Change in plans isn't always a bad thing (but backups aren't a bad idea) (Day 84)

The plan was that we would work in the garden yesterday and today my husband would get in a couple of hours of work. Ha. Today his computer started acting up again, so he bit the bullet and turned it in to microcenter. When will he get it back? I have no idea. 

Good thing the long-waited for elevated garden box finally appeared in the mail yesterday, and good thing we like being in the garden. He put the box together in less than an hour; I want to say I helped, but other than remembering how many screws we were supposed to use, not so much. Well, fine, at least we have the box.

This isn't a great time for him to be without a computer: there's drama with the car, there's college tuition, and there's a wedding. It's such a bad time it borders on comical. We could have bulked, but today for some reason I decided to embrace that this was an unexpected opportunity for us to spend more time together. So we went to Brookline to get some Korean food, looked at the bookstore and found George O'Connor's new graphic novel, Odin, then came home and read, worked out, washed dishes, and enjoyed each other's company. It was all in all not just a good day but a happy day.

...with one caveat: it isn't lost on me that his computer troubles began immediately after he made get out the vote calls with me on Friday. Needless to say, he can't tomorrow, but now I'm nervous about doing so. Just...the internet has not helped without exacting some costs. I miss the days when I got a list of phone numbers to call on, you know, a sheet of paper. 

In other news and perhaps on the other hand, it seems the British food writer and human right advocate Jack Monroe has fled the internet. Crazy that someone who's been bullied and received death threats with a reference to their address might seek anonymity, but here we are. Today I discovered that they seem to have shut down their website, on top of removing social media accounts. This is a huge loss, and that is a fact. They provided clear-eyed analysis of what British austerity is costing its most vulnerable people, and they provided recipes that were always easy to follow, inexpensive, and delicious. 

So here I would like to thank...Pocket. I panicked when I realized Monroe's recipes were gone, then remembered that I had saved many of them to my Pocket account. This prompted me to look through all of my posts tagged "recipes", and I got a little thrill that I had so much great stuff at my fingertips, and in a better format than simply bookmarks or tabs. I'm not going to send everyone to Pocket, but given how likely it is for material on the internet to disappear, it might not be a bad idea to capture the things you love one way or another.

Or, you know, just shrug it off and cuddle up with your sweetie. 

Deb in the City