Back To School and BACK UP BACK UP!!!!

This isn't one of my Memories of posts, rather a recollection of a couple of days I spent in April helping Hubby with one of our companys playground projects.

Spend two days hanging out in a school playground? Twist my immature child-at-heart arm why don't you.

You can check the project we were working on here and here on the company blog (get me, the 'company blog'. Snort) but we installed several playground pieces in December and April and I went along to photograph the finished project and ... oh yeah, there was some sewing required to a large stretch tent we installed over the sandpit. 


Sewing, apparently, requires a womans touch. Turned out it did too, both Hubby and his guy were rubbish at it. Possibly in the same way some men are 'rubbish' at making tea and coffee, so they never get asked, but still. I was happy to be there. It's a lovely gardenesque playground, if there's such a word. If not, I claim it. As much attention to details like flowerbeds, a bird aviary, little bridges and pathways and the like as to the playground pieces themselves.

School was closed for the holidays so we took Tallen 4, and Nate 2, with and as you would imagine they had a whale of a time. To their minds, that's a whole playground right there just for ME!!!

As I wandered around snapping with my camera, letting Nate lead the way as he explored every inch, it struck me how small everything was. I know, go figure right? But I was surprised at exactly how many times I had to hit my head on a low bar or pole, usually when retrieving Nate from a too high/wobbly position he'd got himself into, before I addressed the height I was automatically bending down at.

I eventually had to take on a sort of crouching stance whenever approaching a Jungle Gym or similar, just to prevent myself from nearly knocking myself out a seventh or eighth time. It was getting ridiculous really.

And there was NO CHANCE IN HELL my adult sized booty was fitting into any of the outdoor seating, so when we lunched I favoured the grass. Or the table. Or a swing. One of those one's that's designed to hold 4-5 preschoolers at one time.

Such fun.

Sadly, due to some kind of power failure with our back up system .... Nope. 

Okay, due to the fact that I always forget to back up our stuff most of the pics I took that day (and a million others I can't bare to even think about yet) are gone. Now sat on the 'new PC' of the guy who nicked ours in our recent robbery. Or his mate/cousin that he sold it to.

I wonder what he/she'll do with them? I wonder if they feel a pang of guilt, as they sit there looking at five years of our memories, our life together.

Someone should start a website for just such an occasion. Nicked someone's PC? Feeling guilty as you delete all their family pics? Secure and anonymous, www.uploadnickedpc.com*. Upload the hardrive for your victims to retrieve and feel a whole heap better.

* There's no link there, it's a joke people! 

Nah, I should back up I know. And so should we all. It's truly one of life's slap-hand-to-face moments. Really, it hurts that we've lost all those pics. Not to mention TWO YEARS of my accounts, design and advertising work for the business .... mumble, grumble. Doesn't help to moan or look back, like a Phoenix and all that.

She has a point ...

But still, BACK UP!! Okay? Online, to a CD/DVD however you do it, just make sure you do. And get into a routine of doing it every so often. You can set Windows to do it for you, that's not even hard. And external drive owning folk? We have one of those, but it's not a good place to back up, even if you are regimented enough (and I'm not) to pull it out and put it away somewhere when the PC's shut down. Guess what happens if your external drive goes wrong? Uhuh. Hard copy back up or online is best.

Unless of course you get a SECOND external drive, make a copy of everything on that too. Then if one drive goes down ...no, that's way too complicated.

Just BACK UP!!! Do it now, when you're finished blogging and stuff.

Easy to say that NOW I know, but I can't begin to tell you how much I wish I had.