That Old Black Magic

I have to be very careful. If I type too hard this computer shuts off and does a restart, losing, of course, everything written. We got this one, the Serracin's Samsung, cured of its pink screen to replace our deeply dead Dell, but it has some sort of short that causes it to blip off if treated to anything other than the gentlest touch. (Must be female. That would explain the pink screen problem in the first place.)

There is a Haitian influence here in Panama, especially on the Caribbean side, and it is this influence that played a part in our decision to not allow the Dell to remain dead. Against the advice of our computer guy, we had a friend replace the hard drive of the old Inspiron and now it only works if you recite the proper voodoo incantations and even then you can't say it's really working. It just sort of mimics a computer. Kind of like watching a zombie run the 100 yard dash. Records won't be broken. We are not sure what to do now, leave it alone and let it wander the night or get some high priestess to remove the curse and send it to a proper rest. I think we'll go with the latter and while we're at it, see it we can't get the bone rattling, snake handling, rooster sacrificing mama to find the person who is sticking pins in the dolls of our computers. We'll be happy to pay her in toads of lizards, we've got a yard full, because these are, Ive read, frequent ingredients in many a voodoo potient.

Meanwhile, when not dealing with the mumbo jumbo of high tech, and in our case the tech is clearly high on something, life goes on and is filled with the excitement and wonder of nature, like for instance, it's not raining today, and also the Joy Of this and that, Cooking, Sex and Living are winners while The Joy Of Texas Hold-em Strip Poker is surely on the way to the best of Republican families and here in Panama we have The Joy Of A New Bed. I mention this because we have not been lucky with beds. They are usually too hard or too soft or too inclined to promote dreams of drowning or ships of state sinking, the water beds anyway and we approached this one with trepidation, slippers and pajamas. Not to worry it turns out as this brand name unknown semi orthopedic queen size of the night seems to be just what the doctor would order if doctor's ordered beds. We have had three good nights of solid zzzz's in a row and as soon as we get the rest of the alphabet we'll be all set. There is, though, of late, a mid-nightly sleep interruptus by Gus insanely barking and scratching at the door to get at the toads who torment him from our patio. But that's not the bed's fault. That's just the high priestess reminding us she needs a payment. RTGFKAR's computer may hang in the balance.