I woke up Saturday morning around 8:00a and finished reading my book, Artemis Fowl, while lying in bed. Excellent book, and it put me in a reasonably good mood.

Around 9:00a or so, I decided it was time to call Sony regarding my Playstation 2 issues. I steeled myself for a long fight on the phone, getting ready to sit on hold and be transferred from person to person while they tried to stall me long enough to give up. I prepared my soul for the endless ridiculous troubleshooting steps that they’d send me through repeatedly. Then I dialed.

I didn’t wait on hold at all. I got straight through to a technician, Michael. Michael asked me a couple of fairly simple questions regarding the problem I was seeing and the steps I’d already taken to solve it. After around three minutes of answering questions, he offered me a “waived fee” (reads: free!) repair. No fight, no hassle, no hold time, no transfers.

Holy shit.

He told me he’d email me the information to send in with my PS2 to the repair facility. I thanked him and hung up. Sure enough, the info I needed was in my inbox this morning. If this all goes well, I’m going to fill out a positive feedback form for these guys. That just rocks.

Got my chores done reasonably quickly and had some time to just sit down and relax. Watched a little TV. That sort of thing. Honestly, I don’t remember a lot of what went on because I was feeling generally good and overall just relaxed.

Saturday night Jenn and I went to see Elf. That movie was too funny. I love Will Ferrell anyway, but in this he was too much. I laughed totally hard and felt completely justified in spending my $8 to see it. I’ll be getting it when it comes out on DVD and will add it to my standard holiday rotation.

Sunday…

Ugh.

I don’t have a lot of Good Days, so I revelled in Saturday’s glory. Everything about Saturday rocked. I was in a good mood all day long, things generally went my way, I didn’t have to stress about things or feel like I needed to fight people to get things done. It was great.

Sunday, on the other hand, I could probably have done without. I ended up going to the mall to the local Cost Plus World Market to pick up some spices I wasn’t able to get at the grocery store. Of course, they were understaffed at the checkout line and I got behind two people buying 20+ glass items, each of which had to be individually hand-wrapped and packaged… It took me like an hour to buy three packets of spices.

My parents each called me to “helpfully” inform me that, even though they’re not moving anywhere for months, they drug down 12 boxes of schoolwork from the attic that I have to go through. Normally I’d say “pitch it all” but it’s not just mine - it’s mixed in with my sisters’ stuff. And I’d like to have my trophies and things, so I guess I’ll be going through boxes this weekend, exactly what I wanted to do.

Which got me stewing over the upcoming holiday weekend.

I hate holiday weekends. Why? Because they’re not restful. All holidays do for me is generate stress and irritibility.

I don’t like turkey. I don’t like ham. Don’t ask me why, I just don’t. Weird? Maybe, but I’m sure you can think of a few foods you’re not too partial to, also. But you know what holiday “feasts” consist of? You guessed it. We had lobster one year. That was great. I remember a year we had Chinese food, too, and that was really cool. The rest of the time, ugh. (Luckily, Jenn’s family is eating long before mine, and Jenn’s family is going to an all you can eat buffet - anything you want. That’s perfect as far as I’m concerned. I’ll fill up there and then just “make an appearance” at my family’s dinner.)

I don’t like family gatherings. I don’t really have anything to say to people. Folks ask me what I’ve been doing at work, but there’s no point in trying to explain it because the people at work don’t understand what I do. All that ends up doing is causing a glazed look on whoever I’m talking to, which further irritates me.

I don’t like the lack of coordination and scheduling. I don’t like driving all over hell and back trying to make it to everyone’s house because everyone wants to “see me.”

What the holiday ends up being is less a holiday and more a “try to please everyone else” fest. Fuck that shit. I’m going to fucking snap one of these years and then… well, just you wait. They’ll be talking about it for generations to come.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is - I have a four day weekend coming that I was hoping was going to be one day of hectic shit and three days of rest and relaxation. Instead I’ve got one day of hectic shit, one day of going through boxes of shit, and two days of trying to calm down and chill out before Monday shows up again to piss me off. What a waste of paid time off. I should have just opted to work through it so I’d have an excuse to not have to deal with any of it. At least I’d be able to get something done in the office with no one there.