In Anne of Avonlea, Anne has a lousy day, which starts off when she wakes up with a toothache and goes downhill from there. She gets to work (she’s a schoolteacher at this point) the heating stove refuses to draw, resulting in a cold, smoky classroom. The kids are all plagued with midwinter cabin fever and spend the morning engaged in petty acts of screwing off. She then wrongly accuses a student of smuggling candy in class, confiscates the contraband, throws it into the woodstove and…KABOOM. It turns out not to have been a sack of candy, but instead a sack of firecrackers which sends the class further into uproar. The nadir of Anne’s day finds her enacting corporal punishment upon a student (a practice she swore she’d never resort to).
I’ve had a bit of a Jonah Day myself, though perversely I’ve halfway enjoyed it – or at least seen the humor in how many stupid things can go wrong in just one little day.
Today started out awry, ’cause I couldn’t find the coffee-pot. After about 15 minutes of fruitless searching around the house, logic lead me to the garage. Joel and Justin had been out there yesterday morning working on bikes and shooting the bull, and it wouldn’t be at all unlikely that they took coffee out there with them. Armed with a flashlight, I went out and gathered up the migrating coffee pot and a couple of travel mugs.
Then my commute to work was Murphy’s Bike Ride. I decided that instead of going around back of Kemper today, I’d take the shorter route up Beardsley Rd, forgetting that I usually take the back route in the mornings because there’s often a train blocking my way through the Bottoms.
There was a train blocking my way through the Bottoms.
And I was already out of the way to go ’round back of Kemper, so I had to cut over to Woodsweather, then go up through City Market, through downtown (I went straight up Main Street from 8th to 47th). And on my way, I managed to hit EVERY SINGLE, SOLITARY RED LIGHT between 8th & 47th on Main. Every. Light. I’m pretty sure there were 13 of them.
I ended up 20 minutes late to work! This is not the way I roll. 20 minutes. Reeeally!
The toilet decided that flushing was no longer part of its job description, so I had to take the top off of it and see if I could fix it. With the aide of a pair of pliers and a paper clip, yes, I could and did fix it.
Yesterday, my boss and I had a discussion about an unexpectedly high heating bill; he wanted to be sure that I had turned the heat down to its lowest setting in the basement and the unoccupied offices. While we were discussing the possible causes of the unusually high gas bill, I commented that I thought I’d been smelling gas, and that a leak could be the culprit.
Cue this morning, our accountant coming in and commenting that he’d caught an ominous whiff of natural gas on his way in and thought he heard it leaking at the meter.
So, I called the MGE emergency line, they sent a tech over, he found the leak, and shut off our gas.
Fortunately, it was a sunny, mild day and our office is located on the south side of a stout, brick building. It never got terribly unpleasant inside, but it remains to be seem if the gas service will be repaired for tomorrow. In the meantime, the boss borrowed some portable heaters and we shall see what the ‘morrow will bring.
Fortunately, now I’m home and things are looking up. I’ve got a glass of my favorite “mocktail,” that being soda water with 1/4 tsp lemon extract in it. It’s basically sugarless 7-Up. There are two unwatched episodes of Cowboy Bebop awaiting Joel and me for after-dinner entertainment, and we have some of the good noodles in the cupboard, so I am going to make a sort of Tom Yum flavored noodle stir fry, which is always pleasant.
Also there’s this:
This is the Condiment Song from the Zippy The Pinhead stage play, and my day improved about 8-fold after I watched it.
I love your life. 🙂 Well, not the late-to-work part, but the rest is pretty damn good.
Between my house and my old job were 13 stop signs. In a mile and a half. How much fun was that bike ride?!
You were able to fix the toilet with a pair of pliers and a paper clip?? You rock!!! So glad the gas leak was discovered before something really bad happened. You are unstoppable!!
When I have a bad day, it’s like I have the Shit-Midas touch. During the bad day, I can’t usually appreciate the absurdity of its suckiness, bu sometimes afterwards, it’s kind of funny in a, “oh, for cryin’ out loud…what else” sort of way.
I’m all too proficient in redneck McGyver-ing. The little chain that attaches the rubber stopper in the bottom of the tank to the toilet-flusher lever had broken, and all I did was cut the end off a paper clip, run it through the end of the chain and the hole in the end of the flusher lever, and twist it shut.
I’ve had to do this many times before, to many different toilets.
Clicked over from Doxie’s to tell you that your whack-a-mole-style comment made me truly laugh out loud… My great-grandparents had a house with those floor vents and I can just picture a cat popping up like that!
Also, way to MacGyver the toilet. That’s just awesome.
Thank you! Monique (grandma’s cat) was quite a character. Think long-haired Siamese mix with an adventurous streak. She looked all petite and delicate, but her attitude was nothing akin to her dainty exterior.
And thank you also on the toilet props. I’ve got way too much experience in hillbilly home improvements.