I finally sat down yesterday to answer Part 15 for my training grant proposal - Long Term Career Goal. I ended up thinking of something to say that would please my audience and make me still feel honest. And, interestingly, when I got home at night and read through my daily devotional, I was struck by the fact that sometimes what I want from life, although it may be noble and all that, may not be what God wants for me. Maybe God doesn't have it in His will for me to be a stay-at-home mother. Obviously that's not the case right now, since I a)have no kids and b)am not married. And maybe He doesn't even desire me to be a teacher. I don't know for sure, honestly.
Anyhow, back to the point... I wrote three paragraphs about what my goals are, and I was quite pleased with it as a piece of writing. Saved it, transferred all my grant files to the USB memory drive, overwriting the previously saved drafts of all these files, and then went to a computer that attached to a printer in order to print off my manuscript and be ready to hand it in the next day (which is now...today). When I stuck the memory drive into the Dell computer there were three "ghost" files - you know, those ones with numbers and letters in the title that don't mean anything - as well as the files I wanted. I opened the research proposal file and the information-about-me file (birthday, address, etc.) and printed those, but I had to switch to a different computer that was hooked up to a color printer to print off some of the figures to accompany my proposal. On this Gateway computer the ghost files weren't there. I printed the figures, and then all I had left to do was print the Long Term Career Goals page and I'd be done. But when I opened that file...it was my very first draft of the file, which said essentially nothing and was only 2 sentences long. AAAK!
What I had done was type up the REAL L.T.C.G. file directly onto the memory drive, so that meant that when I overwrote that file with the ones saved on my hard drive (e.g. the draft...) the real one went away - FOREVER!!! I tried everything I could think of to find temp files of the real file back on my original computer, but no - the computer doesn't save temps of files on external drives... I tried to trick MS Word into finding the real file for me, but it wouldn't. I tried to call my computer genius brother, but he was in the middle of driving from Grand Rapids to Columbus and didn't have a cell phone. I called the school help desk, but they said I was out of luck and there was nothing to be done.
I gave up, ranted on the Knitty board, and sat down to the worst task ever - trying to remember what I had written and then rewrite it. I absolutely abhor this... Maybe it's the writer in me, but I feel like I can never recapture the carefully selected words I had chosen in the original when I am forced to recall and rewrite. So...for the next hour I worked on that and was finally satisfied. I checked on the Knitty board to read some comforting replies, and one person suggested looking in the subdirectory where the real file had been stored to see if I could find the temp file. I had already done that, but then I remembered the ghost files on the Dell. ...Could it be...??
I ran to the Dell and plugged in my memory drive and - lo and behold the ghosts were still there... And when I opened one of them...IT WAS THE REAL FILE!! Yaaaaaay! I was so happy, although also so peeved because I had just rewritten and the files hadn't showed up on the other two machines I'd been trying to find the file on... Still don't know quite why only Dell will let me see the temp files, but I'm sure glad at least on of the three computers I was working with did. (Any thoughts???)
Amusingly, the words in the real file and the rewritten file were about 80% identical, which just goes to show that I guess rewriting isn't so inaccurate - but it's still hard because it's quite a strain to try to remember the exact words used.
Happy me printed that last page of the grant application, made copies, paper-clipped them together, and finally left from work to catch the 8p.m. bus... Blech. I had just enough time to grab a bag of greens and a container of blackberries, hop in the car, and drive off to find a Jo-Ann before it closed to purchase yarn to make a Hogwarts scarf bookmark for the Weasley-a-long. Then a stop at Target for contact solution, the grocery store for milk, and the gas station for finally cheaper gas...and then it was definitely time for bed.
What a day...what a week...this weekend will be also what-a, as it begins (and ends) with a 11-hour drive to Cape Cod (and back) with a lot of great food, time with seldom-seen friends, and a wedding in between!
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