Downed by a sour puss

I've had a really great morning. I got my paycheck, cashed it, and completed all the Christmas shopping I had on my slate for today. The only task left was to take the Scout newsletter to the printer.

When I returned to the troop a few years ago, they asked for a volunteer to do the quarterly newsletter. The last guy typed it up on his PC at home and ran copies at his office (all free). Since I was doing newsletters for the Corps of Engineers at the time, I took the job for free and boosted the production value with MS Publisher, pics (greyscaled for b&w printing), and other creative aspects. Superior Printing, which I used for the Corps newsletter, agreed to donate their printing services and I gave them thanks each newsletter in the masthead for this donation. A year or more ago, their copier/printer died. Since little of their business relied on this piece of equipment, they have been taking their time replacing it. Since it wouldn't be cost effective to print out my 30-40 copies on the other equipment, I went down the street to Tangent and asked if they would donate their services. The owner said she'd be glad to and printed them out for me. Over the past year or so, I've gone in there with the newsletter and about half the time she does it for free and the other half I pay, but at a discount. While the inconsistency was a little annoying, I was grateful to not have to pay full price.

Today I go in and things are fine, until she hands the stack of newsletters to me.

"This will be the last time I'm doing this for you for free," she said a little curtly. I asked her to repeat herself and she said that the troop is making money off of her and we should be paying her to do this because we have the money. The troop didn't have the money to pay for this because we run off of donations. I reassured her that when she had charged me for the copies in the past, it came out of my pocket. I don't know if she saw the part where we outlined how much money was raised at the conservation drives we do 4-5 times a year (all of which goes directly to Meals on Wheels) or the tally for the Eagle project that a scout did (cost about $900 with all of that being raised by the Grissom JROTC Booster Club), but she was really bitchy about this.

I'm half inclined to go through the newsletters and black out the company's name in the thank you I put in the masthead.

I was in such a good mood and this Grinch-like moment really pissed me off.

One more aspect to last post...

Another couple of aspects that play into a glorious morning shifting to shitty afternoon:

This morning I read the Huntsville Times and see that Steak N Shake is finally coming to town! No more driving 45 minutes to Decatur or waiting to hit the ones in Prattville and Dothan when visiting the beach house in Panama City Beach!

AND THEN

After I get home for my noon appointment for an attic insulation estimate, I find out the guy was backed up (and despite getting my number yesterday to tell me if he had a problem), didn't call to let me know, so when I called him up at 12:30pm he stammered and said he'd be over at 2:30pm.

Hopefully things will improve soon since I don't need anything bad happening at my hair cut at 1:30pm!

Cory's day keeps tossing about turbulently

The haircut went okay. I got some therapy time to vent about the odd event at the printer with the stylist. While I'm sure it's going to be fine after a shower (worst case scenario will be a few days worth of growth), my hair is shorter than what I care to get outside of the prime of summer. I'm looking like...OH, I know!...
( Cory takes a hair-inspired tangent )

Anyways...I was stood up a second time today by the insulation guy. Not a bad thing, but pretty damn annoying since he said he was going to call me twice today. I'm done with the company until it comes time for my three estimates when I'm ready for the work to be done. Keeping my fingers crossed that the tax refund will be as good or better than the past couple of years. If that's the case, then I'll definitely have enough after paying off our credit cards completely (whew!) to afford the insulation too!

In the end, I'm still coming out of this day with a big, grumpy feeling nagging at me. I know it's not being hidden well right now. I was able to have some fun time today with the boys playing hide n go seek and building tents/forts with the play tunnel, a large blanket, and sizable pieces of furniture placed in strategic locations.

I still have to do the Eagle Court tonight. I was told last night that they will probably need me to be part of the Eagle Guard (escort the newbie) and I have the newsletter I have to take. Calvin's got some sort of stomach bug which has him spending Daddy-lengths of time on the toilet, so he won't be going with me tonight. The boy doesn't like missing out on Scout events and is letting us know of his displeasure with his quarantine status. This only improves my mood. *groan*