Mondays are a very bad word

"But is this not a Tuesday post?" you ask.
"Yes. Sorta." answers I.

You see, I work in the twilight blurry spaces between the definitions of actual "days" as normal people call them. I make up my own hours of sleep and waking- nature be darned. With such a chaotic schedule, you think Monday’s bad fortune would not be able to find me. You'd be wrong.

I did give it the shake for 2 weeks, I will tell you that. But I couldn't run forever. Shortly after buzzing around and causing general Mondayness for the Green Dragon Rider, Mday flew its horrid destructive path to me. Heres how it went down.

Actual Monday day: A very good experience. It buttered me up like a fool. I went to the Marzolfs and played the cash flow game, Jessica H. came over and joined us, I had a crazy multi layer ice-cream cake desert that Lyndsi had constructed- twas beautiful. Twas bliss- nay, twas ignorance my good friends.

I should have caught on that something was up. Its obvious now- Monday was laying it on so thick it was ridiculous. How thick? How bout this: After leaving the Marzolfs, I actually heard none other then Mute Math ON THE RADIO. It was on the indiest of indie stations, 91.5 FM, and it was crystal clear. I got to hear most of the track "Noticed", a song among my favorites of all time, on the radio. It was good. It was too good.

But the even Monday grew tired of the sickening sweetness. I got home at 10:00 ish. So- think about this- is it possible for me to go to bed at 10:00 and wake up at 12:20? What is even the point? Monday decided to show me the futility. Basically, I layed in my bed waiting for it to be midnight:twenty. I got up. I read some online comics. I went back to bed, and waited again. The second the alarm beeped I snapped up and turned it off. Enough of this, I thought to myself, lets stop pretending to sleep and get to work already.

I got up and turned the coffee on for my folks and myself. I thought it a nice thing to do. I waited. It wasn't coming out. I looked at the time. It was 12:27. That coffee better start coming out of that darn whole soon, or I'm not going to get any. 12:29. I look behind the machine. Oh RIIIGHT... its unplugged.

Right before the coffee was done brewing, I remembered that I wanted to email myself a file at work. I ran down stairs and did the deed. When I came back up, it was about 12:37ish. Dad had risen. That was good. I didn't want to have to wake him- it was nice enough of him already to wake up and drive me to my work at 1am. I poured my coffee and we were out the door by 12:40. Perfect! I thought to myself, Today is going PERFECT.

Somewhere in a dark corner, Monday laughed at me. But it didn't protest my bliss. It knew that my fall was soon. It knew I wouldn't be laughing then.

We arrive at the door of [AwesomeCo].

"Love you dad!" I say as I give him a hug goodbye, "Thanks for driving me."
"No problem. Goodnight!" he answers, and climbs into the big red Ark. Just before he closes the door, I fall to the ground, struck to the core by a horrible epiphany.

"Nooooooooooo......" I whimper.
"What?" My dad asks, but then answers his own question before I break the news. "Let me guess- I.D. Badge?"
"Yeh-heh-hesss..."I fane cry. "MaaAAN!!"
"You'll have to have someone else let you in now; its too late to get back."

I knew he was right. I pulled out my PDA, and he through me his cell phone. I started digging through the numbers. I found my desk phone. I called it. I then got the number for the lobby and called it. As I was making this call, I caught the eye of one of my co-workers. He saw me and made a strange face, then nodded and started walking my way. I hung up the phone, and told my dad I was good. He bid his farewells once more, and drove off into the distance.

Big D., the co-worker who opened the door for me, answered graciously my apologies. "Everyone does it once or twice." He buzzed me through the few doors I need to get through to get to my desk. I felt so lame.

Our business has a laid back, friendly atmosphere. But that doesn't mean we take security lightly. Its an important company, and in every zone of the building you have to buzz to get in. You can leave, but you can't get back in without using your I.D. Badge. I can't go to the bathrooms and comeback with out using my card. I had to sheepishly use my co-workers once or twice. I combined trips.

Then I get on my computer and start checking through my email. A subject caught my eye and hung on the screen ominously. That CAN'T be for today... I thought to myself. It was.

Apparently, my co-worker T., the one that shares my shift, wasn't coming in today. Car trouble. What’s the big deal you may ask? Oh, nothing much. Only that he was GIVING ME A RIDE HOME.

So here I was. No ride home, and no I.D. Badge to let me roam around freely in the building.

Not that I had many roaming minutes anyway. Today everything happened at once. One of our most reliable servers didn't get its files on time. We waited till they were supposed to be in, then we got on the phones to call the company. The contact field in the call up sheet was blank. We had never had to call this company for this file- it usually completed first, so no one really knew off the top of their head the number or contact name. D. looked for a long time and couldn't find it. He decided he'd have to wake up one of our guys on call. But first he went outside to take a smoke. When he left, I opened several search windows and a few internal web sites. In 6 minutes, I found numbers and contacts for the company in another document. When he came back, I casually showed him the list. "Where'd you get this?" he asked. I told him. He kept looking at it and shrugged his shoulders. "Well, operations... lets call them. Why not." So he called them. I overheard his conversations while I sat and logged down some other server jobs. He got someone, but no one was sure they were the contact he wanted. He had to keep spelling out the file name. "Yes, you send us this file." he kept saying. "Yes, normally- every day, 2am. This is the first time its not been here." They'd say they’d call him back.

Every time they'd call him back, it would be another person, but they would ask about the file name and not know if they handled it. It was frustrating D., I could tell. Finally a big higher-up called him back and asked him what was going on. He explained it, and the guy knew what it was. "Okay, thanks. We'll try to get it out to you... otherwise...well, I guess we'll just do with out [service name] today...".

He called us back later saying he "Thought he might have found it." D and I joked that perhaps it was under the bed all this time. The file was supposed to be in at 2. It came in at 6:50something.

That was just one of the issues today. D was working the phones much harder then I was with a few other companies that were having issues. Something confused us because our servers processed a file earlier then we thought possible. The lightened holiday schedule apparently caused the mainframe to come back up faster then normal to process the files, and it took them. Our monitoring software wasn't even watching till 8, and it had already finished at 7:08. This little issue caused much confusion.

By 8, things were back on course. The late late file was finally processed and that basically finished what I had to do. My friend and fellow brother in the Lord, R., gave me a ride home- even though he was going the other way. So it all worked out. And now- I'm going to make some calls and lay my head to sleep.

For I have faced Monday, and I have overcome. Now I must rest.