Love That Neo!

I'm sitting in my living room typing my blog entry on an AlphaSmart Neo. Tina's AlphaSmart Neo, to be exact. Today was "Coffee with the Strident Women" day at Starbucks, and wonderful Tina loaned me her Neo for a week so I could try it out and see if I like it.

So far I like it very much! It's incredibly light, portable and user-friendly. I can't wait to try hooking it up to the computer to see if downloading the files to Blogger or Word is as easy as Tina swears it is. (Note: it was!) I could definitely get into using this machine. It's exactly what I need -- a smart, portable machine that does NOTHING except write -- no internet, games, or anything else to distract me. Of course, my ancient laptop is also distraction-free, but it has other drawbacks: it has no battery so always needs to be plugged in (major drawback); it doesn't run Word, only WordPerfect, and although it is small for a laptop, it's still clunky compared to the ultra-light Neo. It's definitely time for an upgrade, but if I get a new laptop it will probably have wireless internet and everything I DON'T need ... because I so easily distracted. The beauty of going to Chapters/Starbucks (or anywhere else) to write is that I can get away from all the distractsion of my home AND my home computer. I am so easily distracted it's not even funny, and the internet is the huge "something shiny" that always beckons me away from work. So, getting a Neo might be a solution.

Strident Coffee was great today ... Christine, the original Ms. Strident, sadly couldn't make it due to this Christmas flu that seems to have almost everyone I know laid low, but other than that the whole gang was there. We discussed everything from bridesmaids' dresses and beauty pageants to the writing life and local literary gossip. Lori was celebrating sending her manuscript out to a publisher -- a book I hope I'll be reviewing and telling you to rush out and buy real soon!

I have had something resembling a social life this week and have really been feeling good about it -- Thursday night, Sherry and I finally were able to connect long enough to go to a movie (the formulaic and predictable, but quite fun, The Holiday), and last night Jason and I had Jennifer and David over for board games. We played Blockus and Scrabble, and I won one game of Blockus. I'm blown away that someone's managed to invent a game of strategy that I can play, much less win. It's amazing. (Jason wants me to tell you that he won Scrabble, which he did, by a crushing margin. But this is not really news as he nearly always wins at Scrabble).

One of the things I've been feeling in the last year is that I don't make enough time to spend with my friends -- having a family, teaching and writing fills my days so completely. Sometimes I feel I'm more in touch with long-distance friends who I chat with on msn than I am with my own good friends who live ten minutes' drive away. It's not exactly a New Year's Resolution, but I would like to get together more often with my friends in 2007, so this week has been a good one that way, and Strident Coffee was the perfect way to kick off the second week of 2007!

In Shameless Parent Brag news, Jason's blog has a video of Christopher playing the violin in church last week ... check it out!