Friday the 13th!!

Overall, I am not a very superstitious person.  I have broken many mirrors in my lifetime, spilled many a saltshaker, and even crossed paths with a few black cats, but I wouldn't exactly say that these things have made me an unlucky person.  On the contrary, I feel that I am a very lucky person when it comes to having great friends, a wonderful family, and a great education.  However, today just seemed to be an unlucky one for me and the people around me.

 I was fooled by the bright shining sun when I woke up after a rare occurrence of 10 hours of sleep.  It seemed like today would be day three of the wonderful 50 plus degree weather we had been having, but that was not the case.  I checked weather.com to see what it was like outside and it turned out that it was only about 37 degrees at the moment--not terrible for the freezing weather we are supposed to have in February, but still colder than the days before.  It seemed like a very low-key, relaxing Friday, but around 1 o'clock things got interesting.

After getting out of CS 159, I met up with a couple people from my class and walked over to Ford to grab some lunch.  We got to the dining court and put all of our stuff down at a nice table by the window.  I got a nice salad with raspberry dressing, some guacamole dip with chips, and I was in the process of getting a hamburger when disaster struck.  Today was the first day I had gotten a hamburger from the dining courts here, and I don't know why but today I just really had a taste for one.  So I wait in line for a minute, grab a bun, grab a hamburger, and walk over the the condiments station.  It seemed like everything was going smoothly as I put on some pickles, a tomato, and some lettuce.  I walked a few steps further to the ketchup and mustard and as I was putting the top of my bun on my newly created creation my tray slipped, my salad flew toward me, and my guacamole dip jumped off of my tray and loudly onto the floor, drawing all attention in my direction. 

It is a dreaded moment when someone drops a something in the dining courts.  They must make the plates and bowls there out of some super-echoing material because no matter where you are in the dining court, you can hear if someone drops their tray as if they are standing right next to you.  Luckily I didn't have one of the breakable plates, because those not only make a noise twice as loud but they shatter everywhere!  

As I gather the rest of my food and check out the awesome new pink stains on my fleece from my salad dressing, I apologize to the worker who had run over to clean up my mess.  He told me it was ok, but NOT TO DO IT AGAIN.  I chuckled, but he didn't seem to be joking so I scurried away from the situation.  When I got back to the table, I wiped my now pink-stained hand off and shunned my salad from the rest of the food on my plate.  

As we all started to eat, my friend realized that she did not have her phone.  Everyone has a slight panic attack when they can't find their phone, because now-a-days everyone's life is on their phone.  No one really knows other people's numbers anymore because we never have to dial them, so if someone does lose their phone, it is pretty a given that they will make a facebook group asking everyone for their numbers.  The odd thing, though, is when you get an invitation for someone's "Help, I lost my phone" group, and you never remember giving them your number in the first place.  When that happens to me I usually just ignore the invitation, in the nicest way possible of course.  But back to the story.

My friend looked in her coat pockets, her backpack, and all around the places she had been in the dining court, and her phone was nowhere to be found.  She couldn't remember when the last time she had it was, which always seems to slip people's minds when they need to remember such an event.  So she decided to head back to the classroom we were in to look for it.  I haven't heard from her yet on if she found it or not, but I hope she does!!

In the middle of all of this, I checked my phone and saw that I had two missed calls and three text messages that I had missed in the midst of all of my food-spilling chaos.  Lately my phone has made it a habit of not telling me when someone is calling, or displaying the wrong time whether it is nine minutes off or an hour off, but that's for another rant.  I am going to the University of Illinois this weekend to visit my boyfriend for Valentine's Day, and as it turned out, his car wouldn't start.  He was planning on picking me up later today but when he got to his car it was completely dead.  Unlucky event #3.  However, the last of my three messages was my boyfriend telling me that he had found someone else who could drive, so that bit of bad luck, luckily, didn't last for long.

So the moral of my story is, it doesn't matter if you believe in crazy superstitions about random days, or if you are generally a lucky or unlucky person, but at any given time you may be hit with some bad luck.  The best thing to do is just roll with it and laugh about it later because you can't take life too seriously.  The best days are the ones when things don't go perfectly and you get to tell a story because of it! No comedians get their jokes from experiencing perfect days every day.  They tell you the stories about when they saw someone get hit in the face with a tire, or when they slipped all the way down the stairs of the Purdue Union.  The best thing to do is just enjoy life the way it happens, and find some time to smile :).