"N"-less

Some weeks go by very uneventful. Other weeks, like this week, it seems that I am God's personal Jester.

I went through my morning routine like normal. Cleaned my house and everything was dandy. Then, I get a wild hair in my butt to vacuum off my laptop computer. It was going well at first, but then my HIGHLY expensive Kirby Vacuum system (expensive as in more than $2,000) decided it would turn against me. Slidding the vacuum attachment along the keyboard, it stopped itself at the letter "n." Then I hear a "clump-clink-clank" go down the hose.

I said to myself, "NO IT DID NOT!"

Upon shutting the vacuum off and lifting the attachment off of it's new favorite meal (the keyboard), I discovered that the darn vacuum ate my letter "n."

I was calm at first, thinking "no big deal, I know where the 'n' is at." So I took apart my vacuum, and took off the 99.997% allergen filtered bag that weighs 3 pounds at least when it's empty (the bag, not the vacuum....heavy bag) and wrapped my face in a wet towel so I didn't breath in all the mites and dust it had collected in the last 3 weeks.

I found that their 99.997% allergen filter bag was almost inpenetrable. It took me 30 minutes to empty that bag (if it wasn't so expensive to buy another bag, I would have cut it open). My first shift through of the dusty little bunnies (wearing 2 plastic bags as my gloves) left me with nothing other than lots of dust, crayons, some paper, candy wrapper, and some pine needles from the Christmas tree. I then went on to flip the bag inside out, shaking the last bits of dust bunnies out onto the driveway. I found no letter "n."

I shifted through the pile of dust again and again. Each time breaking the little clumps into smaller clumps, each time feeling more for something flat and square. Each time failing to find anything.

At this point, I thought maybe I imagined the letter "n" missing (happens sometimes), so I went back to check the laptop. Sure enough my sanity was proven with the empty space between the letters "m" and "b."

So I went back outside again and checked again, and again, and again. I was about to give up, but then I remembered that I have a stubborn streak and with that I took off my wet towel tied around my face and my plastic bag gloves and decided to dive right in (you know, to do it right).

By this point I have spent an hour looking for my letter "n." Covered with dust and who-knows what, looking a bit albino-ish, I thought maybe I should clean up....but not before one last scan through of the thin dusty spread along the driveway. So I scanned, slowly, and stubbornly, I scanned.

There, as white as I was, I saw one-third of my letter "n", then I found another third. Having the two-thirds in my ashy hand I thought it was ok to give up since I found the majority of it. Logic also told me that finding it in pieces ment that it's broken.

So I cleaned up, got Sony on the phone and requested to buy the letter "n" for my Vaio Notebook. They said, "What?!?!" So I told them how my vacuum turned against me (jealuously I presume as I use the laptop more than the vacuum). They did their best to help me and transfered me from one person to another. I didn't understand why the sales people were so confused, surely, there has to be others out there that looses just one letter, but that would be me assuming that I'm part of the normal population.

I finally got a guy who informed me that they simply do not contact Japan for single letters. (I don't see why not, seems reasonable to me...for repair shops and such) Instead, he told me that I would have to purchase the whole keyboard and replace the keyboard. I stared at my laptop and tried to figure out how just the keyboard section is replaced and not the whole base...I mean, if it's just the keyboard section, would they send me it letter by letter, button by button, piece by piece? I just couldn't figure out how it is done in one piece without replacing the base of it. So, naturally I asked him. Either he didn't know, or he was annoyed. He told me that if I didn't know I would have to take it to a repair shop and have them do it. I thanked him for his time and hung up.

There have been many times when things I have bought/own suddenly misses a piece of it. Being that I think it's a bit ridiculous to replace the whole keyboard (I have the rest of the letters and they work just fine), I'm going to handle this as I do in my similar past situations.

I'm going to find a floor model from a store and take the piece that I need. And so I do not repeat this mistake, I'm keeping the vacuum and the laptop separated since they obviously have issues with one another and I don't need the laptop to retaliate against the vacuum.