So there's a running joke in my household that valentines day is cursed. We kinda try hard to ignore it and pretend it doesn't exists as every year on valentines day something happens. from unexpected bills or machinery breaking. Some years are more extreme than others....

One year we ended up in hospital with my husband having has a suspected stroke (sat in A&E for ironically 14 hours) initially they told us he had had a stroke, but then after many tests they revised their diagnosis and said it had actually been a pain free migraine that had caused loss of vision and word soup, we were due to go on holiday the next day and luckily because it wasn't a stroke Paul was able to drive to our holiday.

One year we went to a less than jake/Reel Big Fish concert to see a guy throw himself off the balcony and land head first (it was confirmed a few days later that the guy was ok but he was out cold in the middle of the floor for an hour whilst the air ambulance came and assessed him), we were only 2 songs into the headline act at this point, eventually the gig did resume but only for a few more songs before the strict venue curfew, we made the final train of the night by the skin of our teeth.

One year I had to call in a million favours to pretty much everyone I knew in order to get lots of people to turn up to a field in conventry to dig a 64 tonne train out of a muddy field...If we didnt succeed we would have had our house repossessed... Luckily we succeeded.

This year the train project my husband has been working on for the last 15 years flooded we were unaware of this issue as hadnt been to the train for a few weeks and so It destroyed a lot of stuff, the moisture trapped in the train carriage caused lots of artifacts to go moldy or rusty and has really kinda set the whole project back a good few years just when it was due to officially open to the public in April.

All of the things above all ended up coming out okay by the end of it, so whilst valentines day is usually eventful in some way I think cursed is a bit of a strong word. All the other incidents have turned out to be lucky, Paul didnt have a stroke, the guy landing on his head survived, we got to keep our house and im sure some silver lining will shine through the current flooded train fiasco, but currently its still in the super stressy place.

Today my laptop wouldn't switch on. At all. My heart dropped. My laptop has been broken for like...the longest time. I cant close the lid and havent been able to for like 18 months due to the hinge/screen separating and now I think the internal charge socket is cracked so Ive sellotaped the power cable in the one very specific position that it still works. managed to get enough charge into it and now doing a back up.

Did you know I have never backed up this laptop Jan 2022 was when I got it. Do you know how idiotic that is. Like super dumb, children. That would have taken all the psd files of all my comics with it....I feel kinda ill just thinking about it. Do not do this if you draw a million things every year and just expect this one bit of machinery that's already flakey to keep supporting your stupidity. Back stuff up and heck back up your back ups because for some reason our disk drives always die in pairs....

So whilst this morning was very much panic mode im now feeling incredibly fortunate it allowed me to charge it enough to get a back up going....still with over 300Gb to back up its gonna take a little while. (currently its on pg 463 of shine)

So yeah sometimes I can think oh life is full of bad luck, but when I then sit and think again...actually things could have gone a lot worse. But It wont stop me feeling trepidation every time Feb 14th comes around.

This is also probably a long winded way of saying i'm probably gonna need to open commissions (I'll write in a separate journal about that) because i absolutely don't have the funds to buy a new laptop right now and i think the laptop is kinda hinting that maybe i've squeezed as much as I can outta it. Do not ever buy an Acer Aspire Vero. They're eco friendly but fall apart quick.