Today Was a Bad Day

I had a pretty bad last twelve hours or so. I'm still kind of upset about it but I figured that you guys could laugh at me and maybe that would make me feel better.

Actually, that doesn't make sense but I'm going to tell you anyway.

The beginning of the end began when my boss asked if I would like to join him for some post-work cocktails with business partners of ours in Santa Monica. Sounds good, I thought. It isn't often that I venture up the 405 and out of my bubble. There was one problem, though, I was wearing shorts and sandals as well as a Wpromote polo; that's my standard uniform around the office but hardly cocktail attire. My boss assured me that that wouldn't be a problem, though, and he let me borrow a shirt so I wouldn't look silly.

Up in Santa Monica we met up with our partners and had some drinks. Then we had some more. Then we headed over to Ma'kai for some sushi and more drinks. Ma'kai is a little pricey but still a fun night, right? So far, so good! As it turned out, our partners had some friends over at a fancy club. We made plans to join them but, uh oh, I'm still wearing shorts and sandals!

Next stop, Urban Outfitters! It's no biggie, I'll just buy some jeans and shoes and carry my shorts and sandals in a bag. Makes sense, right? One hundred dollars and some new duds later, we're off to the club. Once inside, I realized that, oops, I hate Hollywood clubs! It's loud, it's expensive and I don't know anyone except Mothner. So, I did what anyone in that situation would do: I ditched my bag of clothes and drank $15 drink after $15 drink until I didn't care.

So far, the night has been expensive but far from terrible. Considering that nobody I know got killed in South Central LA, I might even go so far as to call it a good day. But it didn't end there.

We left the club. Take a guess if I remembered to bring my shorts and sandals. If you guessed that I didn't remember, then you guessed right because you probably had the knowledge that I'm a complete idiot. On the way home, I realized this. Then, for some reason, while I was on the phone, I had some sort of insane seizure that resulted in me fumbling my iPhone out of the window of the moving car. "Stop the car!" I yelled. The car screeched to a halt, we all got out and looked for the phone and, to my surprise, we found it... shattered.

We made it back to the hotel room of one of our partners. I decided that I needed to end the night and go home. My boss didn't want to strand his car, so I ended up taking a $60 cab ride back to Redondo Beach. I entered my house, walked up the stairs, fed the fish and accidentally knocked the top of the tank off and onto the floor. No worries, though, it's just the hood; nothing spilled or anything... OR DID IT?!

It turns out that the top chipped one of the pipes and, as I slept, fifty-five gallons of fish tank water slowly seeped into my carpet. I awoke to find a soaked carpet, an empty tank and a bunch of dead fish. Surprisingly, though a couple were actually still alive. I filled a five gallon drum with water, treated it and threw the live ones in there. I also called a carpet cleaning company to dry the carpet.

What's sad is that a lot of fish died. I like fish, that's why I have a ludicrously big fish tank. However, I don't love fish. Ever since I got my dog, the fish seem a lot less interesting. They can't even sit or stay or anything. If all the fish died, I would have been sad, but that would have been the end of it. Because some lived, I had to go buy a new fish tank because the big tank I have has custom plumbing that, now broken, made the tank useless. So, that's another $200 down the drain and all because I felt some sort of moral obligation to the six measly fish that remained alive. I eat fish, hell, I ate sushi last night! What the hell is wrong with me that I decided that I needed to spend even more money one some stupid, barely alive fish?

I'm not sure I know or that I'll ever know.

The carpet cleaning guys showed up about twenty minutes ago, so I'm typing this in my bedroom. I missed work, including a conference call that I scheduled with one of our biggest clients. I lost my shorts and sandals, smashed my phone, spent way more money than I should have, killed 90% of my fish, ruined my carpet and the guys just quoted me $400+ to fix it.

This has not been a good day.

My mom reminded me that it's all relative. People are at war or starving or dying of disease all over the world. I know she's right. I'd run a bath for myself and take twenty minutes to relax, only, with the way things have been going, I'd probably get out of the tub to find a candiru lodged in my pee hole.

With the amount of fish I killed and knowing that fish are a vengeful animal, I'm not going to take the chance.