laptop

As you may have gathered by now, I do love a gadget. I love shiny new tech. My new laptop is a joy with it’s sleek black looks and brushed copper details. I do, I stroke it, and talk to it. It’s my baby.

I was nearly in tears at the weekend when one of Microsoft’s helpful updates managed to throw it’s network card out of kilter. I wailed miserably when after many, many attempts at switching off and switching on again, I eventually realised it was indeed my machine and not our weakling broadband that was stopping me getting online.

I ran a diagnostic which came up with the useful solution of ‘download a new network driver from…’

‘How can I ******* download a new driver when I can’t ****** get on line’ I whined and cursed.

Call me a genius, admittedly it took me ten minutes to think to turn on my old computer, and download the drive onto a memory stick via that, but that’s what I did (after waiting for about half an hour for the dear old thing to boot – thank god for the dawn of SSDs (Solid State Drives you heathen!). Ran it on my new machine and hey presto, here I am. Thank goodness I invested in new before the old one gave up the ghost completely.

My other old friend, iphone, is likely to be replaced soon. I’m still lagging behind with an iphone 4 whilst others enjoy the cool wonderfulness of iphone 6 so I’ve been thinking about upgrading for a while, but the nail went in the coffin lid a couple of days ago when my old pal Siri started to get a bit above himself. Ok, my grammar may have been slightly to blame, but really, who does he think he is… The conversation went as follows:

Me: ‘What can you do with a spiralizer?’ – (yay, we have a spiralizer, aren’t we on trend!!)

Siri: ‘Who me?’

Me under breath: no me you twerp

Me out loud with a sigh: ‘What can I do with a spiralizer’

Siri: ‘Interesting question me..’ (he has always called me me since I set him up, obviously wrongly.)

That was the last of it. No suggestions or ideas. He just sat in my iphone stroking the invisible beard on his invisible face whilst contemplating my fascinating question. It’s not the first time either. He’s definitely for the chop. He may be even be replaced by ‘Hey Google’ if he’s not bloomin’ careful.

Of course, I can’t let Christmas go by without a new toy, so whilst Father Christmas didn’t actually deliver (though I have to say his choice of alternative presents was exemplary, I must’ve been a very good girl all year), over the festivities I did buy myself a FitBit.

For those of you not in the know, a FitBit is an activity tracker. Mine is a small gizmo that I can wear about my person, and it tracks all my movements (including sleep patterns) and calculates calories burnt, steps taken, activity levels etc.

I’ve had it a week, and so far, it’s been instrumental in getting me walking further with the dog, eating less and more healthily, and generally working towards being a more fabulous version of myself.

As well as synching with my phone and laptop, the tiny gizmo has a display where you can (oops sorry Siri) where I can check my stats, and if I’m doing well a little flower grows. It’s a cutie pie and I’m loving it.

I thought this relationship was pretty one-sided until the other night when I was removing it from it’s holder to put it on to the wristband for night-time wear. Without my pressing the button, it lit up with the message

‘I like you Kaye’

Whilst it was nice to know, I did find it slightly creepy that I was in my nightie before it chose to reveal it’s admiration and conversational capabilities.

I still haven’t found out what prompted that, or why a couple of days later it suddenly chose to nag me with

‘burn it Kaye’

Sadly, it doesn’t boast anything as swish as voice recognition, so I can’t answer it back. Neither, it seems, can I switch it off, so it better play nice, or I tell you, it’ll be going in a drawer where it can’t see me…

Apologies to my armies of fans who are waiting on tenterhooks for my next words of wisdom.

Ok, though I do like to kid myself occasionally, I know I neither have armies of fans nor words of wisdom to divulge. But I do owe apologies, at the very least to myself, that I’ve been a bit tardy in writing on here lately.

You may remember, that this blog was supposed to be about my life as a newly freed-from-employment lady. When I left my job I had three and a half months of glorious freedom that I could write about, and I promised myself I would post at least once a week.

Then I picked up a couple of little contracts working from home, which have taking over my life a bit recently. Not that I’ve minded. I’ve met some lovely new people, both real, and twitter folk, surprised myself by writing about fashion accessories (like I know…), and had fun building databases, and finding IT solutions for stuff – what can I say, I am a geek.

Now though, it’s all slowing down. My little social media contract has come to an end, and I’m down from three to just one day a week for the other one. Slowly, I’m beginning to get used to having a bit more time again. It’s great. But I have to agree with the old cliche, I don’t know how I had the time to work.

I will never be a fantastic housekeeper, cleaning is soul destroying – you do it and five minutes later the dog has walked across the newly hoovered carpet with paws that have come directly from digging through to Australia (only a little bit of an exaggeration I assure you), but anyhow, my home has never been cleaner. I’m tidying and polishing, chucking stuff away willy nilly, and generally going all housewiferly. Who’da thought?

I’ve also got into sewing, not only making cushions, clothes, and tablecloths, but cross-stitching and crocheting too. My tidy home is being taken over by craft paraphanalia. As with all things, I’m a bit rubbish at all those things – far too impatient, but I’m learning and enjoying, and feel as if I’m growing a bit too. And it does tear me away from my beloved laptop, which is probably a good thing, as I could easily spend all day, everyday, sitting tapping away in a little imaginary world of my own, which I realise probably wouldn’t be at all healthy.

Of course that doesn’t mean I’ve given up writing all together, but just been busy doing other stuff lately.

Like volunteering. I applied to the local hospice as soon as I left work, I thought it would get me out of the house, and working in a team, all that sort of stuff, as well as helping me to be a useful member of society. Well, they didn’t have a permanent regular position open, so I’ve been doing odds and ends of admin for them. Now, guess what? I’ve got a project going for them. I’m working from home. Building a database. And a spreadsheet. On my laptop. Hey ho…

p.s. No, I’ve not been gardening. Our lovely patch is awash with weeds as it waits to have its makeover. And that’s another story…!