I suppose one of the advantages of having a blog is that, every once in a while, you get to use it just to rant about how bad life sometimes sucks. It just happens to be extra appropriate that the crap went down on WTF Wednesday instead of some other day of the week.
Every year about this time, the company I work for (which shall remain nameless for a number of reasons) holds an educational conference for our clients. Since I’m an instructional designer (meaning I write lots of training materials), I do quite a few of the sessions every year. Normally, we hold the conference live at a local hotel, but this year, the decision was made to go virtual due to the recession and the fear that many of our clients wouldn’t be able to attend. The parent company hired a third party vendor to handle the technical aspects of the conference.
Or so we thought…
The first sign things were not going well came this morning when the first live session was broadcast. The sound kept cutting out. Eventually, there was no audio at all. Dandy. The vendor couldn’t seem to figure out what the problem was, so the session was eventually cancelled.
Now, I had my own live session at noon. At this point, I was starting to think bad thoughts about what was going to happen when it was my turn to broadcast. Maybe it was stress or panic, but all of a sudden, I started having migraine precursors (for me, that means auras and aphasia). Not knowing whether I have to go in or not at this point, I took some Tylenol 3 and crossed my fingers that they’d decide to postpone the session so I could sleep in a dark, quiet room.
No such luck. “Come in, they’ll have it sorted out by then.”
So, I went. Fortunately, the drugs were working pretty well so I didn’t have a bastard of a headache, but when the time came for my session…you guessed it…no audio. After 20 minutes of dicking around, the presentation was cancelled and now I’m supposed to do it tomorrow instead.
As if this weren’t all irksome enough, I had a little time between leaving the office and picking up my kids, so I stopped on my way home at the B&N, planning to pick up Tessa Dare’s Surrender of a Siren. I know from experience I can rely on B&N to shelve books on their release date if not before, whereas my Borders tends to be slow (they didn’t have my book out for a couple of WEEKS after the release date).
Yeah, right. This ONE time, when I most needed a good comfort read to curl up with, B&N failed me. The book isn’t out yet and I didn’t have time to try anywhere else.
Waaaah!
Okay, so, tell me about your latest terrible, horrible, no good, really bad day. Because misery loves company!
Um…I’m taking a statistics course and I suddenly felt entirely out of my depth. My eyes are raised heavenwards for the rest of the semester. ;D
Oooh, you’re taking sadistics? Good luck, lol!
Went to pick up my child last night from the HS and he was walking to the car and I turned to look at him and all I could think was, “DAMNATION CHILD, Doesn’t your Mama love you? Who the fuck dressed you like that and did anyone call CPS on your folks for that fucked up mess of a haircut?”
Followed by, “It’s okay honey. You can tell Mama you’re gay. I’ll still love you.”
Followed by, “OH SHIT!! My kid kinda sorta looks like a girl trying to look like a boy.”
You think I’m kidding? You think I’m exaggerating? Visualize if you will the monstrosity of colors that was my child yesterday: Multicolored hightops, purple…PURPLE skinny jeans, a brightly colored somewhat snug t-shirt and a really badly shaved head
(because his dad took him to a shop where no one spoke English and the woman sorta butchered his hair and he was so upset he came home after the first day of school and he took the hairclippers to his hair and shaved it all off–it was about five or six inches of highlighted Jew ‘Fro–and now he has stripes in the back of his head where the highlights once were.)