I work four long days so I can have long weekends. This year I finally remembered to take the Labor Day Monday off! First time in ten years!
So naturally, after announcing this to all my students, I threw my back out Wednesday night. How, you might ask, did I do a stupid thing like that? By sleeping, of course! Yes folks, getting old is hazardous to your health. Somehow, as I was sleeping, I did something to twist and turn and really do a number on my back. Getting old? Feelong creaky? Try going to bed feeling forty and waking up feeling 200. I hate it when that happens!
Hobbling in to work that Thursday wasn't easy, but I did it. I went home and took some Tylenol and slept really well, but still woke up Friday morning feeling like dwarves had tried to cut me in half during the night.
So for four days I spent most of my time lying in my bed, flat on my back, trying to play games on my iPad. As you may recall, my iPad survived getting run over by a car. A miracle, yes! But now there is a one-inch strip where the glass has lost its connectivity. In other words, I have to keep turning it 180 degrees to be able to poke a button or slide one of those damned candies in that maddening game. You know which game I mean, don't you?
Why wasn't I playing games on my computer? Because it was broken, too. Even MORE broken, in fact. The hard drive finally gave up all of its zeros and ones and while I had backups (Time Machine rocks) I had nowhere to restore TO. So Friday afternoon, after several cups of tea, Tylenol, and heating pad, I drove to WalMart for my yearly purchase. There are times when WalMart is a place to save money on Important, Vital Stuff and Friday was that day. I only go there when it's necessary, which is about once a year. Having a computer hard drive that I could use for a startup drive is one of those things. Paying $300 for a replacement drive in a computer that only cost $600 is not an option. A $77 portable hard drive from WalMart is just the thing! Just what I needed.
I drove to WalMart. Driving was agony. Parked. Tried to get out of the car normally. OW. Okay, do the Old Guy way: turn to put two feet out the door at the same time. Creak out and stand hunched over. Try to slowly straighten up. Ow. OW. Okay now, feets, WALk. I said, FEETS, WALK! And now I know how zombies walk!
Zombie walk into the store. Zombie walk, pause, look up and realize that of course, electronics are at the back of the store! Okay, big breath, try to straighten up again, and walk. Make each foot take even weight. Step, ow, step, ow, step, ow you are doing great! Keep going! Don't stop to look at the crafts stuff! Don't look at the bins of DVDs for $5 each! (Wow! Bat Masterson shows!) OMG they have a whole bine of blue ray disks now, and I still have no idea why I should get a blue ray machine. I don't even have a modern TV! Walk! Don't stop until you find the hard drives! STep, ow, step, ow, step—made it!
So to make a tedious experience shorter, I got the drive, went home (ow) and hooked it up. Now all I had to do was download Lion operating system onto it. Got all the computery ducks lined up, got the download started and...whoa. Two hundred and twelve hours? You've got to be kidding me. I stopped the download. Started over again. Okay, now it said one hundred and twenty three hours. Okay....so I decided to leave it alone.
In the end it took 17 hours. I have no idea why. I have the second tier DSL, but whatever. Then I restarted, got the machine working and went to use Time Machine to restore all my computer stuff. Okay....twelve hours....well, yah, I had a lot of stuff.
So by Saturday I had my computer back. It had been seriously dead for a week. Yippeee!
Every day my back was getting a teeny little bit better. And today, it was a lot better. BIG YIPPEEE! Because you know, when it goes on for days on end you wonder if you will ever be the same, you know?
During this entire weekend, "They" were rebuilding the Goldstream Bridge, which is not far from my home. In fact, this started the middle of last week. Funny coincidence, that. It went on every day. Every day. How do I know they were working on it? Well.....you can hear what I heard if you watch this video.
My neighbor lets his chickens run loose. They usually come to visit all together. This little guy was here all on his own. If he'd come to me, I'd have Zombie walked him home.
