On my writing table is a bust of Beethoven, a childhood hero of mine. He once wrote a short piano piece of fury and heartbreak called Fury Over the Lost Penny. It’s not a long piece but there is enough fury and heartbreak in it to last a lifetime. He wrote it after a coin he’d set aside for food fell into his piano and was lost forever. Well, that is how I feel this morning. My PC has crashed, crashed to the point it will not even boot up. I get these warning signs saying more damage will be done if Windows allows it to boot up. Been a long time since I’ve had an overwhelming urge to break any, well, windows.

Being on a fixed income this event is, in a word, a disaster. Worst of all, I’d just begun writing a piece that I fear is lost forever. All my other writing is saved, thankfully, but this piece I fear is lost and I loved it, as I love all the things I write, even when they suck, and most do. I’m writing this feeble piece on what can best be described as a Model T Laptop.

Lousy morning. The good news is I will be sober seven years tomorrow and don’t think I don’t know I’d be handling this a lot differently if I wasn’t sober.