Update

Good intentions often fall by the wayside when other things happen. I had wanted to blog last week and just never had the chance - or maybe I just never had the energy with such hot weather. Our computer room was so hot that the fan on the computer kicked into overdrive to keep the computer cool and I had to shut down the computer just to protect it. That's never happened before.
Our lives have been full with hours at the employment center and preparations for a dinner that didn't happen, even after being rescheduled three times. Seems like that's enough attempts on our part.
The big challenge for me requires a little background explanation. I have always kept lists and lists of lists but when Neal came home from the hospital in 2006 my strict organization fell apart. I couldn't keep track of his weekly medical appointments and various other health-related details as well as church responsibilities and on and on. So Neal requested a Metro access bus and told me he was going out by himself and would be back later. I had no idea where he was going but he returned in about two hours with a gift for me - a handheld PDA. I loved it. I could keep all my lists in one place, plus the calendar plus an extensive address book, as well as the scriptures and conference talks and lots of photos. I have used it constantly since April 2006, refining the calendar as needed. All of Neal's appointments are in blue, church responsibilities in yellow, our missionary details in purple, household in orange, social in green etc. I could enter events or make lists on the computer, then sync them to the handheld and always had information at hand. It has been fantastic.
Until July 22nd. That morning I noticed that the desktop version had lost all the calendar information - past, present and future. In the past if there are similar entries on the handheld and the desktop, it will duplicate and I can delete the one I don't want. So I assumed that if I synched the handheld then all the data would also appear on the desktop version again. Big mistake. The desktop overrode the handheld and ERASED the entire calendar on the handheld. I called tech support who told me "oh, you should never sync if the desktop is corrupted." Yeah, I know that now, but that warning doesn't appear anywhere in the instructions. They tried to restore it from my hard drive, but all 2719 entries were corrupted. If it had been the scriptures or the photos I could have downloaded them again from files and the Church website, but the calendar was only available in those two places. It made me sick, and there was absolutely nothing I could do. (In a subsequent phone call I learned that the same thing happened to many Palm customers who also had their computers set for auto updates from Microsoft, so at least I have a good idea what happened.) One of the very competent tech guys in India walked me through the steps to establish a remote backup and suggested I do that about once every two months. I'm thinking once a week at this point. Then if this should happen again, tech support can use the remote backup to restore everything to my system.
I regret losing all of Neal's medical records for the past three years because I used that constantly, and other than parking in various medical offices to copy their records, I have no way of retrieving it. At each appointment I made notes on the expanding calendar, so I kept all the doctor's instructions, plus med changes in one place and I could tell the next specialist if he asked. All that is gone. Blood sugar levels, heart function test results, med equipment warranty dates - all gone. Meanwhile I have this liberating sensation of absolutely no appointments. I know there will be problems because of it, but our calendar is wide open until I start adding more.
Our appraisal came back $20,000 higher than I anticipated and about $25K more than we needed for the loan to value, so it looks like we will be signing docs very soon.
We had dinner on the patio at the home of some friends the other evening. I feel so blessed to have good friends here. I miss Montana, but know that if I were to return there I would miss my Washington friends just as much.