It's the little stuff...

They say that it is the little stuff that make life interesting. So here a few little things from today that made my day quite interesting.

So the day started with the drive into Seattle. It is about a 30 minute drive that I truly enjoy. It gives me time to get ready for the day. I hit the AM Playlist on my iPod and sing along to great morning motivators like Livin' on a Prayer, Don't Stop Believin', and Handle with Care. Not this morning. No amount of Bon Jovi or Journey could counter the three accidents that I stuck behind (It's Seattle for crying out loud...how can anyone with Washington plates not know how to drive in the rain???), the idiots who have to slow down to look, and my favorites...the dumb asses who cut across four lanes of traffic to get to the carpool lane for five minutes only to cut off the very same cars when they see their exit two miles up the damn road. At least my car charges itself when I brake. I had a full battery by the time I reached the base.

So...continuing on...it's 0630 and it is the first day back after a long weekend in the last month of the fiscal year. So naturally I find my computer isn't working. I know that I probably have 65+ emails from people frantic to have a good year or people who are panicking because they missed our August 31st deadline for next fiscal year. Either way...I need to get moving. At 0736 my computer is working (working...not fixed as we will get to later on)and I find out that I guessed pretty close...I have 71 emails, including one from the security officer saying I have been randomly selected for urinalysis.

I'll save you the details of the fun of being into a cup in front of people that you work with and sum it up with this thought....the whole thing totally sucks. You have to chug water for an hour, then you have to stand in line with all of the other people who chugged water since there are only three rooms being used to for the testing. Everyone is line in front of the sample tracker (I don't if that is the official title but you get the idea) so everyone gets to hear what medications everyone else is taking and what color their sample is. We're supposed to be adults damn it! Haven't we grown passed commenting on the shade of pee in a cup?

So that fun ends and I get back to the office at 0912. Did I mention that it is still raining so of course by the time I get back to the office I am completely soaked? The rest of the morning is rather uneventful and I actually get some work accomplished. I break for lunch and feel ready to take on the afternoon...until the computer tech calls and says that he needs to work on my account. So another 30 minutes of the network and I should be good to go, right? Of course not. See...I have the unsolvable computer problem of the Pacific Northwest.

I don't know why no one can figure out why I can't print in black and white. I don't know why they can't figure out why I just have to move the cursor near the print icon and the computer shuts down. I don't know why the damn printer icon is next to the damn save button in Microsoft Excel therefore resulting in me losing tons of data. I just don't know. I do know that I am a Yeoman and it isn't my damn job to figure out why. I refuse to believe that I am the only person in all the world who is having this problem. There has to be answer. Thank God the best tech on the base is working on my account because I am sick of people fixing it for two days and then it breaking again. If I had that kind of failure rate in my job I would get demoted.

So there it is...minor aggravations of the day that remind me that life isn't meant to be perfect. If it wasn't for traffic jams, computer troubles, and peeing into a cup, how on earth would I enjoy the days where the Yankees win and I get my work done with little interruptions?