Oh, all right. There were two good things that happened. But four bad things happened, so I feel completely wrecked. And I started my day at 5:45am with a vicious tension headache which only slowly disappeared over the course of the day despite four Advil. That didn't help.

Bad number one: A woman came in to get a Disney brochure. "May I give you my card?" I said brightly, always being on the alert for people who might like to buy travel. "You can call me for a quote."

"No," she said with a smirk, "I'll be honest with you, I already have a travel agent. I won't be calling."

"Then why are you taking one of our brochures?" I asked mildly after considering keeping my mouth shut for about 0.2 seconds. I know the brochures are free, but we have to order them and they're supposed to be for prospective clients, not freeloaders.

"Listen, you, I have a big mouth and I can make sure no one comes to your agency when I tell them you treat customers like that. I can take all the brochures I want," she said nastily, and slammed out the door.

The top of my head prickled with heat, I was so angry. I wanted to scream. And I was angry for a good hour afterwards. People are being incredibly hateful and selfish these days. I don't think the terrorist attacks have made people nicer at all. I have experienced so many more rude comments and aggressive behavior on the phone and in person since September 11th that it's obvious many people are sloughing off their social courtesies and reverting to a selfish, "watching out for number one" kind of attitude. It's ugly, and it's wearing me down because it happens on a daily basis.

But I did shrug it off eventually because her behavior was way out of line. She was wrong, and she knew it, and she snapped back rather than admit it was a skanky thing to do. Retail means dealing with all kinds of people, including skanks. Nothing to do with me.

Bad number two: Not so bad per se, but not good, either. Ruth asked if we would like to take some unpaid vacation days in December, completely voluntary and no harm done if we didn't. It's slow at the agency. Very slow. So I'm going to take one day off in each pay period. I'm happy to have some extra time, and we can afford for me to do it, and the agency saves a little money. The others are also taking a couple days off. But...eek.

Good number one: the Dean of the Business School wrote to say she has no problem with my request to substitute the advanced web graphics courses for the basic computer keyboard skills course to earn my Personal Development credits. She'll check with the Chair of the Curriculum Committee and confirm it next week. I'm going to learn Photoshop properly and get credit for it. I must say that is a personal development that will be extremely useful.

Bad number three: a friend from years ago, Terry Hughes, died of brain cancer yesterday.

Bad number four: While looking at my home email via the web it disappeared. Just like that! I had reviewed the list, gotten excited by all the mail, answered the first one, clicked send, and instead of the rest of the mail reappearing in the list there was zero. I flipped out, big time. I got on the phone to tech support after reassuring myself that I hadn't accidentally deleted everything. No luck. The tech support person said it was definitely no longer on the server, and yes, it did not appear to be a user error, but so sorry, my email was history.

Oh, my god. 27 messages, all from people I wanted to hear from, no spam at all, and it just spontaneously disappeared? I cried. Mock me if you want, but I actually cried at my desk. It was just one more undeserved, random badness. I tried to reach John a million or so times but he was not near a phone for about half an hour.

Good number two: I finally reached him at home. He was very sympathetic. And just a little puzzled, but I kept talking about how horrible my day was. He told me how horrible his day was. Some guy in an SUV got mad at him on the highway and deliberately pulled in front of him, then put on the brakes so hard he skidded. Talk about unfair, undeserved, random badness! John could have been seriously hurt. We spoke some more, then I hung up to finish my work for the day, what little there was.

No, really, this is a good thing that happened. Because John called back a few minutes later to tell me he remembered why he was puzzled. He'd launched my email from home to test a forwarding process I'd asked him to set up. He happened to have done that while I was looking at it from work. I have it set up to delete from the server once it's been downloaded onto my hard drive. My email was saved!

I was so relieved I cried. Yes, it was that sort of day. Really rotten, with a few bright spots, but mostly just one piece of tough luck after another. I went to the gym for the first time in November and ran for 20 minutes on the treadmill. I think I feel better. I can't tell.

Is it Friday yet? I'm really ready for today to be over.

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