Aaaand . . . we're back.

I'm back! It took a lot of computer parts, a new router to replace my other new router, a lot of phone calls to my ISP, a couple of trips over there (it's a small-town, family-owned business located about three blocks away) and a service call to replace the radio transmitter on the roof, but I have my connection back. My monitor is still in the clutches of Best Buy's Service Minions. The good news on that is that it was covered by the infamous Service Plan. The bad news is that they'd rather repair it than replace it, and their estimated date of return was 37 days into the future. I was OK with that until I found out that it's not actually going to the repair location on one of the Jovian moons (Titan is apparently backlogged at the moment) but to Chicago.
"Chicago, like Chicago, Illinois?" I asked. I wanted to be fair about this; perhaps I'd misunderstood. But nope.
Still, that monitor is a 19" Samsung LCD unit that replaced a 19" Viewsonic CRT that died. The service plan on the CRT covered the Samsung, and is now paying for the repair on the Samsung as well, so for the 50 bucks or so that I spent on the service plan I'm not getting a bad deal at all. Luckily I have friends with components littering their houses, so I was able to borrow an old Gateway. It has issues, but it's looking pretty good at the moment.

• The Camaro is back in the driveway and my wallet is much lighter. It was a freeze plug, as it turns out, and the mechanic said he tried to make it a cheap job by dropping the starter and sneaking past it, but it was no dice. The exhaust had to come off, and of course the bolts and the exhaust flanges have more or less become one over the years. Still, it's back. Tomorrow it goes to the local exhaust guy to have the cat cut off and the muffler replaced. If it sells soon, it sells. If it doesn't, then at least I have something to drive to St. Louis the weekend after next--the Blackwater Blogger Weekend is that close! Since I have to drive down right after work, and then drive back at about 1:00 a.m. on Monday morning, I really didn't want to make My Bride drive me. I'd have had to find another way, but I'm not sure what it would have been. (The mechanic gave me the freeze plug as a souvenir--a twisted, sawed, ripped and torn mess. "This one's been to war," quoth he, "but I always win in the end.")
• I have one more IPSC shoot before I go to Blackwater. I'll have to miss next week, since I'll be getting my cavity search at the airport about the time they start.
• Tomorrow is the first day back for teachers. I can't wait to tell my partner in special-ed crime (a lovely woman, but somewhat . . . . mild-mannered, shall we say?) that I ran into one of our former students . . . . . at an action pistol match. And I'm pretty sure he beat me. He was lucky we were standing still, though: this kid was wearing the requisite cutoff shorts four sizes too big, and he had apparently worked out that his stiff velcro gun belt would sort of cinch his pants in if he tightened it--there'd be no saggin', in other words. So he decided to make the gun belt just as loose, and compensate by constantly yanking his shorts, then his belt, then his shorts, then his . . . . well, there was a lot of yanking going on, all in an upward direction. Anyway, I find this funny. I fully expect her to blanche.
• I have a new boss. She seems very good, but tough. Frankly I don't know how they talked her into the job. I told my last boss before she left that I wouldn't do her job for any money, and I meant it. Whereas I spend most of the day teaching classes and then far too much of my "free" time doing paperwork, fitting in meetings as required, a Coordinator spends her entire day in IEP meetings chained to a laptop. It's a fate worse than death. This one is supposedly "retired." She works Monday at our school, then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday at a residential school for kids with profound disabilities, then comes back to us on Fridays. I may not understand retirement, but 5-day weeks of drudgery and meetings would not suit me in retirement. My grandpa is retired, and his emphasis tends more toward gardening, fishing, hunting and picking berries. To each his own, I guess.