A Series of Unfortunate and Annoying Events.

Yes, Gentle Readers, I am still here, fraught with annoyance! It's been one of those days or weeks?

My printer blew up. Died its last gasping breath. I feel for it, I really do. Mackie, who will not harm a living creature, takes all his bottled up hunting instinct and applies it to the life-long mission of killing my printer. Or any other electrical device that makes noise and has movement. Back in the day when I had an IBM Selectric Typewriter (gosh, that dates me!!!) he destroyed it because he would lay along the back of the body and fish his paws into the guts and stop the ball from moving. I used to have photographic proof of this but it seems to have dissapeared. But take my word for it, it happened!

My old printer died a similar death. When Mackie hears the little motor start to engage he comes out from wherever he is and like lightning he attacks the printer. He shoves his paws in there and grabs the ink cartridge mechanism and snags it.

Over the years I've learned to be furtive and sneaky. I print when he isn't at home! I print when I have the air conditioning running so the noise drowns out the printer noises! I've also learned to catch him, mid-vault, as he dives pell-mell for the death blow. I'll hold him and soothe him, and he just glares at that printer, tail twitching, whiskers straining to kill! kill! KILL!

Of course I think it's adorable. I have a unique cat. One time he sat outside and protected a little baby bird that had obviously just learned to fly so that the other neighbor cats couldn't kill it. I heard the bird parents screaming like crazy so I went outside to see Mackie guarding the bird, and the 2 other cats mad as heck.

And one time Mackie brought me a baby mouse. Totally unharmed and he didn't bring it home to kill it and provide fodder for the pride. He just brought it home so it would have somewhere to live. Because that damn mouse got into the cupboards and Mackie would just sit there and PURR!!! He would not try to chase it and catch it or anything.

And of course I still think he told those possums to come over for some chow. Nice and friendly like!

And now my expensive HP5550 series photo quality excellant printer has made it's last print. The carriage, which had been screaming for weeks now, really screaming (making ME want to jump in there and kill! kill! KILL! myself!) finally moved to the side of the printer and refused to budge.

It was a good printer, and I'll never be able to afford to replace it! So now I must make do with a $29.95 special from Walmart. And try to keep Mackie out of the works!

I don't know how I got off on such a tangent, but what I started to say was, that my printer died, and I was going to tell you a bunch more stuff that went wrong, and now I've forgotten WHAT IT WAS!

I do remember this, however: Remember those checks that came in the mail last week and I had to go round and round with the Phillipino Customer Service Department to see that I didn't get charged for those checks? Well. I got charged for the checks. $25.00 whopping dollars for just the ONE SET of checks, and although it hasn't shown up yet, it will be $30.00 for the second set! And Customer Service cannot do anything about it because they do not have in their records that I ever ordered the checks. He said they could petition the check company but it would take ten days for a refund!!!!! I don't know about anyone else, but I cannot afford $55.00 in check fees I never ordered! Yikes!

Oh, and I got turned down for disability, but that's another story.