The other day I was enjoying a post by CJ Duggan (nuked cuppa!) when she mentioned "a better back-up system." Uh-oh. So I went to the previous post and oh dear, it was true. The nightmare of all writers. Her computer went into code blue and was unable to be resuscitated. And did it have an updated will? Sadly, no.
How many of us do this? We get out of the habit of backing up to an external source and then WHAM! We're buying Data Rescue 3 and hoping that the trash we deleted a month ago hasn't been written over. Or turning the CPU into a planter.
I was planning to dedicate my next blog to my own woeful story from January. You know, a warning to those who aren't using Time Machine regularly (Mac). There were so many blog ideas, though, and so much else to work on, that I made a nice handwritten list with the good intention of making up lost time Wednesday.
And then there's the inevitable pin-hole in the copper pipe.
After a Wednesday of saying, "later," later finally arrived followed closely by a phone call. My mother's downstairs was soaked with water. Mysterious water was weeping down the walls, dragging paint into a column of happy parentheses. Sections of carpet in two rooms and a hallway were sopping wet sandwiched between dry islands. (Definition of sopping: when you depress the carpet with your foot, water sloshes over your toes.) We feared the water was easing in through a cracked foundation and visions of a herd of back-hoes grazing a field of money tormented my mother. It was VERY stressful. My sister and I used a wet vac to tame the damage and moved books from the creeping danger of water.
When I got home last night I worked on my novel and then crawled into bed. Blog shmog.
This morning I returned and called a contractor, a rug cleaner, and then moved EVERYTHING I could because the water had returned to full-on-sopping in the section we tamed last night. GAH.
Finally, around 2 pm we finally had an answer and it was not as we feared--ground water seeping through a cracked foundation. No, it was a pin-hole in a copper pipe. ALL THIS from a PIN-HOLE?
All my good intentions for the last two days didn't happen. I envisioned hours of dedicated, impressive writing, networking, and general creativeness. But frankly my dear, the carpet didn't give a damn.
I've lost a few of those inspirational phrases. An image or two drowned in the carpet. BUT I have a handwritten list of all the blog topics I want to write. Phew, nice back-up.
