My office reconfigured.How many times have I said that historically I'm the next-to-last woman in the world to acquire, utilize, and fully appreciate new technology?

I don't know. Let's just go with a bunch.

Make that a whole bunch.

For example, we didn't own a microwave oven until ... I think it was 1992, but I'm not sure. At any rate, it didn't take me long to fully appreciate that particular bit of business.

Got my third and latest one last Saturday, as a matter of fact, because ours blew up that morning.

Relax! No leftovers were harmed in the incident.

Another thing I've oft been heard to remark is that my wonderful children have taught me far more than I have taught them.

For example, TG and I frequently call on the kids (the younger two are even better than the older two) to help with a computer application, or with the installation and operation of peripherals such as scanners, printers, and the occasional strobe light.

(Not only do they know considerably more than we do about these things, but their eyesight is better.)

"Mom, you've got to hear this."

On Christmas Day I learned that TG and the kids had been conspiring for weeks to buy me a new computer. An iMac.

(Sweet machine. Makes my seven-year-old slow-boat-to-nowhere Dell look like the long lost relative of a desktop PC so extinct, geriatric dinosaurs would laugh it to scorn.)

To say I was overcome when I saw the gift is the understatement of the last twelve months.

It was a moment.

But as much as I will cherish the memory of my family's faces when they saw my face when I saw my new iMac on Christmas, I will remember the night before.

On Christmas Eve we were all snug and warm at home together, eating delicious food and telling jokes and laughing and kidding one another, and marveling at the great colorful mound of gifts beneath our twinkling tree.

As usual, throughout the evening each of the kids was fiddling with one electronic gizmo or other.

If it's not an iPod it's an iTouch. If neither of those, it's a webcam or a GPS device or a fancy laptop or a tricked-out cell phone.

(The only one of the abovementioned items that I personally own is an ordinary cell phone. Forget texting; I don't even like to talk on the thing.)

Okay, okay ... I have a Nikon Coolpix L20 digital camera, also courtesy of my children.

But I digress.

On Christmas Eve, daughter Audrey approached me, proffering a set of iPod earbuds. "Mom, you've got to hear this," she told me, and hooked me up, telling me to close my eyes.

This is the song she played for me: Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni singing the aria O Soave Fanciulla from Puccini's La Boheme.

If you listen, please listen to the very end. You won't be sorry.

Breathtaking.

Of all the things I am grateful for when it comes to my children, I am so glad they have both the desire and the capacity to experience and appreciate beauty, and culture, and near-perfect music, and new technology.

Oh ... and my cooking.

Thanks, kids ... iLove you all.

And not only for the iMac.