Charlie's computer crash

Hi All,
I have just made the blog private - it was public which meant anyone could access it, but I am not sure now if this will affect any of you getting into it. If you can't access this one, let me know. As you can see by the title, Charlie has had a massive computer failure with no explanation. While just being plugged in, but not even on the internet, his screen started to blink and the computer started to cycle on and off in a strange way. Suddenly, it just died, and we could get no further than the message that tells you to restart in safe mode, which we couldn't do. He thinks the boot sector failed and without all the discs and software, it wouldn't do any good to try and repair it here, even if we did have a reliable computer guy. So we are all sharing James' laptop, but my frustration level is really high, as who remembers all those passwords and user IDs that are normally automatic? So I can't access business e-mail but have gotten into hotmail and enjoyed your messages.
Re the blog, I had spent about 3 hours writing 2 blogs about our trip to Byblos, one of the world's oldest continually occupied cities, on Word. I saved it to send once I had internet access (we share that too and Huda was using the modem), but now it is gone as I can't get into Charlie's documents. Oh well, I'll try and rewrite it today or tomorrow.
Last night, I met a man named Anwar Reyes from Pennsylvania. He's in Beirut taking care of his 92 year old father. Anwar is an extremely talented piano player and singer who is performing in one of Lebanon's nicest restaurants. Hugo (remember, he's Frances' husband, she's the British Ambassador here) accompanies Anwar on guitar a few nights a week and invited us to come down last night, which we did and had a really nice evening and another fabulous dinner, this time French. Anyway, Reyes was my grandfather's surname and it is very likely that Anwar and I are distant cousins.....imagine! He said the Reyes family is a large Lebanese family, so I may end up finding some connection to both of my grandparents while here. Wow! Anwar and I will talk again soon and I hope to get more informaiton on his branch of the US Reyes family and maybe do some backtracking from that angle. Now what are the chances I would meet Anwar? Amazing. I do believe I am here to find my family ties!
Still not sure what day we will return as we are waiting for Emirates to confirm flights, so stay tuned.
The boat project is going really well, and the extra two weeks should get the boat almost completely wired, down to the outlets and lighting. Charlie is really enjoying working with James and vice versa, making for a really smooth process.
I hope to get the Byblos blog done soon. Tomorrow, we are off to Baalbek, another ancient city and a World Heritage site. The girls and I went to the Lebanese National Museum yesterday, which contains many beautiful artifacts from Byblos, Baalbek, Beirut, Tyre and other Lebanese sites. The oldest are about 2 million years old and nearly every major civilization since the Stone Age is represented. I loved it, the girls were ready to go to the mall after about 20 minutes - ah youth!
Love to all,
Lari