In focus

It has been an expensive week.

Sometimes things happen that are out of our control and we are left with a bill to pay.

I replaced all of my tires, which was something I had budgeted for, but it still sucked, because tires aren’t cheap. My aging little car is a tad bit happier, but now something else is loose and I will have to take it in to be checked. I’m praying it’s not the struts or maybe it’s just my imagination...

Bigfoot, the only male cat I have, started acting weird. He always uses the litter box, but for some reason he was walking around randomly squatting, but nothing was coming out. I brought him in to the vet the next day and he had some blockage in his urethra. The vet literally squeezed the pee out of him, and man was it a lot! Bigfoot didn’t even fight it. It must have been a relief for him. After some fluids, pain meds, antibiotics and special food he seems to be improving. No more random squatting, and he’s acting normal again. So that was another unexpected bill.

I did have the money to cover it because I had some money saved up to get my hair done. I did have to forego the coloring portion of my appointment, but now I have a cool star shaved into the back of my head. I really love having short hair.

But none of that compared to the biggest expense that fell on me this week. I have a desktop computer at home that has been limping along for a while now. I use it for all of my video editing projects. I decided to wipe out the hard drive and reinstall my video editing software. This has worked for me for years...until now.

The computer was literally giving up on me. The software wouldn’t install correctly, and when it did, there were issues the company couldn’t fix because it was so old, they no longer supported it. This computer and software have gotten me through 10 years of demolition derby videos, enduro races, cat videos, historical videos and so much more. It was a sign that I needed to upgrade as nothing was working anymore. Crap.

I have video project deadlines that can’t wait for me to save up the funds to replace everything. I grabbed the dreaded “plastic” and headed to a large electronics store. Because I was just replacing the computer and not the monitor, that saved a few hundred dollars. But a new computer, keyboard and mouse (because my old ones wouldn’t work with anything newer), new video editing software, and a very large external hard drive to replace what was failing on me...you can imagine what that cost. Thank God for one year interest free...*sad sigh.* But with some projects coming up, it will pay itself off before the year’s end, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to do it.

It’s been a pretty sleepless week learning the functions of the new computer and where everything is located for the video editing software. It’s working great and I’m so happy it takes only seconds instead of hours for video clips to render. I can edit a lot faster now, too.

I also needed to upgrade the computer for another piece of software I will be getting in the very near future. It may have something to do with synchronizing Christmas lights to music....stay tuned!