Sunday, January 25, 2009

Good News Bad News

Good News: Things have been going smoother at home. I've found I have a lot more patience with Sophie when I have a little quiet time to myself everyday, and when I don't expect too much out of her. I need to remember that she's not even two yet.

Bad News: Steve had to go to Utah this weekend (Army stuff). He was supposed to leave Friday night, but his flight got canceled. He thought he might not have to go because he'd be flying back tonight regardless of when he left. They still wanted him, so he left last night. Right now he's probably on the plane coming home from his 24 hour trip.

Good News: I managed pretty well while he was gone. Evenings are the hardest with the girls because they both get cranky. I've managed two nights of bath times by myself, and I streamlined it so I bathe them basically at the same time. Sometimes I amaze myself.

Bad News: I've had an icky hacking cough for the past few days and I sound like a frog.

Good News: The girls here threw me a little surprise baby shower. (Thanks ladies -- it was fun!)

Bad News: I still have some of the gift bags sitting in the living room. I ran upstairs this afternoon to check on something and left Sophie by herself for about 90 seconds. I came back down to see her with an open bottle of Baby Magic and two huge spots on the couch the size of dinner plates. Have you ever tried to clean up soap from upholstery? I scrubbed. It foamed. I scrubbed some more. It foamed some more. I got it really wet, then scrubbed again. By then the original dirty spot had increased in size by about 10, and it foamed even more. I didn't know what to do, so I put a towel over it and hoped it would dry quickly. Unfortunately it's in the spot where we sit the most, and now it makes a squishy foaming sound like you're sitting on bubbles. We may have to rent the carpet cleaner again.

Good News: We had planned to get tickets to see Wicked in San Francisco next month. The school was selling tickets to the students at a crazy price. We had arranged for Steve's mom to come stay with the girls because we wouldn't get home before midnight.

Bad News: Apparently a lot of other people had the same plans. The tickets sold out an hour before they were supposed to go on sale. LAME! It was suppsed to be awesome. Steve and I haven't gone out by ourselves that much.


There's nothing worse than when your computer is over. Very yes.

Potentially the Worst News So Far: The hard drive on my laptop died. It was making weird clacking noises one night, then the next morning the noises were even louder. Instead of booting up, I got a black screen that said it couldn't find my hard drive. I know my way pretty well around a computer, but when it did that, I immediately went to Steve and started whimpering. He may be able to get the data off of it with one more trick up his sleeve, but he hasn't tried yet. I'm using Steve's old hard drive for now, and we're trying to figure out if he can save my stuff before I start loading photos again.

Luckily (very luckily), Steve moved the most recent photos and movies of the girls last week to an external hard drive where we store everything. We do that periodically because it won't fit on my hard drive. None of that will be lost. PHEW. The rest of the data isn't so lucky....

Potential casualties:
1. My OneNote Recipe file. This contains HUNDREDS of recipes. Basically everything that's posted to my recipe blog plus around a hundred or so more that are on my "I want to try this" list. This isn't as bad as it seems because I emailed this file to a friend a few months ago, so I can pull an older version from my Gmail. I'll lose all the stuff I added in the last couple of months, but it won't be the end of the world.

2. My BookSmart file. Because I don't scrapbook, I consider my blog sort of a scrapbook/unprivate journal. There's a free program called BookSmart that "slurps" your blog, then you can drag and drop photos and posts into a book format. Then you can have the book printed. I'd spent hours and HOURS laying out the first two years of my blog into this file. We're talking over 150 pages of stuff. I may lose this. ALL of it. No "luckily's" on this one. I might cry.

3. My Food Photos. Pretty much ALL of the photos I've taken for my food blog will be toast. Luckily (sort of) I don't have a backlog of things to post, but the ones on the blog are shrunken files from the originals. (This is bad if I plan on printing out my recipe blog because I need the originals for this.)

There are other things, too, but not as devestating.

I'll let you know if Steve recovers this stuff so you won't have to feel sorry for me.

I got my hair cut yesterday. That makes me feel a teensy bit better.

9 comments:

Britty said...

Brady spilled a bottle of laundry detergent on our carpet on Thornally. I wish I remember how I got it all out. Anyway, I can sympathize.

About your hard drive, that happened with our laptop a few years back, and I bought a hard drive enclosure for $20 and was able to hook it up to our new computer and transfer everything over. It's realy pretty easy to do. Give that a try!

Andrea said...

Natalie, I feel so sorry for you. We thought our computer crashed the other day and I was freaking out, but luckily it was just a battery problem. Hopefully Steve is successful. Does he have the right tools? It may be worth sending it in. I'm going to look into that Booksmart thing. I've been wanted to print out our blog for a while.

Cassia said...

Oh, yikes! I really hope you are able to recover that data!

Beck Family said...

I'm so glad to know someone else has had some pretty horrible days lately too. Gratefully, like you pointed out, there is always the good to keep us going.

Rebecca J said...

I've had a similarly devastating crash. I have no photographic evidence that I ever attended BYU or traveled to Paris. Sigh. But my then-friend William spent all day trying to recover my data, which greatly improved my opinion of him, and we were married 9 months later. I hope you have better luck than I did recovering your stuff. And we LOVE BookSmart, too!

Kathryn said...

Oh, Natalie! I'm so sorry about your hard drive! That is soooo aggravating.

I have a Seagate external drive that automatically backs up my entire hard drive every night. If I didn't have it, EVERYTHING would be gone if my computer died! Can you set up your external drive to do automatic back-ups?

Kathryn said...

By the way, your Strongbad reference made me laugh out loud! I love that one!

Danica said...

That really stinks. I think you deserve a big chocolatey something. (I realize that this will only bring temporary happiness, but a few minutes of happiness is better than none. :) )

Natalie said...

Britty - That's the first thing we tried. The problem is with the physical pieces inside, so it didn't work. :(

Danica - I got an image of a giant chocolate cake when I read that. I really really want to make one and eat the entire thing by myself, but I think I'd be swimming in Ivy vomit if I did. :( Maybe just a little chocolately something....