Starting Over

I don't think I could feel like a bigger idiot. But I guess I got upset over something that perhaps wasn't so devastating. I was sprucing up my little computer, rearranging things so that I would have more space on my C drive. Since there's always the possibility that Microsoft will ruin my life, I backed everything up, including all of my e-mail and calendar events (both past and future).

I went through the process and everything worked out great. So the next day I started going through the stuff I had backed up and stupidly deleted the mail archives, thinking that everything was still on my computer.

1st Lesson of the Day: "Archive" means "cut and paste", not "copy".

Of course, I already knew that, but somehow I didn't clue into it until hours later, when I realized that every single e-mail and event that I had saved over the past 3 years was wiped out. I completely lost it. I know it sounds ridiculous that I should get so worked up about electronic data, but it was in this moment that I realized exactly how much I relied on this technology.

I have the worst memory. Sure, I can quote Simpsons' episodes and recall that time that Mrs. Plevins yelled at me in front of my whole Grade 5 class, but otherwise, it's hard for me to remember what I was doing last week, or last year. So I use old e-mails and the calendar in Outlook to remember for me. So it was really important to me that 3 years worth of memories was erased because I was careless. And the saddest part of all this is that I don't remember what I lost. I know most of it was correspondence between me and my friends, and there were some newsletters that I get once in a while, and there might have been some important stuff, but I had placed all of my faith in this little machine to remember things for me, that I just pushed it out of my own head, thinking it was in a safe place.

I actually had trouble sleeping that night. By the next morning, I had come to my senses and realized that all was not lost. Half of my messages were still saved on the server. In my attempt to recopy all of the messages back onto my computer, I forgot to click one little box, and now all of the messages that were on the server are now downloaded onto my computer.

2nd Lesson of the Day: "Download" means "cut and paste", not "copy".

So, the server is empty, and I have most of my recent e-mails on my computer. The majority of the stuff that I permanently lost were really old Waterloo Engmail messages from my classmates about projects and from my profs about assignments. Technically, this was all stuff I should have ditched a while ago. As for the rest of it, I'm going to have to rely on friends to fill in the gaps. I suppose I should just make this a "silver lining" experience and move on.

But I still feel like an idiot.

"I don't feel the way I ever felt, I know, I'm gonna smile and not get worried, I try but it shows"

It Could Have Been Me...

I don't know if it's the weather, or if people just don't pay attention anymore, but lately I've been passing a lot of accidents on the way to work. Specifically, on the 404. Yesterday, traffic slowed as I passed Highway 7, which is unusal because when you get that far north in the morning there's less traffic. I crawled past a couple of cars that were mysteriously dented (mysterious because they were both dented on the right side...and I didn't see any other cars on the shoulder).

Today, traffic slowed again, this time near Major Mackenzie. A pretty bad rear-end accident had just happened in the middle lane. I got to work a little late but it was okay. A couple of hours later, I found out that one of the guys in my department, Robert, had gotten into an accident. What happened? He was slowing down due to the traffic caused by the accident I passed, and he got rear-ended. Can you believe that? His bumper was in pretty bad shape, and after a lot of convincing from the rest of us, he took the rest of the day off to go to the doctor in case he has whiplash.

So, my first thought was, what the hell is going on? I know accidents happen every day, but to have another accident caused by an accident? Luckily Robert was slowing down properly and wasn't following the guy in front of him too closely, otherwise he would have plowed into the front car. That means the guy behind him was going pretty fast despite the fact that everyone in front of him was obviously slowing down.

But the really sobering thought for me is...that could so easily have been me. I could have been the one that guy slammed into. I mean, Robert gets to work the same time I do, so he couldn't have been that far behind me on the road at the time.

Lately in the news, they've been talking about how commuters are more likely to die from a heart attack due to the stress of sitting in rush hour traffic.

Right...because what we should be worrying about when we're on the road.

"Crash...on the last splash"

Little Bugs

This has been bugging me for the past couple of weeks. Why does Bono say "Uno, dos, tres, catorce" at the beginning of Vertigo? It's...weird, and it throws me off for some reason. Is he trying to be different? Does it mean something? Because I refuse to believe that he can't count to four in Spanish. For that matter, I refuse to believe that ANYONE can't count to four in Spanish.

