Satan's Copier

So I don't hate my job. It's not the most exciting, but it certainly beats being jobless ANY day of the week.

Lately, however, we've been having some big problems with our copier.


*insert grunts and mumbling here*


You see - this copier gets used a lot. A LOT. A Lot. A lot.

And I'm not just talking like 50 copies here and there... try 21 copies of a 350+ page student handbook that needs to be copied within 2 work days.

Yeah.

That's about an average job for this puppy.


So it's no wonder that she's not the happiest of campers. And she's not exactly your olympic athlete level copier, either. She takes her SaWEET ol' time. That's for DANG sure.


Well today, she and I are in the midst of a battle. Oooh yeah. Lexi and I aren't on speaking terms, right now (unless you count the mumbling and exaggerated sighs, that is).

Because she's winning. And that's not a dadgum thing I can do about it.


If you want to know how bad it is, imagine the project size above jamming ever 30 - 55 seconds. No. This is not an exaggeration. I PROMISE you that.

Just ask Studly. He can vouch for me. In fact, he got so annoyed at my almost constantly putting him on hold that the 4th or 5th time in that brief 3 minutes phone call that I asked him to hold, he grunted "Can't you just let me go? This is ridiculous!" So I did.


IN-SA-NI-TY!!!


Know what's even better? I knew that this job would take a pretty big toll on ol' Lexi, so I tried to split it up a bit. It's taken me ALL DAY to just make 9 copies. 9. ONLY NINE!!!


I'm going crazy. It's freaking 6:42 and I'm STILL at work!!! Can you believe this? Neither can I. And I can't leave until it's done because Lexi won't cancel a job without having to be reset. Which means she won't work tomorrow. Or the next day. And then won't reconnect to the server when she's supposed to.


I'M SO MAAADDDD!!! I want to go HOME!! I want to EAT something. I want to read my book. I want to spend time with my husband.

But most importantly, I DON'T want to be HERE!



It's such a crappy machine that... get this... when any of the technicians are in the area, they just stop by. No kidding. They figure they may as well swing by because they know how much trouble we have with it. Isn't that ridiculous?!

We're being told that this machine "should" be swapped out for a new one, soon, but we've been told that for quite a while, now.


Well, at least that's one business that isn't effected by the recession.





Stupid Lexi.

Busy Busy Bee

I am 24 years old, now, and have never been stung by a bee... well... up until one night about 2 weeks ago, anyways. :-(

I got home from work a bit later than planned, and we rushed around to get everything together and get Austin ready so that we could head up to the Fort for the game. The plan was to get there early so that he could warm up with everyone and be ready for the start of the game.

Yeah.

That didn't exactly happen.

We got on the road (finally!), and got stuck in traffic. In order to avoid even just a little bit of stress, we turned down a back road to skip some of the traffic. We were almost at the end of the road when we realized that Studly didn't have his ID with him... didn't have any ID with him. So we turned around and headed back towards the house to get his ID.

When we'd finally got the ID, we turned back towards the Fort and took the back road again to avoid some of the traffic, and save a bit of sanity. Time was ticking and we were getting closer and closer to game time, yet we hadn't even made it on base!

We finally see the gate, turn in, and are quickly turned away. In our haste to make it to the field in time, we had turned in to the closest entrance... but didn't consider the fact that my car didn't have base stickers. Boo!

So around we went to get through inspection and hustle it on over to the field...

But wait...

What field are we on?

We drove in circles, already having missed the start of the game... the dog was whining, the husband was stressed, and this wife was going crazy!

We finally spotted the field and McStudly hopped out to get over there ASAP. I went on and parked, got the dog out, and got all of the "shtuff" together before beginning the long awkward hike to the bleachers.

At this point, I felt like I could at least take a deep breath. We'd made it. Studly's head was in the game, the dog was out of the car and no longer whining, and we were finally good to go for another couple of hours. With Austin in hand, we crossed through the tall grass area and were finishing our little trek across the grassy knoll, dotted with spots of dandelion weeds. All the while we were walking, I was thinking about how I'd have to check the pup for ticks, later, because of those long weeds we'd walked through.

oww...

Ouch...

OOOOOOUUUUUCCCCHHHHHH!!!!!!

WHAT THE HECK IS THAT?!?!

Oww OWW OOOOWWWWW!!!!!

In that split second between feeling a little prick on the arch of my foot, and getting my hand to that area to wipe away what I thought would be a stick or something that was poking me sharply, the pain intensified immensely!! It was only a split second! I mean... what the dilly?! What the HECK kind of devil stick is this?!

It wasn't a devil stick. Well, devil seems fitting, but definitely not a stick.

...stupid little bee...

In the time that it took to blink while turning my head down to my foot, and also while reaching my hand down to wipe away the devil stick (all in less than a second), my hand touched the spastic wings of the stupid little devil bee before my eyes did and I FLUNG it off my foot!

Totally freaked out, now!!

Well, I hobbled over to the bleachers, which were still a good 100ft away from where "it" happened, and stretched out the hand that was holding Austin's leash...

"Hi, umm... can you hold my dog?!" Poor stranger was nice enough, though. He took his leash and watched him while I examined my now gimpy foot.

Poor little lefty. *sniff sniff

Sure enough, I had been stung right on the arch of my foot. I'm still not really sure how it happened, but it did. And at that moment, all that mattered was knowing that the little devil bee that had stung innocent ol' me was now dead. (I promise I'm not a violent person... but I know bees don't have feelings, so I was perfectly fine with the fact that he died for what he did to my foot. And I did NOTHING to him! Grr... yes it was a boy. No sweet little girl bee would do such a thing for no reason!)

So I basically sat there staring at this odd looking target-esque devil marking on my foot trying desperately to breathe deeply and fight back the tears that were welling up behind my oversized brown sunglasses (so thankful I hadn't forgotten them!), all while McStudly had not-a-clue what had been going on.

I got out what I thought was the last bit of the stinger (found out later that I wasn't accurate in that assumption) and used the antibacterial hand sanitizer offered up by another sweet stranger to clean the war-wound and keep it from getting infected. I asked that poor girl so many questions... I had no idea what to do about a bee sting!!

Well, as you can tell I survived. I did make it and now my foot is on it's way to some semblance of "normal". I went to the doctor last week for a follow-up on some other things, and mentioned the bee sting to her. It was super itchy and driving me CRAZY, so she gave me some topical cream that would help drive out the rest of the stinger and relieve the itchy reminder of what that devil bee did to my poor little left foot.

I don't care how cute of a movie they made, those bees are evil little creatures!