A conversion, of sorts

Singing along to: Gin Blossoms, Jealousy

One of the items on my 1001 Things list is "Back up everything that is on my computer. I am one hard drive meltdown away from disaster." Well. Funny story about that.

Backing up my files is one of those things I know I should do, like taking a multi-vitamin or dusting my bookshelves, but which I keep putting off until a later date because the need really isn't that pressing, is it?

Yeah, well, I guess I should get around to the multi-vitamin and the dusting, too, because this weekend I had a come-to-Jesus moment with the backing up. For a period of about thirty-six hours, from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, my beloved iBook wouldn't do anything except flash a gray question mark and think very hard about running the troubleshooter CD before ultimately decided to ignore it. My dad fiddled, I fretted, we took a brief trip to the Apple store to discover that you now need to make reservations at their "Genius bar", and I made mental lists of the things I thought I'd lost. Every time I thought of a way to recover one thing (like all the songs I bought from iTunes, which I remembered I have on my iPod), I would remember another thing that was gone. (Like my extensive and carefully curated collection of Internet bookmarks, which still hasn't recovered from all the losses it sustained when I switched computers in 2005.)

And then, just as my dad finished getting an old laptop into working order with Linux, so I'd at least have something to use while we figured out my iBook, the iBook came back to life. I spent about two seconds rejoicing, and then I broke out the 32-gigabyte flash drive. All of my documents, music, and photos now have a second home: on 6 DVDs in the top drawer of my dresser at home, with the mismatched socks and the reject pajamas. Special!

It was a weekend of highs and lows, really, because I think also found The Boots. There are just a few problems: a) should I buy them even though they cost $69.95 more than my self-imposed limit (but they are perfect! you can't put a price on perfect!) and b) can I find them in my size (11) and my color (cognac)?