Disaster

My life, my love, my body and soul, my heart and mind … my computer … is broken.

Last night, Valentines Day, Zarita and I were hanging out in her room after the museum. We had come home for dinner because she wasn’t feeling well. I bought her some flowers and we got deserts and a baguette from the Boulangerie (get your boulange on!). Her friends Erin and Mary Soo came over to hang while we ate our dinner and drank a little wine. Oh wine, you bastard.

Z was on the bed with my computer and a glass of the evil red menace. She reached over to place the wine on the floor, the bottom of the glass caught her arm, she fumbled, the wine poured from the glass, landed on my laptop, infiltrated my keyboard and began to slither on its path of destruction. Action was taken with much haste. Z darted to the kitchen for sponges, Mary Soo suspended the laptop upside down to drain the wine, and I sat agape. Transfixed by the horror. Could this be it? Could this be the moment I have feared since the day I first opened the pretty black box that contained my baby?

In moments like those, you stop thinking, you freeze, time slows down and your life flashes before your eyes. The day I decided to take out a student loan to buy good ol’ Humbert, the trip to the apple store, all those days spent debating the advantages between the 15 and 13 inch screens, the RAM, the Apple Care package. Good times me and Humbert had together; trips to exotic lands, ripping and burning DVDs, downloading music, blogging, and so much more. Humbert knew everything about me. He knew my secrets, my hopes and dreams, all of my friends, my schedule, he kept all my music, my work, my dirty stuff. What would I do without him, how could I live alone again?

I sprung to action, but I knew there was little I could do. Humbert had to be shut off as soon as possible, before any liquid could cause a short. I shut him down and removed his battery, which I know is always a very disorienting experience for him. He was drained as well as possible, wiped down and set to dry in hopes that he might be revived in the morning, with minimal injury.

Well my dear readers, this blog entry has been written with Humbert, but sadly not on Humbert. The keyboard and mouse-pad are functional, but no longer working properly. I believe there must be a short somewhere in the keyboard circuitry. The good news is that I have been able to plug in an external USB keyboard and mouse. It seems that while his body may be lost, his mind is safe and sound. Hopefully, with time, Humbert can learn to use his god given appendages again.

As for darling Zaritsa, well last night we were both in a state of denial and great hope for a speedy recovery. Now that we are confronted with the truth, she is very upset and truly remorseful. Still, I expressed my deep state of extreme “pissed off” –ness to her this morning. I mean I understand that this was an honest blunder and I often myself consume food and beverage in proximity of good ol’ Hummie. I can tell that Zaritchka is very sorry and sad. Yet, I couldn’t help but be in a state of rage. If the computer broke on its own, I would be pissed off as hell at Apple, if I broke it, I’d hate myself. She broke it though, and as much as I didn’t want to be, I was extraordinarily pissed off at her. I tried to keep it to myself at first, but I am very bad at that. Anyone reading this who knows me well knows I’m not one to keep emotions bottled up. Once I let it out and she apologized, things were much better for the both of us I think.

Now I’m sitting here at the UofC Center in Paris with a keyboard a mouse swiped from their computer lab temporarily plugged into Humbert writing this blog entry and in generally good spirits waiting for Z to get out of class so we can go look for a keyboard and mouse at this electronics store, Fnac. So with that run-on sentence I conclude my little story. Tomorrow we’re off to London.