If I had to describe myself, it would be in a word that has many meanings with a complexity which falls off the tongue.
A word made up of many elements, is deceptive in appearance, and creates an illusion from the imagination.
My word would be Phantasmagoric. ~Summer Ross

Sunday, January 9, 2011

What happens when....

What happens when a clicking becomes a bad sign? How does a birthday turn into an inspection? Where can you find old pictures? And why is the phone ringing at 7am?


 Well I will tell you the answers my friends, because it all happened last week.


 I know I have been sparse on comments in the last week. But don't fret, I'll tell you a story.


 It all started the morning of my birthday.


 January 5th I awoke smiling because my manly man wished me a happy birthday. Soon the phone rang with texts of happy birthdays. I hopped on blogger to find out my blogfest had reached a fire like rampage with so many commentors and participants. I couldn't ask for a better morning until I drove to my apartment to check on things.


 I walked through the door and instantly knew I heard something off. I put my shoes by the door and followed a beeping sound to my bedroom. I knew it was the computer and immediately sat down at the small desk to rectify the problem. There was a black screen. Guess the computer needed to be restarted. I pushed the off button, then clicked it back on and a horrible clicking sound came from inside the hard drive. The black screen booted up, then nothing. It couldn't read my files.


 I took a deep breath and called my computer friend.

 "My computer is clicking and wont turn on right." I told her.

 "Turn it off and bring it straight over"


 I loaded up my unhappy computer and drove over to my friends house. After I dropped it off the phone rang.

 "Hello?"


 "Is this Summer Ross?" said the voice on the phone.


 "Yes"


 "I see you are only signed up for 9 credit hours, you must have 12 credits to receive your grants."

 I immediately knew one of my classes had been canceled, but which one and would I be able to sign up for a new one so close to semester starting?

 "I realize I need 12 credits, I'll take a look as soon as I can." I said.


 "Well Ma'am, your money will be on hold until we can verify, so be sure to do it soon."


 Oh crap! Fine I'll have to get online somehow tonight and fix this problem. Good thing Manly man has internet access or I might have been in hot water. I hung up the phone, checked my mailbox, and drove to manly man's house.


After I pulled up into the driveway and grabbed my mail, I noticed a small white envelope with my apartment's landlord address on it. Curious I opened it as I moved from the car. A clean crisp white sheet of paper had the word "Inspection" typed in bold letters on the middle of the page. I read further on the line and the date was set up for Jan 13th! Yikes, this put a whole new spin on my day.

 I knew some how I had to add in deep cleaning to my list of things I must do before next week. I had to shampoo carpets, do laundry, wash walls, take down all my Christmas stuff, and (dreadfully) clean my bedroom! Alright I can handle all this, easy peasy.


 Manly man's house was warm when I walked through the door. I shuffled my coat off and onto the couch then loaded up his computer. I found a new class to sign up for and quickly added it to my registration for the college. The phone rang again. This time it was my Friend with my computer.


 "Do you want the good news or the bad?" She asked.


 "Good first."

 "Alright, your computer will run off your C drive, I do not have to reformat."

 "Okay what is the bad?"

 "Well, what all did you have on the D drive?"


 "A few things why?" My gut dropped.

 "The D drive is completely shot and I have tried everything to access it. Its fried, everything on it is pretty much lost."


 "But all my pictures were on that drive!"

 "How many?"


 "All of them, clear back to 2007 when my girls had their dance recital, Christmas. Pictures from 2008 and 2009." The burden of loss quickened my words and tore through my heart. Is there a way to get them from somewhere else, maybe myspace or facebook. I cooed myself into a belief that I would get them back. I had to, those were pictures of my babies, years worth.


Before I ever ate a single piece of birthday cake I had managed to score a shampooer for my carpets, fixed my online classes so I get my grants, and find out that my D drive had become so old the gear messed up and had sketched a few pretty patterns onto my drive making it unreadable.


Did you know, you can't copy your own pictures off Myspace and facebook? I just found out. But alas I am able to go through my old e-mails, where every picture I have ever sent is saved in folders in my e-mail.


 Thus your answers and the reasons made known why I have been sparse on comments. I now have my computer back as of yesterday night. I'm still searching out ways to get pictures, and have my house deep cleaned. Whew- that's a lot of work! Happy Sunday every one, next week will hopefully have better repercussions.


