Craptastic

I woke up stiff and stuffy, much too early for a sleep-in Sunday. Quite the perfect recipe for crankiness. I'd promised to get up and out into the sunshine, but I wasn't feeling like it at all. I was growly when the phone rang and startled me awake just as I was drifting off into "Sleep: The Sequel."

I wasn't able to cancel, but managed to re-negotiate and whittle down the day's events. Unfortunately it meant cutting out the best parts: a nice drive in the country and some springtime frolicking on a beach. Instead, we set out to work on the filling out of many government forms on-line. We headed to my school, where there are three computers that don't crash every five minutes like my home PC (which is short for Piece of Crap) does. I've got the key to the school, but not to the door leading to the second floor which we found locked. Grrrr.

So we went to an overheated loud smokey PC bang (Internet cafe) and spent over two hours trying to sort out faded faxes and strangely translated documents. There were five forms totalling eleven pages and they can only be printed out once they're complete. You can't save them to any computer. You can't copy them and forward them so you can finish them later. Must print.

I'd taken note of the printer behind the front desk when we'd entered the PC bang. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me to ask if it was working.

It was not.

So I spent another thirty minutes or so picking through the forms, cutting and pasting the details we'd been arguing over for the previous couple hours, "I think you spell it Mung-hwangae." "No, it should be Mun-kwangay." I copied our work to notepad, saved it to the PC, opened my e-mail, attached the file and sent it to myself. Then I checked just to make sure it had gone through. Refresh. Nope. Refresh. Nu-uh. Refreshrefreshrefresh. "#*&^%$^, where IS IT?!?" I check my "Sent" box. Yes, it had been sent. To my father.

Which wouldn't be a problem, except that I haven't spoken to the man in a year and a half. So now I've sent him an empty e-mail with an attached file filled with jibberish and a bunch of personal details for someone he's never met. At least it wasn't porn, I guess. Not that I send out porn. Much porn.

I think "porn" is a funny word.

Still, now I worry that in short order my father is going to pop up like one of those little brown mounds in a "Whack-a-Mole" game and I'm going to have to root around for my big spongey mallet.

I really should have stayed in bed.