Hateful Technology

OK that title does not give a clue about what the main news is but it sums up how I feel. I will get to that later.

But the big news

My mum and dad have bought a new car!

On Saturday dad started making noises about a car he had seen locally and was thinking about buying. I told him not to be so daft, he had a perfectly good car,all be it a bit old (a rather tatty, very old Merc he bought 2 years ago) but little did I know he had already been out and done the deed, and this was all just a red herring. It wasn't even that car. So when he turned up on Tuesday in a 5 year old, sparkly blue fl ah looking Merc I was gobsmacked. There is not a mark on it, and the upholstery looks brand new. It has so many gadgets its unreal. Its because after the third holiday in a row where their plane was delayed for god knows how many hours, mum has decided they are not going abroad anymore (insurance was getting difficult because of both them having angina anyway) and now the dog has gone to rainbow bridge they can nip off at the drop of a hat. Of course to tour in Britain they need a decent car. So now until he manages to offload the old Merc he is a two Merc car owner (posh eh?)

Yesterday in the interest of being fit enough to walk round the three theme parks we have booked for in Florida I decided it was time to start regular exercise, so I dragged the bike out of the shed. Of course I would choose the first day of Autumn and with freezing strong head winds I set out on the roads. I refused to allow myself to freewheel, and tried to keep up a reasonably fast speed (for me) but within half a mile I was exhausted and fighting to pass the pain barrier. I managed another half a mile (yes pathetic I know) before my knee finally gave out, and for the rest of the day hobbled round in agony. Mmm maybe I am going to need more than two weeks to get fitter.

And that hateful technology? Well last week the printer run out of black ink and despite being sure I had another I just couldn't find it. I ordered more but my printer refuses to work if one of the inks (whatever colour) is not there so I couldn't scrap, write application forms, print out maps for our holiday etc and was getting really frustrated waiting for the refills to arrive. Desperate I re hunted through the wardrobe and finally found the last cartridge wedged down the back of the shelf. Hurray! And for a whole day I could print. Then last night two other colours gave up the ghost. No probs I did actually have those as refills, so bunged them in. OK? No not OK. Now the printer decided the black it had been more than happy to print out 6 photos and a heap of labels with only ten minutes before was no longer compatible. An hour and a half of coercing, cudgelling and cursing later and it still wasn't having it. So no scrapping last night.

This morning my new refills finally arrived, it accepted the black first go and hopefully all is up and running again. Which is great because I had visions of having to dig out the recipe and start over with a new printer - again!