January 4, 2000

I moved in with David over the weekend.

Electronically-speaking, that is.

In honor of a bright shiny new year (not to mention a bright shiny new century), *His* computer and *Her* computer have morphed into *Our* computer. And I couldn't be happier.

(Well. That's not exactly true. I could be happier. We could each have a brand-new, state-of-the-art, bells-and-whistles PC of our very own ... AND an apartment big enough to spread out and enjoy them. And that's very likely to happen, somewhere down the road. But in the meantime this seems like the next-best solution.)

And no, this wasn't precipitated by any Y2K-related problems. I am pleased but not-very-surprised to report that we transitioned into the New Year with absolutely zero technological glitches. (The Happy Panda Toaster, thank god, was fully Y2K-compliant. And it's not like we have to worry about our CABLE going out or anything ... grrrrrr.) It wasn't even a matter of dwindling desktop real estate. Yes, things are getting ridiculously crowded -- every time we add a new toy, like the scanner or the CD burner or a COFFEE MUG, we lose more precious space -- but the truth is that we sorta like being up close and personal this way.

It's weirdly intimate.

I'm just tired of fighting with the Acer. Fond as I am of my funky little computer -- a gift from a friend during an especially awful time of my life -- I have to face the fact that its days are numbered.

In recent weeks, like an elderly grandfather, the Acer has grown ridiculously slow and cranky, makes horrible noises in the middle of the night and stubbornly refuses to cooperate at the most inopportune moments. (Plaintive e-mail from Son # Only, after another aborted i.m. session: "Where'd you go?") Simple online operations that should take ten minutes, tops -- like changing the message on my index.html page, or fixing a broken link, or uploading another murky, poorly-scanned Polaroid photo of a KITCHEN APPLIANCE to my website -- were taking hours, mainly because everything kept locking up in mid-operation.

It was driving me mad. MAD, I tell you.

So I talked it over with David, and on Sunday and Monday (my day-off) I spent a bunch of hours airlifting files from my crippled Acer to his more dependable Monster PC ... *FootNotes*-related stuff, mostly, plus five years' worth of e-mail correspondence and old journals, the new résumé, a bunch of Internet bookmarks, my miles-long list of AOL favorite places ... a handful of True Type fonts I can't live without ... my favorite Razzle Dazzle screen saver ... etc. etc. etc. I was able to transfer a lot of it simply by e-mailing it to myself, from one machine to the other. Other files had to be handled with more finesse, zipping and copying them to floppies and then piecing them back together on the "new" computer. And some stuff had to be jettisoned altogether: no way, for instance, to transfer my illicit copy of Microsoft Image Composer without the bootleg software it came from originally. (Hey. Don't sue ME: sue *Someone* in Oregon.)

By the time I was done, I had transformed David's computer into something we can both comfortably use ... sort of the electronic equivalent of what I did to his bathroom last year. (*My* bath supplies/hairdryer/cosmetics/Aqua Net Extra-Extra-Firm Hold/electric hairsetter/four brands of leave-in conditioner/baby powder/candles/Lady Schick refills/fingernail polish remover/baskets of potpourri on the countertops ... and *his* spare razor stuffed into the medicine cabinet.) The way I see it, this should be enough computer to get us both through the next few months.

Later this week we'll decide what to do with the Acer. Donate it to charity? Cannibalize it for parts?

Toss it into the bay behind our apartment building?

The interesting thing, to me, is how unfazed I am by all of this. A year or two ago, if someone had suggested the idea of sharing a computer with my Sig Other, I would have screamed bloody murder. I would have considered it a violation of privacy, a surrender of control, an inconvenience, a big fat pain in the butt ... blah blah blah. But this is different. This is David. And the truth is that I have no secrets to hide from him. No *dangerous* e-mail correspondence that needs to be hidden. No archived i.m. conversations I wouldn't want him to read. No triple-x-rated Caribbean journals.

My life is an open book, where he is concerned.

And David's computer is certainly more reliable than the Acer, even in its fresh-out-of-the-box earliest days, EVER was. It isn't likely to burst into flames when I open two browser windows at once, for instance..

And realistically -- given the cramped conditions of The Castle in general and the desktop in particular -- only one of us can sit there and work at the computer at a time, anyway.

Taking all of these things into account, it just makes sense to share with him for awhile. And not only am I totally fine with this ... I'm secretly sort of tickled by the idea. It's just one more interesting way that our lives intersect.

(Pretty soon it's gonna be tough to tell where SecraVoi ends ... and DRafterTerri begins.)