In Which I Leave my Life's Work at Barnes & Noble

The other night Mark and I went over to Barnes & Noble so he could indulge his new bridge fetish by browsing through the Games section. We both brought our laptops along so we could hang out and be trendy in the cafe for a while. But it turned out I was more interested in browsing than working, so I set mine aside.

I spent a couple of hours looking through Law in Plain English for Writers (not terrible, but not as detailed as I wanted it to be regarding tax liability), Can't Fail Color Schemes (I got this one), and The Devious Book for Cats (Hee hee hee! Kitty cats!). Finally Mark had made his selection, and we left.

Without my laptop.

It wasn't until after a delectable dinner at Ru San's sushi bar that we pulled into the driveway and I realized that I had left my laptop at the bookstore. I called them up and told the guy who answered the phone where I thought I had left it. And sure enough, there it was. It was 10:45 by that point, and I couldn't make it back to store by closing, so I gave him my name and told him I'd swing by in the morning.

Now, I had actually backed up my files the night before, so all I would have lost would have been my laptop, the backpack, and a couple of odds and ends. Even so, it was a few hours before my heart rate ratcheted back down into the normal range. And when it did, I found myself rather pleased with the world, content to know that I live in a place where a girl can leave a grand worth of home office equipment lying around for three hours, only to return and pick it up the next day.

I know all people aren't honest, of course, but a lot of people are honest. And it gives me a lift. It's very, very easy to get focused on the negative in the world, because the negative is so much more visible and memorable. But take it from my laptop and me: there's also a whole lotta good.