Have you ever had the feeling that something is missing? You can't quite put your finger on it, but there's a very tangible hole somewhere in your life, and you don't know what's supposed to fit in it. I've had the feeling for a while, and I'm starting to not like it. I know what you're thinking, and it's NOT IT. I'd like to think that I'm not that shallow. But I think I'm formulating a solution as to how to go about looking for my missing thing.

More to follow...

"Hello hello (hola!) I'm at a place called Vertigo"

Multitasking Technology

I was at yet another warehouse sale with my parents on Tuesday (Levi's this time). Same old, same old. As my dad was trying on a reasonably priced, decent-looking belt, all the lights went out. Talk about flashback. But a glance outside the door told us that the only place with no power was the room we were in. So...okay. But it's a fairly large room and somehow the dark seemed bigger because of it. So what do people do? They started turning on their cell phones and continued to shop by the light from the screens. And I have to say, some of those coloured screens are really bright. For pete's sake...it only lasted ten minutes. And naturally the first things to regain life were the cash registers. Naturally.

Now, for my real cell phone rant. In the middle of the standing posture sequence of my yoga class yesterday, there was a sudden and very unmistakable melody permeating through the new-age ocean wave music that the instructor always uses. Everyone sing along! "I see a red door and I want it painted black..." The instructor asked the guilty party to turn off her cell phone, and all the woman could say was that it was going to stop playing in a few seconds. Um...right...until the next minute when the person calls back? Even as the woman went to turn it off, someone else's cell started ringing. Honestly. It rang again just before the final meditation, prompting the instructor to firmly, and with no attempt to hide her irritation, say, "If anyone has a cell phone in the room and thinks that it will ring in the next ten minutes, I'd like to ask them to leave now." The second cell phone woman picked up her stuff and left the class.

Is it too much to ask people to leave their lives outside the door for one measly hour? Okay, I know better than anyone that it's easy to forget stuff like turning off the cell phone. But, seriously! It already rang once! And isn't the point of practicing yoga to relax and let go of the stress in our lives? Why bring the phone in with you?? That's like the source of all stress!! Holy crap, just thinking about it is stressing me out!!!!

Thank you, and good night.

"I have to turn my head until my darkness goes"

24 Hours

I just recovered from a 24-hour cold. It was absolutely fascinating...okay, it's absolutely fascinating in retrospect. At the time, it was pretty crappy. When I woke up, I felt fine, except for a very slight scratchiness in the throat. It didn't hurt as much as it usually does before the onset of a cold, so I decided to deal with it later (especially since I was already a little late for work). I started sniffling at around 2:00 pm, prompting me to make a mental note to take some medication before I went to bed that night. I didn't have a chance to do anything...by 4:00 pm, I was sneezing and congested. By the time I got home, it was a full-blown sinus attack. I lay on the couch in front of the TV like a slug until it was time to take some drugs.

Sidebar: The apple-cinnamon Neo Citron kicks ass. Not only does it actually taste like both cinnamon and apples, but it works like a charm. A little promo just in time for cold and flu season.

So I took the Neo and passed out for the night. By the time my alarm rang this morning, I was perfectly okay. Other than some residual sniffles during the day, you couldn't tell that I was sick as a dog the night before. It was like a week-long cold compressed into 24 hours. If only all of my colds were like that...

24 hours can do a lot to a person. For example, you think that you're going in to get your chemo treatment tomorrow, and then 24 hours later, you find out the chemo isn't working, and just for extra kicks, it turns out that the reason why you can't breathe properly is because fluid has been building up around your lungs and you have to go into the hospital to get it drained out of your body. It was the first time I personally saw my boss cry, which was pretty upsetting for me. You have to hand it to this woman, though. She finds out she's only got one working lung, but she comes into work anyway while she's waiting for a bed in the hospital to become available. I swear, she is my personal hero. Meanwhile the blood clot in her right arm hasn't cleared up yet, so she's in constant agony. It's astounding when you think about how life can be so unfair to really nice people. She's supposed to be in the hospital for a couple more days, so I'm going to try to visit her tomorrow. Just another 24 hours.

"I wanna hold you high and steal your pain away"