I find the month of June 2010 guilty of the following:

• One count of my partner who does all the work I don’t want to do being on vacation for a month, leaving me with twice the work to do and the only person at work I can have a real conversation with gone.
• One count of a staff member just not showing up any more leaving us shorthanded by one for the duration of the month.
• One count of a staff member injuring herself with a box cutter leaving us shorthanded by another one for the duration of the month.
• Two counts of staff members losing family members causing us to be further shorthanded, in one case for a week and in the other for the duration of the month.
• Four counts of machinery literally breaking.
• Three counts of my supposed second in command leaving early without letting me know and leaving me with extra work that I had to rush through so I could be done in time to catch my ride.
• Two counts of my supposed second in command calling in to say he won’t be coming to work for reasons deemed suspicious.
• One count of me not getting done in time to catch my ride.
• One count of the paper being delayed hours to wait for the results of a hockey game. (Fact: Anyone who cared about that game and for some reason hadn’t watched it on television or caught the results on the news or on the Internet or from friends should really just not bother)
• Untold counts of me spending hours trying to get to sleep but unable because of heat or noise from outside.
• Eight counts of me finally being asleep and then being awakened by some external stimuli (In one case it was a cannon salute for the Queen. Am I the only one who thinks maybe she’s been around the world enough that a cannon salute isn’t going to impress her much?)
• One count of being called into work when I had already been awake for twenty-one hours.
• Three counts of me crashing an sleeping for ten or more hours at a time, eating up an entire day of time spent not working.
• Two counts of having to postpone Father’s Day dinner because of work.
• Two counts of having to cancel blood donation appointments because of work.
• Three counts of having to turn down Hanging Out With Friends time because of work.
• One count of ruining a shirt on a jagged metal bit at work.
• Two counts of ruining pants beyond the point of wearability (and for me that point means they are quite damaged.
• One count of me injuring my finger in such a way that blood came out from under the fingernail.
• One count of a long scratch on the back of my neck from the corner of a machine I was reaching under.
• One count of not having access to the Internet on my only day off during one week.
• One count of the twenty-four hour gas station I used to stop for juice when I had to walk from work apparently not being open twenty-four hours any more.
• One count of locking myself out of my apartment.
• One count of the truck I was in nearly being hit by a drunk driver (or if not drunk, just a very bad driver).
• At least three counts of papercuts (those are just the ones that occurred after I decided to keep a list of annoyances).
• One count of being a month with so many annoyances I decided to keep a list.

Now, I fully admit that the vast majority of these are quite minor and several were obviously much worse for other people than me, but the fact it was all condensed into one four-week span really made June 2010 a month that I will not miss in the least. It joins the year 2006 in Times PDR Mostly Didn’t Enjoy. But hey, it is all over now.

Okay, so sure, I’ve been like double my already high usual levels of both “self-hatred” and “hating my job” because this month sucks more than typical at work. I’ve beat myself up for not getting a closer look at a cat and I’ve beat myself up for locking myself out of my apartment (see my last two posts) and that’s the just stuff I hate myself for that I remembered to post about. At least the lockout thing I can find funny because it was a way of shaking up dull routine, but it still took several hours of my time. I’ve also been sleeping fitfully at best and getting less reading done at work. So anyway, I’m not spending as much time doing things I’d like to do is what I am trying to use this paragraph to say.

So one day this week I woke up late and watched the Daily Show and Colbert as I am wont to do and then turned on my music and prepared to do whatever it is I do with my days, but then I realized the time and that I needed to get ready for work sharpish. I muttered to myself “No one told me when to run, I missed the starting gun” and people with good taste will recognize that is a line from “Time” by Pink Floyd, an awesome song about the passage of time bringing us all closer to death.

Within ten seconds of my quoting this, the clamorous opening to the song begins on my computer. It was on random, so there was no way I am aware of that I could have subconsciously picked up that it was next. It was a pretty sweet coincidence, but I didn’t think so much of it that I would have bothered to post about it here.

Tonight, at work, during a rather dull moment I got the assistants to watch things while I went into the office to get a head start on the paperwork I had to do at the end of the night. In the office I had a radio playing tuned to a local station. As soon as I sat down I realized Time was playing, which reminded me of the previous occurrence. It was a pretty easy night at work so there were literally a dozen or more times when the operation was smooth enough that I could have gone off to do that and I chose the one time that Time was playing. Pretty neat.

So anyway, ruling out the possibility that I have just developed some sort of unconscious prescience relating only to that one song, I am left with the option that the Song is Following Me. If the universe is using the song in an attempt to cheer me up, I thank it, but couldn’t it maybe choose a song that is not about Exactly What Is Depressing Me? If the universe is trying to mock me… okay then yeah, good choice.

For posterity’s sake I will point out that at the actual end of the night when I was finishing the paperwork they played Wish You Were Here, another Pink Floyd song which, while melancholy, does not cut so deep into specifics with me. And I love that one too. Clearly Q104 is the station to go for for Pink Floyd, I guess. Not that they don’t play plenty of crap in between.

Anyway, the time is gone, the post is over… thought I’d something more to say…

I successfully managed to forget my keys at work! The ironic downside to this awesome occurrence is that I simultaneously managed to fail to remember to bring my keys home from work. Some would say that that is a more important fact than the first one, but they are Too Negative.

Seriously though, I just spent the last four hours locked out of my apartment. Mostly this was okay because I spent those four hours eating a burger, going for a walk while listening to music, reading in the lobby of my building and then buying donuts before finally I was rescued by a guy who works in my building. Super? Custodian? Some other thing? I have no idea who does what in this building, but whoever that guy is, my thanks go to him.

Haiku!

Doors are made of wood.
Lasers are made of pure light.
They are different.

It has been a long time since I’ve locked myself out. The last time I remember was like five or six years ago. And it was for a longer amount of time that time, but then I had somewhere else to go.

I took a slightly different direction on my route home tonight and encountered a Lost Cat poster. Sitting directly across the street from this poster was a cat. My first instinct was that the cat did not look like the one on the poster, but it was dark and I thought I would get closer and try to get a look. The cat immediately ran away.

Maybe I was deluding myself, but as it ran away it kinda did seem line the one on the poster. But now I’ll never be sure. I’ve had cats come up to me and let me pick them up sometimes when I’m walking at night, but not this time. And what makes it worse is that on the rest of my journey home I saw like seven more posters about that cat and they all made me feel like I’d missed my chance. Maybe if I’d made less of a sudden movement I could have helped someone out.

Or maybe it wasn’t even the same cat.

In other news, since this past Monday my co-Whatever I Am has been on vacation. Since he does most of the work that I really, really don’t enjoy at all, his absence more than doubles my work. I suddenly find myself having to talk to people and fill out paperwork. It is not cool. And this will last until early July. This is going to be one lame month.

Hey, you know something I find annoying? Music videos where the singer is standing there or sitting in a car or something and he’s looking right at the camera and he is ostensibly singing the lyrics, but his face is not showing the emotion of the lyrics? It’s like he’s just talking the lyrics? I think it may be some kind of attempt at being casual or something, but if you aren’t showing the emotion that the lyrics are trying to convey, just get out of the video and show me some cool visuals. Actually, I’ll take cool visuals over showing the singer pretty much every time.

Remember that, people who make music videos.

Not that I actually bother to watch very many music videos…