Tonight a couple of friends who are on the road a lot are staying with us, and since they don’t get homecooked meals very often, we’re pulling out all the stops in terms of comfort food: country fried steak, mashed potatoes, butterbeans, macaroni & cheese and chocolate pie.

Yes, it’s a little high in calories, but the good news is that you’re so happy after you eat all the goodness that you actually sort of enjoy the sensation of your arteries clogging.

And besides, I’m making the macaroni & cheese and chocolate pie with skim milk, so – HELLO – they’re totally good for you.

Last night some Birmingham bloggers (along with some other friends) came over to our house for a little get-together, and we had the best time. We had music and food and Kim made these bacon-wrapped cocktail sausage thingies that caused every single man in attendance to vow that they’d never eaten anything so delicious. In fact, I don’t know when I’ve seen my husband so enthusiastic about an appetizer, thus shoring up my theory that men have a special allegiance to any food that is wrapped in bacon, amen.

At one point last night I decided to sneak down the hall and check on the little man, who was asleep, and as I was walking up the two steps from our living room to our foyer (these would be the same two steps that led to Mama’s brief stint underneath the Christmas tree last year), I somehow managed to catch the toe of my shoe on the edge of one of the steps, and I tripped up the steps like the graceful swan that I am.

At first I thought maybe I could recover and sort of stumble into the hallway so that no one would realize what happened, but unfortunately the forward motion of the tripping catapulted me into a table in the foyer that just so happened to have two – no, three – glass items on the top of it. Once I slammed into the table, the resulting clamor stopped every bit of conversation dead in its tracks, and afterwards my husband said the only part of the entire fiasco that surprised him was that I didn’t take out one of the sidelights by the front door in the process.

So I turned beet red and assured everyone that I was FINE, REALLY, I PROMISE as I attempted to straighten up the glassware, and when I finally made my way back to Alex’s room he was awake again, buried under the covers, crying his little eyes out thanks to THE NOISE FROM ALL THE TRIPPING.

Oh, make no mistake, people: I am verrrry impressive in social situations. You might want to take some notes, even.

So if you’ll excuse me, I need to finish supper (STARCHES AHOY!), get the young’un to bed, then somehow convince three grown men that our first television priority of the evening is to watch “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” on the DVR.

You might want to wish me luck with that last thing.

See y’all tomorrow.

1) If you emailed me to tell me that you’d be interested in writing for the Praise Baby blog (you should have gotten a brief response from me last week, by the way), well, guess what?

You’re going to have to email me again.

Thanks for that, Hoopty Laptop.

All you have to do is put “Praise Baby” in the subject line. Mainly I just need something to file away so that I have everybody’s email address.

2) If you’re one of the B’ham bloggers who’s going to be at our little get-together Tuesday night (you should’ve gotten an email from me Saturday night with all the details), just remember that everything will start around 7-ish. Email me if you have questions or if you’ve had a change-o-plans.

3) Totally unrelated to bloggy-type business, but Andrew Peterson‘s new CD, Resurrection Letters, Vol. II, is out today, and hey, all you people who have been emailing me for a year and a half telling me how much I’d love his music? YOU WERE SO RIGHT.

Anyway, I have a little treat for y’all. You can download “I Got News,” a song from the new CD – and it’s totally free. No password, no email address, nothing – just free musical goodness. The song is absolutely beautiful. So enjoy.

Saturday we went to Six Flags as planned, and we had a wonderful time except for the fact that I got completely grossed out by some of the older rides. I’m a fan of amusement parks in general, and I will support just about anyone’s rollercoaster habit with unbridled enthusiasm, but if I’m on some sort of “river cruise” featuring animatronic characters and said characters are so old that there are SPIDER EGGS ON THE COSTUMES, then I’m gonna suggest that maybe it’s time to shut ‘er down and refurbish.

And yes, I’m talking to you, Haunted Mansion.

The little man loved every single second, though, and he didn’t care one bit that awnings were ripped and water was stagnant and blah mama can be a little picky about these things blah blah. Plus, the weather was absolutely gorgeous, and since I never tire of seeing tall pine trees contrasted against a bright blue sky, I was a pretty happy camper. Except for those spider eggs because, well, EWWWWW.

We got home early Saturday night, just in time to see the Bulldogs get taken to the woodshed, and once I realized that the game’s outcome was not going to be pleasing I started making my way through some emails I needed to answer. I downloaded the day’s pictures and checked a few blogs, then put the computer to sleep because I wanted to watch Saturday Night Live.

A little while later I decided I wanted to check the Twitter to see what people were saying about SNL, so I woke up the computer, looked at my desktop, and couldn’t find my mouse icon anywhere. No little pointy thing to be found. So I decided to restart, because that, that is what you do when your computer does anything remotely out of the ordinary, you just restart it and it’ll fix itself and angels will sing and all will be well with the world.

But all I saw after the restart was this blue-ish screen with a file folder and a question mark blinking at me.

Now I don’t know a lot about computers, but I have seen enough television to know that odds are the whole folder with a question mark thing was probably very bad news. So I summoned the husband. And after he worked with my computer and searched some things on his computer and worked with my computer some more, he made an announcement that honest-to-goodness made me cry: “your hard drive is dead.”

All my pictures. All my email. All my MUSIC, OH MY LANDS MY MUSIC.

Dead.

