My laptop is (almost) fully functioning like before, yipee. So here’s an update of my week.

It’s been a while since I’ve last written something, so to fill in the blanks in the simplest way possible, last week, my laptop crashed. Now, it’s working again. Yipee.

A slightly more elaborative description would be that for some reason (virus, perhaps?), my laptop could not start past the ‘Welcome’ screen of Windows XP, though sometimes I could make it to an plain and iconless desktop background.

It was pretty scary. I had a lot of unbacked-up files on here. A couple thousand photos, a couple thousand songs, and a few dozen important text files and videos and other important projects. My mother and I tried a whole bunch of stuff, like restarting in Windows XP Safe Mode, and other things we learned online. Like I would know what the hell Safe Mode is…

It turned out, I had to get the hard drive out of my laptop and my mother connected it to her laptop, using some encaser thing (we had to go buy it; I still don’t know what it is or what it does). So we transferred all the files I needed onto her laptop, in a nice folder called “Annie’s stuff.”

Then, she reinstalled Windows XP on my laptop, clearing my hard drive and everything. For some reason, it was distressful to see her do that, even with my files now copied somewhere else.

For the past couple days I’ve been reinstalling some programs, getting the internet to work, etc. though I still have more (like Microsoft Word!) I haven’t been using computers much lately, only twittering every little while and checking the news, like seeing what’s been going on with the whole American bailout situation. Thank goodness I haven’t had any major essays due this or last week, or else I would have been really screwed over in the couple days in which I didn’t know what to do with my computer and just left it lying there like a dead broken machine.

This whole process, however, has given me some incentive to backup some of my files. Such as photos. The thought of losing my music really made me think… although I have most of my music on my iPod, iTunes wouldn’t let me retrieve it from it to transfer to my computer, would it? No, probably not. Because iTunes is a bitch.

So, I’ll now recap on what’s happened to me this week. It hasn’t been super exciting, but there have been some quirky moments.

Got to know my morning bus driver - I take public transit to school; one easy bus route that takes me there and back each day. I usually take the same bus at the same time driven by the same driver every morning. I decided to join in on a conversation with him and another guy, about movies. I learned that the driver’s name is Frank, he loves watching action movies, hates the “law and order crap” and even more so hates the romantic comedies his wife loves. Now I say “Hi, Frank!” everyday. It feels very personal, like those people in TV shows that somehow are on a first-name basis with all the people they see everyday (i.e. Starbucks baristas).

Got screwed over by the mall coat check schedule - Last week, I brought a big heavy (warm) jacket to the mall, because I would be taking two indubitably unreliable buses there. Good thing Yorkdale mall has a coat check right? BUT NO. IT DOESN’T OPEN UNTIL DEC. 1. I went there Nov. 29. Lucky, eh. So I just switched between carrying around my heavy jacket and wearing the hot thing. Extremely inconvenient for squeezing through crowds and clothing racks and even racks containing fragile do-not-drop items like perfumes and such. I was always afraid the heavy jacket in my hand would hit something by accident.

Got screwed over by dictionary.com - I’m really loving that phrase “screwed over” aren’t I? One day, I got kind of addicted to dictionary.com, kept checking random unknown words from a random unknown hard vocab book. I checked up about at least 100 words that day, some more than once. And then dictionary.com broke. It just, only showed ads after that. No definition. Only ads and the header. Weird. I was forced to use other dictionary sites that I just didn’t like as much as my beloved dictionary.com. I still am.

Guidance Councillor Talk - One of the guidance councillors came into one of my classes Monday to give us one of those periodic speeches on taking drugs. She asked us to share some of our ideas on drugs, and one girl put up her hand and said, “Crystal meth… it’s nice. It’s like buying shoes. You get all obsessed with it in the beginning, and then it wears off. So you go buy more. You can never have enough shoes, right?” The class burst out laughing and the guidance councillor turned red. Her face was golden.

(this is the same girl whose baggy sweatpants occasionally fall down ‘by accident.’)

Went for a midnight(ish) run and saw a raccoon - It doesn’t seem so exciting now, but wow, it scared me in the moment. I hate seeing moving things in the dark.

Funny conversation - Walking down a school hallway I’m bound to hear something interesting, be it funny or disturbing. I wouldn’t call it ‘eavesdropping’ because they’re saying it loud and public, right? Anyway, the conversation between two girls went something like this.

“I went clubbing last night, and it was awesome! My thong kind of got in the way though.”
“Oh, that sucks. But I totally know what you mean.”
“Yeah, so I eventually had to take it off. I hope no one noticed!” [giggle giggle]
“Hopefully… where did you leave it?”
“Oh, I just took it off and left it on the ground in some corner. It wasn’t there when I left though! Too bad, because I liked that underwear.”

You can’t overhear that and not chuckle…

Piano Teacher - My piano teacher has always had a bad back, but she told me last week that her son has arranged for her to go get spinal surgery in New York. She doesn’t want to, thinks it’s too dangerous. I feel sorry for her. She’s a nice woman.

Yahoo’s new layout? - I don’t like it.

Bought ice cream and ate it in 0 degrees Celcius - Let’s just say, I had a few bucks on me, I was hungry, and there was nowhere else to buy food. I got a few chills and too many stares eating it on the street.

Oh wow, I see this post has become long. Maybe the itch of my fingers after the lack of significant msn-ing, faceboking, news-checking, and comment-writing recently has released itself into one gigantic post. Now I have to get back to downloading more of my old programs. Lots more work ahead of me!