Endings

1. The end of my computer. My computer died on Thursday. One minute it seemed to be fine, then it froze, then when I rebooted, instead of the reassuring Apple logo I saw a flashing file folder with a question mark on it. This was clearly not a good sign. It turned out the hard drive was fried, so I lost everything on it. I spent the whole day trying not to freak out and consider the magnitude of the loss; like a moron I never backed up my files. As a result, I lost all my music, all my photos, and three years of law school notes, as well as other miscellaneous writings (aborted attempts at fiction and my resume) and who knows what else. On the plus side, most of my law school notes are floating around my email account, I recovered my music from my ipod, and L has most of our photos. But I feel like a complete, complete idiot. Over the weekend I got a new hard drive and have begun the long road back. Incredibly aggravating. If you have photos of you and me from this modern era of digital photography (2003-present) please send them to me so I can reconstruct my life. I feel like such an idiot. It's hard to overemphasize that point.

2. The end of my high blood pressure. For the last few weeks I have been worried that I have high blood pressure, but now those fears have ended as well. At the optometrist's a while back they took my blood pressure as a perfunctory matter, and it was alarmingly high; at the end of the appointment it was even higher, because I spent the hour worrying about it. Then when I returned to the doctor later in the week it was high again. I looked up high blood pressure on the internet (never a good idea, I am not allowed to look up possible medical conditions on the internet, but I made an exception for myself) and there was absolutely no reason for me to have high blood pressure. I looked at the ingredients of Chipotle and wondered if maybe sodium was the problem. My nutritional regime had been based on things like calories, sugar, trans fats; it turns out sodium is this whole other axis that has nothing to do with anything else. But then this weekend I was home with my folks and my mom took my blood pressure multiple times with multiple devices, and my blood pressure is fine. I think the earlier doctor had a bum machine. Realizing I don't have pre-hypertension was seriously the best news of the weekend. I celebrated by eating a salt lick dipped in melted cheese and not exercising.

3. The end of a tire. Driving around Virginia yesterday, one of the tires on my mom's car blew out. We were rounding a corner and singing along to John Legend's "Green Light" on the radio when there was a sound like a gun shot and the car seemed suddenly unbalanced. I pulled into a handicapped parking spot and discovered a half-inch sized hole in the side of the wheel ... how the hell does that happen? Being a non-driving city dweller I hadn't had to change a tire since high school, when my failure to engage the parking brake caused the unoccupied car to roll forward when my dad jacked it up to replace the tire. This time around my father-in-law was there to help us figure things out; by the time we ate lunch I was a sweaty disaster. But at least it wasn't my fault.

4. The end of an era. In addition to the end of my computer, my brush with hypertension, and my mom's rear passenger tire, one other thing is ending too: my late summer indolence. Tomorrow is my first day at work at the law firm; my first day of work as a lawyer; my first day of work in a new career; my first day of a new life. Wish me luck.