2007-04-03

The weather darkened the skies and brought torrents of rain today, first a huge deluge with sound effects and fireworks and then a steady spring rain feeding the thirsty ground and freshening the incredible burst of blooms. I saw the first phlox open today and the first day lilies – VERY early for those – as well as the first golden wood poppies and the lilac bushes on the south side of our house blushing with pale color, not yet fragrant, just in bud.

After Morning Offering I discovered that my April Fool’s Day was today. First, my computer refused to recognize the keyboard on booting, and it took four tries for it to find the link. Great – now I can type! But the internet decided not to be found, also. I fiddled with it, hoping to improve the performance of it, but Traveller was being recalcitrant indeed.

Finally I was able to get started on my UPI article for this week. As I was quite late in getting the computer going, I was not able to finish before noon, when the Holy Tuesday Eucharist began at St. Luke’s, so I attended the service, made my confession for Lent to Fr. Joe and came home. I had lunch and set about finishing the piece.

Again, computer woes played with my little head. The article developed heavy dotted lines here and there in the text, all by itself. I struggled for perhaps an hour to get rid of them, even going so far as to type the article over completely. However no matter what I did, new lines appeared.

It gets better. When I would try to delete the line, which I do by placing the cursor at the end of the line of text above the error-dotted-line, first the text would change from 12-point to 18-point font size. When I would correct the font size, the text would scramble itself into a hopeless mess.

Thank heaven for “undo”!

I sent my copy in to UPI as it was, hoping that my two editors, between them, could figure out how to remove the extra lines. Then I opened the Chapter Four file, ready to work on the book. Again the keyboard failed to work. Finally I got everything open and working and discovered that at least my text was still there! However, all the time I had taken to fix glitches meant that I got close to nothing written in new text.

Jim came home from his hard day with Jim’s Lawn Service and we had a whirlpool and then a date, after which we napped a bit, coming downstairs at 8 PM, just as Romi arrived for a visit.

We enjoyed conversation and supper while we watched an episode of Stargate. When Romi heard what had happened with my computer, not just today but for the last few days, he suggested I immediately purchase another computer, as he feels this one has had it. I think I will put my Choice work on a USB drive tomorrow so as to avoid losing my work if Traveller sticks its spoon in the wall before I get it replaced. Romi came up to do an extra, complete back-up before he left. That makes me feel more secure, except that the back-up is still in the machine itself.

Mick and I watched an episode of House before saying good night to Ro and Gary and coming upstairs for our bedtime snuggle with the kitties.