SarahAnnAlien's Journal: Paperwork Results, Cake-n-Floppy Weekend, Package from Hell

I survived my bug and managed to drag my little alien butt to the office last Friday.

I was very happy to discover that the last little results of my Big Paperwork Adventure happened to appear in my mailbox last Friday. Success! (Actually, it really means we have started Big Paperwork Adventure, Part II, but I'll save that for another time.)

So, it was Friday night, I was finally legal (again), *and* could prove it, and I had a *little* bit of extra money. Time to party! And Sarah *knows* how to party.

So, on the way home from work, I stopped and bought a yellow cake mix and some chocolate frosting. I took it home and baked it, which was great fun, since I don't bake very often. Besides, what's a party without a cake?

And then... well... I ate the cake. By myself.

I didn't eat it all at once! It took all weekend to finish! :-)

Sarah knows how to party, but her parties are, um, nonstandard and very quiet. There are usually sweets, but few actual guests.

It was a *very* good cake. Particularly since I hardly ever eat cake.

The other major activity of the weekend, in addition to cake over-consumption, was backing up data stored on floppy disks. I decided that it was probably time to get that little chore taken care of, given that my laptop doesn't even have a floppy drive! And neither did the last one.

Now, a lot of people, when they hear that I'm trying to save all my data from my floppy disks, look at me as if I'm crazy. "Just throw them away," they say, "you obviously don't need that stuff anymore!"

What these people fail to recognize is that my alien-ness caused me to essentially lose a decade of my life. I'm not sure what happened during that decade. But there are little hints and fragments of what happened during that lost decade, and most of those hints are squirreled away here and there somewhere in my collection of several hundred mislabeled and unlabeled floppy disks. And that's literally *all* I have to show for that decade.

The thought of simply flinging a third of my life into the trash is very painful to me. People who suggest it, and who laugh at me for not doing so, really hurt my feelings.

So, I'm trying to back up the data. This is actually try number two. The first time, a couple years ago, I managed to copy a lot of the data off, but wasn't brave enough to actually throw any of the floppies away. I'm repeating the exercise in the hope that, this time, I'll be able to throw at least *some* of the disks away.

And so, a quiet weekend passed with one large chocolate cake and a sea of floppy disks.

*This* week has been consumed by an unexpected nightmare.

See, I'm building this, um, thing. It's a thing aliens sometimes need. I've nicknamed it the Doomsday Machine. (And if you're from the Department of Homeland Security, don't get your panties in a bunch! It's just a *nickname*, okay? Sigh.)

So I decided that the Doomsday Machine should be constructed in a nice enclosure. I searched, and found an enclosure that seemed like it could contain the guts of the Doomsday Machine (although it would probably need some Hello Kitty stickers or something). I ordered the enclosure online. Everything seemed straightforward.

But apparently, when I got to the screen marked "Shipping", I inadvertently selected the Franz Kafka Ground Freight Service (FKGFS).

The package allegedly arrived in town on Friday, my big party night. They didn't tell me about it. And they didn't deliver the package, either.

The nightmare began Monday morning, when one of the good folks from FKGFS got me out of bed before dawn by calling to explain that my shipping address was no good.

I sleepily confirmed that they had the right address, which they then claimed was not a good enough address. I tried to explain that that was just silly, as every major delivery company, *including* FKGFS, had delivered to that address, and had done so for years. She eventually said she believed me.

What followed was several days of phone calls, emails, messages left, calls not returned, emails not returned, and conflicting information from FKGFS. Can you deliver my package? Yes, we can deliver your package! It will be there tomorrow.... No, we can't deliver your package. Why not? We won't tell you. Oh, never mind, we can deliver it after all! It will be there tomorrow... No, we can't deliver your package. How about this alternate address? No, we can't deliver to that address either. Could you call me so we could arrange something? No, apparently not. Call customer service again. We can deliver your package, it will be there tomorrow! And so on.

Finally, this afternoon, I realized that my package was never going to come, and that continually hoping it would arrive, listening to promises that would be broken, and then getting disappointed repeatedly were just making me very, very unhappy. I no longer even wanted the package. Actually, I wanted to get it and smash it into tiny pieces for all the pain and suffering it has caused me!

I called FKGFS and explained that it was clear to me they would *never* deliver my package under any circumstances. I told them to go ahead and do whatever they wanted with it, since it would obviously never reach me. I don't know what they will do with it, and I don't care anymore.

As I had expected, I felt a lot better once I simply accepted the fact that this was one of those things that was just not meant to be. Now it's time for the healing to begin.

So my poor Doomsday Machine sits, enclosureless. It's okay, I'll find another way. I still haven't found the Hello Kitty stickers, either. :-(

I am a little annoyed at myself for letting something minor like this get to me. I guess it's just because my life is full of big, stressful things right now, and having something so obvious and trivial go so badly wrong for no explainable reason just really freaked me out.

The good news is, the horrible, complicated, stressful bits of my life are actually doing reasonably well. So far it's just the little things that seem to work themselves into disasters.

Tomorrow's my periodic journey to see P, my guide in my alien journey, and I'll probably have dinner with a friend after. No dessert, though! Not until my cutest jeans fit again. :-)