Musing on a Monday

So ... I was fed up with waiting for Wal-Mart to actually have my photos ready when they said they were going to have them ready (easiest remedy: have one-hour developing, instead of sending the bloody film out for developing), and I decided that I was, instead, going to support the local economy and take my film to one of our small-business developing stores ...

And so, at 3-ish on Friday, I dropped off my film downtown, with an appointment to come pick up my photos on Saturday. But not at opening time, because he wouldn't have them ready by then. I should come by sometime after noon. And I couldn't get them on CD, because his scanner was broken, and yeah, he really needs to get that fixed ...

So on Saturday, after noon, I went to go pick up my photos ... Oh, yeah, he didn't get those printed. His printer was broken. Story of his life, something's always broken. It would be sometime Monday afternoon before he could get them printed. I wanted to ask -- and should have asked -- to just get my film back and have it developed somewhere else.

Today, I went down to pick up my photos -- four days after I had dropped them off at a store that advertises one-hour developing -- and I was charged for one-hour developing. The guy was in the back room and made his associate handle the sale, and when I asked if there was a discount for the photos being two days late, she shouted the question back to him, which got a loudly shouted "NO!" in reply.

I paid the $13 for one envelope of double prints ... but I think I'm sticking with the Evil Wal-Mart Empire for my photo developing.

Since I wasn't able to get them on CD, either, it will take a little bit of time before I'm able to upload them ... You'll just have to believe me when I tell you that Christmas was merry, I bowled in the New Year, and I have my annual pictures with Santa.

At work, our server crashed last week, taking our most recent files with it ... among them, some files for a weekly series that I had spent 5 hours downloading ... gone. All gone. Starting over from scratch ...

I am soothed, however, by the fact that Safeway still had the Millstone peppermint coffee for sale, and that is calming me for the moment. That and a bag of carrots. I can chomp agitatedly on the carrots ...

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Today, I am listening to Ralph Vaughan Williams' "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis," "Fantasia on Greensleeves," "Seventeen Come Sunday" and "The Lark Ascending." Good stuff.