Aaaand we're back!

I tell myself if I had paid attention to the last decade, corruption of my computer would come under the heading of "glitch" and I'd be up and running within a matter of a few hours. But I've been busy for the past decade working on my Spider Solitaire score.

And so I've lost over a week and a half. A week and a half of trying to find all my old downloads (Spicy McSavant has promised to find my iTunes and until then I'm without The Coffee Song and Chuckie's in Love -- Shut. Up.)

So, at last, just about everything is back to somewhat normal except for the fact that I can't run payroll on Quickbooks, which is a problem only for our one employee (I, myself, being slave labor which is pretty disgusting when you know that our business is septic systems).

So, what have I been doing while the IT people have been attempting to explain what they are doing, why they have to do it and what I can do so they don't have to do it again? You'd think I'd be paying attention but, alas I somehow found more interesting diversions (Spider Solitaire being inaccessible).

For instance, two new types of birds showed up at our bird feeder. I say this reluctantly because I never thought I'd become a bird geek, but there you have it. I spend my early morning staring out at my deck to see who shows up and this week Chipper Sparrows and Brown-headed Cowbirds showed up. According to the Virginia bird book, everything in our yard is a "common feeder bird," a term that annoys me almost like the author is telling me, "What the hell are you getting so excited about. It's just a common, ordinary bird -- nothing exotic like the other birds listed in this book that you'll never see."

It's show season, so Zsa Zsa and I have been attempting one more time to survive the conformation ring. One of us has improved since last year. The other one chickened out and sent Mamma K in her stead.

Also we've been landscaping our yard in dead plants. They were alive once, but given the freezing temperature, I doubt our lame attempts at keeping them warm were successful. But for a few days, there was landscaping potential. There were flowers and Shrubbery!

And gnomes. Protected by our attack 'Pode.