Out of Ink

After a bike ride yesterday morning, the wind chill suggested I get my snow boots out of storage and look them over. They are not my favorite shoes, but excellent drawing material. Not a quick knock off like Squash or Beef Broth, but a getting acquainted drawing that took a couple of hours. With corrections still to be made, the drawing would have to wait. After lunch, Mice was my priority.

But Mice never happened. The painting got pushed aside when Honey's HP Four-in-one suddenly wasn't making copies from the copy bed. All he was getting were black ink soaked papers. The copier was bleeding. We lost half a cartridge finding out we weren't dreaming. The machine was broken. Being the in-house wonk, painting was out of the question.

After a lot of fooling around in properties certain I was just a click away from fixed--and then with HP on-line help, which wasn't--I called Malaysia and was on the phone for nearly an hour with a patient and polite techy who pin-pointed the problem. I needed a new light bulb. I said, 'Send me one. I'll put it in. Where does it go?' Big mistake. He didn't know. He'd ask his supervisor.


A half hour on hold wishing I wasn't on my cell phone, he was back. We had to take it somewhere locally to be repaired. It needed more than a bulb; it needed a new scanner assembly. He apologized profusely for the long phone call, praised me for how patient I'd been,(he was too polite to say dumb), and how terrible he felt that the machine was just ten months out of warranty and he couldn't send us a new one. Heavy sigh, I said goodbye. My ear was throbbing and Honey was whining. He was convinced his ink loss and copy problems were my fault. I printed too many weird photos on the Photosmart printer. Did you hear what I said? THE PHOTOSMART PRINTER. Tell me technology gone wrong can't spoil a person's day.

Our four-in-one, now a two-in-one, I scanned by hand a football photo taken by Senor Hector Gabino/El Nuevo Herald. I admired the photographer's tight composition. While Honey did the dinner dishes, I lightened up. I doodled the aggressive photo in ink.