Oh, man, Santa, where do I start?? *

It's that time of year where we try to put aside our selfish desires and concentrate on the giving of gifts to others... but, then again, it's also the time of year that we all make our own wish lists!

I have found myself a little overwhelmed with the wish-list-writing-process this year for two main reasons: 1) I am down to only one job (can you believe it??) and so I haven't been able to buy myself pretty much anything lately (including food, gas... ;)!), and 2) Everything of mine has been breaking and should be replaced!

As you know, I have always had issues with robots, but let me just say, technology hated me first! I can't seem to get an electronic device that doesn't partially break at some point. And I mean "partially" break... as in “just broken enough” that I think it'll work and try to use it and find that it doesn't! It’s like the technology is teasing me! Let me give you some examples:

1. Digital Camera: It's now officially broken, but before that it was constantly stuck in the "on" position mechanically (lens out and open, etc), and I would have to press the power button about 6-15 times to get it to actually turn off. Then, when it was on, out of every 50 pictures I took with it, about 10 would be blurry, about 10 would be tinted green or red, and about 10 would have creepy streaks through them. But since that meant 20 would turn out fine, I still tried to use it! And this camera only existed to replace my film camera, which had issues of its own!
2. Cell Phone Charger: This charger has since been destroyed, but for good reason! Basically, I would put my cell phone on it and instead of the red "charging" light, there would always be a yellow "error" light. So, after about 20 times of me slamming the phone onto the charger, the correct light would finally be on. But then, oh then, when the green "charged" light would be on, most of the times I'd take my phone off of the charger, it would instantly shut off because the charger hadn’t actually done anything! Curse you, phone charger! You lied to me!! Now I charge my phone in my car, which means my phone basically is out of charge 90% of the time since I only drive 7 miles a day!
3. Kitchen Timer: The first thing to break was the "reset" button, so the timer will just blink "00:00" until we set it for another set of minutes. And the clock portion of the timer loses a couple of minutes a day (and we've changed the batteries). I think recently it's actually been pretty close to the right time again after losing a full 24 hours!
4. Laptop: My goodness, where do I begin? My little Charlie Bucket (like in "Willy Wonka" because she seems to have a good heart, but she keeps screwing up!!) has been my biggest rebel! She's already gotten a brand new hard drive after I've reinstalled Windows twice (since she liked to restart herself several times a day) and she’s had to get her hinges replaced (I would open the screen and it would fall backwards! I had to like sit over the computer and look down to see the screen!), and now the cd driver only works... sometimes. There's no rhyme or reason to it, sometimes it won't read a $400 software cd, but will read a crappy burned cd. She definitely likes to keep me guessing.
5. Printer: About 6 months after I got it (and it used to print beautifully), when I'd try to print something, the paper would just go all the way through, without the ink going over it at all, and then it would say that it was finished! I tried replacing the ink cartridges in vain, and the only way I could any printing at all would be to print documents in red ink. So, I decided to lend it to my friend Tim for a year under the assumption that it only printed in red. He plugged it into his computer and it instantly worked perfectly in all colors. ;) So now it works, but I don’t have it! Doesn’t it seem out to get me?
6. Stereo: Something internally on the volume knob broke, so when I turn the volume knob to volume "1" I can barely hear it, if I turn it to "2" it's at super-loud-party-level, and then again at "3", it's barely audible... and at "4", I need hearing protection... So by the time I've finished making the tiniest movements with my hand on the dial to get it to a tolerable volume, whatever song I was playing is over anyways.
7. Scanner: This maybe should go under the "computer" section, but whenever I plug in my scanner to my computer, it will slow down the entire system to the point that it even takes 20 minutes to restart the computer. I did (luckily) solve that problem by plugging in the scanner when the computer is off. But then, for some reason, the scanning software started "autocroping" and there doesn't seem to be a way to turn it off. So it always takes a few tries to get the scanner to just output 1 picture and not 4 or 5 crooked, cropped-at-every-bit-of-white-space pictures. How does this happen?
8. DVD Player: Sometimes I really think that it has a mind of its own. It will play DVDs flawlessly for about 2 hours, but after that, it just seems to get tired or something and freezes on a single frame. No amount of cleaning the disks or turning on and off the player will make it go past that one frame. Well, until the next day or something and it will magically work again!
9. Answering Machine: I know what most of you are thinking: "Ciara, an answering machine is far from technology! Why don't you complain about an 8-track machine, now?!" But, for someone who can't charge her cell phone, I need a landline! And voicemail is expensive! And the answering machine is very new! Recently, it just decided to act like it's been unplugged (when it hadn't been), erasing all messages, our outgoing message, and the time, every couple of weeks. It actually happened again about 15 minutes ago… does it know I am writing about it??

Doesn't it seem like the devices are just a little malicious? :) I mean, or maybe the machines are just starving for attention and want me to spend more time with them… because it usually takes about as much time to get any of those things to work as it does to actually use them!

Anyway, the only thing I really need replaced is my digital camera, so maybe in the spirit of Tiny Tim and all that jazz, I should count my blessings and be thankful that they work at all... and I am pretty lucky because my biggest and most expensive electronic/motorized device-- my car, Nikki-- is far from broken! But I think that's because deep down inside, she really, really loves me and wants me to be happy. I only wish I could say the same for those other 9 things!

So, yeah, back to Santa... please just have your elves build a little digital camera for me and please tell them to instill in it lots of Christmas cheer so it won't want to break! Thank you!

*(See, I clearly need a camera! But, I must admit, I do love superimposing my face on random people's-- in this case, a random baby's-- bodies! I hope this isn't what my kids look like! Yikes!)