Murphy's Law revisited

This morning started out really well. I woke up at a decent hour and made myself some tea, and starting surfing the web until Jon woke up. I was planning to eat a quick breaskfast and then hunker down and do loads of stuff that needed getting done. I've had a bit of trouble jump-starting myself after taking a week or so to myself to unwind after all the research and writing and traveling on delayed flights and all, but today was the day I was going to get back in the competent-grad-student-saddle.

Then my computer froze....so I restarted it thinking it was a fluke. And I got the typical start-up Mac chime, a gray screen, and....nothing. Just a horrible clicking noise that (I swear to sweet baby Jesus) I'd never heard coming from my computer before. Trying not to panic, I tried restarting again. This time I got the gray screen and a folder with a question mark. Which I took as a bad sign.

And I was right. Several phone calls to Mac helplines and visits to computer people (all done by the generous and stalwart Jon, because I was, you know, panicking) revealed that my hard drive was completely, totally, irrevocably fried. No data can be recovered and I need a new one. I now have a brick. There went my productive day.

I decided to take the day off. Last week when I got my stipend, I ordered all of this from Adagio Teas:


A package with that mug with a cool strainer/steeper thing and sample packs of teas in a bunch of different flavors to try out came yesterday, and I was thrilled. I've been trying to distract myself from the fact that I just lost the entire contents of my hard drive (I mean, I have the really important stuff backed up, but still) by drinking a lot of tea, re-reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and knitting the puff-sleeved cardigan. I'm half-way done on the yoke now.

Sigh.