My Mac. My sweet little Hoopty Laptop.

Dead.

Oh, internets.

Fortunately David backed up all my pictures a couple of months ago, so I didn’t lose very many of those at all – mainly just the stuff from July to now, and I’d actually uploaded a lot of those to Photobucket. For a split second I thought I’d lost all my Africa pictures, and when I realized that D made back up copies of them I was so grateful that I started to cry again, and really, why are you even reading this right now, you should totally be somewhere buying an external hard drive so you can BACK UP ALL YOUR PICTURES RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE.

The lost email is a little bit tough to take, mainly because I’d saved lots of sweet emails from y’all. I also had all of my bloggy contacts in my Mac email – but now all that stuff is gone. I sent out Travis’ Christmas CD giveaways last Wednesday or Thursday – so I should be okay where that is concerned. But if you’ve emailed me about doing a giveaway, or if we were planning a giveaway – all that stuff is toast. So if you don’t mind, just email me again and we’ll start from scratch.

And the music – well, I don’t have to tell y’all that it’s the biggest loss of all for me. I loved everything in my iTunes and had a little collection-o-music built up that so totally spoke to my heart that I’m getting teary-eyed right now just typing this. I have about 200 songs from my iTunes on my iPod right now, so for the time being I’m just going to charge my iPod in the car and pretend like all my music isn’t gone. And I can’t talk about this anymore or I’ll go into the ugly cry and that just makes me feel silly so HEY, HOW ARE Y’ALL?

I’m peachy. Thanks for asking.

Right now our plan is to buy a refurbished hard drive, try to get my Mac up and running for just a little bit longer, and then sock away money for the next few months until we have enough to get a new Macbook. We have an iMac for D’s work, so we’re not totally without a computer, but since I do a lot of my bloggy bidness while he’s working, we’re gonna have to figure out something. And I know that we will. In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t exactly an earth-shattering problem.

But nonetheless, I’ll miss Hoopty Mac as she used to be. We’ve had some good times, Hoopty and I. We’ve been hither, there and yon – overseas, even – and she’s been a trusty companion. In fact, if I hadn’t dropped her in the airport when I was leaving for Africa, she’d probably be alive and kickin’ right now.

But instead, she’s flashing a folder and a question mark, wondering what in the world happened to all those great emails, and HEY, WHO TOOK AWAY THE MUSIC?

Bless her sweet little hoopty heart.

Our family-o-three is on our way to Six Flags this morning, and since my entertainment options are listening to Anderson Cooper’s podcast (Hubby’s choice) or watching A Snoodle’s Tale (little guy’s choice), I thought I’d check in with the internets, which could be a little tricky because I am typing on a very tiny keyboard and quite frankly my thumbs are enormous.

(Sidenote: right now I’m listening to a guy named Daniel Renstrom on my iPod, and I am going to be talking about hom A LOT in the days and weeks to come because OH, THE MUSICAL GIFTEDNESS. My friend Jason told me about him, and, well, SCORE. /sidenote)

I’ve had a little bit of beach withdrawal this week, because oddly enough when I wake up at my house there is no large body of water crashing against a sandy shore. However, we are so grateful for the time away, so grateful for sweet family members who let us borrow their condo for a few days. My SIL Janie and my nephews were also at the beach last week, so we got to spend some much-needed time with them, and Alex loved every single second. Cousins, they are good.

Last night one of the little guy’s classmates had a costume party at her grandparents’ house, and while y’all know that I’m not really one for large social gatherings, especially when said social gathering is accompanied by the possibility that someone might be dressed up as a clown, we had the best time. There was a bouncy castle and hot dogs and a hayride without the hay since it was super-damp outside. I didn’t take my camera, but that’s okay because I will never, ever forget the sight of Alex in his Darth Vader costume on that hayride – with a grin a mile wide as he and Batman and Indiana Jones growled like bears. It’s one of my favorite mama memories ever. And in all honesty it made me want about six or twenty more children, which might be problematic given my ever-increasing age, so maybe some of y’all could just lend me your young’uns for a bit until my hormones settle down, m’kay?

And seriously: SWEET MERCY at the blessing of that little fella riding in the backseat. I’ll never get over him.

Okay – here’s our exit. Hope y’all have a wonderful Saturday. Don’t tell me if there are typos in this. Let’s just pretend that I type beautifully with my thumbs.

Also: parking here is $15. So I expect our car to be washed and waxed when we leave the park later this afternoon. Just sayin’.

This week has been a big one for Beth, Travis and all the wonderful people who serve with them – because they’re celebrating their tenth year in ministry together.

And today, over at allaccess, we’re thanking them.

Tonight’s episode of The Office was a sort of cringe-inducing study in awkwardness; there was the disconnect between Pam and Jim, not to mention the disconnect between Michael and, well, everybody. Plus, it was pretty much the most bizarre Office opening ever, so I think I was thrown off a little bit from the get-go.

Even still, there were some moments:

1. “This baby is related to Michael through delusion.”

3. The bowl of M&Ms for ASTIRD

4. Jan and the “lullabies”

5. Dwight and the stroller

6. The baby in the cornucopia, oh my word.

7. The hug between Michael and Holly, which was oddly touching in a I-shouldn’t-be-seeing-this sort of way.

What did y’all think? Like? No like? Happy just to see our Dunder-Mifflin friends?