After some serious searching and troubleshooting, I just successfully ran scandisk and de-fragmented my hard drive. It's been about a year since those ran correctly. I think my computer thinks it has died and gone to heaven.
as in the day I'm having... slept in, had a great breakfast, played hooky from church, just cleaned up my kitchen... and now I'm contemplating going to a park to take a walk because the beautiful blue sky is practically calling my name.