How often do you get to have these two conversations within three hours of each other?

#1
Co-worker: "Have you lost weight? You look good."
Me: "Yeah, I've lost about nine pounds. I'm just trying to eat a little better, exercise a little more and drink a little less."

#2
Mystery voice: "Hi, welcome to White Castle. Would you like to try the mozzarella sticks?"
Me: "Absolutely. Along with a chicken and cheese sandwich and a Coke, please."

Anyway, so I finally had five free hours at work today. Why, you might ask, didn't I take advantage of that free time to do some posting? Because the free time was caused by the untimely death of my computer's hard drive.

At 8:15 a.m., already 45 minutes into my workday and in the midst of a flurry of activity, my computer made a few unhealthy noises, shut down and rebooted itself. Then, the screen went blank except for a message reading "Hard drive cannot be found." I contacted my friend in PC services, who came and whisked the patient away, muttering, "Hmm. That's not good."

Three hours later, he returned, sat down in my office and said, "We need to talk" with the seriousness of a doctor delivering a death sentence. Which he was, as he informed me my hard drive had indeed crashed and burned, and that he had been unable to retrieve anything on it.

Catastrophe.

I keep most of my work-related files on the hard drive (because we're often told not to store things on the network drive and I'm nothing if not an obedient employee), and also maintain a ton of personal files on it, including the photos I download from my digital camera. I asked if anything could be done and he told me that although it was expensive and needed to be signed off on by half the world, it could be sent to a third-party company to try to retrieve the data, although that wasn't guaranteed to work. I bee-lined for my departmental VP's office and explained the problem, and he gave me the go-ahead.

And then, the seas were parted!

As I was drafting the paperwork to have the computer shipped out for technological CPR, my friend called to report that he had been able to get the hard drive back, albeit most likely temporarily. So he quickly moved all my files and within an hour I had a new computer. I lost all my internet favorites, which will take years to remember, but that is a minor problem. I also can't access my personal e-mail, which is a larger issue but one I'll rectify shortly.

Given all that, my original plan of coming home and taking a long bike ride has been slightly altered to coming home, opening a bottle of Malbec and making some Mexican food. Much better plan.

This week's craziness left me no time to address this from Freakgirl. Holy baked crap, is this a find. It's an anti-drug video from the mid-1980s which features, among others, a young, wholesome, drug-free Whitney Houston. Oh, sweet irony.

For complete randomness, there's also Nancy Reagan, LaToya Jackson, David Hasselhoff, Casey Kasem, Kareen Abdul Jabbar and the current governor of California, who shows up as a garbageman. It also features New Edition but I do not believe Bobby Brown makes an appearance. Perhaps he'd already given in to the Madness by that time.

Speaking of those who gave into Madness: there's actor Stacey Keach. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Mr. Keach arrested for cocaine? Former NFL defensive end Lyle Alzado, who died from brain cancer he believed was brought on by admitted steroid use, appears, as does John Matuszak, another NFL defensive end who died of heart failure after years of steroid use.

I've said it before but it bears repeating. I do love the internets.