March Madness & The First Strike Option

I had every intention of starting off friendly, cooperative, maybe even upbeat with March. Just like I did with February. Look where THAT got me, but I’m an eternal optimist. Let’s start by encouraging March to be the very best March that it could be!

That approach lasted all of about ten seconds.

March had other plans, and announced its presence with authority…

I did NOT see that coming!

You might remember that last night I was trying to finish uploading payroll at the end of an extremely long day. I was writing a post because I had gotten booted off of the payroll site about 22:30 because they had shut down for “maintenance” but would be back “shortly.” I (foolishly) assumed “shortly” would be some time period, say, of less than an hour. SURELY less than two hours. WRONG! After I posted I kept trying until after 01:30 before I gave up and went to bed.

After something on the order of maybe four hours sleep, I was back on the computer and finishing data entry, looking and feeling my best. Semi-conscious at best, I managed to get it done and avoid that disaster. (Folks tend to get cranky when they don’t get paid on time. Go figure!)

Still without a shower, breakfast, my other four hours of sleep, or anything resembling a civilized existence, I was leaving my computer to go get at least two of those things when I noticed the count of unread emails in my personal email. It should have been on the order of a dozen, not ten times that. WTF?

There’s a flood of emails from Match, the dating website. As I said, WTAF??!!

Someone has obviously set up a new account on the dating site and put in the wrong email address. This has happened before with several kid’s education type sites (online math & science tutoring) and with several French websites. (I don’t speak French, so that’s my first clue in that case.) Match is a new one.

However “Kate” described herself she must have hit all of the hot buttons for every middle aged, (presumably) single, horny black guys in the Deep South. They ALL want to meet “Kate!”

Alas, none of their passionate attempts are going anywhere, much like most of the red-feathered finches in the back yard, hopped up on hormones and the endorphins that lengthening days bring. All of those guys are now ending up in my Spam file, and they won’t even make it to there once I set up a filter to simply delete them.

I attempted to contact Match through their customer support email address. There’s five minutes of my life I’ll never get back! They sent a standard response with several dozen FAQ’s and answers, none of which had anything to do at all with my issue. Thus, the kill filter!

From there the rest of the day was “nibbled to death by ducks” levels of stupid annoyances.

The MLB owners and players aren’t even talking and the owners have started cancelling games, so I’m seriously pissed at both. Probably 3/4 owners and 1/4 players, but still.

The Russians continue to try to provoke WW3 and I’m horrified that their next tactic, even if it’s not lobbing nukes at everyone, might be horrific crimes and autocracies against the Ukranian people. If that doesn’t depress the crap out of you, I don’t know what will.

And an Illinois house that I’ve been seriously lusting after on Zillow, like a LOT of house lust, got sold. We weren’t ready to pull the trigger and that opportunity is waving at us as it pulls away.

So, March…

We are not off to a good start, you and me.