iPhoto, iLost, iCried, iDon'tHaveAPostToday

First my mini-sob story, then I need some help!

Today's post was going to be dedicated to Lucy's 8 month milestones. On Monday, the 19th our little bug reached her 8 month birthday! 

Well, last night my computer had other plans. Because of the bulk of photos I have between this blog and Lucy and the fact that the photos from our Canon are large files, I was quickly running out of space on my laptop and recently switched my iPhoto Library to an external harddrive. Great idea, right? Well it is. Except when you let your external drive fall off the couch and the plug pulls out of the computer without being 'properly ejected'. That's exactly what happened last night. And when I plugged my external drive back in, my iPhoto Library is showing ZERO photos.

As much as I want to cry at the thought of losing every photo I've taken in the past six years, I'm not going to weep into my k-cup decaf this morning. I'm not going to throw myself a pity party either, but instead will look on the bright side.

I can access pretty much all of my blog pictures from Blogger or Photobucket (which I just started to use and now wish I had been using it for longer). The only blog pictures I can't get are the ones I took this past weekend and planned to post about this week. Annoying, but I'll live. I'm a little upset about some of the fun friends and family pictures, but I realize that the ones I really love are either on Facebook, someone else has a copy or I've posted on this blog. I'm heartbroken that every single one of my million Lucy pictures are no longer here. Again, I have my favorites and people have copies, and luckily I post about our girl on this blog and can save some from here. I just won't have every single photo, including the adorable ones we took on St. Pat's. I only uploaded a few before I lost the photos

Lesson for the day: I need a picture backup system. This was bound to happen sooner or later. Also, I now need to get an office space where I can properly work at a desk and not on the couch with a computer on my lap. That I actually do have in the works for our spare roon in the basement. Jordan is working on trying to salvage my pictures today using a few tricks we researched online and people have suggested. Maybe just maybe he will have some luck and my pictures will be found by end of day. Otherwise a trip to the Apple store is in order. I do have Picasa on my computer, but I use the program so infrequently, that the photos aren't up to date and are sort of random and scattered. 

Here's where I need your help:

Bloggers - How do you store/backup your photos? The external drive is a great idea for those who aren't clumsy and accident prone like myself (seriously, I can't even eat a meal without spilling down the front of me). But I need some sort of backup system. Any suggesstions are greatly appreciated!

Now, let's turn that frown upside down and end with a picture of me and my girl on St. Patrick's Day (that I had uploaded to Blogger before this fiasco).