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"Is it toast?"

The roller coaster effect of electronic devices in a mercury retrograde has been epic.

Both my iPhone and Macbook Pro needed some serious servicing and thankfully I was heading home for a stint and promptly set up appointments. Who knew I'd be dropping in between every day to fix it all.

The Apple store updated, upgraded and advised me on how to keep this "vintage" 6-year-old macbook pro kicking.

After getting my operating system reloaded to my now functioning computer, I decided to use Time Machine for the first time ever and make a plan to backup religiously. 

I swore to the Time Machine gods that with just a click of a button I would never play Russian roulette with my images again.

So I almost vomited when with 8 minutes left after 3 hours of back up time my computer decided to lock me out AGAIN. This time with everything on the desktop, extracted from my external hard drive per the Apple store genius. AAAARrrrrggh!

Another major lesson in non-attachment when the sucker decided to pop back on after I went through my image loss sickness. I immediately backed up everything the "old fashioned way" by clicking and dragging to assure I'd have it. Whew.

"You need a new hard drive and it wouldn't hurt to get some more RAM so things move faster."

"Ok, but what exactly happened. I thought we fixed it yesterday??"  

"When you downloaded the latest operating system it crashed cause you had just been patching holes in that hard drive when in reality you really needed a new one."

So I ran around town and tried to make friends with a myriad of men who had knowledge I didn't. I joked, I asked newbie questions, I brought them out of their robot state, I got serviced.

I told them about my designs to push this grandma notebook further with other software.

I was told to add more RAM and just for kicks I threw in a new battery too. 

Its not gonna be worth anything without a good power source. Oh and a new external hard drive so I actually follow the Time Machine gods carefully crafted plan.

In between, I visited old family friends. Reminisced in their photos and how I saw us all - then and now. 

Shopped. All I seemed to find were a ton of sweaters for five dollars each. A sign to me that Iceland will happen this year.

Researched and bought health insurance. I am a fully functioning adult again back to the levels of where I was when I left corporate life - but on my own terms. 

It felt surprisingly good to know I won't bankrupt myself or others I love if anything happens. Something that's been in my head a lot since I gave up my healthcare 10 years ago. I'd still like to see more reform though - single payer all the way.

Took yoga classes. Realized during them I wanted to push myself further than what the teacher was doing and intuitively knew what to do. 

Yoga teaching may be coming closer. I haven't been in a rush cause I wanted to feel my own practice first before I started teaching others. 

Visited my beloved St. Louis art museum and randomly ended up in areas that held Tibetan Tankas, a photo exhibition that I had seen and loved in the NY Times; all while trying to find a particular show I'd read about online. 

Location? A hidden alcove that I always seem to end up in every time I visit.

Its tiny and you'd miss it unless you knew what you were looking for, but that alcove holds so much beauty. 

I've been there at least four times and each time I laugh cause whatever exhibition I'm looking for always leads me to this creative closet which no one else is in.

A good reminder that your art will be seen by the people that need to see it. Even if its tucked away by a dead end stairwell. 

Finished with electronic overhaul and promised to take better care of my hard drive. Not just throw it around, give it away and let it come crashing down. 

Downloaded the photoshop trial to get started on that new path. The above pic is from my random play day with a photo taken on the ride back home.

The holes are not just patched. They're fixed.

I've got more memory. So more can happen and faster.

The latest operating system is in place and connecting all my programs. Old and new.

And I've got the right power source which will make it all run.

Are we still talking about my computer?