That crashing noise you heard . . .

. . . was my hard drive. It died on Saturday. Or was taken in the Rapture. It's hard to say. All I know is that the computer worked when I left the house Saturday morning but that it was proudly sporting the blue screen of death when I got home in the afternoon. In between, my other half had attempted to do some of his geek stuff (I think he is logging all of his comic books or something) and apparently that was the straw that broke the hard drive's back. In all honesty, though, the computer had been acting squirrely for a while and the writing was on the wall, so to speak. It was over six years old.

Now, you may be thinking, "Hey, Claudia, don't you do computer stuff for a living? You probably had everything backed up, right?"  Well, I do but I didn't. I had some stuff backed up, but not everything. It's one of those things where you always think, "As soon as I get some time . . . " I'm mostly worried about the files for the rescue. I brought my computer to work and handed it over to a technician. I happen to know that he has a penchant for Gardetto's so I have offered to buy him FULL-SIZED bags if he can retrieve any of my data. I think you'll agree that's a pretty sweet deal.

In the meantime, we sucked it up and bought a new computer. It was definitely not in the budget and our Best Buy card took a hit, but it had to be done. We got a laptop this time around.  We have wireless internet set up in our house so we figured it would be nice not to be tethered to the desk and whatnot. Now I'm just waiting to hear if I can get access to any of my old stuff.  If I can't, I'll weep silently and then start recreating the files I use for adoption packets and such. The hardest part will be recreating financial records.  I backed up Microsoft Money (which has the rescue's finances and our personal stuff) a couple months ago, so I'll probably have to re-enter all of those transactions.  But again, I'll live.

Speaking of the Rapture, P and I went out that night to celebrate our anniversary. We've been married 14 years, together 19 years. The kid kept telling me that I had to wear high heels on the date. I told her that her dad doesn't take me anywhere that nice.  I did wear wedge heels and she seemed mildly disappointed.  We started out by heading to a hotel bar (which sounds like a lame idea except that it is a trendy sort of joint with hip mixed drinks).  We had a couple beverages and ate some hummus. Then we headed to a used book/coffee shop to hear a bluegrass band play. For whatever reason, I have no love for country music but adore bluegrass. Love me some fiddle! After that, we went to a brewpub and split some soggy nachos. Finally, we met up with some friends at a different bar. We felt pretty adventurous, hitting four different establishments and all.  We would've stayed out later except that we were paying a babysitter and were running out of cash.

So, that is all the news from here. As soon as I stop freaking out over my data issues, I'll try to post something more coherent.