I had decided to take the latest train going back home Sunday night. It's the most direct route (only one transfer bus) and the nicest ride, even if the earliest you can get in is 11. However, this turned out to be a big mistake.

At 9:30, they said that the engine on the train had died WAY far down the line and they'd had to tug it somewhere and replace it with a freight engine, which was much slower and kept losing time. It'll be in oh, 11-11:15 p.m. We temporarily went home, and I called Mom to fill her in, and she promptly went ballistic and yelled at me that I should have gone home on Saturday like she told me to and at the very least, have gone home on the earlier train, that I always leave things to the last minute, I shouldn't have been staying there when Dave's mother was sick anyway, yada yada yada.

At 10:45, we went back only to hear the new estimate was 11:30-11:45. At which point Dave pretty much had to leave, which I was bummed about. At 11:30, they moved the estimate to 11:50-11:55, which turned out to be correct.

From that point, all went well and relatively timely... UNTIL we hit a piece of track that was being worked on. Forty minutes of sitting around, plus they oh-so-nicely turned on the air conditioning. Because even at 1:30 a.m. in January, we've got tropical weather in California, apparently.

We didn't get in until 2 a.m. I called Heather for a ride, but by then she'd fallen asleep (and turned off the ringer on her phone because her ex is on a crazy bent and kept calling), so I ended up hiking home dragging my luggage. Got home at 3 a.m. and felt like ass, but figured at that point it was way too late to go to bed. By the time I actually fell asleep, I'd have to get up for work. Ugh. I put on my clothes for the next day and lay on my bed in a stupor for four hours.

And I get to do this on Tuesday night when Hill comes in too! Whee!

And then there was the mail- I was supposed to be getting some packages and bills and Netflix in the mail, and none of it was here. I was rather puzzled, but forgot to ask Heather about this.

While at work today, I was e-mailing with Jackie, and she said "oh, I mailed you your present, but you have to sign for it." I nearly screamed right then and there, and fortunately restrained myself from saying more than, "Uh, nobody here to sign for anything!"

Tonight Heather and I went out for Chinese and she told me that we had gotten mail, but they'd held it for us and she had my stuff in my car. Except for, well, the package that has to be signed for. Hopefully she can drive me out there on Wednesday to actually get it. And I got the rest of the stuff I was needing, so yay!

I found it very funny that while catching up on my NPR listening at work, I found this, Another Lousy Day. Once upon a time, this writer found some old journal entries and scrapbooks of a woman writing in the 60's or so. He got hooked on reading her diary and finding out all about this woman. He ended up creating a one-man play about the experience of trying to track her down.

And this quote stuck with me: "I didn't know her name, but one thing was clear: She had a lot of lousy days."

Oh yes, I do relate. Her journal is filled with plenty of the bitching, and the lousy days, and her being furious with people, and all the stresses of life. (Interspersed with comments about food and clothes and movies, anyway.) The funny thing is that at the end, he meets a friend of the author, Dolores, who by now has died. He tells her that he'd shared the diary with a lot of people and they all told him Dolores sounded very depressed and Prozac would have done her a world of good. The friend was all, oh, she was quite the partier and had a great time. But you probably wouldn't know that from the journal alone, eh?

I suppose I relate all too well. Most of the time I'm most motivated to journal when I've got some terrible, horrible yet funny story to tell, the day's latest disaster, whatever chaos attracted of late. I don't have much in the way of perky and cheerful down on paper.

I guess you end up seeing a smaller picture in some respects and a greater one in others, eh?

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