Computer woes, sickness, and Holland

I haven’t been posting much lately, mainly because my computer is visiting the great Apple store in the sky. Actually, I think it’s either in Memphis or Houston, two cities I personally haven’t visited. Long story short, I am getting a long-standing problem with my computer fixed. My basic thinking here is that if I can get my current computer to last another year or two for the $300 I am paying for repair, it’ll be worth it. I write about this on my official blog in more detail here.

But what’s killing me here is that my repair has been delayed. I thought that this would be a quick enough turn-around, maybe as long as five days, tops. But it is looking like it could be much longer than that. This sucks. With Annette’s computer, Will’s PC, and two computers in my office at school, I certainly have adequate access. But not having my computer with my stuff is really killing me here. For one thing, I’m not able to use my computer with my stuff on it. Not right. For another, Will’s computer is a somewhat old PC and the keyboard on Annette’s laptop drives me nuts– a sticky space key makes all the words run together.

Anyway. Hopefully I’ll get some word on my missing iBook in a few days.

(Slight Update: Apple emailed me and informed me that my iBook is repaired and ought to be back this (Friday, May 12) afternoon!)

In other news, I have a cold that simply will not go away. I am relatively sure that it is not allergies, though that may be a factor. In any event, it’s something all of us around here have, and there is not a whole lot in this world than the feeling of being sick in the spring/summer time. The only plus of it all is I haven’t been eating much lately because of it and I’m down another pound or so.

So, all of this combined has delayed my posting about our road-trip last Sunday to Holland, MI as part of their annual “Tulip Time” festival. I spoke with my parents about all this a bit on Tuesday, and they kept saying “oh, that’s just like the tulip thing they do in Pella, Iowa. Oh, you wish, Pella. The Holland festival is THE place for tulip and Dutch celebrating in this country, my friend.

Actually, most of the “big” events are going on this week and this coming weekend, including appearances by (I shit you not) Three Dog Night, Frankie Avalon and The Oak Ridge Boys. Not together, of course, on different nights. Anyway, we were in town on the somewhat quiet opening weekend.

After a kind of crappy lunch where we couldn’t even enjoy a beer because of the area’s overly strict Sunday alcohol laws (Annette was right– we should have just grabbed some corn dogs and went with it), we got into the spirit of things by wandering around a very nice little downtown area.

One of Will’s favorite stores was an old-time candy store, the kind of place that had pretty much everything you could imagine in bins that you could buy by the pound. Here’s Will supervising the weighing of some jelly beans.

Then we found our way to the very nice Windmill Island Park. Here are a few pictures:

Here’s the reading why they call this “Windmill Island,” a mondo-gigantic 240+ year old windmill. Though we never figured out why they called it an “island.”

And here’s why they call it “tulip time.”

Here’s Will in front of some pretty cool black tulips. Really, they were a very very dark purple, but close enough to black.

In any event, a good time was had by one and all, though I have to say that the whole fascination with tulips in general escapes me.