oh yeah

and we moved again too.

we're still in fort wayne, just in a new place -bye bye dog-house

i'll put up pictures maybe if I figure out how...it can't be hard, but I have to find the time.  Quite honestly I prefer sleeping to blogging, so we'll be figuring that one out later.

back in the saddle

So apparently it was the hard drive.  In a very large way.  I did some backups and it died so much that there isn't even a startup screen or a c prompt or anything except the words "error drive not found" or some such reassuring thing.

It took Ben's computer hours to scan the drive for errors remotely because there were so many errors to compile for the list.  If I'd run the scan it could have taken days because I don't know what I'm doing with computers most of the time, but Ben knows what he's doing and was a bit appalled at the state of my hard drive.  

And to put the cherry on top with a bit of flair. . . 

all that backing up I was so good about...

apparently I don't know how to appropriately back up a drive.  

Ben told me that my "backup" isn't really a backup since I failed to copy some particular thing for the files when I did my "backups". I sort of shut down after hearing that and don't really know what I did wrong.  I didn't absorb anything beyond the fact that I lost all my data.

It's been months and I'm so glad to have a computer to work on again.  

I miss my old one.  It was slow and cranky and old, but we had some good times.  

Maybe some day I'll get the pictures off the drive.  

If any of you have pictures of Stella please send them my way.  Send me an email and I'll forward you my snapfish info so you can load them on there.  All the ones I had on the drive and hadn't gotten around to copying to snapfish are gone gone gone...that makes me sad.  There were sooo many on there to be copied over.

Honestly I'm hoping Ben's wrong about the hard drive.  Keep your fingers crossed for me.

my tired old laptop

Last night I thought my computer had died completely - and me, here, without a backup - eeekkkk! 

I couldn't take the trauma of it so I went to bed and pretended it was fine.  When I got up this morning I waited - again with the ignoring of the trauma - until Stella took a nap today and tried to boot the little beast.  Hooray!   

First thing I did was back up just about every bit of info on the computer.  

But, just in case I don't show up here for a very long time. . . it could be that it happened again. Poor thing has been making some moaning noises for quite some time now.  

We'll see how long we can stick it out  : )

March Forth!

Ah, well, I missed it by a day. Whenever I get to the date March 4th I think of my mom & her dad who said that day was also a command. And so we shall march forth!

March 4th at our house consisted of a whole lot of time spent in the bathroom. Though not as painful as that sounds by itself. : ) Stella is potty training and we spent a good part of the day yesterday running upstairs to get her to the potty on time and then "hanging out" while she waited for the pee to come.

The high temp was at about 7am and it got colder and colder all day long. A "wintry mix" - which is a euphemism if I've ever heard one - all day long and apparently it turned to snow last night because we woke up with the most snow we've had so far. Probably 5 1/2 or 6 inches. The sad part to me is when it gets warm enough to melt it. Really. That is the sad part. : )

I got up at 5:30 this morning (not by choice. . . that'd be one of the perks of having a toddler) and got the driveway shoveled before Ben left for work around 8. I'd rather shovel it early and get to it before the tires pack it down and make it really really hard work. Stella cried inside while I was working because she wanted to help me. Once Ben let me know she was crying I came back in and got her all jacketed and scarfed and we went back out to finish. Her "help" involves wiping the snow off the little metal animals on our porch and knocking the snow off the handrails. She also scuffs around in her boots (which aren't really snow boots, but that's what she's got this year) and makes trails next to the stray cat's footprints all over our yard.

Last time it snowed like this we made a mountain out of the shoveled snow and made a snowman (perhaps my first snowman with a ball diameter longer than a foot ever!). So far today we've only made a snow mountain, but that is still mightily impressive.

SNOW!

Last night it started snowing right around the time Ben got home from work.  7 ish.

  

Stella and I heard the frozen rain from inside the house an hour or so later, making me wonder if we might be in for an unmentioned ice storm.

I woke up at 7 this morning and I think it must've snowed all night.  

It is wonderful out there!  This is what snow is all about - yay winter!

sleep & books

some nights it is pretty easy to find
others....

Lately the thing that has kept me from sleep are the books I'm reading. That's too bad, because I love sleep. I would say I prefer sleep over reading. Judging from my behavior over the past two months though I suppose it may not be true. I've been getting very very little sleep some nights just so I can read a little further in the book.

Maybe that just shows how good these books are.

The ones that have kept me up lately are:
The Mercury Visions of Louis DaGuerre - night before last I was crying as I neared the end
Fluke - this one was more amusing than compelling
Dead to the World - this is part of the Sookie Stackhouse series that I am trying to pretend I'm not addicted to - notice the word "trying"

I'm aiming to read a book about my baby's self-esteem next. Another highly recommended one, although not nearly as escapist as the fiction is for me. I hope to enjoy it.

Good morning!

In-Laws etc

Ben's parents came up last weekend.
They were our first houseguests here.

The bed upstairs has no boxspring so I'm sure that was fun for them. They camp, so they'll survive, but it's just not very comfy to have to get all the way on the floor.

The kitchen was out-of-order for half their stay since the landlords decided to receiling it the weekend before and sand/repaint it this weekend. It looked amazing by the end of the weekend though, and we got a great meal or two cooked before they left.

Showed them around town some: the city and checking out the different neighborhoods/parts of town. Sylvia and I talked about going to the science center with Stella, but Stella took a nap instead.

We took them on an extended tour of Sweetwater (where Ben works) and then had lunch there too and played some video games. Stella made sure to explain to them in detail how the boxes travel up and down the conveyor belt in the warehouse - there's an observation spot near the bathrooms and I think she could probably watch boxes all day if we packed a lunch.

They managed to come up for a relatively balmy weekend here. It got up into the low 40s and has since gotten down to single digits (and they only left yesterday).

Stella had SO much fun with them & keeps talking about them and asking when they'll come over again. I have a feeling that we wouldn't be seeing so much of them if we hadn't just moved their only grandbaby away. That's okay though, I don't take any offense. I know they love her. She loves them too, so I'm glad they want to see her.

We had snow on and off while they were here. It's funny how quickly you get used to things. One month and already the snow is not such a big deal. Don't get me wrong - it's still cool. There's just so much of it and so often that is really is like any other precipitation here.
Not like the phantom-magic-scarcely-ever-seen-perhaps-even-mythological snow of the south. : )