Last Day Under Oath

Not only was yesterday Ariana's last day under oath, it was also her last day in Massachusetts.

Ariana had to return to court to answer the last few questions the prosecution had and to face the cross-examination of the defense attorney.

Whereas she was very anxious last Friday, yesterday she was more at ease. In fact, she said that even had a bit of fun, especially when she made a fool of the defense attorney.

(The bugger was not expecting her to be as sharp as she was. And when she gave him an answer that he was not anticipating ~ an answer that did not allow him to get his way with the court ~ he just silently turned away and walked off in a huff.)

Ariana was finally done before noon.

Our next stop was going to be Best Buy to see if Ariana could return her netbook (which got infected w/a Trojan and a few other viruses) and get a new one.

(One would have hoped that the netbook would have come with at least a free 30-day anti-virus software trial. But alas it didn't.)

However, an easy swap out wasn't going to be possible. The store's procedure was to have the Geek Squad examine the machine before they could accept it as a return.

Sure enough, the Geek Squad found the offending viruses.

To make a long story not as long, Ariana wound up buying an external USB CD drive, from which she could load the netbook's recovery disc and do a total system restore.

(It would have cost a lot more money to have had Geek Squad perform that task than it was to buy the USB CD drive.)

Once Ariana restored her netbook to its originally factory condition, the first thing that she did was to download a reliable free anti-virus program. Then she was all set to roll.

Jeremiah and No Toes stopped by a bit later. (I think those two may become an item in the near future!) No Toes helped Ariana dye half of her head black, as Ariana was planning on coloring her hair Cruella de Ville style after she was done testifying.

After Jeremiah and No Toes left, Ryan came by to spend the night. He was going to go with us to the airport the next morning. And it would have been easier to have him spend the night here than to go and pick him up in Marion the next morning.

Even though we knew that we were going to have to get up early ~ 4:30 AM! ~ the next morning, it was difficult to get ourselves into bed the same time the birds were roosting.

We hung out upstairs, playing with the kitten.

Then finally, one by one, we dropped off to bed.