Monday, June 16, 2008

Near Disaster

Saturday started out as a normal enough day but soon things went very, very wrong. I went to my laptop to check my email and noted that it was acting a little strange so I decided to restart it. No big deal, right? Well, that's what I thought, too, but boy was I wrong. It restarted and then proceeded to log off. So I tried again. Same thing. And again, and again, and again.....Nothing worked. I was just about to cry and became literally sick to my stomach. You see, I had 5 years of tax returns for about 250 clients stored on my laptop and payroll records for two companies. Now, I know it's not smart, but I had no backup of these things. The tax stuff was bad but I at least had paper copies and could have rebuilt them if necessary (although I certainly wouldn't want to if I didn't have to), but the payroll was nowhere else and I had no way to even rebuild it. All I could think was what was I going to do when it came time to file quarterly payroll reports in July.

Fortunately my somewhat tech savvy husband remembered that he had some type of apparatus that I could use to hook my laptop hard drive to another computer so I could copy things off of it. So the plan was that I would take my hard drive out of my laptop, hook it to Jarrod's computer and transfer the things I needed off of mine onto his and then reformat my laptop hard drive and start fresh. Sounds fairly simple but it was far from it. We fiddled and fooled and finally (after a couple of hours) got Jarrod's computer to recognize my hard drive and then I began the transfer process. About an hour later Jarrod came in and asked if I shut his computer off. Of course, I hadn't. As unbelievable as it may sound, his computer had died. It wouldn't do anything. Fortunately it was only the power supply and we had an extra so Darren was able to get it back up and running yesterday. I reformatted today and am now back up and running.

I'm starting the tedious process of getting things reinstalled but so far I've got my payroll files back so I can deal with the rest if I have to. I'd like to say that I've learned my lesson and will do regular backups in the future, and I am going to try, but I know from past experience that it'll probably be short lived. Oh well, at least all is well for now.

Monday, June 9, 2008

Gospel Man & Bible Boy Ride Again!




Our five minute nightly spots with Gospel Man and Bible Boy were so popular last year that we've expanded this year. This year our entire VBS program will revolve around our two heroes. Our theme for the week will be "Gospel Man & Bible Boy and the Lost Treasure." There will be a 10-15 minute video each night this year. We're really excited about it and looking forward to breaking the records we set last year.


We began filming our video productions today. Wow! What a job. Everything has to be filmed in small segments from several different angles and it is very time consuming....and that's before the editing process even starts. We expect it will take all week to film five episodes and from now until VBS in July to edit the final cuts.


I laughed so hard tonight that I almost wet my pants. These guys are just hilarious together. Davy Hamilton is an absolute natural and James, well I can't imagine anyone else as Bible Boy. I can't wait to see the finished project!

Sunday, June 1, 2008

The Pox

Poor Jarrod has been laid low. A couple of weeks ago he complained about a bump behind his ear hurting. I felt it and dismissed it as a zit, after all he is fourteen. Then,this past Thursday night he had me feel and there were four bumps behind one ear and one behind the other ear. I then realized that they must be swollen lymph glands which is something we get really excited about around here because Darren's dad and grandfather both died of Hodgkins disease. I told Darren I would get him an appointment with the doctor on Friday. Friday morning, which was the last day of school, he woke up with what looked like a fine rash on his arms. He had mowed the day before so I just assumed he had gotten into something. I took him to the doctor and they did some blood work and said they thought he had a virus but wanted to see him back in a week to recheck his counts. The doc said the rash was "contact dermatitis" and told us to use cortisone cream on it. So all was well, or so we thought. He went out to his grandmother's house and mowed after school and then came home. I noticed that he had broken out a little more but didn't think anything more of it. I went to church for a jewelry show and when I came home he was burning with fever and the rash was getting much worse and blistering. Then it hit me....I've seen this before. This is chicken pox.

I feel like such a bad mother. The other two boys were vaccinated for chicken pox but that was not one of the vaccinations they were giving when Jarrod was little. I could have taken him to the doctor to get it later but never did. Now he is paying the price for my procrastination. He looks absolutely awful and doesn't feel much better. He stayed home from church today and laid around all day. He got up and came to the recliner and sometime along about 7:30 p.m. he moved to the couch and that was pretty much all he did all day. Hopefully he'll feel better in a few days. What a way to start summer vacation!