Yes another year has gone by and i am another year older..but who is counting?
Age is all relative -- thats what we say when we are over 60!!!!! It was a super birthday...

Saturday i had been invited to Suzie and Sally's for dinner. I didnt think anything about it because they are always inviting me over for dinner but when i got there and walked thru the front door, there were all my close buddies yelling "SURPRISE"!!

Ya know i am 63 years old and never had a surprise party-- so how cool was that!!!???

The house was all decked out with balloons and streamers,and there were drinks and a bushel of oysters on the half shell on the patio!!! WOW!

Sal had cooked this amazing dinner. Tons of fresh shrimp on the grill, coleslaw, corn muffins in the shape of little fish-- since i am a Pisces the theme of the party was fish-- corn on the cob, and for dessert Thea made this awesome cheesecake covered in pineapple.

We stuffed our selves like little piggies!!

Opened all my incredible gifts and then played Quarters till the wee hours of the morning---too many to mention here-- just know that they were all totally awesome!

(Quarters is a dice game in which you start off with five quarters--no we are way too old to play the drinking quarters game---

roll five dice and if you roll any fours, you pass a quarters to the left,fives you pass a quarters to the right, or sixes you throw in the pot .

so for example -- i roll my five dice-- 2 5's, 1 4, a 6 and a 2...

so i would pass 2 quarters to my right, 1 to my left 1 in the pot...

i would have 1 quarter left for the next round. Anything other than a 4 5 6 is a safe roll. If you run out of quarters you simply loose a turn but depending on how the people to your right and left roll you can be back in the game quickly if they pass to you!!!

the object of the game is to win the pot at the end -- if the final person doesnt throw a safe roll then the pot turns over and the game is started again.

It is a fast paced game that is loads of fun plus you are really happy when you win that pot-- the more players of course the larger the pot!!! )

My birthday was really Tuesday and i went to get the mail only to find a huge plastic HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign in my front yard-- Sal had come over around 1am and put it up!

Since my son and his family were out of town on my birthday we are celebrating this week by going to the Melting Pot-- a fondue restaurant-- yummmmmm

I am so lucky to have such super friends in my life-- they are the BEST and made my birthday so very special!!!

Yes it finally happened to ME!
i cant believe it-- my hard drive crashed Saturday February 17th....

i lost EVERYTHING...all my art, documents...basically my entire life!

The last full backup i preformed was in 2003.... and that helps but i still lost so much valuable info that i am in total shock and bummed to the max!

Here is a tip-- if you turn on your computer and get a dos prompt to "boot from cd"
you KNOW you are in trouble.

Your hard drive is either going or is gone.
If you can get the computer to boot up -- BACKUP EVERYTHING IMMEDIATELY.

if it wont boot up-- you are in serious trouble. The hard drive is gone....

My son was out of town so i had to call Chuck who is an incredible computer fixer -- he said he would try to restore the things on the hard drive but couldn't promise for sure--- and when he called me back on Sunday he had the bad news that the restore just didn't happen!

So i immediately bought an external drive -- SimpleNet 250G which was on sale at Office Depot for $50.00 after two $50 rebates and also got ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE 9.0 as the backup software.

this is a very hard lesson to learn--- so i am telling you IF YOU HAVEN'T BACKED UP YOUR MACHINE -- DO IT NOW

you can use Nero to make backup cd-- windows will back up for you-- i don't care how you do it JUST DO IT..do not put it off one more minute.

I have had computers since '97 and never ever had a problem but damn now that i have had the problem i will NEVER have it again.

Its like having a fire in your home-- so much personal stuff is totally gone and cannot be replaced, or restored.

Things you think you will remember, software you have installed or downloaded off the net, music, pictures, excell and office documents, art, all will be gone gone gone.

thankfully my email is all on the net so i didn't loose any addresses. A small consolation---

BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP!

Check this out...

just listed CREATIVE DISTORTION STORE



Choose from a pin or a small card which would be perfect to plop on some Republicans desk--

Cant beat the price either- only $3.75!!!!

Show your distain for the current administration!!!

Hey check out the new items i have listed in my store--

A Memories Journal,

Funky magnetic bookmarks,

Burned soda can pins,

and of course

those darling little spirit men everyone is buying!!!

NEW ITEMS