Derek's Dreadful Day

I was working on my laptop last night until nearly midnight, mostly writing e-mails that I hadn't had time to do at school all day long. Gone are the quiet days when I am the only one in the building (or with maybe just one other). The faculty is back, parents and new students are coming in for interviews...it's all good, but it isn't quiet and I can't do what I want/need to do, so I resort to the quiet hours at home to finish up that kind of work. Anyway, I finally stopped just before 12 last night, shut down the computer and went to bed.

This morning, when I went to check e-mail, I couldn't get on the server. I had a signal, but kept getting bumped off the internet. I had no time to deal with it, so went to school, only to come back at 3 and find the internet still down. I had the Comcast guy coming to switch my phone service, though, and I thought he might be able to help me...which he tried to do...but after an hour of frustration he had to give up.

Poor guy. Derek was/is his name. Nice guy. Big, tall, red-headed Finnish/English guy...not married...has two cats (mine really liked him!)...and a fiance who was waiting for him at home. And try as he might, and he did try everything, he couldn't resolve the situation. The nice thing is that he's not a network guy, just a phone tech. But he did his best to help me out. And he's had frustrations earlier, too. Two people didn't show up for their appointments and he had another internet puzzle as well. He didn't like to leave with the situation unresolved, but at least he got me on my PC.

We shook hands and wished each other well after a crazy hour in which he hit his head on my printer, knocked a bunch of papers off my desk, kicked a stack (one of several) of books over...and just generally felt stymied. We tried to laugh through it, but I'm sure he was wanting to do/say much more than laugh. He kept his cool, though. I'm sure it was difficult.

I'll try to write something more interesting/exciting tomorrow. Right now, I'm tired. You have to wonder what my life has come to when I find myself writing about my visit from Derek the Comcast cable guy!!! Actually other interesting things happened, and I will write about them when I feel more lucid and coherent.

Meanwhile, the picture is of one of several billboards in the Reykjavik airport. I wish I had thought to take pictures of all of them, but this is the only one I took. I plan to use it, along with the "name" poem exercise for worship with the faculty on Monday...wanting to talk about our names, who we are, who/what we represent by our names...and our character. It's just a kernel of thought right now. I'll keep you posted on how it develops.