Laptop Died!

Not sure how often I'll be able to get on here in the next couple of weeks, as my laptop decided to die a fairly slow and painful (for me!) death. It's no longer even turning on, so my wonderful brother in law is going to salvage what he can off the hard drive and help me to put it on a new computer (when I finally manage to get one!). Right now I'm using hubby's not-so-ancient-but-very-slow desktop. It has brainfarts, so when I type anything it takes two to three times as long as it normally would because I have to wait for the computer to catch up. So not fun!

On the plus side, since I'm on his computer, I don't have to try 20,000,000,000,000 times to get it to turn on and then hope that it doesn't shut itself down while I take a potty break like my laptop was tending to do towards the last. I'm hoping that he can salvage my pics and files, but not overly hopeful at this point, given the fact that as of late, whatever can go wrong does go wrong.
For example, Mike fixed his car last week right? Wrong! The bearing that he changed is shot too, and we don't know why, as it's only a week old. He bought rotors but why put them on when you'll just have to tear it all apart and do it again? So this weekend has been spent, not with family time, but with him still trying to fix the car. It sucks, because the weather has been especially crappy, going up and down all the last 2 weeks, and I may be walking everywhere this week if he can't fix the problem.

Not much else going on here, we are doing things for James' 12th birthday a little late, because with all the car troubles we just don't have the money. So I told him that he and I will go shopping on the 30th and then the whole family will go out to dinner where he picks. What should I get for a 12yo boy? He likes cars, but I worry about Gabe messing with them. He likes games, especially racing games, but that gets expensive quick.

Quick Note: In case my sis is reading, Happy Birthday Brianna!!!!! Would have messaged you, but like I posted, the laptop is D-E-A-D! Happy Early Birthday to You too, in case my computer problems aren't fixed before then! Call me at home some time sis!