Taking the night off

I showed up at the newspaper about 6:50 p.m., prepared to spend the evening writing obits and editing copy.

What I was not prepared to do was fuck around with the broken mouse that was connected to my machine last night.

It all started the other night when the page designer's mouse freaked out. He had serious work to do, so in my absence, he swapped it out for the one on my machine.

I tried to use it last night, but it kept locking up and forcing me to reboot the computer. So the page designer swapped it with one of the reporters' machines and I was able to write all eight obits and edit all of the stories in the Ready to Edit folder. The reporter came in and discovered what had been done. I think she just went to another desk and worked the rest of the evening. The page designer said he would scrounge up a replacement mouse when he got to work today.

So when I arrived at the office this evening and moved the mouse around to wake up the sleeping monitor, nothing happened. After several attempts, I rebooted the computer and started to work on the five obits waiting to be written. And the mouse promptly froze.

I asked anybody who might be listening if I had the bad mouse again. The reporter gave me a sheepish grin and I concluded she had put it back onto my computer.

I've been on the run all day, working on wedding photos, juggling finances, tracking down medical records and struggling with the zillion tasks associated with getting our house ready to sell. I was tired and I was in absolutely no mood to be fucked with or to search the building for a functioning mouse. After all, we got new computers and new software at the first of the year. This should not be an issue.

So I announced I was not going to try to work with broken equipment and walked out.

My dogs were very happy to see me and I took them for a walk in the park at dusk to make up for ignoring them most of the day.

I'll go back tomorrow evening and, if I have a fully functional computer, I'll stay. If not, well, I have plenty of packing to do.