One of Those Days

Ever have a day where your best laid plans don't seem to occur like you planned?  Or even occur at all for that matter?

Today was one of those days.  It started out just fine.  Got up, helped Steve get around his things for staying at the station, had breakfast, took the dog out, did my devotions.  A normal morning.  I even buzzed Steve's hair quick.  Productive I'd say.  

Then, I went to turn on the computer.  I had in mind to look up and print out some coupons for my grocery list for the week.  I wanted to compare ads for the various stores around here so I could get the best deals for the things on my list.  So I opened up our "spare" laptop, turned it on and an error message came up.  It wouldn't start.  I hit one of the keys for more info, and it said "hard-disk not found."

My thought process went from complete shock and wonder at how in the world this could have happened to a computer just sitting on the end table all night...to a flashback of the previous night's incident...and I knew in an instant how it happened.  See, as I was going to put the laptop on said table, the power cord got stuck in the couch.  Somehow the momentum from me standing up and the cord being stuck caused the computer to slide from my hands down towards the floor.  I tried to catch it, and proceeded to have it sort of land in my hands again before completely hitting the carpeted floor.  It only really fell from about a foot above the ground, and therefore I thought nothing of the ordeal.

Until this morning, when the computer wouldn't turn on and the message informed me there was no hard drive available to read.  BUMMER!  So my whole plan didn't happen today.  I tried to complete the task on my laptop, but forgot it doesn't have the capacity to install Adobe Reader, therefore I can't read PDF's.  Which is the method our grocery store uses to display it's weekly ad online.  Bummer again!  Plus, my whole meal plan for the rest of the month was on disabled computer (yes, I'm crazy organized with that for some reason), and I hadn't saved it to a USB drive yet. Grrr...I was a little frustrated with the whole thing.

But then, I realized that there wasn't a ton of stuff on the broken laptop that wasn't on one of our other computers or external hard drive because we had really just started using it in the last 2 weeks.  Plus Steve thinks maybe the hard drive just got jarred loose a bit, and may not be completely nonfunctional because it passed all the diagnostic tests that Dell had set up to run for cases like that.  Also, right when Steve left for bootcamp, we ordered a new hard drive for my new "used" laptop which cost about 40 bucks.  So even if the hard drive is damaged, hopefully we can find another cheap one to install.

The day did get better because this afternoon I was visited by the "welcome committee chairperson."  (I don't really know her title, just her name which is Arlene.)  She called me yesterday to set up a time to bring the welcome package over and go through it with me.  I figured it would be a couple coupons for some of the businesses in town, but probably not any that we'd use.  

WAS I EVER WRONG!  This package was loaded with $5-20 off meals, tickets, products, etc from about 10-15 restaurants/events/stores.  A free consult/exam with a chiropractor, $1 dental exam/xray, free oil change, free pizza,  2-month free subscription to the newspaper, free membership to our library "Friends" club which basically informs one of the activities at the library and gives priority to members at the annual book sale, and even a free pre-planning meeting with the local funeral home.  We got pens, a coffee mug, toothbrush, pill box, magnets and restaurant menus without having to go anywhere.  

I like this city even more now!  And Arlene offered advice on some of her favorite restaurants, shops and other businesses in town.  Which was all very helpful for me!  She even mentioned some other things to do besides fish and hunt (which were the recommendations from the guys at the station ha ha!)

So it's been one of those days where my plans totally got thrown out the window.  But, plans are meant to change...if I've learned anything in the past 2.5 years of marriage, it's that.  And the fact that I don't have to be frustrated about plans not working, because if I just go with the flow, in the end it will all be fine.  And today showed that fact to be true once again.