Is it breathing? I don't know. Kick it, maybe it'll move.

Dear friends, it is with heavy heart that I report the news of a sad death. My dearest desktop computer, with us for oh these so many years, has given up the ghost.

She came home with me back in oh-three, I think. I only know this from my version of carbon dating. My tax returns from 2003 were found in the carcass during exhumation.

She was a good old girl. She tolerated a lot of abuse. Too many programs installed. Too many photos uploaded. Too many abrupt starts and stops, and who can forget moving her around too damn many times?

Then late last week I put the proverbial straw on the proverbial elderly camel's back.

It was like loading up your ninety-three-year-old grandmother with a heavy backpack (Adobe Illustrator is the heavy backpack in this analogy) and then forcing her to run a sprint. Uphill. In a snowstorm.

She passed out. The mouse died first. Then the keyboard. Now she sits, unplugged and forlorn near the window in my office.

I dragged out our spare desktop. Sickening, isn't it? We're like Hoarders, only with more hoarding. Actually, my hubs and I both bought similar desktops from Costco while we were dating. When we got married and he moved in, we just kept using mine and stashed his upstairs. I hauled it out and have spent the last two days trying to connect the fracking thing to the internet. I've spent a total of three hours on the phone with two separate tech support lovelies from AT&T U-verse. They're stumped. It's not working. It should be working, but it isn't. I guess I'll be calling the Geek Squad soon. Or my neighbors will hear glass crashing as a desktop computer comes hurtling through the front window. Either way.

- H