RIP Fender

as if the next 2 weeks isn't going to be absolutely ridiculous and possibly-failing-out-of-grad-school enough, last night Fender tried to drink some soda and thusly is no longer functioning.

so. not only is there no laptop anymore, quite possibly everything on said laptop (all my work from this semester) is now gone.

i spent all yesterday trying to fix it when i really, REALLY needed to write this presentation that's coming up on tuesday. then i spent all night trying to figure out how the fuck to still get everything done, and afford a replacement/repairs (humongous credit card debt, ftw!). then i spent all late evening and early morning alternating between watching episodes of "24" and having a massive panic attack. then i cancelled my class and stayed home sick. because by then i was completely insane and definitely incapable of interacting with humanity.

things are a bit more under control at the moment, though i occasionally try to break down the list of things i have left to do into discrete chunks and then breathing gets weird and scary.

unfortunately, i don't really have the time/luxury of...those kinds of things. i'm just going to have to keep plugging away and hope i don't completely losing.

though, going insane might be reasonable grounds for requesting INCs from my seminars...

jesus fucking christ.

on the upside, despite having to go into horrible debt, i'm probably getting a new laptop, and fucking soon. i definitely need one for next semester, and it looks like HP could get me a custom one for a decent price by dec. 20th or so.

i hate suddenly dropping so much money that i don't have, especially since i just put 500 bucks worth of car repairs on my credit card, and have another (at least) 500 coming up when i get the timing belt replaced (before march). but my laptop is fucking fried, and i don't really know what else to do. my warranty ran out in october, and everyone i talk to says getting repairs done would be incredibly time-intensive, involve at least a few hundred dollars, and even after all that might not result in the laptop actually being "repaired".

so i'm going to try to salvage the data on the hard drive and just buy a new one over xmas break.

my primary, immediate problem of not having a way to work in my office on stuff (which is where all my hundreds of pages of books and notes and such are) has been temporarily solved thanks to paddington (who handled a late-night freak-out call from me quite gracefully) letting me borrow her backup laptop. now i just have to get my head back on straight and get to work.