the time I lost to the printer

The day started out innocently enough. In fact, as I left my apartment, breezing up 75 in zero traffic, I was filled with the wide-eyed hope and eager expectation all good souls feel around Christmas time.  Little did I know that was all about to change, and that in one fatal moment all that holiday cheer would be completely overtaken in an ill-fated battle with modern technology.

Walking into my office cubicle at exactly 8:15 I found myself with a solid 45 minutes to prepare for my 9:00 meeting. All I needed to do was run an easy report and print a simple spreadsheet and I would be on my way, and with 45min I was in no rush. I had plenty of time... 

So when 8:35 when my coworker peaked over the cubical wall and cheerfully inquired if I would like to go grab coffee from the cafeteria, I happily agreed with the simple caveat that I just needed to "print something real quick." 

Pulling on my coat and grabbing my coffee cup I clicked print and snapped my laptop shut. But as I was walking out the door I thought to myself, "Better take one more copy--just in case." So I turned around reloaded the computer, then the file, then printed another copy. No problem right? 

WRONG! 

8:45, I swing through the copy room to grab those three silly little sheets of paper only to discover that the copier is currently spitting out what looks like a 1000 sheet job. 

"Awh man," I thought to myself, "I'm caught it in the middle of someone else's job. What on earth are these crazy people printing anyway!?" 

As I picked up the top sheet to investigate, a wave of horror washed over me. That stupid printer was spitting out page after page of empty excel columns. Even as I struggled to comprehend what I had just done, I sprang into action, frantically pressing any button that looked like it might possibly make it stop, while simultaneously yelling at it to do just that. 

Hearing my distressed cries, another coworker ran to my aid and also began pressing buttons too, all to no avail. IT JUST KEPT PRINTING.

Looking back, I'm grateful that by this point, everyone else in the office had left to go get coffee because if you would have peaked into the copy room in that moment you would have found a girl in near hysterics flinging open all the printer doors, picturing herself drowning in a never ending stream of printer paper. 

When it finally became clear that none of this button pressing was working I ran back to desk to try and cancel it from there, but it was too late. I had been beat--soundly. 

At 8:54, with no time left for coffee, I carted my stack of shame back to my desk and attempted to find the three sheets that I actually needed, before heading to my 9:00 meeting, utterly defeated. 

Well That Was Unfortunate

I had every intention of blogging a lot this summer. I was going to tell you all about my adventures, make some craft tutorials (I mean I'm making this stuff anyway, might as well document the process, right?), and maybe even get a little philosophical.

[OBVIOUSLY I'm doing really great at that....not]

I've been home three weeks and have not written a THING. But, it's not entirely my fault! The reason for the "silence" as it were, has to do with a little incident that happened several months ago.  

You see, a couple months ago I was traveling with the choir on our annual tour. Most nights on this 5 day trip we stayed with host families which was actually quiet lovely. They were all delightfully charming people. The night this story occurred started out like all our other home stay experiences that trip. After our performance, our hostess picked us up at the church and we all piled into her new SUV and drove off. 

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***Side note***

The day before we left my econ teacher assigned some homework that was due before we got back. "Oh, just email it to me," she said. It was supposed to typed up anyway. So, like the good student that I am, I toted my computer onto the bus, did my work and emailed it. Simple.

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When we arrived at the house we all got out and prepared to unload all our stuff from the back of the car.  This shouldn't have been a problem except for the fact that is was one of those fancy self-opening doors, which I can see as being useful, but this one was SO SLOW. As I watched the hatch rise at this excruciatingly slow pace I saw into the future. I saw my backpack containing my computer sliding through the gradually widening crack and crashing to ground.

And, wouldn't you know it, that's exactly what happened. 

Granted, the damage could have been FAR worse and I was lucky. It still worked, but the corner was a little crunched: purely cosmetic, but super annoying.

I could have had it fixed back then, but I didn't want to be at school without a computer for the 3 weeks it would take to get it fixed. Instead, my friend Mark bent the corner back down with a pen and brute force so that it mostly closed.

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***Side Note***

It was terrifying: as I sat there listening to these awful cracking noises I just knew the whole thing was going to fall apart. It didn't. 

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That's all to say for the past few weeks I have been without a computer as I finally sent it off to be fixed. But hey it's back now and consequently so are the posts. 

A Little Lunch-time Adventure

As most of you know, Mondays and Wednesdays are my busy days. Now the good thing is that my two favorite classes are Monday/Wednesday, but unfortunately I also have classes back to back from 10-3, so I don't really get a chance to eat lunch on Monday/Wednesday. The first week or two I tried the whole not eating thing ---ya that didn't  work well at all. So generally what I end up doing is making a mad dash from my leadership class to the cafeteria where I proceed to scramble to get something to go before I run off to Spanish, usually all in about 8 minutes. Well today my leadership class got out a few minutes late, literally only about 5 minutes. No big deal right? WRONG. Remember the value of five minutes. Loosing those five minutes meant that I now only had 3 to get food and get to class. I opted for lunch. No one wants to listen to my tummy rumble for the next two hours, I reasoned, and besides being a minute or two late to Spanish wouldn't be the end of the world. 




So at 12:24 I grab my chicken sandwich and mac and cheese (which are both actually really good here) and start to book it to my 12:30  Spanish class. I have my lunch in one hand, ID and Dr. Pepper in the other and am 100% focused on getting to class ASAP. I was feeling pretty good, 12:28 and almost to the building, this was going to work out fine after all, no big deal. 


Then I was introduced to my new bff Mr Mudd puddle. Before I knew what was happening, I was completely off balance and slipping ankle deep into a nice big mud hole. The next thing I knew I was standing covered in Dr. Pepper with my left foot ankle deep in mud. FANTASTIC.


I cleaned myself up as best I could and finally arrived at class....at 12:40.
BUT I did get my lunch.

Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday

As I mentioned before, classes started Tuesday. I was excited. I had survived registration, probably one of the most stressful days of my life, and I had successfully navigated my way through the first half of my first day of being a REAL college student.
So I was feeling pretty good as I strolled into my Spanish class. I was about 15 minutes early, but "Hey, no problem," I thought, "I'll just wait until someone else shows up and then we'll waltz in there together and impress the professor with our promptness." Sure enough about 3 minutes later one of my friends walks up and asks if I'm taking Spanish. After the mutual "YES! That's awesome" we decided that it would be in our best interest to go on into the classroom. As we did so, it did strike us a little odd that the lights were off and that we were the only two there.

But just when we were beginning to worry two upperclassmen walked in and sat down behind us. Eager to meet people and make new friends my friend and I quickly engaged making dazzling conversation. After awhile though, we all began to look around uncomfortably. All of our clocks read 12:30, the time class was meant to start, but we were still the only four people in the room. 12:35, still no one. Where was the professor? Did we have the wrong room? Were we really the only four people in the class? Panic set in. Fanatically my three companions whipped out their smart phones and began to double check times, room numbers, and the number of student's signed up.
"Room 206?"
"Ya"
"It says it's full."
"Really?"
"Ya!"
"I don't understand. It SAYS Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday....."
"What?"
"Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday."
"Wait a minute...."
"....Oh."

The End.