I man­aged to loose a tablet pc (lap­top) in the DFW air­port this after­noon. To make mat­ters worse, the com­puter was bor­rowed from work. I had checked out the com­puter just-in-case I required Inter­net access while on a ski trip with some friends (I’ll talk about the trip when I stop kick­ing myself). Iron­i­cally, I had decided to carry the lap­top because I was afraid that my lug­gage would be lost.

The last time I am cer­tain that I had the lap­top was at the bag­gage claim at DFW. I don’t know for sure where I left the com­puter, but I know I had it when I picked up my back­pack. It had been wrapped in plas­tic, I am guess­ing that I put the com­puter down when I removed my pack from the plas­tic bag.

I don’t know if it was the effects of post-ski-trip-tum depres­sion or the chaser of jet lag. Either way, I didn’t real­ize the lap­top was miss­ing until we were halfway home from Dal­las. I started to worry when we were unable to find it inside the truck. Panic really set in when we stopped and throughly searched the truck and lug­gage. I aban­don hope. I real­ize what I had done, my panic quickly turns to rage.

Rage really isn’t the word, I don’t believe I posses the vocab­u­lary to ade­quately describe the frus­tra­tion and anger I expe­ri­ence when I real­ize I have done some­thing really dumb and I have no one to blame but myself. Sit­ting in the back­seat of the truck, I had no way to vent; I wanted to throw a tantrum or break some­thing. Qui­etly fum­ing, I con­cen­trate, try to retrace my steps between the bag­gage claim and the park­ing lot. I can’t remem­ber any­thing, its all a blur. My atti­tude dark­ens. For bet­ter than an hour I am in the worst con­ceiv­able mood. There are few feel­ings worse than anger with no object, no one to blame but myself. After a few hours, anguish and frus­tra­tion grad­u­ally turn to just feel­ing stu­pid. I can deal with stupid.

This is the sec­ond time I have expe­ri­enced this rare mood in as many weeks. Two weeks ago, I had over $200 in sid­ing (for my house), break off at the tail gate of my brother’s truck. All at once, the entire load of sid­ing had snapped in two. Much of it fell into a crowded inter­sec­tion (uni­ver­sity and hw6). At night. In the rain. I was dri­ving the truck, I had loaded the sid­ing, I had tied the knots.

Any­way, my bad mood has passed. I still feel like a dolt for los­ing a lap­top. I called the airline’s lost and found, no one was there. It was just as well, I didn’t have any­thing but a descrip­tion of the com­puter. I will find the ser­ial num­ber tomor­row before I call back. With any luck, I will take an after­noon vaca­tion in Dal­las tomor­row. Oth­er­wise, I guess I will take a less desir­able trip — to Best Buy.

Enough rant­ing, i need to take a shower. I just don’t under­stand how I can smell bad — I have been sit­ting all day…