January 27, 2008

Totally spent

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Our first retreat is officially over and it went so well. We had great weather . . . snow on the ground . . . not too cold. The sledding hill was in perfect condition. The new addition to the Field House gave us a place to enjoy warmer activities (including, but not limited to, DDR and Karaoke). Our staff was, as usual, phenomenal. Campers stayed safe (only one went home sick). Best of all, campers were incredibly receptive to our speaker's message. By anyone's standards, it was a success.

The days leading up to the retreat were so stressful for Kyle and I and that took it's toll on us and left us running on empty for most of the weekend. Jack didn't let us get much sleep the past two nights and that just kind of compounded our stress. We are incredibly tired and ready for our day off tomorrow. I think we're going to find a sitter for Jack and get lunch and a movie.

Saturday afternoon, all of our campers and staff went to the Family Center for swimming and bowling and I stayed home with Jack and put him down for a nap. I had a few things to work on. When I sat down at our computer to work, I saw random patterns of lines all over the screen. I figured that there was something wrong with our monitor. I soon realized that the computer was frozen. FROZEN. So, I manually turned it off and on again. It froze half way through booting up and gave me all of the pretty lines down the screen again. I did this over and over until I realized that nothing that I could do would save it.

This computer has all of my card designs saved on it, including four custom designs that I was working on for people this weekend. It also has our checkbook and several other important documents that I had been working on and desperately need.

When camp ended today, all we wanted to do was go home and sleep but instead we tried to figure out the best course of action for this computer. It's 4 or 5 years old so it's probably time for a new one, but I REALLY need the data off of it.

Kyle and I took it to Circuit City tonight and the results of the diagnostic tests are still pretty inconclusive. We should know more tomorrow morning. I know, I know . . . I should be backing everything up. I've already lectured myself several times today. I'm just praying that they'll be able to save everything.

Anyway, I'll have more to say about all of this later, but I'm at the point where I can't type fast enough to get things down before I forget them. It's 8:14 and I'm going to bed.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bummer. (There are a few other words that came to mind, but that seemed the safest.) I'll say a prayer for you and your computer tonight! Why is it that stuff like that happens when you have least time and the least amount of brain waves available to deal with it?

Sara Neufeld said...

Oh, I'm so sorry. I am horrible about backing stuff up as well. I lost about 3 months of Finley's life in pictures b/c of a bad disk. My dad always says, "save early, save often." Yeah, well, I still haven't learned that lesson!

Anonymous said...

Oooh Sara. I feel your pain. That happened to me a couple summers ago when I was working on a paper. I didn't care as much about the paper as I did all of my PICTURES!!! My computer was okay, but my hard drive literally had cracked in half!! I don't know how that can happen, but it did. So, I didn't get to retrieve ANYTHING :( Hope your outcome is better than that though. Anyway, sorry about your computer...