I return from a week-long road trip to Napa Valley and get the server up and running again.

I left last Wednesday morning with Mike for a week-long road trip to California. We’d gotten a free 4-day weekend at the Napa Valley Lodge (long story) and decided to drive on up rather than fly. The trip gave me lots to blog about and, since I didn’t bring my laptop with me, I have a lot of catching up to do. Look for entries about our experiences — including the drive up the California coast, our mud baths, and crossing the Sierras during a thunderstorm — in the days to come.

Of course, the server went down while we were away. I think it crashed sometime on Monday, because the last backup I got via e-mail was dated early Monday morning. I discovered it was down when I got home last night, but wasn’t willing to drive the 5 miles to my office to check it. Worries — and the dog’s panting, for some reason — kept me up half the night, imagining a fire had swept through the building, consuming my equipment.

But this morning the building was still standing. When I turned the server’s monitor on, I saw a message telling me that the computer needed to be restarted. (Duh.) I restarted it and everything is now working fine.

Now I need to get back to work. I have a deadline ahead that is going to ruin my July 4th weekend — but I can’t really complain, since I just got back from vacation. I do want to finish the book on time, though, so my editor can get some sleep.