How to Win Friends and Influence People (and why I love Chris ;)

Brief Computer Summary of the last week:

• Monday: we have two working computers.
  
• Tuesday: Chris buys networking hardware (Lynksys DSL Router) from Future Shop.
  
• Chris installs router on new computer, no problem, tries to hook up old computer, problem.
  
  • Chris calls Dell.
    
  • Technician gives "help" for a couple of hours.
    
  • Chris gives up and goes to bed.
    
  • (repeat over the next several days)
  
  
• Saturday: Old computer has no anti-virus. Neither computer has internet access. Both slow as pigs. Chris still working away with Dell technicians on the phone.
  
• I freak.
  
• I take the phone from Chris. Talk to two technicians who don't speak English, get even madder, finally ask Chris to just disconnect the damn router.
  
• I go down to Future Shop full of piss and vinegar, get our money back, and loudly complain because Sympatico told us the system Future Shop sold us was not compatible with Sympatico internet access, and they said it was.
  
• Come home.
  
• Computers work again.

We get lunch, and at one point Chris gives me a hug and says, "Thank you for making me stop."
"What?"
"I wasn't going to stop working on the computers on my own. I'd reached the point of diminishing returns, you know, when you've invested so much you don't want to give up?"
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. I was pretty mad at you for making me quit, but after you left I thought about it. And I thought, I wasn't ever going to stop on my own. So what the hell were you supposed to do, other than get mad and take my toys away?"

( 10-9-8-meme! )

Hormones

I wonder how much of my behaviour these days is governed by the fact that I'm on a double dose of birth control pill (because every time I tentatively venture into the land of regular doses, I have to Go With The Flow again).

I've been mostly keeping out of the really obnoxious online discussions lately, and trying to steer clear of comments that really get me seeing red. But today, somebody posted yet another declaration of sympathy for poor, beleaguered, downtrodden straight white Christian males, and yet another tirade against all of those people who shout "oppression" and say they want "equality" but really just feel entitled to "special privileges" and blah blah blah

You know, I'm sorry, I know there are cases of members of "privileged" groups (eg whites) being screwed over by quotas and such. But white men have been feeling oppressed and downtrodden since before the days when they owned vast plantations worked by hundreds of slaves and literally had power of life or death over "their" women. It's ridiculous, pathetic, and embarrassing.

So today I answered what I felt, and was probably a bit of a bitch. Or a lot of a bitch. ::shrug:: Whatever. I blame the hormones. And I'm grateful to them :)

Anyway.

Also painted the boys' room with primer today. Hopefully tomorrow we'll paint it with actual paint. And then get our lives back to normal, because right now everything is covered in plastic, the house smells awful, and Daniel and I are confined to the upper floor while Justin and Chris nap in the living room.

( to do )