Gee, you dangle technology in front of me and I get all gushy. The Thinking Blog is hosting a contest between now and Dec. 20. In exchange for posting about it, you get an entry in a drawing for (you can all sigh with me) a brand-new RuffBook Tech. It’s billed as a rugged, water-resistant laptop with a magnesium alloy casing. The descriptions are certainly impressive on the website — including the photos of a water-soaked laptop with mud piled on the keyboard.

Now that’s the kind of laptop that might survive even me. I’m hard on my computers — and laptops in particular. My old orange iBook endured through two keyboard replacements, spilled diet Cokes, the occasional drop (OK, more than occasional), and my constant use, with its screen getting darker and darker and the hard drive eventually grinding to a halt.

My current HP Pavilion ZD8000 has a frayed power cord that keeps popping loose from its connection to the computer (the plug-in end is kind of warped). Battery life is about 45 minutes if I’m lucky. The case is battle-scarred from being toted around so much, and the silver is worn off the corners of the plastic case. It’s been knocked off the couch by the cats and off the bed by me, and my kids have lugged it around in my carrying case as delicately as if they were handling, uh, bricks. The touch pad wore through to a green base in the first three months I had it, and eventually it widened and deepened to an oval clear spot showing the touchpad mechanisms beneath (kind of cool, actually). The heaviest-used keys have the letters worn off them. (Yeah, I’m at the keyboard a LOT.) No dead pixels on the screen yet, but it’s going on three years old and it’s just a matter of time now. 

And it looks like my laptop will have to last me, no matter what: My youngest daughter wants a computer of her own and at 10 she’s getting old enough and insistent enough that I’m having to share mine more than I like. (What a bad, bad geeky mom I am.) My oldest is going off to college next year and is in need of an upgrade from her old desktop system to a MacBook Pro for her graphic design studies. And I’m thinking that mine will just have to endure for another year or two since their needs are more acute than mine. Darn it!

Suffice to say that a rugged laptop was designed for ham-handed users like me — and the timing is perfect! So I hope to win. Until then, I’ll keep my fingers crossed … and the diet Cokes away from my keyboard. (*slurp, fizz*) Well, mostly.

Oh, man. I’ve got to take this luck to Vegas. Or at least to the slot machines of Tunica, Mississippi. I just got word that I won the beachy contest at Plot Monkeys — which is one of the latest adds to my must-read blogs. (You KNOW you have a good blog when someone who is actively cutting her Bloglines subcriptions left and right just groans and adds you anyway.)

And now I’m feeling guilty for winning my fourth freebie this month; I think for a while I’ll just drop in and say “Hi” when I’m visiting other blogs. Not that I’m not tickled — this is great! I just don’t want to be greedy.  ;o)

Technorati Tags: PlotMonkeys.com, book giveaways

I’ve had a run of unusually good luck recently with my favorite blogs and podcasts, through no special virtue of my own. First, I got a note from one of the uber-cool podcasters I love to recommend, Charles Hodgson of Podictionary fame, advising me that he was asking his publisher to send me a copy of his newest book, Carnal Knowledge, coming out in August. It’s all about the words we use to describe body parts. Well … bless my enormously callipygian self.  ;o) And bless his kind heart.

Then I won a monumental stack of books, magazines and more in a giveaway at Lynn Viehl’s Paperback Writer blog.

And then, before I’d finished dancing about that book glory, I got a note from The Writing Show podcaster, Paula Berinstein, saying I’d won a signed copy of C.J. Box’s new novel, Free Fire, for several show ideas I submitted. Woo-hoo! Woot! This rocks! (Have I embarrassed my children enough yet with my lame execution of cool sayings?)

I’m awed at having so many great new things to read and very grateful for the generous gifts. When I’m not writing, I’ve been reading book after book lately like a desperately thirsty sot locked in a liquor store for the night. Or — a more familiar scenario — like a Weight Watchers member on the ice cream aisle the day *after* weigh-in. Romances and paranormals and gardening and literature, oh my. I wanna taste them all, and they’re all good.

Of course, my husband’s now starting to look skeptical when I squeal and yell out, “I won more books!” Pity he’s not more gullible … there are several items from Target I’d love to sneak into the house.

And now for something completely different …

I made it to my weekend goal already; I’ve cut down to 150 blogs in my RSS reader. *whew* That still sounds like a lot to my hubby, but it’s a sight better than the 262 I had gotten up to. Just 50 more snips to go before July 31, and I’ll be right on goal.

What are your best ideas lately for carving out more time in your life?

Technorati Tags: winning books, savage blog cuts, time management