One of Those Days

Yeah, it's been one of those days.

You know what I'm talking about.

It was one of those days where everything was just a little bit off, nothing quite worked the way it should have and now at the end of it, I just want to crawl into bed and go to sleep so that the day can be over and tomorrow will hurry up and get here.

It all started this morning when I got to work and tried to login to my computer. The company has a big network with a lot of users so sometimes it can be a little slow. I realized I had a problem though, when I had been staring at the blue screen of death for about fifteen minutes. Boggled down server aside, it definitely shouldn't take that long to get going. So, I called IT and was told that a technician would be over immediately to see what was up.

Well the techs work in a different building and before he could get over to my office my boss came out and announced that his computer wasn't working either. (You can guess who's computer took priority once the tech guys got there). While it made me feel marginalyl better that at least this was probably a bigger problem than I realized and was not confined to just my computer, it didn't bode well for our collective productivity for the rest of the day.

So the techs spend probably 45 minutes working on his computer before announcing that they're going to have to take it back to the lab for diagnostic work. (Read: they had no idea what was wrong with it). Meanwhile, I've now spent the first hour and a half of the work day starring at a blank computer screen and accomplishing absolutely nothing. Right about this time another lady from the office strolls up and notices that my computer still isn't working and decides to take matters into her own hands. She completely dismantles the thing! I'm talking parts strewn all over the place; it looked like a small bomb had gone off on my desk by the time she got finished. Long story short, we put the thing back together and it still didn't work. Yeah I know. Shocking, huh? Fifteen minutes later I was back to starring at the blue screen of death when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, my computer just woke up and came to life. It was a miracle!

I made it through the rest of the day with little incident, thankfully, but my frustration level shot right back up as I left work. One of my new friends down here in NOLA had invited me to meet her and some other girls downtown for a happy hour after work. Now, you know that happy hours typically aren't "my thing" but in the name of meeting new people and making new friends, I thought this one sounded like a lot of fun. Plus I work downtown and the place they were going was right on my way home so why not?

The "why not" came about an hour later when I still hadn't managed to find a working parking meter within three miles of the place. I'm not exaggerating. I spent an hour driving around (in downtown, rush hour traffic no less, which just did wonders for my already elevated blood pressure) looking for a place to park that would put me within a safe walking distance. The first meter on the street I tried ate all my money then promtly refused to print out a ticket for me to stick in my window. I've heard the New Orleans police are extremely strict about parking illegally, so I wasn't about to leave the car without the ticket in the window telling them that I had in fact paid to park there. With no change left though, I was forced to look for meters or parking lots that would accept a credit card. I tried three different places; all of them scanned my credit card but wouldn't print me a parking ticket. I thought the impound lot in Lexington was a scary place to visit--there's no way I was going to risk leaving the car and getting it towed down here in New Orleans. I finally gave up, texted my friend, and let her know that I wouldn't be able to make it. Even to me this sounds like a really lame excuse, but by that point I was so frustrated with the city and its stupid parking meters that I just wanted to go home.

The final insult of the day came on the way home when I stopped at Rite-Aid to pick up a prescrption. As the cashier was ringing up my order, she casually asked me if I have always paid $62.50 for these pills? Why yes. Yes I have. I have because when I specifically asked the pharmacist back home whether or not there was a generic brand of the same drug that would be cheaper he told me NO. He told me the brand I was getting was the only choice for that type of pill. "Well, I only asked cause I take the same thing," the girl behind the counter went on, "Only I get the generic brand and it costs like less than $10." UUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH.

My lawyer-in-training husband offered to try to sue the pharmicst who told me there wasn't a generic option, for the $315 difference that I've paid over the past six months. Hmmm...

Nah.