Thursday, October 18, 2007

We UnInterrupt This Blog

After months away, I’m finally back!

Although there aren’t more than a handful of people plus my best friend Jonderson who even realized I’ve been out of touch, I will offer both a brief explanation about my absence from the blogoshpere and a quick summary of life during that time to whet the appetite of the few folks who may have developed a taste for such things.

The why part of being away is easily summed up in three words: technology crapped out. The day after my most recent entry, two of the three working computers in our house went belly up. First to go was the laptop I had claimed as my own, on which are/were stored all of my blog entries. Later that day, my hubby’s ‘puter, the most technologically advanced machine in the house, gave up its ghost, only coming to life long enough for him to rescue some data that wasn’t yet backed up.

The deaths of the primary computers meant that the last machine standing was one ultra slow, antiquated 486, a monstrosity known locally as the Frankenputer. As the name indicates because it’s a sad imitation of a real computer that we bolted together from bits and pieces of real computers -- and a few parts that were cultivated from a jar labeled Abby Normal. (Big nod to all the other Mel Brooks fans out there.) Not only does this thing lack a decent processor, it’s also severely deficient in RAM -- the combination of the two make it ungodly slow when performing any one task. And heaven help you if you ask it to do two or more things at the same time.

This left two geeks, each used to spending at least six hours each day on their own personal computers, to share the slower than molasses Frankenputer. The result was that I pretty much gave up any use of the computer until recently, when I was fortunate enough to acquire a new laptop. Hubby, sadly, is still struggling through with the Frankenputer while he decides what upgrades he wants to do along with returning his PC to the land of the functioning.

The time away wasn’t overly eventful, but we did have a few things happen that are worth sharing. I discovered that the local health club has a hydraulic lift to help folks like me who can’t use steps get in and out of their pool. It is awesome! I’ve been a water lover since I could toddle, and it’s been hell living in the middle of the gorgeous, warm Caribbean Sea without being able to get into it without a lot of advance effort and the help of several friends or strangers. I was able to take advantage of the pool for a few weeks -- long enough to get me in shape enough to swim a kilometer in under a one hour session. (Not bad for someone with only 50 percent lung function using only her arms, is it?) Unfortunately, I had to give that up temporarily until I can settle a legal dispute with the facility’s manager over her insistence that my personal aide pay for a full price membership just so he can come inside the facility to help me get in and out of the pool. Updates on this legal battle will be posted as they occur.

Turning to other things…healthwise, things have been a mixed bag. I’ve been having pretty decent pain control, but have something weird happening with mystery infections and blister breakouts on the tip of my right ring finger that’s keeping me watchful. This is the same finger that developed a mysterious hole that took 27 months to heal back at the turn of the century, so poor, unexplained behavior is nothing new. The hubby is doing okay except for his ongoing battle with muscle spasms in his mid back. We hoped that he was on his way to answers when we finally got a referral to a local orthopedic doc, but a poorly timed island-wide power failure occurred five minutes before his appointment. He’s still trying to reschedule.

The family is doing well. My mother-in-law, who I love to pieces, will be here to visit us next week, her firs visit since we transformed our house from a broken-down, badly neglected hovel of a former duplex into a nice place to live. Can’t wait for her to be here when she can really relax and enjoy her time with us. She’ll also get to meet the five newest members of our indoor kitty clan and their outdoor parents. And speaking of the kitties, Ono, Omai and Kindle are fully integrated into the herd. Omai and Kindle have turned into little love sluts who crave petting and human attention. Ono remains skittish, shying away from physical contact but hanging out with her people. She’s even started to jump up on the bed, a sure sign she’s wanting to take her relationship with us further. The rest of the kids are all doing well, except for some itchiness and fur loss on a few that we can’t explain -- they will be checked out by our vet in short order.

Wow, a lot of time away doesn’t seem to amount to much on paper, does it? But I guess that shouldn’t shock me -- time seems to fly by so quickly that I often wonder how anything can happen at all.

Anyway, I’m back, so look for new entries to show up on a pretty regular basis.

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