So, we had to leave our computer at the shop for repair this last Sunday. We picked it up this afternoon and now have a new optical drive and a new hard drive. The VERY sad news is that we lost the 400+ photos and videos that I took while on our trip. All we have now are the ones that I have posted here. I am grateful that I did that. In any case, we still have our old hard drive ~ and at some point perhaps we can take it to an information extractor to see if we can recover those files. Glad to be back in touch, though.