Not my day

It's just not my day. Usually you'd say "I wish I never got out of bed". But, in my case, I wish I'd got out of bed earlier.

Sometimes I sleep in. Today I did. Not only do I feel guilty about it, but I have great difficulty to get the day started at all if it doesn't start properly. And today it doesn't. As my girlfriend is visiting Finland, I'm left to my own devices. The device that didn't work this morning was the alarm clock.

So, it was late (almost 11) when I managed to get up. A bowl of porridge, my usual breakfast, would hopefully get me going. Well, it did, but in a wrong way. It got me cursing as it boiled over and messed up the microwave.

I'm not going to mention the horrible weather, because predictably it was raining this morning. So, after struggling to wake up, having burned my fingers in the scalding hot water when trying to wash the porridge off the bottom plate of the microwave and in- and outsides of the bowl, I headed out to the refreshingly moist and invigoratingly cool outdoors. Our bike shed is under renovation. As it's now two months old, they need to replace all the sideboards, doors and drains. Quality building work. It has 5 compartments, and the builder had decided to set up shop at the one where I keep my bike. After a bit of a wrangle, I managed to get the bike out, carefully lifting it over the debris, table saws, axes, hammers and power cords.

And then the typical Cambridge traffic. Men in their white vans, speeding and trying to knock over as many Chinese students swaggering on with their low-ride bikes as they can, taxis loading and unloading at junctions, pedestrians crossing streets at a whim, without looking, buses too large for the lanes powering through the ranks of students plodding from a lecture to another. The usual stuff.

Finally at work, and going through my normal routine of news- and blogreading before starting work proper, I found this. I found it at MusicThing, and liked it a lot, and decided to link it here. I went to the YouTube site, logged in, and already wrote a cheery entry about how this saved my day as I found it both witty and skillful, not to mention original (perhaps the best compliment you can make these days). Then I found out that since I changed to Blogger Beta, the link between my YouTube account and blog that allows me to embed videos with just a couple of clicks doesn't work anymore. So, I needed to delete the old association and add a new one. Then I found out that Blogger has a huge delay and signing in doesn't work at all, and so the association can't be built.

Now, finally, Blogger works, but the YouTube-association doesn't. So, you'll need to follow the link to see the video.

Meanwhile, I'm starting my work proper, and hope that me having a bad day means that Nick is having a great one, as his viva voce examination is today and he will pass the final hurdle in becoming a PhD. Balance of karma, or something. Not that he would need any luck, he's our star.

Edit: just went to a library to return two books. And of course, what started as a loan had again turned into a rental, and I had to fork out £6 in overdue fees. £6! That's ridiculous, this library has probably the highest overdue fees in the country, and of course the online-renewal system most libraries here have, doesn't work in this one.

As I was heading back, my bike key broke in the lock. So, I had to get a janitor with a wrench to bend and twist the keystub in the lock to open it. Of course, now I can't relock it, so the inevitable errand-running thing I have to do this afternoon will take about an hour longer as I must walk everywhere. Even locked bikes are stolen en masse in Cambridge, I don't even want to think what would happen to an unlocked one. Especially if it's mine, especially today. I've now put my bike indoors at the faculty, of which I'm going to get told off, as that of course isn't permitted.

Edit2: So, I went to run the errands. The rain has picked up, and now it's pouring, and so I'm soaking wet. The main reason for having to go out now was that I needed to renew a prescription. There were two items I had asked for, insulin and test slips for my blood sugar meter. The insulin, which the pharmacy had plenty, was just so I don't need to go again before Christmas. The slips, which the pharmacy had none, were the original reason for the renewal as I will run out of them during the weekend. So, after completely soaking myself and waiting for about an hour, I need to go back tomorrow morning to actually get the bleeping slips.

I don't know who wrote the hideous Christmas song that has the most annoying chorus that says something like: "we're all having, a wonderful Christmas time". It doesn't have a verse at all, as the song consists of repeating this chorus-bit about 154438 times. I wish that whoever wrote this and everyone who has ever recorded this song would be slowly disembowelled with a blunt and rusty penknife and then chopped to minuscule pieces starting from their toes. And whoever decided to play the extralong live version of this song while I was queuing for the non-existent slips at the pharmacy should be made to perform this operation, as s/he clearly has the sadistic tendencies required.