Starting Over

So...traditionally, this time of year is a time of new beginnings. It's Spring, the Sun moves to Aries...okay, we still have a week to go. I know that. Work with me here.

Anyway, I have a lot of new beginning types of stuff going on in my life right now too. New house. New housemate (my MIL is coming to live with us). New office. Shiny, new, poppy-red desk (hai, Kate ;)

...okay, the paint's new, the desk not so much. It's also probably the cleanest this desk will ever be again. And, as of last night (as those of you who follow me on Twitter might already have heard) I have a freshly-scrubbed, almost completely blank computer. Oh, the joy. Let's re-visit some of the better newnesses, shall we?

Here's the view this morning from the window of my new office (or, the dining room, as the rest of the family insists on calling it).

As you can see, it's raining and somewhat foggy today but on a clear day you can see Napa...which is probably where I should be right now, drinking heavily. Those lights in the sky are the reflection from the chandelier (what? doesn't every office have a chandelier?) NOT alien space-craft...I don't think.

And here's my dog, with his poppy-red collar, lounging on the color-coordinated carpet.

Yes, I'm all about the color coordination these days. And that's my desk in the background with one of the side panels of my computer. Sigh. So, I guess we're back to that again. (note to self: new beginnings are a GOOD thing). 

See, what happened was this: every few years my husband gets a new computer custom built for him with all the newest, fastest, bestest hardware ever. HE likes change. Me, I like to wring every last drop of usefulness out of an object. Take my desk, for instance. Up until a few days ago, it was yellow, turquoise and lime green. (better than it sounds) Before that, it was stained wood (kind of a redwood, cedar-y shade). Now it's this gorgeous red that makes me very happy and (hopefully) very productive. But, to continue...when my last desktop showed signs of terminal quirkiness (ie it refused to turn on most of the time) about a year ago, just as my husband was getting ready to retire one of his still-stupidly-new (IMO) computers, I thought it sounded like a great idea for me to take possession of that computer rather than buying yet another computer when there were so many other things I'd rather spend money on. Going to RT, for example. 

The only trouble was, his computer was set up with Windows XP-64 and a lot of things (Adobe, for instance) have stopped supporting that system, which meant every time I accidentally opened a page that had flash or video or anything of that sort on it (or any time I tried to watch German Soaps onYouTube) the computer would crash. Which was just a little problematic for me. It would also crash if I tried to open more than one pdf at a time. REALLY problematic. I also couldn't download a lot of the drivers I wanted on it. I couldn't access Skype, I couldn't use my webcam, I couldn't use my printer, I couldn't make it wireless... Basically, I was writing on my desktop computer and doing everything else with my laptop. And either emailing everything to myself, moving flashdrives back and forth, or using dropbox. Which, ironically, is why what happened next was not a complete and total disaster.

Okay, deep breaths. Let's look at that view again...

Obviously taken on a sunnier day, but never mind that.  

So, all I wanted was to have Windows 7 installed on my computer so that I could use it as something other than a big, clunky, somewhat expensive word processor. Should have been simple enough. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a lot like the copper pipe scene from Moonstruck. "It's good, unless something goes wrong. And something always goes wrong." What went wrong in this instance was that somehow all of my files were overwritten leaving me with exactly what I said I wanted: Windows 7...and nothing else. *thunks head on pretty red desk* 

Here's the view from my bedroom, by the way...

See all that shiny stuff in the background? That's San Francisco Bay. Nice, right? That's worth some missing files...isn't it?

Actually, the whole thing could have been a lot worse. I could have lost more than just the last three months worth of notes on my ongoing projects (that haven't been going so well anyway)  and a lot of pretty pictures of sexy guys that I didn't see the need to back up on the laptop (BIG mistake. Huge.). Who knew being in a writing slump would turn out to be a good thing?  I actually lost very little that wasn't backed up on one of half a dozen different flashdrives. And the computer is working great. Hasn't crashed once all morning. Of course, I still have quite a few programs to re-install before we're back to something approaching normal and I missed the deadline I was going for on the novella I was working on...I mean am. I am working on it and the next two vampire books...right after I finish putting my 'puter back together...and buying a new (red) futon for the family room couch...

(Mm. Fireplace. Good.) ...and you, know, stuff like that.  

So, even though I'm not generally a big fan of change or starting over I am trying really hard to remember that sometimes it can be fun, in a roller-coaster kind of way, sometimes it can be as refreshing as...well, Spring rain. 

And, hey, sometimes a little rationalizaion is a very healthy thing. New beginnings. Woohoo. 

By the way, I just learned that A Clockwork Christmas has been nominated for Best Anthology by The Romance Reviews. Here's the link, if you'd like to vote for it...

http://www.theromancereviews.com/viewbooks.php?bookid=4417 

AND...Thanking the Receptionist by Juniper Bell has also been nominated for Best Erotic BDSM Contemporary. http://www.theromancereviews.com/viewbooks.php?bookid=2889