The bad news first?

My shop had a leak in the ceiling yesterday, I came in to find my computer sitting in water... "No, no no!" Panic, hysteria, denial, "it's gonna be okay"... Cut to Apple store, "It's not okay, everything is fried. But, at least you backed up. You did back up right? Okay, here's a number to a data recovery place, go and come back in an hour and we'll see what we can do. Jackie treated me to David's tea, she bought me Vanilla Oolong and even hugged me as I cried. Who are these people?
After an hour of weeping around Sherway Gardens clutching my delicious Oolong, visited my brother at American Eagle(he works there), window shopped and thought about draining my bank account on a Mark Jacobs hand bag to take the pain away, I made my way back to the MAC store. They greeted me as though I had a loved one in surgery. And I did. Two years of my life were documented in Iphoto. My budding relationship with Tyler, the birth of my little shop and all the work that we did to make it happen, and the hundreds of floral arrangements I've made since opening the doors, our baby bunny, the shop's files, clients, dreams, folders of inspiration, Adobe!! Programs, invoices, bookmarks, wedding inspiration. I didn't just lose a play list for shit sakes! My memories, are the souveniers of my life and the only thing I really own. I felt as though my heart was breaking open, call me dramatic but ask yourself, if you lost it all right now how would you feel? Do you need to back up? I actually believed I'd get to it, that it wouldn't happen to me. Even as I picked up my computer yesterday and drained it of 2 cups of water, I continued to use it and I believed it was fine.
But, there I stood in the MAC store with all of it's employees gathered around me at 9:05pm. They were closed but they were not rushing out the door with their coats on, they were there for me until the end, whatever that meant. And then Jackie spoke, "We all feel so bad for you so we've replaced your computer with shiny new parts, including a better hard drive and battery." My battery died months ago and that was a three hundred dollar fee I couldn't afford. Apple care doesn't cover water damage but they swooped in like little darling computer angels and rescued me from the depths of despair. I cried some more, thanked them endlessly and grabbed an external hard drive from the shelf, "Can someone tell me how to use this please?"
Please, back up your computer today. This happened to my dear friend a few months ago and I remember thinking, "Al, don't let that happen to you. There is too much to lose." But then I went and ate a burger or something.
If anyone has programs they'd like to share, I've got a clean slate and a shop computer I need to rebuild.
Alison xo