Can you guess what it is yet.....?

I was up bright and early this morning, champing at the bit to get on with phase one of the photography mega-marathon.  However, my laptop had decided to 'pull a sickie' and no amount of encouragement, coercion or unadulterated threats would induce it to start.

I thought it was sickening for something last night, when it took 30 minutes to close down, but hoped that an early night would do it the world of good.


Apparently not.

After a number of false starts it did eventually manage to give me a black screen with instructions on how to start in 'safe mode'.  It then spent 90 minutes doing a complete disk scan.

If I'd known at the start it was going to take 90 minutes I'd have gone and done something really useful, but as I had no idea how long the diagnostics would last I had to keep checking back every few minutes in case it needed me for something.  Exactly what I'm not quite sure. 

Perhaps to mop its screen with a cooling flannel, or hold its mouse.

Personally I think it's just malingering.  Probably in cahoots with the printer/scanner.  I expect it's been whingeing about the hammering it's keyboard has taken over the past few weeks while I've been writing the manuscript.  And bemoaning the fact that it's going to have to cope with a massive influx of photo files over the next few weeks.


Yada, yada, yada.......

So while I was hovering impatiently over the patient, I decided to go and do something moderately useful.

Can you guess what it is yet?

No?

I have to admit I'm a bit stumped myself so here, for reference, is the mystery object before I did something moderately useful to it.

Aha.  It's all so clear to me now. 

The mystery object is, of course, my workdesk.  

I also have a terrible, guilty confession to make.  

I haven't seen it so 'naked' for almost 7 years.....

Yes.  Yes I know.  I am a clarty bitch (as my grannie would have said).   

Although I do, of course, clear and clean it more often than once every 7 years,  (in my defence, I clear it when I'm reduced to working on a clear area of less than 4 square inches)
I have to admit though, that in the normal run of things, I don't take absolutely everything off it.

However today, as I anxiously awaited the prognosis on my laptop, the worry went completely to my head and I absent-mindedly completely cleared my desk.  That last time it was so empty was the very day PP and I built it.  Since then I have cleaned 'around' a few permanent fixtures, such as my tool pots, workmat, etc.  So to see it completely unadorned is a bit of a shock.


I feel both traumatised and elated in equal measure.

In other news, the laptop, as is evidenced by the fact I'm writing this post, has deigned to return to the land of the living. I have several other diagnostic and maintenance tasks lined up for it later this afternoon.


The laptop equivalent of a good going over with a wire brush and Dettol.