"We are experiencing technical difficulties..."

So, the first glitch was that the computer in the office has once again decided to delete the Adobe Pro software that I not only pay for but have reinstalled several times. I let our departmental IT person know about the annoying hiccup, and she'll try to get it fixed, but meanwhile, I was unable to save the Word documents with my comments in such a way that 1. Students with no access to Word could still open them, 2. Students with access to Word couldn't change them, and 3. The comments actually showed. I was mostly concerned about the student whose conference was scheduled today, and--as a very clunky bandaid over the problem--I uploaded his essay to Google Docs and tried to share it that way (though the formatting and comments got pretty wonky when I did) and I also sent him the Word file, knowing he might not have access to Word.

I knew I'd have to convert the rest of the essays with comments from home, so I wanted to get home as early as possible, and, since I was not in Advisement, I could leave as soon as I saw this one student. But his appointment wasn't until 5. I let him know about the technical SNAFU, and asked if he could move his appointment earlier today. I didn't get his reply until about 3:30, but he asked if he could reschedule to tomorrow. I had an appointment time that would work for him, so ... hooray on that score. I quickly put everything on a thumb drive and scampered home to continue working.

So, I churned through the essays (whether I was making any kind of sense is an open question (but it wasn't as painful to try as it would have been last night), finishing the comments, saving as PDF, emailing to each student. At last, I finished commenting on the last of the essays and was all set to send it--and something had gone down in terms of the college email: I don't know if it was a problem with Outlook or with the Portal or what, but I tried several times to get the attachment to attach and it just wouldn't. Then I got a message that the entire page--i.e., my work email--couldn't load. As I've been writing this paragraph, I've bounced over to the email page several times and finally--two minutes ago--I managed to get the damned thing attached and the email sent.

And man am I ever stick-a-fork-in-me done. I started the day with yet another headache (not a trend I'm liking very well, I confess), and although it left me sooner (and without as serious a case of the stupids), I am just completely whipped. Fortunately, however, I am already at home and, figuratively speaking, in my bunny slippers. I won't exactly belly-flop into my landing for the night, but I am hoping for a very, very fast glide.

And tomorrow ... etc. etc.