...And a Happy New Year!

last night's Corfu sunset from the kitchen door

Yes.  Well.

It may seem like I have forgotten this blog (or relegated it to the Well of Souls) but actually since my last post I have had my computer "fixed".

Having an older laptop with XP as my aging operating system, things began to seriously become undone.  It was possible to check the email  and touch base on facebook, but anything requiring doing two things at the same time would cause the computer to crash.

Steadily things got worse until I finally broke down and took it in to my gracious computer tech guy where upon he told me that things were starting to "degrade" (as in photos on my computer were starting to become inaccessible and programs were starting to fail) and I would have to "DO something!".

What this meant was that it was a good thing I'd invested in the re-installation CD's as we had to :"wipe" poor Ms Laptop who had started to develop Altzheimer's, and reinstall my same old XP program again. (this time without all the Dell junk I never used)  Of course we also had to find all the other programs and the updates for the old programs and, and, and...

As for a New Years' Recommendation of "Needful Things to make 2011 a better year"- I recommend a little USB back up hard drive. 

I finally purchased a nifty little back up hard drive, which is about the size of a pack of cards and I recommend to all and sundry BUY ONE, and back-up all your photos and important documents.  ASAP (Unless of course you are one of those "Ant" people, and already have one, as opposed to the rest of us "Grasshopper" sorts who didn't.)

I have now obviously done this, in a proper Ant-like way, but unfortunately I did lose some photos before I could back it all up.  Bummer.

Lesson learned.

Anyway, much of my seemingly cold shoulder to the blog has been because I have been first struggling with my computer, then going through the trauma of trying to save as much as possible on CD's, then taking my baby to the computer doctor to be "wiped". And finally relearning my computer (who is not the same "person" since the lobotomy), and then trying to find the discs to the old printer and other programs (still not up to speed on a lot of stuff), updating all and sundry, ... Oh yeah, and baking cookies, making quiches, cooking holiday meals and generally being a bit of a seasonal bon vivant.

So today I end this year and say, "I am glad you are over 2010".  Between the collapsed septic field, the dried up well and other water issues, moving my mother across the US, the mini wind sheer that made a hole in the roof and took out half of our yucca trees, and of course the computer "fail" that I've just been through, I am thinking that 2011, even as an unknown, is looking pretty good!

For what it's worth, Happy New Year to all and sundry, and may all your toasts be true!

Tomorrow I will try and do a bit of a catch up overview of the past month that does not include technology issues.