So...I am pretty much permanently attached to my laptop. I watch a lot of my TV on it, I web browse with it, I use it to plan all my lessons, it contains most of my social life, and I use it to watch all my DVD's.
I love my laptop.
Unfortunately, Marley loved my laptop too when he was a wee small puppy (Hah! Oh, those were the days!)...more specifically, he loved the laptop cord. Yes, my laptop cord has been held together by electrical tape and habit since about two weeks after I brought Marley into my house...teething puppies know no mercy.
Or pain, apparently, as the cord was not always unplugged when Marley was chewing on it.
But I digress.
Sadly, electrical tape and habit can only last so long, and the power cord on my laptop has at last given up the ghost. And so...I find myself without a laptop. The battery is for shit at this point, and having just spent $350 dollars on a new motherboard for the latop, I can't afford a new cord as well. Why, you ask?
'CAUSE THE CORD COSTS ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MOTHERFUCKING DOLLARS.
A CORD. A laptop CORD!
I need it, but I cannot justify spending a little over a quarter of my monthly income on my laptop this month. I'll just have to wait until my tax return comes in. But in the meantime, I am in a bit of a pickle. I've been doing Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred workout DVD (and let me tell you, never mind the shady lawsuits or the fact that this chick looks and sounds like she spends all day every day thinking about all the people she wants to kill and how she wants to do it...I'm a believer. Two weeks and my pants are already WAY looser, I have a crap-ton more energy, and I just feel GOOD)...and without a laptop, I have no DVD player.
Now, obviously, I have computer access. My mother let me bring my grandma's old desktop computer to my apartment to use while my laptop was being worked on. Problem is, this thing has none of my customary bells and whistles installed. Including a DVD player.
And I haven't had an actual DVD player in years. Seriously, I do everything on my laptop, why would I need one?
So now, I can't do my workout, 'cause I haven't memorized the moves or anything...and while I COULD just make up my own, or go jogging or somethi---
No, never mind, I can't even finish that sentence.
Any road, suffice it to say I'm a creature of habit, and when I find something I like (well, okay, 'like' is perhaps too strong a word. I DREAD those twenty minutes where I'm gonna have to workout with Jillian, and spend those twenty minutes panting, groaning, screaming, and growling out lots of things along the lines of: FUCK YOU, Jillian Michaels!!!!! Huh, and again, that didn't sound that dirty in my head) I want to stick to it.
So, I decide to go buy a DVD player. 'Cause it's not like I'll NEVER use it, and they're pretty damn cheap these days, so it'll cost less than replacing the power cord anyway. And I find one at KMart for, like, twenty bucks.
Yeah, I kind of forgot about that whole "you get what you pay for" thing. This player is a piece of crap. The remote it came with doesn't work, and the little "forward" and "back" buttons on it don't work, so while I can play a DVD up to the menu screen, I cannot advance the screen to the "Play Movie" option...and the "Play Workout" option on my DVD is the SECOND option.
So, I can watch all the "Biggest Loser" commercials on the DVD...but can't actually play my workout.
No problem, says this Elf. And I high me hence to the ninth circle of Hell, also known as WalMart. And buy a universal remote (for seven bucks, so still cheaper than buying a cord).
Clever, no?
Well...no, it's not. 'Cause my piece of crap DVD player is such a cheap piece of crap that the remote doesn't have a code for it. So my universal remote works fine on my TV and my cable box...but will not work on the DVD player I bought it for.
Which I think defies the very definition of "universal," but that's just me.
So, after two trips to two of the places that I hate most on this Earth, $27 dollars spent (plus tax), 45 minutes of wrangling cords and hookups and scrolling through code libraries only to discover that my brand isn't even listed...
I sit back with a baleful glare, only to literally jerk to attention seconds later as I have the latest in a long line of "well DUH" moments.
And then I went and downloaded a free VLC media player in five minutes, uninstalled all the stupid advertising hangers-on, and happily plop my work out DVD in.
Literally. Genetically. Incapable. Of Doing ANYTHING. The Easy Way.
Nothing much else going on...came home today and had to spend the better part of an hour cleaning out Marley's kennel. Marley does not do well when left to his own devices for large amounts of time. It's weird...he's perfectly happy to go and sleep on my bed while I'm in the living room for hours on end, but if I leave the house without him he will go CRAZY. Unfortunately, this means I can't trust him out in the house while I'm gone during the day, so he spends his days in a truly giant crate.
That he's almost outgrown. *sigh*
Any road, a downside of this is that I sometimes come home to truly spectacular messes. I don't think Marley is what you'd call "crate-dirty"...he clearly doesn't like to mess in his crate, and it's not a daily occurance. But part and parcel of his health issues are that he needs to drink lots more water than a "normal" dog to help flush out his system (like, I literally leave a MIXING bowl of water out for him and have to refill it at least twice a day), which means that even though I let him out in the mornings, he can't really be expected to 'hold it' for the eight or nine hours I'm gone during the day. He usually does, but two or three times a week, he just can't. Another issue is the fact that the food I feed him leaves his stools rather loose.
This is good because again, gets his system cleared out of excess protein faster.
This is terrible, because sometimes, he just can't hold it.
Oh good LORD, I hate coming home to find dog crap smeared over half the bottom of the cage (interestingly, Marley tends to use the blankets I pad the kennel with to cover the mess, so I rarely come home to HIM covered in dog crap). Today was an, "I'm sorry Mom, but I just couldn't hold it!" day. So, I had to awkwardly maneuver the dog-crap covered kennel bottom (it's a slide-out plastic tray for 'easy cleaning') into the shower, soak off the dried dog crap, scrape off the "rehydrated" dog crap, scrub everything down with Resolve Pet Stain formula, drag the kennel tray out to the living room to let it dry, go over the tan carpet with a fine-toothed comb for any "pieces" that might have gotten dislodged, and then go and sanitize my shower.
Plus side, the bath tub has rarely been this clean.
Down side, 409 cleaner and dog crap is NOT an attractive scent.
And I don't know why I described all that...just like to share the misery, I guess.
Marley's lucky he's cute! ;)
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