the second half of the year 2008 is when things really turn around for me
Today a miracle occurred, and that miracle is called I found a disc titled "My Documents 09/12/07."
Based on the date, I'm guessing this is a disc that Devin made when we transferred all of my documents from my Westminster files to my brand new Macbook one year ago (almost to the day!) - though I could have sworn we did that all with an iPod. The other option is it could be all the files that were recovered from my old dead Toshiba laptop, which I'm told are all on a disc somewhere, which would almost be the more miraculous scenario since those files were not backed up anywhere else (no Westminster H: drive) and go back further in time.
I haven't unearthed all of this disc's treasures yet...they are currently copying to my hard drive. But I can tell you that there are photos on this disc; oh yes my friends, photos and lots and lots of Word documents.
Also, today iTunes graciously allowed me to re-download everything I've ever downloaded from them. Soon my music library will be almost totally restored and so will (hopefully) my iPod. So do not worry friends, now that I have given myself the proper time to mourn my hard drive (approx. 2.5 months), my life aka my hard drive is being put back together piece by piece. It seems likely now that only 99% of only 1 year of my life is lost forever, a much more comfortable figure to deal with than the originally anticipated 4-10 years.