After an entire week of introductions and orientations, I had a pleasant Saturday planned for myself. There would be a flea market. There would be a farmers market. There would be the ever slightest reading of school work. There would be some movie watching. There would even be some socializing and drinking at the end of this well experienced day. I had plenty to do and I'm awful glad I woke up early enough to make all of it happen.
I figured I would do some work on my internet classes I'm teaching this semester, while listening to some various podcasts. It was delightful- and usually grading isn't. I listened to some of the new Okkervil River album, which I am now anxiously anticipating the release of. I thought I'd take a quick break for some breakfast and newspaper reading after printing out a few things. As I set my computer down to plug in the printer...it froze up. Oh, no problem, right? Just restart. Upon the restart- my computer gave me some crazy error message about not being able to show the "native images." What the fuck is a native image? There are tons of funny "I was about to..." going through my head right now, but I'll save you from it. The next two hours involved me doing things like crashing and restarting my computer over and over again. Then, I dabbled in starting it in safe mode. Then I had the disk checked for consistency a handful of times.
I flipped through the manual. And I came to the conclusion how utterly dependent on a machine I am that I haven't the slightest clue how to fix it. I've never been the kind of person who has a computer screw up on them. I'm the person that always thinks "Oh, computer virus...it is a culture of fear out there! It'll never happen to me." I suppose I better get some identity protection now, since that is also somethingI have thrown around as part of the culture of fear.
Regardless, 6 hours later...one phone call to Dell...and a few crying fits...I gave into the inevitable. I had to restore my computer to the factory basics. It was tragic. I was going to lose all my music on my Itunes and my photos. But, wait, what is that you ask? Did I back-up recently? Yes, I backed up some stuff. I hadn't backed up my Itunes- Who the hell has time for that? And I hadn't backed up any pictures since May. It took merely 7 minutes for my entire computer to be wiped clean. I don't think I moved an inch while I watched the bar inch further and further over indicating that more and more of my work and memories were being erased. Ha! How melodramatic, right?
I'm over it today. I've already started rebuilding my Itunes library. I'm up to C and D today. My mom yesterday tried to convince me to see the positive. And when I was in my hour of darkness and she called, I had to smile. I had my head in my hands, I was surrounded by old cds and start-up repair cds...and when she called, I felt silly. Why? My ring on my cell phone is part of the Hold Steady's song "Stay Positive." And it was just all put into perspective. In the scheme of it all, not that important.
Besides, did I tell you I'm seeing The Hold Steady on Halloween? See, there are happier days around the corner.
This traumatic Saturday did make me think about the way we capture memories though. I remember the whole situation that Ben Bridwell of Band of Horses experienced when he hollered at a fan for taking video on her cell phone. He wanted to know what ever happened to people going to an event and just experiencing it. To just keeping the memories in their head- without the pictures to prove. And the thing I was most upset about losing were my pictures. So, I tried to remind myself that I still have the memories.
And hell, after all, I've got my blog to remind me if I forget.
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