Three Busy Weeks!

Its been a crazy few weeks in my little world. The previous 2 weeks I had the kids home for Spring vacation. It actually wasn't too bad because we kept busy with activities and stuff but it was very tiring.

A happy update in Dell Computer Saga...a very very kind and helpful friend came over to see if she could work her magic and breathe any life back into my evil Dell. Unfortunatly she wasn't able to save any of my files from the hard drive :( But she did help me discover how ridiculously cheap and easy it would be to switch out the hard drive for a new one which meant I could do it myself and take back the expensive new computer! Yay!

Of course, Best Buy had to charge me a dang restocking fee but even with that it was still several hundred dollars less and I now have my Dell back in working order (and I did the actual hardware exchange and reprogramming the operating system all by myself! I'm wildly impressed with me! LOL)

So that's all been good. Probably just a matter of time before it bites the dust again, but maybe I'll get lucky for a change...haha right...

Just a day or two later when I installed the Blackberry software onto my newly restored computer, I hooked up my Blackberry to update it and remove the files from it onto a disk. The program froze up so I clicked on the little thing to safely remove the phone from the computer. When I unhooked it from the computer EVERYTHING was gone!!!! My whole phone was wiped back to how it was when I opened it on day one! OH MY GOSH!!!! Why oh WHY does technology hate me sooo much!?!?! I absolutely started to cry. First my computer files gone and now my Blackberry too! My entire electronic exsistence just gone..poof!

In tears I called the Verizon people who thankfully were WAY nicer and WAY more helpful than the stupid Dell guys. One of the lovely Verizon Angels of Magnificence & Knowledge helped me on the phone for over an hour and with his help we discovered a hidden back up my computer had made of all my Blackberry files so I was able to restore them to the Blackberry! Hallelujah!!!

So hopefully now my technological life will run smoothly for awhile.

In other eventful news and definitely the more exciting of the list: I bought my plane ticket for Canada! I can't believe its finally happening! I've been waiting to go there for almost a year! I'm nervous but mostly just excited. I know its going to be an amazing weekend and one that will be very tough to have come to an end, but we're already looking ahead to future visits soon and then of course working on moving me up there so hopefully we won't have to do this long distance, back and forth stuff for too long. I love him soo much! :)

This week the kids went back to school (YAY!) but my employers are hosting their annual Easter Egg Hunt this weekend and of course I get to work the whole day. Luckily I've enlisted a friend or two to help out as well so I won't be all alone in the sea of crazy, sugar-hyped kids and wealthy but amazingly dull adults, all getting drunk on mimosas. Oh yes...what a jolly holiday it will be! But at least I know that the next Saturday I'll be with Phil and that is all that matters!!!!

Hope everyone has a lovely Easter (and Conference!) weekend!
XOXOXOX

Opposition in All Things!

Yesterday was one of those incredible turning point days where something you've waited for, put your whole focus and every effort into, FINALLY happens!

For the past 10 months I've been falling more in love with Phil every single day and he has been making my life so much happier and more fulfilled than ever before. But due to some circumstances beyond our control we haven't been able to be together and have been stuck letting our relationship grow long distance.

Yesterday we got one gigantic milestone step closer to finally being together! The holdup has been resolved and in one month I will be able to go to Canada to visit him! YAY! I am nervous and excited all wrapped into one. Its a funny thing having this strong a relationship from a distance...a lot of people who know us probably don't understand it at all, but it doesn't matter...we love each other and now we can finally start being together and feeling like a normal couple! I feel sooooo blessed!!!

This also means that I can start actively working on moving up to Toronto, because after 10 months of long distance I know that neither of us is going to want to stay long distance any longer than we have to. I've started to contact nanny agencies in Canada and hopefully will get the ball rolling to get a placement there and all the immigration stuff taken care of. Its going to be a complicated process I'm sure but I'm excited to finally be able to actively work towards what I want instead of having to sit patiently waiting, waiting and waiting some more for things out of my control.

So as you can imagine, yesterday morning I was on Cloud 9! I was so excited when I got the news that I was literally bouncing around my room and had a smile from ear to ear....During the last 10 months of waiting I feel like Heavenly Father has been really drilling home to me the value of patience. Now that a big portion of this specific lesson in patience has come to an end, I think He saw my euphoria as a perfect opportunity to teach me another lesson....OPPOSITION!

There needs be opposition in all things...This is something that I've really come to understand in the last few years particularly and really started to gain a better appreciation for. I suppose that because I know how the knowledge and understanding of the principle its time for me to really be tested on it.

After getting my good news, my laptop decided to have a heart attack (in the form of a completely crashed hard drive) and stop working! It really had me crashing back down to Earth. My computer houses my life...my pictures, my writing, my journals...it is the way I pass the time, the way I do great with my job, the way I'll be able to effectively work on moving to Canada and most importantly, my computer is the way that I talk to Phil! Because he is in Canada it costs a lot of money for us to call each other by phone so we've relied completely on Skype to talk to and (thanks to webcams) see each other. Without a computer we would have very little contact....YIKES!!!!

So I made a call to the Dell technical support center....they helped me zero. They wanted to charge me hundreds of dollars just to talk to me. So I packed up my square shaped life and took it to the hospital known as GEEK SQUAD! The black-tied surgeon gave it a good look over and tried some tricks but to no avail...the hard drive was damaged beyond repair and would most likely need to be replaced:

Full diagnostics: $70
Replacement hard drive: $70
Labor costs: $50 minimum
Software replacement: $30
More labor costs for software installation: $50
Attempt to recover lost information on hard driver: $200+++
Time required to fix laptop: 1 week

Price I paid for said laptop: $400

Amanda NOT happy! But but but...don't I have a warranty??? I purchased the laptop with a special credit card that would extend my warranty!

Warranty: MAY cover the problem, but will not know until after it is repaired. If not covered, it will still cost you. (Fabulous!) Oh and you'll pay out of pocket...the credit card company will then reimburse you (Hmm wonder how long that will take and how many hoops I'll have to jump through)

Time: To take advantage of the warranty you must send your computer away for 1-2 months (1-2 months with NO COMPUTER?????)

Amanda VERY NOT happy!!!

So the bottomline, I had 3 options:

1. Send computer away and live without one for 2 months (and basically without Phil too!) and HOPE that the costs to repair are covered and HOPE that the credit card company really does reimburse me!

2. Go ahead and pay upfront to have Geek Squad fix it on the spot and only be without a computer for a week, but still out almost the price I paid for the stupid thing and that's WITHOUT paying to try to save my files!

3. Accept the loss, spend a little more money and buy a whole new computer

None of these options made me happy...but in the end I opted for door #3 because I'd never liked the Dell computer anyone. In the year and half I've owned it, its given me nothing but grief and I've had to take it to Geek Squad on numerous occasions anyway. My wallet is not happy about the purchase as that money was intended to pay off another bill or perhaps finance a couple trips to Canada...but its life I guess isn't it :(

The good news is that I actually had a lot of my files saved onto discs. But sadly I've lost a lot of my pictures from the last few months that I never backed up, including most of my Florida vacation pictures :( I'm so sad about that.

All in all...in was one big fat emotional day! But I will happily concede that the joy far outweighed the grief!

I am soooo happy to finally know when I'll be able to go to Canada and so happy that Phil and I can finally truly start to pursue our relationship together!

May my stupid Dell RIP