Worst Day Ever?

I go into every Tuesday with a magnificent trepidation. Maybe because it is the furthest day from the weekend, or because that was the day when I was growing up that I would have to go to an awful hour and a half of a Boy Scout meeting and be reminded how much I hated the Boy Scouts (both the organization and the rest of my troop), or because I have some vague shadow-Freud memory of being born on a Tuesday (a fact that I discovered in eighth grade, when I had been hating Boy Scout Tuesdays for over three years.)

Today at work was awful. The new car smell is officially off. There just wasn't time for anything - for breathing, for thinking, for doing any of the other interesting things I try to do with my day. For some vague reason, I've felt like crying ever since the last time I saw my shrink (there is nothing worse than walking out of your shrink's office feeling like you are about to cry - much better to let it out in the office and walk out refreshed - it's like leaving a restaurant when you're still hungry, or leaving a bathroom feeling like you need to shit.) Worse, I had an awful dream about people I never want to think about. Worse, I finished "Kavalier and Clay" on the bus, and there may be no more perfect final words in any American novel after Fitzgerald finished "Gatsby." Then midway through the day, I read that Anthony Minghella died. For some reason, this struck me as being so sad that I had to leave the office and go to a bookstore and pick up a new book.

Now I just read that Arthur C. Clarke died. Mark your calendar. March 18, 2008 - the crappiest day in history.