8.24.2005

A Wonderful Moment

So my work day was less than perfect. Having stayed up late with the Greeks bidding our friend SJ goodbye at her pad, I knew that spelled trouble for me at work. I was already behind on some jobs due to some maintenance on my machine. I planned on making an early start this morning in order to get a head start on the work. I managed to get there a mere ten minutes early. I started working as soon as I could, and found that the maintenance on my machine needed one more tweak to finish half of the most urgent jobs that I had (I apologize for the ambiguity of my descriptions... the specifics would be boring and irrelevant, except to perhaps Mistah A.) So having accomplished two half jobs, with a net result of zero effective accomplishment, my computer's machine begins to go fluky. At this time I am already getting annoyed at my day so far. The computer freezes, meaning that I have to reboot it and resetting a bunch of annoying stuff on the machine. Done with that I am feeling rushed, knowing that still I had done pretty much nothing for the day. That's when I crashed the machine. Somehow I managed to shatter the glass plate I was working on. It was loud, somewhat scary, and stupid! I nearly had it at that point, giving some crude exclamation and throwing my glasses in some uninhabited direction. The day got "less bad" from then on out. I jabbed my left index finger with a razor, cracked another plate of glass, and was told by a coworker that it would have been a good idea for me to stay in bed all day. So there I was: early afternoon, drinking some coffee, wanting mom to give me a hug, feeling sorry for myself. I thought of one of Mistah A.'s blog posts about a wonderful day that he had a month or so ago. At that point, I didn't need a perfect day, just a "wonderful" moment. I started thinking, hoping, and praying for some wonderful moment to happen to me. I tried to think of such moments in my life already, and differentiating them with just "fun times" (e.g. the night before). It was now the normal time for me to leave, but I stayed longer to catch up on my work. I wanted to get out. I really wanted to drive as that often settles me down and gets my mind where it should be. But I was working late. I left a couple hours later, not looking for anything wonderful, but hoping intensely for it. It was raining as I left. The rain is good, but not wonderful. I got in my truck. It made me feel a bit better. I drove to the end of the street and I saw it. A rainbow right in the sky in front of me. I never cared for rainbows, but this time it was different. I gazed at it for a while and continued on. I took a longish route homeward (perhaps hoping to repeat Mistah A.'s experience doing so) where I saw it again, perhaps the most perfect rainbow I had ever seen. It was to my right brightening up some darker clouds. To my left the sky was blue with picturesque clouds floating. My mind went back over the day, but this time it skipped all the annoying junk that I had been focusing on. It remembered the carefree drive to work. It remembered the compliments I received over lunch from the company's CEO, or CFO, or whoever the guy is. It remembered the fried cheese sticks and pizza that was given to me by a coworker too full to finish it. It remembered an informative conversation with another friendly worker. And that wonderful moment made the day alright.