One of those days...

Things that did not work for me yesterday:
1) My brain
When I woke up Friday morning, I realized I hadn't done my Spanish homework for the week, and it was due at 11:30. While I was rushing through the (pointless) assignments, I had a sharp craving for Dr Pepper. Which leads us to...

2) The Beacon
The thing I hate about UNL is that it is an exclusively Pepsi campus. There is precisely one Coke machine on the entire campus, but luckily it is right across the street from my building. We Coke-drinkers call it the "Shining Beacon of Hope," and I was looking forward to paying it a visit after I got all my homework done and headed over to class. I had a dollar, and trust me, having a dollar is a rarity, and kind of a big deal; I was ready for that beautiful 23-flavored goodness. So I put the dollar in, and...that was it. The Dr Pepper button did not do anything, nor did any of the buttons for other Coke products. And neither did the Change Return button.

3) The copy machines at the library
In the process of making copies of some magazine articles, I discovered that both of the machines to which I had access were smudging parts of the copied pages. One was smudging the left side of the pages, and the other smudged the print on the right side. So if I really wanted those copies, I had to work doubly; nay, triply hard for them: Make a copy on one machine with the smeared left-hand column, then make one on the other machine, then take both copies home, scan them (another story entirely), splice the readable parts of the page together in Photoshop, then print a third and final copy. I will be scouring other parts of the library for different copiers next time... maybe they're on the fabled half-floors?

4) My (typically wonderful) computer
I love my computer; his name is Eduardo. But yesterday, during the scan/splice/print portion of copy-making, he froze during approximately...every single step of the already convoluted process.

5) My brand new scanner/printer/copier
My motto for technology has always been, "When it works, it's wonderful." When it's functionless, bloated software, it probably came with an HP printer. Dear goodness, I spent so much time just waiting for this thing to DO something; anything to prove to me it wasn't a paperweight with green flashy lights. After about 25 years, it finally worked, but not before my blood pressure skyrocketed. And that was for the scanning part alone...

6) The printer portion of my scanner/printer/copier
The final step of the convoluted copy-making process was to print the spliced-together page, right? That was a simple and wonderful idea, until I had to wait 10 minutes between the time I hit Ctrl+P and the time the 'Print' dialogue box appeared, and even then, nothing printed for a while. I had to unplug and replug it twice...to print one page. When it works...it's so great.

And then there was a false fire alarm in my dorm. Oddly enough, it was my new roommate's best friend who accidentally leaned against the alarm in the basement, but the proceedings put everyone out in the bitter winter cold for a while, delayed my dinner with one of my friends (who is an RA, and therefore had to do a bunch of administrative stuff in the wake of the fire alarm).

So yes, yesterday was one of those days. It's over now, and it's time to gear up for a Husker basketball game today, and two of the roughly seven NFL games I've actually been excited for this season tomorrow. (My picks, plus a huge tangent: Packers and Patriots. If I were to call myself a fan of any NFL team, it would be the Packers; it has been the Packers since I was about 8 years old, and Brett Favre is one of my all-time favorite athletes. So by that standard, I want the Packers to win it all. However, I have this generational inferiority complex, because it seems like in this generation, sports teams (or individuals) come really close to historically significant feats, but fall just shy. One huge example is the lack of triple crown-winning horses recently. Back in the '70s, three horses won Triple Crowns, which led both of my parents to believe it was fairly commonplace. But nowadays, lots of horses win two races but never the third. To me, this is a generation of "almosts," and I kind of want the Patriots to go ahead and be "made it all the way" team. I want to tell my kids about sports history that happened while I was young, not sports history that almost happened. So if those teams win tomorrow, I will be torn come Super Bowl Sunday. But mostly, go Packers.)

Have a lovely day, y'all. I hope it's not one of those days.