I thought I was getting an iPad just to save my back and some trees. But the lean, mean machine doesn’t just let me haul a complete set of books and articles to class in my purse. Now, thanks to my friend Pam, I am using it to play something called Words with Friends.

It sounded innocent enough.

“You’ll love it,” she said. “It’s a lot like Scrabble.”

I’m a Scrabble-lover from way back, so I couldn’t download it soon enough. After all, it’s free (money, not time) and before I laid eyes on it, I convinced myself it was “educational” and would probably make me eloquent.

Besides, Scrabble holds fond memories. Growing up, I remember my dad tossing aside work in favor of a hot Scrabble game. Some of our most spirited debates were over high-scoring words like “Unjar.” Without Scrabble, I would never have realized that anything capable of being jarred could also be unjarred. And I wouldn’t have wondered if the same principle applied to canning or dancing or even applauding. In a family that normally discussed the price of potatoes, Scrabble took us to a whole new level.

So it was with sentiment and passion that I downloaded Words with Friends, assumed the code name zyngawf19892 (which I couldn’t figure out how to change), and electronically planted WART, a measly seven-pointer, across the star in the middle of the board. I should have realized right away that if WART was the best I could do, WWF might be a humbling. But it didn’t take long to find out.

In the very first game, my daughter came up with the word OUTWHIRL for 72 points. In the old days, under the family rules, I could have said, “What? Outwhirl?” and jumped up to consult Funk & Wagnall’s or Merriam-Webster. If it was there, fair enough. If not, the burden would shift to her to explain exactly what an “outwhirl” is. Not with WWF. The game takes away the fun by either instantly accepting the word or declaring unconditionally that “outwhirl” is not a word. No arguments.

Right away, we’re bidding sayonara (a high-pointer, I bet) to the educational component. No need to look up the word. It either is one, or it isn’t. And no built-in advocacy training. Thanks to WWF, probably fewer and fewer English majors will succeed in law school. S’long (not a word) to eloquent briefs.

I, however, am doing my best to profit from the (considerable) time spent with WWF by looking up words such as “outwhirl” and finding out what they mean. FYI, it is possible to outwhirl someone when you whirl better than they do. It is only from WWF that I know that “cloot,” which won me 54 points, is one of the divisions of a cleft hoof – knowledge that one opponent points out will come in handy if I am ever a veterinarian in Scotland.

But mostly, I have learned that in two of three games, I have been considerably “outscrabbled,” a condition that WWF tells me is not a word but that serious players tell me I can overcome with much more practice.

Maybe. But with the new semester starting, it occurs to me that FLUNK is probably a word. And so reluctantly, I am turning it off.

Copyright 2012 Pat Snyder

They say a journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step, so it should come as no surprise that de-stressing for something as big as the holidays must begin with 10,000.

I hadn’t planned to start the season with such an ambitious, time-consuming de-stresser, but the professor in a positive psychology class I’m taking thought it would be a great idea. More accurately, he required it – along with a pedometer and daily reports on our class blog. Since the unit was on the mind-body connection, I figured the expected reports were on the mood-altering properties of a good walk.

“Be sure to wear your pedometer,” he said gaily, which suggested we already owned them. I did not mention that the closest I’ve come to a pedometer was a couple of years ago when I placed one in my son’s Christmas stocking. Or that the closest he came to it was when he handed it over to his wife.

Since I refused to confess to pedometric ignorance, I set out without a roadmap to find one. It is not a simple task. There are cheap analog ones that simply count steps and more expensive digital ones with stopwatches that count not just steps but miles and calories, tell time and I think play music.

When the salesman started pointing to some that “counted every single step,” I got curious. “You mean some don’t count every step?” I asked.

“Well, “ he said, “the digital ones are better.” Better meant you could attach it to your shoe and get credit not only for walking but also pedaling a bike, tapping your foot and – ta-dah! – possibly driving? I quickly sprung for the “better” one and after two trips to the store for technical assistance was wracking up digital numbers with every step.

I’ll admit it put a positive spin on holiday confusion. Shopping in mega-malls was suddenly a plus, and I was thrilled when I couldn’t find close-in parking. Suddenly, I had an advantage over the younger students. Every time I misplaced my shoes, my glasses or could not remember why I walked into a room, I was sure to log another 2,000 steps.

Still, in addition to the more positive real one, I was mentally posting another daily report on the class blog. “What sort of sadist would assign this extra work during the holidays?” I whined. By the 9,000th step, it had morphed into a newspaper headline: “Student Collapses. Professor Indicted.”

In the end, like a child who threatens to run away but comes home before dark, I stopped with the fantasy notes and surrendered. I am proud to announce that on one momentous day, I wracked up 15,000 steps. That’s a lot even if it was in response to a challenge from my daughter’s boyfriend, who promised lunch and dessert.
But I will never match the joyous report from one of my classmates:

“15,000 steps today. I have no idea how this happened!”

My theory was it happened because he fell into a coma somewhere around 9K and experienced 6,000 involuntary twitches in his right foot. I’ve made a mental note to see if he has a digital pedometer.

