Bleh. Just bleh.

I had one thing to do today: turn in my 2010 SSHRC proposal. All I had to do was go to the university, print it off, drop it off, go home. Easy, right? Not so, evidently.

The first thing that went wrong was that I became disastrously aware of my bike's brakes officially downgrading themselves from "poor" to "nonexistent." I emerged unscathed, but the bike is clearly out of commission for the season--or until I get it to a shop for a tune-up, whichever may come first.

With cycling off the table, I thought I'd take advantage of the still-new student bus pass and take public transportation. Of course, by the time I made this decision, the bus had just gone by. So a few minutes of waiting later, I was university bound. Everything went fine, until I tried to print off the files. After waiting some more for an unresponsive printer, I went to the IT guy on duty. After a half hour of work eventually involving another three guys from IT, they determined: a) the printer is really, really jammed, and b) the guy that does printing refunds wasn't there today, so I wouldn't be getting my money back.

That created another problem: I didn't have enough funds on my printing account to do the printing over again. And I didn't have my credit card on me, which meant I couldn't transfer the funds online. So I had to walk to the ATM, withdraw some money, go over to the library to put the money onto my student card, go back to the computer department, transfer electronically the balance on my student card onto my printing account, and finally print off everything on the OTHER printer. I take the results, turn them in, and that's that done.

But there's still the return trip to manage. After the delays, I figure out that I have only a few minutes to get to the departing bus, so I start running. I get about five steps before I trip and sprawl all over the pavement. The damage isn't too bad; I bruise my shoulder, rough up my palms (but nothing breaking skin), and scrape my knee. The worst part is that I tear the knee out of my jeans. It was, unfortunately, the last pair of comfortably fitting jeans I currently own, which necessitates a trip to the mall for clothes shopping tomorrow. Here's a statistic that will convey my feelings on the subject: # of times I went to the dentist since moving to Ontario: 3. # of times I have gone to shop for clothes: 0.

So I'm in a pretty bad mood at this point. But resilient, I get up, brush myself off, and head towards the bus... and make it about another 5 feet before I trip AGAIN. This time: My shoulder is throbbing, both hands have been torn open to grant me my own personal stigmata, and the knee--which got the worst of it, with even the faint protection my jeans previously provided being torn away--was a mess of bloody scratches and open wounds. At this point, I opted to forget the damn bus and hobbled home. And here I am. I got back and cleaned myself up (including pulling threads of the blue jeans OUT of the rapidly scabbing wound--fun!). And now I'm going to watch multiple episodes of The Simpsons while eating pizza pops and skittles, because, dammit, this day owes me.

*UPDATE* Didn't help. Nor did my "let off steam" run. Probably because most of that run was in the rain, and it was 45 minutes into it before I realised I was wearing shoes that didn't match. You know what? It's 6:38 pm, and I'm going to bed. DAY OVER.

*UPDATE 2* And then I watched WALL-E. I know Pixar is part of a multinational corporation that accumulates capital through the manipulation (masterful manipulation, mind you) of emotionally loaded situations, but WALL-E is still the most adorable garbage machine ever. What a nice day.
Later Days.