Crash and Burned

Six weeks ago my computer died. As I was sitting paying bills, the horrid blue screen appeared and that was it, dead as can be. I survived, barely, five long weeks without a computer. This survival was due only to the fact that I have a blackberry, which is not a replacement for the computer but became merely a survival tool. It is a very difficult world when you must live without a computer. You may not realize, however, how dependent you are until it is too late. Kind of like losing use of your thumb. Last January I had MRSA on my right thumb. It is extremely difficult to function without your dominant thumb.
Anyway, when I got my computer back, it was stripped of everything that made it mine in the first place. You know when you use someone else's computer and nothing is where it is supposed to be, none of your files are on there, nor your cookies, no saved passwords or log ins? That is how it was, a stranger in a familiar shell. The only thing that made this same old computer with a new hard drive mine was that it was in my possession. On the bright side it functioned a whole lot faster than I remember it ever functioning. Slowly, but surely, I am making it my own.
Last week the external hard drive containing all of the recovered data from my dead hard drive was delivered to my door. I was rather excited to see it and felt optimistic in what I would be able to reclaim. Turns out, nearly a thousand dollars later, a lot of my pictures are toast and the two most important files I had (and need) are totally corrupt. My hard drive truly crash and burned.