Copyright 2011 Pat Snyder

I’m not sure if it was nostalgia for Steve Jobs, my aching back, or the encouragement of readers, but this week, in one of those passionate gotta-have moments, I rushed out and bought an iPad.

After my last column – in which I confessed to owning a Kindle and cast a wishful eye toward the latest (as of that moment) techy device, readers were relentless. “You’ve GOT to have one,” they said. “You will LOVE it.” Although one admitted using hers mostly for Scrabble and TV fact-checking, others raved about the 10-hour battery life and portability (only 1.3 pounds). Most important, they said it’s “intuitive,” a happy word for “You don’t have to read the manual.”

I cannot blame readers alone for this electronic indulgence, though. The iPad bug had been building over two months of schlepping a laptop to graduate school classes in positive psychology – a field that ironically (1) teaches that buying more gadgets does not bring lasting happiness but simply sentences us to a “hedonic treadmill” and (2) warns against being a “maximizer” – that person who goes nuts trying to make the right choice out of way too many choices.

“Are you someone who has trouble choosing just the right dish on the menu?” the professor had asked. “Do you get stuck looking for the very best solution?” He urged us to become “satisficers” instead – people who do not agonize but go for the “good enough” choice.

At the time, I was dragging the laptop in an old roller bag that flipped and banged into my ankles every time it hit a bump. By far the oldest student in the class, I felt like a klutzy version of Grandma Moses. Fellow students, who had heard the same lecture, rushed in with their very best solutions – an obscure brand of roller bag from an online store I’d never heard of, a backpack custom-made in San Francisco that came in hundreds of styles, or an iPad.

To my credit, I “satisficed” and borrowed my daughter’s backpack. “You should really get an iPad,” she said when I picked it up, about a half second before adding, “Then I could borrow it.”

After a weekend with a laptop and several notebooks strapped to my back, I became nostalgic for the genius of Steve Jobs and decided – tentatively – to honor him in a very personal way. “If I really hate it, how long do I have to return it?” I asked the clerk as she handed me the razor thin notebook with a dual-core A5 chip, 10-hour battery, over 200 new features and 140,000 possible apps.

“Fourteen days,” she said.

I am now in Day 3. So far, I have spent a couple hours finding exactly the right purse to carry it in and learning to touch type with one finger. I marvel – thank you, Steve – at the magnetic cover that puts it to sleep when I snap it on, but worry that I’ve never turned it off and don’t know how. I love turning the pages of my calendar by swiping my finger across the screen and taking class notes on something that looks exactly like an old paper notepad.

Which, come to think of it, might have been the very best solution of all.

Copyright 2011 Pat Snyder

This is hard to admit in pubic, but I’m finally coming out.

After telling my book club, my children, and the English major in me that real books are better, I’ve been sneaking around with a Kindle.

I’d like to say the confession is about integrity. But actually I owe my honesty to the public library. Last month, they finally added the Kindle to the e-readers where they’ll plant your book for free.

Before that, I felt purely self-indulgent having one. I hated fessing up that I was a person who couldn’t delay gratification. But the fact was I couldn’t wait even three days for an Amazon shipper to send me a book. And I sure couldn’t wait for the library to announce, when I was in Timbuktu, that the book I requested two months ago was finally back on the shelf – please pick it up in five days.

With free downloads from the library, all that has changed. I can be impatient and a paragon of fiscal integrity at the same time.

“The Kindle is less expensive than some,” I can say. “And the downloads are free. I could be at an airport somewhere needing a book and get it for free right from my library!”

The explanation will be impressive. Everyone associates airports with day-old $12 sandwiches swathed in Saran wrap.

“She’s obviously saving a bundle,” they will think.

I will probably not spoil the good news by letting them know what I was pained to discover. You have to get on the library wait-list for the most popular e-books, too. I assumed that since they travel through the air, they are sort of like molecules – in unlimited supply.

Not so. Each library has just so many licenses for each book. A quick look online tells me I’ll still have to wait for the hottest business books by Daniel Pink. But ta-dah! I can download Frommer’s Cambodia and Laos today.

I also pictured these e-books living on my Kindle forever once I captured them in mid-air. How could there be due dates or fines?
Again, not so.

The cruel realty is that the e-book, like the real book, has a due date. When it comes, Poof!. The book is gone. On the happy side, there is no book inside to amass fines or guilty secrets. A Kindle, left under the passenger seat of the car, does not become a guilt trip or a second mortgage.

Imagine, though, that I’ve been so engrossed in some 500-page mystery that I’ve missed the e-mail notice that my book is about to go Poof! And just before I find out who dun it, it’s gone.

No more can I just read on and pay the fine. I must rush back online and pray no one has requested my digital copy, so I can grab it again. If it’s spoken for, then back to the old delayed gratification dilemma. Can I wait to know who dun it? Or will I pay Amazon $12 or so for an instant answer?

Who knows. With a little restraint, maybe I can splurge on an iPad.

Copyright 2011 Pat Snyder