Dutiful Food Review... - Thursday was all about the salad of "what's in the house?" I wrote Wednesay there was nothing in the house, and yesterday morning I just started opening cupboards. In the fridge, a bag of mixed greens and some grated parmesean. On the table, one apple and one jicama root. In the cupboard, dried currents and a can of tuna. On the counter, balsamic vinegar. In the freezer, some rolls I froze a while ago and some frozen peas. (I borrowed the peas from my roomie, so I'll buy some more even though I didn't use very many. Her pet rats still have plenty.) The salad was actually REALLY delicious. I'm not much of a "salad dressing" gal, I really prefer just balsamic vinegar. The dried and fresh fruit added a sweetness, which then paired with the vinegar, the tuna, and the sharp parmesean comes across as very filling. No "nibbling leaves" here.

I also picked up a nice permenant water bottle, a small bottle of mixed berry juice, and made a pot of coffee. Total time in kitchen: 40 minutes, plus the 15-min trip to the store for a water bottle and juice.

... Which Bores Me Out of My Skull - After all this, recounting my food adventures is boring the bajeebeez out of me. I cannot fathom keeping up a daily recitation of the foods I prepare and consume... how can this *possibly* be worth my time and yours? I'm just not into the grand food recitation. I buy ingredients I like, I combine them, I eat them, I wash up all the dishes. Lather, rinse, repeat. Boring. I even took a photo of the salad, and the PHOTO was boring me silly. Sorry, just cannot muster the energy to prattle on about food everyday, and certainly cannot take the extra time for photos of said "boring me silly" project.

Things That Do Not Bore Me - I spend a significant portion of my time in my car, alone, traveling to and fro. So two years ago I bought an iPod with my Federal tax return money, before the long LONG drive to Estrella War (a week-long camping SCA event in Arizona every year). I've burned nearly all the CDs I own onto the iPod. I download language learning files for English --> Mandarin Chinese. I subscribe to several radio show podcasts. I follow a few more podcasts that are hobby related. I have purchased several books on CD and copied those files to my iPod. And back when I first got my iPod, my computer at home was a little tiny 10 GB laptop purchased in 2001. So there was no chance I was going to be able to sync this music between computer AND iPod ... the iPod was 60 GB. So I would copy some music, some files, some recordings =TO= to little player, and delete them from the computer.

I had bought a padded case, a little iSnug to keep it safe, and mostly I didn't drop the iPod too often without the case protecting it. And I would carry the iPod (in it's case) in a little sling bag over one shoulder, and take it with me everywhere.

I think it was stepped on, at the New Year's Eve party. There were "cracks" of bleeding pixels on the faceplate display, which I could have totally just dealt with. There's a tiny bump in my car, I could handle a tiny bump on my iPod. I'm sure no one meant to step on it, but my bags were under the piano bench in the main room of the poker tournament, and it was just any accident that could have happened to anyone.

Sadly, it wasn't just a ding on the display. One time I got the "sad face" screen that said to contact tech support at Apple. The error went away, and I could listen to anything on the iPod. But I couldn't copy anything new to the player. Well, it *looked* like ti was copying, but everything new wouldn't play.

*sad, sad*

So of course, I had to just suck it up and start researching replacing the iPod, getting a BETTER case, and buying software to do a full copy of the old iPod and uploading it to my new iPod. All was going well --> I'd successfully downloaded the files from the old iPod. I'd backed them up to my portable hard drive. Then I backed them up to the iTunes on my computer. And I'd successfully downloaded my newest podcast files to the new iPod. Then I started to sync the new iPod with the iTunes fully populated library, and it failed to see the photos on my portable harddrive. Okay, no problem, I have backups of that folder.

Then the problem REALLY became apparent. The portable hard drive wasn't readable at all anymore. Normally, no problem --> I have two more portable harddrives with copies of all those files. But no. I hadn't done a full backup of the main portable drive with the 2 double backups. Okay, no problem, what could I have possibly lost in a week? One file for tomorrow, easy enough to redo in word. Oh, the newsletter updates, frak, oh well I can rebuild most of that. And then the HORRIBLE realization: There were photos I had unloaded from my camera this week and from my phone this week, that were ONLY on that drive, and not on the double backup drives yet.

*sob and whimper*

Yes, I broke into tears. So now I'm still working with some possible disk recovery software, but currently I cannot make this laptop boot from the recovery CD to do the file check on the portable drive, so currently I'm SOL. And I cannot spend any more time on it, because I have to pack for tomorrow. I'm headed to San Diego for 12th Night and the competition for my replacement as the Kingdom Bard, plus I had agreed to have Coffee Bar for the Saturday event, and I have my first Peerage meeting on Sunday. And someone close to me just went into the hospital tonight for kidney pain.

*SOB*

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Today's Blessing That I'm Thankful For: Not feeling very blessed right now. It's just the truth. I'll get over it later.