My Worst Nightmare

I woke up this morning (slowly, since it was after a long weekend) thinking that my biggest problems of the day were going to be (in no particular order):

1. I lost my favorite lip gloss
2. I need to get my hair trimmed and I can't find the time
3. I need a new yoga mat (mine is doing a stupid curl that needs to go away)
4. I need to make an appointment for the dogs at the vet (they are due for shots and nail trims).

So, as I got dressed thinking those were the biggest problems of the day I thought I could make it through. After all, the lip gloss was $2.00, I can squeeze in a hair cut tomorrow afternoon, I found a yoga mat on clearance at Gaiam.com, and I can most likely get the dogs into the vet on Saturday. Crisis averted.

As I finished getting ready (holding onto the naive belief that I had solved my biggest problems) I wandered into my office to turn on my computer to check email and my other morning websites (Myspace, blogger, channelcincinnati.com) . As I waited for my computer to start up I went about my morning routine (feeding the dogs, giving them their medicine, getting my coffee, etc.) And then it happened.

A blue screen with the words "FATAL ERROR" emblazoned across the top.

No...no, no, no, no, no...this was NOT HAPPENING...

I did the only thing I could do. I woke TJ up (he is my resident computer expert) and he wandered into my office and sat down, took one look at it and proclaimed that he had no idea what was wrong, but he was pretty sure that the hard drive had crashed. Crashed--as in died. As in took all my documents, pictures and files with it--crashed!

I will admit I am the world's worst when it comes to backing things up--well, I used to be okay (when I had two drives in my PC), but now I only have one so I haven't backed up in about 6 months. That means all my graduate school work could be gone. All my pictures from my wedding could be gone. All of the pictures we have taken of the dogs over the years could be gone. Gone--as in vanished for all eternity, don't pass GO, don't collect $200 GONE. The documents I don't care so much about. Is it a bummer--sure it is. Is it the end of the world? Nah--grad school is over (Thank GOD) and I can type new documents.

The pictures, however, are irreplaceable. As much as I love my digital camera, this is the downfall. At least with film I would still have copies and the negatives. With digital, I got nada.

TJ said he is going to try to look at it tonight and he has a plan of attack. I can only hope that some things can be salvaged--if not, I am big fat SCREWED.

As I sit here (on my work PC since my home one decided to take a vacation), I can't help but be reminded of a Sex and the City episode where Carrie's laptop crashed (the infamous "sad mac" episode). At the time I thought that episode was humorous and I was thinking "man, is she had only backed everything up she wouldn't have lost all her work." I laughed when she took it to the tech place and all they got off her hard drive was something that looked like it was written in computer code. I laughed because it wasn't happening to me.

I'm not laughing now.