She sat and charged a while.  I opened her back up yesterday to resume my normal activities and the same windows were still open, obviously.  I attempted to "Force Quit", to no avail.  No response to any of my commands.  Frustrated, I held the power button for a reset.

And then it happened.  Or didn't happen.  That's kind of the issue.

The spokes on my "loading" wheel turn and turn and the screen changes (eventually) from gray to blue...  but that is the extent of Lucy's activity.  A cursor appears on the screen after about 10 minutes, but it's a blank blue screen.  Nothing to click.  Nothing to do.  I've gone through the steps about 20 times now.  I've researched suggestions for this particular issue.  All to no avail.  If you hold down certain keys on boot you see other screens, kind of like a behind-the-scenes peek at what is happening during the loading process.  My screens display messages that imply my hard drive has failed.

"disk0s3: i/o error." - doesn't that just sound horrifying?  I don't have a clue what it means, but if you google it you find a bunch of traumatized Apple loyalists trying desperately to salvage their computers via "help" forums.  All of the "help" gurus mention hard disk failure, which can only really be fixed by replacing the HD.  And the HD can only really be replaced by a professional (Apple Store: we don't got) or a really ballsy PB enthusiast who is pretty certain he/she can replace it without destroying the machine.  Plus it costs more money.  And I'm not sure how I feel about all this money I am pumping into my outdated machine.  So far the battery was $49, the RAM $29, and if I were to tack in a new HD, that'd be close to another $100, plus the power cord replacement she really needs.  Is it worthwhile?  Do I even bother?  I mean, certainly $200 is cheaper than replacing the entire computer...  But she'd still just be a PowerBook G4, circa 2004 or so, with fairly limited functionality as far as things go these days.

Oh, and thinking that I might be able to boot using the OS restore disk that came with dear little Jimmy MacElroy (since Lucy's original [outdated] software restore disks are packed away somewhere that isn't here) I stuck disc 1 into the drive on Lucy.  And there it remains.  None of the emergency eject features even work.  Which panics me further.  I don't want to be without that software.

I am just sad.  Totally sad.  We had something special, Lucy and me.  And now it's fading away.