Score a Billion for Self Relliance

Our Internet was acting wonky and when I checked all the external connections it all went kapute, phone included. Turns out our basement line was a little fragile and a couple of wires broke. I was sure we would have to replace it, but my mom called my brother - our guru of all things computer and electrical - and he told us we could fix it by stripping the wires. And we did it! And things actually work even better than before! We haz experience!

This is awesome not just because of the money we saved but also because we're a "handle it ourselves" bunch. Back before we got our new washer and dryer, whenever something went wrong with our old washer and dryer my mom would be the one to fix it (the new ones are more complicated so she has to call someone in, which means waiting nearly a week for someone to show up). I've always been in charge of dealing with the TV and computer. Getting Dish Network meant having to reconnect everything differently from how we had it, but the directions were completely useless. But I kept at it and through trial and error eventually figured out how it needed to go together.

So it's nice to have one more thing we know we can fix ourselves (but hopefully we won't have to).

Writing Discussion 3

Another two-fer.

How to survive a plateau ie where you cannot seem to move ahead
and think maybe it was a mistake.

and

What to do when you have a beginning and an end, and nothing really interesting as a middle.