When Bev visited me last fall she asked if she could use my laptop to send me an e mail, and I said sure.  However, after a few minutes of frustration, she gave up. Because of my zeal at striking the keys with the force of a punch, I’ve managed to wear off the letters. Bev’s not a touch-typist, so you can imagine her annoyance at my keyboard!

The roving hub in the computer had packed it in years earlier. So whereas other people can sit at their nice sunny dining room tables, I’ve had to be connected to the actual cable in order to do anything on the Internet.

Whenever I unplugged the laptop and took it to Osoyoos to type mom’s biographical information, it squeaked whenever it was plugged in again.  There were toast crumbs wedged so firmly that some letters hardly reacted when struck.

Once the laptop was running, I noticed the motor roared very loudly, but I just thought oh well.  Backing up files would cross my mind now and again, but I thought as I didn’t have a clue how to do it, I’d just igore that, too.

Yesterday morning I was typing away, and suddenly the computer turned itself off.  As this had never happened before and due to the squeaking, roaring and no back-up, my blood ran cold.  I decided to just slowly back out of my office, and then I ran dow the hall and paced in my kitchen for a while.

I consulted with a fellow member at the gym who works for the RCMP in their special computer section.  She reassured me it was likely just the power inside the laptop that was now gone, but that the hard drive should be salvageable.

When I came home from the gym I just wished for good luck and picked a mobile technician from the Yellow Pages.  He came over, transferred my files from the poor old laptop onto the new one Luke gave me for Christmas, and installed an external hard drive to boot.  Now nothing can happen.

So despite a few traumatic weeks of landscapers, a broken computer and surprisingly huge invoices, I’m now in pretty good shape all around.  The yard is now supposedly all going to be automatically watered, so without hours a day of watering, life should improve tremendously.

I’m off to Osoyoos today then will pick up cherries on the way home to make some more bark.  Tracy, the owner of Discover Wines, ordered some tiny bags of bark and I didn’t have the heart to tell her I don’t want to sell my products wholesale anymore.

I decided I’d continue to sell to her, because the quantities are manageable plus she’s the first store owner who contacted me, and who helped with my foray into stores.  Besides, with my new-found time I should surely be able to handle that.