One Week After the Disaster

I seem to have misplaced my head.

It has been a week since my computer was destroyed by a rogue water sprinkler. There’s some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that my printer resurrected itself from the dead. I had the new one out of the packaging and ready to go, when something made me try the old one again. It must have dried out following its dance with the water sprinkler, because it worked again. Yeehaw! Back went the new printer into the box, happily returned to the store.

The bad news is that I’ve lost my email program, Outlook Express, along with everything that was in it. After many frustrating hours, I can’t seem to get the new Outlook email program to work, that is, to find my server, log on successfully, and so on. The hours I’ve spent on this endeavor have driven me into a dark depression. I’m forced to use a yahoo thingamajig which is annoying. I curse it. I curse many things. Oh, well, tomorrow is another day.

The good news is that I managed to salvage my document and photo files. I’ve spent the past week working madly on magazine assignments and got them all done and submitted. This is a big deal, and worth celebrating, especially since the subject of one story had her husband go and die on her right before my copy deadline. This threw her whole story out of whack, not to mention what it did to her life. But with a little sympathy and rewriting, the story was written, approved, and submitted. So there’s cause for celebration. However, I’m stuck in the dark depression of the email fiasco, and that is all I can think about. I’ll have to work on that.

The bad news is that my office is still topsy-turvy, with everything moved and stacked and out of its usual place, letting the carpeting dry after its assault by the rogue sprinkler. Oh, well, tomorrow is another day.

The good news is that I have a new computer. My documents and photos on now on its hard drive. This is a blessing, one worth celebrating, if I weren’t so busy being annoyed that it isn’t configured for me. There’s a special circle in hell for training computers to mind, to find their servers, to refrain from pop-ups that one doesn’t want, to behave the way you want them to behave in general. I hope when I die I don’t go there.

My old computer is finally on its way to get an autopsy at its manufacturer. I’m praying for it, as if it were a living person who is deathly ill. I would like to have it resurrected, along with my email program and all its contents. It seems like my life has gone on a strange diversion this past week. And in the hubbub of the past two days, as I worked around the strangeness to get my last three stories finished, I forgot to do my morning meditation, pray, and work on my gratitude journal. That has no doubt contributed to my sense of depression as the day has ended.

Oh, well. Tomorrow is another day. For now, I’ll go make a few entries in my gratitude journal and remember that every day above ground is a good day. May God’s blessings be with all of you.