"Did I ever tell you you're my hero.....?"

Well, I have to share some exciting (exciting for ME anyway, lol) news.

Those of you who are teammates of mine and have listened to me rant on and on are probably sick of hearing about my computer woes, and I had finally chalked my crashed hard drive up to a total loss and was trying to move on. Lisa's boyfriend's brother is a computer whiz and thought he might be able to extract at least some of the data off of it. He had it for over a week and sent it back to us this week with an apology that he couldn't do anything with it. He did say that if we took it to a professional they may be able to do more, but it would be spendy.

So, dejected, I had started trying to recreate documents, overwhelmed with the magnitude of the project. I'd had that computer for 6 years and had saved EVERYTHIG on there. I have a huge external hard drive that I had so far only used to save photos. (So thankfully, those weren't going to be lost or I might have just lost my mind as well.) Meanwhile, John was checking out youtube videos and looking for ideas, and he said he wanted to work with the hard drive one more time. Certain that he couldn't do anything with it, I had the "what the hell....go for it" attitude. But I didn't have any illusions that it was going to be successful. And, I suppose you all can guess how this story ended? YES! You are correct! He was able to pull up the files and I was able to transfer everything onto my external hard drive. I didn't have much time, as the computer was flashing warning signals about a problem with the hard disk (duh -- no kidding!) and that I should back up files immediately. So I didn't have time to put things into folders, or weed out the stuff I didn't want, so the external drive is a tangled MESS and I have to search for everything I want to use -- but it's there!

And I am so overwhelmed with happiness and gratefullness that I'm still tearing up as I type this. Yes, you should have seen me when John called me down to see. He had opened a daycare newsletter that I had written a couple of months ago, and when I saw that on the screen I completely lost it. I was sobbing and bawling like a baby -- reminded myself of one of those people on a home improvement show when they see their new house unveiled for the first time. And even though I knew in my heart that I was overreacting, I couldn't stop! I was hysterical, and I couldn't stop it to save my soul! I had everything from my mom's address book to my tax records on there, not to mention all my business records. Yes, there were hard copies of many of these things floating around, but it was going to be a MASSIVE undertaking to recreate -- and there were some things that were absolutely irreplaceable, such as copies of the letters I had sent to Jeff when he was in boot camp. I wanted to always remember the way I felt at that time of my life -- and it was almost lost forever.

Yes, I'm overreacting, I'm sure. But that's who I am. And while I've always said that my husband is my hero, he more than proved it yesterday.

And yes, I've learned my lesson.