Yesterday I enacted the role of emotional-support dog for a dear friend whose husband was having surgery. And then I came home, excitedly opened my new computer, immediately discovered that it had been improperly refurbished, and then spent more than two hours on the phone with ten or twelve incompetent customer service reps who should have immediately issued me a replacement but instead maundered and blathered and made me repeat the same information a thousand times and foisted me off onto other departments, until final one man acted sensibly and got me connected to the returns department--which then acted as if this were my own cavalier choice rather than the company's fault from beginning to end, which then led me, finally, to lose my temper and screech at him, which then led him to . . . drum-roll . . . offer me a $100 credit for company products, NOT a deep discount on the product I'd already purchased . . .

Which explains why I'm late writing to you because first I had to fire off a stern letter to corporate headquarters.

In other news: I had a poem in the newspaper.