This is the last gate, runner. Use your key now.

That was one of the worst weeks in recorded history, that was. Not the worst week but certainly a close second. No, actually, third. I'd place it third.

The Inspiron, she is dead. Dead as the dodo and the carrier pigeon (she gone, she gone!). There is no sanctuary. Documents, Outlook email, contact files, alles ist weg. Music files can be replaced or are stored on a card somewhere. The only digital photos that remain are on Flickr, here or other blogs. Family photos aren't too big a loss since I always sent copies to my sister and brother. Doll photos and stuff is negligible, I could always take more (over 1,200 on Flickr alone which means I lost close to 8,000 total). Photostories and other things I never got around to posting, that's what I get for procrastinating, I guess. Trips I took and shit, someone else was there to take photos too so it's not too tragic. The hit are the photos of people I don't see anymore and stuff I did that I can't replicate, I have no way to replace any of that. Everything in my ghost drive which I forgot about until just now, never going to see any of that again. No more patterns, no more spreadsheets, no more diagrams, no more scans, no more drivers for ancient hardware I refused to part with (until now). No more archived files from the last computer that died.

I'll pull the hard drive and see what I can extract but I am not optimistic, it committed suicide. That was only the beginning though.

This week was supposed to be lame duck week at work but I worked right up until the end and on into Friday. Thursday was supposed to be my last day. Thursday night, I did not get home until very, very late and I saw my neighbor had staggered home before me and parked her car half in my space. Rather than be an ass and wake her to move her car, I opted to park across the street. I awoke Friday morning to a $55 parking ticket (street sweeping). After work was drink-buying and glad-handing and I was forced to be cheerful and smile so much, my head was pounding. On the way out of the parking garage, I realized I'd turned in my keycard and would have to pay the lost ticket price to get out. After many travails, I turned towards home at around 2:30 a.m. but not before my shoes destroyed my feet to the point where I had to take them off and walk barefoot through the most disgusting, ooky, sticky street in all of Los Angeles County. When I woke up this morning, the knuckles on my left hand were abraded and swollen. I'm not a southpaw and no one left me any angry voicemails --- curious.

And the grown-ass woman who screwed me on the Ravelry swap just won the Komen raffle.

I am trying to look upon violent change as a good thing. Really. Somewhere in there I managed to buy a new laptop which I'm quite happy with although the built in webcam gave me quite a start. Also, I hate Vista. If I wanted an Apple, I would have bought an Apple. Jerks. Also, made another sweater or rather, am in the process of making another sweater and I know what to make Ann for her birfday, I'll do that next.