March 14, 2007
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Sorry I haven’t been around the last couple of weeks. It is so boring
in Liz land, even if I had written it would be drivel. For the 4
faithful readers still out there, I have one exciting thing coming
up. I’m going to go to Holland. Lisse to be exact. I want
to see the Keukenhof gardens and take a thousand pictures. And if at
all possible I’m going to go from there to Amsterdam so that I can go
to the Van Gogh and Rijks museums. I think I will more than likely end
up riding the train over by myself. Bear and Mike had glazed eyes
by the time I finished telling them what I wanted to do. Not that
I expected them to be thrilled at spending all day looking at tulips
and then all the next day looking at paintings, but sheesh, I at least
expected them to stay awake while I talked about it, I guess not
everyone appreciates Van Gogh the way I do.My external hard drive crashed last week. Every picture we’ve taken
while here in Europe was on that hard drive. As well as almost 3,000
songs and tons of important paperwork. Like our resumes, which could be
re-written but most of the hard copy data from that kind of stuff is
back in the States. But the pictures and songs could never be replaced.
Bear went to a website called file scavenger or something like
that and bought a recovery program. we ran it and overnight it
recovered virtually everything. It recovered the files but for
some reason it didn’t recover all the file names. For the last
week or so I’ve been wading thru one file at a time and re-naming it
and then putting it back where it belongs. ie: Germany pictures in the
Germany folder, Prague in the Prague folder and they all have sub
folders. After I get the file as close to original as possible I make a
hard copy, that way if for some inexplicable reason the new hard drive
crashes it won’t matter. This time I’m making extra Cds. I’m giving
Mike a copy since he was there for most trips and I’m sending a set to
my daughter Em.(triple redundancy) I cried when I thought I had
lost all my pictures. Sure I have a lot of them here on xanga and
we’ve printed some out but the majority were in the original un-edited
form and no-one but me has seen them. So I was fairly devastated
at the loss. As soon as the recovery program ran I took a double
layer dvd and copied all the photos onto it, ( it took 5 hours just for
that) I would rather have my pics messy than not at all. So that has
been my latest 10 to 12 hour a day effort. And get this, I haven’t even
started sorting thru the music. Gah! My back is killing me,
I really don’t know how computer tech can sit at a desk 8 hours a day
all year long. So if you wonder what I’m up to and what exciting
thing living in Europe has afforded me, now you know. lol.My nose has noticed that Spring has arrived, even being stuck in the
apartment all day my eyes are itchy, watery and red and my nose is
stuffed up and I’m sneezing. Yay, for Spring. Time to get ready for
Holland! I love the flowers to much to worry about the pollen.
Go to google and type in keukenhof.com, it will bring up the gardens
homepage, there’s a small British flag at the bottom of the page so
that you can read it all in English, you’ll see why I want to go
so bad. If this really is our last
year here in Germany it would be a crime to not go when its only 4 and
a half
hours by train. Wish me luck!
Comments (11)
No fair, no fair, no fair! I wanna go!!! Let their eyes glaze all they want, I wanna see tulips and VanGogh! I wanna I wanna I wanna!!
p You need to take me to see VanGogh at least while I’m there, even if the pretty flowers aren’t in bloom.
Oh and good luck with the hard drive momma, that just sucks. xoxoxo
~allie
OH MY… (I have not been around xanga much. Sorry.)
What a wonderful idea… going to Holland… oh my *jealous* have a wonderful time. Take loads of pictures *drools* eat some stroop wafels for me. …and assorted other sugary treats.
Spring is not here yet… but it will be soon. My nose also lets me know a few weeks in advance… and the eyes.
Stock up on claratin
I am so excited for you that you get to go to Holland. Wish I could be an article in your suit case, so, i could go along. Flowers and museums are such awesome things to take in.
Holland! I want to see LOTS of pictures.
daughter’s fave artist is van Gogh too…
and good luck!
How I wish I could go too! I love Van Gogh … I have turned many a third grader into Van Gogh afficionados.
And, I’ve always wanted to see the Anne Frank house. I was fairly obsessed with her in junior high school.
I’m glad that you were able to recover all of your pictures. I really do need to back up my files one of these days.
I hope that you have a wonderful time and take tons of pics so I can live vicariously. Just to be fair, I’ll even take pictures of dead lizards, snot-encrusted children, the avalanche-waiting-to-happen that I like to call my desk, and my semi-comatose self after some of the dates I have been on so you can live my life vicariously too.
Miss you lots!
K
I can only imagine Springtime in Holland. Must be beautiful! Here the dogwoods are in bloom and everyone is sneezing….but it’s nice to have the warm weather and some color in the landscape again.
ST
I understand your despair when you lost files and pictures . I lost also many files in the past definitively and they were important . I am glad you recovered some .
Enjoy the Holland , Elizabeth with the tulips and the museum Van Gogh !
And thank you for your kind birthday wishes .
Love
Michel
I re – read your post and I can say it is never boring in Lyzland . When do you go to Holland ?
You ask me , in your kind comment if my father in law was a political prisoner . No he has been a military prisonner . He was a sergent in the artillery and has been caught by the Germans in Lorraine ( Est of France ) in May 1940 . My wife is born in 1938 and her sister in 1939 . When he came back in France in 1945 his children didn’ t recognize their father of course . It was sad for him .
Love
Michel
I don’t blame you, I would want to see as much as I could while there. Sounds like a fun trip!
RYC: Yes, we have been taking pictures of the house at about every stage of completion. We even took extensive pictures of the plumbing and wiring inside, just in case we even need to tear a wall out to fix something, we will know where it is. So when do you think you’ll be coming back? Did I miss a post?
I would *totally* love looking at tulips all day! They’re my favouritest flower EVER! Lucky ducky. [But really, I know you're just going there to get higggghhhhh]
Oh thank god you recovered your photos – that would be devastating!