And it really is. Or at least on a small scale. Saturday is "I should have known" Day, though most of the time everything balances out in time for the afternoon. This Saturday was a pretty good example.
So really, Saturday just adheres to a strict policy of cause and effect, and therefore my story begins on Friday. Fridays are the days that I used to spend frantically trying to complete a worksheet unit for my Saturday morning students (who don't appreciate it so much, by the way) so that I could get it printed by 4pm, when I have to head back to class with Russ and Dave. Ever since I found out though that the printer opens at 7:30 in the morning, I've been putting off the work until the evening so that I can relax a bit in the afternoon and just wake up early (which I tend to do anyways) to get everything done. This worked fine for like one or two weeks, until one recent weekend where the machine kept choking or something and I wound up having to take a cab to make it to school on time (and the cab woman would not give me change for a 50, even though she had it, and insisted on looking in a gas station for change when they were either closed or didn't have it either and in this manner stalled me even further). My thing is that I like to take the bus cuz it saves money and I like to take it early because I don't like walking through a fog of recessing #1 school students to get to my classroom.
Anyways, last Friday, I was tootally not in the mood to spend my afternoon making this worksheet. I had some lunch, walked around a bit, and came home with the intention of napping for a while before getting started on it... but then I decided that maybe I wanted some lychees. I figured I could get some fruit and get in some brief conversation with the fruit guy and thereby put myself in a good mood to do work. The brief conversation became kind of an hour-long conversation, give or take, and by the time I got back I was even more tired and much closer to classtime. I ended up sort of not doing anything productive in the meantime and then left.
Putting the worksheet together at night normally isn't a problem for me either. I can stay up to do work if I have to, and really a lot of the worksheet is pretty automatic once I get the main idea set down. So this was not a big deal, nor was it out of the ordinary.
After class, I hung out with Dave and Russ as per usual. We often eat dinner together since it used to be we all had class relatively soon after, but recently it's just been a few snacks at some picnic tables near a bunch of vendors. By the time Dave and I got back (this particular class takes place in my neighborhood), Mrs. Liu and some of the parents were just standing around outside my apartment. After a brief chat, I headed in, BUT stopped short when I saw Tara's bike sitting there. I found that I could go no further. The whole idea of writing this thing with the constant distraction of her mere presence was simply too much. SO, I decided to go cool off in the little park area. I sat for a while... sent Alice some text messages describing my plight, and eventually pulled out my notebook and sketched out my worksheet idea. Eventually Alice texted me back and told me to go over to her place instead. So I walked on over, rested my head briefly, ate what amounted to a 2nd dinner, and at last the 2 of us came home. At that point I just wanted to shower and die, so I did just that. I didn't feel like wasting a bunch of time sitting around staring at Word, when I knew that I could get up early and have a nice serene work atmosphere all to myself. That's just what I did.
Saturday dawned. I arose as planned, and finished everything on time. I figured that the latest I should be headed to the printer was about 8:15, to allow for any copier troubles that could come up. Everything went all right UNTIL I couldn't find my USB drive. Couldn't find it anywhere. Still can't find it, as a matter of fact, which ain't good but whatever. I did, however, know the location of my 256k drive which I hadn't used in months because it was full. I decided to just delete some of the stuff for now.
I don't know if I was just dazed or what, but when my anti-virus/spyware monitor suddenly started asking me if Windows Help should be allowed to alter system information and access the internet, I just kept clicking allow. I remember thinking "this doesn't seem right... oh well!" Then I got the BSOD for the first time in ages and my computer shut off. Cue storm of cuss words and panic attack.
I restarted my system, and it all came back ok, at which point I was prompted again about Windows Help. I'm not sure why it said Windows Help, but the actual program in question was one RECYCLER.exe, which turned out to be a trojan/smashbot or stashbot or slashbot or something. I got sooo pissed. I'm pretty sure I got this virus from a computer at the #1 school last semester. But anyway, I couldn't access the drive at all, so I burned the files to CD to drop off at the printer so that I could come home and work this out while it was all getting done. I threw on a random outfit (jeans/t-shirt affair) and ran downstairs. When I got there, we couldn't get their CD drive open. When it opened, it couldn't read the data. SO. I had to run back.
By this time, Tara had gotten up and was getting ready to leave. Alice got up too, though I guess just to visit the bathroom. I waylaid her and begged her for her usb disk. She gave me her usb hub. We spent a moment trying to clarify this and finally I got a working disk with my files to the printer. While I was there they also killed the virus on my USB (though it involved deleting everything). At this point I had enough foresight to ask whether or not I should go make some change to pay for the printing. I did have to, so I went to the convenience store and bought random crap.
I got out at 9:15 wide awake with enough adrenaline in my system to last the rest of the day. At the end of it all, I decided to just take the bus anyway just to sort of reclaim my morning. I got to class exactly at 10.
Afterwards I went for a soothing coffee/student journal reading session and the rest of the day went all right.
So anyways, I'm not complaining, since everything worked out in the end, but it's just kind of a funny story to me. By the way, I fiddled a bit with the registry and it seems like my virus problems are solved...
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