lid shut laptop = high cpu load?

[Eric S. Johansson]

woke up this am and tried to use my laptop (dell inspiron 5000).  I had 
closed the lid to keep the cat from stepping on the keyboard.  It was 
running very slow, had very high load (16-18), and constant disk 
activity.  based on top, it looks like it swapped its brains out

top - 08:02:01 up 3 days, 23:22,  7 users,  load average: 15.25, 15.35, 
13.14
Tasks: 129 total,   1 running, 127 sleeping,   1 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  0.4% us,  5.6% sy,  0.0% ni,  0.0% id, 92.2% wa,  1.8% hi,  0.0% si
Mem:    516488k total,   511308k used,     5180k free,     1404k buffers
Swap:   979956k total,   335068k used,   644888k free,     8576k cached

nothing is running all that much and I got the following messaged from 
/var/log/messages

Nov  7 06:25:38 localhost kernel: [4632317.066000] Normal: 340*4kB 
15*8kB 2*16kB 2*32kB 0*64kB 0*128kB 0*256kB 1*512kB 0*1024kB 1*2048kB 
0*4096kB = 4136kB
Nov  7 06:25:38 localhost kernel: [4632317.066000] HighMem: empty
Nov  7 06:25:38 localhost kernel: [4632317.066000] Swap cache: add 
8405281, delete 8402960, find 1106874/3048657, race 1+23
Nov  7 06:25:38 localhost kernel: [4632317.066000] Free swap  = 659052kB
Nov  7 06:25:38 localhost kernel: [4632317.066000] Total swap = 979956kB

time to hit the power switch, la just hit 28....

--- eric