In celebration of a successful first six months of freelancing, I mailed in my enormous, cringe-inducing tax payments (yes, payments, plural: one for New York State, one for Arizona, one quarterly estimated payment, and one big fat one for the feds for last year) and then proceeded to spend a whole lot of money on a new MacBook.

I’m spending the next two weeks in and around New York, visiting friends, family, and clients, and although my iMac seems almost portable (afterall, Dan took his on the Chinatown bus to Boston last summer), I didn’t think it would go over well in cafés or bookstores, the home base of the away-from-home.

The last laptop I had was an ancient, college-era Toshiba, which had, instead of a trackpad, a bizarre and sort of disgusting little rubber joystick implanted in the keyboard. It probably weighed 20 pounds, and its case was that dull gray plastic all computers seemed to wear in the 1990s. That poor computer died a long a slow death after many mangled attempts at connecting to the college network using some arcane and seemingly untested Novell software. It introduced me to the Blue Screen of Death. Happily, though, it was the first computer on which I learned HTML.

UPS says the little new guy is en route for delivery, so until then, I’m housebound, awaiting that blessed brown truck’s arrival.

Update: It’s here! See above!