What does “Brick” mean to you?

I know I’m going to post this and somebody is going to say that Mercury is in retrograde and that’s why this has happened to me, but I’m starting to harbour a secret suspicion that Mercury is in perpetual retrograde.
At Christmastime, Ken and Joe had this software (software that related to a router somehow.) and the it cautioned that one must take this precaution or that one, lest one (I swear it) “brick” ones router. “Brick” as a verb.
“Brick?” I said, rather inquisitively, as computer terms are foreign to me and therefore an endless source of intrigue… “What does that mean?”
“Brick?” said Ken. “You know, brick your router.” (I may have looked pretty blank.)
“Brick?” I queried…trying to look informed and clue-less at the same time.
“Yeah” Ken (giving me that look that he gives me when something is obvious and I am dense. ) “Brick. As in ‘turn into a…’.”
Turn your router into a brick. I get it, I thought. How very descriptive. We all know exactly what that would look and behave like, a “bricked” router. I have told you this story, my lovely knitters, because about 11am this morning, I committed a crime against my computer (we shall never know what exact keystroke did me in) and I have, effectively… “bricked” my laptop.
This afternoon and much of the evening was spent in on the phone with Apple and I have been informed by a very, very nice young man named Adam that I should not be optimistic. It would seem that my new laptop hard drive is toast. In fact, when a diagnostic disk was finally inserted in the laptop, it denied that it even had a hard drive at all… and that’s a pretty bad sign. In the morning I shall take deep even breaths while Joe takes it to the computer doctor, but I am emotionally resigned to learning that all is lost. (Ok. I just threw up in my mouth a little bit, so maybe I’m not as resigned as I think I am. There’s a new book started on that computer. My email is on that. The great picture of Sam on skates… My… everything… is on that. It’s all I can do not to lie in the road.)
The only thing comforting me at all is the KWB total. I was adding things up at the moment that that Everything. Went. Wrong… but before I was consigned to the abyss, I knew the total.
$320 093.
Seriously. That is the total up to the end of the 24th December (so there is more to come) and dudes, that means we blew by the goal like Nicole Richie blows by a lunch buffet. We are so far past the goal that even “bricking” a laptop can’t be that bad. This is like the hugest afghan that anyone ever knit. $5- $10… $100 at a time, one knitter at a time, we are changing the world.
Now that I think about it? I’m just glad that I live a good enough life that I have a laptop to brick. Yeah man… that’s it. I’m grateful for my bricked laptop and I am thrilled that this has happened. Vive le MSF dudes… me and my bricked laptop don’t mind at all.
(OK. I’m not quite there yet, but I am really proud of all of you. I’ll write later when I find out if I’m totally screwed. Give Ken a round of applause for posting this. He’s such a nice boy. )