so, yeah.

[dira]

My computer's dead and staying dead, alas, as it would cost an unconscionable amount of money to fix and it's three years old and out of warranty for a reason. daveamongus has kindly offered to retrieve my data when next I see him, and in any case I'd gotten pretty good at backing up crucial text files and I keep a lot of things on my external hard drive anyway, so I'm not actually especially worried about the information on my computer. I suppose that distinguishes this from my first totally unexpected traumatic transition of laptop (Laptop #1, Karina: stolen while I was studying abroad in 2001, bringing what was in retrospect a merciful end to my seven years trying to write the same novel) so that's something. But since it's only moderately less impossible for me to buy a laptop right now than it was when I was 19 and in England, hypothetical Laptop #5 is ... going to be remaining hypothetical for a while.

Luckily I have a iulia and she has a netbook (Captain Apollo, pocket-sized but fully-equipped) which she's going to lend me, so I will not be forced to spend altogether too many nights like I spent last night (successively: reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms while eating comfort food; reading The Guide to Mathematics for Intelligent Non-Mathematicians while listening to classical music; knitting while watching CSI:NY; still not doing the dishes due to computer mourning; plotting out Holmes/Watson kinkfic which on the bright side I will probably never write but which presents one or two interesting logistical problems).

Right after my first laptop got stolen--well, okay, fast forward through the first several hours with the hysterical sobbing, insomnia, solicitous police officers, and abruptly deciding to go to Paris on what turned out to be the final weekend of the Tour de France--after my first laptop got stolen, my stomach hurt all the time. I think that may have been when I first started exhibiting anxiety that way, or at least when I started really recognizing it as such. I hadn't brought antacids with me from home, which I think I would have if I was used to reacting to stress like that; I had to go and buy some at the Sainsbury's down the street, and the purple ones turned out to be black currant flavo(u)red instead of grape, and like many of the trivial things I bought in England I took them home with me when I went. Being stomachache-stressed was always slightly leavened by taking out the little Sainsbury's box from my desk drawer, until at last it ran out and I had to replace it with fruit-flavored Tums.

Anyway, so it's Friday and even before my computer died it'd been a long and underslept week, and when I woke up this morning something hurt in my midsection and wouldn't let me go back to sleep. It took me a good solid five minutes to realize it was my stomach. My stomach hurts again, for the first time in years, and there are no Tums in my purse and no cash either, and I want like hell for my workday to be over but when I go home there will still be an absence-of-laptop on the coffee table waiting for me. So. Yeah.