This may be the end of it...

I just want to start off by saying I love my Mac. I have never been happier with any computer purchase in my life than when I got my Macbook in 2006. For the most part it's never died, glitched, stayed frozen or given me the gray screen of death.That is until last night. My Mac totally froze on me and wouldn't unfreeze so I had to do a hard reboot. This has happened to me only once or twice in the entire three years I've had it but I'm not even sure of that. Last night when I powered it back up it made that trademark sound but I could tell something was wrong. Because a gray screen came up instead of the regular blue one and the picture initially looked like this:

It stayed like that for at least 10 minutes so, right or wrong I did a second hard reboot. This time it also made the trademark sound but then you could hear the hard drive click three times and then go practically silent. Still same gray screen and instead of the apple there is now a blinking folder with a question mark on the front of it. (I was unable to find a picture of this) That's all I get and then after it does this for a little bit it powers itself down. Oh, I am so screwed. So while I was freaking out last night I called my local Apple store to see what they had to say over the phone. The guy I talked to did not make it sound promising and he in fact even sounded a little sad that he had to tell me it was bad news. This only makes me conclude that my Mac is toast. I don't think anyone ever sounds sad unless it's really bad news. Irregardless I am taking it in today to get it diagnosed and keeping my fingers crossed. This is the last thing I need right now and at the worst I hope they can pull some files off of it for me. I do have to say that I back up my computer so all is not lost, although it's been two months since I backed it up last.
This is what it looks like now:

Wish me luck.