I did it I did it. Yesterday I went to Best Buy and bought the Sony e-reader (pocket edition). That's the one I bought because it's the only e-reader (so far) that will (I hope) download word files from my computer instantaneously. I knew that I wasn't ready to open the package yesterday, being a wee bit stressed about getting up at 3:30 am to appear on Hour of the Wolf. But once I got home after breakfast today and took a lovely long nap --awoke without an alarm at 1:30 pm--I felt ready to take my baby steps.
The reader is currently being charged on my "desk"--and should be ready for use in about three hours. The instruction manual isn't very detailed, so I hope the next steps are self-evident or I will be asking for help. As I just received two collections/anthologies I have to read as pdf files, those will be the first items I download. Stay tuned....