My poor old workhorse of a computer. A Hewlett-Packard desktop that has been with me through thick and thin. Struggling now to fulfill its commitment to our mutually-agreed satisfaction. Constantly on call and prepared to do my bidding. Except ... when it won't ... because it can't. Another dire episode yesterday. It crashed. Froze. 

I use Mozilla Firefox as my search engine. Even though right from the beginning -- likely ten years ago -- I assigned Firefox to the position of default, for the past year or so Microsoft Edge has tried to muscle in. It interferes with Firefox and with my intention to use it. And I suspect it's also the source of my problems altogether. I'm a timid user, who will experiment sometimes but avoid taking any bold action.

Mostly because I'm a simple novice. Anything that happens of an extraordinary nature and I'm stumped. I fiddle about trying to understand and to take steps to minimize conflict, and it hasn't helped much, lately. It's frustrating to see that computer in distress; time-wasting and irritating. It does try, though.

I tried too, yesterday. Beginning with closing the system down, then firing it up again. Blast! Worse than ever; it distorted the programs I was using and left me frantic with frustration. So I closed it down again, and this time shut off the surge protector and left it for about a half-hour before turning everything on again. No dice. Finally resorted to shutting things off at the modem level and just left it. 

When it was turned back on again, the computer woke up with the realization that something was seriously wrong. So it set about advising me that it was looking into internal matters, scrutinizing everything, correcting, putting things to rights. It took awhile. And then it suggested I might try turning it on again and see how things went from there. To my utter delight, they went well; everything went as it should; no more distortion, no more freezing. This has happened before. It'll happen again.

Do I want to replace this computer? No. I shudder to think of setting up another computer. Today, it's been slow going but moderately responsive. Mozilla still 'failing to respond', while Microsoft Edge does and makes me shut it off before things will slowly return to functionality. 

Other things are normal in this household. As has become our late-summer, hot-weather routine we were out early with Jackie and Jillie this morning tramping through the ravine trails. Another 30C,  high humidity day. Lots of sun but lots of wind too, thank heavens. We encountered the usual suspects, about a half-dozen others out on the forest trails. 

Someone who we've seen on occasion and who we're not entirely certain has all her marbles accounted for, stopped us at one juncture to shrilly advise us to 'watch our dogs'. She had seen, she averred, a coyote when she was out yesterday. This is a quite strange-behaving woman and we don't tend to have any but a nodding recognition with her. If it is true that they've returned, we will indeed have to watch Jackie and Jillie, to the extent that they'll have to be 'walked' through the ravine with us, on leash, a prospect that does not give us much joy.

In mid-afternoon we decided it was time to get out to do our weekly grocery shopping. We're back to normal in the sense that we no longer feel it to be a health-safety requirement to get to the supermarket just as they open at 8:00 a.m. And now that we've returned to shopping at the time we're most accustomed to, we still haven't returned to normal, since there's nothing 'normal' about the necessity to wear a mask, but it has without doubt of necessity become the new 'normal'.

We've found the store interior no more crowded now than when we'd shop early in the morning. But we find it infinitely more personally congenial to shop when the store personnel we've long been familiar with are on duty. It's good to see them all again. And it's particularly good to see smiling, friendly attitudes and faces. No more moody, grudging service and resistance to the civility of courtesy. 

It irritated the early-morning cashiers to be at work in the early hours, we feel, either that or they're just a curmudgeonly crew, bad-tempered and unwilling to be pleasant to others. My habit of filling up a bag with canned food for the food bank seemed to bother them. That we'd ask them to dump the contents of the bag, put them through the cash, and replace them in the bag while we're packing away our own food to take home seemed to infuriate some of the early-morning cashiers. 

The afternoon staff quickly and genially put the cans of tuna, baked beans, soup and boxes of noodles with cheese back into the bag for us that is meant to be deposited for the food bank, while we're busy filling up our plastic carryalls and bags with our shopping. And all is well.