[Imported] Wanted: karma improvement tips

This was written yesterday, and you'll see why it hasn't been posted until now in a moment. It was written in about 30 minutes (you'll laugh, but it usually takes me at LEAST 2 hours to churn out a blog before I'm satisfied enough to let the world see it, and just typing this paragraph has taken me about 9 hours), and it definitely isn't my best work, but my mind is fried and defeated right now, and I just wanna sleep.

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I'm typing this in Notepad right now (Notepad! THAT DESPERATE!), because my internet is now on the fritz.

Well, it's not the internet. It's the computer; but all I asked my cousin to do was to help me remove ONE non-working program that I was unable to remove, and now suddenly up to my eyeballs with viruses, even slower performance than before (and it was already nearly running backwards as it was), and an internet that DOES NOT WORK. I can go to Google's main page, msn.com's main page, and the login page to hotmail. Beyond that, asking my web browsers to take me any further into the vast wilderness that is the WWW just results in a permanent and patronizing "Waiting for www.yourlifesucks.com to respond..." (I seriously left the browser open over night and nothing was different the next morning) and if my computer had a face, I would totally smack it. I may just have to settle for kicking my cousin in the shins.

And that program I wanted removed? Yup, still there. Maybe I'll throw my computer out the window. THAT should remove the program. At least from my house.

Of course, if you're reading this, that means that my computer is *insert plagal cadence as sung by a choir of angels* whole and working and beautiful again, in Christ's Name, Amen. [edit: no, it's not, but I just hacked into the administrator, for whom the internet works fine, and now that I realize that it's working here, I think I just wet myself.] But all I can say is that if I knew ahead of time the kind of luck I would have this week, I probably would have just stayed in bed. I mean, what's the worst that can happen in bed? Your pillow becomes too warm? The comforter becomes crooked? A family of bedbugs moves in? Internet, I WILL EXCHANGE YESTERDAY FOR ALL THE BEDBUGS IN THE WORLD.

Now, remember - I'm the girl that jinxed the brand new coaster on it's grand opening day. Apparently, that was only the beginning.

It started at around 1pm yesterday when my phone suddenly beeped at me that it had a low battery. I knew it was lying, because I had charged it all the previous night long. But it's done that before, so I figured I'd just turn it off and turn it back on (as a sort of "restart"), because that's always worked in the past.

And it worked this time, too. Or, at least, the turning OFF part did. It turned off BEAUTIFULLY. I could give my phone a standing ovation for how well it obliged to my request of it to turn off. Good thing I held my praise until after it turned on. Rather - until after it was SUPPOSED to turn on. It stayed off for a good three hours despite my attempts to charge it, fiddling with the position of the battery, hitting random buttons, and even threatening it with a hammer. Plus, we don't have a land line here at the house, so it was rather frustrating knowing that I couldn't even call anyone to tell them that my phone was dead. [edit: this was quickly trumped by not having the world wide intrawebz0rz, when, for once, I was actually in need of it for things more important than looking up fake swear words and a 10 second recording of the breakdown spiel on Splash Mountain as said by Br'er Bear.] Even with all this dang electricity, processed food, and pants around me, I felt oddly Amish.

Anyway, my phone miraculously came on about 3 hours of just crossing my fingers that my phone would still be under warranty should it not have started working again. So, the world kept spinning and I breathed a sigh of relief over not needing to spend money on the one piece of technology that I have a deep and passionate hate for.

But while my phone was dead, I had apparently missed a call. My voice mail tone thing went off, I jumped out of my seat as usual from the eardrum-busting volume, and I absentmindedly began going through the voice mail checking process.

Now, remember my cracked LCD screen on my laptop? Well, I called Toshiba about it, they told me it was under warranty, they sent me a box, and I sent them my baby computer. And that voice mail? It was them, telling me that they were actually just a group of compulsive liars whose greatest joy in life is to toy with the delicate emotions of broke college students with pitiful broke computers by lifting their hopes up with the idea of a warranty that covers cracked LCD screens, only to smash those hopes into a million tiny pieces until their hearts are as black and dead as the black and dead pixel spots that run along the various hairline cracks on their laptops. Their words, true story.

And then casually mention that it will now cost $425 to repair.

I told my mom about this later that afternoon when she came home from work. She tried to cheer me up by using such nuggets of wisdom as "Yeah, that's life," and "Welcome to the real world." Not that I was expecting much else from her. I certainly couldn't ask for her to pay it for me given that a) she just paid for nearly everything on the Hershey trip b) I'm 22 years old, time for me to step up the responsibility and c) I've got a mental list of all the things I'd like to pay her back for someday, and I really don't want to add to that since the current tally is right about at an amount that I don' t think I'll make in this lifetime.

