Tomorrow needs to look better.

This morning I walked into the office to one of the things that annoys me the most.  Someone, over the weekend, had poured coffee into the industrial size coffeemaker instead of pouring water in.  The only way to fix this is to continue to run water through the machine until the end result again runs clear.  Or as clear as possible.   Now, I understand the need to drink coffee if you are working on the weekend, but WHY, WHY OH WHY, wouldn’t you go across the hall and get fresh water and make yourself a fresh pot?  All the ingredients for a lovely pot of coffee are at your fingertips.  The only thing you have to do is walk 10 steps across the hall to get fresh water.  10 steps is nothing considering that you are going to use coffee that has been sitting on a burner most of the day Friday, over night, into Saturday or even Sunday, and rewarm it by pouring it THROUGH the coffee machine.  The resulting sludge cannot be healthy, and is seriously going to annoy whomever comes in on Monday morning to the resulting mess.  Not to mention, you have just annoyed ALL the tea drinkers because they are not likely to ever again get hot water that doesn’t taste like coffee!

See, this is how I start my Monday mornings.  I walk in the office, turn on my computer, and get the coffee ready to go.  I begin by making the hot water FIRST, so that the tea drinkers can have the freshest non coffee tasting water that I can get them.  Then I proceed to make decaf and coffee.  This morning, I went to make the hot water, but the hot water came out black.  I know it didn’t look like that when I poured it into the machine, so imagine my consternation!  I mean, it is Monday morning, Monday I tell you!  I assumed I had left an old filter in.  I checked, I did not.  HHmm…well looks like I have a problem.  An hour later and 15 pots of hot water turning into sludge later, I have semi clear water.  I proceed to make coffee and decaf, hoping that the water will eventually come out clear.  It does not.  Any further coffee attempts have been fine with an overtone of old weak burned coffee sludge.  A smell that sends shivers down my spine!  Reminds me of a certain family who only drank their coffee that way and I could never convince them that this was not the way to do it!  Why bother?

While I was getting my 15 or so pots of water to run through the gross coffee machine, I noticed that the women’s bathroom sink was running slow.  In fact, it was backing up some gross stuff.  So I thought I would give facilities a call, since I hate it when I, or anyone else, just lets things go hoping someone else will take care of it.  Oh yes, an hour of coffee making was going to make me a proactive worker!  That also backfired.  Plumbing came to fix it, and they broke a pipe behind the wall.  Now we have no women’s bathroom for a few days until it is fixed.  This not only makes it a pain when I have to use the facilities, but it makes trying to get copious amounts of coffee made, as we fill them at the bathroom sink.  Great, I’ve now shot myself in the foot.

Moving on, I needed to process and send out some tissue to another university.  This means I need to print out quite a bit of information from our university system for tracking and informational purposes, as well as overnight it via fed ex because it is on dry ice.  I enter the information appropriately, but cannot get said information to print.  I get annoyed, but I am persistent and try again.   And again.  I ask favorite coworker if she will please check into it, and she cannot print either.  OK, we have an issue.  I call systems guru.  She can print.  That is right, SHE can print on OUR printer from a very remote location.  But she doesn’t print the info I need, she prints a test page, dubs me good to go and I try again.  No luck.  I call her back, I have to leave a message.  I wait for a call from her.  Get said call.  We talk printers for a long time, establishing which one is where and which one we can use.  I try to print while she is on the line.  No luck.  She tries to print.  She can print.  She reads error and says that they have to reboot their servers but in the meantime she will print the info I need.  Great.  Crisis averted as long as I don’t need the system again.  Now, this sounds simple but it was quite a lengthy and frustrating conversation, often involving favorite coworker who, by the way, probably has much better things to do with her time than to trouble shoot printers and look up IP addy’s.

So now tissue is processed and fed ex needs to be sent.  I use fed ex’s handy dandy online shipment processing center, pull up the appropriate address and am all set to go…..except I keep getting errors.  Erm OK, this SHOULD work, I do this often enough.  That is IT I say, this will wait until I get back from lunch.  After all, I have already missed the next mail run due to printer issues.

So off to the local yarn shop I go.  I need to pick up more Noro in a specific colorway because I have 2 more short projects it is necessary for.   I was more than halfway done with the first when I ran out of that specific colorway, and I really did not want to frog it and start over in a new color.  I looked through all their Noro Kureyon to no avail.  I couldn’t find my colorway anywhere.  There was MORE than enough when I picked it up last, but it is gone now and the Noro shelves are looking a little light.  I start to panic.  I think to ask someone if they have more in the back. Of course, I did not bring the label so I am guessing on what I need.  Lucky for them they know what I last bought.  Awesome.  They also have 4 more skeins.  Even more awesome.  Life looks good.  I buy my 2 skeins and guess what?  Their printers won’t work either.  Am I emitting something today that causes everything to fail?

I get back.  Try fed ex.  No dice.  Definitely something wrong with their system.  And at this point, I am writing to you to the sound of the plumbing guys drilling into the cement wall to get at their broken pipe.  *sigh*  Can I reboot?  Should I blame it on the time change?  Will I get my loopy ewe order today to make everything feel better?