The unwanted visitor

Yesterday morning I went into my office here at home and there was an unwanted visitor! This is the visitor you really don't want to see on your home computer: The blue screen of death. It gave me a long and complicated message which basically said your computer is doomed, it did a full memory dump, and needs to be restarted. (Actually I am not sure what it all said because there was no way to scroll up and read the entire message that must have been quite long.) I have no idea what happened (hence the problem of not having an IT department waiting nearby to solve computer disasters). So I rebooted and watched the computer give me another message: Windows has successfully recovered from a serious error. Well, I am not sure I believe that yet but it seems to be working okay for the most part but didn't want to get me my email yesterday. Well actually, it did get me my email. It delivered the same messages four times, just to make sure I had read them. Now I just work with my fingers crossed that the blue screen of death will not return and cause additional errors. It will be a distraction from some of the other issues going on in my life, not that I need more stress or anything.

Here's another thing I am not sure is wanted: single serve SPAM. Yes, the lunch meat that must have a cult following somewhere is now available in single serve portions. I learned that this weekend, in fact you can order them online as well. I do not plan on going out and buying any as I have tried SPAM in my life and that was plenty, thank you. There must be a demand somewhere if they are now making individual portions. Perhaps this is like liver and onions which is one of the most popular restaurant menu items in the US. People who like liver and onions are rare and usually can't get their family members to make it for them or have the smell of it in their house so these fans must eat it in restaurants, hence its popularity. I do know I will not be eating SPAM or liver and onions anytime soon. (If you refer to the lunch meat by product, you are supposed to write it in all caps. The unwanted emails are lower case. I believe there was once a lawsuit on this topic... Go to www.hormel.com if you really care to learn more. I can believe you can even download the SPAM cookbook too.)

Another not-so-sure-we-want-it item: Visa gift cards. These are the most difficult things in the world to deal with. If you read the card, they clearly say redeemable anywhere Visa debit cards are accepted. I recently participated in a survey and was then entered in a drawing for a $100 Visa gift card, which I actually won. We tried to use the damn thing about five different times and couldn't get it to work. We learned the secret the other day from the cashier at Barnes & Noble, you have to run it through as a charge not a debit card (even though it says debit on it) and you should know the remaining balance on the card because some cash register systems need to have that piece of information to conduct the transaction. This all makes it very complicated and stressful. More stress is something I don't need at this point.

Speaking of stress, today I am going to be lazy and not go to the gym. I have been to the gym or walked every day since my last surgery which was December 18 and I just don't want to go today. I am tired, it is cold out, the gym is boring, I have lots of stuff to do, I feel like I might be getting the sniffles (and saw two people yesterday with colds - one of whom was my doctor), and I just don't want to go. So there, I am not going. Instead, I will stay inside where it is warm and do some work and job hunt before going to work and crisping. Tomorrow I will return to my normal routine and go to the gym.