Aches and Pains

My knee is KILLING ME. The right one, not the left one (the one that was all screwed up from the skiing oops I had in Utah). They started hurting after the first mile, but I kinda ran it off, so by the time I was done, it wasn’t that bad.
Turns out I had to mow the lawn as soon as I was done. No biggie, right? Usually. The grass was longer (thicker) than it seemed and the blades were set so low I could hardly push it DOWNHILL, forget uphill. I wasn’t going to raise it and have to mow everything TWICE, so I dealt with it. I looked like an absolute dork trying to wrestle with this thing that couldn’t have weighed more than twenty pounds (and nearly twice that when the bag was full [which I had to empty probably twelve times]), but I got ‘er done.
The lady at the hall yesterday: long series of circumstances as to why she’s been wanting to come for a while but can only now come to an afternoon bookstudy; been studying for a while, yadda yadda yadda, very professional type lady, clearly a devoted student, etc. We got to talking (about everything, and discussed her situation, and it was good, because good people were there; I’ll give you details on it if you want them later) about her travels. Because of her husband’s employment, they got assignments throughout the world: Singapore, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Benin, and a few places in Europe. There were more, but those are the ones I remember. Obviously, I jumped on the opportunity to speak something with her, but all she spoke (aside from English) was Spanish, and the tiniest bit of Arabic. She told this story about how she had asked a professor or somebody about learning Arabic (I think she said this was in Bahrain) and the woman, very respectable, etc., said it would be a waste of time because nobody speaks classical Arabic, and she shouldn’t worry about it. Turns out they moved to Riyadh next, and she realized the whole “don’t learn Arabic, you won’t use it” shpiel was crap. She was disappointed. She explained her experiences living in Muslim countries and what life was like in the Nigerian bush, as they were not in big cities like Lagos. It was all fascinating. She said Singapore was amazing and it’s not at all difficult to live there, but that could be because her husband worked for a billion-dollar corporation that could shuffle them to and fro at the drop of a hat. Ain’t no thang. So we talked about travel, and the people, and a good time was had by all.
Still having issues with my computer, and H’n’B, maybe you can help me here. I’ve got this new notebook (actually Dad’s old Toshiba, but not an old Toshiba), and the hard drive was JUST replaced because the old one crashed. Yippee. Dad got a new machine and loves it, so I have this one. To work from it, we have to set it up on the server downstairs so I can sign in to the network and work off of that. That doesn’t conflict with being able to access my local hard drive, blah blah blah. They may have worked before, and I wish I could remember, but now my USB drives, (not 2.0) do not recognize (or are somehow blocking) any external storage device from functioning. When first connected, my MP3 player is recognized by saying “this device can perform faster, blah blah blah,” but is not seen by Windows Explorer, WMP, or the software that came with it. I cannot sync my digital camera or my palm to the notebook, BUT a keyboard and mouse I use thru USB, as well as the printer, work fine. It’s driving me crazy now. At first it was like, “eh, I’ll figure it out tomorrow; no big deal.” But now it is. I need more podcasts, and I can’t get them on my device. Yargh. More on something else later.