An Explaination.

So, my last post promised that I would begin posting more regularly. 13 days ago. Yikes. I feel compelled to make excuses offer up an explaination. So here you go - a list of reasons I have been on a posting hiatus:

1. Life was getting the best of me.
   Or, to put it more accurately, I was finding myself overwhelmed and struggling to muddle through each day. By the time I came home each night, I was drained.
   
   
2. Refering back to number one, I had nothing left to pour out. I wanted to - wanted to pursue my assignment from the Psalms, wanted to share some of the things that have been rising up within. But there was just an... absence. Of motivation, of strength, of words.
   
3. Embarrasment. Having stepped away from my assignment, and broken my commitment, I was embarrassed to post. Which is silly - this is my blog, and whatever I post or do not post is up to me. And I want it to be "real" - an example of what it's really like to walk this Christian walk. Part of that "reality" is to let you (my readers) see me fail, and then pick myself up and keep going.
   
   
4. Time. I haven't had much of it to spare.
   
   
5. My husband's cat Bayleigh. Pictured over there --> on the right sidebar. Last week Friday (so 8 days ago), she came into the bathroom at about 11:00 PM as I was getting out of the tub, and made it abundantly clear that she was not at all okay. Called her vet, left a message with the answering service. Then called every other vet in the area hoping to find someone who would/could see her.
   
   Took her in at 7:30 the next morning, found out she had a bad bladder infection. They gave her some good drugs, lots of fluids, and informed us that she also had a pyometra (infected uterus) and needed surgery first thing Monday morning. We took her home in between, and babied her.
   
   Surgery Monday went fine, she came home Tuesday, and has been quickly (and sleepily) recovering ever since.
   
   
6. A nasty, nasty computer virus. Yep, somehow, somewhere, I picked one up. In spite of running Norton Antivirus non-stop. Well, non-stop until my subscription expired 12 days ago. Two days before the virus showed up. Entirely coincendental, I'm sure. Or not.
   
   Seriously. It was a real pain to get rid of. First step was to renew my Norton subscription. Which I did. Twice. Whoops. The refund from the second purchase will go through in 5-10 days, or so I was told when I spoke with one of their representatives. I'd like it faster, but I can't complain. It's not like it's their fault I was so impatient that I placed the order twice, convinced the first one didn't go through.
   
   Back to the virus. I was alerted to its presence about a week ago, when a large red circle with an "X" in the middle showed up in my system tray. It kept randomly generating a pop-up informing me that my computer was infected and I should click the link to download removal software. Yep - I got the infamous "Windows 2009 Security Update" virus. Fortunately, I knew better than to click the pop up. I also know enough to disconnect the network cable.
   
   After updating Norton, I realized that his obnoxious little virus prevents Norton from being able to open. Not being very programming-savy, I opened my task list and watched it as I tried opening Norton over and over. I finally noticed that each time, a task would pop up for about 3 seconds, and then disappear, and Norton would quit loading. So I finally got the bright idea to kill that task as soon as it popped up. And viola! Norton loaded.
   
   I figured my problem was resolved. Ran the full scan, which took most of the night (I slept while it worked). The program disappeared from my system tray, the task was gone from the task list. All was well.
   
   Or not. When I restarted my computer, the program promptly reappeared and began incessantly reminding me to download a "removal program." I pulled the network cable again. Looked at my task list - found the tasks that were new (yes, I am enough of a geek to be very familiar with which tasks should be on that list and which ones don't belong). Using my phone (because the computer was not connected), I browsed Microsoft's process library for the tasks in question (braviax.exe).
   
   I was bitterly disappointed less than thrilled with the description on the entry retrieved: "This is a process." Ya think? Very helpful, eh?
   
   I found a techie forum, filled with big words I don't understand, and instructions that were written in some foreign language. Or maybe it really was English, and I'm just not cut out to run with the techies. Either way, the instructions were almost useless. Except the part that listed the two search terms to use when removing the braviax virus from your registry. Which is not something I'd recommend doing if you're not used to checking and editing your registry, since you can totally mess up your computer doing it.
   
   After finding and removing all instances of "braviax" and "cru629" from my registry, I restarted my computer, expecting that dreaded red circle to reappear. It didn't. I re-ran my full system scan - Norton found nothing. I opened internet explorer. Still no sign of it. So I restarted it again. Nope, nada.
   
   I've been waiting for it to reappear for several hours now, and it seems that it's gone for good.
   
   I like winning.