Crappy Saturday (so far)

I don't like bitch blogs, where all people do is complain about everything from politics to the "liberal media" to how much they hate the ex-girlfriend they broke up with (or who broke up with them) years ago but she's a skanky slut and they hate her and they don't care about her and she's a slut and a skank and they really don't care oh but did they mention she's a skank? There seem to be no end of these, and it seems that it may actually be a good reader-attracting strategy to simply bitch on your blog. People seem to like it.

I don't like it. And I try not to bitch whenever possible. But...hey, it's 1:00 in the afternoon, and I have to tell you how this day is going:

1. I woke up this morning dreaming I was dying of cancer - stomach cancer, I think. In the dream, I had a scheduled "death date", much like a scheduled "due date" for a pregnant woman. The date was a Saturday (today, maybe?) but I wasn't showing any signs of dying, or even many signs of being sick. So my doctor was going to induce me (basically euthanize me.) I pointed out that I was actually feeling pretty well, although I had accepted that I was sick and dying of something that would be increasingly painful. So I asked for medication to ease the pain in the coming weeks. The doctor misunderstood me and thought that I was looking for some treatment despite the fact that my case was beyond hope. He warned me that any treatment would cause internal bleeding. I was trying to explain that no, all I was looking for was something for the anticipated pain, when...

2. ...I awoke to find that the furnace in our house had died overnight, and the whole house was now below 60 degrees Fahrenheit. (I awoke in the middle of the dream, which is why I remember so much of it.) We called in a service guy, but while tidying up the area around the furnace (which is also where the cats' litter boxes are located), the furnace came back on by itself. By the time he got here the furnace was running fine, and he concluded that we were idiots who had turned our thermostat down to under 60 degrees. I blamed the cats.

3. I had plans for today: a blood donation, a haircut, a trip to the Post Office for a hundred or so two-cent stamps (since the new postal rates go into effect tomorrow, and I have tons of old stamps), a trip to the bank to deposit two weeks of paychecks. As it was, I wasted until after 10:30 in the morning dealing with a phantom furnace issue. I decided to go in for a shower and try to salvage what I could. (The blood center, the barber, and the Post Office all close at noon on Saturdays, and a blood donation takes about an hour all by itself.)

4. While I was in the shower, my mom informed me that the furnace had stopped pumping heat again.

5. After getting dressed and gearing up, the cell phone bulging out of my right hip pocket (and yes, I am happy to see you) snagged the book and magazine rack in my downstairs bathroom as I maneuvered around it, causing it to collapse.

6. I picked up as many of the books as I could (those that were in immediate danger of being in water on the floor from my shower) and sized up my situation: I would not be able to give blood today if I wanted to be there when the next service guy showed up. Ditto on a haircut, which would take anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour, door to door, depending on if there were any people in front of me. I could deposit my checks anytime in an ATM. Which left the Post Office as the only available activity option for the day.

7. Most of the population of Nanticoke had apparently had the same idea today, and were currently standing in line at the Post Office. (Vending machines loaded with the two-cent stamps placed in the lobby would have been a great idea. Too bad the Post Office is not noted for great ideas.) I saw the line, turned around, walked away, turned around, walked back, thought better of it, and left. No blood donation, no haircut, no two-cent stamps, just a broken furnace and a billion books and magazines and catalogs scattered across my bathroom floor.

8. I decided to sit down at the computer and look up the MySpace sites for a local musician, and her girlfriend (or possibly ex-girlfriend, it's hard to be sure), and their dead dog. (Yes. Their dead dog has a MySpace site.) Unfortunately, MySpace is one of the worst resource hogs in the known universe, so it was almost impossible to spend much time at their sites, let alone work them into this blog entry. Maybe some other time.

9. By now a different service guy had shown up. This time the furnace had not spontaneously started yet, and the temperature had again fallen below 60 degrees. He spent an hour here and replaced some contacts. The heat seems to be working again.

So now I need to roll up my sleeves and sift through the reading material all over my bathroom floor, deciding what to toss, what to store, and what to keep current. And in two hours I have to go to a Mass for my father. So this day is pretty much done.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.