Today I Fucked Up (Or, The Idiot Moments Thread)

So I have a van. A month and a half or so ago, the tire was flat, beyond repair. I'm poor as dirt, so I'm not about to call a tow truck and find someone actually competent to get this handled.

My husband is disabled so it's me and my long-suffering housemate trying to figure this shit out. I've never changed a tire in my life, he only knows how to work with spares, but after doing some research, I figure if we can just get the tire off, I can bring it to a shop and they'll take it off the rim and put on a new one. BUT WE CAN'T GET IT OFF. These big ass nuts (heh) on the rim just will not budge, and that's after a few days of trying to find a wrench that'll fit. I even got some good ol' Liquid Wrench and sprayed the shit out of the nuts in the hopes it was just rust making it stick. Housemate is a busy man and not an unemployed schlub like me, so trial and error all takes place over the last month.

So I cave and ask my dad for help. He drove down today, took one look at the tire and said, "I...think this just pries off." And proceeded to take a crowbar and takes off what is now a PAINFULLY OBVIOUSLY PLASTIC hubcap. The real nuts were under it.

I'd been struggling with decorative plastic for nearly two months.

 

P.S. now I have a tire

but my battery is dead

 

@Ruevian Did you check to make sure the battery isn't plastic too?

 

Today's fuckup: So today I've felt really exuberant, which is great. It was not so great, however, when I was bounding through the house and misjudged the trajectory of my knee and the distance between my knee and a doorframe. Now I have one hell of a painful bruise and moving my knee fucking hurts. Oof.

 

...you may have a very well-inundated lawn

 

The ice machine on one of our soda fountains at work is broken, and has to be refilled manually. There is a drop where a small curved piece of ceiling hangs down right next to it, this holds the screens with out menu info on them (I work at an arby's). I forgot about this, and jumped as hard as i could into the piece of ceiling that hangs only a foot and a half or so above my head, because I was trying to see how full the ice machine was. I had a headache for the next 15 minutes because of this.

 

Not me, but Bossman at my office. This is day 2 of moving into the new office and he, Bosslady, and our office manager are the only ones with keys. The server is in the file room off my office and the tech guys have been in and out all day getting the server/internet/phones up and running. My office is literally 75% windows and my door is glass.

Despite all that, Bossman still walked right up to the door and started locking it while I was literally standing right in front of it. The tech guys and I ended up just staring at him while he tried to lock us all in my office until he realized that we were there.

 

So I went to get gas today (finally). Went inside to pay and was not parked at the pump like you're supposed to be. Literally have no idea what the fuck I was thinking. So I paid, couldn't remember what pump I said I'd pull up to because, you know, the cognitive capacity is not strong with this one. So I had to circle the pumps TWICE before I remembered which one they applied my money towards. Got my gas, and it shut off at the exact amount I paid for... And then started asking for my payment method and I almost cried because I thought I picked the wrong pump and it had let me get gas by accident (?? Why would it do that Zero. Why). So I thought I was gonna have to go inside and pay again before, you know, logic kicked in and I realized that gee, remember literally 30 seconds ago when it cut off the gas at the exact amount I paid for? So I got in my car, left, can never go back there again, and am still kinda scared I stole gas. Because I'm an idiot.

 

Last night I got home from trivia at the bar and promptly spent a full 5 minutes trying to figure out why I couldn't get my earbud in my ear. Then I realized that here was already something else in my ear and panicked for a moment thinking something horrible had happened to my ear and I just hadn't noticed it because why else could I not put my earbud in.

Then it clicked that I could hear music and the thing in my ear was my other earbud. I couldn't even use "I'd had a lot to drink" as an excuse because I only had ONE and that was hours earlier.

So now I get to add "bad at headphones" to my list of skills.

 

Walking down the hallways at break yesterday night, I saw a man with an Iraq Veteran hat and a shirt listing his squad's football team. My parents are vets, and I try to make a habit of thanking them for their service and asking them which branch they served in because I know some of them get a lot of shit. So! Thank you for your service, my parents did as well, which branch were you? Not hard, right?

What came out of my mouth was:

"HAT."

And then:

"You're a vet! Hat!"

At least he took it alright, and laughed it off by going "And you're blue hair!", but oh my god I wanted to die on the spot.

 

So about... A month ago-ish, I applied for a job I wanted really badly. Well, it'd been a while, so I figured they picked someone with more experience. I stopped religiously checking my email and started checking it less regularly.

They emailed me back to ask if I wanted an interview. ON MONDAY.

