Enchanted

I love my kitchen gadgets. Last night my new immersion blender arrived and I spent the evening dancing around the kitchen. It came with attachments! I did not expect a mini food-processing bowl or a whisk.

Expect salsa, meringue, and whipped cream to dominate my upcoming dessert recipes.

I need to build new house. After over seven years in my current house, I have decided that the house in which I live is about the right size, but the distribution is wrong. My dream house needs to have a living room with a couple chairs and a coffee table; a bedroom or two with room for a bed and dresser and space to walk between; a bathroom with a sink, toilet, and shower; a library/office that takes up (at least) the space of my current master bedroom. The remainder of the house would be kitchen and pantry.

I love my kitchen gadgets so much, I am seriously considering turning one of my guest bedrooms into a second pantry with shelving to house my pots, pans, bowls, gadgets, etc. My counter and cabinets cannot take any more. I no longer have a dining table. My china cabinet has every nook and cranny taken (with turtle figurines and with cookware). There is barely room for me to cook. The guest bedroom will definitely be a theme room for anyone who sleeps there.

The current theme in the guestroom of “things I haven’t taken to Goodwill yet” is too difficult to decipher.

The dancing in the kitchen when I got the new immersion blender is just the start. I will giggle and applaud - then take a picture and tweet it whenever something turns out just right after using an appliance. While dancing in the kitchen last night, I did stop long enough to tweet to the appliance maker, “Does @(the brand name) have any idea how ecstatically happy I am when a box with 1 of their products arrives at my door? #cooking #gadgetaddict” They did not respond, so apparently the do not have any idea how happy I am when I get a new one of their appliances.

Next time, I will do a Vine of the happy dance so they can see.

Since I am so disenchanted with sports at the current time, I will turn my touchdown dance into my enchanted-happy-appliance dance for this season. And no, I am not ashamed that a hand-held blender makes me dance.

I am certain that if I did a thorough search online I could find a name for my condition. Surely someone who gets as happy as me over a new appliance deserves a diagnosis, but I am not going to search for it. I am perfectly happy calling myself easily amused, and my friends are happy calling themselves deliciously fed.

Teching Down

In March I took a plunge with a Chromebook after reading and researching them for some time. I had converted a useless netbook into a Chromebook and found it useful. The move in March was an all-or-nothing stunt for me as I purchased it the day before going out of town to a conference - and it was the only piece of technology I took with me on the trip.

My initial trepidation evaporated. The more I used it, the more I realized I only needed a traditional computer from time to time when I reached the point that some documents were ready for their final layouts in a program with more features than Google Docs. In the months that followed, I began using the Chromebook almost exclusively for all the work I did.

I even made my staff activate their Google Drive so they could access documents I sent them and my calendar. Every document they receive from me goes through the drive. They were thrilled that I did not pass out stacks of paper, but they were nervous about everything being placed online.

I admit that I sometimes worry about everything being stored in the magical “cloud.” Then again, I put nothing online that would violate any privacy laws if it was lost or hacked or NSAed.

Six months after purchasing my first Chromebook, I upgraded from one with an 11” screen to one with a 14” screen. As fast, functional, and useful as the first one was, my aging eyes struggled to read the screen for long periods of time. Minutes into using the new Chromebook I am thrilled with the larger screen. My eyes are working much less hard than they did on the other one.

I do not mean to sound like a fawning Google fan. My skepticism kicks in every time something becomes centered around a single source ( Google, Microsoft, Apple). I purchased my first computer, a TRS 80 in 1984. I am a gadget geek and spend hours each day with my technology. But after the dozens of devices, I have never worked with a more efficient set of tools than the Google Drive paired with a Chromebook. It simply works and that sells me.

For generations of computers, the next generation surpassed the previous with bells and whistles. On a Chromebook, there is nothing you do not use on a regular basis. Instead of something new, the computer comes with everything necessary. Cleanliness replaces clutter and proves remarkably refreshing. I have everything I need at my fingertips without volumes of extraneous programs to sort through. Even as one who is fairly savvy with technology, I find the minimalism a time saver. For the first time in my many gadget purchased, I have chosen to “tech-down” and I could not be happier about it.