I'm at a public library and using a — sniff — public computer. I feel like Princess Anastasia scrubbing the hearth. Or like our dog Lena, who gets that miserable look on her face when eating her dinner, a look which seems to say, "And so it's come to this… reduced to eating dog food from a dish on the floor."
I need a new computer, since mine died its sudden death. Or at least a new hard drive, but putting a new drive in the decripit thing looks like throwing good money after bad. But needing a new computer and getting one are two very different things. If this is 1929, it's going to be a long time until 1940, and it's not a good idea to run around spending big money that we don't have. It pains me to say it. I feel that my right arm has been severed. But… there it is.
We just painted the peeling, lead-hazard garage at a computer-like cost. We're getting the new kitchen shortly… and there's the well. Well, it's not a done deal yet. Although pretty shiny water runs freely from it, we're still total coliform positive (i.e., bacteria laden) apparently because of the pipes. My next step, today, is to call the well drilling guy and get a new "check valve" put in. This will prevent the yuck factor from going backwards from the house to the well. Then we will go through the icky bleaching process again. THEN we will test again, at a point before the well water touches the pipes of slime and germs. If negative — please God– then we will at least get the well approved and get the Summit County Water inspector, nice as he is, to move along. Then we can sit here and try to sterilize this mess on our own time.
"I re-plumbed my whole house for only about a thousand dollars!" he said cheerfully, implying that that's where we're headed. Don't. Go. There.
I spent much of the day Monday trying (without success) to find the lost power cord to our ancient iMac from the dawn of time (i.e., 2001?) While looking through boxes in the basement I was further traumatized by a loud defiant squeak from creature or creatures unknown. I called my mother and she diagnosed it as a chipmunk, and I went out and got a sparkling new trap– this is a small squirrel and chipmunk version. It caught nothing, though. And the next morning it squeaked again, much louder, and seemingly right next to me in the kitchen. This jangles my nerves so! What the fuck is it??
Elias was home with a fever and he helpfully pointed to the source of the noise, "Chirp chirp UP HIGH!" he said. But I couldn't see anything up high, down low or otherwise. As the day wore on, it seemed that there were two things going on– the basement squeak (a bird? the pipes somehow? a chipmunk?) and the upstairs squeak, which seemed ultimately to be issuing from the world's tiniest frog, which we caught just the other day. Or coming from its cage at least. I could never see the bitty thing, much less in the act of making all the racket. All I can say is that when I finally moved it outside, the upstairs squeak stopped at least, and that was a blessing.
My friend Colin, who knows about computers and swims in the sea of geeks, has found me someone in Ohio who may be able to help me retrieve my data, at a cost within the realm of human possibility. This is pending. I'm going to bring him the whole mess later on today, so we'll see.
the public computer is quite nice, despite the other-people cooties, but it has a time limit. So, bye!