Post Christmas Blues

Today has not been the feather in my holiday cap that I had hoped it would be. In fact, to be honest, the day has pretty much sucked thus far. There have been multiple, shall we say, incidents to support my evaluation this morning, a couple of which I will recount here.

First off, you might be saying to yourself, "Oh, that poor soul. He has to work between Christmas and New Years. He must work on a slave ship with a captain who looks like Gollum from Lord of the Rings." Well, you'd only be partially correct (I'll not say which part), but the truth is that I thought it would be good to conserve some vacation days for our cruise next week. It seemed like working a single day between Christmas and New Years when nobody else would be at work would be a simple way to save a vacation day. I figured I'd listen to my iPod, watch a little TV, maybe write a blog entry about what I ate over the past four days (which would be quite a tome). No sweat. Well, it's almost been that easy.

For starters, this morning when the alarm went off at 6am, I nearly had a coronary. I've been somewhat sleep deprived over the past few days, and I was deep asleep when the alarm went off. I dragged myself out of bed. I had a few bucks left on a Starbucks gift card, so I decided to not make coffee at home, instead opting to swing by Starbucks on the way into work for a bitter cup of joe and one of those new breakfast sandwiches they're hocking. The girl at the drive up window didn't seem to quite have it together, probably angered by having to work the early shift on the day after Christmas. She handed me my cup of coffee, and at about the point where the coffee was evenly placed above my crotch and the side of the seat where your keys, money, etc fall into an abyss that cannot be reached, the lid sprung off the cup allowing for a fount of, shall we say "friggin," hot coffee to spew forth onto, er, the worst possible place on my lap and the side of the car seat. As I finished squealing in pain, I looked at the cup to figure out what went wrong. Nothing looked askew, so I put the lid back on and held the coffee while I mopped up the mess. About 6 seconds elapsed before the episode repeated itself, further damaging what was left of my ego and car seat. After further mopping and another fount, this time of swears, I reexamined the cup. The lip had been compromised such that the lid fit just fine, until you put any pressure on the sides of the cup, at which point the lid would exit stage left and give you a coffee lap dance, the likes of which leaves you with stained pants and an angry, not so peaceful feeling.

Once I got to work, I worked for about an hour on a few things I needed to clean up prior to the cruise. At about 8:00am, I felt a low rumble in my gut which was telling me that Christmas dinner had decided it was time to get a move on. Now most families have ham, potatoes, perhaps a salad of some sort for Christmas dinner. We have chicken fingers from Captain D's (with honey mustard AND sweet 'n sour sauces for dippin'.) Why chicken fingers you ask? Well, in the past, our choice has been the more traditional Christmas dish of lasagna, made lovingly by my grandmother. These usually get assembled shortly after Thanksgiving and placed in what grandma considers her "auxillary refrigeration unit," better known as "the garage." Now this course of action alleviates freezer overflows and normally works relatively well in Indiana winters. But this year, it's been in the 50's for most of December. As Christmas approached last week, various members of the family intervened and the lasagnas went unused. (Nothing says "Happy New Year!" like a little food borne bacteria induced wretching.) Therefore, the backup plan was chicken fingers from The Captain. Bless my aunt and uncle for taking up responsibility for the food, and in all honesty, the chicken fingers were a rather welcome break from tradition. I suspect what caused my issues this morning were the sheer number of chicken fingers I ate (let's just say that I don't think I left that chicken with enough fingers to hold a pencil) plus the variety of baked goods and sweets that I ate in the days surrounding Christmas. In any case, I took shelter in the bathroom nearest my desk in hopes of getting in a few minutes of quality reflection. About 2 minutes in, I heared a knock on the door.

Now our building has a lovely staff of cleaning people who keep our restrooms sparkling clean, despite the, er, problems that a staff of middle aged male engineers seem to inflict on them. The cleaning staff is nothing if not persistent though. There's no "I'll wait them out" when dealing with these folks. You either finish up and get the heck out of their bathroom, or you risk them making an unflattering entrance and swearing at you, frequently in a foreign tongue. I opted for the first option, knowing that I'd left the job half finished. As I washed my hands and made my exit past the glares which said "You'd better not have plugged that toilet up, Dough Boy," I considered which direction the cleaning lady was coming from. I knew that going to the nearest other restroom was a risky maneuver, but I thought I'd be safe if I hiked diaganolly across the floor and finished my task in a distant land. This plan seemed to work with great success, for about 3 minutes. I'll be danged if that little lady hadn't finished up my first bathroom AND dragged her cleaning cart across the floor, all in under 5 minutes. I finished up, again, and prayed that she'd be working on the women's restroom as I left, or perhaps it wasn't her at all. No luck on either count. As I left, her eyes said "You should see a doctor." I was deeply embarrased. I slinked back to my desk and decided that I'd need to go to the other building if I needed to do another deed before the end of my day.

So there you have it. Hot coffee on crotch...Another bad bathroom(s) experience. I sure hope I get out of this day without any further complications. All of this makes the pending cruise sound just that much better.