Too Beautiful

I spent this past week in Indiana, where fall is in full blast.  The oranges and reds and yellows and golds, mixed with some still green trees are just too beautiful for words.  Last night my son and I walked through the IU campus on our way to dinner.  This tree captures the whole fall experience - all the colors right there in a single tree.  From this angle, it looked like the red leaves were on fire - especially as they were being lit from behind by the setting sun.

I am in awe of the colors of fall.

snowfall in Bloomington

It's been awhile since I've posted here. When I first started this I thought I'd do it once a day, and for a while thinking about that daily post helped me get through the day. Then life sped up and I became too busy to think about it at all. In the last three months of 2009, I bought a condo in Indiana, my company was acquired, I left my job of 25 years and started work for a new very small company, I traveled to California once and Indiana 3 times.

So here we are about to start a new year and a new decade. My new job keeps me pretty occupied so I doubt I'll go back to a once a day posting, but perhaps I'll try for once a week.

This photo was taken yesterday in Indiana at the new condo, these lions adorn the gates to the courtyard. The snowfall was so spectacular as snowflakes clumped together in the air, making giant snowflakes. It was even better because we had nowhere we had to go, so we built a fire in the fireplace and simply enjoyed the fire, the snow, and the day.

magical yellow world

I took this photo last week but have been so busy all week I haven't had a chance to post it. I don't have words to describe what it's like to be walking along and all of the sudden you are in the middle of all this incredible yellow beauty. It just envelops you. Everything else in the world just disappears and there you are, yellow all around, the rustling of leaves falling from the trees to make not only the air but also the ground yellow. It's incredibly powerful.

Fall Flower

I love the way the light was shining through this flower, and also the two bees busy with the job of pollinating. This photo was taken at Oliver Winery just outside of Bloomington, Indiana last weekend.

Since then I've been busy working during the day, stripping wallpaper at night, making it a little hard to find time to take photos or blog. I'm heading back to Chicago soon so I expect to get back to more regular posts, at least until the next trip back here to finish up - I'm not quite through with bathroom number 1, and number 2 is yet to be started!

another sunset at a very special place

I took this photo last week on one of the last days that my son was staying at the home of two very special people. They provided him with a place to live during a month while we waited to close on the condo he just moved into.  


The closing was Wednesday and ever since we've been working morning till night on moving, unpacking, cleaning, etc. This also explains my absence from posting here - by the end of each day I was too tired to do anything more than fall into bed.

silver linings

This photo was taken yesterday in Bloomington, Indiana, not long before sunset. The drama and mystrey of the dark landscape and clouds constrasted with the bright light making its way through seems so appropriate for my life right now. The darkness of my son's illness is contrasted with the brilliant light that comes from the care and concern of so very many incredible people around us. And behind that cloud is the even brighter light that will be shining on us as soon as we find ways to treat his symptoms and allow him to regain a more normal life.

freezing a hard drive

The previous post didn't actually go the way I expected - I searched for that photo because I was thinking about how relative time is, how it can seem so short and so long simultaneously... and that made me start thinking about the clock from Prague. But when I saw the photo I also saw the skeleton figure, which I had forgotten about... and it sort of shocked me all over again.

Anyway, tonight's post is about something I'm very thankful for. But first you need the back story. Last week I was in the middle of typing on my Mac and all the sudden everything froze. Practically in mid-word. Wouldn't respond to the mouse or keyboard. So I shut it down, waited awhile, and turned it back on... nothing. Wouldn't boot at all. Tried booting from an external hard drive, still nothing. By now I'm getting the idea this isn't going to be easy; something is seriously wrong with the computer. I went in search of paperwork and found it is still covered under AppleCare (whew!). BUT... it's been awhile since I've backed anything up. A long while. And I have lots and lots and lots of photos stored on this machine.

So off to the Apple store I go, and sure enough, the hard drive is not responding. They replace it and last weekend I went to pick it back up. I asked if I could take the old hard drive just on the off chance that I can get something out of it. First they said no, we gave you a new one so we need to keep the old one. I asked if they were just going to throw it away. They said yes, but it might cost you thousands of dollars to get someone to restore it. I said I was going to try myself, and finally they said "OK, here it is."

Now back to the title of this post which involves my freezer. Turns out that if you put a hard drive in the freezer, it *might* fix it long enough for you to copy files off of it. I found this out at work a few years ago when my laptop's hard drive crashed. They put it in the freezer and the next day I was able to copy everything I needed off of it.

So I put my drive in the freezer overnight, and sure enough, when I tried tonight it came up right away. I recovered about half the photos on the drive before it stopped working. So now it's back in the freezer, I'll try the other half tomorrow.

No photo tonight (I'd take one of the drive but it's back in the freezer) but I am very thankful that I've recovered as much as I have of my hard drive. Oh, and by the way, I am now going to leave Time Machine running to keep more regular backups. I've learned my lesson.