@BlueCollarGoddess - Oh, Geez!   That is easier said than done.  I mean, I could never argue with you that that would not be the best thang for our budding young familie.  However, you don't know my wife.  But let me tell you a little something about me first, just a little snippet, a tid bit, if you will:  I like to spend, and it is one of the few thangs I do rather well.  There, I said it.  It's out in the open.  SHE says I spent 6000 dollars a month average for a good many years.  I don't entirely believe that.  But, I am not one to pick the flies out of you-know-what, looking for details.  I like to think that I am the sort who what likes to keep his eyes on the big picture, whatever that is.  It's just so darn easy to say, "The Big Picture."  How can anyone come back with something to sting that into oblivion, let alone someone struggling with The English as a second language.  So, yes, I depend heavily on big picture rhetoric, use it all the time.

Now, as for her.  She only belatedly admits that any money I spent other than for taxes, milk, eggs, and bread has been worth the expenditure.   Mind you we eat no butter -- though we did once, and it was a funny story, got some magical butter at the Thanksgiving bash from our church, at this catered buffet.  My kids went hogwild over butter.  At first they didn't know what to do with it.  They smeared it on their rolls, after I taught them how to do that, and then they did it with glee, picking up where I left off years ago, without a blink. 

I have spent over 4000 dollars on old US TV sitcoms and dramas from the 60's and 70's. Now, she curtly acknowledges that those purchases are probably why our children speak the English so well.  And surprise me with phrases I never use.  It's funny, but pleasing at the visceral level.  Before the influx of US sitcoms, my children were all carbon copies of me linguistically, using only the words I used.  Of course, I always did my level best to give them a great array of choices, being an aficionado of diversity anyways.  For example, when they lag behind and I want them to come thundering down the wide sidewalk to catch up with me and my Little General (4-monther) hanging from my chest, I turn and yell.  "Let's go!  Get the lead out!  On the double!  Hup two!  Pick up the Pace!  Let's get a move on!  Let's make some time!  Get a move on, now!"  and so forth.  Still, I immediately recognize new words and phrases which I know I have never once used in front of my children.  And it's not dirty words; we avoided those merely by buying sitcoms from the earlier time period.  It's just other words. 

But boy, yeah.  That computer looks reeeaal good sitting there on that shelf, or rather in my mind, which is where I visit it more frequently.  I only saw it that once in the store.  But boy it looked good indeed.  Yessiree Buddy.  I could imagine my children using that thing, and little "moi aussie," to boot.  You can bet yore sweet booties.  So it looks like we're all go, a no-brainer, ready to plop down the money and make the buy.   But, then we come to my wife.  Dead end.  The wall starts here. 

Just yesterday I axed her if'n she would like to buy some rings.  We never bought wedding rings.  I rather fancy the tradition.  I like lots of traditions, you know.  But that's me, again.  But I've been trying to persuade her to let me traipse down to the local bank and buy some gold.  Apparently they've got lots of it.  I thought it would be a good investment, you know, after the Chinese lose interest in our dollars, what with the extra 3 trillion stimulus spending underway.  Remember the old saw, "Too many dollars chasing too few goods spells inflation ever time."  So, I figured I could squeeze in a little bit on our fingers, a bit of gold into our family holdings.  No go.  And now that I think about it, I could have predicted a fat chance on that.  My problem is I get to dreaming and let myself go to easily, forgetting the formidable woman to whom I'm married. 

She's a screamer (except of course the one time I might want her to scream a bit, let me think I was doing a decent job of it, where she's as mum as a turtle, and about as motionless), minutely managing the affairs of the whole household by carefully orchestrated punctuations of her unique emotional input when she doesn't get her way. 

And according to my students, that is the way of many South Korean households, where the wife holds all the purse strings, doling out a small drinking and "funning" allowance to their hubbies, while socking away the motherlode for education for their children.  They spend more per capita on education than the Japanese. 

The way I see it, education is just not so important.  What is the point of being a high flying hedge fund manager if you have a drinking problem and can't please your wife and kids?  If they live a life they enjoy now while they are young, then I believe their love of life and moral capacity will be sufficient to carry them through rough educational challenges in the future. 

The way I see it, I cannot spend too much time with them now.  And they can very clearly spend too much time staring at a book when they have long since burned past their attention spans for the day.  That is what happens when they come home from school (taught in The Korean), and are forced to sit by her for an hour or so.  They do one extra hour of intensive Korean study with their teachers each afternoon at the school anyways, on account of their Korean language deficits. 

