Nothing is ever easy

Today was another of what is generally called "one of those days." I kind of thought the day sucked and needed to end by noon. And of course, it didn't. It just kept getting worse. But it's the sort of thing I'll look back and laugh on someday, so I'll write about it. Okay, I admit, I'm kind of laughing about it already, because why wait?

Okay, first let me explain how my typical Sunday works. Sundays are the days we put everything together for the newspaper, so I pretty much work from morning till night. What happens is, my boss e-mails me articles to edit and I wake up early, edit them, and e-mail them back to her. At quarter to two, I pack up my laptop and head down to campus for juggling practice, and then when that's over, I go straight in to work and work in the office for the rest of the night.

Today just didn't work.

When I woke up this morning, my computer wouldn't connect to the internet. I spent a very long time trying to fix it, including restarting and even turning it off, unplugging it, and trying to clean out some of the dust that collects at alarming rates (this is the fourth time this school year I've pulled out a chunk the size of a golf ball). Alas, nothing work, so I decided there was something weird going on with the internet in the dorms. I decided to take my laptop down to the Wood Center, get a slice of pizza, and use the wireless internet there.

But first, I edited the one article that I had already, which happened to be an intensely painful, agonizing story to edit. (It took over half an hour to edit this one article that was about half a page long. Twelve-point font, Times New Roman, skipping lines between paragraphs.) So I edited the article, saved it to my thumb drive, packed up my laptop, and headed down to campus.

I reached the Wood Center, pulled on the door, and... it was locked. I checked the sign. Guess what. Wood Center doesn't open till noon on Sundays. Checked my watch. 11:15 a.m. Dangit!

I didn't really feel like going home just in time to turn around and come back, so I decided to go to the library and work there instead. Walked over, and guess what. Closed till 1:00 p.m. on Sundays. Sigh.

So I wandered around doing nothing, reading flyers and whatnot until the Wood Center opened. Finally got in, found a nice table in the corner, set up my laptop, waited ten minutes for it to boot up, and spent 45 minutes trying to get the internet to work on that before I finally gave up. Hoping I could get the articles I need off my boss's computer, I went down to the newspaper office, but of course, I don't have a key for it, and there was no one there to let me in. Not that it matters, since I don't know the password to any of the work computers anyway because I would rather use my archaic laptop than a Macintosh. So I went back to my corner and read a book I'd had the foresight to bring along. When I finished the book (I was nearly done with it anyway), I decided to check the internet again and lo! It worked! But by then, of course, I only had like twenty minutes till juggling practice anyway. I felt bad for getting nothing done this morning, but I tried really hard not to worry about it because seriously, there was nothing I could do about it. (I'd thought about calling my boss's cell phone to tell her, but I don't have her number. So then I thought, "Hey, I'll just look it up on Facebook! ....Oh wait."

So downstairs I went for juggling practice. At least I wasn't the only one there--Casey and Abe showed up. Casey took out his laptop and played a youtube video and said, "Oh hey, Nelson's Nemesis. That looks pretty cool. We should try it." And ten minutes later, he had pretty much mastered the trick while I was still pretty much staring at the video going "Huh?" So I watched the video, and I watched Casey, and I tried and tried and tried and chased the balls all over the building, and of course, Casey tried to help by saying, "Here, watch me, it's easy," which is cute, but really just makes me feel even more hopelessly pathetic. Especially since I've been juggling for four years, and he's been juggling for four months, which makes me feel like I OUGHT to be better than he is, but of course, I'm just plain not.

So I got increasingly frustrated, and just then, Quinby walked into the Wood Center, and here's where I decided I wanted to just slit my wrists with a rusty chainsaw: Without thinking, I called out, "Hey, Quinby! You should come juggle with us so I'm not the worst one here anymore."

AGH!!! What the HECK! Did I SERIOUSLY just say that? Why yes. Yes I did. Hence why Quinby now had a sad look on his face and Casey was cracking up. Ugh! Stupid stupid STUPID! Foot. Mouth. INSERT!

And of course, Quinby was busy, like always, and couldn't stick around, and I felt like a jerk long after he left, and Casey said I'm mean to Quinby all the time, and I said something similar to him last time he came to practice too (something to the effect of how he sucks it up), which made me feel like a TOTAL monster because I like Quinby and don't want to be mean to him at all! And then Casey mastered yet another trick, and I just wanted to go bury my head in the snow and DIE, but I couldn't just say, "Forget this, I'm going to work," because Casey and Abe don't know the locker combination to put the juggling stuff away and didn't want to know it.

So after practice, I went in to work, set up my laptop, got the internet up, pulled the article I'd edited this morning off my thumb drive to e-mail it to my boss, and guess what! The file had somehow gotten corrupted, so I had to edit the entire article again. Ugh!

So I did, but then my laptop decided to be a jerk and refuse to get internet at all anymore, only this time it was the computer's fault, not the campus internet. So I had to put the article on my thumb drive again and use Chris's Macintosh until my laptop decided to behave. But then Chris came in a bit early and didn't have a computer to use, so he had to just sit on the couch and do nothing for a while until I got smart and just e-mailed my boss the few articles I had and took the unedited articles off the computer and onto my thumb drive and went back to my decrepit old hunk of overheating metal, which had decided to be good and connect to the internet again. Finally. But also only intermittently. But either way, it's better than trying to use a Macintosh.

But then I got in trouble because in one of the articles I edited, the author used "email" sometimes and "e-mail" sometimes, so I changed them all to "email," because in the most recent dictionaries, that's how it's spelled. But apparently, in our style guide, it's "e-mail" and I got them confused, so I got verbally reprimanded. Grrrrr, some days I can't do anything right.

Then there were the little things that would normally have been just funny, but today served to add to my mounting frustration: Things like slipping on the ice, messing up the locker combination three times, dropping the juggling clubs on the floor as I got them out of the locker, trying to drink and missing and spilling water all over my face, forgetting a coworker's name even though she's told me over a dozen times....

So by the time I got home from work, I just wanted the day to end. But I couldn't, because there were still two or three articles to edit that hadn't even been written yet, so I had to wait by my computer for my boss to send them to me. Which is fine, but it meant I couldn't just go to sleep and dream of being something besides a clumsy jerk who insults cute boys.

I guess it was all pretty funny, though. And at that point, my day actually started getting better. The internet at home was working fine again, and I had just downloaded the demo version of a game called Spellborn, which I got to play with Rye. More often than not, when I'm frustrated, he's really good about being goofy to try and cheer me up. It usually works, too. When I'm upset, I'd rather have someone distract me than listen to me whine. People who say "getting it off your chest" helps are silly, in my not-so-humble opinion. Then again, maybe I just work differently. Not everyone can be ADHD like me. :P

So yeah. I have decided not to hang myself from a ceiling fan after all. And one other good thing happened today that's definitely worth mentioning: Casey finished making my ring, and it's pretty awesome.



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