Rick Almighty ...

first ... let me start by saying ... hallelujah! Praise God! and a GIANT THANKS to my cousin Rick ... who literally saved me today!

my computer decided to die last night ... not a very timely death might I add ... by means of a nice shade of a blue screen ... followed by a black screen with white letters and a blinking cursor compared to that of a computer on LOST!

Crash is not a nice word in the world of computers, it's a bad word ... and a very bad one for me ... fyi ... if there are any clients of mine reading this right now ... please be assured that your pictures are safe ...thanks to Rick (did I mention him and his almightyness already?) ... after having a horrible night and pacing for hours this morning until I finally got a hold of my cousin Rick (who saved the day - did I say that already?) ... and spending the entire afternoon and half the evening at his office in Hermitage ... AND after purchasing a new external hard drive to move EVERYTHING off my now vintage computer onto this sweet little external beauty ... yep ... it's been a very long, stressful day ...

the moment I started seeing my files on his server at work ... yep ... my everything went limp and I started breathing again ... I will not even go into detail of what I was thinking ... and imaging what would happen if my files were not able to be retrieved ... not just my personal files with 1,000's of pictures from the last 4 years ... but my clients pictures from the last 4 years ... and my data base and all that entails for my other job ...

Yep ... not able to describe to you my feeling at the moment ... can so relate to you Renee knowing you just went through this ...

as I was driving to Hermitage today ... looking down into the floorboard of my van at my tower, cpu ... whatever they call it today ... that box that holds my memory, etc ... I thought to myself ... that small box holds SO MUCH personal stuff to me ... like ... every picture I've taken in the last 4 years of LeAnna and family ... that I've NEVER bothered to print ... AAAHHHHHH ... stress people, stress is what I felt and experienced today in a VERY real way ...

yes ... stress ... and lots of self promises today too ... of what I'm going to do to help prevent this from happening again ...

however ... I'm feeling MUCH better ... and after finding out the problem ... it wasn't my hard drive at all ... and in fact, my computer didn't even crash!!!!! My $20 card reader decided to bite and take a chunk out of my USB port and when it did, it shorted out all the other USB ports ... which in turn messed up the entire computer ... and so ... when my nice shade of a blue screen popped up ... all it kept saying was ... Disc 0 not found, Disc 2 not found ... meaning, hello, no hard drive ...

leading me to believe that my computer crashed ...

I was very happy to find out it was just a USB issue and can be fixed!

So ... in a state of trying to relax at the moment ... although most of my limbs are still taut and drawn up somewhat ... I'm trying to relax ...

I had big plans for today ... they will have to start tomorrow ...oh well ... LeAnna was back to school today after a week out ... I was ready, she was ready ... and my plan today was to take down all Fall decor and start decorating for Christmas ... didn't happen ...oh well ... there is tomorrow ...

now ... if I can just relax enough to fall asleep! Thanks Rick for calming me down and making it all okay ...

happy day ... tammy