Am I back? I hope to freaking goodness I'm back. Matt mailed me an XP disc, got it yesterday, Tom reformatted and installed for me today - and installed Ubuntu Studio (Linux for multimedia creation WOOOOO!), so I'll have that to play with as well. But for right now, started with Windows, because it's a bit less of a headache to get up and going. Got my Firefox, AVG, Kerio Sunbelt firewall, Winamp, iTunes, last.fm, uTorrent, divx, and, well, Guild Wars, as Tom finally convinced me to get a copy a month or so ago, and I play occasionally, because it's very pretty.
Windows Genuine Advantage still kicks me out - this key is a batch key, or something along those lines, and it won't let me register with it, BUT, the install had service pack 2 in with it, and really, that's all the updating I'd need it to do. Anything else is a smaller issue and I can probably handle it. And I can, y'know, login and things.. so we'll give it a few days to be sure, but it looks like Windows should be content enough to let me use it.

Here's hoping.

Tom's all excited to teach me 3D modeling, as I occasionally express an interest in it.. of course, he decides to teach me during a week when I'm *not* particularly interested, as I'm caught up in flute and a story idea and some drawing ideas just not, but.. I should learn anyway, and he already knows it's really just the basics I want to learn. I have no interest in animating. I just want to make a little room I can walk around in. :)

Apart from my computer being only vaguely usable, it's been a good week or so. Every morning this week, Tom and I have taken a nice walk into town, with the sunshine and the warm and the green leaves and flowers, as he's been applying to various places trying to get some work. He takes his five-hour course on Friday, and soon as that's over, he's lining up a driver's test, and then he can fiiinally take his new car out. Which'll be lovely, as, y'know, he's had it over a week and hasn't had a chance to even try it out. (I mean, he'll practice before the test, but he didn't want to start pestering someone to go out with him until he had a set date they needed to take him to the driving test.)

My lavender finally sprouted! All of my plants are up and I'm very happy, my African violets are blooming like crazy. It's very nice and warm out. Work is work, still not getting quite enough hours but I'm surviving anyway.. and now that my computer is (hopefully!!!) back for real, I can get cracking on my websites and things, so hopefully someone would like to pay me for making pretty things. :) I have some halfway decent ideas that I'm rather in love with kicking around my head just now, so I should have a reasonable bit of inspiration.