Today was actually kind of positive. Imagine that. First of all I survived the morning horror without a) falling asleep instead of getting up and b) dying violently or c) all of the above. That's always good.

Then before I go to work I start up EasyRecovery and let it begin scanning my dying hard drive. It estimates that this will take 20-30 hours. That's what a normal workday feels like to me, so why not give it a go.

Work was nauseating. Literally. They were frying bacon. Lots of bacon. Now I don't mind bacon at all. But when the whole building is filled with smoke and bacon stench at 9 am then you know it's going to be a long day. Kirsten asked me about my photography. It was conversation. Lasted 2 minutes. But it was conversation. So now I've tried that too. Kirsten is the new kitchen woman, I can't remember if I have mentioned her. Sonja got her retirement and is spending less time at the Barn because of it. This is good news. Sonja is negative and likes to talk behind people's backs and she hates me. Kirsten is kind of shy and timid and always says hi to me and doesn't hate me even though I'm a nogoodnick. Definite improvement.

She drinks lemonade like me too. Everyone else has tea and coffe. What's up with that?

After work I go to the gas station. To check if they might have Attack of the Clones home. And they do. I thought they only had one copy but I guess I was unlucky last time. This time there were 3 or 4 copies. And I grabbed me one. And Ghost World too. Cutegirl was at the counter being very cute. I still get surprised every time she talks nicely to me. If this was two years ago then I would be convincing myself that she was the love of my life and I would develop this psychotic from-afar attraction. That's what happens when girls are nice to me. Except of course now I have a beautiful girl who is not only nice to me but also loves me and is generally perfect. Skye. So I don't need any stalker-relationships anymore. Skye is afar too. But emotionally she's right here (in my heart I would say if I was trying to write a corny lovesong). It's interesting isn't it. She's in a whole other country and yet she's right here. And some other girl can be 2 metres away and yet very very far away.

Now I just need to get geographically closer to Skye too of course. But I digress. Let me evaluate the movies I rented. Review them, if you will..

Episode 2 was cool beans (possibly minor spoilers ahead). I may have outgrown Arnold Schwarzenegger but I'll never get too old for Star Wars. And I think aotc was better than the Phantom Menace. It will never be as good as the original movies. But it's getting there. I could do without some of the highspeed action scenes. But altogether I liked it. I love all those alien planets and species. Wonderful visuals. And it had the Star Wars feeling. For me. The feeling that this was part of the story. The Death Star plans, the clone wars, Owen and Beru. And Palpatine. I love Palpatine. It may not be the perfect movie. I will never get used to seeing Jimmy Smits in Star Wars. And I can't remember hearing about sand people kidnapping humans and holding them for months. And it was quite a coincidence that Anakin's mother died just 20 seconds after he got there. But all in all I did feel some of the magic. It's nice to have Star Wars around again. I remember waiting for these prologues. Reading the Danish Star Wars comic books. Seeing rumours on the news pages about how it might happen soon. That was in the eighties. People writing in to ask how Kenobi and Vader met, who Luke's mother is, what the clone wars were all about. Back then it was hints and little details in larger stories. And now it's all here. The actual clone wars. That's just cool. If you have the history.

Thumbs up. There's no point in being upset that the new movies aren't like the classic ones. They could never be. If you went back in time and transported the then George Lucas to our time he still couldn't make it the same. I'm happy with what we got. I irrationally love Star Wars. Escapism has always been very important to me. And I like Rick McCallum.

Also I'm happy that they put some deleted scenes on the vhs version. I know dvd is all swanky and wonderful but there's really no reason that there can't be extra features on vhs too. You can't have the same interactivity but there is a fast-forward button on my video, I think I can manage to find the extras anyway. I don't really care about most of those boring "the making of" things. They're just glorified commercials. Mostly. But deleted scenes are more interesting. And that's the first time I've seen them on vhs. More thumbs up.

Next movie. Ghost World. I really enjoyed this. A lot. But that's not surprising. I have a hard time imagining a movie with Thora Birch and Steve Buscemi that wouldn't be worth watching. They could make American Pie 3 with Birch and Buscemi and it would be worth watching. I recommend it. Good film, good performances, nice dark humour. And Thora reminded me of Skye. I don't know why, she doesn't usually. Maybe it was the glasses. The lips. The hair-dying. Or the attraction to the nerdy music collector...

That was the reviews. I watched those very nice movies while EasyRecovery tried to recover my files. And it did. I recovered about 6 gigabytes of stuff I thought was lost. Boody hell! It saved every thing I tried to save today. Amazing. Now I'm out of space on my other hard drive. So I need to send more stuff to Skye so I have space to recover more of what I'm missing. Maybe I will actually be able to save everything. All of it. But right now I'm sure of having saved all the most important things. I am happy. My hard drive failure has gone from initial fear of doom to catastrophe to nuisance and annoyance.

I still won't apologize to the universe though.

Nite all.

np: neil daly - lasher