Oh god, that was an annoying day. It started off badly, with the road blocked off on the way to work (the little man with the stop/go sign was totally favouring the other stream of traffic. The Designated Driver thought so too, I totally feared she was going to just rev up and run him over after we'd been waiting ten minutes or so). Which made us late for work, of course, but, once there, my computer wouldn't log me in - in fact, I couldn't log in on Absent Co-Worker's, either ('Absent Co-Worker' could, at present, represent a good 50% of the company, but that's a whole other story), which was, in some way, a relief: at least I knew I hadn't fucked up the hardware, but, on the other hand ... er, I do still work here, don't I? It took our off-site IT bunny until almost 11 to get me back on the system - I later discovered that I still can't print to our printer, only to the photocopier downstairs, but decided I'd had enough IT support for one day - time I spent wisely in opening the post, as 'Absent Co-Worker' currently also includes any form of receptionist, reading old copies of the TES and doing some archiving, which is one of my least-favourite aspects of the job. So tedious. And so ... how do you say 'beneath my abilities' without sounding arsey? You can't, but it is.
The agency representing the job I applied for yesterday left a voice mail on our home phone last night - comforting in one way (at least they didn't write me off, sight unseen), but scary in others (because change is scary). Then phoned me on my mobile, and then left a voice mail on it, and then emailed me. Ooooookay ... desperate for commission, are we, or what? But it was all academic, as it turned out, as, when I phoned them and explained, more-or-less truthfully, that the reason I want to move jobs is because being reliant on Designated Driver is a pain in the arse, they said the job was in the business park. "Is it with Blackwells, by any chance?" I asked, and yes, yes, it was. Now, I had an interview with Blackwells a couple of years ago, and I'm still slightly traumatised by the experience - you know how, generally, interviewers are all smiley and friendly and want to put you at your ease? Not this lot, it was like being interviewed by the SS, I almost walked out midway through (so only a bit like being interviewed by the SS, then). So I'm never going there again. So that was that. "We'll keep your CV on file," they said, but yeah, I used to say that to people back when I was interviewing for Nigel, and ... yeah.
But the thing that totally made the bottom fall out of my day was when I discovered that, in spite of all the newsgroups and message boards and alerts I'm signed up for, and in spite of the fact that, when I'd checked yesterday, Backstreets had been saying that tickets for Bruce's concert at the O2 were going on sale tomorrow ... yes, you guessed it, there'd been pre-selling on the O2 website, and I'd missed it. There are allegedly tickets becoming available through Ticketmaster at 9.00 tomorrow, but that will depend on being able to get on the site at 9.00, debatable in itself, and, after that, it's in the hands of the gods - whether I can get through, whether there'll even be any tickets left. So, after that, I really didn't have much heart for anything else.
A few things went right, although in the first case it was a narrow squeak: Trusty Typesetter had been producing proofs for us to go out to authors and proofreader TODAY!!!, and she just managed to get them to me in time for them to go in tonight's post; Designated Driver had, for reasons of her own, to leave work at 4.30 today, which (woe and alas, obviously) left me no choice but to leave early too. And, when I got in, I discovered that a very kind Snarkfester (particle_person, to be specific) had, in response to my query as to how to turn this blog into a LJ feed, not, as I was expecting, left me instructions as to how to do it, but had actually done it for me, which was utterly above and beyond, and very much appreciated.
There was even a little Sports Night fic over on LJ, including a drabble by a first-time writer, so, technically, life is not all bad.
But if I don't get a ticket for Bruce, I don't know how I shall bear it.
