I'm Aliiiiiiiiiiiiiive

Look out world- I have a computer again.  

Let me rephrase that: I have a working computer again.  

I've had my old computer sitting propped against a wall in the corner of the family room since the day in the middle of November when it went ka-put.  It has sat there, mocking me, every day since.  It reminds me of all the pictures, and projects, and papers, and files, and programs that were swallowed up into the black hole of death when it died.  I'm still grieving over these things.  Of course, the fact that I haven't had a computer since has kept the wound open and fresh.

I told my friend Chantel this morning on our first walk of the year that I finally have a computer again.  She looked at me and asked how I've managed to get by this long without a computer.  Well, my cell phone and our first generation iPad (that was "a free gift" when Ryan signed up for his master's degree) has kept me connected with the outside world and Pinterest.  And Ryan was kind enough to bring his school computer home in the evenings and on weekends.  But let's face it, it's been a big pain in the derriere not having a computer.  

We had our taxes done and submitted to the IRS before the end of January, and we were one of the very first to get our tax refund.  This chunk of change was my ticket to a computer, and I stalked our bank account for the refund to show up.  (Well, it's also been assigned places in our student loan repayment and roof repair fund.)  

The day after the refund was in our possession, an order was submitted to Dell for a new computer.  We were not going the ultra cheap route this time, as the last two were not great.  Well, inexplicably the order was cancelled without any notification to us.  All of a sudden, we no longer had a ship date.  (We think what happened was our credit card company was hesitant to authorize such a large purchase.  We never spend that kind of money.)  But instead of a phone call to see if we could call Discover and authorize the purchase, the order just went dead.  So, we tried to contact Dell to see if we could fix the problem.  

We tried chatting on their website, Facebook messaging, and calling.  This was Ryan's first phone call on hold:

Soon after this, #Dell kicked him off because they were getting close to closing time.  We tried calling again, trying to use another option on their line to see if we'd have a shorter holding time to actually speak with a person, and they were unhelpful and put Ryan on hold again.  We tried again, and no helpful customer service was to be found.  

#Dell is now dead to us.  Two crummy cheap computers and the worst customer service imaginable, and we won't be buying from them again.  The last one died completely and it wasn't even 1.5 years old.

Well, last Thursday brought our new Lenovo ThinkPad in the mail.  I was cautiously optimistic about the whole thing, considering my luck over the last several months.  (My iPod died, the computer died, the roof leaks, our upper oven, aka the one we always used, doesn't heat up, the iPad is getting slow and finicky, and after all this time I couldn't even buy a computer with money I already had.)

But I think this new computer and I are going to get along.  I sure hope so anyway.

I finally checked my blog, over a lunch of left-over stroganoff, and I realized how much I have to catch up on.  But I figured a note to let the online world I did not mean to give up on my blog was in order.  I hope to fill in that big gap a little over the coming weeks.

But right now, I think I need to change out of my exercise clothes so I can go volunteer in Maddie's classroom.  7-year-olds might not get embarrassed about mom's lack of clean and presentable clothing yet, but I might.