Checking In

So we did our long car trip from California to Oregon. The night before we were to leave, my laptop died. Yep, the laptop I love and adore, my lifeline, the device the kids were going to watch 3 new DVDs on, the device I was going to catch up on work with, etc., died. I was trying to backup Quicken, it spurted some error message and then gave up the ghost. I had to reinstall Windows XP, which of course wiped out my hard drive, and of course the re-installation disks don't have the drivers for the DVD player or the modem on them (who really wants everything on their computer to work, after all?) so I couldn't even get it to play DVDs. It's terribly sad and I feel a great sinking grief in my heart. Mostly because I'm lazy about backing up and I lost 3 months worth of pictures and work accounting info.

I'm posting this from my SILs laptop in Sunriver. We're impersonating an active family and doing bike rides (not me, though, because none of the bikes fit my short frame, darn it. Ben wasn't up for it either so I stayed home with him but I'm told that I MUST rent an appropriate bike because I MUST try out these trails), hikes and swimming.

I have to give the computer back, but when I return, I'll tell y'all about the day before I left, on which my laptop dying at 10pm was just the culmination of pretty much everything going wrong. I think I brought my luck with me. We've been in the house my ILs rented for less than 24 hours an, there are men fixing the broken garage door and a locksmith fixing my FIL's car that won't start, the lady's been out to fix the wireless internet. And now it's RAINING. In Sunriver. But, the DVD players in the house work. And Ben's sleeping so it's not all bad.