Failure

This morning began with battery acid. Yes battery acid gushing out of my wireless mouse. I was going to do some work at home, but no, I spent the earlier part of this morning pouring baking soda into my mouse--and all because I put some stupidly old batteries in the poor thing. Nothing looks quite as helpless as an upside-down open-cased laser mouse.

Then, I got to the T Station where my T pass fell out of my hand and fluttered through the rushing throngs of MIT students eager to make their 9am class. Once I finally caught up to it, I realized that it was February... and my pass was for January. I tried the "I forgot it at home" line, but apparently that only works in college.

"The only thing we can take is a dollar twenty five," said the woman with her entourage of equally un-busy colleagues. So, after realizing that I'd spent my last cash on the coffee that was spilling down my hand, I went back outside to find some more.

Cambridge Trust's ATM was being serviced. They're the closest bank to the T and they decided to service it just before 9am. Now how smart is that? Not smart for me. So I head to BofA, where they committed highway robbery and charged me a whopping $2 just to use their stupid operational cash dispensing machine. Thieves!

So I returned to the T Station at this point sweaty, testy, and getting later by the minute. The unhelpful lady from before is now behind the glass of the collection booth fruitlessly explaining how to get to North Station to some poor, lost girl who I later learned had been "stranded in Boston" and was on her way back to Lawrence. Not quite sure of the whole story, but it involved "her boys" and a "crazy night".

Anyway, I'm late and the train is coming, so I slip my twenty into the collection tray hoping that this somewhat rude gesture will be passed off as someone who really just needs to get to work. The lady looks at me like I'd just cut an old lady in the grocery line and says (after a dramatic pause), "don't you have anything smaller than this?" I couldn't believe it. Isn't this the same woman who just turned me away for having the wrong month's pass in my hand? So I lost it and said incredulously, "Are you kidding me? No I don't have anything smaller."

So of course she takes her sweet time counting out her ones and fives and nickels and dimes so that I'm sure to miss the approaching train. Then she decides she wants to know why I "yelled" at her. I explained that I thought she recognized me from before and knew that I'd just been to the ATM--and that my day just wasn't going right yet.

So we kissed and made up and it was all good.

Then work happened. I was in good spirits until about 6:30 rolled around and I was being constantly asked to do stuff--after a pretty gruelling day. So I did it and left around 7:15--which wouldn't be bad or crazy if I were getting paid $100k and had a better title than "Research Data Analyst" standing behind those hours.

So basically I failed today. I got angry at everyone and nearly burned my fingers off with battery acid.

Luckily, redemption did come in the form of steamed artichokes with some killer roasted garlic butter sauce and chocolate chip cookies.