It’s Sunday and the hoards who descended upon the beach after Christmas have suddenly disappeared. The campgrounds are now nearly deserted. They must have gotten up very early to pack up and get on the road or else they did so yesterday in the late afternoon or evening. This was the case with the huge open-sided canopy installed ten days ago in front of my neighbor Daniel’s house. It completely blocked the view of the nightly tequila sunset crowd, who had started moving over under the canopy as soon as the family who erected it left for the evening.
Any other morning I would not leave the house until I’d posted my blog, but there was a death in my family yesterday and both the one human occupant (me) as well as all of the techno gadgets that reside here with me were thrown into the throes of mourning, which made me rather dizzy and discombobulated with the loss.
The story of our loss? Stupidly, stupidly, stupidly, I had put a full plastic glass of Diet Coke, heavily weighted with ice, on the table beside my computer and of course, stupidly, stupidly, stupidly, knocked it over onto the keyboard of my Macbook Air which was plugged in and turned on and which did go immediately black. Long story short, it did not survive the 4-hour-long resuscitation attempt by another Daniel, the local computer guy. And that is why I am sitting at my favorite morning wifi spot writing with pen and paper instead of my lovely, slim, nearly weightless Mac Air!
Last night, still in heavy mourning, I had turned to my Kindle Fire for consolation. Everything went wrong. I never could get on either my blog or Skype. Both Hotmail and Yahoo refused to recognize my passwords. After hours of their sending codes to other emails I seemed not to have the passwords to enter, either, I finally got on Hotmail thanks to Duckie, who demonstrated incredible patience in trying to help me deal with problem after problem.
At any rate, once on Hotmail (via my Kindle) I attempted to write to Duckie, but my Kindle threw a temper tantrum and I swear, started speaking Czechloslovakian!
“I can’t get signed in to WordPress,” I wrote to Duckie, my co-administrator, editor, critic, best friend, nightly cyber-companion, debater of Oxford commas and apostrophe advisor.
“czeltophlztxyvich” typed my Kindle Fire.
“This Kindle has been changing my words,” I screamed in type, pounding those tiny keys with inappropriately-sized fingertips.
“prostovichzertylich” glowed eerily from my screen.
“Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!!!!” I thought in screams, and typed as well.
“sczerchloxyxy!” my Kindle reported back to me. Earlier, it had started out suggesting alternate words; then, in frustration over my never choosing its word choice, it had started inserting its own words in lieu of ones I’d typed. “Judy,” I had signed one airmail. “Jury,” it had insisted and recorded for posterity. And that was the last half-way recognizable word it typed for the next ten minutes, at which point I gave up and tried to call Duckie, only to be told that his call forwarding or message service was not functioning, whereupon I tried to call his home phone only to be told in Spanish (I think) that I was out of minutes.
I gave up. Perhaps I’d just watch one of the nine movies I’d purchased in the street market two days before to watch on my computer. The rental agent had brought a new TV (promised 5 weeks before) the day before Christmas. I’d never watched it due to the fact that it had no cable hookup and no DVD player, but I suddenly realized I had both a thumb drive with movies on it and a DVD player for my computer and so I tried plugging both into the TV, only to discover it didn’t recognize either.
At this point, I decided that technology had turned enemy and that I was probably in great danger if I meddled with it further; and so I went to bed early and tried to read a book, but my glasses kept steaming over and soon I must have fallen asleep, for I awoke to discover that WordPress suddenly recognized me as the author of my own blog and that Kindle was pretty much willing to have me publish my own recognizable words I had written and edited, although the editing took longer than the writing. In the end, I breathed a long and tremulous sigh of relief and signed off, “Judy.”
“Jury,” Kindle typed, and for old-time’s sake, half in superstition, I let it lie.
Miss you all,
Jury
Yesterday’s WordPress Prompt: First! Tell us about your first day at something — your first day of school, first day of work, first day living on your own, first day blogging, first day as a parent, whatever.
(Gently edited by Duckie/okcforgottenman)
