Since the moment I was born, my family has made a yearly pilgrimage up to New Hampshire. The annual wind-down is something I always look forward to simply because I get to spend time with my family at a lake-front cottage and just relax. No TV, no stress, no worries. . . . just the way I like it. If I'm not swimming or playing cards or hiking trails, I'm literally sitting in a chair with a drink in hand, staring out over the lake alone in my thoughts. Getting up there has been especially valuable the last few years due to college and all the difficulties associated with it.This year was no different. I headed out of Philly on the last Friday of June and didn't come back until the night of the 4th of July. After a few years away, the Tegan family was finally back at Bow Lake where we belonged and the familiar sites and sounds were refreshing (it felt right being back at the place that many memories call home). It was also the first year for my new sister Sarah at the lake, so we all had a blast putting her through the paces of life at the Bow.
The resulting problem has always been the inevitable return to life back home. It's not as if I can't stand existence here in the Philadelphia area: far from it in fact as I really do love being here in city, being close to everyone and everything important in my life. But the fact remains that transitioning from vacation life (soaking up sunshine on an 80 degree day in a cushioned chair beside a tranquil lake) to the humid heat of city life is tough. Then three things happened:
1. Shit hit the fan between me and John/Kaitlin the morning of the 6th.
2. I was laid off from my job.
3. My computer died.
Hooray on all three counts. I'm not going to get into the first, ESPECIALLY in this blog (lest we all forget the now infamous "Blog Incident" that took place before the NFL draft three months ago). My computer died, for the fourth time in four years, only this time it wouldn't even start up in safe mode. As far as getting laid off from my job, my company lost a big contract due to a strike by one of our customers and needed to lay off the part-time help in order to accommodate the union guys (hey, it happens, what can you do).
The thing is, I'm not even writing this to complain or to fish for sympathy. Instead, I'm writing this to share a message of hope.
After avoiding the computer problem for awhile, I finally decided that today was a good day to play around with it and see what the level of destruction was. Phil helped check out the BIOS noticed that my computer was only sporting about 72MB of RAM (if you really don't know shit about anything, that means that my computer had about as much computing power as a circa 1992 Mac). . . . AKA, my memory was bad. I grabbed a screwdriver and took out the two memory sticks from my computer to investigate when I had a moment of pure genius. Straight Super NES style, I jokingly blew on the sticks like many of us used to with game cartridges.
Amazingly, it worked, and with that my technology drought was over. With any luck, this minor change of fate will shift the momentum in my favor.
