Rant #1,578: Wonderful Frustration Time

Merry Christmas, and I am glad to be back.

Yes, I could have used another day off, but it's not meant to be.

Today, I trudge onto work, looking forward to a short week and New Year's.

This time off was good, but it was also a very frustrating time for me.

I should have known ...

First off, with all my Rants about relatives sending Christmas cards and "Season's Greetings" cards to my family, yes, we did get one of these sent by close relatives as the time off began.

We saw them at a party on Christmas Eve, and I thanked them for the card, but I also said to them, "Next time, make it a Hanukkah card." They were apologetic, and I said to them that I know their heart was in the right place ... but c'mon, this card was from a relative that is thisclose to us.

I expect a Hanukkah card next year. If you cannot accommodate what my family believes in, don't send anything, and another group that is thisclose to us doesn't send us any cards for the holidays.

So be it.

As you know, my car was sideswiped just before Christmas, sort of an evil holiday gift to my family and I.

Well, I went about fixing it up, myself, by purchasing paint to cover it up.

My intentions were right, and I purchased a paint pen online to do just that.

The pen came in about 24 hours, and I was looking forward to doing the touch-up work once the weather wasn't so damp.

Finally, on Saturday, I decided to do just that.

I proceeded to use the pen, but I noticed that it simply did not have enough "oomph" in it to do the job. You can't paint broad strokes with the pen, just use it to spot, and it simply would not cover a scratch that is about three or four inches in length.

So I went to my local car supply store, and to make a long story short, they did not have the exact color that I needed, and they sent me to a car paint specialist.

I could not even find the place at first--it has an address on a main road by me but is actually situated off the road--and when I found it, I walked up to the store's door, only to see that the store was closed for the entire Christmas weekend and would reopen on Monday.

I got so frustrated that I went to the local burger place and bought myself lunch--after wasting more than two hours on this paint thing.

Then yesterday, I decided to use, for the first time, the Blu-ray player that I bought for my family for the holidays. It is a "smart" player, which means it has the capacity to hook up to the Internet and access various apps.

I clicked on an app, and it said I had no Internet connection ... and for the next two hours, I tried to figure this whole thing out.

I retyped in the code, did other troubleshooting measures, but the thing would not hook up to the Internet.

Finally, I called my Internet provider, and after more than a half hour waiting for someone to speak to me, I explained the problem to the person, and he told me flat out that the router we have is out of date, and that I would need a new router to be able to hook this device up to the Internet.

The device is being sent to me, free of charge, and I am going to have to hook it up later this week, something I am looking forward to like getting a disease.

I was on the phone with him for five minutes tops.

So I wasted all of this time during my time off, leading to nothing on several accounts.

And now I have to go back to work yet.

Life isn't fair, and these things certainly weren't fair to me, but I have to look on the bright side.

Right before the holiday, I had the results of my physical, and I came out with flying colors.

All the indicators were good, and actually, things such as my cholesterol had gone way down from the prior exam.

So I have my health, knock wood, but I guess my frustration level is through the roof.

If only a slight change in habit could change that ... .