What Sound Do Gnashing Teeth Make?

Arrrgh.  (and not in a fun pirate-y way)  On Sunday morning I tried to get online on my laptop to blog, check emails, etc. and it said it had a "problem loading page."  So I thought, oh, it needs a reboot, so I did.  Didn't help.  Restarted.  Didn't help.  Tried Durwood's desktop (which is still running Windows XP) and couldn't get on the 'net there either.  Tried the Kindle--nope.  Called Time Warner (we have a bundle [no puppy or pie] and the cable and phone worked) for help.  I got a native English speaker (yay!) and explained that I could get on the internet, just couldn't enter it.  It showed me home pages, wouldn't let me post or comment or even scroll.  She made an appointment for a service call and then tried "flooding the modem to flush it out."  Like a blocked pipe?  Hey, I'm the woman who waits for the electricity to drain out of the wire or plug before I fix a lamp or socket so it made sense.  Didn't work.  I was, and still am, horrified by my obvious dependency on my electronic gadgets.  I was rootless, hand-shaking frustrated, clenching and grinding my teeth, and came within a heartbeat of screaming at poor, long-suffering Durwood when he tried to help.  Not good, not good at all.  I ended up making a cauldron of chicken soup so I could bleed off some of my craziness by dismembering a defenseless chicken and hacking up innocent veggies.  That helped some, as did going to Titletown with DS, DIL1, and Cookie to see The Big Lebowski for the first time.  It was funny, hilarious even, but I could have done without about 90% of the F-words.  I had high hopes for spending the great majority of yesterday on the work computer but fate intervened.  Not only were we busy enough to keep 2 people hopping all day, but Mrs. Boss was there trying to get some of her work backlog done.  Thank god she was because there is no way I would have been able to cope alone, it was that busy.  I was hot, sweaty, and running around like a crazed weasel most of the day and barely had a moment to check my emails and scan Facebook.  Granted, it made the day zoom by and she does pay me to work not web surf but, people... no internets all Sunday.  None.  Just a little tease and then nothing.  Today after dodging the Packers owners' meeting traffic (did every one of the 30,000 of them take their own car???) walking (around and around in the mall where it wasn't all that cool anyway) with Skully I took my laptop back over to Aaron at Infinity to see if he could wave his magic wand and fix it.  Nope.  I had to leave it there for the second week in a row.  He's going to try to fix it without making it billable, but he can't promise anything.  Fingers crossed.  Gah.

July 22 & 23--Japan, Female Warrior in Armor.  The paper's fibers meshed well, cross-crossing the way that Yoshi wanted them to.  She swirled the pulp, adding petals and grass blades to catch in her frame with the screen bottom.  She was very careful as she swept and lifted the frame into and out of the water, seeing immediately how the paper would look when it was finished.  Her press was old, hand-made over a century before, but it helped her make the paper that made her famous with artists and print makers like Surimono.  He came every week to see the paper that she had made and every week she asked him to have supper with her.  They sat as equals at her small table, eating the simple meal of rice, fish, and pickled radish, talking far into the night.  All through the autumn when Yoshi added aster petals to her pulp, and winter when she carefully embedded fans of pine needles, and into spring when cherry blossoms blushed pink in her papers, she and Suri got to know each other.  He treated her like an equal, talking about his paint and ink recipes, asking her opinion about how he made his woodblock prints.  She barely noticed their familiarity and the comfortable ways their times together passed.  In the spring Suri arrived on a rainy day wearing a bamboo cape and hat.  He laughed at her fussing to make a cup of tea to warm him.  "You cluck like an old hen," he said.  Yoshi blushed pink and stopped, afraid that she had presumed too much.  He touched her cheek and said, "I like it."

Okay, that's it for me for now.  I'm going to go burn some incense and maybe sacrifice something to the gods of laptops so that the Kumquat comes home soon all better for no more money.  Fingers still crossed.  (that explains the typos)
--Barbara