Generally when I hear the word “vacation,” I think of trips. The last couple of days, though, have been vacations also — from the blog. I didn’t plan this vacation, nor did I seek it. Instead, it just sort of happened.
On Tuesday night I got home from a Leisure Learning class. When I sat down at the desktop, though, I could not log in to the computer. It didn’t recognize the log-in password. Eventually I realized that my keyboard was probably the problem. Of course, I also saw that this was totally my own fault.
I’d left a diet Coke sitting near it. I’d also left the door to the office open. That meant that Homer (or Romeo, but more likely Homer) had been on the desk and knocked the drink over. Hence the dead keyboard.
I tried for two hours to revive that keyboard. Short of running out and buying a new one, I just kept trying to dry it out. I kept trying to log in. I’d turn the computer off and back on. I’d let it sit, turned off, and then try once more. Finally, I gave up. By this time I was completely and totally frustrated and the last thing I thought about was finding the laptop and logging on.
So I simply went to bed. No blog on Tuesday.
Yesterday, I talked to a friend, and he said that he had an extra keyboard that he would bring with him for today. That was cool.
Last night I could have turned on and used the laptop, but frankly I just crashed very early. My restless leg syndrome acted up and I took my medicine for it — in the middle of the afternoon. Let’s just say that I got a lot of sleep yesterday. And last night.
Once more, no blog. And I didn’t even realize that until today.
Refreshed (well, I ought to be after all that sleep!) and out the door at 7:45 a.m., I met my friend Todd at McDonald’s across from the university. He loaned me a keyboard. I sat and visited with him and other friends who are still teaching. That’s one reason that McDonald’s on Ryan Street is one of my regular hangouts. It’s an easy place to meet up with friends who simply have to walk across the street.
We sat and talked. By 9:30 a.m., everyone else had departed for offices and classes. I headed home.
Confident about the keyboard, I unplugged the old one, plugged in Todd’s keyboard, and shortly afterwards I had successfully logged in to my desktop computer. Only then was I able to set up the new wireless keyboard that I had not yet set up. I mean, you know how frustrated I was on Tuesday night — there was a dead (wired) keyboard and a brand new wireless one, but in order to set up the wireless one, I needed a working wired keyboard first. Sort of Catch 22.
And so it is that I had a 2-day vacation from the blog. By this morning, I was eager to be back at work.
I appreciate so much more the comfort of the desktop computer, which I admit I’ve taken for granted. Sometimes I blog on the iPad mini, rarely from the laptop. Usually if I’m at home it’s the desktop. Only when that wasn’t possible did I stop to think just how much I enjoy the larger screen of the desktop computer. And only then did I realize that I’d been lazy in not setting up the new wireless keyboard earlier. To cap it all off, I’d carelessly left the drink too near the keyboard and left the door open, giving the cats easy access.
All my own fault. All lessons to be taken to heart, too.
Now I’m just realizing that I haven’t backed up files in a while. It’s time to pull out the backup standalone hard drive and set it up again for regular backups. Yikes. Complacency gets us every time.
Time for work. Vacation over.
cwareintheworld 