The relaxing fun of this weekend (dinner at a fantastic Mexican restaurant, knitting with friends, snow, more knitting) was almost entirely nullified by today. I think I had entire hours today with nothing but one of these two thoughts blaring through my brain:

1. The mold!
2. My computer!
3. They banned a book!

Yes, I made a huge tactical error this morning; I went into the living room. I realize that to most people this is not an unusual thing to do. We are not most people. We are very, very cheap people. Our heat can be controlled individually by room, so we only heat the very small office where we spend most of our time anyway (especially since we moved the TV in there). We just duck out for food and to sleep. I haven't been in the living room for a month, and certainly haven't looked at the windowsills. You may be able to sense where this is going. I had known about the mold potential of our home, but had grown up learning that mold grows in moist warm places. We can see our breath at night in there; how could mold proliferate? Well, it did. Worse than I ever could have imagined. I spent my first hour awake cleaning up black mold and standing water. Eeeeeew. Damn aluminum sills causing condensation.

My day took a turn for the worse (like it needed to) when I turned my computer back on. Yesterday I joined the Knit Your Bit Along (an awesome project, check it out), but had trouble opening the file. Shortly afterward my computer froze. Since it was 1am I decided that was my sign to forego blogging and go to bed. This morning I opened a new version of the file that had been sent to me and the computer froze. Okay, the file had been gobbly-gook to me since it was in some Windows only format, so maybe the computer just got confused. Then when I restarted it froze again without provocation. Noooo! I rushed to the Apple Store for help. I had pretty much convinced myself that my hypochondria was being projected onto my computer and this all would be filed under Stuff Happens, but the support is free and I've learned my lesson about waiting too long and running out of warranty. The guy at the Apple Store seemed to agree with me and ran some programs that did housecleaning and fixed minor glitches. Then as long as I was there, he started some stronger tests. And the sparks flew. Or rather didn't. By the time we were done, the computer wouldn't start up. When he filled out the work request he simply wrote "Many Issues." I almost burst into tears. I was fortunately able to get it to turn on long enough to get everything onto the iMac. There were some bumps along the way, but the important thing is that all my info is safe. I'm highly tramatized, though. I need it back! I don't know that I can wait 5-7 business days! (Rock on Apple for that kind of speed by the way, I was just born way too recently to be equipped for this sort of computerless eternity) I don't want to hear any nonsense about having thousands of computers available to me. Since you are reading a blog, I am fairly sure you understand and wouldn't even try.

The third thought was provoked by something I heard on the radio. In Mississippi, the Mississippi I will be living in part time soon, they banned the book America by Jon Stewart. This is not helping any of my yankee stereotypes. I may never go off base.

posted by Anonymous @ 7:39 PM