Well there's bad news and there's......

More bad news!

So, it went down like this:

1. About three weeks ago, our computer starts getting slower and slower.

2. We buy an external hard drive so I can get my million pictures off the main computer and shift them to the external drive.
Because we are SO smart, like that.

3. I start to transfer photos off the main computer drive onto CD's, because I can't find the way to do this into individual files on the new external drive yet.
However, I did find out how to set the external drive to "sync" once a day, hopefully saving ALL our main computer's memory until I can learn how to do individual files on the external hard drive (because I am a dumb shit on learning new stuff like that and wanted to ask someone who knew more than me, which is basically anyone with a pulse).

4. About a week later, the main computer gets "locked up" whenever we ask it to do anything.
Being the smart ones about technology (NOT)...we look at our Compaq manual and it says if the computer needs cleaning to make it faster (our interpretation, I am sure not what they intended to mean),---no problem,---- just run their "simple" little program.
Which we do.
Which causes us to lose EVERYTHING on our computer's memory.

5. We bring the computer to the tech guru's shop and beg them to see if they can find our previous memory and all of my pictures, providing them with the new external drive that we had just purchased and sync'd once daily prior to our other huge mistake of running the Compaq program.
The Tech Guru smiles and secretly thinks we are pathetic.
Greeting us at the tech guru's shop door is a gigantic dog, 3/4 part wolf (the Tech Guru says), who looks friendly and wags his tail, but scares the beejeezus out of me.
Sure he wags his tail, but I am leery.

6. After sacrificing a virgin, doing several cult ceremonies around a hexagram and boiling up something with gnat's ears and bat wings, we call the techies back to find out the news two days later.
" Good news!", they tell us, they saved all the pictures in our new "F:/" file/ (external) drive!!.
And, he cheerfully adds: "I'll show you how to load your pictures right straight onto that external drive from now on, so that so you don't ever fill up and crash your main computer again."

7. "Yay!" we say. "Oh, thank goodness. Let's go pick it up!", we declare.

We go there.
It is extremely busy.
Mr. Techy tells me 1, 342 instructions on how to load my pictures directly onto the external drive within 30 seconds. I go to ask him to go over it again so I can write it down, and his phone rings, and my husband says, "don't bother him, honey. It looks simple enough!".
We write a hefty check, leave the shop, and all is happy for Christmas.
But before we leave the shop, the Tech Guru calls out to us as we are leaving: "Just call if you have any problems."
"Yay!", I declare, "now I will have a resource for all future problems!".

8. Christmas comes and goes and I have no time to download my treasured pictures yet.

9. The day after Christmas is spent reloading a zillion programs on the aforementioned crashed computer, including e-mail services, which takes approximately 2.3 hours talking to a foreign-accented, hardly understandable (but polite) techy over the phone.
At approximately 10 a.m., I go to unload my precious vacation photos so I can do a knock-your-socks-off blogpost for all of you.
I try the shop Tech Guru's step-by-step instructions, to the best of my recollection.
Yeah, right.
I get no where.
I try in my old programs to load the photos (not on the newly installed external drive).
Still no luck.

10. All morning, I try several different attempts to download my pictures to no avail.
Husband also informs me that our printer will no longer scan, by the way.
I try the next hour or ten trying to get that loaded, to no avail.
I even located the installment disk on both the camera and the printer/scanner and reload them. No luck.

11. I remember I can call the techy guru at the shop for help.
I call and get no answer.
They are closed on Saturday.
I am sad.
They are also closed on Sunday.
I get sadder.

12. I call the tech guru early on Monday morning.
He walks me through several things I already tried over the phone.
I try them again.
No luck.
"Funny!, he says...I am sure it is just a little glitch...if you can bring the printer and your camera and the computer in, I will fix it while you wait if you want!"

13. I hear angels sing and say several halleleuya's.
"Sure!", I say.
We are having a blizzard, but I am from the north...no problem...we will rev up the old four wheel drive and be there in about an hour (which is about how long it took us to drive there in the frickin' snowstorm).
We are again greeted at the door by the pony gigantic puppy, who now smiles at us and happily wags its tail.

14. We leave the computer, the external drive, the printer, the camera and several cords at the tech guru's shop....telling him we will be back in an hour, after we pick up a few groceries.
"Fine", he smiles..."I am sure we will have it up and running in no time!".

