It's a good day for backups.

You've got the day off, you're sitting around having a mellow afternoon, and you're about to launch a new year's worth of work. Now is a great time to make some backups. If you don't have a formal backup program, and you're within the sound of my voice, I beg you: make today the day.
If you've got a mac, join .mac, and use their Backup 3 software along with their iDisk, with monthly burns to cd or dvd. This costs $99 for a year, plus an hour a month feeding blank disks to your machine. Your mac will tell you when it's time to back up.
If you've got a PC, I don't know what the industry standard is; probably something from Symantec? Pay money for the software (should be about $100 I think) and then use it at least once a month to back up to hard media.
Then go one step more: bring a complete backup set to a different location. If you've got a safety deposit box, great; a drawer in your desk at work is also fine. Or ask a friend who lives in a different zip code to tuck your backups into their files. Why? Floods, hurricanes, fires, burglary, psycho roommate: many things that destroy your computer can also destroy a set of backup cd's stored in the same location. Life will be hard enough if the levees break; at least your data can be safe if you do some regular preventive backups.