wish i'd stayed in bed

I got a fairly decent night's sleep, especially compared to the previous night, and was up and getting ready for work even a little early. I remember having some interesting dreams, including one where the world was being threatened by some interdimensional baddies, and I had to climb to the top of a mountain to gather the pieces to find the egg-shaped marble-in-appearance key to a machine--which ended up looking like one of Dr. Robotnik's vehicles from one of the early Sonic games--in order to erase the universe so it could restart and recreate itself from scratch (I'm not sure now why that seemed like such a good way to deal with the bad guys; seems kind of like throwing out the planet with the bath water).

The day went downhill from there.

It was raining steadily, and I'd left my big umbrella at the office; all I had was a small, collapsible one. And since I hadn't yet taken care of getting the nail out of the tire and the tire patched, I couldn't risk taking the car out and having it go flat in the rain during rush hour. So despite the raincoat and the duck shoes, the bottom 8 inches of my trousers were soaked through: 2-1/2 hours later, they're still mildly damp. Of course, it's my own fault for not getting the tire patched this entire week. While the weather was pleasant, the nail in the tire provided a good incentive for me to walk every day; but today, of course, I'm sorry I procrastinated.

Once here at work, I discovered that the network for the multimedia labs was on the fritz. The lab manager is still working on it, but hasn't yet been able to figure out what's wrong. Needless to say, there are lots of folk who aren't happy about this.

I'm also the Acting Manager for the department today, in my boss's absence. I was supposed to go to Main State to attend a presentation between 10 and 11:30, but given that the network was down, that I have to do the department's weekly reports, and that there were supposed to be four others going to the presentation, I thought it might be best for me to stay here. It turns out that two of the five already had dropped out by yesterday, and one of the remaining three was stuck in traffic this morning and hadn't made it in by the time the shuttle bus was leaving, so my withdrawal left just one person to go and take notes. I'm told that he wasn't very happy about this. But I've been the one to go to this group's presentations, on my own, every other time, even though it's not part of my official duties. And I haven't minded going and taking notes for everyone else, but it pisses me off that just once when someone else is asked to go, he grumbles about it.

So, it's only 11am and the bulk of the day still lies ahead. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the rest of the day goes, if not better, at least no worse.