It was a really gorgeous morning out, while I was doing my rounds.

The trees were covered with frost – but only the tops! 😀

It was not a very productive day today, unfortunately. I think I spent too much time on the computer yesterday, leaving me with a weird headache all night, making it difficult to sleep. I was also getting up to check the computer to monitor a download. I wanted to use the electronic files to type out my defense response to the suit our vandal has filed against us. They are available in Word documents, but I allowed my subscription to MS Office lapse, long ago. I decided to start that up again.

The first fight was trying to go through the process of paying for it, which kept looping back to the step one, every time I tried to use my Debit Visa. I finally started up a chat request for assistance.

It took over an hour for someone to respond.

I had no idea there was an Xbox launch that day. 😀

He was very helpful. It turned out there was a whole bunch of stuff needing to be updated, but my card kept getting declined. That’s why it was looping when I tried before. All he could see at his end was that it had something to do with it being a Debit Visa, instead of a regular credit card (I haven’t had a credit card for many years). I finally used the card for an account I have in a different bank, and it worked just fine.

So that took about 2 hours in total.

Then I had to download it. A 10 gig download, on satellite. After another couple of hours, I think it got to almost 40% before it completely stalled. It decided my computer wasn’t online. Our signal may indeed have kicked out; it does that fairly regularly, but our systems log on again automatically, and it typically is working again so quickly, whatever we are working is not affected much. Whatever happened, the download just died. I finally had to end-task it and tried again. It was still frozen. In the end, I had to restart my computer, then start the download all over again.

It still took most of the night, but it worked!

Today, I spent time time getting the various parts of the suite set up, then started working on my response. When looking up the form online, I found a similar one that could be used.

Defense and counterclaim.

!!

If we were under different circumstances, I could counterclaim for all the stuff that disappeared from here that we know is at our vandal’s place. Except 1) it happened before we moved here, so I don’t actually know much about what has gone missing and 2) this all belonged to my mother, so I can’t make any claim for it, nor would I be able to claim on her behalf. At least, not for this.

I’ve been talking to my brother, however, and he has a much better idea of what has gone missing, so he agreed to start a list, including estimated value. I may not be able to claim it, but I can include it. It actually fits in with the email I am including to show he could have taken stuff he claims as his own at any time, if he had only produced proof of ownership.

Well, I got a partial list today, and I must say, I was shocked. I knew a lot was taken, but I was still not prepared for this!

Almost $45,000 worth of stuff has been taken from here – and that’s just the stuff he knows of, and has remembered so far.

Looking at the list, I found myself thinking just how much easier our job of taking care of this place could have been, these past few years! We wouldn’t be having to scrounge through the junk for whatever isn’t too badly damaged, for starters. And the tools!! Oh, my goodness! I had no idea many of them were even here in the first place.

By the time I finished reading the list, the trees were not the only things that were frosted!

The Re-Farmer