Here are just a few of the things I lost when my laptop was stolen from our apartment:

• Audio recordings of my dad making up stories for me when I was a child, which I originally captured on audio cassette with my very own portable recorder
• Silly videos from the very last day of secondary school
• All of those history essays I wrote in university
• About 28 years of photos
• My first ever conversation with Randi

I didn’t lose any of these things for very long, of course, because my next step was to download everything exactly as it was from a CrashPlan backup. A week later, I’m typing this on a swanky, self-indulgent new laptop purchase with my digital life all restored. So I can get on with feeling nerdishly excited over this slim new computer which recognises my face, or shame-faced that we hadn’t got around to buying renters insurance yet, or philosophical that the forensics officer from the Chicago police who came round “mostly handles homicides” so our Friday night drama was just some light relief by comparison, or confused that whoever broke into our apartment decided not to take my laptop’s power cord or the actual cash sitting on the coffee table. That’s all fine, I can cope with all of these feelings very easily.

But – public service announcement – backups are good. Would recommend. Now all I have to worry about is the @ sign in the wrong place on the keyboard 😉

If you’ve recently picked up this laptop from a Chicago pawn shop, I have a power cord to sell you

Aside from being victims of minor crime we’ve had a relaxed few weeks, venturing outside for select activities such as a lovely catch-up night with Chloe and Aaron at Kingston Mines. Oh, and my first “proper” Super Bowl party on Sunday. I thought I’d already ticked this one off back in 2015 but apparently that didn’t count because (a) there was no chili cheese dip (b) we all fell asleep. Anyway, this time around I can rest easy thanks to our amazing hosts Ashley and Erik, who I last saw during our phone-banking on the Clinton campaign. (Remember that? Seems like a good idea now, doesn’t it?) The food was amazing – I’m still a little full of queso – the crowd was pleasantly moderate on the “caring about sport” spectrum, and the underdogs won by doing lots of running and less stopping than usual. Huzzah.

Sharon Dinkin, Gillian Self, Arielle Dubowe, Randi Lawrence, Sue Buxton, Steven Petitpas-Polselli, Beth Dubowe-Lawrence, Natasha Self liked this post.

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