Breakdown

Then I looked at my computer and the screen was blank. No, no, wait. It was BLACK. And then I kept hitting the "on" button on my computer, hoping in vain that the damn thing would start again. It's so sad and pathetic when you hear yourself thinking, "Ok, maybe it will turn on the sixth time I press the button."

But guess what? It never turned on.

So then I tried really hard to fight back tears while answering The Boy's question of "What was that?" (in response to the popping sound) by saying, "The computer just died" as calmly and rationally as possible.

Then the pain invaded: Eight pages of work. Gone. Eight pages. Out of ten.

The Boy, however, is a computer type, so he opened up the machine and tried to see where the problem was. Side note: do you know how much dust is in your computer? We actually vacuumed the inside.

As The Boy had a hunch, we headed down the street to buy a replacement part at the local computer crap store. Funny thing, though. It's closed. Forever.

So we went to another store, and they suggested third. And at the third store, they suggested a fourth, but not after The Boy and the guy at the counter had a long, drawn-out conversation about what kind of education one needs to be a grocer. I'm so not kidding.

Can you imagine? I'm freaking out because every second ticking by is seconds more I could be spending making up for the lost FIVE hours of time I just spent on my paper. And we're talking about a grocer's qualifications? Wha? It's five pm already, people! Let's get moving. At this point, I was having visions of having to pull a twelve-hour marathon to get the paper finished.

So then we took the bus to the fourth and final store, where the people who work there must have all taken some sort of drug that keeps them from smiling. One (bad) joke on the part of The Boy was actually met with a cold, unblinking stare. The stoicness, were it not so frightening, might have actually been impressive were the clerk, say, a cop. I don't know what it is about computer tech types. Aren't they normally cool? Are these particular ones so happy that they finally are in power that they have to squish our heads? Even The Boy was like, "Dude, what was their problem in there?" and he doesn't let anybody's 'tude get to him.

Finally, we bought our mysterious piece that The Boy hoped would fix everything. We rode the bus back in the sweltering heat, got very comfortable with everyone's body odor. And then we climbed up all those damn stairs to the house again, only two and a half hours after I had first noted the Death of My Machine.

Fortunately, my WonderBoy knows a thing or two. His "hunch" was actually correct, and my machine worked. The Boy gets this strange little vein that pops out of his head when he's a) physically exerting himself a lot or b) happy. The vein was going to burst, he was so proud of his technical detective work. I could actually see it from across the room.

Me? I was so happy that I recovered those eight pages that I wrote six more, and now have the resulting brain fry. I need to wrap some sort of conclusion on that bitch, but it's gonna have to wait until tomorrow because I cannot talk about declinable referents any more this evening.

On tap for the next 36 hours: physical therapy in the am, buying a book or two in the neighborhood in the late am, studying for exam in the early pm, Spanish class in the pm, finish essay in the late pm, good night's sleep (hopefully) before the exam in the following am, coffee with The Boy in the early pm, and flight out of Paris in the pm. Arriving in Venice at 22.00 on Friday. I think somewhere in there I'll be in Germany, too. Hurray!

Again, laundry? Not so much a priority.