We Went To The Mainland And Later We Got A Call From Maine

Living on Campobello Island means that we have to transit through the U.S. if we want to go to mainland Canada. It’s about a 60 mile drive one way. There were a couple of errands needing our attention today and one of them was getting my drivers abstract at the New Brunswick service office in St.Stephen. Since we still have no running water in the house we also needed to find a laundromat in either Calais,ME or St. Stephen, NB. Yet another errand was getting a couple of rock chips in our windshield fixed. Oh, and Bea needed a vacuum cleaner and a new iron as she had left both gadgets in our trailer. The drivers abstract I had to pay $20.00 for, (welcome to Canada) but at least I got it. Re. our laundry, we found out that 3 laundromats had gone belly-up in St. Stephen and now there was none at all. The only one in Calais had just moved and wasn’t really in operation yet. Can you imagine that you need to travel to another country if you want to do your laundry? You pretty well have to if you live in St.Stephen,NB. (or on Campobello Island) The visit at the auto glass company was very successful, as they fixed both rock chips, put new wipers (free promotion) on, AND washed all of the 3000mile-road grime off the van. They even wanted to vacuum the interior, but I prevented that, as Bea and Molly had taken to sit inside while the guys worked on the windshield. Besides, our next stop would be at Canadian aka Crappy Tire to buy a vacuum cleaner. And what better way is there to test the new gadget than cleaning a dirty car interior? While we were out and about today the sun was shining out of a (winter-)clear sky and being in the sun, I could actually walk around without my jacket. Yes, we had a nice day, and we sure felt that we deserved it.   I almost forgot to mention our visit at Wally World in Calais. We do have a second DSLR camera, a Canon EOS, which I will use while in Alberta. It’s an older model, but still functioning. But we have misplaced our card reader and I needed a new one. A helpful store associate was around and found it for us. At Wally World I rate that an extraordinary experience. :-) Still frozen lake in Maine While we were there we walked by the computer shelf and I must have mentioned something about my old rusty trusty fossil of Toshiba laptop which has suffered through a lot of brutal abuse lately. “The thing” is going into its 9th. year, which makes it a grampa between all laptops in the world. It has the old trusted Windows XP as operating system, and I think I mentioned it here earlier that I am scared to death by having to learn something like Windows 8.1. But looking at my fossil I can’t deny the fact that the passing of this device cannot be far away. There is no sound on it anymore, it can’t read any CDs or DVDs anymore, The power cord at the back barely hangs together and if i move the cord no power is supplied. The battery is shot too and won’t last one single minute.  And last but not least most recently I have to stick my little finger through a hole if I want to operate the on/off “button”. The real button which used to fill the hole as part of the keyboard, did not live through my abuse and disappeared after it broke off the little dinky plastic hinge. :-(  At least I have a chance to transfer my files If I get a new laptop now. It’ll be a whole lot better than losing it in an imminent looming total computer crash. Little “Icebergs” on a stretch of open water So, back to the said shelf at Wally World. We kinda hung around that spot for a while looking and studying until the very same helpful store associate showed up again. The one machine which interested me most was a 15.6 Toshiba at just under $400.00. When communicating our interest, the gal told us that she didn’t have any left. And there was no way that they could sell us the one we looked at. Now what exactly is the point of a piece of merchandise on display if it isn’t really available? Yet, another customer was interested in the same machine and had to listen to the same message.  While I had negotiated about the laptop, Bea had kept herself in the background and I had caught a curious glance from time to time. So we ended up leaving the store without a new laptop, but the visit had ripened  a final decision to go find a replacement for “The Thing”, and after I got home I went online to do some research. Pretty soon I found even better equipped Toshiba laptops at a lower price at BEST BUY. In fact, when I leave for Alberta on Tuesday, I will be stopping by in Bangor, ME to buy it and yet save $120.00 on the purchase. “Save Money – Live Better” Is that a Wally World slogan? :-) Back at home I was just checking out things on “The Thing” when the phone rang. Caller display (yup, it was finally available) showed a Maine number. It turned out to be a dear neighbour who has a summer house here on the island. They had read the blog that we were in dire straits with respect to house features like running water. They also thought we were sitting in a cold house. So they offered us their island home to be comfy in. Wine and candles would be available for spending cozy evenings and a hot shower would do us good.  I am not often speechless, but such considerate neighbourly thinking was almost doing it for me. Yeah- the house is heated and we would be welcome to use it. Thank you Jim and Linda for your offer. If things would get worse around here we sure would move over, but our furnace is running, even if it’s behaving erratically, and we do have water, though it is not running water. Thanks again friends, you are so wonderful! And now I have blabbered enough about things which, I take it, won’t even interest you. Have a great evening, night or morning, or what ever it is when you are stopping by. Oh…and THANKS!