Technical Difficulties

This morning started out like a normal morning for me. The baby actually slept (finally) through the night, so I was able to be awake and semi alert. I walked over to the kitchen table, hit the power button to my new-to-me laptop, and proceeded to go about making my vanilla creamer with a hint of coffee. I love to do this and enjoy, instead of morning news reports on television or cable, my Associated Content stories.

Sadly, though, when I returned to my laptop, warm cup in hand, sandy eyes ready to be absorbed into my wonderful morning reports, I looked up and saw nothing. I put my cup down, rubbed my eyes, made sure that I was indeed wearing my glasses, took a sip of my morning wonder potion, and looked again. To my dismay, it was true. My dear laptop screen was dark. I stared at it, willing for it to come back on. I looked at the clock, and it was 5:15 am. I had 45 lovely minutes before I had to start my morning routine of waking the kids and getting ready. I wanted my 45 minutes of reading and commenting, and putting up my Dictionary Theatre that I forgot to do the night before. It was not fair. Did this silly device not know what it meant to me to start my morning checking my email to see who had new articles? I needed to check and have my personal 'spa' time and relax.

Well, the frustration flashed through me, so I did all I knew how to do. I started to troubleshoot why this happened. I found that if I tilted the screen all the way back, that I could still see some of the desktop. There was hope! My morning could be saved! I called my personal tech support at work. When my panicked husband picked up the line he immediately asked what happened to the kids. I told him they were fine and still sleeping, and apologized for calling him so early. (He normally starts very early in the morning, and I never call this early, so he panicked.) I told him my woes, and as I desperately waited for him to tell me the cure all for my ill stricken laptop, I heard the words I had never heard before from my tech savvy husband. "You know Honey, I really don't know."

I was stunned. I took another sip and thanked him. I hung up and again, willed my screen to come back. Nothing. I did some things to it, and even got a virus scan going... but still no screen. Sadly, I closed the lid, refilled my cup and did the walk of shame to my television. I had ten minutes left of 'me' time. Sigh.

I turned on the TV and blindly watched 'The Soup' on E! Channel thinking I could be reading better stuff than this online. I missed my morning dose of Grandma's White Rabbit from Cheri Bowser, (which I just checked and I had already read it yesterday; for some reason, I thought it was Wednesday!), the cornucopia of topics from Darrin Atkins, my morning dose of politics from Tony Vega, my daily house call from Dr. Kristie Leong, and other wonderful articles from Rachel de Carlos, Carol Brown, Greenhill and many, many others. What can I say; I do a lot of reading in the morning! (Yes, I read a lot, and I really should leave more comments than I do, and I will get better about that.) I will say that yesterday I read Cathy A. Montvilles's article on commuting (which is really good) and was not looking forward to my own commute later that morning.

Well, I got my morning all done, kids at school and daycare, and now I was sitting in my long commute wondering what going on in the world. I turned on KCBS (an all news station I listen to) and wondered who on AC had already reported on this stuff. I turned it off, decided to clear my head and blast some music to help this 15 MPH trek go a bit faster.

I got to work and asked my boss, The God of Knowledge, (also the man who gave me the laptop), what happened to the screen. He gave me some simple steps to try and fix it, and now I can't wait to get home to try it out! Only six more hours and I can fix my laptop!

Tomorrow morning I will get my daily doses of AC again. I can't wait!

Oh, if you want a great recipe for Halloween popcorn balls, go see Langley Cornwell. She is great! If you want some fantastic articles including keeping up with John and Kate +8, then Susan Braun is the lady for you! In amongst all of Anges Farside's super articles is a recipe for eggnog pound cake! Yummy!