Poor Dying Hard Drive

As my first foray into actual advertising, I purchased a spot in tomorrow's Etsy Travel Showcase where I planned to highlight vacation-themed jewelry. I have several pieces that I just photographed this morning and haven't posted yet, so I arrived home from my regular job with a mission! Process the rest of my photos, compose charming write-ups, and get those pieces into the public eye! Oh, and write a blog post for my friend Sharon of Mana Moon Studios, who is always pushing me gently to market myself. :) I've never met Sharon, but she's such a nurturing person that she makes you glow from afar.

After an hour's commute, I pranced in the door, was scolded by three felines for neglecting to bring home a swordfish steak again (honestly, how many times do I have to be told?), and woke my beloved iMac from its slumber. And .. it clonked. I walked around it and peered at the back, gave the cats the hairy eyeball, then walked around it a few more times, unable to believe that the source of this mechanical thwacking was my computer. Unfortunately, the frozen screen that greeted me confirmed that which I wished fervently to deny: my hard drive was clonking. I turned it off, turned it on, and glowered at it in dismay as it displayed a gray boot screen, clonked to itself, and did little else.

All is not lost -- I have the raw photos on the camera's flash card still, but .. argh! My good photo editing program is on that computer, and as any self-representing artist can tell you, a photo editor with a good white-balancing function is absolutely essential to correcting for the incandescent camera flash. I'd already put time into photos which I now must choose and process again before tomorrow's travel showcase with the inferior functions available to me on my laptop. Poor timing! Bad Mac!