Pop Goes The ...

I have an excuse! Really, I do. And it’s not sickness either. There I was late Monday afternoon ensconced in the fabulous purple chair adding the last book of the day to my database when rain starts gushing from the sky like Old Faithful. I leapt to my feet and ran around upstairs closing windows to the sound of distant thunder –think rumble not racket – when all of a sudden a tremendous BOOM!, a bright flash of lightning, and an audible POP catapulted me back into the office. I knew. Of course I knew. What else could make such an ominous sound? Never mind the black box on the floor that’s supposed to protect me from power surges – my computer fried.

Of course great wails of protest ensued, but a lot of good THEY did. The computer remained deader than a doornail. Oddly, the phone still worked, as did the printer and the external hard drive. Grateful for that much at least I put in a frantic SOS to my computer guys, the famous Shawn and Larry. After a few do-this and do-thats they seconded my diagnosis and told me to bring the terminal by the store in the morning. We were headed in that direction anyway because the people who had the Frank Lloyd Wright books we bought earlier had called to say they’d found BETTER Frank Llloyd Wright books under the bed, so I said we’d be in Brunswick around ten.

That night we awake at 2 a.m. to the sound of a yelping dog.

“That sounds like a dog,” I say in a flash of obvious brilliance.

“I very much doubt it,” Eric replies. “Oh!!!! I!!!!!!! Did you see that?”

 I did. A bright  blue light flashed briefly, it’s hue caught on the open door of the office down the hall.

“I’ll investigate,” says he.

“Yes, do,” I reply.

And so he does. But before he reaches the office the yelps begin even more piteously than before, this time accompanied by a GREEN light. My entire being fills with rapture.

“This is GREAT!” I holler. “My computer’s  working! It’s working!”   I jump out of  bed and chase down the hall barefooted  in my oversized  tee-shirt/nightgown  to greet Lazarus as he rises from the dead.

Too late though. Before I get there Lazarus takes another powder.

The next morning we duly haul  him over  to the computer doctors who use a magic beeping light to determine that the power supply, at the very least, is finito. It can be replaced, Shawn assures us -- as long as the motherboard is okay. Of course it’s okay! Not only had it yelped, but it flashed in two – count ‘em – TWO colors. We leave Net Effects happy as clams, our heads filled with Frank Lloyd Wright books of wondrous wonderfulness.

But alas! The bad news comes swiftly. Shawn phones to say that the motherboard has crossed over the Great Divide and will never emit so much as a squeak again. A new computer is mandatory. Of course I agree that the geniuses (not to be confused with geeks) should build me a replacement. But as soon as I hang up  time slows to the crawl of a tortoise. Without a computer there is no work, no email, no research, no blogging, no anything I do in the daytime. So I head to the garage and desultorily sort some of the books we got from the lawyer in Cleveland. It’s a drag. Seven boxes of nothing, one of which falls on my foot, and I’m back inside, bored and crabby. I try to read an Italian memoir called Extra Virgin, but name a bookseller who can concentrate on two English girls lugging buckets of water up steep Ligourian terraces in a draught when she HAS NO COMPUTER????

The book did mention grapes though, so I wash some from the fridge and think as I eat them what else I could do with my pitiful self for the next week. Finally I walk around the downstairs thinking about the guy who is supposed to come later in the week to see about a new front door and a new floor for the foyer. That’s when I spot it– a tantalizingly loose piece of wallpaper next to the coat closet. All it would take is one little tug and I could create enough mayhem and mess to see me through the entire week. Without thinking I boldly do it! I grab the corner, give it a good yank and down comes a satisfying swath of paper the size of Rhode Island. After that it’s more like pieces the size of dimes, but that’s good too. I don't even mind the ugly splotches and spots of old glue dotting the walls. Stripping wallpaper is a zen experience.

Which mercifully ended yesterday when Larry showed up. My printer and external hard drive are checked out and pronounced healthy. A tiny little loaner computer terminal perches daintily on my desk.  I figured out Windows 7 with only one call for help. I added seven new books to the database which Shawn magically recreated and uploaded photos. And next week I will have a brand new computer.

Now if only somebody would come by and finish scraping that last wall in the foyer maybe  I could hang out with Frank.for awhile. Right now he's under the bed.