Meanwhile, back at the ranch

We have a wee pal for the week - young Haggis MacFeagle, Sally's westie. A young dog of character and energy. God knows how they manage just giving him one walk a day! The first time he came, you may remember he managed to find everything within a 2 feet distance from the floor. This time, I "de-Haggified" the living room before he arrived so we're safe there (except on Christmas morning, when he managed to make off with Nick's chocolate coins THREE times!)

My plan of walking his wee legs off and thus curtailing his energy and curiosity seems to be working. He's too knackered to get into too much trouble, and seems to love his walks too, bless his wee cotton socks.

It's actually quite funny, he and Murphy ignore each other (not through any animosity, I think the size difference renders them out of each other's worlds) but he LOVES Maddie! Follows her nose to tail all round the place when they're out and despite several occasions where she's tried to bully him, he remains undefeated and a devoted camp follower. Which given that she's a Springer Spaniel and he's a Westie, is pretty impressive - I've started calling him "small but determined" - pity there isn't a word in English that says that! Maybe there is - "Haggis"

New for old

Got a new laptop for Christ,as - so excited! At last, my chance to get rid of the annoying PC machinery that has been tripping me up for the last 3 or 4 years and try out a (hopefully slicker and less accident-prone) Apple Mac.

But Microsoft has one last try at putting a spanner in the works - it is refusing to properly download the "Migration Assistant" which is supposed to help me transfer all my information over to the new Mac.

I may have said this before, but "AAAAAAAAARRRGGGGHHHH!"

Ideas for presents

Been thinking I should maybe get some socks for Andy for Christmas, from Maddie - she's going through about one a day so far! We did say he ought to either keep his door shut or not leave them on the floor, but thus far he doesn't seem to have managed either. Oh well.

Maddie's weekend

Poor Maddie hasn't had a good weekend - I shouted at her on Saturday cos I heard a rustling in the kitchen and thought she was at the counter. Course she wasn't, she was behind the TV eating Murphy's dinner - and confused and aggrieved about being shouted at!

Then today I stood on her paw. Oops!

Of course, that's not taking into account the three shoes and a sock she had in her bed last night, which she was most reluctant to give up!

My fault this time

And it really was. I left that Crunchie (with only one bite out of it) on the counter and suddenly remembered two minutes later while I was upstairs with the cat. I considered chancing it but decided not to - I ran downstairs and the counter was bare!

I ran outside (no mean feat - I was in my socks and the ground was covered in freezing rain, snow and ice) and stood in the dark. All I could hear was "crunch, crunch... crunch"

"noooooo!"

Too late. I think that's even worse than finding the wrapper the next day - to actually HEAR her demolishing your chocolate bar and not be able to do anything about it!

Never was a bar so aptly named. Never was an owner so frustrated. And all my own fault.

Technology beats me. Again.

I may have mentioned this before, but I hate technology. And it hates me right back! Don't get me wrong, I love having a laptop and all that you can do with it, but when things go wrong - and they do, often - it drives me demented! Everything seems to go wrong together.

I'm hoping to get a new laptop soon (apple) as the one I've got is so awful in so many ways. I've not been able to upload photos since I moved the ones on my laptop to a hard drive ( cos they were causing the machine to crash, using up too much memory)

So how do I do my annual photo calendar? I had to get Nick to muck about and somehow use a back door method to upload my photos onto the big computer. Then I chose the ones I wanted but had to get Richard to put them into a new folder (ok I should've been able to do that, don't know what happened there). Then I loaded them onto a memory stick and transferred them to my laptop that way.

So far so (exhaustingly) good. Tonight, feeling a bit shivery, I took myself off to bed with the laptop (did I mention it regularly crashes for no reason?) and after getting back up to get the memory stick (cos apparently they HADN'T uploaded to anywhere I could find them) I finally managed to get the chosen few uploaded to the Truprint website.

And that's as far as I've got, cos now the bleeding website just sits there saying "Flash Player detection" and a big fat nothing happens.

So peoples, if you're looking for a calendar this Christmas you might get one by the summer, by the time I work my way through the myriad of shortcuts, ways around, fixes, longcuts and general crap that is my life online!

Is it just me?