In the garden department, we appear to be good at squash; I really wish that I liked squash more than I do, but I will use it. Garlic does much to make anything palatable, as does butter, but we gave that up for gall bladder season. None of our produce is real tasty, but I understand that comes from too much rain and neglect. We have the neglect aspect down very well.
We have been trying to use the all-to-often rainy, cool days to do some more work around the house inside. We finally got the inside of our sun porch painted and our next big project is to organize the garage. How does that happen - you start with everything in its place and then it seems to find a new place. Like most men, my husband has the 'horizontal disease' - if there is an empty, flat surface, whatever is in your hand at the time gets put there. I sometimes feel like such a nag, but knowing how we forget where we put things makes me more strident in advocating that things have to be put back where they belong! It is very frustrating when we know we have something and we cannot find it, so we buy another one. IF you are lucky, you find the original before you start using the new one, but that rarely happens. Why do you think there are so many open packages in the hardware stores?
So a simple project takes all day and at least two arguments - or at least they used to. Now we do more planning before we start something, usually taking an hour or two the day before to find everything we need before we start. We have been amazed at how quickly we can do a project, clean up and then do something we want to do on our days off. Brilliant this planning stuff!
On top of everything, our PC died - brain hemorrhage or something. Feels like your whole world collapses when that happens. Fortunately, we had bought an external hard drive and all of our information was backed up on that. We looked into getting the PC fixed, but with prices going down so much since we bought it, it would cost as much or more to fix than to buy new. (Some repairers charge a fee before they even tell you if it can be fixed. ) Still, I tried to muddle through fixing the thing. I pulled out all the start-up discs that I had and I am re-booteding better than Nancy Sinatra, until the system asked for the blue disc. Blue Disc! What Blue Disc? I don't have a stupid (not what I really said) Blue Disc!
In moving the PC from one house to another, heaven knows where this disc went! Organized and well packed, and probably so well packed it got thrown away - or something! Thank goodness for friends. Our dear friend met us at a half-way point between our houses, where we had a lovely lunch, and then she loaned all the discs she had to help us to try to bring our PC back from the dead. It looked like we were passing something illegal between cars in the parking lot. So we come home and I load those discs on our PC and our system is now regressed to 1998! Which means nothing that we have saved can be recognized anymore on that PC.
But now we had to wade into the murky world of buying a new PC.
Here is where you realize how much you depend on the Internet; normally, I would research on-line for the best deal and then go to the store. Oh Right, the PC is Dead! So now we are spending the better part of a week in our spare time going store-to-store to get the best deal. In the end, we were at a shopping center that had two stores that sell PC's and laptops, so I am in one store, on my cell, calling my husband who is in the other store to see who has the better price, deal, etc. (Yes, like those Sears and Home Depot commercials.) We decided on a laptop, which had more on it than our old desktop. But the salesperson was insisting it is not good, we need bigger, better, he has a degree in Computer Science, on and on. Finally, I looked at this skinny little kid and said we are not using the thing for games, it is better than the one we were using pretty darn well up until last week, and Consumer Reports recommended the one we picked for people like us (a euphemism for over-50). Then I walked away and said to my husband to handle it from that point. I figure my husband can win through intimidation, since he is a big guy. Of course the kid tried to sell us the extended warranty - which costs almost as much as the laptop! Right! No! Even the check-out person asked "is there a reason you are not buying the two year warranty?" We don't want it. "Really?" Now we feel like she is saying 'do you have to heads and are you out of your mind?'
This laptop can do so many things that I didn't know I ever wanted a system to do. But one purchase leads to another - new mouse, USB extension plug, DVD camcorder.... hope this all works out!
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