Size does matter

We had some rough weather a few nights ago, and when I woke up in the morning I realized we'd been hit with a power surge. Fortunately, everything in the house survived except for my computer monitor. Poor old thing! She was a good monitor- big and bulky and taking up far too much room on my desk. But I loved her and all her 17" of pixelated glory. She served me well for nearly 8 years, connecting me to family, friends, school, and all sorts of strange places in between. So I sighed a heavy sigh when I came to accept the fact that no sort of fiddling with her power cord was going to revive her.

New monitors are cheaper than ever now, and I'm really looking forward to an LCD screen and the smaller amount of space it will take up. Can you even buy an old fashioned monitor anymore? The reality is, no matter how much I'm looking forward to a new monitor, my checking account is not looking forward to shelling out for one, even at the cheap prices they can be had for. I suppose cheap is a relative term.

But I can't be computerless for weeks on end. That's like an alcoholic going cold turkey while working at the liquor store. Too much. And yes, I do admit that I spend far too much of my time on the computer. We all have our problems, right? So what's my solution?

My ancient little (I think it's a 15" that was hiding out in the shed. I got this baby for almost free back when I worked at Best Buy. $12 total for it and the little computer with the 4 gig hard drive that I was so glad to have. Amazing how quickly technology changes and we get spoiled to the new stuff, isn't it? I'm telling you, looking at this tiny monitor is doing terrible things to my eyesight! But it works, I think it might actually have a better picture than my old one, and it'll do until we're ready to buy a new one.

Sometimes I'm proud to be a packrat.