Adventuring In My Own Way

Joanna Bourne, Historical Romance

I have a little machine called a Eufy that glides around my floors and picks up dog hair and cat hair from underneath the chairs and the bed. It’s like a roomba but cheaper. *

The cat and dog eye it with grave suspicion but it does not terrify them which is a good way to live one’s life.

Today my little machine friend managed to pull out one of the wires essential for the operation of my internet hook up.
When I could not connect to the net it was not immediately obvious which of the many possible problems was now mine. I have lots of cords behind the desk.

By dint of** brilliance and hard work I managed to spot which cord had been pulled from its proper
mooring. Yeah me.

But while I was crawling around on my hands and knees I noticed a UBS port on one of the black box thingums sitting about
that connected the router to an external hard drive.
I didn’t even know I could do that.***

So now I have wireless access to my Time Machine which I wanted all along.
I am doing backups automatically,
even though I am not adventuring with the Dr.
My life is bright and shiny and I feel very clever.

I have signed up for pottery wheel access. It starts tomorrow. I will now be both artistic and clever.

 * Here’s a video of a cat on a roomba. It is not my cat. My cat is smarter than that.

** The dint in “by dint of,” you will be pleased to know, is from Old English dynt “blow dealt in fighting” (especially by a sword), from Proto-Germanic duntiz (related to Old Norse dyntr blow, kick.)

“By dint of” as a phrase for “by force of, by means of,” is early C14 so it is a fine, strong, ancient little set of words.

*** This is a slight exaggeration of the number of cords I have around my desk.
But not by much.

RITA-winning author Joanna Bourne writes historical fiction set in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France and Regency England. It was a time of love and sacrifice, clashing ideals, and really cool clothing.