Sometimes it’s just too much. Or maybe it’s just me. Over two weeks ago, while I spent my day off hanging out at Wheeler RV, waiting for the motor repair on the jacks on the coach, someone exclaimed, “Wow! The weather’s phenomenal. Summer is here.”

LIAR! The wind has blown continually, the little dust mites and desert pollens are soaring into everyone’s head, allergies RULE! And not only is the wind blowing, it’s cold. Weekend before last, it snowed while I was up at the old residence, this weekend it rained, it’s still cold and creepy outside – throw in gloom and darkness. I keep thinking I need the ‘hiking trail, I need to get out and do the energy burn that settles my brain down, but instead, I stay inside, borderline depression is here. Yes…I’m accustomed to it dropping in to say hello every now and then when life should be really good. This is the time that I could go off and do something really stupid to my finances or look for some reason to fuck up my life – it’s happened before. But I refuse to give in. Instead I’ll just get through the maze until it all settles down somewhere in time.

I started this weekend planning on nothing other than:

1) Working on ‘finishing’ setting up my new laptop and cleaning up and restoring the desktop so I could market it.

2) A new camera, I bought an Olympus E-500.

3) Playing in the WPBT Satellite on Paradise – a tourney set up by Iggy to send a Blogger to one of the WSOP events. I had everything set to go on the new laptop – the tourney kicked off at 6 PM Pacific Time.

So what actually happened?

1a) the computer thingy: I managed to blow the hell out of the desktop. I’ve never had a PC problem that I couldn’t fix myself…no kidding! But this time? After spending many agonizing hours, and exhausting every swear word I know in too many multiples to list, straight to the shop.

2a) the new camera: Frustration here. It’s much more complex than the Sony and it’s going to take sometime for me to master a small amount of the info and options available. One thing I can’t seem to master is the ‘Olympus Master’, (no pun intended). It has hidden away the pictures that are imported to it. So…anyone with more computer smarts than me, help me out. The pictures are in the ‘browse’ folder when the program is open. The pictures seem to only live there, no where else on the hard drive. I’ve searched the ‘Number.jpg’ of several of the pictures…no such animal. I’ve cruised through all of ‘my pictures’ and through the ‘programs folder’ which houses ‘Olympus’ and the ‘Olympus Master’ inside the ‘Olympus’ folder – still no pictures. I’ve searched ‘all pictures’ on my hard drive. The ‘Master’ really is the master – bastard software program! Then the straw that broke a nerve in my head somewhere happened today – I had taken a lot of ‘test’ pictures and quite a few that I knew I would keep – and when I imported them from the camera to ‘the master’, they were in a file – they were there – I was looking at them, I turned off the camera (exactly the same way I’d imported pictures on Saturday and they are in a folder on ‘the master’ now), cleaned up the disc in the camera, went back to ‘the master’ and the pictures I’d just imported are NO WHERE! Lost. Kee-rist! I won’t be using ‘the master’ again when I import pictures from the camera. So no fun pictures of the weekend are available! *sob*

3a) The WPBT: Sunday afternoon, around 3PMish, I got a call from Wayne. He was out of the line up, heading for home, and wanted to host a few players for a Big Deuce game at his place. We set up the time and we both called a few people to see who could make it. I told him I had to play in the Tournament at 6 PM and I would bring my laptop. Shower – load up everything for the Big Deuce Game (include wine in that), laptop, new camera, me – whew! Off on the journey across town to Wayne’s by 4:40 – I needed time to see if I could connect through his cable modem and if not, maybe someone in his near area was running a wireless, unsecured network. Nothing worked. After messing with the computer/s for about an hour, I was ready to give up; he connects to his cable modem with a USB connection. I tried to connect my laptop the same way – we needed the C D to install the cable modem…ugh! No can find. There was a wireless network but I couldn’t connect to it – yes, it was unsecured. No can hook up.

So….Wayne downloaded the Paradise software on his PC, registered, and we checked out the Tournament page, I was in a seat, but couldn’t even chat any of the players through Wayne’s log in…maybe because it was a ‘private tourney’. AND NOW – you’re asking why I just didn’t log on through his PC and play. Of course we thought of that. I couldn’t remember my password. I only have a zillion or so and I’ve had a thousand computer thingies jumbling through my head lately with the new and old PC work.

Finally I tried one more time to log on and then requested they send my password, I had to create my email account in his Outlook Express program. Got it! No wonder I couldn’t remember it, it was one they sent me and I hadn’t changed it. DOH! I logged on and managed to make it to 18th place out of 69 players. I, for some reason unknown to me, tried to run over J-J with A-5 Clubs. I suppose one of the reasons was that by now the rest of the players for Big Deuce had been hanging around for an hour or so, waiting for me to finish the tournament so we could play Big Deuce. Gracie won the tournament…big congrats! Iggy did a great job setting it up, and since I was never at his table, I tried to chat him once on his table and couldn’t…maybe they don’t allow observer chat on Paradise or maybe because it was ‘private’. Disappointing to say the least. But I had fun, even though I had an hour or so of frustration trying to get there, and I hope we can do it again soon. Bloggers RULE!

The Big Deuce game consisted of Wayne, Gary and Marie, Greg and Amy, and me. We grazed on a variety of snacks and foods, drank a lot, listened to great music, and I have no idea who won or lost. Dave Roletto, Marie absolutely loved the wine you brought me. She says you have great taste in wine and she managed to download most of the bottle by herself…it showed. She had me in stitches. And Marie, you are just so damn lucky ‘the master’ ate the pictures I took…you escaped. Soon it was time for everyone to head for home.

Guess there’s always next weekend to finish what I didn’t finish this weekend. And the eternal question – will NV Power ever finish what they are doing in my RV park? I could really use a ‘good day’s sleep’.