etc.

I am not a collector of things. In fact I can barely get my head around the collecting mentality (much to chagrin of my husband, a man who scours the city for garage and rummage sales every summer weekend in search of I don’t know what, and I don’t think he knows either, but he’ll know it when he sees it). I am very much against the amassing of things, and if you ask my family, they will confirm that I go through a household purge at least once a year, riding myself of the growing quantity of stuff, the byproduct of modern living I think, that eventually floats to the surface like a whole lot of suffocating flotsam and jetsam.

And I’ve never really been a gadget person, I’ve always preferred one multitasking piece of equipment over many single-task ones, which is why my recent yearning for several computer and personal peripherals has caught me somewhat off guard. While sifting through junkmail yesterday (definitely flotsam), I came across the Radio Shack flyer, one that usually goes from the landing, where our mail is dropped, straight to the recycling bin. But this time I brought it in, lay it down on the coffee table and sat in front of it with a cup of tea and pencil and circled about 20 things, some of which include:

• a digital camera
• a webcam
• a zip drive
• CD burner
• MP3 player

I’d be willing to pay a decent krona or two for a single piece of equipment out there that can take digital photographs, post them to my website, zip my files, burn CDs and play my MP3s. And if it can boil up a nice pot of Earl Grey and spontaneously lay waste to incoming and resident flotsam and jetsam, I’ll add a few more kronor to that offer.