And then life started to suck...
So!
My day was going great! My sister and I are going to see RED later today, I brought a sweater last night from Old Navy that looks just like Chris Pine's gray cardigan, I got a large portion of the housecleaning I needed to do done last night, meaning I'd only have to do laundry and vacuum - just a general sense of contentedness/excitement for the day. And all before noon!
Then, my dad calls and says he needs a toolkit for something he's doing at work today and would I mind swinging by his office and dropping it in his car? That was fine by me, 'specially since I wanted to head by the library and check out the other half-dozen or so CDs I saw earlier this week. That in mind, I went to rip the tracks off one of the CDs before heading out and my computer (Peggy, after the help tech in those Discover Card Commercials) was having troubles connecting to the home internet. This is the first time in the past couple of days I've tried to connect Peggy to the home internet, mainly subsisting on the school's wi-fi connection when I drive my sister to her classes, so I figured something small must've happened when I turned on the computer. I restarted Peggy and logged in as usual. It was taking it much longer than usual, so I was channel surfing on the TV behind my desk. Because my back was turned, I almost missed the BSOD that suddenly flashed on the screen and, though I did managed to catch it before it rebooted, I only was able to read the phrase "Critical Thread Error". Or something like that.
Cue the start of my decline in to hysteria.
After Peggy rebooted, Windows asked me if I wanted to start in Safe Mode or normally. I've encountered a BSOD before on my computer and, when I got it to reboot, had no problems loading it back in Normal Mode. Using that experience - though a niggling tingle of terror was starting to build in the back of my mind - I told Peggy to load normally, logged in, and sat back to await a normal load sequence. When it got stuck on the "Welcome" screen that shows immediately after inputting my password, I got a little more worried. When it started making an odd buzz-click sound, I stared in wide-eyed terror. When the buzz-click stopped and it was still stuck on the Welcome screen, I started to hyperventilate and grabbed for the phone to get my help-desk father to bail me out of my predicament.
Peggy is now upstairs attempting to find/load the System Log, so I/we can find out why the desktop wouldn't load. And I've dug out the system backup disks, discussed with my dad where my file backups are stored (on the other half of the hard drive, which is great it we can get to them), and I've started mentally cataloguing what homework I don't need Peggy for and which fanfictions are actually backed up somewhere other than my computer (answer, very few. Luckily, my epic bb!Jim fic is safe with my sister, but the space_wrapped fic I'd started, along with several others, is only saved on Peggy. Grr.)
I'm sincerely hoping that my dad'll be able to work some wonder cure on Peggy tonight. I don't want to contemplate what my reaction'll be if he can't - I've already cried once over the issues and I don't particularly relish the thought of doing so again. I might not stop for a long whille.