monday, monday

Today's theme seems to be computer problems. I think I've previously mentioned that I knocked our newest lappy (Compaq, less than a year old) off of a foot stool. It fell about two feet to the floor and the drop seemed to damage the electrical connector (the thingy that you plug the power cord from the wall via the black box into). (impressed my technical vocab?) At first we were able to just jiggle the connectoid a bit to get it to draw power. After awhile that stopped working and our roommate (who is a VERY highly skilled "tinkerer" rigged up a rather Rube Goldberg arrangement with string and ink pens that provided tension to hold the plug in. That worked ok for a few days but we still had to every now and then jiggle the plug to get the current running again. Now that seems to have stopped working and our tinkerer is trying to jerry rig it again but in my heart I fear we are reaching the limits of what we can fix with string. Tink did go online and found a detailed diagram of how to take the top off of the lappy to access the broken part and if we can FIND the right part to buy he believes he may be able to install it and bring that lappy back into regular service.

Meanwhile, I decided to try hooking up my very old Toshiba lappy. After nearly ten years of hard service we had retired this machine because the hinges were broken and it was impossibe to make the screen stand up open so as to be able to use it. So I hooked it up to the flat screen monitor from my late hubby's old desktop and switched the screen to display and like a trooper the old lappy is allowing me to type this post. The problem is this old machine does not have a built in wireless connector and the one I used to use with it broke and I don't even have the $20 to replace it at this point. So I will have to when I am finished save the .txt document to our USB thumb drive and take that to the library to use a connected computer to upload this post. (Sighs. It's always something, isn't it?)

As i type this I am gazing at a framed picture that sits on this desk. It shows me and my late hubby Joel posing with Mickey Mouse. The gold embossed emblem at the lower right indicates that this picture was taken in Fall 1999 at Disneyland. I close my eyes and remember all of the wonderful trips Joel and I used to take--on weekends and vacations when he worked at London For and I worked at Earthlink and the more or less full time travel we were able to do for about two full years after I got laid off and we had my severance pay, money I inherited from my father and a large insurance settlement we received after a car accident. It was such a happy and carefree time and I felt then as though I had earned the right to enjoy a bit of luxury and was very grateful for the opportunity to travel and see many parts of the US that I had not seen before. I really my Joel and pray he is at peace in heaven with his parents and friends now.

Tomorrow we have to get up early and go to our appointment with my shrink and our talk therapist at 8am. After that I will know when the lib HR people will be receiving the reply to the questions they sent. According to John, our talk therapist, he and Dr. Park and NOT lib HR will decide what accomodations are appropriate for me. This jibes with my reading of the ADA so I am hoping I will be able to go back to work by the end of this week or the beginning of next week. I am also hoping that if HR does not send me back to work by Thursday that they will extend my paid administrative leave until such time as they do send me back to work. Just one more thing to worry about. I beieve that I have largely calmed down from my huge stress out but the uncertainty about my job continues to be a huge stress. I so hope that tomorrow will prove to be a better day.