I discovered yesterday that I had lost a HUGE section of geographical writing on Richard Symanski's rant-book, Geography Inside Out. This is because I am a technological moron.
See, the laptop loses stuff when the power goes out, even though you have saved your work and the laptop has gone into inactive mode. Inactively it runs through all the battery power and then it disassembles whatever documents are open, EVEN THOUGH THEY'VE BEEN SAVED.
I know this from painful experience - I lost my syllabus last winter, and B almost lost a paper that was due the same day he was working on it. But naturally when the power went out on Monday afternoon, I didn't even think about the laptop.
We are thinking of flying to Boston tomorrow to fix the upstairs bathroom in our house before it (it is to be hoped) gets rented. It's slightly more expensive to fly than drive but when you consider that it takes 4-6 days to drive there and back, plus the wear-and-tear on the old cars, it may well be worth the extra expenditure.
I'd prefer to wait until next week, when the current tenants will be out and there's a greater possibility of meeting prospective tenants, but the last-minute deals are what they are. So we'll see.
Cool and damp and threatening-looking today. I may splurge and drive to school.