But, I digress with these "ways I see it."  The computer is a beaut.  And will not be a part of our family for the forseeable future.  I read a WSJ article, too, about how lap tops do strain our necks and backs.  I may get an Apple desk top once we make our great Exodus, which incidentally, is approaching, taking shape.  [Just a second, give me a break for a second, and let me see if I can't round up a dirty spoon here somewheres for stirring my fake coffee, decaf mixed into hot milk with real cocoa powder and honey.] 

There, I'm back.  One handy dirty spoon was lying faithfully beside my printer.  Two days ago I got blessed out for paying 20 dollars to this fellow who came out to fix the printer for us, there being some kind of mixed message between the printer and the computer.  He wouldn't take any money because he sold us the printer about six months ago, but the fact that he came to our house, driving about 15 minutes each way, I had to insist he take something.  My wife got teed off, but funny thing (and she's growing up, though still young, just past 30), she was pissed because I reached into our secret stash, out in front of God and everybody, when (according to her, not me) the man was standing in view of my quick grab, giving away our family jewels secret, all in one fell swoop, like he's going to rush back and sell his intimate knowledge of the interior of our messy home to some miscreants just waiting around the corner, watching the comings and goings of our increasing clan, waiting for the opportune moment to strike.  But you know, that moment never comes.  Our home is almost never empty.  If I were a thief, I would do my trading elsewhere, maybe even turn over a new leaf, start some meditation classes.

Yippee!  On the way back from the chicken (kitchen really, but "chicken" is what my children learnt from yore's truly ... and we do a lot of words differently, adding a little flair to our family specific vocabulary just for funsies.  After all, I AM the sole arbiter for what goes in the English language around these here parts.  Heh heh heh.), I was dandified to notice an extra unopened package of  Maxim decafeinated coffee.  I was noticing that the one here in the classroom has been getting  low here of late.  But no matter now. I'm good for another two months!  I love it!   I had to make an extra trip to the chicken to bring My Clever Lad up to par.  He has to wear the same kind of hat I do whenever we go outdoors, which caused a problem this morning when My Dandelion took one of our pair.  He also has to have a drink of the same sort I mix for myself.  He, too, calls it "coffee," when really it is not the genuine article, real McCoy.  But that matters not to him.  He doesn't really drink it much anyways, would rather play, but has got to have the identical drink mixed up and set beside his playing place.  Then, for him, life is good.  It doesn't get any better than that.  I, for my part, go behind him and drink what he left (cold now) hours later.  You can't follow too soon, lest he catch you and complain, insisting you mix up another.  And I operate like a vacuum cleaner, eating what my five children leave behind on their plates.  Isn't that what fathers are for?  It is one thing I do well. I can eat with the best of'em.  After all, I'm an American Baptist from the South.  We do eat.  And we are big on the whole, maybe not taller than the US average but nobody, not nobody says we are not big.  They have to give us that. 

So, I hope I was able to properly answer your comment on the computer. I'll add more later, when time and circumstances allow.  It's good to hear from you.  I hope you are doing well, there.  We'll be there in two shakes of a sheep's tail.  And for that, once I get into my seminary, I can't be shaking no more sheep tails, now can I?   Got's to clean up my act.  They's no drinking allowed in the seminary, either, which really, when you think about it, doesn't make a whole lot of sense, given that Christ's first miracle was to create wine from water at the Wedding Feast.  But that's fine with me.  I can stop my almost daily wine glass with no regrets.  And my wife will bank the difference.  I have always thought I might grow a beard and smoke a pipe, and of course, Meerschaum.  But I don't know whether pipes are accepted on that there campus or not.  Probably not, since they would be a tobacco product.  I wonder if they would let you smoke some other herb that is legal, like cloves.  I do not like smoke so much as that I am struck by the appeal of the appearance it may lend me.  I feel a need to coax out some vanity, or maybe add a little mystery to my persona, no?  I am a thoroughly boring person, and a Meerschaum pipe might be just the thang.

Below is a quote from an article in my paper:
"Laptops are inherently unergonomic--unless you're 2 feet tall," says physician Norman J. Marcus, a muscle-pain specialist in New York City.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122938297526708695-email.html
When Your Laptop Is a Big Pain in the Neck

Wall Street Journal 16 December 2008