MySQL - "create table" creates malfunctioning tables

[F.R.]

The other day, for unfathomable reasons, I lost control over tables 
which I create. There was no concurrent change of anything on the 
machine, such as an update. So I have no suspect. Does the following 
action log suggest any recommendation to experienced SQL programmers?


1. A table:

mysql> select * from  expenses;
+----+------------+-------+----------+--------+-------------+-------+
| id | date       | place | stuff    | amount | category    | flags |
+----+------------+-------+----------+--------+-------------+-------+
| 38 | 2013-01-15 | ATT   | Sim card |  25.00 | Visa credit |       |
+----+------------+-------+----------+--------+-------------+-------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

2. I want to delete everything:

mysql> delete from expenses;

3. Nothing happens for about one minute. Then this:

ERROR 1205 (HY000): Lock wait timeout exceeded; try restarting transaction
mysql>

4. I want to delete the table:

mysql> drop table expenses;

5. Nothing happens indefinitely. I have to hit Ctrl-C

^CCtrl-C -- sending "KILL QUERY 167" to server ...
Ctrl-C -- query aborted.
ERROR 1317 (70100): Query execution was interrupted
mysql>

6. I expect to find "expenses.frm", "expenses.MYD" and "expenses.MYI".

I find only the format file:

root at hatchbox-one:/home/fr# find / -name 'expenses.*' -ls
1055950   12 -rw-rw----   1 mysql    mysql        8783 Jan 25 01:51 
/var/lib/mysql/fr/expenses.frm
root at hatchbox-one:/home/fr#

7. All the tables I regularly work with have a "frm", a "MYD" and a 
"MYI" file in the directory "/var/lib/mysql/fr/".

8. I'd like to drop the table "expenses", plus a number of other tables 
I created, hoping to hit it right by chance. I didn't and now I have a 
bunch of unusable tables which I can't drop and I don't know where their 
files are hiding. If I did, I could remove them.



Grateful for any hint, comment, suggestion

Frederic



Dell E6500
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
Python 2.7.3 (default, Aug  1 2012, 05:16:07) \n[GCC 4.6.3
MySQL (Can't find a version number)
Server version: 5.5.28-0ubuntu0.12.04.3 (Ubuntu)