A Too Early Morning Rising

6:55

7:44 

I am up at 5:30, a result of our impending trip tomorrow and the horrendous day I had yesterday because of computer problems.  It amazes me that something I did not even own twenty five years ago could be so important to me today.  Anyways, it is now 6:25, not a hint of light yet outside but when I went out to look for the paper, I was surprised at how warm it was, 61º.  Everything changes tomorrow when we head East.

Yesterday was a day from hell, computer or external hard drive hell to be more exact.  Morning was as usual; I wrote my blog, published it, then we started to plan our day.  I went back to my computer intending to get some pictures off of my external hard drive, where I keep all of my photos from the past ten years and it would not open.  Panic.  Nothing I did would allow me to open the hard drive. As a back up, I had something called Time Machine, which supposedly saves your stuff each day. When I checked it, I could not find my photos.  More panic.  I knew I had an extra external hard drive upstairs where I also save my photos but I had not updated it since August.  Damn.  I knew I would need a new external hard drive, so I jumped in the car and drove to Erie, to the nearest Best Buy to talk with them.  The guy who helped me was great.  He took my old drive to see if they could save it.  They couldn't but he said they could send it away and perhaps save the photos but I would have to put down fifty dollars, and I would still not know the cost.  I may still try this but I decided to wait and see what happened at home when I tried to download the photos on my extra external hard drive.  I was home by noon, a record drive in and out to Erie and called my son in law Ramiro, who knows this kind of stuff well.  He guided me through moving the photos from my old drive to my new drive so they would be available on my computer.  With a few glitches and problems, of course, we got it started.  Well, it took close to seven hours for the photos to download to my new external drive but at least by 7:30, they were on my new hard drive and accessible.  I lost all my photos from this fall, late August, but have the rest.  I may yet send in the old hard drive to see if they can retrieve my photos but that will have to wait until we get back from Maine.

Most of the afternoon was filled with anxiety, for both Evie and I, wondering if the downloading of photos would work.  Evie kept busy making cookies, packing them up for our trip, and getting the house and stuff organized for a two week sojourn.  I was going nuts so I jumped in the car and drove to Lakewood to get some things done before our trip, hit the bank, do some light shopping for tomorrow, things like that.  It actually was a pleasant day out, though it rained early but we did not venture out much except for my trips to Erie and Lakewood.

We had the easiest of dinners, hot dogs, cole slaw and salad, and the dogs tasted amazingly good for some reason.  We both must have been famished and worked up from our computer/photo woes.  We watched our typical Monday night fare, The Good Wife from Sunday night which was particularly good after a number of average episodes.  We both were exhausted by 10:00 and went to bed.  I am into the new Jack Reacher, not sure if I like it as much as his others.  It reminds me of The Day of the Jackal, a popular novel in the 1970's, about a sniper intent on shooting the President as I recall.

It's 6:55 and there's a light tinge of rose just beginning to develop over the Eastern shoreline, a few small puffs of black clouds hang above. Tomorrow we head East, first to Vermont, then Maine, so it will be a busy day.  And I just discovered there's a forty seven minute difference in sunrise and sunset between Chautauqua and Southwest Harbor, Maine, where we will be staying.  For example, sunset here at the lake is 6:37 PM, but in Maine it's 5:50 PM.