Natalie and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad 24 Hours
Curses.
Yesterday afternoon, I attempted to register online for a statistics class from
Mission College. I discovered that I couldn't register online because I hadn't met the prerequisite. What was the prerequisite? College algebra. I have a degree in electrical engineering; I'm pretty sure I can handle algebra. But I nonetheless can't register online.
Curses.
I call the counseling office at Mission College, and discover they don't have actual humans manning the phones. I, eventually, discover how to leave voice mail. My husband offers to bring over my personal undergraduate transcript before his appointment. I decline, because I don't think it will help. When the counselor finally calls back, they decide they want to see it, but of course I, like a fool, declined my husband's invitation to have him drop it by my office, so now I have to go all the way home and get it myself because my husband has already left.
Curses.
So I drive home. Not 10 blocks from my apartment, a construction pickup decides to change lanes into me and leaves a lovely dent in my brand new car that I hadn't even made a payment on yet. The driver denies wrongdoing.
Curses! Dammit! Curses!
I call my insurance company and then drive my car over to the body shop they recommend (it is, fortunately, perfectly drivable). The people at the shop are nice, at least, and they assure me that it'll be like new. Well, dammit, it OUGHT to be like new considering that it freaking IS new.
Curses.
I come home, tell my husband, drink beer, and assure myself that tomorrow will be a new day.
Zzzz.
So this morning, I have to do two things before work. (1) Ship all Christmas gifts that I bought myself that need shipping. (2) Go to Mission College, which the entire reason I arranged to leave work early yesterday, but that plan of course was foiled by the necessity of dealing with the consequences of the individual driving the F-250 failing to watch where she was going. And, on further reflection, (3) call my boss and leave him a message that the thing that I said I was going to do yesterday wasn't done because of the aforementioned fender bender.
(3) was no problem. (1)
seemed like it would be no problem. I went to Kinko's in San Jose at Oakland and Brokaw. A word of advice: don't do that. I was "helped" by the most singularly useless individual I have ever encountered in a customer-facing role, who couldn't seem to grok that I considered it his job to, you know, help me, answer my questions about whether a given shipping method would ensure that my packages would arrive at their destination before Christmas, and generally pay more attention to me than to whatever the hell else he was doing that involved getting up and checking the label printer every 45 seconds. I was there for well over half an hour, and there was no one else in line.
Curses.
(2) involved, as it turned out, standing in a lot of lines, several of which were lines that terminated in people who could guide you as to which line you ought to stand in next. Incredibly enough, the documentation I provided was actually sufficient to allow me to register for the class.
Hooray.
But all the time that got eaten up by all this crap meant that I couldn't join the refugees of my former company (which, alas, finally went under last week) for lunch at one of my very favorite restaurants,
Shalimar in Fremont.
Curses.
My life, generally, is good, even considering the past 24 hours. But I'd like the annoying bits more spread out next time.
