A full week!

Thanks, Vi, for the kick in the pants.

I can't believe it's been a full week since I last posted. The reason is mainly because of the previously-mentioned dropped laptop. Took it to one computer repair shop, and they got it to turn on. With some help, I even got some documents retrieved off of it.

But then it stopped working again.

So I took it to a new repair shop. And even though I told them I dropped it, and it made a clicking noise, they thought perhaps it was a software problem. This sounded ludicrous to me, but they are the experts, and low and behold, when I got to their shop, they had it working again.

Until I took it home, turned it off, and... wait for it... it wouldn't turn on again.

So now it's back at that repair shop, with instructions for them to, at a minimum, get all the documents off the hard drive and save them externally. They are looking at the hard drive again, insisting that they ran tests and it's fine. But I think I'm going to tell them to swap the hard drive regardless of what their diagnostic tests say. At this point, it's new hard drive or new computer.

Sigh.

I never quite realized how much I used my laptop. I'm an early bird, so I'm in the office by 7:30 a.m. each morning. This generally means I burn out and need a break by 4:30 p.m. I usually leave, go work out, make and clean up from dinner, then sit down for at least another hour doing work and personal e-mails or Web surfing or posting.

We have a computer at home, but it's in the Man Room (silly if you thought this was a shared office!), so Mike's on it most of the time. Especially now that the first part of the CPA exam is tomorrow.

Which just leaves the time I'm in the office. And, goodness, I would never use work time for personal things like posting or searching the Web! (oh, please! I just said I checked work e-mail at home, right?)

No, the real thing holding me back is that I'm now borrowing a colleague's laptop. And these things have cookies, you know! And not of the Oreo variety! Plus, it's just been an unusually busy week for this time of year.

All of that to say... sorry I haven't posted!

(And here you all thought it was maybe because I had actually turned 30 and maybe forgot how to use this Internet thing!)

I drove myself down to Raleigh last Friday to spend the weekend with Terry's and Tim's families. I figured I had already subjected all my friends to celebrating my birthday, and Mike was in hard-core study mode for the CPA test. So why not take myself down to Raleigh, where:
1. No one had yet celebrated my birthday
and
2. I would walk into an already-existing celebration - my brother's!

Hey, Terry's used to me stealing his birthdays. Been doin' it for 30 years now!

I spent the last night of my twenties with an 8 year old, 6 year old, 4 year old, 2.5 year old, and 1.5 year old. Didn't even pack my going-out jeans!

I had a blast seeing all the kids. This is a big "duh" statement, but it was amazing the difference in quality of the time I got to spend with them this weekend instead of in the summer at the beach (see here, here, here and many other posts around those!). In the summer I was one of a bunch of adults, and none of the adults were nearly as exciting as cousins or even babysitters.

But last weekend, I was IT. And we all know how much I love being the center of attention!

Okay, that's enough rambling for the kick in the pants to post. I have more stories from this past weekend, but really do need to get back to work now!