Divisions and Precisions

Bugs, organic and otherwise

I should have known things were too good to last. It's been an incredible week here. Happy, productive, energetic. Today, since my library books were due back anyway, I decided to take them back and spend some time writing in the library. I took my laptop, the disk with all my novel-related files on it, and of course, my library books.

Aside from the construction going on practically on my doorstep, the drive over was nice and soothing. The local library is kind of small by Ann Arbor standards, but is very new and very picturesque. I turned in my books, found a movie I wanted to borrow for the weekend (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), and then found a nice sunlit spot to work. Not too warm, facing the beautiful garden behind the library.

That's when it all went bad.

My first indication of trouble was when my laptop still hadn't opened up my novel document after five minutes. I did an end task on it, opened my other files, no problem. Tried the novel again. Same thing. The floppy drive made horrible ratcheting noises and Word locked up. Tried copying the file onto the laptop directory. Got a mysterious error message about a "cyclic redundancy check". So I ran check disk on the disk. No error, but check disk wouldn't work. Great. Must be a bad disk. I tried to open it one more time. Word told me "This file caused a serious error last time. Do you still want to open it?" After a moment's consideration, I said no.

Fortunately, I have my novel backed up in at least three places, not to mention a huge chunk of it printed out. So I didn't panic. Much. As I was ignoring the insidious little voice in the back of my head that suggested perhaps all the copies of my novel doc were corrupted, I decided to try once more on the library computer, in case my laptop was just being moronic--it's been prone to that lately. Alas, either the file really was the problem or my laptop broke the file, because it still wouldn't open.

Fine. I thought, "I'll just go home and work."

I got into the car to see a grasshopper the size of New Hampshire sitting on my windshield, staring back at me. Now, aside from the occasional shudder at a spider, I'm not that squicked by bugs (unless they're on my body, then all bets are off). But this one was staring at me. Have you ever seen a grasshopper's face? From across the width of a car? He was on the far passenger side windshield, and I could still make out every detail of its face. That's how big this sucker was. It almost looked like it was smiling, as if to say, "Hi! Welcome to life in the country, where the air is clear, things are peaceful, and the bugs are bigger than your head!"

Then again, maybe it was just smirking.

It stayed on my car about halfway home, periodically turning this way and that as if trying to get comfortable--it looked as if it planned to hang around for a while. Then, unexpectedly, it pooped on my car and jumped off. Yes, you read that right. The grasshopper pooped on my car. Now, you may have seen a bug's face before, for that matter, maybe I have, but have you ever seen bug shit? I can safely say I have never seen a bug big enough to leave behind a visible dropping before. It's disturbing.

The good news is, all of the other backups of my novel seem just fine, and I was able to run check disk on the floppy with my desktop--there were some bad sectors on the disk. I still think I might back up the novel in a couple more places. Just in case.

And I should definitely go get my car washed.