The Unfortunate News

Hi everyone! So here it is, the most unfortunate news: My computer croaked about 2 weeks ago. I think my family sabotaged it as a computer detox, if you will. Well, actually, the story is that Mr. Jones bought me an ipod for the plane ride to our vacation. Despite the fact that 4 other ipods have worked just fine on my computer, mine did not. The computer didn't recognize it at all. Mr. Jones spent a day trying to figure it out. The next day I called customer service, who had me uninstall and reinstall itunes and restart my computer, all of which wiped out my operating system. Oh, but Dell forgot to give me the disk with the drivers on it when they sent me my new computer 3 1/2 years ago, and they don't give those to customers anymore because that was SOOOOOOO long ago, so I need to download them. Well, you can't download anything without drivers, so I tried to sign up my kids' computer temporarily on a dial-up service so I could download those little drivers. That computer was a wee bit jealous of all the attention the other computer was getting, so it crashed. Yes, completely. I had to reformat the hard drive and reinstall everything. But after all that, could technical support get me hooked up to a dial-up service? Of course not! So today I went to my dear, sweet neighbor's house to download the file. Got it! Woooohoooo! Called technical support for the 50th time, and it turns out they told me to download the wrong file. Back to the neighbor's house. Got the file. Tomorrow morning, crossing my fingers, I might get something accomplished. I'm not EVEN entertaining the thought that I might actually get it working on the internet or anything. Baby steps.

I've actually been ok with it because I have gotten other things done, despite the fact that I'm clocking about 20 hours a week trying to figure this out. Mr. Jones even offered to buy a new computer, but I can't spend that much money for something that should work!

The sad thing is, what is really most upsetting to me, and is causing much despair, is that I can't online bank. I put my foot down and I will absolutely not, no way, not a chance, going to balance my check book with a statement and a phone. Uh, uh. No way sister, ain't gonna happen!

Anyway, this is why I have seemingly fallen off the planet and not been heard from. I have high jacked Mr. Jones' laptop tonight for a quick e-mail check and post to say "hi!"

Hope you're all doing well. I miss you. Sniff, sniff.