After five days of computer frustrations, I think everything is back up and behaving. I had to turn my computer over to a nice guy in India, who tickled the hard drive with magic fingers and gave it back to me shiny and happy. It took him almost an hour and it cost me $20. Fair enough.

LOTS of viruses had made their way in over the last few days. It was nasty.

But nothing has been lost, although I'm reminded again, to make a copy of not just my novels, but things like my query database, and synopses and query letters. Losing those would be almost as bad (a couple of orders of magnitude less bad, but still...).

It's downright strange to watch your computer being manipulated by remote control. Makes me realize how connected the world has become. And how vulnerable we all are.

My grandsons spent last week with us while my daughter took a trip out of town. We didn't do anything too spectacular, although they did help eat the pie. We took them to a ball game on Friday - A's v. Angels. Unfortunately, the angels didn't play. Oh, they were on the field, but they just didn't play. Jon Garland was pitching and, oh how do I put this? 

He was having a bad day.

Worst pitching I've ever seen. He allowed something like 18 hits in 3 innings. Not that the field was backing him up. The A's brought 9 of those hits home. It was really sad watching Garland walk off the field when he was replaced. I think everyone felt bad for him.

They held us steady after that, but the game was a rout. Wish I could say the same for the rest of weekend, but the Angels remembered how to play ball, and beat the A's both Saturday and  Sunday. We should learn to spread those hits out.

Great fireworks after the game. The grandkids were impressed.

We saw a couple of movies, too. Hellboy II - wow. Go see it!  At home, once we figured out how to fix the connection with our new cable box, we watched the Spiderwick Chronicles. It was okay. I bet the book was better.

 Sunday, I forced myself to get busy and throw a few paint samples on my kitchen wall. Dark green, light green, and a sort of lemon yellow. Eh. Can't say I'm thrilled with any of them. I'm ordering more samples. Will Not Rush this.

This morning was a cooking morning. I was out of yogurt, granola, and waffles, so I whipped up a batch of all three. The waffles are in the freezer, the granola is in its air-tight container, and the yogurt is staying warm and growing bacteria. I have a lot of errands: to the wood store to see about stain for the kitchen baseboards, to the mattress store to beg them to take back the too-hard mattress and give us something softer, to Trader Joe's for walnuts and milk (the waffles took all I had after the grandkids cleaned us out). Looks like I have to get more medicine for the dog, too. And I have one more paint sample for the kitchen. 

Oh, and a novel to write. Yeah, I'll get to that...