Ok so...what a looooooo ah ah ah AH ahnnnnnnng day.
First off, without a 'puter (and not quite but kinda almost hence w/out the will to live I kid, I kid, sorta) I went to bed AND OMD to SLEEP at around 10 p.m. last night.
Er, Thursday night.
Forgot to set my alarm so didn't change the pic on this site til 7:23 a.m. when I bolted from sleep and rushed to mom's computer to do it.
Then, well...went back to bed.
Tech guy was set to come between 11 and 12, so I thought I'd sleep it off, as it were (the puter withdrawals, ya know).
He came at 12:05.
So...in the interest of hopefully retaining some interest in this missive, I'll give the bottom line instead of the play-by-play.
It's not fixed.
It's pretty much dead.
BUT! The harddrive seems to live (THANK WHATEVER IS HOLY OR UNHOLY or just whatever). It wouldn't show on mom's puter (and let me tell you, my stomach dropped to the other side of the world I'm NOT exaggerating) but she gets errors when we plug stuff in, and scarily it did not show up on his laptop on the MS side, but it did on the Mac partition.
So there's hope.
He said it might be the video card.
Then he moved on to mom's puter problems (she does have an ANCIENT one (like, 2001, running Windows MILENIUM, Compaq) and I retired to my room to read.
Actually sit and read, if you can believe it.
Peter Straub, The Hellfire Club, tis good.
OH and watch the SEVERELY edited version of Showgirls on tv (shoosh, I'm allowed me guilty pleasures, shoosh).
Then mom comes in, "are you going to your appointment?"
I'd forgotten about the doc checking up on my owie.
So away I go'd and he dug yet another suture out of it (WTF? I ASK YOU) and picked of the scab (twas hurty, I don't mind telling you) and said it looked good and sent me on my way with a bandaid over the newly re-bleeding and stingy thingy.
Apparently the stingies are GOOD; means nerves are re-attaching or whatever.
Anyhoo, home again home again, tech guy's still working on mom's puter.
Finally he's away at 3:05--with her printer STILL not working, corrupted file somewhere he thought (and seriously glad we didn't go Geek Squad-try FastTeks if you can, they're good), and off mom and I go to Microcenter to get a video card.
OH and he said he might can find us a puter for semi-cheap that's better than mom's so that might be good. Hope. Hope springs Eternal. Where there is life there is Hope.
I hope.
Straws, they was meant for the grasping at, yes?
Yes.
So...where was I?
Oh yeah, trying the video card route. Cuz if a $50 vid card fixed my puter, how happy would I be?
You know it, Slim.
Get the vid card, home again, guess what? Did NOT fix it.
Fed dogs, fed ourselves, then headed out to Circuit City to get me another computer (month-early Birthday present--how much do we love my mom? INFINITY!).
At the edge of the development, mom can't find her wallet in her purse. She had it out at Microcenter.
Home again, can't find it, grab vid card, head back to Microcenter (it's NOT close by).
OH and the doggies got to go for these rides, they were happy.
But anyway.
Microcenter does not HAVE the wallet. So we return the card and head off to Circuit City, not sure if they'll let her purchase w/out her ID.
Was gonna get an HP Slimline (SOOOOOO cute you'd not believe it) and only $439 but really only $400 cuz it's the last one, the display one, hence discounted, nice, eh?
500 gig harddrive, 3 gig memory, not too shabby.
However, it's been running another computer for THREE months.
Then...see another Gateway, around the same price "ooo I can get it new in box" and it's just better, processor-wise (triple core, yay). Smaller harddrive (but still a respectable 320) but same memory and just better and doesn't use laptop parts, easier to update, blah blah blah.
An hour goes by, talky talky, question/answer, etc. Guess what?
Yep. That Gateway? The last one. Display. Can't pick up til tomorrow after they've "optimized" it and reset it to factory settings.
So funny.
OH but discounted, eh? So yay. Covered the price of tax and the harddrive case I hadda buy which will house the hopefully (OH PLEASE LET IT!!) functioning harddrive from the Gateway I just killed.
CriminETtly this was longer than I intended.
So anyway, we go pick up the new puter tomorrow afternoon. My mental fingers will be metaphysically crossed until I have it set up and have plugged in my old harddrive.
Porfolio. All School Stuff. Work Stuff. Web Stuff. Writing. T-shirt Designs.
SO much stuff I could lose.
Yeah. Little freaked, way hoping.
Oh, yes, and: epilogue.
Mom found her wallet 
We didn't get home til 10:30 p.m.
Dogs are hilariously exhausted.
Zoey loves Dulci.
Both dogs loved the tech guy and he loved them back so that was nice.
This is not an epilogue so much as another big ol' tangent so I'll stop now.
Yes, and, how are you all? 
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