Whew. So I survived my defense this morning. (I think it went well...thanks to my boss Eric) Despite a total technology breakdown yesterday. That's right - approximately 20 hours before my Master's defense I discovered that I had a very expensive paperweight rather than a laptop. A laptop containing my presentation, several week's worth of simulated data, and the 26-page rough draft of my paper. Thank God for back-up copies. Let this be a lesson to you - BACK UP YOUR WORK!!!! Yesterday was still incredibly stressful, and I spent more than a few minutes curled up in the fetal position weeping, but after that passed I realized that I had saved a copy of my entire rough draft, and that I had backed up my presentation just two days earlier, meaning that I needed to spend the afternoon re-creating about 5 graphs, not the entire presentation. So, that crisis was averted, but it looks like I'll be spending the weekend installing a new hard drive on my laptop. After 2 hours on the phone with Dell tech. help it was determined that the thing was kaput. That's a technical term. Which reminds me, bless you Jennings, once again, for knowing exactly what I needed to hear, before I could even ask. That's all my news for now, I'm off to an anti-war teach-in, then Ahalya's poetry reading, an appearance at opening night of Grand Hotel, and then it's time to consume mass quanitites of alcohol. I do believe I've earned it.