I should be in bed right now, vacation or not, but I am too wound up. Today, or yesterday actually, started out great. It was my "date day" with Josh. He took the day off so we could go to breakfast at Portage Bay, which is a cafe I love that I pass every morning on my way to work. I always lament that I can't be having a weekday breakfast there like all the customers I see through the windows who must have flexible schedules or are independently wealthy (or so I tell myself with my jealous mind). I told Josh I definitely wanted to take advantage of my days off this week to dedicate one morning to join that elite crowd. So today was the day. We had a great breakfast and then trekked up to Best Buy to give our broken pc to the Geek Squad. Oh, because btw last night the business PC died. And when I say it died, I mean it's totally dead. Considering I've had it for 7 years, that's no big shocker. Still. It couldn't have happened at a worse time. I know everyone says that about bad things that happen, but really it couldn't have. Josh hadn't backed it up since November, he's about $3500 past due in finances....yeah. Not the best time.
So. We took it to Best Buy only to be told that if we chose to have it fixed for the hefty price of $200, we'd probably lose a lot of important info in the process. If we wanted the files off of it, but not fixed, that would be $100. If we wanted it fixed after retrieving the important files that would be another $200, or $300 total. We opted for the second, cheapest, option. Meaning, we still needed to find a new pc. I use a Mac, so it's not an option to use for the business because all of the business software is for PC. Plus, this is mine mine mine. I'd like to keep it that way. I had noticed, when we arrived at Best Buy, that they are offering 18 months' interest free purchases. I knew we would never qualify for that offer, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask mom and dad to apply and allow us to pay them for a purchase they made for us. This began the stress and focus for the day. Long story short, mom and dad graciously agreed to "loan" us the money by applying for credit and Josh promising to pay them before interest would accrue (18 mos. per Best Buy's advertisement). My parents don't have a lot of money, but they have no real debt and resulting great credit. The afternoon hours were spent researching laptops that were both affordable and not a piece of junk. After lots of phoning back and forth with mom and getting all of our ducks in a row, mom proceeded to make the purchase.
Then the unfathomable happened. Mom got denied. ??!?!?! I wasn't prepared for that. Neither was she. She'll have to wait for the letter in the mail to tell her why, but I kind of fell into a small state of depression over that.* This turned out to be only a slight setback since the other option for a purchase via a line of credit was with Dell. The two drawbacks were that a)Dell makes the machine when you pay them, so it takes a while to receive and b)if anything happens with it, we have to send it in for repair rather than take it to a store for repair. Oh, another drawback is that their no interest credit is only 6 months. Less time to pay mom and dad back is of course added pressure. Still. It was the only option, so we took it. Dell did approve mom, so we went with it. The proposed ship date is March 11th, which sounds totally nuts to me. 3 weeks to build a standard, no-frills, no customized add-ons laptop? Beggars can't be choosers, though, and without a PC for business stuff, Josh is going to have a lot more stress in running the whole operation. 3.5 weeks PC-less is better than nothing. So, overall I guess it all ended on a good note, but the day did NOT go as planned. I had hoped we would also get a movie in on "date day". I had hoped we could take Lulu to the dog park. Lulu was obviously saddened by the day's turn of events as well. Mopey mopey moo.
Tomorrow it's back to the mission of purging and organizing the house in anticipation of moving into a better place. 'Dunno where that'll be yet, but it's the only time I have to devote to it before school's out this summer so the time to do it is now. Unfortunately. Let's see if I actually do it. After today, I need a day off.
Josh just told me, from the bedroom, that he "accidentally" broke his new hearing aid. "I was playing with it." good lord, help me.
*I have always felt, deep down, that I would be okay no matter what happened to me financially. I am an only child and as such I think I've been pretty well taken care of all my life by my parents, which has fueled this (false?) sense of security. My parents getting denied for a line of credit- at an electronics store, no less- forced me to realize that a)I'm not necessarily able to rely on them no matter what and b)they're human too. Depressing.
