Day 362, Year 6: The Question of Importance
Date: Friday, October 21, 2011
Weather: Continued Partly Sunny and Very Windy
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
I know health is at the top of the list of what is really important in life, but I’m having a hard time thinking that right now. A few weeks ago my computer died. It had been my constant companion for the last six years and it was hard to lose it. But I had some warning and had backed up most things on an external hard drive that I brought in North Carolina in June. The new external hard drive is the same brand as others we have that have been so very reliable. So everything . . . all my posted photos from the last six years, my logs, all of the writing I have done since I have been home, and on an on are on that drive and no where else. And this morning when I turned on Mark’s computer, it didn’t recognize the drive. I was sure the problem was in his computer, so I hopped on a bus and went to the only place I could find in Falmouth to have it checked. At the end of the day I was told that Mark’s computer is fine. The new WD external hard drive is dead. And buried with it are six years of my life. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. The logs in their original form and some of the posted photos are backed up elsewhere. But I have spent countless hours getting photos from Year 1 renamed and put into Picasa. And I had completed a summary of the first two years of our journey as well as recommendations to cruisers on provisioning for long-distance sailing, and those Word files are gone. It costs $100 to start investigating whether or not they can retrieve the data on the drive, and as they explained the cost goes up from there depending on the difficulty of retrieval—up to $1,000. I know I can’t pay $1,000, so I am just hoping there is some other way. Mark will be gone with the car the first three days of next week, so it will be late in the week before I can continue to figure out what can be done. I have always had two copies of everything–one on my computer and one on an external hard drive. But since I have been using Mark’s computer which is already overburdened, I thought I’d be okay with the only copy being on the new hard drive for now. Very bad thinking.
On the brighter side of life . . . Yesterday I wrote about Ziggy and his pink furry boots. Well, today Jonah gave Ziggy a run for his money. Jonah usually takes his pants off and naps in only his shirt and diaper, but today it was cool and he wanted to keep his pants on. His diaper didn’t quite do it’s job and he woke up with wet pants. So off they went. When it was time to leave the boat and go to the car, he really didn’t want to put those wet pants back on, so he put on his bright red ladybug boots. As I looked at him in the cockpit, I realized that he was definitely in serious competition with Ziggy for cutest two year-old in a diaper and boots. Jonah had on his fleece jacket which made it even funnier. So he tromped out to the street in diaper, boots, and fleece with no care. Heather immediately sent a post to Facebook, so the battle of the “booties” is on. It’s all about being two.
