Thursday 15 November 2007

Pic of the day: Just married opened. And a lot heavier than it looks.

Divine intervention

This is totally like something out of my novel.

I got a text message that my new computer had arrived at the post office. I went there to carry it home, although the words "or die trying" kept creeping up on me. Computers are heavy beasts, especially in the box with all the stuff that follows with them. I comforted myself that technology keeps getting smaller and lighter over time, perhaps this one wouldn't be so bad.

It was so bad, and then some. The new computer is fully as heavy as any I have had before, and there were also a box in the box, and various extra stuff, and lots and lots of tightly packed insulating paper. (I normally think of paper as light and fluffy, but this was a very solid type and it was packed very tightly.) The actual outer box was huge and unwieldy, making it hard to get a grasp on.

I started to carry it home. Soon I had to set it down and wait for my heart to get back to a decent pace. After barely 100 yards I was sweating, despite the freezing temperature and having purposely left my outer jacket and cap at home. I took another break, my vision swimming a little. Only 750 yards left, some of it uphill ... Light help me!

An unfamiliar van stopped at the bus stop a little bit ahead of me. The driver came out and headed toward me. This made me a bit nervous. Was it someone taking advantage of my weakened state to rob me? No, quite the opposite: It was an old friend from The Christian Church, who I had not seen since I briefly met him when I moved here, and before that not for years and years. He was on his way back to work for some overtime (he just happens to work in that direction) and generously offered to drive me and the computer home.

(He didn't need to do that, you know, he could have thoughts: "That guy stopped going to our church, he deserves what's coming to him. Die and go to hell, damned apostate." But that's not how people think in the Christian Church. They are like my Lightwielders in that they see themselves as servants of a Higher Power with the sole purpose of helping those who need it.)

So here I am, alive and with a heavy quad-core computer. "Fiction has to be realistic, but real life is not so limited."