Computers!

So, I am plugging away working on projects for grad classes, trying to get them done before I start teacher orientation on Thursday. Tonight I started having some WEIRD computer problems with my screen. I had left the computer to go do something in the kitchen and when I came back it was in sleep mode & I couldn’t get the screen to come back up. Very faintly in the background I could see what should have been on the screen, but not well enough to figure out where my mouse was. I did control+alt+delete and could vaguely see that screen pop up in the foreground. I finally held the power button to shut down the machine. I waited a few minutes and then rebooted. It booted up fine so I immediately saved my projects to my flash drive. After about an hour I shut down the computer to go run an errand. When I came back I powered it up, but this time I had problems again. I saw the first Windows XP screen come up fine, but then just before the blue “Welcome” screen the back light went dark and I couldn’t see anything on the screen. Eventually I tried running my mouse down so it would be in the START button vicinity and clicked. Faintly I could see the start menu come up, so I guessed at where the shut down button was. I faintly saw the Standby/Shutdown/Restart box come up but couldn’t find my mouse to make a selection, so just ended up shutting down with the power button again. I tried twice more to restart the computer, but each time it came up dark so I manually shut it down with the power button. I waited an hour and tried again. Now it’s working fine. What in the world??? I would think if it was a hardware problem that I would not have seen the first screen clearly every time I rebooted. Plus, it wouldn’t go back to working now. I’m afraid that this is just temporarily working and have no idea what to check or look for.

Any ideas???