About a month ago, I was so excited to have a new laptop! I found one I'd been eyeing at a store that was going out of business, so I bought it at close to 20% under market value. I couldn't say no. My hubby couldn't say no either. Now I need to figure out what to do with it.

The first thing I did was load The Sims 2. I had wondered what it would play like on a new machine. I quickly discovered that when I threw out a bunch of stuff two years ago I threw out the loading codes for the first two Sims games. Woe is me! I finally found the first one online (I'd actually registered it) but alas, The Sims 2 University is no longer part of my Sims experience. Then I bought The Sims Vacation to add to my fun. All that and I played the game twice. Who has time for video games when there are books to be read?

Next, I loaded Tax Cut and did my taxes. It was nice to do them in a different work space than my writing office. Still haven't heard back from  the government, even with electronic filing, so I'm nervous about that.

After that, I explored the world of book trailers and made my first two trailers, which was so fun and worked so well that my friends thought my sister had done them for me (yes, she's the artistic one). But no, it was just me and my new laptop.

Yesterday, I thought that maybe I should try to write or edit something on my machine. Because you know, that's why I bought it. So I trussed it into its new on-sale Fred Meyer computer bag and took it to a fast food restaurant to avoid the paint fumes in my house (hubby has been painting the living room). You know what? I could hardly see the screen! The mouse was all but invisible and I had to use the backspace and delete key to make edits. Despite all that, I did edit a synopsis but my efficiency was low.

Let's hope the lighting is better other places, or I may be back to using my Alphasmart in restaurants!