Everything about today told me I should go home and curl up into a little ball underneath the protective sheets of my bed. I began the day by discovering that my cat had filched my USB pen drive—meaning that there was a slim chance in heck that I’d ever find it again.

Then my shower towel gave off a mildewy smell when it got wet, and my skin started itching where it came into contact with the towel. (Yes, that was pretty much everywhere.) That led me to discover that our washing machine is part of a class-action lawsuit involving failing electronics and motors—and, of course, for growing mildew that infects the stuff you wash.

I arrived at work to discover the gal who sits at the front desk with a big grin on her face. This has been a pattern all week: every time I walk in the door, I’m presented with something broken in the project I’m working on.

Today it took five hours (!) to figure out what was wrong: there’s a bug in Microsoft Word. Curse you, Gates!

[The issue, though I doubt anyone will really find it useful (but perhaps Google will prove me wrong): I had a text file that has LF (line feed) line endings, and I needed it to have CRLF (carriage return/line feed) endings. So I wrote a VBA script that did some other prep work, and then supposedly did a “replace all” to swap the LFs for CRLFs. The darn thing would do that for some 2177 lines, and then started replacing LFs with plain CRs. The solution? Do two replace alls: one to swap LFs for CRs, and the next to swap CRs for CRLFs. Silly, but it worked.]

Partway through my five-hour Word ordeal, I tried to refill my water cup from a filtered water pitcher. I succeeded at that. And then I poured a lot of water on the counter.

My lone thought, after I stared at my new lake for a few moments longer than I want to admit: Eh?

I suspect that it was a miracle I survived the day. I mean, I had to drive to work to be able to pour water on that counter. Eep.

This evening was a bit better: the first ballroom dance practice of the term was rather lightly attended, but it was attended by a good number of people I know. Jay dragged a gal onto the dance floor with the dubious line, “You know how to swing? Then you know how to hustle!” Nihal fell asleep in the corner during a waltz; Barry declared that we had a man down! I then talked Barry into bending over backwards far enough to hurt himself (I’m that persuasive!)… he didn’t really hurt himself. That much.

What I’m really looking forward to, though, is Marco’s West Coast II class tomorrow evening. Yay dance!