Yep.... I think I had a hard disk failure. I restarted my computer and was
presented with:

     error: unknown filesystem.
     grub rescue>

I then typed 'ls' and the response was

     (hd0) (hd0,msdos5) (hd0,msdos3) (hd0,msdos1) (fd0)

which is two partitions, the swap drive, and the floppy disk
how do I verify my suspicion of drive failure?
funny how all this happened just as I was attempting to back it up.

-- 
:-)~MIKE~(-: