This was a day of huge disaster at work. The hard drive on the Mac crashed.

All my templates and catch phrase files for my reports are on Mac disks. There are no other Macs in the building. I am doomed.

Now granted that this is a Mac LCII that has to be at least ten years old, but that means NOTHING!~! I know it’s been faithful and worked hard, but dang it, that’s 10 years worth of work on those disks!

I have a Mac at home, but no printer. (It’s the old scussy port vs. parallel port thing – I can’t find a compatible printer for this model.) So I can read my disks at home but I can’t print anything.

So I can’t bring my paperwork home on the weekends and get it done, then print it when I get to school.

I will have to try to recreate all my files and retype them on a PC. This will take ages and ages.

I started to try to download the forms from the department of education site that are the legal forms that are required for each meeting. Basically this took all day (whenever I had time away from kids.) Then once I found the forms on the site I had to copy and paste them into a word program, then try to reformat them so I could type on them with ease.

I was close to pulling out my hair.

So the next batch of stuff that has to get done is recreating the goals I use for each subject area (these are based on the Mass education standards). This will be easier as I have printed copies that I’ve used for other kids.

It’s the testing info that will be a misery to reproduce. I had files that told the best strategies for kids who had difficulties in certain areas (for example long-term retrieval or auditory processing). This files had been created, revised and tweaked over the years, and were in great shape.

I used to be able to copy and paste and customize them to help with the profile of each child.

It makes me ill to think of what lies ahead.

I should mention that the hard drive had a somewhat musical death. When I turn it on it makes a sound like the Nazi police sirens during the Luftwaffe.

All I can think of is the Von Trap family as they try to escape to the graveyard at the convent and all the cars are racing after them.

It’s truly pathetic.

Bets’ daughter is not in good shape. She seemed to be on the upswing, but took a bad turn Tuesday night. I wish there were something that I could do to help Bets, she’s an absolute wreck.

My foot is still giving me pain, although considerably improved from where it was. By the end of the day it’s throbbing.

It kind of wears me out, too. Last night I fell asleep watching TV at 8 o’clock. Woke up and went to bed at about 8:30, started to watch West Wing and fell asleep before the ending. I had thought that I’d watch the Grammy’s but found it was too loud and irritating.

And I can’t stand listening to Tony Bennett sing flat.

Time for me to crash now. I know tomorrow will be a misery trying to deal with the computer issue, so I should go catch some sleep.