Sheesh.
Let me tell you, “sheesh” is pretty much the understatement of the millennium. Luckily the millennium isn’t so old, so that is not such a melodramatic statement as it might seem at first glance. Sure, sure, worse things have happened . . . you know . . . floods, fires, blah blah. But I had a pretty darn rough week.
It started with a splitting headache on the day I moved in to my place in College Park. Well, actually, no, it didn’t. It started nearly two weeks ago, five days (as I thought–I was wrong as it turns out) before classes were set to start up for the Spring semester. I was all set to sign the lease for an apartment in Courtyards, a University-run apartment complex. Because of digital forms and having to set up meetings and so forth, time was very tight as it was. On Wednesday I really needed to sign that lease; so I contacted the person Tuesday night and got no response. On Wednesday morning she let me know that her roommate had signed someone else to the lease. I was SCREWED. Nowhere to live, only a few short days to find somewhere. I was pretty upset, obviously. But I’d come down to College Park and looked at a house that seemed to be a pretty good place. So I called the owner up, and lo and behold I was able to sign the lease that same day. Whoopie. I was a little put out by the entire thing. Excruciating.
The place:
In any case, for all of Thursday and Friday I simply couldn’t make myself pack because I frankly didn’t want to leave and come back down here, because I really wasn’t wild about the housing situation nor about starting classes again. So I did my packing Saturday and didn’t do as good a job as I normally do, which means I took a lot less stuff. My bad. On Saturday, I got together what still needed getting together and we left around noon. Mom and Dad both came. We carried my stuff to my room and in about twenty minutes Mom and Dad were gone. I HATE it when they do that which they do EVERY time. My brother Will was coming up to take me to Ikea, and he was going to be there in half an hour, but did they stay? NO. And did I have a cell phone or any way of helping Will find the place–NO. And did I really want a little help putting my stuff away and figuring out what I needed? YES.
Anyway, Will took me to Ikea–what a good brother!–and got me a rug and a little dresser which I still haven’t assembled because I don’t have a hammer and screwdrivers. We got pizza, I was dropped back off at my place and started arranging things. That night was when I found out from my housemate that classes were starting the next day (Monday) and not on Tuesday like I’d thought. Which threw a wrench into everything because I suddenly didn’t have a day to straighten everything out, get books, go to the store to get what I needed, and so on. I had to get up and go to classes then work. Classes went just fine, just like usual. It was weirdly busy at work, but what can you do?
My room:
I can hardly remember the flurry of classes, work, walking all the way down to Bookholders and Maryland Book Exchange to get books. I do, however, quite distinctly remember walking down to CVS and Radio Shack. I needed to get an adapter for my desktop to be able to pick up the wireless Internet in my house. I had it all planned out: when to catch the bus, because the house I’m staying in is really far from the CVS and Radio Shack, in fact far from campus. But the bus didn’t come and didn’t come and didn’t come. until I lost hope when it was 20 minutes late and started walking. It took forty minutes in the dark on the side of the nastiest, most frightening road ever. I was horrified, and very upset. Route One is just nasty.
But I was getting things sorted out. Then my VCR/DVD player decided to croak. And the Satellite TV (ie all the channels) was out. And then I decided to plug in my iPod to charge it up. BIG MISTAKE. Of course, normally you would never think that doing something necessary like plugging in the iPod to charge it would cause problems. But it did. It killed my computer. It won’t turn on any more. I really liked that computer; it was not fast, but it was fast enough, it never failed me, it was payed for with my high school graduation money for God’s sake. And suddenly when I press power it just goes beep beep beep, and does nothing more. I was pretty damn devastated. I’m still quite peeved about it. I am hoping it can be fixed and hopefully if nothing else, the hard drive is okay.
So that left me with: no TV, no phone, no Internet, no way to watch DVD’s, and what’s better I found out the hard way that buses don’t run on weekends. It was all such a mess. On Friday morning the bus came early and so I didn’t catch it (I refuse to say that I missed it when the damn thing was five minutes early!), and my housemate’s boyfriend drove us to campus. Then I borrowed my housemate’s cellphone to call my brother Charlie, whose was the only phone number I had except for my home phone, and no one was at home because Mom and Dad were in flipping Florida. So I called Char and he called back and I told him the situation and that I needed by laptop, stat. Thank God I happened to have an extra computer lying around. Anyway, he told me he’d get it to me. I was very relieved, but I still had no contact with the outside world at all.
On Saturday I tried to get to campus twice and the bus wouldn’t come and wouldn’t come. So I ended up going nowhere except for a (long) walk down the lovely (note: sarcasm) Greenbelt Road to Target, where I bought a prepaid phone along with a few other essentials. Ergo: contact with the outside world. It took all day for someone to show up at my house so I could use their phone to activate my pay-as-you-go phone. Silly, eh? But then I was able to call Char, and he let me know his buddy Josh was going to be bringing down my laptop the next day (yesterday). I talked to Josh, too. Now, as I came to realize, Shuttle UM buses don’t run on weekends, so I had to walk the thirty-five minutes to campus for work. Whee. BUT Josh showed up with my laptop. So now I have phone and computer and Internet. And I realized that the TV in the house gets Fox and NBC, but it’s very very fuzzy. In any case, I worked until 5:00, then went over to the Student Union to get some free snacks and watch kickoff for the Superbowl. It turns out I missed the boring parts, because I caught the bus back and missed most of the first and part of the second half (certain buses run in the evenings on weekends, but not during the day). I watched the Halftime Show and then took a shower so missed part of the third quarter. The rest of the game was great and I loved to see the underdog win.
So. Pretty much the worst week ever, I’d say. Worst week of my happy life. Everything just converged on me. But now I’m getting things sorted out (I think). So I will forever be bitter about the week when everything went wrong. I will have better weeks, though.
And, for good measure, here’s the cat:
