Warning: Really Long Whine Fest Ahead

What a day this has been! I have been in a bit of a funk lately and finally I felt like I was coming out of it. Yesterday was a really good day. I accomplished some of the things I'd been putting off; I got in a decent workout; I had a really good time with my dad. By 8:00 I had settled down on the couch to watch the debate. After that, things started going back down hill fast.

It has nothing to do with the debate itself, I'm trying really hard not to go into politics on here. The problem began with the fact that I had to watch it on my laptop. I don't have cable and only get TV reception for the local Fox station, which was showing baseball. Luckily, a couple of networks were streaming it live, so I tuned into CBS and was all set. My laptop has been acting a bit wonky lately. I've been having lots of pop-ups, even with the blockers on, but scans for viruses were clear and having it checked out by a professional is just another one of those things I've been putting off. I was watching on full screen and as the debate was winding down found that I was not able to go back to normal or close the screen. After trying all of the tricks I know, to no avail, I finally just had to force it to turn off. When I turned it back on, I got a Fatal System Error message. Yup. My [less than two year old] laptop has totally crashed. I don't know if I actually had a bug or what, but I only pray that my warranty will cover it. Thanks to ever responsible Johnathan for making me buy the extended plan.

Fast-forward to this morning. I get up, planning on a trip to the apartment fitness center before work. Thankfully I had cause to run the sink before I left, because I had no water pressure - just a tiny trickle. Apparently a main has burst, so it had to be shut off. What a stinky mess I would have been! Instead I was able to crawl back into bed for a little while longer and come to work only moderately musty.

Work has been stressful "lately." By "lately," I mean the last 9 months or so. My company is having issues. Since we were getting so many calls to various offices from different people about the problems, it was decided that things would be "easier" if everybody directed those complaint calls to me. By "easier," I mean for everybody but me. So, I get anywhere from two to two dozen calls a day from people who hate my company and hate me by association, because they feel like they are getting screwed over by all of us. Honestly, I don't blame them, which I think makes it even more horrible having to deal with them all the time and make excuses and try to convince them hold off further action. The people in charge keep telling us "things should all be sorted out in [insert time frame]" or "it'll be taken care of by [random date]" or "we'll know something definite on [pick a day]." So I keep getting hope, only to have that time come and nothing has been rectified. Today was one of those days. We were supposed to have definite dates for all of this to be fixed by the end of this week. As of this morning, the new "we'll know something" date is October 28th.

Note: I really love the people that I work with, including my bosses. I have a lot of faith that this company will pull through the mess it is in and become something great and I look forward to being a part of it when that day comes. If I didn't really believe in it, I wouldn't still be here.

When I'm at work I keep my personal email account up, as well as my work email and various other work and non-work sites. This morning I had a message in my personal email from a Facebook friend with a video. "Cool" I thought. *click* I'm redirected to what appears to be a video hosting site and told that my Flash Player is not up-to-date. Not surprising, since most of the stuff on this computer is not the latest version, so I click to get the update. It never did load, and I started to question the whole thing, so I gave up. Then somebody else tells me that they had gotten some weird Facebook message from me about a video, but it was poorly spelled, so they knew it couldn't be me (ha!). Apparently lots of people have been hacked/spammed. And now my work computer is acting funny- super.

I shut down all Internet while I try to make sure that everything is clear of viruses and such. Then I get a call from another office that an email has gone out to the whole company saying that a bunch of reports that were due yesterday (many of them from my area and my responsibility) were not received. It always sucks to get called out in front of others, much less the whole company, but the real kicker is that I did turn in the reports yesterday. I was able to forward the original email that had them, so I could prove to the person requesting them that I'd done it, but it doesn't take back that everybody thinks I didn't. It's been a busier than usual day anyway, and I just have all this extra stuff on top of it. Oh, and, just now this minute my printer/scanner/copier started making a clicking noise that cannot possibly be good.

If I might make a point in all of this complaining it is this: I definitely believe that God tests us. There are always going to be hard times and it frequently seems like all of the bad happens at once. But, good times will undoubtedly follow. I think both of them are tests. The point is not how much things are or are not going your way, but what you do with the hand you are dealt. I'd like to say I'm not responsible for all of the cruddy things that have happened in the past 24-hours, but I also have to admit that I'm not responsible when things are going well either. That's just how life is. I have to try to deal with both the good and the bad as humbly and faithfully as I can. No one day (or week or year) is going to make or break me. Only the persistence of my faith can do that.