Then, last week on my day off, I went to my friend Rachel's house and we worked out together, and then when I got home, Matt and I decided to take Lucie for a walk. We walked her up to the elementary school and when we got there, Matt let her off leash. When we had completed our loop of the field, he decided to work on an obedience refresher with her. They were both getting frustrated with each other. Finally they ended on a good note, and he said, "OK!!" That is her signal that she is now off command, and she took off running great big circles around the field. I clapped my hands to call her to me to play with her a little, and she came running to me at full speed. I didn't really have time to change my position, or brace for impact before she ran straight into my knee, at full speed. All 85 pounds of her, leading with her solid rock lab head. I doubled over and gasped for air. For a split second I thought she'd broken my leg. It took me well over a minute to be able to stand upright again, and attempt to put weight on my leg. It hurt like blazes, but I was able to wobble along. We made our way home, me limping about halfway there, and then tried to decide what to do with the rest of our afternoon.
We were talking about some chairs he'd seen on sale, and I went to my computer to try to look them up and my internet wouldn't launch. I tried twice and nothing happened, so I decided to restart my computer and see if it would help. It didn't. In fact my computer wouldn't restart. It just made strange whirring noises. Matt determined that my hard drive had died. So we decided to go to Bellingham and look at the chairs. We got in my car, and I plugged my iPod into the tape-deck adapter and off we went. I noticed that my music sounded weird. It sounded like the harmony was the main sound, and there was no melody audible. I had no idea what was going on, and Matt figured out that my adapter had died. He asked me, "What?? Did you magnetize your fingers this morning or something?"
I got to work on Friday morning and had to deal with a broken fishing license computer. I have been dealing with problems with my barcode scanner since before Memorial Day. I have called and talked with technicians and they sent me a new scanner. I packed up the old one, and plugged in the new one. It worked for about a day and a half, and then it let out a series of three birdlike chirps, and then died. I unplugged it, plugged it back in, and it repeated the cycle; worked for a day, chirped three times, and died. I called the technicians again, and they determined it must be a software issue and they wanted me to plug in the usb key attached to the back and reload the software. I searched the terminal, there was no key. They shipped me one, and we got the software reloaded. My scanner worked for a day and chirped three times and died. They sent me ANOTHER new scanner. I packed up the old one, plugged in the new one, and the light flashed spasmodically for about 36 seconds, and then it chirped three times and died. I called the technicians and they determined that they needed to send me a new computer, and another new scanner. It arrived on Thursday (the same day that my computer and iPod adapter died.) Now we flash forward to that Friday morning. I spent all morning on the phone with technicians trying to make the new terminal work. It wouldn't connect. Finally we ended up with the old computer plugged in with the latest scanner plugged into it. Everything started working like it should. At this point I mentally did the Chester Cheetah "Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay!!!" head-shake. But I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth, and just accept that it is working.
So now I'm trying to figure out whether I truly have turned into Maggie Magnetron, the electronics killer; or if selected electronic devices in my life have banded together in some sort of suicide pact? Either way, I've been somewhat reluctant to take out our laptop and try to write down my woes.
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