Orders and Deliveries and Online Enjoyment

Packages!  Over the past week or so we've had things delivered, including several major items needed for the comfort of some of our family members who will be visiting over the holidays.  Most of the stuff was ordered online both by us and by other family members. 

We've also had some car issues and received a few ordered items that my handy husband and younger son are using to fix those issues.

Those items were pretty much all ordered online.  Yes, we keep getting snail mail gift catalogs and I thumb through them in case there's something I hadn't heard of or looked up online that I can't live without, or I can't live without ordering for someone else.   

We do, in fact, have something I want to order for our dogs that happened to appear in a snail mail catalog.  Once upon a time, I'd have mailed the order form in with a check and waited for the things to get here.  Now?  My first thought is I'd better make sure they have a website so I can order the same things online.  It's faster and easier. 

I admit to having shopped locally and physically wrapped and taken the packages to my local post office this year for snail mailing as well as in prior years.  But I do less of that now. 

I'm quite a non-techie person, but when I learn something and it becomes ingrained in my mind, that's what I always turn to.  I've written on a computer for most of my life, fortunately, but I also know the program I use isn't the most current.  At least I can still use it for now.  I additionally rely on the Internet for things I know it can do for me, like provide writing research information and social media contacts and--yes--blogging!  And ordering things, if I need to, and signing up for writing organizations and conferences, and more. 

I've become even more aware of this lately as I've been helping a good friend who's even less Internet and computer savvy than I am.  I print out forms for her since she doesn't sign up for things online, and I think about when stuff I did relied a lot more on snail mail. 

So what if I'm far from being the computer savviest person there is?  At least I know what I do and learn more as I need to.   

And, yes, I'll look forward to my next deliveries of stuff I've ordered online. 

By the way, I received input about how the editorial process will go for my first Barkery and Biscuits Mystery BITE THE BISCUIT, which will be a May 2015 release.  I'm currently writing my next Harlequin Nocturne about my covert military unit of shapeshifters, called CANADIAN WOLF.  But I'll look forward to working on BITE THE BISCUIT, too.  I received a printed galley of it at Bouchercon, and it does need some editing.  Yes, even a grammar and proofreading nut like me can make mistakes!