And now a bit of revisionist history, if I may. It doesn't happen this way in the books, of course, because the books are not that dramatic. But let us take these quotes from the movies as though we are hearing only the words and not seeing the action: 

 

 

 

Now, I ask you, what just happened? It seems clear. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli have tossed their weapons into a pile at Frodo's feet, saying he should carry them with him on his journey. Right? You can see them: Clatter! KaThunk! Chunk! But in reality it was not the words that defined the meaning of what the characters said, but rather their actions. Just something to think about. Is it the words someone is saying to you or their actions I should be considering? Some combination of both? Do their words not match up to their actions? It takes careful consideration, at least on my part...

 

Onward to the past:

 

Friday is as usual a bit unclear, I never keep good notes on that day. I know I had one job and went to get food. Humph.

 

Saturday I finished wrapping Mizzy's gift and did a job at 11:00. Just setting up a wireless printer. Then over to Mom's to set up her new printer. Had a few hours around here at home, then over to Sean's for some Shadowrun. Brought the gifts with me, just in case.

 

Sunday was a feast of Thundercats and cleaning up a little around here. So exciting.

 

Monday I went shopping as always, and even though the basket for the fruit has sat here for two weeks, I nearly forgot it. Only when I was about to checkout did I exclaim "fruit!" and turn back to get them. Ran late because I went to wegmans for a specific ingredient for something, but couldn't find it. Finally asked someone (It took a few tries to succeed on my RES check, should have used energy) and was told it was back by beer of all things. Yeah, that's logical. So I was fifteen minutes late to my first one. When I walked in she was like "oh I just called you." Really? You couldn't patiently wait 15 minutes before calling me? Installed her RAM. Then over to the hotel to install Outlook. Mistake. Instead of "follow simple procedure to re-licence" I had to investigate other ways of doing it. Then just stuck the disk in and it gave me that choice. Then installed on 2nd machine. Setting the same as another machine, won't get email. Also tried express and thunderbird- won't get email. Then someone else came in and wanted me to look at their Excel that was acting up. You know I only planned on being here like ten minutes, right?

 

Excel is opening funny. Every time it "preparing to install" something for a couple of minutes. Then gives up or whatever and opens properly. Of course we have no disks so I can't even try a repair. Great. Why doesn't Word do the same thing? Hummmm

 

So rather then going home for lunch like I planned, I just went to my 3:00 directly. Another ME system bites the dust after 10 years. Hurray. Maybe got his "family tree" data he hasn't updated in 2 years off? He couldn't find the install disk so… who knows. Finally ate lunch at around 4:00.

 

Found an Office 2003 torrent so perhaps later I can do a repair of Excel. Ordered $500 worth of parts to build someone a system, despite me telling them they could probably get a much better price just buying a  box. Whatevs.

 

Tues: Un-mutting some speakers for a person just down the street. Two in the afternoon. One cleanout/fan issue (ordered a new fan) and the other had two to clean out. Then got one dropped off so I looked at that as well.

 

Wednesday the morning was the lawyer guy, got his cute daughter printing and changed folder to read/write on network from read only. The horrible one that day was the evening one. Setting up Netfix. Turned ut to be the router I guess. Tried the firmware update (which it had to do otherwise it would just shut down) three times, each time it crawled across and stopped. Finally used the website to download it (80+ MB for a firmware update on a blueray player? Huh?), burned it to CD, and loaded it that way. Then netflix went bonkers on its own. After router changed started watching Thor and it was crystal clear. Wow. Over 4mbps DSL even. I'm impressed. 

 

Then yesterday at 9:30 it was "yahoo is acting up" except when I got there, it wasn't. Poked around. I was going out to an 11:00 guy but he had a doctors appt (this is why I don't make appointments over email. I get a message "weekdays 11 A.M. or Sat. 12 to 3 P.M. Thanks.." and say "okay, I'll be there tomorrow at 11:00" and then get back "sorry,I have a doctor's appointment to day, (the 20-th). How about the 21-st? tomorrow?" Really? You couldn't have said that in the first place? Does the appointment really belong to the doctor in that case? I don't think "doctor's" is right, do you? Anyway.

 

My replacement display came. Or not, as I had ordered the wrong one. Ordered right one. Put wrong one on ebay. Thanks for using two different parts in the same laptop, Dell, I appreciate it. Went to 1:30 one, somehow her wireless router encryption type changed which of course messed up windows. Then over to the hotel again to repair Excel. Didn't help. Finally tracked it down to some add on software odf reader that got messed up and was trying to install itself every time excel opened. Got game gifts. Got parts in for new PC. Assembled new PC. Loaded new PC. It's a beauty if I do say so myself. I have to admit, it probably is faster then a similarly priced retail system because I used an SSD and didn't instal any trial crap. That's being delivered Saturday.

 

Today the 11:00 guy, have no idea what he wants (as the two quotes above are the extent of our conversation) and at 2:00 someone's coming here to pick up a mac laptop I ordered for them.

 

Busy with holiday stuff the next few days. May go to Sean's tonight, not sure. Then Mom's birthday (and Sean's again depending on time, etc) on Saturday. Then Sunday a retirement party for my father. Then monday is christmas eve. Then Christmas.

 

So have a good one everyone, I'll be back writing… complaining if the world doesn't end, Dec 27th when I can show you the pictures of what I made for Sean/Mizzy/Neil/Mom and give the big reveal and tell the story of the gifts that almost weren't.