There's been so much that's happened since my last posting. So I apologize in advance for the length of this posting, I'm sure it'll get to be longer than most people want to read. Here goes.

Last weekend we had an amazing event happen: it rained. And snowed, depending on where you were. My brother got snowed in up in Payson. On the northern outskirts of Phoenix there was snow, and on most of the mountains surrounding Phoenix. What was more amazing than anything was that you could see the mountains... the air was crystal clear, moreso than I've ever seen since I've lived in Phoenix. It was actually a bit chilly, but the clear air and sunshine on Sunday made it all ok. I went running Monday night and the clean air made it seem like I could run forever. I wish I would've taken some pictures of the snow covered mountains, but I didn't. If you're a fellow arizonite and have a good one send it to me.

Wednesday night (till Thurday morning) was the youth group lockin. We all had a good time. Even Bryan and Troy who didn't come, but instead decided throwing water baloons and silly string off the top of the building would be fun. We did several organized games, a worship presentation, and I did a short bible study (which turned out to be almost an hour) along with baskeball, video games and movies. Good times.

I took Thursday off work, after having stayed up all night. Friday I wasn't feeling great, but it seemed ok so I went into work. I left early, as I wanted to do anyway. As the afternoon went on I started to get a sore throat, but later that kind of went away so I went on to church for worship practice and youth group leaders meeting. I was feeling pretty good, stopped to pickup some panda express for dinner. Got home and started watching battlestar galactica, and by the time I was ready to go to sleep (around 10) I was feeling pretty bad. Took some nyquil and went to bed.

I woke up around 8, shortly after that my brother called. I helped him get a rental car. I then decided to make some spiced cider, as that had been helping me feel better before. I had it all made and was getting back in bed when I spilled some of it... on my laptop. The laptop turned itself off. This... this was not good. I was in no mood to have a broken laptop. I got some paper towles and cleaned up what I could, not having the energy to deal with it further than that. I checked to see if it would come back on, and no, it wouldn't. Oh well. I got into bed and had my cider and fell back asleep. It was almost noon before I woke up again. I tried my luck with the laptop again, and I wasn't very lucky. So I got up and started searching for instructions for disassembly. I found detailed docs, and started taking things apart. I only found a few spots still damp, and anything that would seem to have caused any real damage. I put things back together, cleaning everything as I went. I tried it again, and it would only just start to turn on before shutting back off. I then decided to try it docked, with the lid closed. To my amazement, it started to turn on. Windows started to load, but it crashed before it loaded all the way. There was hope afterall! I unplugged it, plugged it back in and tried again. This time it loaded all the way. Not taking any chances, I took the opportunity to backup all the essentials from the hard drive, which didn't amount to much as I'm pretty careful to not store things on there. At any rate, I was successful, and since then I have yet to get it back to that state of operation. I'm pretty sure I blotched something with the video card, or the internal LCD - despite the fact that neither of these items are located in the "spill zone". At any rate, I'm now debating a) buying an identical used laptop off ebay and swapping parts to get the best system, or b) selling off the parts I have and buying a new laptop, or c) what do I really need a laptop for anyway? So I'm debating these ideas, as I think about taking mr. laptop apart again to see if there was something I missed. What would that hurt at this point?