...lightning bolts and ambulance sirens

OK, you are right, I entirely forgot to offer an explanation about the opening post's title, so I owe you one (so what, you can't catch me). All right, here it is.

Question: how do you ruin a perfect day?

Well, there is a multitude of solutions for that question. For example, just take in a classic Woody Allen movie, and you already grabbed a handful. But, as you could guess, this is my blog, so I'll offer up some ways, then.

Method #1: Go swimming with your girlfriend, only to find the only capable sports swimming pool in ole Valhalla is under a bit of (re)construction, therefore having to share its only indoor pool between the professional swimmers (aka "Fastlane") and the occasional, if frequent, hobbyists (aka "Golden Girls"). Things such as this are bound to cause a few raised eyebrows (swimming cap and goggles allowing), more than a few swearwords, heavy muscular straining (for such stinky little overachievers as your humble guide to all affairs valhallan) and rarely some black-blue bruises stemming from swimming accidents related to a combination of different speeds and speedy indifference. In our case, we swiftly realized we won't be able to swim our regular 40 laps (being able to choose between extremely low speed (due to pensioner grannies' mockery of swimming), extremely high speed (guess what, "Fastlaners"), and regular speed and thus a long and exhausting match of dodging and overtaking other swimmers -- or them dodging and overtaking us), I told my sweetie to cut the laps to 20 and be over with the whole ordeal quickly. She agreed. So we swam on, and the whole mess was clearing up a bit (people leaving), so I decided to cut it back only to 30... And when I was swimming my 24th lap, she appeared on the sides and asked when I'm getting out... Then I told her about the 30 laps... And then she charged off looking very hurt and annoyed. OK, so what's the deal? I'm off to the sauna to sweat some capable poisons out of my system, only to be poisoned by her stiff arrogance some more... Well, girls out there, is it worth falling out with your boyfriend because of... ten bloody minutes? Whoosh, day ruined. (To be honest, actually, we made up about 15 minutes later... and behold, the day was no longer ruined. But it could have been! Ahem...)

Method #2: Have Thor et al conduct a trying weather experiment. Set off the day sunny and balmy and hot, and then, out of the blue, import a nice big storm template to your Weather.dat file and kebang! enter lightning strikes and no sooner than you could say 'Blitzkrieg' the ambulance sirens sound off and you suddenly start worrying about your computer at home, left turned on and all (eMule grabbing some nifty episodes of Stargate...), but only after 3 very sweaty seconds do you realize that a month ago you bought your facsimile of SurgeArrest... And then you remember you organised a drinking bender for tonight at an open-air watering hole... And then you can't take more and collapse, reduced to a sniveling heap of rag in the middle of the creative room, ready to swear at the Nordic gods, only to realize that you're on a first-name basis with them.

Tomorrow suddenly looks verrrry intriguing!

Method #3: Waste your time writing blogs when you have a well-paying private work to be done... On a schedule... With a multitude of bugs waiting to be fixed... Not even mentioning your 'official' work...

Well, kids, daddy Andy is off to make some dough! Checking back tomorrow...