It’s taken hours and hours. From six thirty until ten-thirty last night and then again for about four hours today, there’s still a little more fine-tuning to go, but basically I have what feels like a brand new computer. It’s sooooooooooooooo fast. We fire bombed my hard drive last night and then started over building systems from the ground up.

Millennium is no longer my operating system. I now am using windows XP home edition. I installed MS office this a.m. and my new and improved Windows is running fine. I have Word back and all my data seems to have made the transfer to John’s hard drive and back again.

I installed new Ram – doubling what I had. I had to reinstall my printer and scanner drivers as well as my SBC DSL software – all of which had to be updated. I reinstalled Firefox and the new weapon in my arsenal: Avast anti-virus, which is a great FREE program that I highly recommend. I am using the networking router that I had gotten for M.B. to use, before her computer tanked, as a hardware firewall backed up by a software firewall from Zone Alarm.

I feel like I am driving a Ferrari dressed in the latest Kevlar.

Now that I have Word back I have access to my resume and vita which means I can get up on Monster and other related sites and get back into the working world. And I can get back to work on the book.

Revamping my computer was a big domino from which lots of other dominos can spread out across the gym floor like they would on those special episodes of Real People.

We are getting new neighbors today so I hope they like New Year’s parties. I haven’t met them yet as they are busy doing the furniture lifting thing, but I imagine I’ll make their acquaintance before too long. Eek.

The roofers were also here today and we are getting a new roof, so here’s hoping I’m not pulling nails out of my tires for the next six months.

Karl, “How’s the roof look?”

Guy, “There really isn’t much of a roof to speak of. It’s pretty much rotted away.”