The week before my trip

Sunday, February 7th

Machines and technology have not been very nice to me lately. Let me take you back about one week ago. My computer had been freezing on me so I took it to my local computer store in Des Moines to figure out what was wrong. They told me they probably wouldn’t keep it overnight and would call after a while. Later that night they called to say they needed to keep it overnight because they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it. That was fine, I said. The next day I get a call. My hard drive is dying. It needs a new one. Do I have my data backed up somewhere? Sure. It’s in about 100 differences places. I opted to have them back up my data for me, format the computer, install a new hard drive, and then put my data back on the computer. Not a problem. Should be done by Friday night or Saturday at the latest, they said. I call Friday night. It’s taking a little longer than expected because my hard drive was being cranky and I had a LOT of pictures on my computer. It will be done for sure tomorrow.

Saturday rolls around and I’m waiting expectantly for them to contact me. At 3pm I realized I had just missed a call from the computer store. “Hi Alisha. We ran into some problems and we’ll have to keep the computer till Monday”. Yeah….. the only problem with that was I was leaving Monday. So I drove to the computer store and told them Monday would be too late. The owner said even though the store was closed on Sunday he’d go in and work on it. Sunday comes, I’m waiting, I’m waiting. I got a call around 3pm telling me it was going to be late Sunday before my computer was ready. Luckily I got a call around 6pm saying my computer was done. Yea!! Matt and I went to go pick it up, and it was not cheap. Once back home I started moving things around to the correct places, reinstalled my camera software, Skype, and other things. Everything was really starting to look up. I tried to open one of my Word documents. It was then we realized that Microsoft Office was not installed on my computer. Duh! The software was 180 miles away in Davenport. It was 7:30pm on Superbowl night. Less than 12 hours before I was suppose to leave for El Salvador. I began franticly calling my neighbors to see if any of them had the software. I gave up after a half hour. So Matt decided to go out and buy Microsoft Office. Ouch! Also not cheap. The software I had in Davenport I’d bought for $7 as a student. He returned around 8:30pm and we got it installed on my computer.

Needless to say, the computer fiasco was not a pleasant experience. I had planned to spend the week before my trip getting things ready and working on my Spanish (with the help of my computer). That didn’t happen. I realize that there are much worse things that could have happened. I should consider myself lucky that my computer didn’t crash while I was in El Salvador and that I have a computer in the first place, but it just wasn’t the week I hoped it would be. Thanks for letting me vent.