Christmas Music Irony

"Have yourself a merry little Christmas, hear the music play... From now on our troubles will be far away..."

Right.

My morning went something like this: Got to bed at 2AM, after reconfiguring the cables in our home from satellite TV to cable, and getting everything ready for the cable guy to install the digital cable today (should be the easiest job he's ever had. He walks in, sees two cables labeled "to wall" and "to TV". He plugs it in, turns it on, and voila! He's done.)

I should have gotten up at 5:30AM, but I had mistakenly switched my alarm off last night instead of my wife's, so she wakes me up at about 7:30.

I walk outside to the sound of my car running. Apparently, my car's security system has a "cold start" function to it, where when it reaches a certain temperature, it will start up. I live in a freakishly cold place, so my guess is, that poor car was probably starting up all night. Burning fuel.

You can see where this is leading, can't you? Have you ever seen someone's car stall in an intersection, and thought "Wow, glad that isn't me!" Today, that was me.

My wife, who hadn't slept since 2AM, graciously drove down to where I was stranded, bringing the gas can with her.

So, getting to work a mere two and a half hours late seems like only the beginning of an absolutely wonderful day, and I do say that with just an edge of sarcasm in my voice.

I walk into the office, and there is a stack of roughly 300 Christmas cards I need to sign and pass on to the next unlucky engineer, so that they can be sent out in the next week.

Grandma calls up and says she's feeling a bit under the weather, so Thanksgiving dinner at her place is kind of in limbo right now. And the day is still young. I don't dare ask what else can go wrong, or say that things can only get better from here; I can feel fate lurking around, waiting to be tempted.