Hallelujah!

All in all, it's been a difficult year. I've spent most of it feeling very unwell, so as much as possible I've kept my head below the parapet, which has kept me away from blogging.
But even though I haven't been online very often, my blog has been a warm, furry presence out there, awaiting my eventual return.
So you cannot imagine my dismay when on Thursday, after a long absence, I opened up Blogger only to be told 'You are not the author of a blog yet'.
Thinking I'd done something wrong, I tried again.
Then I switched email account and tried a third time.
I did everything my technically-challenged brain could think of.
No joy.

It may sound a little dramatic, but given the circumstances, it felt like the last straw.
In desperation, I sent an email to the GeekWizard (who retrieved everything off my blue-screen-of-death hard drive), but he has - rather thoughtlessly, I feel - moved to another country and is currently house-hunting and up to his gunnels. I sent a similar email to WonderBrother (who salvaged my blog once before when all was lost), but he - also rather thoughtlessly - has acquired a new, uber-demanding job in yet another country.
Neither was at the other end of my emails at the time.

It was then, after turning off the depressing message that I was 'not the author of a blog yet', I went back to my emails. There was one from my first-born nephew, about a photo he had kindly sent me a few days ago. He was, the email said, studying for his MBA exams next week.
My addled brain lit up. My nephew, I suddenly recalled, works for Google. (In yet a third country.)
I communicated my misery to him in Helsinki, and told him - in fairly round terms - what I thought of his employers.
He answered at once, bless him. He doesn't work for Google (it's one of the other big names out there), but said he'd have a look.

It took most of his precious revision day, and involved him setting up a blog of his own to see how the system worked - and there were odd hours when either he or I were offline, but at bed time - oh Hallelujah! - there it was!
He had managed to retrieve my blog from the jowls of perpetual oblivion and return it to one rather distraught owner.
He is a Genius and a MegaStar!

I think you can see the seeds of greatness in this photo, taken when he was less than a year old. It's one I'm particularly fond of.

 Thank you, dear Nephew!

The Blue Screen of Death

About ten days ago, when I opened up my computer, I was confronted by the Blue Screen of Death.
I quickly turned it off again, to give it a chance to pull itself together.
Computers are like that - what won't open one minute opens the next; it's as if they're still asleep, or have forgotten what page they're on. You sometimes just catch them on the back foot.
When I opened it again, alas it still hadn't woken up.
I turned it off and left it in the corner to ruminate on its misdeeds.
'The In-Charge will fix it,' I thought.

He tried, but nothing doing.
Death of a hard drive. 'It happens,' he said.
'But what about all my photos?' I wailed.
He wasn't totally sympathetic. 'I bought you an external hard drive for Christmas,' he said. 'And you should use Dropbox.'

I haven't had time to deal with the hard drive yet. I know it's now mid-February, but I was away, and there's been a lot to catch up with since then. And I don't know if I totally trust Dropbox.
There's something unsettling about the concept of my personal filing cabinet floating around in cloud-storage-space with lots of other filing cabinets. Who's to say it won't strike up unsuitable relationships right, left and centre, and share the innermost secrets of its soul? And with totally random, nosey people of dubious intent. Like that girl I loathed and detested at school, or that loud twit I'd cross the road to avoid, or the NSA.
I mean - you just don't know. 
After all, there's nothing else to do up there.

The In-Charge loves his Dropbox. He uses it all the time.
But then, the In-Charge would join the queue to go to the moon.
I asked him once. 'If all the chips were down,' I said, 'you know, blood pressure boiling over in the far-off Pentagon, someone's shaking finger approaching The Red Button, would you de-camp to the moon if it were possible?'
'Of course,' he replied.
He's a man of few words, by and large.

Decisive, but not wordy.

He likes screen Sci-Fi too.

I don't like Sci-Fi. Fantasy, yes - but move it into all space and you've lost me.
And I definitely wouldn't be in the queue for the moon.
I like my moon large, silver and romantically far away, preferably with the Evening Star in the same frame, a balmy breeze wafting by and a glass of something delicious in one hand.
Following that conversation, our extremely ancient wedding vows had to be retrospectively altered to accommodate this new position: 'Until death or the Red Button do us part'.

However, as usual, I digress.
Once the death of my laptop had been diagnosed, our friend, the GeekWizard very kindly came and looked at the lifeless corpse. He poked and prodded it and then opened it up and surgically removed the hard drive. You will not be surprised to learn that the helpful commentary accompanying these manoeuvres went largely over my head, but finally he took it all away to his own personal ICU.


Yesterday was discharge day. The In-Charge went to bring the patient home and de-brief the GeekWizard. I would have gone myself, but What is Point? I don't have an Enigma Machine to decode the feedback.
Instead, I stayed at home and made the most of the first Spring-like day we've had for as long as I can remember. The sun was shining, the wind had gone, the rain had abated and all was well in my garden. In a weird sort of way, this is one of my favourite times of year in the gardening calendar, but that's because I love snowdrops.
Well, OK, it's not just the snowdrops. I'll be honest. It's because I still feel in control. When I weed a bed, it still looks weeded the next time I go out, nothing has rampaged all night to fill the convenient space.
I can breathe in my winter garden, it's not permanent catch-up time.

The Winter Potager

I was out there for hours, happily weeding the potager.

