The best laid plans…

I had in mind to continue posting regularly, but life had other plans. Last week was a week which, if ever repeated, may lead to my demise. It was supposed to be a busy week anyway. My teaching responsibilities at King and Milligan began on Wednesday. I was also slotted to preach on Sunday. And, our youth group was going to spend all day Friday and Saturday at the Bristol Motor Speedway selling ear plugs and water to race fans as an attempt at raising money. Was this a full week and weekend? Sure. But it was manageable…until the unforeseen entered into the equation.

I was typing feverishly on my laptop on Monday night. I had spent most of the day crafting a sermon and preparing my notes for OT Survey. So at around 9:00pm, as I paused to reflect on my work, I heard some unfortunate words – “Oh my gosh!! Watch out!!” I lifted my hands from the laptop and looked up just in time to see a bottle of lotion whiz by my head and land squarely on my laptop. Carrie had accidentally dropped this bottle off an overhang and down onto my work area in the family room.

The laptop restarted to the sound of grinding. I knew immediately it was the hard drive that had been damaged. Not wanting to subject it to further damage, I turned the laptop off with the hopes that things could be salvaged. The next morning I tried to start the laptop up but it tried for about 10 seconds and gave me the, “You are screwed. Throw the computer away.” (Note: this was not the actual message, but I am conveying the connotation). So I shut down again and decided to try again later.

In the afternoon I powered up again and after running a battery of diagnostic tests, it did load up, but again the sounds emendating from the hard drive area would make even the most stalwart listener cringe. I quickly threw in a USB drive and started copying files, starting with my sermon, class notes, and irreplaceable pictures of the new baby. Partway through, the Hard Drive locked up and I had to shut down again, but not before getting the most pertinent files.

As it stands today I have replaced the Hard Drive and gotten many of the files off the damaged drive, though I will never get everything off. Some pictures of Elijah are lost. Some pictures of family are lost. Any file over 1 Mb is pretty much toast. But my written down thoughts, lessons, sermons, etc. made the transfer.

I hope to get things back together soon, but am still trying to catch up. Thanks for your patience here at “The Second Call.”