Cosmic Dumping and Happy Wheels

Have you ever had one of those days where from the instant you wake up, nothing goes right? Everything is out of control and you are helpless to prevent the next catastrophe from derailing your morning any further. It's as though there is some cosmic force at work, spinning one disaster to the next in some grand, perfectly designed plan to screw you.

Today has been one of those days. I realize it's only 9:30 in the morning and how could that much possibly go wrong, and in the big picture of life, it's not really been all that terrible, I mean if you think about it there are children starving in Africa and a big shitshow of a war in the Middle East, and civil turmoil in places like Sri Lanka, but in my little life here in Los Angeles, it has NOT been a good morning.

I am not going to go into all the details, because that would be TMI for most, but my morning did involve some of the following events: my sweating problem, woolite, a trip to the dry cleaners, the inability to comb through my own hair, my gas light, international cell phone malfunctions, the server crashing. A few other things too... let's just say I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

Anyways, fingers crossed that the cosmos has decided I've been toyed with enough today and it will move on to screwing with someone else's life. I also wonder sometimes if Wednesdays are just destined to be crappy days because it's the middle of the week and there's nothing you can do about it. I liked middle school when Wednesdays were early release days. We would go rollerskating at "Happy Wheels" for a few hours, which strangely enough was the perfect way to spend a Wednesday afternoon out of school. (It's a little weird, considering it's the early 90s we are talking about here and not the late 70s Disco era, but whatever).

Happy Wheels was the spot for birthday parties, nachos with that disgustingly delicious chemical cheese doused on top, and couples skates where you could awkwardly ask the boy you liked to hold your sweaty hand while you took a few laps around the rink. There were also some sweet "shoot the duck" contests, and some songs in which only backwards skating was permitted. The song list was incredible, quite possibly the perfect playlist of tacky 70s and 80s jams and all the over-the-top emo/pop/grunge songs of the early to mid 90s. I remember there being a lot of Green Day. I think I can credit those Wednesdays at Happy Wheels as being responsible for introducing me to a lot of bad music, but also for introducing me to Top 40 and pop music (wait that is also bad music. Okay so Happy Wheels is responsible for all the bad music I like. And Billy Joel's "In the Middle of the Night.") I can also blame Happy Wheels for a lot of pre-adolescent identity crises because it was really difficult to watch the boy you're holding hands with on one couples skate to be holding hands with your total BFF (of that month) for the next one. Ah, those were the days.

When it comes down to it, I truly loved Happy Wheels and mostly because I was very skilled at rollerskating. I grew up figure skating and it was a pretty easy transition to the roller rink. In seventh grade I finished the school year with the title "Best Skater." I am not at all kidding.

Wow I am not quite sure how I got from the Cosmos Hates Me to My Glory Days as a Rollerskating Fiend but that was a nice little trip down memory lane. And I just found out it will be another 45 minutes until our server is back up and running. What a morning it is!