It’s late, so I won’t make this long, but I wanted to drop in and let you guys know what’s been going on this last week. I was really sick at the beginning of the week, and my computer decided to die again while I was home from work, leaving me grouchy and bored, with no way to catch up on my blog. No good at all.

Last time my MacBook died (about a month ago), my motherboard fried, and my boss very kindly took my hard drive out of my 15″ MacBook Pro and put it in a 13″ MacBook body. It was a great trade – I had a working motherboard, plus a smaller, lighter computer. Unfortunately, my good luck didn’t hold out. It only took a couple of weeks for my “new” computer to start having the same problems that the old one did, including a mouse that froze at the drop of a hat, forcing me to restart several times a day. Eventually the issues ended up escalating to crazy screen color changes and wholesale refusal to work for more than a minute without freezing and turning off.

On Tuesday, my boss replaced my hard drive, but that didn’t fix the problem. On Wednesday he upgraded my operating system in case the problem was with old drivers, and that seemed to do the trick, until yesterday morning, when the computer started freaking out again right in the middle of an important task. I had a mini meltdown…OK, a pretty huge tantrum. Life has been hard lately, and the computer was the last straw. I started sobbing uncontrollably, then crawled into bed and tried to hide. The Man was home to witness it all, and after awhile he made me get out of bed, then took me to Best Buy and bought me a new computer as my early Christmas present. He’s a good guy.

So now I’m typing to you on my very own personal laptop. It’s not a Mac, but I’m not inclined to be too picky about free gadgets. Especially since I’m pretty happy with this computer. It’s a cute Acer Aspire, with a touchscreen! I’ve been having a lot of fun personalizing it (everything’s purple) and figuring out how to swipe between screens, add apps, and change settings to get everything just right.

The thing I like the most about it, however, is that I’m never going to take it to work. From now on, the computer that my boss is attempting to fix is going to be my work computer, and this laptop is going to be my personal computer. One of my worst habits is not having any kind of barrier between my life and my job, and it’s eating me alive. I think it’s an important step to give myself a little more breathing room from the stress of a job that follows me around everywhere. On this computer I can write my blog, research Santiago de Compostela, take notes about my fitness and life goals, and never feel compelled to stop and take care of a “minor work matter” in the middle of a personal task.

The learning curve is huge, though! The last time I had a PC was way back during the days of Vista. In fact, even though Mac people like to talk smack about PCs being unpredictable and full of viruses, the only PC I ever had die on me was on the Vista operating system. It was a grand death, though – a pop, a flash, a sizzle, and suddenly my hard drive was toast, along with a good chunk of music and photos that I didn’t have saved anywhere else. That’s why this scene will forever be one of my top favorite TV moments…