Welcome to Hell

Well we have been here two nights now and we are on our second full day. It has been worse than I imagined it could be. Here are the highlights (or lowlights) to date:

1. My mother had to tell the story to her gardener (again) about how we would go backpacking. This of course is the infamous story where I refused to go any further and was left before a fork in the path. I got to the fork evenutally (I was maybe 10 or 11) and I went the wrong way. She thinks this was hysterical. I did ask “who leaves a kid at a fork in the path?” I got no response. Then it went on from there. The experience of being left in the backcountry and not knowing which way to go likely led to me having severe abandonment issues my entire life. What is really disturbing is she finds this funny.

2. My sister is so angry. She is stuck looking after her ailing husband who has had a stroke and seems to have lost most of his cognitive functioning. She storms around the house because he pisses her off because he is very inconsiderate. Well, newsflash, he was always inconsiderate why would he change after a stroke? It would only get worse.

3. The best comment so far is that we use more toilet paper because our asses are bigger.

I have to cut this short because I am being watched as usual. Thankfully we go home tomorrow.

I did manage to fix my sister’s b0rked (h/t to Dr. Beth for the word, it is such a great word!!) laptop.

We are in the Kootnays!

Deb and I are on our annual trip to help my mother. This year she needed a new computer installed in Calgary. Off we trooped to London Drugs to get the one on sale and we were told they did not have any. So I asked if we could buy the floor model and they said yes. The only crappy part was that they would have to wipe it clean which would mean I would have to install windows and all the drivers. No problem I said.

I unpacked the computer the next morning and immediately had trouble with the video card. There was a card on board but they had also put in a much better stand alone card. When I finally got the video in the right place I installed windows. Then I installed the drivers. The first one I did was the video driver and as soon as it restarted the monitor did not display anything. I had already ruled out the monitor as the problem so I called. They had me go through all the trouble shooting I had already done and finally the solution was to turn the computer off and press delete as it came back up (he reasoned that the driver may have not sufficiently installed in the registry). I did this and it came back up but I remained suspicious.

I installed all the other drivers and everything was working fine. I set up a network as I had my laptop with me. I did the scanner and then I installed office. We went out for dinner and when I came back the monitor was dead. I restarted the computer and it still did not come up. Tried a few more things and decided it must be an intermittent video card problem.

So the next morning I called LD and got a bit of a run around. I have to say that I don’t think the ones in Calgary are as good as what we have in BC but I digress. We got another new computer and at least I did not have to do windows or the drivers. I got the other one mostly done in less than 2 hours including network, scanner and printer. When we go back on Thursday I will finish it.

I always love to see the Rocky Mountains. I grew up with these mountains and spent a lot of time camping and just looking at how they change on almost a daily basis. I love our mountains at home too but they are not quite as majestic as the Rockies.

This visit has not been as bad as other ones. It is a bit disturbing to watch your mother change from being a strong determined woman to a depressed widow who appears anorexic these days. If she gets sick she has nothing to fight with which I find quite disturbing. At 5′ 7″ she weighs 127 pounds.

We will be back home on Friday. I have a 3-day weekend before I am back to work next week.