Thank you

all for your sympathy on my plight, although I am slightly perturbed at the devious nature of those who comment on this blog, but I feel I should be totally honest with you. You see as the laptop dried out things got a little brighter.


In fact it reached the point where CK formulated a plan. Once it was safe to plug the Dell back in to the mains the in-house tech went through every key on the keyboard. Of those that worked they either showed as '4, e, y, d, f & g'. This included the tab key and the space bar.


However the mouse was still in working order so during our spending spree at P.C. World my tech support suggested splashing out an extra £5 and bought a new USB-linked keyboard. I feel ever so clever and posh as I sit typing away on a keyboard to one side while I look at a screen in front of me.

If I am very careful one day I may be allowed to touch!

Yay for comprehensive home insurance.

Having survived the debacles of CK trying to iron the living room carpet, the mega-overflowing kitchen sink (three inches of warm water to wade through) and 'someone' (whistles tunelessly while looking at the sky) burning the back of an armchair with the iron (don't ask) I gave into the demands of the gods and set our home insurance to full cover.

Having paid out those premiums for the last five years it was with joy that I phoned the insurance company to claim for the sad demise of CK's laptop. For yes it was actually HIS that we use generally in the house. Despite MY protestations that 'we didn't need a new laptop mine was FINE', it has actually sat upstairs in its lovely, padded backpack untouched since this lovely Dell Inspiron 1501 first arrived about 18m months ago.

Do you have a greater appreciation of the horror I experienced when I spotted the water pooling over the keyboard?


However, after several telecons back and forth it was all sorted out and we could expect a voucher from the insurers to buy us a new laptop in just a matter of days. So Friday afternoon, post swimming and football and with their sweetie day sweets clutched tightly in their hands, we bundled the kids into the car and headed the 20+ miles to our nearest P.C. world. En route the terences were placated with suggestions of takeaway food and after nearly 3/4 of an hour mooching around said computer place were starting to get a little bit restless.

It was fortunate for us all that CK had made up his mind by this point and purchased himself a shiny, new, whizzy computer that apparently does lots of clever things.

I say 'apparently' because I am only allowed to look at it from a distance. But it seems nice enough.

Have we been sucked in yet?**EDITED

***22:43 hours and we have just had Princess Curly-Wurly down the stairs saying she has been having bad dreams. Apparently the possibility of a black hole swallowing up the world before she wakes has disturbed her slumber.

CK took her back upstairs and tucked her into bed explaining that it was okay b/c he had done the science at work during his lunchtime and it would all be well. The science was called quantum mechanics and he had - at this point she interrupted him and said 'Is that like in your 'quantum physics book, Daddy?' Truly my husband is a science geek.

Apparently she was laughing by the time he came downstairs because he said to tell her friends that if any of them were worried she should inform them the experiment was done in the shed last weekend. It involved Pr C-W and Destructo Boy riding in opposite directions on their bikes until CK released the neutrogena and the whole thing went CRASH! They kept it quiet so as not embarrass the long term efforts of all those at CERN ;-)



The (excuse my spelling b/c I think it will have to be phonetic) Hadron accelarator under the Alps in Switzerland was started up at 8:30 this morning. Being a household of nerds and proto-nerds and dogs we listened to the whole thing on the radio. Well, most of us did, the dogs just lounged around snoozing.

Of the three of us listening one was quite interested but fairly clueless as to the science. One was kind of interested and ignorant of the science. And the seven year old boy was listening horrified waiting for a black hole to open and suck us all in, never to be heard from again.

It hasn't happened yet. As far as I know. Let me know if you find yourself being s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d out into a blackhole. Please.