3 Hours of My Life

Let me tell you about my afternoon today.  It wasn’t the craziest or most hectic afternoon I’ve ever had.  There weren’t any real emergencies or life or death problems.  But it was one of THOSE afternoons.  I was supposed to get off work today at 2:00.  Around 11:00 or so the lady I work for asked if I would be willing to stay a little bit late so she could take care of some family stuff.  Normally I totally wouldn’t care but I have class on Wednesday nights and I was nervous at what staying a little bit later actually meant.

She assured me absolutely no later than 3:00 and there was a good chance she would in fact be back by 2:oo.  I end up staying and hear from her husband that apparently some other family problem came up and he wasn’t sure when she was going to make it back.  Enter a little nervousness on my part here.

I’m watching the clock like a crazy person, imagining the worst possible scenario possible when she shows up a little after 2:30.  Phew.  I have three hours to get done what I need to and get to class.  Plenty of time.

I get home and immediately go to the computer to check email and since it’s a class night, I needed to log onto my student account and pull some information from my class.  Naturally I discover our internet connection is down.  I call my mom to see if it was working when she was home a couple of hours earlier on her lunch break.  It was.  I’ve now discovered it’s only recently gone down and of course I missed my apparent window of opportunity to log on.

While I’m on the phone with her, I see a furry rodent scurry into view.  Oh crap.  I go into my brother’s room and sure enough, his three gerbils have escaped by gnawing a giant hole through some tape and plastic.  Lovely.  And it’s no surprise they would choose their jail break now because my brother is out of town and won’t be back until the weekend.  Smart little devils.

It takes me over an hour to finally catch Scribbles.  I’m now sweaty and really dirty.  Want to discover how dirty your house really is?  Let loose some gerbils and try to track them down.  It’s now about 3:45.  Still have plenty of time to get ready and eat before I have to be to class.

Right about at this point my mom, who came home when she heard about the escapees, discovered gerbil #2 – Scruffalufagus.  I’m going on record to say that my mom is completely afraid of gerbils and was basically no help in catching them.  Regardless, she found him and it took me another half hour to finally catch him.

I know have an hour and fifteen min. to shower, eat, and get to campus.  Shower is now done and while I’m getting ready I realize that the internet is still out and unless I call about it, there’s a good chance it won’t come back up until sometime tomorrow afternoon when I finally get a free moment to call.

So then I’m on the phone with the internet people and it’s taking longer than usual to get the problem resolved.  As I’m on hold I make a unpleasant discovery.  I completely bypassed shaving my right let.  Hello, my entire right leg.  Now I’ve missed patches before and once a partial back of the leg but the whole thing??  BLARG!!  The realization is short lived because the lady comes back on and I begin plugging and unplugging cords and try to fumble my way through computer lingo but finally the internet was up and running.

The time is 5:15 and I have 15 min. to finish getting ready, eat, and get to campus.  Needless to say I looked worse than usual and forgot about eating.  Three hours of my life down followed by another three hours sitting in a classroom discussing the analysis and theories of the classroom – boo – and did it all on an empty stomach – double boo!!

I spent the last hour or so looking for Leroy – gerbil #3 – but to no avail.  I hope tomorrow he wonders out into the open because I don’t know if I’ll find him if he doesn’t.  It’s now after midnight and I’m heading to bed so I can get up in a few and start it all over again.

*Update: I kept looking until 12:30 this morning.  Finally I got in bed and just as I was about to fall asleep I heard him.  So I spent ANOTHER hour – yes, it’s now 1:30 in the morning  – and finally catch him.  All gerbils are present and accounted for – the gerbil drama is officially over.

Looking Forward to Some R&R

Next weekend I’m flying out to LA to hang out and chill with my sister for the weekend. The days can not pass quickly enough! Not that my life is stressful or agonizing….just incredibly boring. Even work has lost the challenge and what used to keep me occupied and pass the day quickly, I can now do even faster with time to kill. I have 6 operating stations and while the machines are doing their job, I surf the net to pass the time. So I was a little perturbed when I discovered last week that the company I work for blocked WordPress from the system. Out of the hundreds of thousands of sites I have no clue as to why this would be one they would block. I wouldn’t really care except that it just so happened I lost internet connection at home a couple of days before this fiasco. Well I’m computer illiterate but something sparked in my brain, whether it was from boredom or sheer disdain from this new development I’m not sure, but I figured out a way to maneuver around the system and access the page. Hooray for me!! Take that corporate America.

Things are also at a standstill after work as well. We’re getting more snow than the state’s had in 5 years. I’ve stated more than once that I hate snow and being cold. But I also will openly admit that I don’t know how to drive in it very well, either. So I opt to do everyone a favor and stay off the roads whenever possible. This means I go to work and head back home. Home leaves me with limited options. I do go to our clubhouse to work out but aside from that it’s basically TV or books. After a while both get mundane. Although I’m currently reading Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome and it’s pretty good.

So I’m more than anxious to head out to LA for a couple of days. I’m ready for some warmth, time off work, and the company. And as an added bonus, I fly out on Valentine’s Day so I get to bypass that lame “holiday”….I can’t wait!!

ZZZzzz

Holy crap work is borring!!  I work for a company that depends on our customers to send in their photos/slides/videos for us to scan and upload to their website.  This is my third holiday season working for this company and it’s usually the busiest time of the year.  Last year,  for about 3 months, I worked 6 days a week and averaged about 70-75 hours during that week.  The paychecks were awsome!!  However, I don’t know what the deal is this year but it’s December already and I’m pulling teeth to find stuff to do to fill an 8 hour shift.  Some things I have managed to do while maintaining my regular work include: reading CNN online about 10 times a day, reading People online about 10 times a day, reading other people’s blogs, writing my own blogs (like I’m doing now), check my email about 10 times a day, chat with people on messenger, surf myspace, surf facebook, read Dracula, study Spanish, done most of my Christmas shopping, paid online bills, play on flickr, taken care of the visiting teaching numbers, thought up new recipes to try out with fudge (now that I’m a pro!), addressed my Christmas cards…for crying out loud!!!  WHAT ELSE CAN I DO??!!?