Downton Abbey and the Flu

On Mondays I gab about, well, pretty much whatever I want!

Okay, so this week got totally away from me on a number of fronts. My daughter's been sick as heck for a week now, and we made a trip to the urgent care to get antibiotics for the ear infections that came on the heels of days' worth of high fever and sore throat. She had to miss her belt test at Tae Kwon Do, which she was totally bummed about.

Also, the hair video we made (and I didn't manage to get posted) right before she fell ill got toasted along with the rest of the video on my dead hard drive, so no vlog episodes or Stylin' Saturday. I did manage to get a new laptop that I'm actually fairly happy with, and after that chunk of change went out the door, my husband's brakes decided to go completely mush--as in putting the pedal to the floor and hoping something interesting happens, like the car actually stopping. We'll be making another trip to the mechanic with it tomorrow. And since Bri was sick, of course Mike managed to catch it--and enough germs attached to me that I'm fighting a sinus infection. After having my face swollen like a balloon last fall, I'm not thrilled at the thought of another round.

And oh, yeah, I managed to watch the finale of Downtown Abbey, and I was highly unamused by the last five minutes. Ugh.

I'd also like to go on record saying the new pricing structure for Office 2013 really bites. $99 a year so I can type and edit files? Seriously? What happened to the days of you buy it, that's it? Now it's you buy it for a couple hundred AND pay a monthly/annual fee to use it. Me no likey. And since my old Office disks are nowhere to be found, I'm thinking it's time to go back to Open Office, which isn't my first choice. I had issues in the past sending files back and forth to editors when one of us was on Word and the other Open Office. Formatting problems cropped up. I suppose I could bite the bullet, but I'm digging in my  heels on principal. Meanwhile, I barely cracked open my manuscript all week and did a little editing, but no new writing. Double ugh!

Sheesh, this post turned into much more of a rant-a-palooza than I intended. So much for "mild-mannered!" Sorry about that. Guess it's just been one of those weeks. 

So the plan this week is for all of us to get healthy again, hopefully with no further trips to urgent care, get the brakes fixed, do some work on the WIP, decide which way the wind will blow on the Office/Open Office debate, and pick up some blank CD-roms so I can make my backup recovery disk for the new laptop, which already managed to get infected with malware 2 days after I got it. Bri finally seems to be pulling out of the worst of it, so we might even start re-shooting some of her vlog stuff by next weekend. We'll play that by ear.



J. Rose Allister is the author of more than twenty-five books, primarily romance and erotic romance. A former editor and submissions director, she now works as a mild-mannered hospital secretary by day, naughty writer by night. Connect with her on Twitter or Goodreads. She loves talking to people.