on the mend-hopefully

I’m feeling much, much better. Unfortunately, I still have this nagging fatigue that just won’t go away. I also have the slight problem of not knowing which computer store I dropped my hard drive off at sometime last week. See, this is what happened: My 500G Buffalo hard drive fell from the mantle piece above the fire place where it was plugged into my Xbox360 (I had been using it to play movies). The plastic case cracked open, exposing the innards. I knew at once that it was instant death. Naturally, I tried plugging it in, moving pieces around, using diffferent cords. No luck- no computer seemed to recognize it. A friend also had a 500G external so he brought his over and we tried to use his non-bent ports to connect my hard drive to my computer. Still no luck. So I called up a few data retreival companies that I found through the Western Digital site hoping to find something semi-affordable (i.e. not $2500…are you kidding me?). I end up taking it to a little dumpy store in my local town instead.

<Note: in my defense, I was still quite sick at this point, and had no voice what-so-ever. Go easy on me.>

My friend and I walk into this computer place. No wait, first of all, the shop is right next to a bakery factory…and a skating rink. We walk through the doorway and there is a man working on a computer with his back to us. We scuffle our feet, I cough, finally, he turns around and makes a huge, unnecessary deal about not knowing we were there (we had only been waiting for about 30 seconds). I begin to explain my problem (sounding like a pubescent boy, no doubt) and suddenly I am aware of someone new behind me trying to push past. Turning around I see a smiling woman with a bowl of water gesturing towards the flip-up counter. She shimmies between my friend and I and scoots under the opening, placing the water on the floor…for their…DOG?!?! She brushes her hands off, retreives a pen from her pocket and asks for my name. Needless to say, I forgot to even ask how much it was expected to cost. I blame the enormous slobbering mass that parked itself happily in my line of sight. Err…and I also forgot to get the name of the computer repair store. Good thing I live where I do. Anyplace else and it would be bye-bye dead hard drive! I’m just hoping the dog didn’t eat it.

infomercials

In the midst of a bout of lightheadedness, I lay down on the couch in the living room with my head against the armrest. The TV was on- some black and white movie made decades ago. I watched the hyper-drama unfold through bleary, sun-sensative, contact-less eyes. Finally, commercial break:

1. The Potty Patch. A fake rectangle of “grass” that the dog is supposed to get on to go pee. Yeah right. The dogs in the infomercial were pretty much told to “go sit” on the “grass,” because they clearly were not peeing on it. How ridiculous are these people? Is anyone really stupid enough to buy that? I visited their website (just save yourself the time and don’t bother) just for kicks. Yeah, more like a kick in the head (how I feel anyway because of whatever the fuck sort of sickness I’ve come down with). And when I tried to navigate away from the site, up popped 2 “ARE YOU SUUUUUURE YOU WANT TO LEAVE?!?! Press cancel to stay and admire our fabulous product!!!!” Kill me.
2. Some backpain-relief apparatus. Basically, you strap yourself by the feet onto this thing and swing around so that your are hanging upside down, your head about 5 inches off the ground. You’re then supposed to do some sort of sit up and twist motion to “allow all the goodness to penetrate your spine.” Best part is that the guy advertising it is supposedly 70 years old. Hahahahaha. “Hey gramps, I got you something fun! Here, lemme just fasten you down and…weeeeee.” I can just see my grandmother walking in on that one.

Queue a repetitive Tupperware ad and I was just about ready to roll over and die. After I finished laughing at the vision of my grandfather hanging upside-down in the living room while my dog pees on a faux scrap of grass.

<<And I forgot to mention. When I went to try to find the physical measurements of the Potty Patch (think Great Dane), I dug up an old Craig’s List post where a person was selling a used Potty Patch. And because he was being oh so generous-  the advised selling price was $30.00! Down from $39.99! What a bargain!”