So, the six months were up yesterday. Kaspersky warned me my Mac was unprotected. I didn’t click on the renew now button. I closed the window. Instantly, Kaspersky warned me it had detected a Trojan virus. It even roared like a Russian bear.

I couldn’t find Kaspersky’s uninstall command. I had to move the application to the trash. Instead of leaving my MacBook in a dignified manner, Kaspersky behaved like a jealous ex-boyfriend who parks his car across the street and watches you with your new beau. Kaspersky refused to leave.

I’ll bet our government had the same problem with it. So, I had to use a product removal tool that I had a heck of a time downloading. No doubt Kaspersky knew what was coming and did its best to prevent its eviction. Finally, I was able to download and activate the tool and it worked–or so I thought. Even then Kaspersky’s icon loaded when I booted up the Mac.

Once I was pretty sure I had banished Kaspersky, I installed Norton Internet Security, and suddenly my internet browsers ceased to function. They couldn’t open any web pages. It had to be Kaspersky’s doing. It was as if Kaspersky was saying, if I can’t have your Mac, no one can.

Norton alerted me that my Mac was at risk. I ran Norton’s fix now, scan, and update features. Norton failed to fix the sabotage. It admitted defeat.

I tried once more to rid the Mac of Kaspersky’s remnants. I deleted it from notifications. Voila! I launched Safari and by some miracle it worked! For how long, I have no idea. I’m taking my Mac to the Geeks to see what can be done.

Other irreparable damage had been done, however. Thanks to Kaspersky the cyber stalker, I missed out on the Cyber Monday deals. Talk about Russian intrusion, I wonder if I could persuade Mueller to investigate Kaspersky.

I started out with clearing away the piles of stuff on every flat surface. That included the floor, the largest flat surface in the room and my favorite choice for temporary storage.

I couldn’t bear to part with my several years’ worth collection of writers’ journals. Who knows when one of those articles will become relevant for my work in progress? Sadly, they were spilling out of the converted locker room locker where they were originally stored and making a disorganized mess look messier still. I had the brilliant idea of switching them out with storage drawers that were on the closet shelves. Lots more room to stack them there. I was so proud of my ingenuity that I rushed to inform MG. He said, “Yeah, but are you ever going to read any of them again?”

Since I barely have time to read all my email every day, I had to admit that his observation was entirely incisive—the party pooper. Maybe someday I’ll feel secure enough to break the hold the journals have on me—but not that day.

As I plowed through additional closet shelves and into file drawers, I discovered many more Items that had aged beyond their expiration date while in storage. Numbered among them were years-old calendars and telephone directories, ancient printer cables, old keyboards and computer mice, and outdated computer programs—Windows based programs that dated way back earlier than 2011 when I switched to the MacBook Pro. Some were pre-turn of the century—on 3½ inch floppy discs no less. Worthless, of course.

I yanked open another storage drawer to find a trove of 3½ inch floppy discs. It was a pitiful sight. The poor little things were orphaned back up discs from days of yore when I owned a PC mini tower, which now resided in the PC graveyard in Microsoft heaven. The only reason the discs were still in my possession was that I hadn’t opened that drawer in at least a decade. I was oblivious to their existence in all that time, and in all that time they had outlived their usefulness. They had to go. I put them in the toss sack, that was next to the file sack, that was next to the keep sack, that was next to the shred sack.

The Saturday before Mother’s Day, I went to the bank to update my accounts following my little local bank being acquired by a national behemoth bank. While there, I got some items out of my safe deposit box. The box seemed crowded, so I emptied it out to see if I could rearrange things in a neater fashion, an unprecedented action for me to take. I reached all the way to the back of the box, the part that is covered, and drew out a disc wallet containing eleven 3½ inch floppy discs. These were backup discs as well, and the safe deposit box was where I stored them off site, replacing them once a week with updated discs. It was a process I abandoned when I got my first laptop with its CD-ROM drive and no floppy disc drives. I forgot all about the discs in the safe deposit box.

After I added the eleven safe deposit box floppies to their siblings in the toss sack, a spark of creativity lit a fire under my decluttering drudgery. I was unpinning old notes from my cork bulletin board when the inspiration came to me. I would repurpose those old 3½ inch floppy discs. I would save them from the landfill and use them to brighten up my office instead. The plan is to take all these colorful 3½ inch floppy discs and give the bulletin board a makeover by gluing them to the board’s wooden frame.

All that is left to do now is persuade MG to let me use his workshop and maybe some of his tools to embark on my project.  Hmmm…  That may prove to be the most difficult part of the project.

After the reunion ended, we stayed on for a family visit, mainly to help MG’s older sister in her quest to downsize from a three-bedroom split level to a one-floor condo. An additional quest involved persuading her to be more active in communicating with the rest of the family via email and on Facebook. She needed a device that was more user-friendly and more mobile than her old PC minitower so she would be more apt to use it. To that end, we [that is, I] helped her shop for and select an iPad.

That shopping trip to Best Buy was personally devastating to me. When we approached the Apple product center, I felt the  stirrings of new tech lust. There on the counter were shiny new Apple devices. All models were newer and more up to date than my own. They silently mocked me while I drooled over them.

It was torture and so unfair. The iPad Air and iPad Air2 were thinner and lighter than my seemingly ancient iPad 3, but had the same size screen. Forget MG’s big sis, I wanted one for myself, but somehow I managed to get my tech lust under control. I smiled through my envy and helped my sister-in-law select the model–iPad Air or iPad Air2–that best met her needs. Drat.

The situation worsened. I foolishly allowed myself to cast my gaze upon a new MacBook. In inquiring about the new MacBook and the MacBook Air, I mentioned to the Apple Rep that I had a MacBook Pro. He responded that while Apple still makes and sells them, the MacBook Pros are older technology.

Older technology? His pronouncement cut me to the quick. I was in possession of older technology, blithely unaware that my MacBook Pro was yesterday’s news. The horror.

My sister-in-law purchased a shiny new better-than-mine iPad Air and we headed home for her first lesson. Since MG was woefully unqualified to teach her how to use it, that task fell to me. Big Sis did so much better than MG at learning to use the iPad, it’s tough to believe they’re related.

I’m back home now, writing this post on my iPad 3. I wish I could say that I managed to get past my envy and new tech lust, but since I’m sitting here wishing I were writing this on an iPad Air2, we’d all know I was fibbing. I want an iPad Air2, and I want the new MacBook. Unfortunately, instant gratification is off the table. It’s already past my birthday and past Mother’s Day. If only Christmas wasn’t so dang far off. Drat, drat, drat!