Mardi Gras & a Fiasco of note

Tuesday, as you all know, was Mardi Gras... also know as Fat Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Day [as it was called in my house growing up].

In keeping with the tradition of Pancake Day, I made crepes.

I grew up eating them with some lemon juice squeezed over them and sprinkled with sugar.

Thomas put syrup on them. [Boring].

I suppose the fiasco sort of began while cooking the crepes. I somehow managed to grab the frying pan by the hot metal part and burned all the fingertips on my left hand. I was already not feeling great that day, so that was just icing on the cake. Now I had to type out the study guide for my exams with one hand, because all the fingertips on the other hand were blistered and painful.

But Thomas went out to get a few things at the grocery store, and came back with these pretty flowers for me.

So that made the day better.

But the next day was a completely different story.

{Fair warning: one long rant coming right up}

The fiasco:

You see, my final exams for my online classes had been mailed last week and were supposed to reach my proctor at the library by Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest. I had to take them by March 10th (Thursday... TODAY), or my classes would expire.

I called my proctor at the library every day this week, checking to see if the exams had arrived. When they still had not arrived yesterday I began to panic. 

I called FedEx, and they said they had tried to deliver the exams three times, but the library had been closed each time. [You'd think they'd check the library hours that are posted on the entrance, jeez.]

Apparently, after three delivery attempts, FedEx stops delivering and the package has to be picked up at a FedEx location.

Well, the exams are addressed to my proctor c/o the library. And the library wasn't about to go across town to pick my exams up. And FedEx would not allow anyone else to pick them up.

At this point I've already spent about an hour on the phone with the library and FedEx, and I figured I'd better call the university that I'm taking the classes through (LSU).

So I call LSU, and I get some poor incompetent fellow who has no idea what to do with me, so he makes me leave a message on his supervisor's voicemail and promises me that she will get back to me. Great. I'm thinking to myself: "Does anybody understand that if I am not able to take these exams by TOMORROW, my classes will EXPIRE, and all this work will have been for NOTHING, and I WON'T GET MY DEGREE!!!"

Meanwhile, I made another call to the library and FedEx to see if they can authorize someone else to pick up the exams, and I got a big resounding NO, that is not allowed.

I called LSU back with a different number and FINALLY talked to the first helpful & nice person I'd talked to all day. I explained my predicament, and she went straight to the supervisor and they said they would extend my expiration date to April 1st and send another set of exams via regular mail.

PHEWSH.

But I still wanted to see if I could get FedEx to redeliver the exams so I could just take them and get it done with. So I got back on the phone with them, and they agreed to try and deliver the exams again, this time in the afternoon when the library was actually OPEN.

So today is the day I was supposed to take my exams and be completely done with my classes. But I'm still waiting to see if they will be delivered today by FedEx, and if not I have to wait another week or two on the exams in the regular mail. *Sigh*

I know there are worse things, but when you've been battling these silly classes for a year, you just really want to be DONE.

Yesterday wouldn't have been so bad if  the exam proctor at the library was a nice person. She happens to be extremely unhelpful to the point of being mean, and I had to call her about six different times. The FedEx people were generally unhelpful and did not care that my exams were stuck at their establishment and no one could pick them up.

Thank goodness for the kind lady at LSU who saved the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

When this calamitous day was finally over [good riddance], I did what I do best when I'm stressed out.

I cooked.

Salmon steaks, with quinoa, asparagus, and sliced avocados.

And now, I study and wait for those troublesome exams. Who would have thought a few pieces of paper could cause so much grief.