Spinning Beach Ball of Death on newish MBP?

I bought my new MacBook Pro in December 2012. I had no major issues with it until yesterday. Let me point out that it is well-cared for. It is about 4 months old. 13" 500 GB model.

Yesterday, I started to get the computer freezing up with the rainbow click wheel. Happened in MS word. Every sentence I typed, it froze. Now it happens no mater what I do. Safari, mail, even when no apps are running.

I literally have zero apps running, CPU is 95% idle most of the time.

Virus scan was clean. I used iAntivirus, a free app from the App Store.

I uninstalled Adobe flash, Picasa, and deleted a bunch of files.

The hard drive was nowhere near full.

Ran disk permissions repair, no luck. Tried safe boot, no luck.

I didn't purchase Apple Care. Not sure if limited warranty will cover it or where to take it.

I heard this has happened to a lot of people.

Is there anything I can do or try?

Any help is appreciated!