On a lighter note...

Eric and Tanii are in the final countdown to the arrival of their firstborn! You can see a slideshow of the shower pictures here.

EDITED TO ADD: That link actually takes you to the baby shower photos now. Sorry about that!

Please be patient through the first ten photos or so, since the detail shots of things like the favors, etc are all grouped together in the beginning. Usually I sprinkle those around, but it's already 2:30 a.m....



Since we definitely need a little laughter in my house, I also wanted to link to this hilarious article on theonion.com:Woman Overjoyed By Giant Uterine Parasite. I was telling Tanii all about it, and it just might be funny enough to make her water break. 90 degree Indian summer days and the the third trimester- not a good combination. Discuss. :)

Congratulations, you guys!

Prayers, please

So you know I never do this.

But the prayers? They are needed.

One of Joel's students, a young man he is particularly close to who was really refocusing his goals under Joel's mentorship, was seriously injured during football practice. His neck is broken. He's in ICU. He is currently paralyzed from the neck down, though he has regained sensation in the lower half of his body. The paralysis may not be permanent once swelling around the broken vertebrae subsides. This could literally be his body's way of saying, "Dude, whatever just happened? WAS BAD. I highly suggest you NOT MOVE for a few days until we figure this out." His injury sounds similar in many ways to the accident Stephen had in 10th grade when he fell from some scenery, though he never experienced the paralysis.

I suppose there is some comfort in knowing that of all the ways that young men in Queens wind up in the hospital, this was truly an accident. Without a doubt, the trajectory of his life has changed, and there's a hard road ahead. I've never seen Joel upset in quite this way, but there's a sense of steely peace in knowing that there are very real, concrete ways he can help this young man- tutoring, etc.

And as we sit together on the couch at 1 a.m., my phone rings. It's Kelly. For those of you who have been following her dog Asia's story on her blog, I'm sad to say the news is not good. At the moment, Asia is under the care of a wonderful veternarian. I've said before that because dogs show us their unconditional love without words, that perhaps they can know we love them, too, even when we can't be there with them to say it. Love to you, puppygirl. Love. Love. Love.

Faith makes all things possible. It doesn't make them easy.

Girls Just Wanna Have Fuh-un

So I'm slogging my way out of the oppressive, hate-filled process of data recovery !@#$%- ahem- to tell you I HAVE been having a little fun. Or Fuh-un, as Cindy Lauper would say. It's been all about the girls lately! :)

I give you... Melanie! Who is FIVE! (I really wish YouTube let you choose the frame grab, because I would have chosen a shot of the birthday girl, but alas, it does not).



The rest of the party photos are here.

As of yesterday, she is also an official kindergardner. She really changed this summer. Aside from shooting up about 3 inches, she just seems... a little older, a little wiser, maybe? She has also entered the phase of life where she's discovered the gift that is a Best Friend.



Wendy Shenberger was the banner-carrier of that particular title from MY first day of kindergarten until 7th grade. If you're out there in cyberspace somewhere, these two little girls reminded me of us. We did have fun, didn't we?

Then there's Lauri, Andrea and Lucy. I drove down for Lauri and Mike's engagement party and a short engagement photo session. They're a great couple. They have so much fun together, AND they let me take them to a total stranger's house, knock on their door and ask if we can jump on their trampoline. Such good sports. :)



You can see the rest of the photos here.

And then I have to hit you with some gratuitous baby cuteness, because Lucy? Is, like, 17 different kinds of awesome.

News Flash

I have two shocking things to tell you.

1.) I take a lot of pictures, and

2.) You have never electronically deleted anything in your life ever.

I have dozens of anal-retentive ways of archiving all my photos, but my be-all, end-all super easy, every image sorted by holiday, client, event, nature trip, "get to it in 3o seconds or less" system is on an external hard drive.

Which just died. Hate.

I have other versions of almost everything on backup CDs, in the archive at work, on two different online services and in a safety deposit box. However, there are a several dozen images that I am particularly fond of that weren't backed up on anything but the backup drive. And I want them back.

I WANT THEM BACK. BAAAACK.

It costs upwards of $700 to have a data recovery service restore the drive. I thought briefly about putting out a message on Craiglist- free wedding photography for any Western Digital Data Recovery Partner employee willing to quietly restore my drive in their cubicle. $700 isn't not worth it for the 150 photos I want to get back. BAAAACK.

So I bought an affordable data recovery program. It found- I am not making this up- 93,680 photos. It renames them as it restores them, so I have no way of knowing which image is which, nor can I search for files with helpful terms like "Life in Stepford." If I look at 100 images a day, it will take me 3 years just to LOOK at them all. It also found every image I have ever clicked on online, every AOL news story photo, every flickr image, every blogger profile photo, every forward/back button on a website that was made from an image of an arrow that was created in PhotoShop. EVERYTHING. EVER.

I am sort of clicking around at random, hoping to hit paydirt or find a method to the madness of chronology to the files. But this program restored a picture of my chiropractor's newborn baby. Kid starts pre-K on Tuesday.

In short, none of us have never deleted anything permanently ever, and I have shot over 600 GB worth of pictures. That's like 1.21 jiggawatts in photo terms. My laptop? Is Doc Brown's DeLorian.

"They found me. I don't know how, but they found me. Run for it, Marty!"