My Birthday Weekend

I think I can safely say that my birthday sucked.  This is a descriptive term, not one based in any ill feeling.  But, given the way that that day went, I would say that "sucked" is clearly the word that describes it best. It started off all right, with my wife posting my birthday on her blog and being very affectionate in the morning.  I knew that things were going down hill when she sent me an e-mail saying that repairs to pfkat's car will be $1200, which is about $1000 more than we expected.  (pfkat is our 20 year old daughter.  The letters stand for Person Formerly Known as Teenager). Then I got a call from my wife indicating that pfkat got a call from work indicating that she was late.  She drove my wife's car hastily across town, and vomited all over herself and the car just as she pulled into her work place's parking lot.  She was terrified that she was going to get written up for it, and, between that and the car costs, made the rest of my wife's day miserable.  So, my wife was not in the best of spirits when I took her, my mother, and my other daughter out for my birthday dinner at my favorite restaurant.  This restaurant rarely has a wait, so it was rather unpresidented to find the parking lot full to bursting when we arrived.  The hostess said that there would be at least a half-hour wait, and there were no seats to sit in while we waited.  Apparently they had booked a wedding party and another large gathering simultaniously without first consulting me as to what my seating preferences were.  Crushed with disappointment, we left in search of food. We ended up at a dive called the Flamingo, which has edible enough food, but not food worthy of a birthday.  The non-smoking session was virtually full while the smoking section was nearly empty.  Naturally we sat in non-smoking at a tiny table, people all around us, and someone constantly stepping on my coat.  I had a hamburger, which, again, was edible.  The place served no alcohol, which may have been for the best but was not the way I wanted to spend my evening, nonetheless.  I dropped off the mom, the wife, and the kid, and went promptly to sleep at home, having only had 2.5 hours of sleep the night before. The morning after, I woke up and went to turn on my computer, only to get a bone chilling "System Disk not found" error message repeatedly.  The drive was fine, so it seems to be something wrong on the motherboard.  Pfkat gave me one of her old computers so I was able to make due, but it will cost me a minimum of $300 to fix my machine unless I can somehow diagnose it myself.  This happened on a day of record snowfall in our state.  That night, I got a horrible rash from my wedding ring and spent the evening wanting to chop my finger off.  I took an antihistamine, which made me tired and sent me to bed, again, early.  Sunday at least was mostly uneventful.  The snow blower worked, pfkat did not get a reprimand from her job, and my finger itched less.  I anounced that I put a chapter of my book up at three different locations, and got exactly one viewing.  Oh well. So, here I am at work, looking at massive piles of papers on my desk, wondering what happened to my weekend.  Another snow storm is predicted for tonight.  Oh joy.