For five years I've wanted a glider rocking chair. They're soothing, they're relaxing, you can sleep in them if you want to. I thought about getting one before the first tum operation but the price was beyond beyond. They cost as much as most desktops and some cost as much as a good quality laptop. Add 15% GST and PST and, well, no. But I have money if I want it, or a line of credit at good rates, and am tired of being saving for my old age. I went to the end of the street and sussed out the gliders.

They were having a sale on the floor models which essentially cancelled the sales tax plus a bit extra. They also had a new import model at half the cost of the others. It had black lacquer arms and frame and was certainly the best looking of the lot. But it only glides back so far and then catches as if hitting a wall (something gliders will do- hit walls, I mean.) So after trying out all the chairs and rejecting those above $700, I went with the stock affordable-ish one, the one that cost as much as this system. Delivered yesterday.

It's a rocking chair. Meh. So what?

At the same time I can no longer bear the fonts and the sizes and the idiocies in my copy of Word, which is 97. (All my documents were created in 2003, unless it was 2005. They display badly, and new docs display worse.) I see there are shareware Word 2003 downloadable on the net, but I'm suspicious of it. And anyway I suspect the problem is this monitor, which I'm beginning to hate passionately. It wants everything at a thin tiny 1440x900 and isn't going to get it. Meanwhile I can put the brightness up to 100% and my macros and half of Post secrets are still too dark to see. (And all fonts are unreadably light.) My rocking chair could have got me a new screen (but maybe all LCD monitors are dark?) and a copy of Office 2003 (though why I have to buy the entire office when I only want Word is something else that bugs me) and dinner out at a good restaurant.

I was not born with a happy disposition. I would like a personality transplant, stat.

(OTOH I've now met Baby-saving! Zhao Yun. The baby was in fact a toddler, though I should remember that Warring States 2 year olds were not the gargantuan figures they are now. And even now there are bonsai babies-- Winnie at the daycare would probably fit under someone's breastplate no problem.)