random thoughts – Day 1,802 – (Friday) – frustrating friday

French toast fritter.

The level of frustration was elevated and the day did not have the usual "hooray, it's Friday" feel to it. It wasn’t anything major, just a lot of smaller things. Even a delicious French toast fritter couldn't alleviate it. 

There were a couple of ad requests that were not only short-notice, but also had incomplete information. Listen, if you are asking for an ad to be written, designed, reviewed, and delivered to an outside organization in as few as three business days, the least you could do is include the organization’s correct, full name. Also, don’t list “we can discuss” in the description field of the request form. No, we won’t be discussing it. The fill in the blanks project request form was designed specifically to gather the necessary information and minimize discussions and delays. Sheesh.

So, that is how the day kicked off and it just repeated all day. It was hard typing all day with one hand. For a while, I couldn’t access the Internet to research the correct organization and/or event names from the incomplete ad requests. Project notifications weren’t coming through. I was cold. See, nothing major, just multiple low-level frustrations building up like the layers of ice outside.

Then, suddenly, thankfully, the day was over.

Not connected. Not entertained.

I immediately headed to the living room for some Netflix time. Unfortunately, an hour into watching a show, it disappeared and the TV screen went black. No fanfare. No weird noises outside like an accident or broken pole. Just nothing.

After consulting the mostly useless Xfinity app, entering the error code and running the troubleshooter, restarting the TV and cable box, suffering through the lengthy restart process and a screen message that I was being connected to my entertainment experience (big lie), there was still no reception. I was definitely having an experience and it was definitely not entertaining. A screen error message suggested checking a specific website which claimed there are no outages, then, in the “report outage” option, noted the servers were experiencing a high volume of traffic.

And that is an hour I’ll never get back. I could have been reading. Sleeping. Eating. Shopping online for remedies for the new headache that was blossoming. Doomscrolling on my phone or laptop. Anything at all besides playing amateur cable detective and being annoyed and frustrated. Oh, well. At least it was on theme for the day. And tomorrow is Saturday.