all at once

Well, there's nothing like logistical nightmares to drive out the angst.

The day after I posted my ruminations on feeling unfocused and as if my life purpose was potentially not a purpose and more of a severe craving for an ego-massage, I had a series of disasters which sent me scrambling.

Wednesday morning, I spent a solid and inspired six hours fixing my spanish writing sample. I was very much under the gun as I hoped to have my writing partners see it that evening. I was scooting around, getting ready for school, saving the doc to my jump drive, and when I came back to the computer expecting the computer to be ready for me to eject the jumpy and go on with my life, I noticed it was just sitting there, pretending to save the doc, with that little colorwheel whirling away. I restart the computer, and up pops a blue screen that won't let me login.

Dead hard drive.

I'm breathing, I'm checking online to see if there are maybe any quick fixes to this blue screen issue and sites entitled "The Blue Screen of Death" keep popping up. Still breathing but pretty scared, I pack it up and head into school where I had an adrenaline-fun 50 minutes with my students, despite my severe lack of preparation. After class, I called the dude at Mac Enthusiasts (on Pico and Manning) and when he informed me that data recovery was $400, I moved from scared to feeling helpless and hella angry. It was in this mode of bemoaning and raging against time-wasting logistics that I apparently blew right through a stop sign at LaGrange and Overland. How do I know? Because a block later after a siren went off, I realized that there was a cop trying to get me to pull over.

Moving violation.

After we all pull off in our separate directions, I start crying and not little tears trailing decorously down my adorably pink cheeks, no, but face-contorting wails ripping out of my throat. Loud. Snotty. Unhelpful.

I get to Mac Enthusiasts and wipe off my face and stump in there. Am totally uncommunicative with Matthew, front desk dude. He's pretty sure it's a hardware issue which will run me $350 to $500. We discuss the data recovery issue some more, I insist that there's nothing on this computer except one doc I really do want, he asks its name, just in case. I drive off and call babe, and while telling him that I'm going to go home, make a cup of tea and then try to reconstitute that morning's work, Matthew calls and tells me that he has my doc!

And he didn't charge me $400. Seriously, I think Matthew from Mac Enthusiasts is now one of my favoritest people of all time. If you problems with your mac, you should go there. They really are very sweet and efficient.

From there, although I had left semi-hysterical phone messages to my writing partners, one of whom I'm most certainly not close enough to justify dumping that level of incomprehensible ramblings on, I was able to meet with Neetu, have a good dinner, calm my ass down and have a productive night. But it was really too much emotional brouhaha for a single day.

Since then, it's been pretty day by day, trying to meet deadlines. I've already found some mistakes in things I've sent out. Pretty depressing. But there's really not enough time to wallow. Mental health days and nights have certainly happened, but mostly it's scoot scoot scoot scoot scoot.

Netflixed
Black Book
I thought only Hollywood movies were this obvious. Our heroine Ellis/Rachel is a creature of coincidences to the extent that I began to think of this as the Forrest Gump of Nazi/Holocaust movies. I'll back up: it's about Holland during WWII and follows one woman who loses her family because of a lawyer who was colluding with a Gestapo officer and how she survives and becomes part of the resistance, becoming a spy who falls in love with her Nazi mark who, after the Liberation, is executed according to Article 163 which allows the defeated German military to continue to enforce military law on their officers and a particularly reptilian Hauptofficer had hated her lover and wanted to personally issue the firing squad order. Meanwhile, she slowly realizes that the resistance had been infiltrated, which explains why the Nazis were always on the scene so fast but not the bumbling ragtaggery of the resistance members. Long story short (and I'm leaving out several subplots), the movie ends with her at a Kibbutz built with the loot salvaged from the Gestapo officer who had robbed the bodies of the Jews he had mowed down and bombs falling during the Six Days War.

Mostly Martha and now this. Apparently, my netflixing choices in the germanic realm are definitely not top notch. Suggestions for improvement welcome.