This past weekend I headed to my sister’s house for my youngest niece’s birthday. She’s turning 5 – my niece, not my sister – and was dressed up in wild and colorful birthday skirt and shirt. Again, my niece, not my sister.
We took a trip to the library, the farmer’s market, and the craft store before going to wendy’s for lunch. By then it was time to start getting ready for the party and I kept the girls entertained with some lego building before the guests arrived.
My sister always does a great job with party planning and we did tie dye shirts and had a rousing indoor snowball fight (with crumpled paper) before pizza for dinner. They then moved on to press on nails for all the little girls and I opted to skip that one.
It was a good trip and I had fun, but I’m really not a good traveler. It was worth it, though, to hold both my nieces’ hands when we crossed a street. So much love and trust there – it was really special.
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I’m writing this post from my new laptop and there’s a story in the purchase.
It was the Fourth of July and I was on the hunt for a computer. Best Buy was having a big sale and I was jonesing for a chromebook.
I scoped out the various laptops and strongly resisted correcting a best buy salesman as he gave bad information to a customer. (Well, not bad, just a little scarier than it needed to be).
To my surprise, they had a fairly good selection of chromebooks and I found one that I liked. Even better, they had an open box of that one for another $50 less. Sweet! It was Geek Squad certified and while I had a slight twinge, I went along with it.
I made my purchase, took it home to charge up, and got it on my network easy as pie.
It wasn’t until I opened it up a second time that I found a problem. The chromebook has a touch screen and something had gone terribly wrong with the connection. Instead of sitting patiently for me, the screen went crazy.
Windows appeared and disappeared. Things zoomed in and out so rapidly it was a blur. Confirmation boxes leaped in and out of focus.
It was possessed.
I closed it and reopened – and got it under control enough to use for a bit before shutting it down. It was an intermittent problem – the worst kind to try and diagnose – but I was able to get it to repeat enough to record a short video in case I needed proof.
And then, receipt in hand, I headed back to Best Buy.
The clerk at the counter was sympathetic and didn’t need the video to get a return started. We found the “powerwash” function to clear me out of the machine and I went back to the laptop area to find a new one. I took it back to the counter, paid the difference, and was on my way.
And yes, I know I said I didn’t need a laptop – but oh my gosh this is so damn shiny. Did I tell you it had a touch screen? And a built in pen! And it’s a Chromebook! And it’s so SHINY!!!!
Ahem.
So, I’m now able to blog from my first floor or my front porch. Or anywhere with a wi-fi connection, for that matter.
It’s so shiny.
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Jim and I went to PizzaFire for dinner tonight. The pizza was excellent, but the experience was a little rough. Terrible acoustics, disruptive/unsupervised children, a loud kitchen, etc. We opted to eat outside where cars idled with terrible music and motorcycles charged down the street.
I ate quickly as I usually do and tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to keep my cool. I don’t get noisy. I would vastly prefer the quiet and still. So I sit here with my laptop and listen to deadmau5 on low in the background. There’s a warm cup of tea at my side and a cat doing his best to not chase the one mosquito that managed to sneak into my house – thanks, Thunder(cat). And I wonder at the human impetus to make as much noise as we can.
I’m tired from my swim and an already a long week of work – I suspect there’s an early night ahead of me.