Backing Up

Somehow things feel urgent tonight.  I have tried to drive this rising anxiety away.  It makes me prone to pacing the house, checking my phone and emails, and I am inclined to be vacant and probably grouchy.  

My computer has sat unbacked up for more days than I care to admit.  Sitting in that wretched 'too hard it makes my head hurt' tray as I grappled with back up drives becoming full.  I've got to swing my attention to the proper back up solutions we've been discussing.  The computer then began groaning and staggering.  In addition to the nerves that seem present from this morning I felt extra worried.  It wouldn't recognise my film scanner.  This was doubly frustrating after I'd spent 20 mins sitting crossed legged on the floor finding negatives of Guy Walter's many champions.  The computer ports sometimes stop working.  So I asked it to restart.  It sat spinning for 25 minutes.  This made the anxious pit in my stomach feel more anxious.  After a while I disconnected everything and then forced it to turn off.  When I switched it back on again, my heart in my mouth, my desktop wallpapers had vanished.  I swung around and dug up the old back up drive and plugged it in.  It's now backing up.  6.94GB of 167.55GB backed up.  I know, I know.   It's well and truly overdue.

What's that I said earlier today??  Don't leave it till tomorrow..  Will that be too late??  Goodness I hope that this is not the case.  Not tomorrow.  Not the next day, and not the day after this.  Fortunately as I type this my computer says hello brightly to my scanner and asks it where on earth has it been???  

I sigh with relief and put a negative of Spinning Hill winning the 2003 TJ Smith Stakes for the late Guy Walter.  I took this little series on 3 May 2003, with a 400mm f2.8 lens that the lovely Julie Mitrovski from Nikon had loaned me.  I hand held it for the race, despite the fact that I struggle hand holding lenses this large.  I'm too little.  But in this instance hand holding it allowed me to swing across to her in enough time to grab a few frames.  She was a bugger this mare. Always coming with a late charge.  When you're standing up at the 100m mark with a 400mm mark in the last remaining sliver of sunlight for the day there is very little room for error.  When I hand hold something like this I have about a 30 second window before I begin to wobble.. Fortunately for me, and her late trainer's legacy, the wobble held off just long enough.

I listen as the rain falls outside. I love sitting inside at night with the sound of the rain around me. I'm sure Victorian rain sounds better than ACT rain. I'm sure of it...

Spinning Hill.  G1 TJ Smith Stakes.  3 May 2003.  Ridden by Danny Beasley.  Trained by the late, and great, Guy Walter.