Here is a list of things I own that have either broken-down or gotten lost in the last month:
My vacuum cleaner - broken, but my dad's repaired it - thanks, Dad! - and I should have it back this weekend. But trust me on this, you don't want to have white carpets and no vacuum cleaner. I've been pretending that I'm camping for the last two weeks but the game is wearing thin.
My "good" hairbrush - lost, but found again in the 1st floor Ladies' room at Rotman, go figure, although not before I shelled out another $10 for another purse-sized "good" hairbrush. When you have long, thick, wavy hair, you can't underestimate the importance of a good hairbrush.
My DSL internet connection - down for two days, and then I finally called the Help Desk and the nice analyst told me to unplug the modem and plug it back in again, which worked. Doh. Those of you who know me know that in my past life *I* was a Help Desk analyst and unplug-it-plug-it back in is the Help Desk Analyst's mantra. That and, shut-down-and-then-reboot. How soon we forget.
The backlight for my bicycle. It fell off of my helmet somewhere in the Annex and I didn't know until I went to turn it off. So I paid $10 for another one. Which also fell off my helmet, in the Annex. (I'm a slow learner). This time I retrieved it, but it wasn't working properly. Fortunately, a friend of a friend was able to fix it at a party on Sunday.
My laptop - attacked by the Sasser worm in the wee hours of the morning two weeks ago. This time my help desk skills kicked in and I was able to kill the worm dead and get my laptop back, but it was scary. My resume is on this laptop. All my papers are on this laptop. My life is on this laptop. Of course, now all of the above have been burned onto a CD, but that was a close one.