Learning Curve

   "For the Lord God is our sun and our shield. He gives us grace and glory. The Lord will withhold no good thing from those who do what is right." Psalm 84:11

  My new laptop came without Word, the writing program. While I am able to create blogs on the Blogger platform, Word is a program vital for a writer. This morning began as an adventure into techie stuff.

  It was easy to find the Microsoft Office Suite I was looking for. Basically, you buy the package, download it and voila! There you have it. What irked me is Canadian websites and shopping opportunities were three to four times the price of US online shops even with taking the exchange rate into consideration! So I bought it from the US.

  Part of me, the one that is still wrapping my head around virtual purchases of virtual products, was skeptical about the whole process. I did use an official Microsoft store just to be safe. Safe and successful. Oh, and relieved the moment the Word icon appeared in my taskbar. It ended up being a whole lot easier than anticipated. It's a one and done.

  

  I haven't had much time to play around with this machine. It seemed to be lacking the little pictures of the sites visited the most, especially the Gmail one. Google is my friend even if it's called Edge. I wanted to have a quick shortcut to Gmail rather than going on line, finding the login...talk about impatient! 

  Long story short, I now know how to add icons to my taskbar! There's one for Gmail, Blogger and the public website readers can see. Must say I am feeling pretty proud of myself. 

  For sure there are people out there who would smile and wink at my ignorance but for the most part, my laptop is a fancy typewriter and that's about all.

  It's raining, heavily at times today. The spring peeper frogs started their nightly chorus earlier this week. It means spring is rapidly unfolding. Then there's a male robin who leaves me wondering if his brains haven't gotten scrambled somewhere along the line.

  My neighbours have a shiny, stainless steel chimney for their woodstove. This fellow has spent hours attacking his reflection, trying to drive the interloper from his territory. He has been doing this for days now. It's a wonder he isn't exhausted. I think it's the same bird that attacked my bedroom window the other morning. 

  Funny story: my housemate, her sister and I had arrived home late from a weeklong trip to the Dominican Republic. I was roused by what I thought was someone repeatedly opening and closing the dresser drawers in the other room. To be honest, it left me rather annoyed, having only had a few hours sleep but when I walked into the living room, the two of them were sitting quietly. Talk about being confused!

  The drawer scraping noise continued until I opened my bedroom curtain. Mr. Robin's wings beating at the window screen made the drawer scraping noise. I don't know who was more startled, him or me! Thankfully, the chimney is keeping him occupied so there hasn't been a repeat performance.

  This ole gal needs her sleep. 

  The trip was lovely. Sun, sand, beach and great food. There was even a miracle.

  I wear a necklace to help counteract the effects of EMF's. It never comes off because it truly helps. As I sat down after swimming, I was thoroughly dismayed to discover it was gone.

  After retracing my footsteps to the water's edge, I looked at the waves with a heavy heart.

  "Lord?" I thought, "The odds of me finding it are a gazillion to one, but You can."

  I returned to the beach chair and sat down.

  Within moments my friend cried out, "Don't move!" She bent over and pulled the half buried necklace out of the sand at my feet. 

  I have no words to describe the gratitude, the comfort this little miracle has poured into my heart on so many levels. That will be for another day.

  May God bless you with your own miracles, big and small.