Precious And Few...

As an aftereffect of my snow-bound cleaning marathon, I've been taking some steps to get my digital house in order as well. I currently have four computers in my two-bedroom apartment, three of which are mine, and of those, only one is properly functional. The other two are out-dated machines dating back to earlier eras in my life, that I had been holding onto because there was data left on them that I still hoped to recover somehow. Although I am tech-savvy enough to work in the modern economy and blog on the side, I didn't know nearly enough about computers to retrieve my old data, and the pair of old computers sat on my desk, taking up space and gathering dust.

Enter Justin. Early on in our relationship, he noticed the old computers sitting on my desk, still plugged into the wall, and commented on the vampire power they were drawing and putting on my electric bill. He offered to take a look at them and see if anything on them was salvageable. Since we've been keeping ourselves busy in the intervening months, the computers slipped off our radar screen, until I found a new font of inspiration to clean house this week and decided to reclaim my desk space.

Tonight, Justin performed some sort of computer magic, extracting the hard drive from my circa 2003-2006 Dell, and using a piece of equipment he just happened to have to connect it to my current Mac. Mostly, I wanted to preserve the papers I'd written in college, since that computer predated my purchase of a digital camera, but lo and behold, there was a small cache of images on the hard drive as well.


Of the forgotten photographs I found, this one was by far the most significant. It represents the last photo ever taken of me with my late maternal grandfather, and one of very few pictures to represent me and both of my grandparents. It was taken in 2005 at the Kampsville Inn, where we'd gone to eat to celebrate the visit of my cousin Jenny. Just a couple months later, Paw-Paw passed away. It may not be the most flattering image ever captured of any of us, but seeing it again brought tears to my eyes. I am so thankful to have this photo back in my collection, and to be reminded of one of the last times I spent with my Paw-Paw. I am a very lucky girl to have such a helpful boyfriend who does thoughtful things for me like this. Thanks babe!