Well, when you're planning a big trip like ours to Australia on Sunday, you try to prepare for things that can go wrong.

    Somehow, I hadn't planned for terrorists throwing commercial air travel into a tizzy.

    Silly me.

    "Well," I said to the spousal unit, "Surely it can't get any worse than this."

    Silly me.

    Sunday the motherboard on my computer, the machine I use for my business AND to make sure our flights haven't been cancelled, died. Croaked. Bought the farm. Kicked the bucket.

     Fine.

    So I called the good folks at Dell, and they sent a technician out to the boonies yesterday and lo and behold I had a new, free motherboard.

    "Well," I said to the spousal unit, "Surely it can't get any worse than this."

    Silly me.

    An hour after the technician left, the computer locked up again. The motherboard was alive, but a message on my screen said it couldn't find the operating system.

    Uh oh.

    Another call in to Dell Tech Support and after many, many diagnostics it was decided that my hard drive had died. Croaked. Bought the farm. Kicked the bucket.

    It's touch and go as to whether or not they can get me a new hard drive by Friday.

    Fine.

    In the meantime, I'm keeping my lips zipped. No more fretting about what can go wrong. If bad news comes in threes, I'm at my quota.

    Clearly, flying half ways around the world will now be a piece of cake, eh.

    Right?