Holiday Detours and a Technological Groundhog’s Day

Seems as if I haven’t written in forever and don’t think I haven’t heard about it. Do I have a good excuse? Probably not.

I could say that I wrenched my shoulder setting up my Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Really, I have a Charlie Brown tree, complete with one, lonely red ornament and strip of blue Linus blankie to cover the stand. I’d show you the photo, but then I’d have to develop a new photo card for next Christmas, and we all know at this point in the Christmas 2012 calendar, I don’t have time to do that!

I could say that holiday baking slowed me down, but I only actually cooked Christmas day. It was fabulous and we all ate far too much to move afterwards. I believe there’s a standing invitation to my house now. It was the first year that I was not stressed because I didn’t make all our traditional goodies. I know, the kids wanted cookies but we all know life is all about a box of chocolates. And they were Peterbrooke. Need I say more?

Nope. I wasn’t crafting.  I did a bit of sewing for the holidays, but not to make presents. Mis amigas and I just had to have holiday aprons so we’d be properly attired for cooking Christmas dinner.

You must now be impressed because I have rejoined the $6 block-of-the-month quilting group. My mission is to complete the “free” block and its companion by the third Saturday of each month. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? In the past I have always paid for an additional block or two…Maybe it will be easier now that I am not correcting essays long into the night. Oh, and I chose a bright sunshiney yellow as the background for the batik fabrics. We’ll be wearing shades to view the bright blocks by July 4^th. It’s gorgeous though!

My best excuse is the technical difficulties that my computer presented over the last 6 months. It all started when the battery refused to charge. Then, the hinge decided to crack. Great! Two in the same house with afflicted wings.  I could still type and surf, just not as comfortably or as portably as I had been.

Thus was born the plan I like to call Merry Christmas to Me. A new computer was in order. Sounds simple right? Not in my universe. I don’t know much about these machines and they all look pretty much the same. How to choose? Certainly not by color the way I choose a car. Did you know that the guys in the stores expect you to know things like Quad Core and lots of phrases with numbers? It all sounds too much like Math. I wonder if they saw my eyes glaze over? Friends and family started asking me which ones had keyboards that I liked and what size was I looking for? Really? Do they know me? A keyboard is a keyboard and I wanted a smallish one because they’re lighter generally.

I was good. I didn’t get the one at the first store. I went home, did some online reading late into the night. Why is it always this way? I had a whole day off, but before I got the one I wanted, I listened to helpful people and I traipsed from store to store to store and then back to the first one I visited two days earlier. As usual, I bought the first one I looked at.

I left my new baby with the tech guys to install the antivirus and office programs. And that is when I got sucked into Groundhog’s Day.

I could pick up the computer anytime the next afternoon. I went in after work and waited for about 45 minutes for the computer to be ready. As I left the kid said, oh, you have ten days to activate your antivirus. Here’s the password. The password didn’t work.

Back to the computer store. An hour later, I had an assurance from tech support that everything was good to go. Ha!

Back to the store. The two-year contract was listed as two one year contracts. An hour later, I had an assurance that the email would be in my inbox shortly and all was fixed. Five weeks later I am still waiting for the email. My account says all is well, so I will just cross my fingers and see what happens in a year.

Off to the internet card store near my house. The first one made me wait an hour and then couldn’t sell me a new card. They need to print resale store in larger letters on the door.

Back to my favorite internet store. New device activated and out the door in half an hour. At home, I found out that I was being dropped all the time.  The internet provided a helpful phone number to call to sort it out, but who wants to wait around on hold with tech support? Grr. Today I had been dropped for the last time. I spent an hour and a half with tech and she told me to go…

Back to the internet store. Another hour later and I have a new Simms card and life is good. Cross your fingers I have learned all I need to know about computers and wake up tomorrow on February 6^th.