So I had to make up a reason that wasn't 'sorry, I'm lazy and bad at everything' and email them back HOPING AGAINST HOPE that I can salvage this. It's unlikely, but.

That's why you check your email, kids!

 

YIFU: Dropped my 1yrs old. 500.00 USD cell phone and stepped on it while trying to pick it up. Like, oh, hey, there it is...where are you going foot? CRACKNCH

 

TSOFU: Dude who owns the building my day job is in also owns the building on the nearby corner. They decided to tear it down AND tear out its parking lot.

Our shared dumpster lives on that parking lot, in a little fenced enclosure at the back. Literally the only way for Waste Management to get to it and dump it is through the parking lot.

They did not think to move it before they started tearing shit up.

There is no longer any way for Waste Management to access it without taking out a bunch of trees and that fence. It CAN still be accessed on foot, though...

We are taking bets on a) how long it's going to take the dumpster to become overfilled to the point of uselessness and b) whether or not the property owner is going to spring for a second dumpster to be temp parked on one of the lots that's not being torn out. My money is on a) tomorrow afternoon and b) nah.

 

this is not really a fuck up but it feels like one:

i logged into my nsfw tumblr because i keep all that separate from my regular tumblr, and it won't let me log out now. i live in a camper right now with my sister and mother, there's not really any turning the screen away, so i can't reliably keep trying to log out without them seeing something i don't want to have to explain (〃艸〃)

 

TIFU REAL BAD: I collect bones, and today on my way to school, I passed a roadkill fox cub. I was running a little ahead of schedule (aka 'not late like usual') and didn't want to let the cutie go to waste, so I hopped out of my car, put it in a walmart bag I happened to have, and continued to school.

Today, it was supposed to get up to 80°F, so I knew I shouldn't leave it in my car for the 7 hours I would be in class. So I thought, hey! I'll just take it to one of the science rooms and ask to put in in their fridge! (My reasoning behind this came from my 7th grade science teacher, who was All About dead stuff, and would happily keep dead animals for students or put them on the Dead Shelf, a big shelf of preserved animals.) Naturally, I thought the teacher would be ok with it.

I was Wrong.

Not ONLY was the teacher horrified, she didn't have an extra bag, and I had just realized I had left a trail of fox blood through the halls. So I go to the office, thinking they'll help me out, and all they do is give me an extra bag and tell me to get rid of it.

I was Not going to get rid of it, so I quietly take it to my first class, put it in the corner of the room, and do my work. THEN about halfway through class, the class phone rings and the guy asks to speak with me. So naturally I'm terrified, but he was very nice and just told me that I shouldn't have brought in the fox because it might carry diseases, which is reasonable, and if I wanted to keep it that I needed to take it out to my car, which was the thing I was trying to avoid. But orders are orders, so I take it and put it in the shade underneath my car to keep it as cool as possible.

Then I go to NJROTC class, and the rad old ex-Navy Chief just goes "Lord God, you shoulda just brought it in here! It's not like I care, I'm not one of those sissy science teachers!" And he let me borrow his fridge and asked me if I knew how to skin it, which I did, and then joked and said that he might have to barbecue it if I didn't come back for it. So, a good end to a REAL BIG fuck up.

 

So I had a really long day yesterday and I was exhausted today, but I think I really managed to top myself.

We were discussing a paper in class (which consists of my thesis advisor, another grad student, and a research labmate), and I was trying to figure out whether this paper was taking about genes or the specific sequences within those genes. I was reading a passage aloud and... well...

Me: It says they looked at... Okay I don't know why it says this, but it says they looked at eleven genes, and then it says 'comma one-thirty-nine' but I don't know what that means in this context?

(beat)

Other Grad Student: It... says eleven thousand, one hundred and thirty-nine genes...

 

Mis-read June 2-5 as June 22-25th. Am now bumming for a space for Nate and I to stay at this convention ahead of time instead of scrambling last second.

And still:

 

Decided to walk to my hospital appointment. Didn't realise that the hospital is up THE STEEPEST HILL IN THE WORLD which takes about quarter of an hour to climb. I am now in the waiting room quietly wheezing. Next time I will take the bus.

 

I had to manuever my car out of a tight space earlier. Thought I made it, but there was this very soft noise, like two very light things falling on the ground. Like a moron, I kept driving. I am now worried I knocked something off the kiosk I was parked in front of. When I looked in the rearview mirror everything looked fine, but anxiety-brain keeps saying 'you probably caused like two thousand dollars of property damage and are going to go to jail'.