Crash

Of the computer sort. A particularly nasty one from which I could not avert my eyes. In the middle of typing a post, my computer froze. And then, millimeter by millimeter, AOL started minimizing. Ctrl Alt Del did nothing to unfreeze it, so I switched it off.

And that was the end of that.

It will come on, but windows won't load. Mind you, this is a week after I lost my flash drive!

But, the dissertation chapters are saved elsewhere, so I didn't come apart at the seams... initially. I thought, well, it's still under warranty and, as this last chapter is due next week, not having a computer in the house might be a good thing.

Then it got serious. First of all, I can send it back to the company, but I have to have the stuff on my hard drive recovered/saved, because whatever they were going to do was going to wipe everything clean. So yesterday, I took it to the the Geek Squad at Best Buy and paid too much to back the hard drive up. And they won't have it back to me til Saturday, so I can't send it off til Monday probably.

Then, last night, I found myself sitting around glassy-eyed and shivering. What the hell could I do with myself?

Finally, the last damn straw--I got outbid at the last minute on e-bay for a sea lion I wanted for the Noah's Ark Baby Shower (all caps, that's how serious this is). We're decorating with pairs of animals and I have one Discovery Channel sea lion. I desperately wanted the other one, but someone outbid me!

So, now, I am perturbed (isn't that a horrible word? I'm quite perturbed by it). And my sister missed a late afternoon e-mail from her Curriculum Coordinator so she called this morning from work to tell me, "You can't send that computer off. Find out how much they'll charge just to fix it at Best Buy. I'll pay half." She's perturbed, too. Tempted as I was, I told her that would defeat the purpose of the warranty.

So here I am, having driven up to my university, jeopardizing my 11 am salon appointment, just to use the computer. I need an intervention. For real.