Skating on Thin Ice

That's the way I've felt all this rainy, cold day: as if I'm skating on thin ice.

In many ways, it's been a lurking sensation at the edge of my existence for the last year and a half (or more). But it's gained prominence in my frontal lobe recently for a number of reasons. Today I'll enumerate only the simplest and least painful... my beloved laptop is dying a slow death. I'm keeping it alive at the moment, quite literally, on ice.

I own this monster of a laptop - a real beast. I lovingly refer to her as my Cadillac. Huge and heavy, she boasts a 17" display, full-size keyboard, separate numeric keys, and a large tracking pad. Add a DVD-drive, card reader, and more USB ports than I could ever use at once. Basically, she's a desktop system that I can take on the road. She's accompanied me from New York and Washington to Nice, Madrid, Hamburg, Milan and countless other lovely cities. Despite her years, she's still beautiful and classy and very smart. She's always been faithful, although many would have dumped her by now for sleeker, sexier, younger Airbook-type models. Not me, I'd take another just like her any day.

But yesterday, she flat-lined blue-screened on me. Repeatedly. No chance at a traditional resuscitation boot. We made it through only in safe mode, and even then there were a few crashes. I spent the entire day nursing her back to health. We sit here with her in traction now, mounted on a wire rack over a set of ice packs to keep her cool (seriously!). All my old work-related software has been purged. As have kids' games. Piecemeal, I've been able to backup the files I care about and have kept her running now for a couple hours.

For now, it seems we're out of the woods. A little tender loving care goes a long way. But the end is near. No idea what I'll do without her...