Trouble comes in threes

Argh. Argh argh argh. I should have known it would be a bad day when I couldn't stay asleep last night. Today, I feel pain all over, and the world has been doing its best to ensure that things just get worse.

We're busy trying to finalize details for a trip we're taking to Virginia to visit with (and take the wedding photos for) two of our best friends. Thus far, most everything else has worked out -- we managed to come within our budget on the estimated costs for the trip, and already reserved the hotel and purchased the train tickets (which arrived today).

Today we tried to confirm the reservation to rent a car. We were going with Enterprise (you know, 'we'll pick you up'?) Unfortunately, they weren't open either during the time we arrive or the time we leave, so as it stands, we already had to arrange a ride between the train station and the hotel. Still, we managed to arrange a reservation for a reasonable price, and then I called them up to discuss the part where they pick us up from the hotel and vice versa. We worked out the arrangements, and they claimed there wouldn't be a problem. Then they suddenly announced that we'd need a major credit card (not our Visa debit card) in order to rent the car, because we're from out-of-state. (No, it didn't mention this on the website, and usually when you have a Visa-brand debit card, it counts as a Visa card for all intents and purposes.) The only other alternative we know of in the area (Hertz) costs twice as much, is located about an hour away from the town we're staying in, and won't pick us up or drop us off, so obviously we'd rather deal with Enterprise -- but they refuse to deal with us, because we don't have a credit card. I miss the days when people actually accepted money for services.

Then another problem cropped up. My wife uses a laptop computer, because it's more comfortable to use in bed. The only problem is, its power supply has decided to fail miserably -- as near as I can tell, the little pin within the laptop that connects to the AC adapter cord is loose... or maybe the AC adapter is failing (which would suck, because we've already replaced one)... or something. So, like it or not, we have to take it to get checked out and hopefully fixed, because me trying to fix it would likely be a bad idea and more likely to completely ruin the laptop than to solve the problem. Anyhow, this means that her laptop is definitely out of service for now, because it can't recharge (or run) without AC power. This is bad, because we rely on it for Internet access when we're on the go, not to mention for offloading our pictures and video content (and being able to get a better look at the results), which is vital for this whole wedding photography thing. Very frustrating, and very frustratingly timed.

Still, we do have another computer set up for Laura to use when she's not on the laptop; it's the computer she uses for image editing, graphic processing, and anything work or play-related that simply won't work on a laptop. It was purchased in better days several years ago, and has served us reasonably faithfully. I carefully set things up so that she had plenty of back support and could work on it from bed, headed over, turned it on...

And discovered that its monitor had apparently chosen this precise moment to cease functioning. We seem to have a particularly bad run of luck with Dell monitors, and the intermittent power flickering around here lately hasn't done anything to lengthen the lifespan of any of our electronics, I'm sure. Still, everything electronic and otherwise had seemed to be working just fine yesterday. Today, it's nothing but problems stacking up. I eventually got it to start working again (mostly through blind luck), but it's still got me worried that it might zilch out again at any moment.


Have you ever just had a day when you feel like waking up wasn't such a good idea?