mortified

yesterday....I am sitting and answering emails, and suddenly without warning....

black screen.

well, black screen with these words on top:  "No hard drive detected." and then a series of prompts. The whole F1 for this, F2 for that. No amount of rebooting or crying was bringing anything up. Well, my little brother who is in town (and has some computer-y knowledge) took a look and figured that the tumble that my lappy took a few weeks ago did some damage other than snapping a hinge.  The hard drive seems to be intact. We *think*. It's something else that is keeping that information from booting up.

So.

I now have a new and shiny laptop. Yay! right? Not so much.

My old friendly Dell wasn't kind enough to send up a flare, or even shout 'iceberg, straight ahead!' before I got the black screen o'doom. And while I am normally pretty good about backing things up? Well, I had about two months of patterns (approximately 6 designs finished and about 12 more started!) and allll of my images for inspiration and fun and for my graphic work ....were not backed up.

With some research, my brother believes he can get this external usb-thingy that can pull the info off the old hard drive and get it on to my new sparkly baby.

Please please please...if we can't? I have got a ton-and-a-half of work ahead of me.

I am sooo upset with myself for putting off the back up. I know better. :(

Hopefully I will have some good news later today!