Crashed computer

My trip to South Dakota over Thanksgiving and to see the new granddaughter has been great. But it hasn't been without its perils..... I got up there and took one picture and my camera died. I thought the battery might need recharging, but that wasn't the problem. The lens won't retract, it won't turn on or off in picture mode. It will allow me to see the pictures already taken, but I have since downloaded them. I wonder if it was dropping it in the sand last week..... But then I wanted a new camera anyway. But the biggest issue is my computer. I thought the hard drive seemed to be cranking and cranking and cranking the other day. In fact, I thought about it and realized it's been doing this for several weeks. My battery won't stay charged either. If I am not plugged in, I have exactly 19 minutes before it shuts down. But today it wouldn't boot up. Finally after trying safe mode, last known configuration, etc., etc., it did boot, but then I could not open my mail program with my contacts and calendar. Oh my, my life is ruined. Without those, I don't know anything. Every phone number and address and email, including over 6000 emails and 400 contacts were in that program. So I did what every network tech does, I rebooted. And it took about an hour to get it to boot up again. So I checked the event log and my hard drive has a bad sector. What is that you say? Well, believe me, it isn't good. So, the bottom line is, I will be using someone else's computer to keep up my blog, at least until I get back home and replace the hard drive or get a new computer. This means no pictures for a while. Hopefully I will be able to salvage some of my files and won't loose everything. And I'm always telling everyone else to backup, backup and backup. I wish I took my own advice...