I restarted my mac and many apps and files disappeared. It's like it booted to a state several months ago. My CS 5 apps are not in the dock or applications folder. Has this ever happened before and what can I do?

It's like it booted to a state it was in several months ago. My CS 5 apps are not in the dock or applications folder. Has this ever happened before and what can I do?
The files on my desktop are not the ones that were there when I shut down. It's like it's gone back in time.
My display's power supply got fried (I think) in a power outage so I bought a new one. However, every time I restart the display usually stays black. I have found I need to keep rebooting until it kicks in and starts working. I unplug everything, wait a while (a few minutes to overnight) and try booting again.
This last time the display finally came on but I'm faced with this problem. I used to use time machine, but I deleted everything and disabled it a couple months ago or more so I'm at aloss as to why the mac is booting into the state it was in sevearl months ago.
What could I have done to cause this? Has this ever happened to anyone else and is there a solution?
Note: I did a search for a file I knew was created today. I found it and it showed that it was a file I had saved on the desktop this morning--even though that file's icon is not appearing on the desktop now.
I did a search for photoshop and saw my CS5 version listed.
However, I did a couple more searches and these files no longer appear in the search. I don't know if they're there or not. This is bizarre!
I'm on a Mac Pro, 10.6.2.

Thanks for the obvious question. I mean it. The very same thought came to me this morning and, sure enough, I had booted into another drive--my old one that, of course, had the old desktop, etc.
It didn't dawn on me that this was the case since I hadn't set it as a boot drive but I guess in the course of all the restarts I did, it got switched.
I'm back to normal again.

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