My hard drive died last night. Just up and died. Everything I've ever written, downloaded or uploaded was gone.

I panicked. "AAAAAAAAAOOOHHHMMYGOD what am I going to do?"

Adam was as cool as a cucumber. "Relax, baby. I'll fix it. I'm going to need a ziplock bag, a couple of screwdrivers, a baby seal, some garlic powder and a cork."

I'm serious, that's what he said. I was like, "Baby seal?"

"My rubber chicken's at work. I figure, it's good enough for a quick fix."

So I gathered up the requested items. Ziplock bag, a cork, garlic powder and a rubber baby seal toy my mother-in-law brought back from a conference. With a completely straight face, Adam held the seal over my dead lappy and clubbed it with a Sharpie.

"Gotta appease the computer gods," he said. Club, club, club.

He threw a little garlic and burned the cork. "If only I had my chicken," he mumbled. I reminded him we had a package of chicken wings in the fridge. He pulled it out. "I'm showing the chicken to the computer," he explained with a straight face. "Chickens, both rubber or real, are very important in the process."

He put the chicken back in the fridge. "What about the ziplock?" I asked.

"I cannot reveal all of my secrets at this time," he said. He shooed me upstairs, it was time for bed. While I stressed over the state of my hard drive and moaned about the tools of my trade, he assured me it'd be fine. "Never doubt the computer voodoo."

I fell asleep eventually. The next thing I knew, it was morning and he was perched over me like a vulture. "It's working."

And it was! I worked long enough to save all of my downloaded music from iTunes, all of my photos and every document I've written since May of 2002. "Don't doubt the voodoo, baby," he said.

But, and there's always a but, the hard drive is a goner. A new one is winging its way from New Egg and the master swears he'll have a faster lappy up and running by the end of the week. So awesome! But it'll be a week. Damn.