We scraped together some cash and took the maligned and malignant hard drive to a professional. The file system had imploded upon itself, and data recovery was a bust - so, it is all gone. But, I got a brand new 80GB hard drive (the previous one was 40GB) so I suppose it's not all bad. Actually, because he couldn't restore anything, the very lovely man who helped us did not charge a consultancy fee. He only charged us the very reasonable price for the hard drive. I love him.
It's rebuild from here. But not so much today. I have to go register to be a teacher today. This involves going to the library and getting documents signed by a justice of the peace and then trekking off to the city and forking out even more cash.
It has suddenly occurred to me just the extent of what I have lost. Programs I have to reinstall. Bookmarks I have to track down. On that last part, I guess I could ask for some help from my lovely friends list - what are some links which I must have bookmarked?
[Oh, and I almost forgot - how much chocolate is too much chocolate when needing consolation? ]