It’s Been Different Around Here

We didn’t have a clue that today was going to be one of those days–preceded by my computer power supply going out and taking the monitor with it. But today has been one heck of a day. I brought up DH’s monitor to double-check to see if it was actually my monitor that had gone bad (after retrieving my computer from the shop for $100+), and sure enough, his monitor worked (after a fashion) and mine didn’t. So, put a new monitor on the ‘buy soon’ list. Next, I went to the Polls Worker class. No problems there. I stopped at the store on the way home–still no problem. Got home and DH announces that he accidentally backed the trailer into HIS garage door. He’d taken the bend out, but couldn’t get it to go down all the way. Now that I had my computer (and a monitor with a display that was wonky) I could go to the Household folder on my hard drive and find the user’s manual for the garage door. I print out the pertinent pages and we fuss with it for 30+ minutes. Finally, I tell him to let it go, to close it manually and we’ll try again tomorrow.

We go inside where it’s warm and I begin dinner. No problem there. I fix dinner and go in to putz with the monitor’s resolution, whereupon I set it for some incompatible setting and the screen goes black with a warning of "Analog Out of range" with some megahurtz numbers. aaack! Gads, I just get the computer back, and for the first time in 3 days I can see something on my screen and I jinx it. <sigh> I wind up shutting it down and going into the living room, sit on the couch and begin reading again. DH asks me what’s wrong and I hate to tell him that I 86’d HIS monitor, but I know he won’t yell at me, so I tell him I messed with the resolution settings because the screen was all stretched across and I couldn’t read half of the page but I inadvertently set it for the wrong thing because it’s now black with a warning in the center of it. So I shut it down and will come in here and read for a while. I might go back in later and try again. If not, I’ll wait until tomorrow, find a phone number for LG (the monitor brand) and see if they can help troubleshoot it over the phone.

A bit after dinner, DH decides he wants to go downstairs to watch a new train video we’d been given that was produced by our friend, Aaron Bentson of 7Idea Productions. I think that won’t be a bad idea so I go down with him, leaving my computer off. When I get down there, I push the button for the dumbwaiter, to call it downstairs. This dumbwaiter has given us nothing but grief for the 5 years we’ve had it installed in the house. I no sooner push the button than the dumbwaiter motor begins to sound like banshees from hell and it begins its clunky, downward movement. I inwardly cringe and get an instinctive awareness of the future with the dumbwaiter dropping like a rock all the way to the bottom of the shaft. Well, it doesn’t drop–it reaches almost down and then begins to grind its way BACK UP! Great Sighs of Exasperation. I’m thinking to myself — What else can break? So far it’s a 2-car garage door for him, A computer & monitor AND dumbwaiter for me.

So, after watching the video I come back upstairs and with great trepidation I turn on the computer. I put it in SAFE MODE and everything seems to be o.k. so I restart it in normal mode. It somehow resets itself and the resolution appears to be fixed. Ask me if I’ll touch it again!

Things could be worse, but there for a while tonight it seemed that everything he or I touched went south. Tomorrow has to be better!

Be safe, be well, and please be happy. There may be times when you feel the whole world is against you (or maybe just a computer & monitor), but this too shall pass. Be sure to remember that you are loved, and remember to tell those you love that you love them. Anything beyond this is unimportant trivia.