I never would have considered myself to be a superstitious kind of person, and did not change on Friday the 14th. Yes, the 14th.
My alarm didn't wake me for work which is a rare, but not-unheard-of, occurrence. Needless to say my boss wasn't pleased because I was supposed to present the new corporate budget to the higher-ups that morning, something I slept through, and made my boss look foolish as he "umm-and-ahh"'d throughout the entire presentation he didn't know he needed to prepare for.
As I scrambled into work, throwing my bag and tea on my desk, I suddenly realized how stupid it was to throw a cup of tea onto a desk and then spent the next fifteen minutes mopping up tea-soaked reports and files. It was apparent that I was meant to go through the rest of the day on a caffeine withdrawal. Probably because I got some extra Z's.
With that crisis averted, I logged onto my work station and gave an inward groan to see an e-mail from my boss kindly requesting a short, casual meeting when I receive the message. Well, his actual words were "Your ass, my office, NOW!!" I suppose he missed the grammar class explaining the proper use of exclamation marks, but I wasn't going to correct him. It sounded as though he was sans caffeine as well.
After receiving my pink slip, I slinked back to my desk and filed it with the action plans I had received. I stopped asking why action plans were on yellow carbon paper a few months ago. Apparently it only gets you another. Rejecting the thought to go back and ask why pink slips are pink, I opened up the game of Solitaire I began the night before just before I left work and decided it deserved completion since I wouldn't be seeing my work computer anymore after today. I quickly ran out of moves and lost the game. No fireworks for me.
Then Jack, the office smartass, decided now seemed to be the most appropriate time to inform me of the pros and cons of tea-soaked dress shirts and trousers and much to my surprise, there are actually more pros than cons. At least something was going right today. I didn't appreciate it when he told me he was being sarcastic and that it was probably for the best of the company, or any company for that matter, that I no longer occupied a slot on their payroll.
Me, being the silver-lining type of guy, decided to look on the bright side of things - early weekend! On my way home, after accidently cracking my rear-view mirror with a pen (I've never been a fan of spiders), driving under the fireman's ladder as I left the parking lot (I accidently left my paper-mache goldfish too close to the outlet again), and running over a black cat (my squirrel friends are safe once again), I stopped at the drive-through for a tea and got rear-ended by a sobbing woman behind me, adding another coat of light-tan colour to my apparently under-coloured shirt.
I got out of the car to inspect the damage just as she whipped her bawling infant baby into my arms and ran in the opposite direction. Confused, I placed the child on top of my car and jotted down her license plate for insurance purposes and called the cops. The noise was overwhelming at that point so I left my information with the drive-through girl, who looked incredibly confused at the cinematic display that was happening in front of her and decided to write today off as a glass-of-wine-then-to-bed sort of day.
As I entered my house, I couldn't help feeling as though I were forgetting something, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Then it hit me: I left that damn goldfish in the corner of my office by the electrical outlet, but was reminded by nothing in particular that the firemen were taking care of that, so I could just relax. After pouring myself a glass of wine, I opened up the newspaper to find myself another job before I took a rare, treasured nap at noon.
