I have told you before that technology hates me. Like, bad.  I pick up a phone, and it loses service. I sit in front of a computer, and it completely quits working. Since I’ve been at my current job, (for a year and a half) I’ve gone through 3 computers.

3 computers. One which was brand new.

I’m sure my bosses think I’m on porn sites all day contracting computer AIDS, purposely sabotaging my computers so I have an excuse not to work. In actuality, I have NO FREAKING IDEA how or why these computers keep breaking on me. I treat them well. I run anti-virus programs regularly, and I’m very careful about what sites I go to. The only reasonable explanation that I can think of, is that I have been possessed by a frequency demon. I’m not sure it is actually a frequency demon. It may be a computer demon or a technology demon, but I personally think frequency demon has a better ring to it.

But I digress.

I will state for the record now, I am in no way responsible for my current state of, yet again, being without a work computer.

I’ll start from the beginning. (Imagine the following told to you in a ghost story voice. It’s not the most exciting story ever… but I think that will help.)

Last Friday was a normal day at work. It was rainy, and I was planning on leaving early to head to Austin to see my little sister.

As usual, my bosses left (even earlier) to go either hunting, golfing, or fishing… I forget which- on this dark and foreboding day. As usual, I cleared my internet history and shut my lap top down before I headed out.

*Side note- I actually have two work computers. My desktop has Vista, and the marketing software I use, naturally does not work on Vista. Therefore, my bosses begrudgingly had to get me a second computer to use for marketing purposes. A computer which I need in order to get anything done.

Monday morning I came back into work. It was still raining, and I was in a particularly foul mood. The bosses were going to be out until Wednesday, but regardless, since I had left early on Friday, I had plenty of work to do. The early morning was business as usual. I updated the blog, checked my email, and caught up on my friend’s weekends via facebook. Around 10:00 am I turned around to start up my laptop and get started on some mailings.

DUN DUN DUN….

The laptop…. was gone.

At this point I actually didn’t think much of it, and I was a teensy bit excited that I DID have an excuse not to spend the rest of my day swamped with the monotonous task of sending out mailings. The bosses have taken the laptop with them on their hunting trips before, (as my screen saver slide-show of dead deer proved) and I figured that they had taken it again to showcase their killings. Plus, the case was gone- so I was confident that they had packed it up, because the case was nowhere near the actual computer. So I spent the next two days outwardly cursing my bosses for leaving me bored and with nothing to do, but inwardly thanking the heavens that I had extra time to do as I pleased. By late Tuesday though, I was as bored as I have ever been on a 13 hour road trip with my parents. I was racing to answer the phone. Giving insurance quotes never seemed so fun.

First thing Wednesday morning when the bosses returned I popped right in their office to ask for the laptop.

Boss: Distracted that I’d come in without knocking “Ummm… OK.. we’ll get it for you.”

I returned to my desk and about 5 minutes later I was called back into their office.

Boss: “Did you say something about the laptop?”

Me: “Umm yeah… I need it back, so I can… do some work.”

Boss: “Well where is it?”

Me: “Uh… umm… you… have it?”

Boss: “Noooooooo…..”

By this time, everyone in the office (all 6 of them) were up and in the bosses office, eager to know what we were discussing. I explained how I thought that they had taken the computer to put their pictures of bloody deer on, and they acted surprised at the prospect that I would think they would do such a thing. There was no sign of foul-play. No broken windows. Nothing else was missing. We looked in every drawer, under every desk, and in every corner of our tiny office. They asked me about five times if I was sure I didn’t accidentally take it.

Oh sure, I packed a laptop and carried it out without realizing it.

Did I? I seriously started questioning my sanity. I clearly remember leaving the office and driving straight to Ft. Worth to meet up with my friend LA, and we headed to Austin as soon as I got there. But what if I had a crazy drunk ambien moment and drove back to Dallas, stole the computer, and drove back to Austin without even remembering it?

Ok, even I am not that crazy.

The bosses called the cops and talked in length to the owner of the building. They all concluded that, besides the cleaning ladies who the building-owner fully trusts, there is no way that anyone could have gotten into our office without a key.

Its been nearly a week now and there are no new leads. Oh sure, there have been the daily jokes… “So Carissa, if you just bring the laptop back- no charges will be made.” Or the ever so clever, “So, hows that laptop treatin you? You sure were smart in stealing your own work computer to have an excuse not to work.”