Still, I found myself only slightly offended in the part of me that took her comments to mean that she doesn't think I know how hard the "real world" is. Hi, mom, remember me? Remember all the drama we've lived through in the past four years? Yeah, I'm well aware of the knee in the balls that life can be sometime - NO NEED TO REMIND ME.

Then she said, "It's just a small set back in the long run. One of us is probably going to need brand new tires soon, and that might be as much as $1000. Not much you can do about that kind of stuff." [edit: That was just her guess. She thought that they were one or two hundred dollars a piece last time she bought tires, which was a while ago, and she just assumed they went up in price like everything else. Maybe they did, but luckily, my little ford focus hatchback has such itty bitty baby tires that they were only about $100. Haha..."only."]

Remember that. Ohhhh...just you remember she said that.

Later that evening, my mom asked me to run to the grocery store to pick up a few things. I'm a creature of habit - and a creature of avoidance where ever possible of social situations - and I always go lane 11 in the self-checkout. See, my lucky number is 22, and since there aren't that many lanes, I just half it, and hope for the best. Only someone was in that lane yesterday, and I'm not SO superstitious that I'll wait for that ONE LANE to open when EVERY OTHER LANE is completely empty. I may have a lucky number, but I also have common sense. So I went to lane number 12. There's a 2 in twelve, right? And that's kind of like 22. I mean, it's the closest you'll come to 22, visually, without actually being 22. Sure, there's 32 and 42 and 52 (etc.), but those simply would not work if this was The Price is Right. And I base everything I know around the rules from the Price is Right. Going above a specific number? Two words: Cardinal. Sin.

Anyway, so I'm scanning all my stuff, and the machine freezes up on me about half-way through. The guy comes over, fixes it, and I continue. Until it happens again. Only this time, every single light on that frikin machine is blinking like it's Christmas, and, oh my gosh, I did not know that those things had THAT. MANY. LIGHTS. Lights that I never even noticed before (and I'm not entirely certain that they even existed before that moment, either) were spasing as though the self-checkout had suddenly become a disco floor. The guy came back over, looked at me, and said, "Umm...I've never seen it do that before."

They actually had to use the computer at the customer service desk to upload my transaction from the now-completely broken lane.

After paying, I grabbed my groceries and headed outside only to see that my car was waiting for me with a nice, fresh, FLAT. TIRE. And it wasn't just ANY old flat tire. It wasn't just your run-of-the-mill leak. I wasn't even lucky enough to hit a nail. No, I ran over a small piece of jagged metal [edit: today I found out that it was a razor blade. A RAZOR BLADE! Either someone was REALLY desperate for a shave, or I am the victim of a real nasty, jackass prank], that left a TWO INCH SLICE in my tire which I've already been told cannot be plugged. That's right, I must now buy a whole new tire.

The story of the flat tire isn't all that interesting beyond that. It's just what you'd expect - someone saw me see my flat tire, he offered to help, and I stood there like a totally helpless girl while he did all the work, even though I probably could have done it myself. The most interesting thing came when he tried to take the tire off, and when it wouldn't budge after five whole minutes of pulling at the thing, had to use the flat end of the tire iron to pry it loose. And when it finally was loose enough to pull off, he still had to use so much force that he fell backwards in his nice work slacks and landed in the bed of mulch that I was parked next to.

Sorry, sir. My bad karma is contagious.

And when I finally walked through the door at home, I went straight to my mom and said, "You just HAD to say that one of us was going to need new tires, DIDN'T YOU?" and between that and my dream about Fahrenheit, I think my mom and I need to pay a bit more attention to the things we say.

Don't get me wrong, now. I'm not being oh-woe-is-me. Despite the fact that I don't even have $400 right now, most of these things are MINOR (I KNOW THIS), and I can always use my credit card (ugh) for all the repairs and just make payments. (I've had a credit card for about two years now and have yet to use it ONCE because I'm a firm believer in not spending money you don't have. I guess I'll have to tweak that philosophy a bit).

I'm just warning you all about my plain, old bad luck that seems to be hovering around me lately. Considering all the things that have broken/stopped working/freaked out around me in this past week, I am just telling you right now that it'd be in your best interest to be as far away from me as possible. If you do come near me, say within a 400 miles radius, I cannot be held responsible for your inevitable problems and frustrations that I'm sure will waste no time in occurring.

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As of today, I found out that my iPod car adapter is now broken. A wire fell out. It just FELL OUT. How does that even happen? Then I was stung by a sweat bee right on my spine at work today. You know where I work, right? At the Y? You know...INDOORS? And while I was getting my new wheel at the car repair place (which they had to special order), I also had my car inspected since it was due. Came to find out that another one of my tires would need to be replaced immediately in order to pass inspection that day, and more than likely, the other two will need to be replaced by my next oil change.

Again, thanks a lot, Mom.