One of the few things Geoffrey and I agree about musically is that Rebecca Loebe is a really amazing singer. She’s my college buddy’s sister. I’d heard her play once in undergrad and once again two years ago when she came through, crashed on my futon and insisted Geoffrey and I would make a good couple. Last night, she came through town again and it was a treat to hear her sing live some of the songs I’d only heard on her new CD. When I mentioned to C- and J- that she was coming through town, they made sure their weekend plans included listening to her sing.

Now I could go into at this point my opinion of the venue (which the whole group agreed didn’t really let her sound her best) or the girl that went after her or even her rendition of Kanye West’s Stronger which was excellent. But I’ve an awful head cold, so I’ll just stick with saying we saw Rebecca, her music gets better every time I’ve seen her play and everyone should check her out. Now, where is the sudafed?

I know why people blog about food. It’s a daily source of inspiration.

Tonight I made tacos. But I forgot the taco seasoning. That was fine because I like bland food, but Geoffrey had to flavor his with hot sauce.

Also, people blog about food because its safe.

Tonight I made tacos but almost burnt the house down in the process. The oven started to burn and when I opened it, smoke billowed out and set off the smoke alarm. Geoffrey ran in the kitchen to find me cowering in a corner with my hands over my ears, unable to see from the smoke in my eyes and had to wave a dish rag at the fire alarm to cut it off. Once I could see again, I started to worry that the fire department would soon show up to mock me as they did four years ago when an accidentally burnt steak set off the fire alarm. My ever-practical engineer husband assured me that because of different requirements in the fire code, this fire alarm was not wired to immediately summon the burnt-steak-mocking firemen. I guess their wives never had to learn how to cook the hard way.

Finally, people blog about food because everyone is interested in food…

Did you hear that, J-, I made tacos! Normally, J-, C- and I end up at Tuesday Taco night, but since J- is in the middle of the bar exam (which he will pass so that I can have his books) we held off tonight in plans of bar-completion celebration tomorrow. But I had tacos anyways. Nah nah nah nah nah nah.

Yes, there is lots of inspiration in food.

Last year for valentine’s – since everything was already booked – I decided to cook Geoff supper. So I sent him to the grocery store with explicit instructions to bring home bread and cheese and flowers. So off he goes and I get down to the business of cooking.

About thirty minutes later, he shows back up and dumps his goods on the counter; white bread, good cheese and three kinds of flours – wheat, self-rising and pastry. He was very pleased with himself.

This valentine’s I decided to ask for something different as it took me forever to finish up all that flour. So I asked him for a sweet letter. Fairly straightforward, right?

I wake up to find a pink note on my desk, sitting on some wax paper, wet. The content of the note was certainly sweet, I must admit, but the note ended by suggesting that I taste it.

“What did you do to this?” I ask, sniffing it.
“I made you a sweet note,” he looks very pleased with himself. I lick it. Sure enough, it tastes sweet. Sigh.

“Next year, I’m going to ask you for diamonds…oh wait, never mind, that’s too easy for you…”

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It’s still snowing. Three inches and counting. Nothing compared to what they’re having up north, of course, but for South Carolina, its pretty awesome. Well, now that Geoff is home from work safe and sound without getting into a car wreak, its awesome.

The last time we had this much snow I was in high school. I went outside diligently to play in it and spent all afternoon gathering up every single bit of snow in our front yard to make a snowman – which I proudly put in the dead center of our driveway. When dad came home from work, I ran outside to make him drive around the snowman.

The pictures of snowmen have started to appear on facebook – its good so many people are enjoying the snow! I kinda wish it had snowed a different weekend, one where I didn’t have a lot of fun things planned, but hey, its the once-a-decade snow storm. I plan to enjoy!! Weather, would you mind snowing again Monday so school and work will be canceled?

Apparently, about a month ago, Geoff got a virus on his computer. It disabled his antivirus and happily went about inviting in its buddies. But otherwise, it was unobtrusive. Until Tuesday night when his computer completely died.

“What’s it doing now,” I was trying to figure out what was happening, he was driving me insane by looking over my shoulder and making me explain everything I was doing.
“This is generally referred to as the blue screen of death,” I reply, “I just know you have a backup somewhere, right? Just in case I have to wipe it?”
“I did, but I lost it.” Typical.

I turn back to regard the blue screen. This was going to be a fight, then. Loosing five years worth of code and data was not an option. So I couldn’t take the easy way out and wipe it.

I pull the harddrive out of the laptop and connect it to my desktop (which by some fluke of luck uses Serial ATA to connect my RAID harddrives), disable RAID and boot up. I can now access and clean Geoff’s harddrive using my desktop. All while my data is safely disconnected.

Two days and countless hours of various antivirus scans later, not to mention the viruses rather valiant attempts at invading my machine, the computers are both clean. Tonight I will have to drag him to the store to buy a portable harddrive to make regular backups.

“I had this happen to me after I completed my masters,” he tells me.
“And what did you do then without me to rescue you?”
“Oh, I had to send it off to get the data recovered – cost me about $800.”

When will people learn to backup? Even if you don’t get a virus, harddrives periodically wear out. They have movable parts that grow old and break. Or a lightening strike can totally fry your system. Or your malicious younger sibling can sit down and delete your files while you aren’t looking.

Businesses (or at least those with tech savvy people) back up regularly, on a schedule, including a remote backup (in some cases, this means the manager takes the tape backup to her house). Why haven’t individuals learned to do the same? Its as easy as burning a CD or copying to a portable harddrive. There are even programs that do it for you automatically.

In my now 8+ years of doing tech support I’ve run across two types: the ones who back up their data almost obsessively to the point that they spend almost too much time and energy on it and those that don’t bother to back up at all. Oh, and those that have macs and so assume that nothing bad at all could happen to their computer ever. Which is just great. But my experience also shows that if your computer is going to crash (which they all eventually do), it will probably do so the night before your paper is due.

“So where is Geoffrey this weekend?” I’m out eating with some of my parent’s friends.
“Hiking.” It’s true.
“Ah, that’s what Gov. Sanford said!” Laughter.

But no, he came home last night dirty with the sniffles from spending the weekend in the mountains in below-freezing conditions.

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I was in the produce section of the grocery store yesterday loading my cart up with apples and bananas and strawberries and other yummy foods when a very large old man with crooked teeth and a wicked grin walks over to me.

“You’re eating far too healthy there,” he tells me.
“Ah, don’t worry,” I reply, “I plan to dip it all in chocolate and cheese.” I’m planning on having fondue for the evening.
“Good to hear there’s a little sin with all that health food,” he replies. He wanders off and I go back to my shopping. About a minute later he comes back over.
“Dark chocolate,” he tells me, winking, “that would make it healthy.”

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The circus is in town. I had managed to stay oblivious to the newspaper ads and tune out the radio ads, but the circus struck me full force when I walked by the Colosseum on my way to school. The entire building was vibrating to the beat of music I could not hear. I hurried away, worried that the building was about to explode from its outward vibration. I hope that really old concrete Colosseum engineering still holds up to modern sound production.