Mourning the laptop...

Last night, after Casey and I got home from an enjoyable day at the zoo, we found out that our laptop (the old one that Casey bought in Summer of 2004 before coming to Japan the first time) had crashed. Well, this just happened to be the computer I had been using for work, and it had all of our pictures from the last 1.5 years on it. There are still some on our computer at home, but these were all of our pictures from Japan so far. You can imagine (if you know me) that this was a pretty depressing moment in my life. Pictures are really important to me, and the only way to see any of them now is to check out my Yahoo! site. Unfortunately, they only post the smaller version of the picture, so I will probably not get the true version again. I really hope there is someone here who can help us. I just want to spare the pictures, and all of the work I had done since I got here in November. The irony of the thing is that I had written a note to myself yesterday to make back-up CDs on Monday. Well... the damn thing didn't even make it that long. Note to everyone who may be reading this- don't be a dumbass like me and wait- back your stuff up NOW. (Sigh...)
In other news, I went out with Natsuki-san today, which was nice. We had lunch at an organic restaurant, and then walked around downtown. I was trying to get ideas for Casey for Valentine's day... it's going to be here and I'm afraid that my creative side isn't kicking in yet. I think we will be going to Kobe for a nice dinner (Kobe beef!!) but other than that, I'm not sure. I guess I still have a little bit longer to think about that.
Not much else to write. I have pictures from the zoo yesterday and will post them as soon as I get the chance- probably tomorrow. I don't know what we are doing tonight- 3 students from Casey's laboratory were defending their dissertations today, so I don't know if anyone will be going out for dinner to celebrate or not. All I know is that I didn't go to the store, so I won't be cooking tonight. (I cooked 4 days last week so I think I'm ready for a break!) Japanese cooking is complicated sometimes!
That's all for me. I'll update again soon.

-Ash