The Time I Almost Ruined Christmas

I’ve been absent from my blog for roughly fifteen days. It’s because I accidentally threw my laptop into a Christmas tree.

Yes, you read that correctly. Gather round the fire with a mug of hot cocoa, and let me tell you about the time I almost ruined Christmas.

I’ve been known to get pretty into storytelling, which is often accompanied by wild and unnecessary hand gestures to emphasize my main points. So one fine evening, I was attempting to vent my frustrations on the less-than-desirable-in-my-opinion plot points of a show I’d been watching on Netflix, while my laptop sat on a ledge near our Christmas tree. You can see how this would go wrong already.

Now, just for reference, our Christmas tree is a beautiful, vintage silver tinsel tree that in my opinion, is a direct portal for the spirit of Christmas to travel through into our home for the holidays.

Each year, my older brother and I cover the tree in 50’s era glass ornaments promptly after Thanksgiving, and the tree stays lit up and beautiful through the holiday season. It’s something I look forward to seeing each Christmas.

So you can imagine how appalled my family and I were, when, as I was dramatically telling my story, my hand flew out and knocked into my laptop, sending it flying into the Christmas tree. Several silver branches tumbled to the ground, sending quite a few glass ornaments to the hardwood floors, where they shattered into a million pieces, just like my spirit at that very moment.

There was a moment of silence as we all processed what had just happened, and I pulled together the courage to take a look at my laptop. It had landed on a Christmas present, and the screen was sticking straight up. It looked fine, so I carefully picked it up, avoiding the shards of glass that surrounded it.

Somehow, there was not a dent on it, so we began cleaning up the glass ornaments and reassembling the tree branches, which thank God were not broken. My mom assured me the broken ornaments were no problem, as she has boxes and boxes of glass ornaments stored in our basement, so despite the initial shock of the moment, it seemed as if everything would be alright.

I continued to watch Netflix on my laptop for a few hours that night, and woke up the next morning to write for an hour, as I do most mornings. My computer was functioning perfectly fine, and I was watching Netflix as I began to get ready for work when things went a little awry.

Out of nowhere, a white film covered my screen. It didn’t look like a brightness issue, but I tried adjusting the brightness anyways. Nothing. I thought it might go away if I plugged my charger in, which I did. That, for some reason, made the white film turn more orange than the Commander in Chief, which I know is hard to believe. I decided to try the turning it off and on again method, and when it powered back on, the screen was blank, with a few flickering strands of color running up and down the screen.

Definitely not a good sign. However, throughout it all, I could still hear the sounds of my Netflix show playing, so I suspected that the inner workings of the computer were just fine.

I brought it to a repair shop in St. Louis Park, where they quoted me $700 to fix the laptop, barely taking a look at it and telling me I’d have to replace the whole top of the laptop, not just the screen. That didn’t make sense to me, so I brought it to an actual Apple store (which, by the way, is challenging to do, as you need to make an appointment in advance, and they have very limited available time slots). The Apple employees actually took a look at my computer, and ended up telling me that they’d have to replace the LCD screen, which would cost $450.

Instead of paying $450 to fix a 5-year old laptop that was worth $900 in its prime, I plan to just purchase a new laptop. However, I’d like to be fiscally responsible and wait until the new year to purchase it, in hopes that I can write it off in the next tax year. So for now, I’ve hooked up my laptop to a monitor, which is projecting what my laptop screen should be. It’s fine for now, just not very mobile-friendly.

So that’s why I’ve been momentarily absent. However, stay tuned! I will be making my very first opinion post on this blog in the very near future!

In the meantime, connect with me!