In less than a week.

A really frigging expensive Mac, if that counts for anything.

And a brand new aluminum MacBook, as well (which is somewhat redundant to the sentence above, but not so much if you’ve never looked into the pricing).

It lasted five days before the hard drive screeched to a grinding, crunchy halt.

I’m not happy about it, and I don’t get it, but apparently I’m some kind of Kiss of the Spiderwoman curse for laptops of any make, creed, origin, or operating system.

A friend suggested that the problem is electromagnetic in nature. Like I’m electromagnetic, that is, and have some freaky brain waves that fry the poor, helpless mechanical gears to tiny bits. If there ever is a rising of the machines, I may be our secret weapon.

Basically, I’m like Powder without the albinism. And with eyebrows. And with a whole big pile of broken computer parts.

In other news, and probably not related (but maybe related??? You be the judge), I have been on an osyter bender.

It all started on Wednesday when I discovered that a grocery store near my home was selling fresh oysters for $.50 each. Fifty cents!!! Fiddy cents!!!!

So I bought a dozen.

And when I discovered that they were fresh and non-poisoning, I asked a friend (who lives a mere two blocks from said grocery store) to bring two dozen when she came over for dinner that night.

And then Friday, tragedy struck. They only had five left.

But the five were good, and I enjoyed them and tried not to think about the fact that I was seven short of a healthy dozen. Life is hard sometimes. Especially if you’re an oyster within a five-mile radius of my mouth.

Then on Saturday, tragedy became ecstasy when I discovered that they had three dozen baby oysters and they were selling them for only $.25 each!!!!

Here’s where I made a bad call: I only took two of the three dozen. I didn’t want to seem greedy. Or obsessed. Or addicted.

But I’ll tell you what, as I was eighteen into my delicious stash, I lamented passing on the last dozen. I thought of them there  lying on the cold ice with no one to eat them, and if the grocery store weren’t currently overly difficult to reach due to some road construction in between our two locations, I would have gone back.

And if I could have coerced someone to go for me, I would have.

But alas, it was not to be.

On Sunday, as you know, I rest. And that includes the murderous slaughter of raw oysters. It’s a god thing.

Lastly – and you can probably see this coming – this morning I stopped by a different store location of the same chain and discovered some super huge mamas for $.79 each. Due to the unexpected price hike, I elected to purchase just 12.

Somehow during the chitchat process of getting my oysters from the guy behind the counter, I somehow let it slip that I was psychotically obsessed with the obtaining and eating of oysters. And that I eat them raw.

“You’re going to eat a dozen oysters?”

“Um. No. Maybe. Um. Yes. Yes, I am.”

“You can eat a dozen oysters?”

“Um. No.  Probably not. Well, yeah. I can. I have a good metabolism…”

“You eat them raw!?”

“Yep.”

“I’m afraid to eat them raw.”

“Yep.”

“I ate ten once.”

He grilled them. And poured tequila on them to make sure they were dead, or at least knocked out. And I was very sweet and pretended to be interested, but in my head another voice was talking and it said, “Buddy, ten oysters is for amateurs. I could do ten in my sleep. And, in fact, just two days ago I ate TWENTY-FOUR standing at my counter, shucking and pouring them down my pie hole. How ya like me now?”

But I didn’t. I took my bounty, and I left, and I ate them all for lunch.

This brings me to another thought: Does anybody know if there’s an oyster eating contest, because I think I could sweep the thing?