Now my office is like one of those really cool kitchens with stainless steel appliances that look so pricey-awesome on TV or the brochures ... and totally mock me with their whole "look at me i'm so expensive and desirable and totally out of your league realtors love me you'll never own me hahahahahah" jibes.

But I digress.

My poor lil' white iBook gave up the ghost on Tuesday. Bad hard drive. Bad logic board. (Oh, don't think there weren't jokes to that effect around the office. You know who you are.)

So now I have a new/old/used MacBook Pro. It's silvery. It's WIIIIIDE. Well, specifically it's much wide-ER.

And it doesn't include at least 2 weeks of everything important in my life, since I hadn't backed up my stuff in a while. Yes. I know. YELL AT ME. Make fun. Give me the laundry list of strategies I might have used to save my calendar, contacts, iPhotos, work docs, emails, etc. It's sort of like pointing out the sidewalk to someone who just wandered into traffic and got hit by a bus.

THE GOOD NEWS: I'm up from wallowing at the bottom of the well, with a valuable life lesson to trumpet to the masses.

THE BAD NEWS: It is almost certain to happen again, as I'm already complacent and lazy and positive lightning couldn't possibly strike twice. Which is exactly why it will. So you'd think I'd just learn from that and recognize that but well hey, you'd be wrong.

If you have kids, here's a tip:

A DVD player in your car doesn't guarantee a happy roadtrip. It just causes more pain, because then they all fight over what to watch. The real trick, I think, is to get them all portable DVD players and headphones. But is that spoiling?

Some things they fought about:

[More]