Slasher Struggle

Yesterday was a crisis day. Don't you love those? When I awoke, vaguely hungover and bleary on Saturday morning my plans for the day included brunch with a friend, capoeira class, reading, and attending a production of Harold Pinter's Old Times that evening. Ah the best laid plans. What actually happened was a day of struggle, defeat, terror, mockery and ultimately substance abuse. But Leah, you're asking yourselves, how? Why? What could have possibly happened to you? Oh, my friends, a struggle happened. A deep and terrible struggle.

Also part of my plan for yesterday included having a working computer. But this was not part of my computer's plan for the day, as evidenced by it's refusal to work. While everything seemed to be fairly normal, for example, the machine turned on and appeared perfectly healthy and in working order, as I tried to type in a website, for example, www.gmail.com, what the keyboard actually decided to create was ppp.wihaglknjvtuehg./agkopjgv.com8. Which, while interesting, is not ultimately that useful to me. Now, had I the time and energy, I might have spent some time trying to understand what my computer was trying to communicate with me. Was it angry? Was it possessed? Was it going through a dada stage? Who can say? Fascinating as these questions were, they did not calm the overriding panic coursing through my body. Being without a computer as a student, hell, as a person at this point, feels like going without a limb. An awesome limb that connects to the Internet where the youtube lives. I love the youtube. I love the limb. I don't do well with the limb gone, and despite my efforts to be zen about it, I was freaking out.

Luckily for me my friend Lisa, who is a glorious human being, has been forced by her mother to keep a car at school. Having appropriated said car, which is a prius, so good for me, I headed out of not-New Haven with my poor sad computer in my purse and my mapquest directions clutched firmly in my hands. I arrived at the mall with the Apple Store a scant and terrifying hour and a half later, having only gotten lost once or twice, and trotted into the giant building in my gym clothes, hair flying out in all directions, doing the nervous talking thing I do, well, most of the time. Several things occurred to me at the time. One, this mall was fantastic. This mall had a pier one imports. This mall had everything. Two, I looked like crap. Seriously, very odd little outfit which would have been ideal for my gym class, and was in fact utterly a hot mess for my trip to the real world. Three, I was wearing a huge and obnoxious not-Yale sweatshirt. Just in case there were any doubts about where I went to school, the nice people in the mall would have a visual reminder.

After this harrowing entrance, the actual purchasing of a new computer (which I found out was necessary), was actually quite easy. Thank the lord for the kind people of the Apple company, who, bless them, spoke gently and slowly to me and steered me towards the nice shiny machine upon which I am now typing. So, new computer in hand, I left the mall and headed into the car and into the night. Here is where it gets super fun. In my confusion and elation over my new computer and my ability to solve the problem neatly I got amazingly, incredibly, fully lost in the suburbs of not-Connecticut for not one, not two, but three hours. Three hours. Driving around dark, isolated roads like some kind of terrible slasher film with Rhianna's Live Your Life playing over and over again in the background because there are TWO songs on the radio and that is both of them. When I finally stopped to ask for directions I was mocked and demeaned by the liquor store attendant but, more importantly, pointed down the right road. When I finally arrived in New Haven, an exhausted, unshowered, sweat-suit clad mess, it was almost 8pm. Good times.

What helps in these situations includes whiskey. A lot of whiskey. And nice people who hug you and tell you it's going to be okay. And showers. They help too.

But at least my new computer is awesome. And for the time being, it seems to be fairly comfortable staying out the more experimental aspects of the modern art movement.