From yay to disappointment

I wish that had to do with hearing back on a submission. The limbo of not knowing is not a fun place.

Deep cleansing breath.

Today, the delivery truck pulls up and I'm jumping up and down because my laptop has safely arrived back home. The angels sang. The sun shone. I grinned from ear to ear.

I pull my beloved laptop from the box, untangle the charger and run upstairs for some long overdue bonding time. The computer boots up. Glee! All of my programs and settings are just as I left them. With no time to waste, I get comfy and do a little web surfing.

What? I should have been writing? Yes, probably, but I'd been doing that all morning on my desktop computer. My characters are demanding to be written, and I couldn't make them wait for the laptop. I'm well into chapter two of the sequel as of this afternoon and I'm quite excited about how its coming along.

With my celebratory web surfing cut short by having to get some work done--the kind that actually pays the bills--I plug the laptop in to charge and wander off.

Four hours later, I grab my thumb drive, ready to transfer the sequel back to its rightful place on the laptop. I open the laptop. (insert long string of profanity here) It hasn't charged. (insert cursing of repair workers) Why did I send it in the first place? It wasn't charging! I send the adapter. I sent the battery. They knew the issue.

Yes, I had a fine rant going by this point and felt that a customer support chat window just wasn't going to be a good option. I needed a live human. Not so that I could chew them out, but because it’s so much easier to be nasty through words on a screen. Since there are probably hundreds of these support people, the odds that I would connect with the one I really wanted to rant at were darn slim.

The helpful phone service person did far more testing than the online service person did and decreed that I needed to ship my beloved laptop back.

Disappointment.