Technical Foul

Okay. I've been faking it for awhile. Our server issues were cleared up over a week ago, but I somehow found it easy to stay out of this space. Pretend I wasn't home. Peek out the window to see who's at the door. This happens to me from time to time. I suppose it's a form of depression, but not the clinical kind. I think of it more as a technical depression, as in technological. In other words, sometimes all of this technology depresses me.

I have a complicated relationship with my high tech stuff. To be perfectly truthful I find it all irresistible. In addition to the standard fare of phones, DVD players, flat-screens, and iPods I own three computers all capable of mind-bending feats of art, organization, and calculation. I use them to type on for the most part. Sort family photos. Shop for used tools on eBay and Craigslist. There's nothing I use these computers for that I couldn't and didn't do before I had them. The difference is that it is so much faster and easier to do now. This ought to put time back into my life but it doesn't. It's so fast and easy I just do more of it.

And every once in awhile it all breaks down and I have to stop. That's what happened for a couple of days two weeks ago. My website went down. My blog crashed. My email server became unavailable. My excellent web guy and I spent way too much time on the phone with customer service people in exotic foreign locations. There were accounts to be verified. Passwords recalled. Indecipherable series of numbers and decimals appeared in my phone notes. I dropped my iPhone in the sink and the sounds stopped working. We think an electrical storm took out our WiFi router. By the time it was all fixed I was broken.

I took a trip with my 3-year-old to see my 24-year-old. I didn't take a laptop. I mowed the lower field -- finally. I started cutting the frame for the arbor to go over the pergola out back. I laid out a new fence line along the east side. I sharpened all my hand planes and scrapers to get back to work on a table for good friends that is six months overdue. I picked some raspberries.

And now I'm back feeling much better, thank you. I'll never lie to you again.*

*[asterisk denotes unidentified caveat to be named later]