A Screw Loose

A week ago Thursday was my last ceramics class of the summer. I really love doing ceramics even though I'm not that good at it yet. There's just something about playing in clay that is satisfying on a visceral level. I want to take another class but I need to study the family schedule first to see if it'll fit in. I have a lot of unfinished pieces from the summer class I want to get done before I call it quits and move on to another hobby/activity.

So, last week at 10:00 pm my cell phone rings, my hands are dirty because I'm trying to finish cleaning up after myself in the studio. Fern is on the other end of the line, very distressed. Very. I'm trying to clean up, I'm trying to calm her down, I'm trying to hold the phone without rendering it unusable from the clay on my fingers. "Something bad has happened."

She is so distraught on the phone, wild thoughts are swirling and I can't help but think the worst: someone is dead, but because she's so distraught, it takes her, what seems like forever, to get the story out. No one is dead. No one is hurt. The computer is broken, she and Kevin were fighting over it.

Evidently, she moved the laptop to the other room so she could hook it up to the printer, but Kevin didn't think it belonged in the other room. He's very OCD like that. He'll get very upset when things are moved to places they don't belong, sometimes he'll be upset enough to become really agitated.

I've learned to bargain with Kevin, I'll explain thing needs to get moved here because reason and he can help me put it back when I'm done. That usually works, he sees an end to the discomfort of change and I've engaged him to help and staved off any aggression. Fern hasn't learned these tricks yet. Maybe this incident will help keep this trick in mind should she need it again.

So now we have a broken laptop. It turns out it's just a broken screen. Dan found a company that sells replacement screens and will even install it for you for $50. When we got our first Mac iBook, the memory upgrade was shipped separately and came with instructions for installation. I've seen the inside of laptops before, I was not afraid.

I took apart the laptop to get to the part number on the back of the broken screen, (I took out 12 minuscule screws to get there!) and ordered a replacement for $109 + shipping. It arrived yesterday and it didn't take me long to get the new one installed. It was quite easy and everything went back together nicely. Except, I had two screws left over. The laptop booted up so I'm not going to worry about it.





PS, I took pictures of the fix, but the camera battery died so you'll get them later.