Tricks and treats

I was looking forward to a nice quiet normal Saturday. I had a hair appointment, and a birthday party to attend this afternoon, and other than that, nothing much. Just a perfectly normal, quiet Saturday.

Mother Teresa said, "If you want God to laugh, tell him your plans."

I wanted to get on the PC this morning around 10:00 AM. Turned it on, and the monitor came on, but no picture. Crap. That can mean one of two things: the monitor is shot, or the video card is. I'm bitching about both. It hits me that it's most likely the video card, which is a semi-blessing -- only about $100 compared to the $200 for a monitor. But by now, it's about 10:30 AM. I have a hair appointment in less than 2 hours. Decisions, decisions.

I had been planning to kind of spend a little time this morning at Earshot, a locally-owned CD store. Having to stop at a nearby office supply store to scout a new video card or monitor purchase would put a serious crimp in those plans. Time's a-wasting: Big Box to the rescue.

Now I'm all for saving money, but I really try hard to support Earshot and/or Horizon Records. They're both locally-owned and fabulous. Yeah, I'm going to pay a little more in there. But considering we nearly lost Earshot a few years back, I'm going to take as many opportunities as I can to buy from them to keep the business going. But time was of the essence..... so off to Big Box I go. There I can buy a video card and look for the CD's I wanted.

I found a video card. I bought four CD's (let's just call it retail therapy): a Donna Summer compilation, Faith by George Michael (because I wore out a cassette of it in college and wanted to relive it), Best of Bob Dylan (from 2000) and Modern Times also by Dylan. I came oh-this-so-terribly-close to getting The Essential Bob Dylan but the Best of compilation only lacked two songs I really wanted. So I also bought a download card to get those particular songs. (And am currently working on using up that tiny card VERY quickly on a whole bunch of other songs too). Yes, I saved probably about $20 buying them at Big Box. But honestly, I felt very bad -- so my next few purchases of music will be at Earshot or Horizon. Asperge me, Dominus.

Anyway, off to get my hair done. I'm going to have about enough time between hairdo and party to eat a quick lunch. And I do. And I manage to check the PC again. Still no dice. I open up the PC and see the video card and proceed to change it out. It's not coming out. I am freaking at this point, but it's time for the party.

I go to my cousin's house -- and what a great time! The party was for her little girl (Happy First, Maggie!!), but I was reveling in all the compliments on my appearance. I hadn't seen my cousin in about 6 months and she was floored -- as was everyone else. Her dad and my dad are brothers, but I've also known members of her mom's family off and on through the years, and her husband's family has always welcomed me with open arms. It's a crazy kudzu mess, but that's a Southern family (extended and so forth) for you.

We came back from the party, and I got my dad to help with the video card project. We were FINALLY able to extricate the card .... and my new one doesn't match anything remotely like this one. Same manufacturer, same model, but my current one is a 128mb and this new one is 256mb. Okay, but it doesn't fit ANY of the slots. What the hell am I supposed to do now? So I decided to pack the new one back up, take it back to Big Box tomorrow, and with a huge sigh, put the old one back in. For the pure sheer torture of it, I turn the PC on.....

Fan-fricking-tastic hallelujah. It works. I don't know what I did, but it's working. So I'm typing to you now, and enjoying downloading songs from this site. I can already tell I am going to be in some serious trouble. Serious. Serious. I may need to visit Big Box again and pick up another card.

Music: a harsh mistress and not a cheap one either. But I was seduced too many years ago to leave now!