Let me preface this by saying that I am, by no means, a great seamstress.  My mother was exactly that.  She could whip up a new party dress, a suit for my father, or upholster the couch and in each case, the results would be stunning.  I live in fear of zippers.  I dread darts.  [...]

I’ve owned a lot of computers over the years.  My first was an Apple II.  I skipped over the whole Commodore craze.  Then came my Apple IIe, and then a Compaq Deskpro.  That silly computer lasted me some 14 years, over a billion words of novels and medical transcripts.  It was still working when I [...]