Reunited... and uh, it feels mostly good

Yes, it is true, Mac is Back...
I got the call yesterday afternoon... my heart raced, my head was dizzy with excitement... Mac was coming home today. But my hair was a mess, and my eyebrows are long overdue for a wax... and OH MY, my desk is so cluttered! I so wanted everything to be perfect when he finally came home... when we would once again be together. Together listening to music, together watching a movie, together sending emails to our dear friends together. Yes it all sounds so idyllic.
But...
I knew that there would be issues. I knew that we would have our problems. All relationships have their problems.
So the lowdown is that all 3,000 and something of my photos were backed up. They are visible and i can open them up one by one as jpegs... but when I attempt to import them into iphoto it kicks em back and says they are unreadable files. I installed ilife 08, new iphoto.... it imports them... spends 10 minutes importing... then it shows me a bunch of empty boxes which are supposed to be my photos. Did I back something up incorrectly? Am I stuck having to view 3,000 and something photos one by one? EEEK!!!

And then there is the issue of ical. I synced all of that stuff to .mac before I turned mac over to the genius. My address book, bookmarks, mail accounts, keychain thingy, AND my ical. Mac came home and i synced again... everything showed that it had last been synced on the day i handed over mac... and when i synced... it was all there, all correct... except my calendar was of a very old version from like two years ago!!! All of my birthdays, my meeting notes, everything is gone. AHA! It's NOT gone. It's all on my ipod. But here's the rub... I cannot sync from my ipod to the computer. I have an app that allows me to transfer my music from ipod to itunes. (that is another issue for another time). But I could not find an app that does same for photos or calendars.
UGH!
I really thought that I backed everything up properly. But it turns out that I did not. There is some stuff missing here and there, I didn't back up or save Office, so now I have no way to view or use all of my Word files. I should have had my genius back it all up with me. Live and learn baby. Live AND learn!