On Wednesday of last week, my laptop contracted a virus that all but crippled it, nearly wiping out everything I had stored on the machine since last May– thousands of job specific photos, videos, story notes and documents.

I’ve been playing back-and-forth with Staples, which is supposedly repairing the damage and backing up all of my important files on my external hard drive. A 48-hour turnaround and a ‘Satisfaction Guarantee’ has turned into a week of phone calls and messages left for absent “Tech Experts.”

Hopefully this week will be made a little less stressful. I’m supposed to get a call from Staples this morning. We’ll see.

Posts will resume soon!

In college I had gotten used to the dimly lit, closet-sized kitchens of campus apartments. We’d cook in them, sure, but only as quickly as possible and maybe once or twice a week. Meals were convenient and fast, with a coffee table for a kitchen table, and T.V. for table talk. The food was normally good because we were resourceful and shopped smart, but even as we moved farther from campus where kitchens tended to improve, the time spent in them didn’t.

Since I’ve been back in Wilmington, the time I spend in kitchens of friends or Mom or– only recently– my own, has grown from twenty minutes a day to several hours a night. We cook because, some of the time, there’s nothing else to do. We cook because food has a lot to do with our jobs. We actually use all of our cookware, our blender, food processors and bread maker instead of letting them collect dust in a cabinet where they used to be. And lately, we cook because our kitchen is big, for the first time ever.

On a typical night here we’ll cook greens. Kale or chard or spinach. Lots of onion and garlic, some olive oil. Normally some kind of protein– either chicken, tofu or tuna. Maybe rice or a grain and almost always a steamed vegetable. In short, simple food. But good food. And the leftovers make meals for days.

Frankie and I have been inspired by it. We’ve decided to set a goal of three new recipes a week, found online or borrowed from friends. It should make for good times in the kitchen and add to our recipe book, as well as make for some good blogstuff.  I don’t want to trumpet it or make a production of it because, well, it’s been done before. A lot. This is just a way to challenge ourselves to spend more time in the kitchen, with friends. Sign me up.

I think to start, we’re going to break out the slow cooker and make this Indian dish I’ve been ogling. Slow cooked chicken masala. Yes please.

We ventured to the abandoned third floor of my building again today. The sun poured in through the big windows facing South street, into the cavernous room covered in pigeon feathers and dust.

I took this of Eric as he was looking out of a window toward the iconic Buckley Bros. grain elevators.

View it on black.

I love how this one picture, taken somewhere in Washington, D.C., completely sums up all of the problems facing the news industry in America. People want content, but they’re not sure they want to pay for it.

In its defense, the Express is supposedly a very good alternative paper in the D.C. metro area, so maybe that’s why D.C.-ites have parted the Red Sea of snow to get to its box. Something tells me the $0 price tag helps a bit, too.

If ever my plans of writing and making photographs for a living don’t pan out, I’m taking a cue from Jason Mraz and starting an avacado farm in California.

Watch me.

I didn’t think the guy could get any more atmospheric with his live shows than he did with Sigur Ros, but it looks like he can and is. The video shows a “cross-artform live stage” which will use video, installation, live theater and, of course, music, to round out each performance.

Having missed Sigur Ros three times on their past U.S. tours, I’m making it a priority to catch Jónsi’s show on his next visit. The closest he’ll be to Ohio is either Chicago or Philadelphia, but I’d drive twice that distance to see him.

You can watch the video here, or click on the link at the top of this post.

Everything else– the content, the links, the nature of the posts– will stay the same. Same stuff, different package.

I hope you like it.

The cable company came two days ago and plugged us back into the interwebs, so now we’ll be able to work and play from home without having to suffer through the ups and downs of the downtown wi-fi connection. We decided to suck up the extra $12 and spring for basic cable, after not having television for more than a year. If nothing more, we now have a venue to watch our weekly guilty pleasure (LOST), some quality local programming or the occasional PBS gem. Twenty-four channels has never seemed so vast. So what if three of those are snow channels.

At present there are two vacant store fronts below ours and our neighbor’s apartment, though that’s apparently about to change. A hastily drawn sign taped to the window of one of the spaces below us reads: “Coming soon: Vintage Vinyl.” At first I was skeptical: what kind of market could there be in Wilmington for vinyl records? But my friend and landlord tells me they have a fairly big regional following, and could bring plenty of outside customers to Wilmington. And I guess a niche music store is better than a general music store here– you can’t download a vinyl record or buy one from Wal-Mart. Now, Frankie’s Christmas gift of a record player seems a lot more practical. We’ll probably be their biggest customers.

At this point, there’s only one more room to paint and furnish before we can call this project finito. A thrift-store visit to find some comfortable chairs is in order. Any recommendations? Apart from Ohio Thrift, which is nearby and has great deals, I’m unsure where to look for second-hand furniture.

But thanks to a stellar online DIY tutorial and my unshakable resolve (hah), the lens is back in working order. Total cost: $18, even after the Click Camera expert told me a lens-mount repair would run “at least $100. You’re better off buying a new lens.” Thanks, dude. You were way off.

In other news: Frankie and I have been splitting our time between Cincinnati and Wilmington for most of this week, trying our hardest to finish packing, painting, cleaning and rehabing or new apartment before the furniture arrives Thursday afternoon. We’re almost there. We took several boxes over last night, and stopped for the first time in days to enjoy our new space.

I was taking test shots all night last night, making sure the auto-focus was working correctly and that none of the highlights were blown out (those were the most common issues I found online from people who rehabbed the same part of the 18-55mm lens). Luckily, everything seemed to be working as usual.

Afterwards, Frankie and I met up with several of our friends for a long awaited, mega-geeky television event: the Lost premier. Frankie brought a couple take and bake pizzas home from work for the night, and we set up the CCYC into a veritable screening room.

I’m not a TV critic, so I’ll leave the Lost review to the Twitterverse and everyone else who can’t stop talking about it today. Let’s just say my mind was sufficiently blown. That is to say, Lost is back.

Yes, by most accounts, today was a good day. But one singular string of events more than ruined it all, and I’m still fuming because of it.

After checking into the aforementioned new apartment, where I turned off our circuit breakers in time for the DP&L visit tomorrow, I pulled out my camera for one last picture before heading down the stairs to leave.

Less than five seconds after taking that picture, I slung my camera over my shoulder and started down the stairs. Apparently, camera straps are only as strong as your camera is heavy, because with a little added momentum my beloved new camera broke the strap fastener and barreled down the stairs, bouncing on what seemed like every f-ing step as it fell. When it made to the bottom, 35 steps later and well after the 18-55mm kit lens had separated in a flurry of black plastic, the camera body pushed right through the door and rolled onto the sidewalk. I stood mortified at the top of the stares. Paralyzed, and absolutely mortified.

It’s funny how during these recent unfortunate events in my life, the first thing I think of when assessing the damage is “It could be worse.” When I picked up the jettisoned lens, only the lens mount was cracked. It sure shed a lot of plastic for such a small part. And when I hastily pulled out my other, brand-new prime lens, which I had taken off of the camera just a few minutes before it fell, I was relieved to see that the camera body still worked.

Thankfully, Nikon cameras are built like cinder blocks and my D3000 only withstood a few cosmetic scratches. The lens, on the other hand, is worse off, but not as bad as I thought. I searched online for Nikon lens repair manuals, and I found no fewer than ten other helpless folks who dropped their camera the same way. A new lens mount is only about $15 online, and I found a couple of very helpful DIY tutorials on repairing the lens at home.

At this point, all I can do is sigh. I really hope my bad luck stops with this, but in any event, it could be worse. I could have broken my other elbow.