New Year’s Resolution #1: Back up your files.

It’s been a wild ride for the last few weeks.

First, I managed to pour water all over my laptop. Second, since I failed to properly back-up this laptop, I lost all my files.

I lost:

– all photos and videos of the last six months

– the first 20,000 words of my work-in-progress novel

– months of work I’ve been doing on my writing courses and workshops

– basically everything I hadn’t emailed as an attachment.

Trying not to cry…

I was prepared to start the New Year by rewriting all those files, by redrafting from scratch, by treasuring the eleven photos I did have backed-up. This would have been hard. (It would have been horrible…I feel ill just thinking about it.) But I would have done it.

Thankfully, I’m married to an absolute genius with the patience of a saint and a passion for computers. Over the course of a week, we (he) managed to recover 90% of these files. It was a slow, clunky, my-hard-drive-is-totally-stuffed series of late nights. But he did it. Words cannot explain the relief, joy, whirling-madness I experienced.

It was no ordinary recovery. It required decrypting, hacking, Linux (not the kid with the blankie…that’s Linus), constant restarts and about five litres of espresso. 

Did I mention he’s a genius?

(This is the same guy who recovered a friend’s wedding photos when others said it couldn’t be done.)(He also makes a damn fine flat white…that’s right. I married extraordinarily well.)

So, instead of spending these next few weeks weeping over my blistered fingers, I can pick up almost exactly where I left off.

I still have all my favourite lines, my clever ideas, pictures of our boys covered in cornflour slime. I lost a few files and all of our kids’ videos. But, rubbish-backer-upperers can’t be choosers. 

So, as you go into the New Year, keep your eyes firmly on the future, be grateful for the present, and don’t forget to back up the files from your past. 2012 deserves to be archived, properly.

New Year’s Resolution #2: Grab a copy of Parlour Games for the Modern Family

It’s been 40 degrees C for the last few days, and our aircon is broken. No worries!

Remember playing knucklebones? Need some card games to play with your kids? Want hilarious games that will even get teenagers involved? This book will have chapters of ideas and more. Get a copy.

Parlour Games for Modern Families by Myfanwy Jones and Spiri Tsintziras.

Our eldest is three and he’s loving these games. We’ve played War, Snap, Flip the Kipper, Memory, Interrogation…heaps! 

And there are a stack of games I’d love to play with larger groups, and older groups, and camping, and when it’s colder than it is now (a round of Squeak, Piggy, Squeak somehow does’t appeal when it’s this sweatingly hot).

I’ll be keeping this book in handy reach. It’s fab. Keep it on the kitchen table.

Have a great New Year people!

xxx