Toast

Livey's antique computer finally bit the dust.

We had a big huge thunderstorm night before last, with a lot of lightning. I'd been regaling her with all sorts of horror stories from Florida, Lightning Capital of America. We get Lightning Fried Computer for dinner all the time.

So she unplugged it, which she usually doesn't. The storm raged on, with really close strikes, right by the house. Nice and dramatic! The poor animals were shaking and shivering. The satellite went out right in the middle of a movie she'd been waiting to see for weeks and weeks.

Finally, the storm abated. Livey was watching her movie again. I felt I was not so technochallenged that I couldn't plug a silly little computer back in. Honestly!

But - when I plugged it back in, there was a loud pop.

A very ominous loud pop.

So much so, I didn't even tell her about the noise it made until the next morning, yesterday, Monday.

Meanwhile...the monitor and modem came on, but not the tower. I thought it was me, see. I must have been pushing the ON button wrong. Not holding it long enough? Too long?

Nope. The internet connection is fine. I'm able to use my laptop, but her desktop is fried.

For a blogger to lose their computer is a terrible thing. Terrible.

She was far calmer about all this than me. I know it's ridiculous to feel guilty about plugging it in and hearing the pop, that computer death rattle, but sometimes I have to remind myself.

She wanted to take the desktop apart once again and try to fix it. My overall feeling is that anything would be better than what she has. Her antique computer, running on Windows 98, was rebuilt around 10 times already. It's very slow and does bizarre things when you're in the middle of posting. It's so shaky she can't use spyware or adware or virus protection. The monitor is so bad you can hardly see my pretty pix!!! Not. Good.

She's patient with it, just as I am with my own old desktop. But it's just purely way too old now, and its time has come. It wants someone to recover the precious photos of her life it holds inside, and whatever it can yield up of her old writings, and then it wants a decent burial.

Yesterday, Monday, we had an extremely long day at the dentist, then doing errands while sort of far from home. It's 5am Tuesday and I'm just now getting to bed. I've been emailing and commenting and talking to Walter about computers and things, and I wanted to update you all at least a little before I hit the sack.

After extreme arm-twisting last night, i got Livey to agree to accept financial help toward a moderately priced new computer. Walter and I will pay for whatever can't be covered by donations. We both like to give gifts when we can, and Livey's done a lot for us. So while we aren't in great financial shape ourselves, one way or another, we'll come up with enough to get this done.

Livey's given a lot to the blogging community. She's done so at some cost to herself. Her life is not an easy one, and her health is not good, but she works very hard. She simply doesn't have enough to get a computer right now, and that's all there is to it.

If she's entertained you, made you laugh, made you feel better with her sweet comments...if you'd like to help just because she's There...then please, do what you can to help out. That means that gamut from sending prayers and good thoughts her way, to hitting her PayPal button, or mine. Believe me, any amount will help. We'll pool it all together.

Oh! AND! She realizes full well what this means: Just because *I* am here visiting, and hogging her internet connection, does NOT mean she's off the hook for posting.

Nope.

Now she has to be SURE to keep us very well entertained! Frequently! And she KNOWS it!

heh!

If that means all y'all find comments from me at 3 am, and new posts at 5:30 am...so be it.