I have learned this new term “Mercury Retrograde,” but I unfortunately learned it the hard way.

September 7th was the day when the planets & stars aligned for me to have all technology go sour for 24 hours.

Literally…

I woke to an alarm clock spitting funky sounds. My hard drives were slow. Final Cut Pro shutdown 3 times while I was editing.

And Then… 
Just as I was about to press “upload” for the final cut of the “Volcano Girl” trailer to go on Vimeo, all of the power in the house went out. I mean, as if pressing “upload” turned off the power in my house!

Luckily I saved everything, so I put the quicktime file onto my mobile hard drive and drove to campus. Let’s not even discuss that hour where I had no air conditioning in this 100 degree weather…let’s not discuss it…

And Then…
I went to campus. Once I got to campus to upload the file to Vimeo, the internet went down.

Okay…now what?

I waited with all of my other colleagues equally frustrated. I swear, I didn’t do it! 

And Then…
The internet came back, but, oh no, the file did not upload to Vimeo. It kept stalling, then giving an error.

And Then…
Speaking of error, I tried to print a document as well and after 4 tries where the word “error” literally printed instead of my document, I gave up.

It was that kind of day where I needed to just go home and not touch anything. 

I never got that file uploaded, and never got that document printed.

And Then…
I went to play another file on another computer, and that didn’t work…

And Then…
I had to work until late at night and kept the tech guy close by just in case anything went wrong. Did the projector turn on for me? Nope. Did the mouse on the computer NOT work…at all? Yep.

I really did not know what to think of this! Until my friend, and soundie on Volcano Girl, told me about “Mercury Retrograde” — where the worlds collide to make all technology go kaputt.

And that was my day.