30 09 2002
I’m having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. I think I’ll move to Australia.
For the first time in a while, I managed to wake up at a decent time in order to get back on track to 9:00 AM arrivals at work. The coffee was really, really weak, and there was nothing on except “Breakfast Television” talking about kitchenware. I left home at 8:20, and arrived 15 minutes away from my house at 8:58 AM. I left my briefcase at home, with my good music CDs in it.
Inside, I found that one of the MPEG files I left to compress overnight didn’t work right - a long time battle between me and Media Cleaner 5. I thought I had the problem solved, but it would seem that I don’t. Running the file through three more times, I finally got a usable video. I hate when trial-and-error is my only option.
I’m having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
Last week I got a letter from OCAD saying that I was deregistered from the course I’m taking. They said I had twenty-four hours in which to pay - an amount of which I had no number, and no clear indication of how to pay. After two weeks, they let me know that I was no longer technically taking the course at OCAD anymore. A phone call today enlightened me that the registration period is over, and I can no longer sign back up for the course. I might be able to petition to get permission to pay OCAD for the course I’m taking.
“We allowed you an extra week to pay” the woman on the other end of the phone said. Whether a week or a day, the fact remains I just didn’t know.
I hope she falls off her chair and lands in Australia.
My shoe laces kept coming undone and one time when I bent over to tie them up I fell and twisted my good knee and it still hurts. One of the lenses in my sunglasses keeps popping out.
Since I’m the biggest movie buff at Livewire, I kept telling everyone my brilliant ideas for the James Bond-themed event we’re doing soon for one of our clients. No one listened to any of them. No one tends to listen to my ideas even when I have the positive solution for a tech problem. I’m given all the responsibility but none of the power. I’m like a figurehead Emperor but without the riches.
I am having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, I told everybody. No one even answered.
On my way home I stopped by the Indigo book store and bought “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” by Judith Viorst. This is the book that my Mom used to read to me when I was having a bad day as a kid. I drove home - 30 minutes for a 10 minute drive. It would be faster if I drove to Australia.
As I walked down the stairs to my apartment, I prepared myself for the smell of ash. Water has seeped into my fireplace, soaked the ash and drained lye into my carpet. It needs to be dry-cleaned again, so my furniture is all piled up. I wanted to read my book but my computer desk chair has a broken back so I sat in the living room chair.
I read the book. With every page I could hear the voice of every person who had ever read it to me - my Mom, my nursery school teacher, my public school librarian Mrs. Lepsoe and a few others I couldn’t single out.
When someone says that they’re having a bad day, don’t ask what happened. Bad days are usually an accumulation of smaller cruddy things that happen over the day. Sometimes, the person can’t pick out even one truly bad thing that happened, some times they can, but sound silly for basing the path of an entire day on only a few bad events.
That’s why I like “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”. There’s nothing extraordinary that happens to him. There’s no great boulder resting on his shoulders. Instead, he continuously gets pelted by little stones of annoyance.
If someone tells you that they are having a bad day, just tell him or her what Alexander’s mom tells him:
“…some days are just like that”