15. We practically skip to the car (except for that ice threatening to break my hip) and go off, holding hands, me dreaming of downloading pictures from sunny Florida when I get home later this afternoon.
It is now 1:45 pm.

16. We go shopping, buying a bottle of champagne, just to celebrate our hard fought victory over technology.
We picture ourselves pecking away at the keyboard, sipping our champagne with the fire burning as we snuggle together looking at the loaded pictures come up on the monitor.

17. We arrive back at the tech guru's shop at exactly 2:45 p.m.
The we-are-sure-this-time-that-the-dog-is-100-percent-wolf dog now runs up to us, bringing his squeak toy for us to play with him.
Evidently we have bonded with a wild animal by now.

18 "Oh!", the tech guru exclaims unabashedly.
"We aren't quite ready yet. Evidently the HP installment program for your scanner had a lot of extra stuff on it you really don't need, which used up WAY too much on your computer's main frame, and well, it is taking a dickens of a time to take it back off your computer. We called HP and we are going to their main on-line site to load only what you really need to get your scanner up and running, which is also taking a lot of time to load.
So, it will be a little while longer."

19. We sigh.

20. We sit in their (only) 2 chairs in their waiting room, which has no music, no television, and nothing but gruesome shelving with ugly wooden or sleek chrome keyboards and even uglier new computers. Oh, and a panting wolf-dog, who now likes to poke his nose in our netherlands.
We sit there for another hour and a half!!

21. We call the tech guru out from the back and ask him what is going on.
He says with a smirk smile, "I have never seen anything like this....it is just taking forever to download off and back on!"...do you still want to wait?"
By now the snow has accumulated outside another three inches.
I explain that we live approximately an hour away, and since we have all this time invested in it, we might as well wait another hour.
He says fine.
We look across the street and notice a restaurant.
Since neither of us have pee'd or eaten or drank anything for hours, we make a wise decision to go there.
We tell him, and he agrees.

22. We go to the restaurant, tired and hungry.
We do not order protein...we order coffee and a huge cinnamon roll to split (comfort food, of course!) and chow it down.
We bundle back up like eskimos and make our way against howling winds and snow to the computer shop, arriving covered in wet snow, with flushed faces and twinkling eyes in anticipation of grabbing our goods and making our way back home to sit by the glow of the computer screen full of our wonderful photos.

23. The dog now greets us at the door by a crouch shove and an immediate roll over on his back, offering up his wolf-belly for a good scratch down (since obviously we are now part of his wolf pack, having bonded through our many contacts).
Tech guru is buried back in the shop and doesn't even bother to re-greet us or update us.

24. After about twenty minutes he finally returns to the counter and says: " I don't know folks...we are open until 6pm and it is about 4:45 pm now.. we are close now...we are running the final check and it should be done soon.
My breath catches in my throat, thinking it just might be fixed!

25. We sit in those hard chairs until my ass screams for mercy.
At 6 p.m., I march up to the counter and knock loudly on it until he comes up again, and demand to know WTF is going on.
He says: "I think you better leave it here. It is getting slower and slower.
By the way, did you happen to notice this when you had it back from us?
Anyway, it looks more and more like you may have to purchase a new hard drive from us, folks. Can you call us tomorrow?
And by the way...if you need us to put it in, we gotta order it so it won't be in until Wednesday or so and then we need a day to put it in."
I swear to God, the dog then barks two sharp barks and sits at my feet.

26. So that I:
a. don't cry
or
b. Jump over the counter at the guy to rip his throat out and risk being mauled to death by wolf-dog:
my husband gently pulls my arm away from the counter and blurts out at the guy: "ok we'll call you tomorrow".

27. I remember that I have left my camera with them and ask them weakly (because by now my spirit is completely broken and I have gone from the first stages of grief (denial, followed by anger) straight into the third stage: bargaining (the if-only-I-had stage)).
He says sure and gives it to me.

28. We leave. We climb in the car in complete darkness now (Because it is 6:15pm in the frozen Siberia winter here) and drive home in the blinding snow, and slippery roads, in complete silence.

Oh boy, I can't WAIT until tomorrow.

And I bet the dog will have my slippers waiting for me when we get to the shop.