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I’ve had the kind of week that usually only happens during Mercury retrograde – not that I would necessarily admit to a strong belief in astrology, but when a pattern happens often enough, the accumulated evidence will eventually impact my position and shift it a little, because if it didn’t, I would have to abandon the scientific indoctrination I got in school and embrace similarly ludicrous positions, such as the Earth being flat or global warming not existing and where was I again? Oh yes… my week.

A week that has included people in management positions on in various agencies and organizations involved in my life deciding to annoy me to the point of requiring communication in written form. Communication which may have been irate to the point of possibly burning a hole in the recipients’ respective monitors and I am not ashamed at all of admitting that I enjoyed the exercise (and the subsequent apology). A week involving my wheelchair yet again acting as if it was possessed, doing things that I had not told it to do and doing them at great speed to such a point that I am now considering giving my wheelchair a name, more specifically calling it Regan and waiting for the subsequent spewing of pea soup. A week in which the attempted repair not only sucked up an afternoon of valuable work time for no reason, as the replacement part had not been tested in the shop and did not work, but in which the position my chair was placed (arse – the chair’s and therefore mine, as well – significanly off the ground) also re-injured my already re-injured elbow, meaning that I ended up working while under the influence of A LOT of codeine and have decided not to check resulting work output, not so much out of fear that it’s terrible, but worried that it may be better than what I normally do and I don’t even want to think about the implications of that possibility. A week which included far too little sleep, much too much pain, Mojo going off her feed and being sick to the point where she got rushed to the vet’s (where she still sits grumpily in a cage, no doubt expressing her general displeasure with great frequency and volume) and the pièce de résistance, my kitchen light fixture suddenly malfunctioning to such an extent that it seemed prudent to call in a (very expensive) emergency electrician.

See what I mean? There is no way it’s not Mercury retrograde. Or maybe it’s that I’m back to being the cat toy of the universe. Either way, I am so done and would very much request a balancing positive act. Winning the lottery would be nice. Just a suggestion.

And it was Saturday evening when the electrician is doing mysterious electrician things to my light fixture and switch that I heard a completely delicious geeky term. For some time, this particular fixture has been problematic in that the bulbs get sort of stuck and are hard to dislodge when they burn out. Having wanted to ask somebody in an expert position miscellaneous electrical questions for some time, I took advantage of the captive audience – hey, at that price, I’m getting my money’s worth – and among other things, asked why that was. To which he replied “coefficient of linear expansion”. Which I promptly had to write down, because that is a ridiculously wonderful term and while I was writing it down, I was busy beating down my inner geek girl who’d instantly developed a bit of a crush on the electrician, telling her that it was inappropriate to swoon over someone just because they said lovely exotic words and strung them together in a supremely geeky phrase. I only vaguely remember the explanation of the term – something about things expanding and contracting at different rates – and suspect that I may forget that entirely down the road. I’m pretty sure, though, that I’ll always remember coefficient of linear expansion. It gets me all tingly…

And it gets better. I decided to spend yesterday doing a bit of catching up on blogs that have remained on my list of things to do, yet have been continually bumped for a few weeks due to rather intense requirements of the kind that results in a paycheque. It was quite lovely spending a few quiet hours on a Sunday – which apparently was National Goof-Off Day – reading about other people’s lives and thoughts, laughing, pondering, admiring photos of landscapes, flowers miscellaneous structures and knitwear and one of those blogs was Quinn’s (who I’ve mentioned before and whose writing I absolutely adore and she even has a book coming out, which will make me very happy, especially if it comes out in audio book, as well. Yes, that was a hint). In her last post, she spoke of the impact of the recession/depression is having on marriages and it is a sad thing that this has to happen, but I guess not surprising, as they say most fights about how to raise the kids and money. And giving the topic, I feel sort of bad about geeking out about a particular term within that post, but I’m going to do so anyway. Because one of the reasons I love Quinn’s writing is how she plays with language, in this case how she used an economic term to describe an interpersonal event. Inflection point. How marvelous.

Learning wonderful new words was a bit of a balm. I’d still like that lottery win, though.