Drat!

My trackball mouse is on it's last legs. It seems that nothing lasts forever anymore. Fragile things, those trackballs. Much as I like them, they seem to have a pathological aversion to being repeatedly dropped to the floor. Drop them enough, and they refuse to function. Although this is my third Logitech trackball to sufferer this same fate (Could it be, that I'm a serial trackball killer?), I still love them, and will probably get another.

I sit at a right angle to my I-Mac, with my feet propped up, and my keyboard on my lap. The mouse simply rests on my right thigh, just in front of the keyboard. With a trackball mouse, there is no shuffling the mouse around. The mouse sits in a stationary position, and your thumb, index, and middle fingers do all the work. Track ball mice (mouses?) are great, until the rubber pads on their underside begin to come off. They are mere slivers of rubber, affixed with a contact cement. They are there to provide traction. Once they come off, the mouse easily slips off of your thigh, and falls to the floor. Thud! Enough of these falls, and eventually the poor thing becomes addled, much like the brain of a boxer, after taking too many punches to the head. The cursor then begins to freeze up, and you constantly have to give the mouse a shake to wake it back up. It's all down hill from there. You have a mouse with Alzheimer's disease. There with you one moment, and the next, it doesn't know who you are.

Currently I have my I-Mouse plugged into the USB port on my I-Keyboard, and compared to my trackball, it feels more like an I-Pain. Since you are all mature, and exceptionally perceptive readers, I'm sure it isn't necessary to mention exactly where that I-Pain is located.

For one thing, the cord is only about a third as long as the extra long Logitech cord, and because my bare thigh, or the shorts or Capri pants covering it, are apparently a weak reflector of light, it's optical nerve, has difficulty sensing my commands. Additionally, I just found out that my I-Mouse's right click function, does not initiate spell check, when you need it. In fact, the difference between the two mice (mouses?) is do glaring, that I just plugged the trackball back in. Better to have the mobility and functionality of a crippled trackball, than have to deal with an inferior I-Pain.......er......I-Mouse. It's kind of a shame really, because I love my I-Mac, but I am less than pleased it's peripherals. The optical mouse is sluggish and cumbersome, and the keyboard is notorious for requiring consistently heavy keystrokes to avoid dropped characters. Words with double letters, such as........well.......letters..........Blogger.........etc., often have the second double letter dropped, unless you really hammer the keys.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but I think the searing heat may finally be winding down. For the past few days, it has struggled to reach 90°F. Under normal circumstances, 90° would be considered hot, but not this year or last, with temperatures soaring up to, and above the 100° mark. Now we are experiencing a stationary front, that is bringing much needed cooling rain showers. In fact, it's 75°, and pouring down rain at this very moment. Very pleasant indeed!

Have you ever seen the lovely Christina Hendricks, who plays Joan Harris, the office manager on the hit AMC TV series Mad Men? She is on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon right now. I would love to be as beautiful and confident as she is, yet at the same time, I would die to be possessed by her! Does that make me wacky? I don't care! All that I know, is that I love strong beautiful confident women!

Speaking of beautiful confident women, how about a soothing song from the lovely Diana Krall?

Melissa XX