these are the times…
Virgo: You may have to cut back on your big vacation plans for a while, but don’t get discouraged. You can still take your trip; it may just need to wait. Paradoxically, the more effort you put into making it happen now, the less likely it will. You are better off if you can shift your focus to something besides your vacation for a while, at least until the time is right. (Rick Levine horoscope)
Well my trip is still on, so stuff that noise, but it has been a rather trying past couple of days. Friday night my monitor went on the fritz. I’m not sure why or how. I was only out for a few hours and I come back and it’s off, or appeared to be. So I rebooted when it didn’t respond. Thankfully my PC has a bright white opening screen and I could just barely make out the flicker when I turned it on, so unfortunately, it wasn’t the video card. I plugged it’s twin flatscreen into the PC and it worked fine, so that meant time for a new monitor. I wasn’t in a mood to shop too much, and Best Buy had a really good price on a highly rated wide screen monitor from acer so I nabbed that the next morning. To console myself, I also picked up a bluetooth mouse/keyboard combo which work very well and as the added bonus give my PC a bluetooth adapter so I can more easily sync my phone contacts. Still it was money I didn’t need to spend right before vacation. I have the money, I’d just rather it be used for other things.
That line about the more effort I put into it is pretty interesting though, as my iPod has decided that it wants to die too! Last night my trip prep involved laundry, initially 3 loads, but upgraded to 5 since the laundry room was empty. I took in some dry cleaning, and got my items sorted (if not all folded) last night while watching The Closer. Since I had some time before bed, I thought I’d look at my tunes and make a vacation playlist. My iPod had been acting up a little over the past week but I didn’t really give it much thought as usually a hard reset fixes things. Well when I plugged it in last night, it froze, iTunes froze, Windows told me that the drive I’d just plugged in was damaged and would I like to scan it? — uh oh. I’ve restored it three time, let it sit overnight and finally this morning it was responding, so I performed another restore and am trying to sync music to it while I’m at the office. If I get home and there’s no success, then it looks like I’ll be shopping for a new one before my trip.
Still, getting all of the laundry done last night was a good thing. I stopped at the store beforehand to pick up a few things for a quick and healthy dinner. Michael has agreed to be my healthy eating buddy, so I figure I can get started before my trip. My plan was grilled seasoned tilapia fillets and pasta over a bed of wilted baby spinach, but the store had a Panko breadcrumb coated chicken breast on sale, so the tilapia will be for another day this week. The spinach was wonderful though and took all of 5 minutes to cook, however the recipe I was adapting called for a pound of it and I know why: 9 oz. of baby spinach wilts down to perhaps 1½ or 2 servings, maybe. I pan-browned the chicken and finished it off in the oven. It all came out well and I’ll do the fish another night this week, probably with more spinach. I’m craving some collard greens, but I don’t really have the time for that during the week. Perhaps this Saturday.