Henri

Henri, who is staying with us for a few months, doesn't weed - it makes his elegant paws dirty - but he graciously supervised. The TeenQueen was too poorly to help - she lay on a mat and looked quietly sad. She had had a Bad Day. One of the headland horses kicked her in the face when she raced over to say good morning.
We have tried to warn her, but on this occasion she refused to listen, and wouldn't come back when called. Poor baby, she has learned a hard lesson. I bathed her closed and massively swollen eye, cleaned the blood away, gave her arnica and Rescue Remedy, administered some of the painkiller that had been prescribed for Under Dog's back injury and cuddled her lots. Once in the garden, Model Dog volunteered to look after her - the best nurse anyone could hope for.

The best nurse anyone could hope for

So we were all out, enjoying the sun and the crocuses when the In-Charge returned.
'He's managed to retrieve all your files and photographs,' he said. 'They're on the new hard drive he's installed.'
Oh GeekWizard, you are a marvel. A fantabulous, wonderful, geekily-clever marvel!
I cannot tell you how grateful I am.
And he even helped me find a way of getting back into my blog last night when I discovered that the nice, welcomingportal to its innards had closed when the old hard drive died.
Joy of joys!
Thank you, GeekWizard!
 

Poor TeenQueen

When Is a Rabbit Not a Rabbit?

While hanging the In-Charge's shirts on the line this morning (naturally I am the Boss, but husband makes a far more reliable In-Charge), I was pondering this week's 100 WC, and lamenting that I had, unwittingly, read Isobel's entry before putting finger to keypad on my own account.

I bemoaned this lapse to my four able assistants - the cats Hobbes, Henri and Popsicle, and the speckled hen.
'And Isobel's is - as always - so good!' I said.
Henri and Hobbes stared at me unblinkingly, offering no comfort. Popsicle was busy chasing a small pebble.
The speckled hen was just busy.
'Now I can't think of anything original,' I complained.


The cats shrugged with what I can only call Gallic indifference and the speckled hen begged to be excused.

But later, in the woods, the dogs sensibly suggested that this wasn't necessarily a problem.
'Rabbits,' they said, 'can pop up anywhere. But when you're looking for one, they don't. Better the rabbit already in the hat than not having one at all. And by the way, any chance of borrowing it?'

So I hope Isobel won't mind me continuing where her Philosophical Rabbit left off.
You may already have read Isobel's excellent entry this week, but if not - please do. You can find it here.
Mine will certainly make more sense if you have read hers first!



'What was the rabbit late for?' echoed dreamily through Alice's head and she awoke with a start, picturing jam tarts and flamingo mallets.
'So,' the lecturer was saying. 'The rabbit's anxiety is predilection not propensity, but was he late?'
His eyes rested on Alice and she flushed self-consciously. 'Alice - any thoughts?' he asked sardonically.
'Um...' Alice began blankly. Then: 'It depends,' she said with sudden inspiration. 'If you subscribe to Newton's timeline theory, yes. If you side with Kant and Leibniz, time isn't measurable, so he couldn't have been.'
‘Good answer!’ The lecturer grinned. ‘You'll become a philosopher yet.’
Everybody laughed.
Slowly Alice smiled.

Needless to say, I didn't actually read Julia's page - I only looked at the prompt words.
Now I see that the last ten words have to be used to start off next week's...
Looks like I've blown that one.
Sorry!


I see that Julia has published an appeal on her page this week, namely and to wit:

I don’t know if there’s any way to post a message that everyone can see but for all the blogspot people, it’s very hard for those of us who aren’t members of blogspot to ever get to post a comment. If the word matching is turned on, it never thinks you’ve matched and sometimes when it’s not the comment just hangs up while it blinks back and forth to the word matching but never posts… I note from comments that I’m not alone. Definitely helps when people turn off the word match but maybe blogspot needs a heads up?

I am going to ask Julia to post this too:

COMMENTS

As a blogspotter I am sorry to hear of your problems and  hope that your appeal will help.  However, you are not alone!

The problems of commenting are universal it seems! I find it almost impossible to comment on WordPress blogs. Time and time again when I press 'publish'  my comment disappears without trace. In some cases I have come to understand that my comments have been instantly binned as spam.  SO frustrating do I find this, that I have almost given up either commenting or trying to enter WordPress based challenges - ie the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge, on which I am UNABLE to leave my link. This is a shame.  It has also posed a problem on the school 100WC. My comments are only recognised if a comment I have left is fished out of the spam bin and 'instated' in the comments column. Thereafter, generally, I have been 'recognised' on that particular blog and my comments 'allowed' to appear.

I don't know how to overcome this problem - as often people don't look in their spam bins and are unaware that someone has tried to leave a comment.. Sometimes I leave comments via Facebook, but it's annoying that leaving a comment isn't a simple business.

I wish Blogspot and WordPress would talk to each other and sort this out. I have left comments on the Blogspot forum, and beg WordPress users to do likewise (you are missing out on lots of comments at the moment!), or send an email to WordPress if they are lucky enough to have that facility.

There seem to have been a lot of additional problems commenting recently. WHAT IS GOING ON?!

In the meantime, I would recommend all bloggers read this post about word verification and her original post which recommends how to deal with it, paying particular attention to point 5.