Computer Failure...In August...AHHHH!

My school happens to be connected with the church I'm a member of. So, on Sunday afternoon I dropped my husband at work and then headed to work in my classroom until I had to help out in the church nursery during the evening service. I was really looking forward to printing off some of the reading binder pages I had meticulously prepared in the weeks prior. I love working in my classroom and thankfully am not limited when I can work in there. When I logged on, all sorts of settings had changed. I tried not to act older than my age and freak out about all the changes, but the changes soon proved to be big problems. I had no printer access and had no idea what the name of the printer was so I could reconnect to it. ALL of my bookmarks and favorites were gone because we had a new version of Internet Explorer installed. And worst of all, the new Internet security was so high I had to add each website I went to prove that it was okay. Also, Java Script was disabled so Pinterest and Adobe Reader wouldn't work. I couldn't even re-install Adobe Reader because there was no Java Script. I can totally live without Pinterest access. I use it a lot for classroom resources, but I can just do a little more work at home and still get what I need from there. I CAN'T live without Adobe Reader, though. So many of my documents are in pdf form so I can share them with parents via our class website. Also, almost all documents I have downloaded from TpT are in pdf form as well. So, I fired off a slightly cranky e-mail to one of our IT guys begging for advice how to adjust my settings. On Monday we all got an e-mail about how the server had crashed and everything was messed up so we should be patient. Oops. I felt kinda guilty for "presenting" my problems to IT, but then again they don't know there's a problem if we don't tell them. Right? Oh well. I'm over my initial crankiness at my failed trip to the classroom. While I was there, though, I found this adorable note in my mailbox from two of my former students. My heart melted...and so did most of my crankiness.

Yesterday, my laptop keyboard finally stopped cooperating with me. My "i" key and my comma key would occasionally not work. They pushed down just like all of the other keys, but wouldn't register the letter/punctuation. This is pretty annoying since my first and last name both have an "i" in them. Occasionally they would start working again, but yesterday they finally gave up the ghost. I couldn't even log into my computer because I needed an "i." So, my handy hubby tried to fix it, but he couldn't get access to the inside of the keys. :( So, we gave up and ordered me a new laptop keyboard. I'm now stuck using my hubby's computer till it comes. Ugh.

This is NOT the time of year to have both of my computers out of commission! Oh well, I've really been working on not letting little inconveniences derail my joy. There are all sorts of trials and disappointments in this life. Limited computer access is just not that big a deal in the grand scheme of life.

So, in the mean time I'm reading real paper books! Here's one book that I'm loving right now:

I'm planning to a post reviewing this book and giving some of my many, many highlights once I finish it. I've also read Fletcher's A Writer's Notebook which was extremely helpful to me when I was setting up Writer's Notebooks in my classroom last year. Live Writing has really been inspiring to get going on my own writing. Blogging is helping with that.