Never Give Up

I got my Mac back from the shop today, with a new hard drive and no data transfer. I don't have my address book anymore or any of the music that I bought in the past year. After I picked up the Mini, I went through the phone book in my cell and called all of my friends, leaving a general SOS message. Only four* have returned my calls. Clearly, I should find a better class of friends, haha.
My Christmas knitting is almost done. I was going to post some arty , abstract photographs, except I can't. The geniuses (genuisii?) gave me a free OS upgrade to Tiger from Panther. That's awesome, except that iPhoto and Garage Band aren't included in Tiger and they were in Panther. I can't edit photos or music without them and am loathe to cough up the $70 to buy iLife. Picture me shaking my fists in rage in the general direction of Cupertino.
Back to the knitting: I'm almost done. I'll probably have a few more last minute emergency projects. I should have squirreled away projects over the course of the year in my "gift drawer", but my lack of disk backup should tell you that I'm not inclined to think ahead. The last planned project is in the works: a beret made out Noro Silk Garden. It's dragging itself out by refusing to change gauge despite changes in needle size. I will be the boss of my knitting!
In that vein, I've restarted work on the hateful IK ballerina wrap. It's bulky, it had awful bulky sleeves, and it's been in pieces for months. As I worked on all of my "obligation" knitting projects, I longed to knit something for myself. The bulky, woolly wrap is perfect for this time of year and easily finished in a short period of time. All it needs is sleeves. So, I'm making my own sleeve caps for it, to avoid unfortunate 80s poof. I've adapted a sleeve cap from a similar pattern with the same armscye depth. This looks much more promising than the first set of sleeves. Well, that's very dry and technical. Basically, once I've got the sleeves done, it will be 98% finished. I might also shorten the belt pieces. I could skip rope with them now if I had any kind of coordination.
I've got plenty of other things to say, but I'm so wrapped up in this computer thing. Lately, everything has felt as though it was staged for my injury or irritation. That's too egocentric. I'm not the only person to lose all their files. I'm not the first person to suffer a romantic disappointment. It's just been really hard lately. Besides all this crap, I've also been to the opera lately, had a fabulous Greek dinner, had a restorative soak in the tub with a Lush blackberry bath bomb, and switched skin care systems with happy results. It's not all bad; I just need to frame things differently.
* One called while I was writing this post. He recently went through massive data loss on a Mac and offered love and support.