On a more positive note, I have decided to use one of my new journals for memories. I'm starting it with as far back as I can remember, about the age of 3 or 4. So far I have four pages written with four different memories dating back to 1985.

19 comments:

Kittie Howard said...

Oh, Summer, you've had a rough go of it but big applause for turning lemons into lemonade. I've never figured out why bad things seem to run in a pack, but they surely do.

And Happy Birthday to you! (Your manly Man sounds like a really nice guy.)

Summer Ross said...

Kittie- thank you, and he is a terrific guy!

Tony Benson said...

Oh dear! I hope you get all your photos recovered! I'm off to do a back up now.

The Words Crafter said...

Bless. It. You've had a time! Stinks about the photos, though. I'm glad you can find them elsewhere. I absolutely hate registering for classes. Yuck!

Happy Birthday!

Wendy Tyler Ryan said...

Poor Summer. Glad things are looing up. But now I will say three words to you that people ignore with frequency. Backup, backup, backup. Don't leave things to chance, especially treasured pictures and god forbid, writing. Incorporate making a backup copy of any pictures you dump onto your computer right away. Sorry to sound like a mom, but computers and hard drives seldom give notice when they crash.

Summer Ross said...

Tony- me too.

Words Crafter- Registering is one of the pains of college...lol

Wendy- You are very very right!

B.E.T. said...

O.O Wow, that's a crazy birthday. I'm glad it all worked out okay in the end, mostly. I had a similar scare with my housing at college, I couldn't get into my dorm and apparently there was a hold on my account because of some BS technicality. Happy belated Birthday, and may your following week be so much more enjoyable.

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Three words - external hard drive.
And your landlord inspects your apartment? Really? Wow, never had to worry about that.
Just think, it can only get better from here.

Caroline said...

That's so awful! I'd have melted into a quivering puddle instead of dealing with things as well as you did.

My belated birthday wish for you is that this was the universe's way of getting all the nasty stuff over with at once so you can have a carefree, easy 2011.

-Caroline

Old Kitty said...

Oh wow. What a manic few days for you!! But well done you for sorting everything out!!! I do hope you retrieve all your pics back - they're so precious!!! Good luck!!!

I hope you are now enjoying a calmer Sunday!! Take care
x

Golden Eagle said...

Glad to hear you could recover some of the photos! I hope you get everything else important restored somehow.

Hopefully, this week will go much more smoothly for you. :)

Jules said...

Man, NO Fairy Frigging Way! Bummer. There is a new windows 7 tool called "Snipping Tool." This allows you to snip only part of a web page and save it. May be a way to get pictures as well.

Now go buy an external drive for storage and burn those photos to CD!

Sending calming Fairy Spirits to you my friend :)
Jules @ Trying To Get Over The Rainbow

mshatch said...

I hate when bad things happen to my computer. I've lost pictures, too and it sucks! So sorry this happenbed to you :(

Jemi Fraser said...

Yikes - that's all nuts!!! I'm so glad you haven't deleted your 'sent' folder - I usually do!

Time for an external hard drive! And now I'm going to back up my photos....

WritingNut said...

Oh my goodness.. that is horrible! I'm so sorry! I'm glad you had them saved elsewhere though! Back everything up as soon as you can.

I had a scare last year too, and went out and bought an external drive. The computer has since died, but thank goodness I managed to salvage everything first... :S

Mason Canyon said...

Wow, I'd say that will be one birthday you won't forget anytime soon. Hope everything else works out for you. This is a great reminder that we need to back up our computers at least weekly. Good luck.

Mason
Thoughts in Progress

Unknown said...

Wow, dearheart. I'm sorry the computer fairy couldn't save the hdd. I'm happy w manly Man's spin in your world. Very cool that there was a class to sign up for! ×_× for inspections. Mine is this week.
I love you w all my heart, my sweet. That's what Family is for. Kiss those Kids, hug the Man, and set out extra cookies for the good luck Faeries!

Katrina L. Lantz said...

Wow, what a crazy birthday! I think it's amazing you commented on the blogfest at all with everything you had going on. Yay for nice warm manly man's house and computer-savvy friend. I'm sure glad they were around.

Elena Solodow said...

Wow, that's some birthday, Summer!

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