Time for the penguin on your television to explode

After a brief intermission known locally as 'Tuesday', Monday has continued unabated throughout this week.

We need a montage:

It's Wednesday afternoon, and the minivan decides to start getting cranky right in SuperWife's face as she's driving home for lunch. She nurses its herky-jerkying progress the last few blocks to the parking lot behind our house, where it sits all afternoon while a tattooed bald man who is supposedly a very skilled mechanic, and who looks like someone you would never want to share a prison cell with, pokes and prods at it. His final diagnosis -- the transmission. Or maybe the computer that controls the transmission. Or maybe the transmission filter.

Thursday, my training class finally gets our regular trainer back. She looks and sounds like she's in the final stages of lung cancer, but swears she's nearly fully recovered from a bronchial infection, and certainly isn't contagious. Over the course of the day, she manages to contradict probably 80% of what the substitute, a woman who has actually been doing this job with a high level of expertise for five years, has taught us for the last three days.

Also on Thursday, SuperWife has the van towed over to a garage for diagnostic testing. They confirm it's the transmission, and due to their association with the dealership that sold us the thing, they'll throw us a discount and do the rebuild for only $1200. That sound you heard about 30 hours ago was the anguished shriek of our bank account bursting into flames and then suddenly imploding into nothingness.

All that, and my first week's pay does not show up via the usual direct deposit in my bank account.

Friday, I still have no pay, and SuperWife finds that she has no direct deposit either, and there seems to be some uncertainty as to whether she or anyone else in her office will be receiving paper checks, either. Such are the vagueries of many businesses, but given how our savings account has just evaporated into our van's transmission, it's a pretty crappy week for neither of us to get paid. Also, it's raining, which normally ain't no thang, but, you know, with the van h'ors combat, we're proceeding on foot to and from bus stops. Also, our class's regular trainer continues to blithely teach us how to do things that the woman who subbed for her at the start of the week entirely contradicts when she drops in after lunch to give us a few more practical lessons in what is soon to be our job. Additionally, I call my bank on break and am assured no attempt to do a direct deposit has been made by anyone. I call my agency, and am told that it's likely I will get a paper check in the mail today at home, but, you know, the guy I'm speaking with can't be sure, and the person who might be sure is on another call.

Finally, 4:30 rolls around and I take the bus home without further incident. Once home, I'm watching TV with SuperWife when the phone rings. It's my agency, and to my enormous relief, they aren't telling me I'm fired. To my even greater delight, they advise me that they've 'cut an emergency check' for me, and if they'd called me or sent me an email while I was at work downtown, I probably could have walked over and picked it up, but, since they waited until I'd taken the bus home and we have no car at the moment, well, I'm going to have to wait until Monday to pick it up. Still, it's a relief to know it's waiting for me. Maybe last Monday is finally over.

A few minutes after that, SuperWife and I adjourn to the bedroom, showing that, yeah, last Monday has at long last given up the ghost.

Whew. That was one long goddam Monday.

We hope to have the van back by this Tuesday. I s'pose I'll keep y'all posted on that.