Laughing At Life - My "Perils of Pauline"

Sometimes I just have to laugh about how ridiculous my life can get. As an example, yesterday I had several errands to do, among which was laminating an insurance card so that it wouldn't disintegrate while I was carrying it in my card carrier. Although I have a laminating machine (I use it for my etchings and enamel work), I really didn't feel like digging it out for one item when I could go to my nearby FedEx Office store and use their equipment for less than $2. 

My local FedEx Office store is quite close to the house, only a few
minutes away by car. It was a convenient option for getting my
card laminated. 

I picked out the correctly sized plastic pocket, inserted my card, and turned on the machine, feeding the packet into the laminating machine. I heard the gears operate and my card was pulled into the machine. It was creating heat, and I patiently waited for my card to come out of the other end. And waited. And waited. Nothing was happening. I shut down the machine and called one of the staff over for help. 

The laminating machine I used was quite similar to this
style, with all of the interior workings closed away to keep
people from burning themselves. Laminators get VERY
hot. They had to remove both side panels and then
remove screws from the rolling mechanism
 to finally get to my card. 

Ooops! Apparently, according to the instructions nearby that I hadn't even seen, I was supposed to have put the packet into a carrier sheet. I didn't do that. My card, my IRREPLACEABLE card, was stuck in the gears of the laminating machine. 

By the time I finally was able to get my laminated card out of the machine, three sales associates were clustered around me, helping me. They had to unscrew the side casing to remove the top, and then release and unscrew several layers of gears to get down to the final level. By the time of suddess, they had used three different screw drivers, with three different people wielding said screw drivers with varying force, and finally inserted a needle-nosed pliers to pull the card from the gates of hell. What was supposed to have been a 5-minute pop in/pop out errand, had turned into a 30-minute comedy of errors. Oy! My life! Think "Keystone Cops", because that's rather like it seemed as I look back on it. All it needed was a faster film speed and a sprightly soundtrack. 

The fact that I had three staff people helping remove ten screws
from the laminating machine reminded me of the old silent
"Keystone Cops" films. Haven't seen the classic silent films?
I think some of them might be on You-Tube. 

Tonight is the next episode of Project Runway, so if all goes well, I'll write down my thoughts as I watch the episode, and upload them along with photos and results tomorrow morning. I'll be exhausted today since I was too into my current book last night to go to sleep on time - bad me! I hope your day is less eventful than my day was yesterday, and that all of your errands go smoothly. Happy Thursday to all, and I'll be back with fashion tomorrow.