Hard Drive Woes

Last Tuesday I went to Peet’s to write. I ordered my coffee, found a cozy armchair to sit in, fired up the old laptop, and connected to Wi-Fi. Suddenly a restart warning appeared on the screen and my computer shut down. And then, instead of restarting, it informed me that it was unable to boot. I stared blankly at the screen. I told myself to be calm. I explained to myself that I should just try turning it off and then on again. I felt the panic rising in my chest. I suck at the routine maintenance that technological devices require. Sync my iPhone? Who needs that? Back up my documents and photos? Who’s got time?

Well, I’ve hopefully learned my lesson the hard way. My computer failed to restart because the hard drive crashed. So I lost everything recent on my computer. The last backup appears to have been done about two years ago (just for the record, that’s when I got my current computer). Fortunately all my writing is saved on Dropbox. And a lot of other important stuff is on Google Docs. But I may be missing some photos and whatever other random stuff I’ve done on the computer for the past two years. A lot of the photos were still on my phone, thanks to me sucking at taking them off permanently when I saved them to the computer (See? Sometimes there are perks to not preforming proper maintenance).

Thanks to my rockstar boyfriend, my laptop is back up and running again. He replaced the hard drive, re-installed all of the programs, got the pictures off my phone, found my old backup, etc., etc. And because I suck at all the routine maintenance stuff, I’ve begged him to periodically backup things for me. Some days I hate technology.

I have three critique group “dates” set up now. One is with a woman who is looking to rejoin a group, one is with a group that has already been meeting for a while, and one is with a group that is just starting. I’m fine with the first and third “dates”, but the one with the group that’s already active makes me totally anxious. It’s like sitting down at the lunch table with a clique you don’t belong to. Will they like you? Hate you? Bah!! I just keep reminding myself that it doesn’t really matter. If we mesh then we mesh. And if not, I have two other “dates” that may be better.

We finally got a membership at the local climbing gyms here. There are four Touchstone gyms nearby: one in Berkeley, one in Oakland, and two in San Francisco. We tried out the Berkeley gym over the weekend. It was decent, but not as nice as the Touchstone gym we’d been climbing at in LA. But it’ll be nice to belong to a gym again. And being a member gives me access to yoga (which I haven’t been able to do since I injured my shoulder) and fitness classes.

I finally got added to the sub system in the district that hired me, but I haven’t picked up a job yet. It’s nice not having to sub if I don’t want to because it means I can be picky about the schools/grades I choose. No more subbing in high school and middle school. Woohoo!

The Bridge to Bridge race was on Sunday. My friend came to visit and to run the race too. We both did really well. I ran the 12K in two minutes more than it’s been taking me to run 6.5 miles. So that was pretty exciting. But it still did not inspire me to run seriously again. Running is fun, but I’d rather climb.

What I’m reading: East of Eden by John Steinbeck and Looking for Alaska by John Green. They are both awesome so far. I fell in love with John Green’s writing when I read The Fault in Our Stars (which I highly recommend). And I’ve long been a Steinbeck fan. With both of these books I hardly want to put them down. Call the Midwife has been put on hold for a bit.