Lying liars!

Okay, so the computer repair place SWORE up and down that they could fix up my Mac in one day, which was important because I have a ton of work to to on it right now. I was worried the harddrive was failing and it has been driving me nuts lately with its slowness and crashing, so I thew in the towel and took it into the shop. Sigh... in the old days, Macs lasted forever! In fact, I have an eight-year-old Mac sitting in my office that has yet to crap out. Too bad none of my new design software runs on it. Heck, in the old days I fixed my own Macs!  Now they are clearly more "Made in China" crap, too popular for their own good. This is my reward for standing by them all these years. Crapola with a three-year shelf life.

Anyway, Gordon went to pick up my computer at 5 pm and they were still screwing around with it, having found nothing wrong (which just tells me they are imcompetent!) They wanted to keep it until tomorrow and do a few more things to it, so my dear husband is going back to pick it up sometime tomorrow. But I do wish people would keep their word. They PROMISED to deal with this today! Lying liars. If that bastard of a computer isn't working by the end of tomorrow, I guess I'll be shopping for a new piece of Made in China Apple crap. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

But things could be worse. I could be living in Croydon, which was in flames last night, watching my family business go up in smoke. My mother was born and raised there (Croydon, not the Reeves furniture store), and I am sure she would be having flashbacks to the Blitz if she were alive to see the current fiery footage. What a sad situation in England.. I hope things calm down and return to normal soon. 

I am fond of England, my parents' homeland. Although my Dad was born in London, it was in an Irish ghetto and he was ethnically Irish, not to mention an altar boy. He was going to be a priest until he discovered girls. But my mother was very middle-class English. She definitely married "down" when she wed my Dad months after meeting him in a pub on 23rd birthday.  

Too bad Scotland gets the credit for inventing the deep-fried Mars Bar, but at least the English can lay claim to chip buttys! (or is that "butties"?) For those of you unfortunate enough not to know what these are, take some hot homemade French fries that your English/Irish Dad made from real  potatoes in a deathtrap of a chip pan* on his stove. Butter a slice of crusty white bread. Lay hot chips (French fries) across the bread. As the butter is melting under its potato blanket, sprinkle it all liberally with salt, then slap on another piece of buttered bread. Repeat as needed, but don't come complaining to me about how you're only 47 and your arteries are clogged like Poopy McPoopster's toilet drain!!

That's enough for tonight. No photos because they're ON MY CRAPPY MAC!

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*A chip pan was a battered old pot filled with lard that was kept in the fridge between uses. At least once a week, one of my parents would plonk the chip pan on the stove burner, set the coil temperature to max, and wait for the lard to turn into a greasy Vesuvius. One had to remember not to stray from the room while this was happening, lest an inferno erupt and devour the kitchen. It was also wise to keep small children away from the handle of the chip pan, lest they reach for it and pour boiling oil all over themselves!

Once the fat was set to incinerate, said parent dumped in a whack of peeled and hand-cut taters. Golden fries would emerge minutes later, usually without a call to the fire department.

When my parents divorced, they each had their own chip pan and I got even more chips!  Nowadays, at least in Canada, the chip pan seem to have been supplanted by the much safer but infinitely less exciting home deep fryer. Sigh.