I’m over this shit. Even if they decide to get me a new computer, it will take me at least a week to get everything set up again… that is if my software is even compatible.

So I’ve decided to take matters in my own hands. Seriously, I’m thinking of coming to work tomorrow donning a trenchcoat and very large pipe. I WILL get to the bottom of this.

In other words… To whoever is out there, typing away on my work laptop. I hope you are enjoying yourself right now. Because in the very near future (*shaking fist) “I’M GONNA GET YOU!!!!!

I am planning on making one minor adjustment though. I think I’ve been holding back a little, for fear of who may be reading this- and from this moment on- I’m making a vow to blog like no one’s reading. Which should be easy, since at this point- that’s pretty much true.  I also have been pretty bad at writing in my own personal journal, so I’ll use this opportunity to write the stuff that I would write only to myself. If that makes sense.  So, if you don’t give a crap about what happened in my day, then go away. I’ll get over it.

So far, this week has been pretty uneventful. I had kind of fallen off the working out wagon for a couple of weeks, and now I’m back. If you don’t know, I have lost about a bit of weight over the last 2 years- (96 lbs, but who’s counting?) and now I’m not so focused on losing more- but I am bound and determined to finally tone up. It’s either that or I need to find a new job where I actually have health insurance that would cover a tummy tuck that would probably rival that of Kate Gosselin. Note: The previous sentence is the only time in my life where I will ever compare any part of my life to that of any Gosselin.

The last 3 days I’ve actually run-walked (mostly walked) at least 5 miles, and did weights and crunches… and my body feels it. Even my hands are sore from gripping the top of the treadmill so hard. Seriously, it hurts to type. But I’m not risking falling off the treadmill again.

I did have a bit of an unusual situation yesterday. You know how you can put the treadmill on different settings like trainer, fat burner, cardio etc.? Well I usually don’t like to do those settings because they require you to enter your weight, and I don’t particularly want the douche-bag on the weight machine behind me to know just how much more I weigh than him-not that I care what he thinks. I have actually gotten over anyone judging me at the gym. You kind of have to when you accidentally wear a pair of light gray leggings to spin class. (Don’t try and tell me your butt doesn’t sweat…)

Anyway, yesterday I decided to try the fat burner setting on the treadmill. The other problem I have with the settings is that I’ve never had any luck with machines being able to read my heart rate. They either tell me my heart is erratically going from 150 beats per minute to 25 beats per minute, or that I have no heart beat at all. So I was pretty surprised yesterday when I noticed that there was a steady 123 where the words “Need HR” are usually blinking. It didn’t strike me as unusual that I had already met my target heart rate within my first 3 steps on the treadmill.

“Yay, target heart rate! I’m not dying of heart failure!,” were my thoughts, since usually I see my heart rate bottoms out at 14 beats per minute.

As I reluctantly switched the speed from 3.5 to 4.2, I kept a watchful eye on my heart rate. It stayed right around the 123 mark, which was interesting- but I didn’t really think too much about it. I was just happy to know that I had a heart.

After a few minutes I decided to really throw my figurative balls to the wall and raise the speed up to a slow jog, which is the only form of running I will attempt. I watched my heart rate go down to 121 then right back up to 123. It was around this point that I realized that I was running, and my hands weren’t even on the handles.

“Holy crappola! My heart must be so strong that the machine can feel it vibrate through my body!”

There was a short time when my heart rate disappeared completely. I slowed my pace and tried to put my hands on different parts of the treadmill, since I knew through the course of the workout my hands had been anywhere from the handles, to the sides (to hold myself up,) to the top of the treadmill. Just  as the person occupying the treadmill next to me returned from getting a quick drink of water, I quit fondling my treadmill and what do you know? My heart beat returned at about 67 beats per minute and gradually returned to the 123 mark.

I usually like to keep tabs on the time and calories burnt of the people around me (I know it’s not a competition,) so it is kind of surprising that I hadn’t noticed the bald guy next to me had the exact same exact heart rate as I did, until I was cooling down.

You probably think I have something wrong with me but I didn’t make the full connection until I was off the treadmill and the still machine was still showing my heart rate.

Damn digital heart rate monitors.  The only thing I can really say about the fact that I had spent an entire hour on the treadmill focused on watching my heart rate-which was actually the heart rate of the guy beside me- is that it worked as a good distraction. I guess it’s still up in the air as to whether or not I have a heart…