day is done

Okay, so it started before today. On Tuesday while sitting innocently on a desk, projecting powerpoint for my Performance in History class, my laptop inexplicably threw itself off the table, landed on its side, and looked fine until I picked it up, when suddenly the screen went like this:

Oops. I still have AppleCare active on this 2.5 year old computer, so I didn't really panic at the time, while the whole assembled 15 or so students sat aghast around me. "Okay, let's get back to 18th century acting!" I asked them, but still silence, and the uncomfortable feeling that everyone was staring at me with shock and pity.  "I can't do anything about it right now, so let's get back to class!" Finally I got them back into it, and kept on using the computer even, the projected image looking perfectly fine.

The panic happened later when I discovered that applecare will not cover what they kept calling "accidental damage." I kept thinking that this mishap feels exactly the same as when my power jack suddenly stopped working, or the hard drive instantaneously failed, but apparently not. I took it to the Apple store (a nearly impossible appointment to get, and I was checking THREE metro London stores) only to be gaily told by Giovanni that it's only £250 to replace the screen-- a real bargain, he insists. I disagree. I tell him I will be buying a £7 cable to connect the computer to the only-slightly-faulty plasma tv my friend gave me for free. That is what I do. Now my computer set up looks like this:

I have a home desktop now. "You can't carry it around town and use it then," Giovanni oh so helpfully told me in the apple store. No kidding.
I am considering my options.

Also, I am feeling that I do not have a large reserve of disposable income right now, because it is expensive and rather complicated to run even my modest finances on two continents.

And then today. I am trying to appreciate the wide world of free and cheap entertainments. I decided I should get on my bike and try to figure out the weird wasteland of green space, Olympic Park, cafes, and highways and then go by the big Tesco for the big stock up shopping trip for Wednesday's Kansas Day party.

And then, while trying to thread my way through the industrial wasteland and endless construction of the Olympic Park, the navigation device in my gloved hand slipped and hit the ground with a simultaneous thud and crack:

Again.

Four days after my laptop met a similar fate. It's so awful it's funny.  And it got funnier.  First the bike shop allegedly open next to the cafe I eventually found was unattended, so I was left with my very flat tires to head on to Tesco. Where I bought too much. And piling it all on my bicycle, in the front basket and back rack with bungee cords, as I headed off to walk the overloaded and underinflated bike home, I managed to flip the back bag, leaving me in limbo with the bag suspended upside down, shedding glass bottles and eggs while it started to rain. Nice people grabbed the bike and picked up groceries while I got it flipped back upright, out of the way, and rearranged everything (bottles in the basket now! it's just the bags didn't fit that way before.) Rolling basically on the rims with every bump, I try to lift it up over the shallow steps that oxymoronically lead to the incline for wheeled things to pass under the highway. I make it up one and realise that loaded that far down, there's no way I'll make it up more. I'm not the only one: there's a muddy track up the bank next to the steps where people clearly push their bikes. Up that, I make it nearly to the top before sliding in the mud, the bike and I fall over again, now trapped in the gully. I'm beyond the pitiful bike person in the rain at this point and it's too funny. Righted once more, I begin the slow trudge home in the light rain. About a third of the way, there's a spectacular bolt and a few seconds later, the thunder. At two thirds, a gale force deluge suddenly begins, which bends me double as the hail starts to fly down the street. I detour into the lee of the DLR station for a few minutes and watch sheets of rain and hail push us all eastward toward the river. When I launch out again, I pass mothers literally shielding their toddlers with their bodies and people attempting to advance down the street behind phalanxes of vibrating umbrellas.
My suede boots are uniformly soaked through, my hat, scarf, gloves, tights, and skirt are sopped as sponges.
Here is what my cornflakes look like now:

Enough of today.