Bill's Bulletin Board
By Bill Rea

Ever have a proverbial "day from hell?"

I had one last week, but I lived to tell about it. In fact, looking back, I could almost feel like laughing, were I not trying to stave off the almost overpowering urge to have a nervous breakdown at the thought.

The day in question was last Tuesday, although my troubles started the night before, when Mother Nature decided to put on one of her big production numbers, complete with lots of rain and lightning.

I was working late in the Sentinel office, which as many of you know is located in Bolton. I was trying to get a leg up on the next day's production of the July 19 paper. And then the screen on my computer suddenly went blank. I didn't think it was a power outage because the lights above my desk were still bright.

I thought my machine may have become unplugged, but I checked that, just about giving myself a hernia moving the desk far enough from the wall so I could check the connection. No, everything was secure there.

This just didn't make sense, and I had little use for computer gremlins while I was trying to get ready for production.

I went to the back room of the office to refill my coffee cup as I tried to puzzle this out, and realized there were no lights there. The light on the coffee maker was out too, as were the lights in the washrooms.

But the lights in the front office still burned.

I went outside to see if there were any other signs of electrical things not working as they should, and found lots of them. The biggest sign was the traffic lights at the nearby main intersection of the village were out, with a cop on duty directing traffic. It was also starting to rain.

I reasoned there was little cause for worry. What ever power problems there might be shouldn't last long, and I had a perfectly good laptop at home on which I could work. True, there were some e-mails that I knew were on my machine that I had not yet pulled off of it, but they would wait until morning. I'm usually in the office shortly after 6 on production day, so I really figured there was nothing to get my shorts in a twist about.

I should have known better.

I got to the office at the time I planned, and found all the lights were out.

That which I had blithely shrugged off the night before had now materialized into a problem, although not a terribly serious one, at least not yet.

I still had a couple of hours until I had to head north to the company's head office in Beeton to put the paper together, so there was a chance the power could come back on.

In the meantime, I could work on my laptop, although that presented a bit of a difficulty too.

Since it's a basement office I was in, there's not a whole lot of natural light coming through the windows. I dealt with that by parking myself in the brightest area I could find, and made the best of things. The result was I had quite a lot written by 9:30, at which time some decisions needed to be made. There were still no lights in the office. As well, the phones weren't working, so the only way people could get hold of me was on my cell. I decided, with concurrence from the people with whom I was to spend the day, that I would lug my desk computer north. Thus I would be able to access all the work I had done through the week.

Upon my arrival in Beeton, with my extra inconvenient cargo, we were able to get things hooked up and my stories were all dumped into the main system.

Things were looking up. All that remained was to dump the stories that were on my laptop, which included such things as most of the sports and the captions for all the pictures I took during the week.

Problem. I couldn't get the stupid thing turned on.

The conclusion I reached, after venting off several examples of very bad language, was the batteries in my laptop had drained to nothing.

Now some of you would think that the composing room where several community newspapers are produced would have at least one adapter to recharge a Mac laptop. Not, I learned the hard way.

So with a deadline hard upon me, and already some time behind schedule, I realized the closest place where I could be assured of finding a working adapter was on the kitchen table at home.

No, these impromptu excursions can't occur when it's convenient. They have to happen on production day, the busiest and most stressful day of the week.

A couple of people in the office offered to make the trip home for me, but that presented problems, like giving directions, disarming our security system and keeping my wife from killing me because I had given a stranger access to our home without her authorization.

All I can say about that episode is it's a good thing the police didn't see the way I was driving. They missed some really serious lead-footing.

If there was an advantage to all of this, it's my colleagues realized I was having a bad day, so they had the good sense to give me lots of space, although I think a few were concerned whether my heart could handle all the strain.

During my mad dash to and from my abode, I had

noticed the gas supply in my car was getting seriously low. Considering the way the day was going, it wouldn't have surprised me if I had been obliged to walk the last couple of miles. But I had a bit of luck going for me that day.

As I was leisurely driving away from Beeton, my day from hell behind me and nothing heavy facing me (except the fact I had to work that night), I stopped at a full-serve station to take care of the gas problem. There was one attendant on duty, and a whole line-up of customers waiting for him to take care of them. The poor guy was obviously harried as he finished filling my tank. I quickly gave him my VISA card, and he dashed into the kiosk, then raced out with the usual clipboard and pen. The problem was there was nothing for me to sign on the clipboard. In his haste, he had neglected to attached the flimsy for me to sign.

"Haven't you forgotten something?" I asked as lightly as I could, not wanting to antagonize this fellow any more than I had to.

He grabbed the clipboard back, and muttering something I think was unprintable, raced in the kiosk. In that second or two he was inside, I think he had time to see the humour of what he had done, because he emerged with something close to a grin on his clock.

"Sorry," he said, handing the clipboard back to me. "One of those days."

"I know what they're like," I replied.

Man, do I ever know what they're like!