I'm not laughing!

Alright, I'm praying that this is some kind of weird hotmail error, but it seems as though hotmail has erased my entire contact list! We're talking hundreds of contacts . . . gone! I'm hoping they just temporarily "lost" them and that when I check my e-mail again tonight they'll have magically reappeared since I do NOT relish the idea of having to reconstruct my entire contacts list! What could have happened to them? I'm positive they were there last time I wrote an e-mail, which was maybe a couple of days ago? I check this e-mail account several days, and I know I checked it this morning and this afternoon at work, but as I didn't have any new e-mails at that time, I didn't bother to go beyond the first screen! HELP!