Since I completed a lot of practical to-do list items yesterday, like opening my mail and going to the bank, this afternoon I decided it might be best to work on my resume for a while. After all, having a thorough and well-written resume will most likely help me in my quest for gainful employment, freelancing gigs, or if not, at least it will make me feel good to read it and realize I have done a few things while I'm watching hour five of "What Not to Wear" on TLC. I'm not big on the technical improvements of the last decade so my resume is this behemoth of the golden era of Resume Wizard and I never, ever plan to change the template. Not if it means doing tricky shortcuts and pulling up bulleted lists at the drop of a hat. When I've gone to interview at temp agencies in the past, I always amaze them with my very fast typing skills, thanks to years and years of constant emailing with friends while at work. Where I fail are those awful tests that assess your aptitude of the basic computer programs like Microsoft Office, ensuring you know how to do impossible, horrible things like create a data chart on Excel that adds up columns of numbers and whatnot. I just sit there and nearly cry until it's over and they see my results and say, "Um...Ok." The next week I'm happily answering phones in some nice office, free to very quickly type all the emails I want.

Luckily, I've kept my resume pretty up to date over the years and today just wanted to add a couple of the things I've been working on lately and thus get millions of job offers. It took me a while, copying and pasting and wording everything just so, but I'm happy with the end result. Next, I decided, I'd see if I could get the old printer up and running so I could send a few letters out and attach my new resume.

There's a lot we take for granted when we work in offices, like printers and copy machines and people who will come and fix those things for you when they don't work.

The printer didn't work the first time I tried it. Typical, I thought. So I messed around with the printer utility program on my computer, which is a total joke because it certainly did NOT explain to me why the machine would make noises, like it was totally going to do something awesome, and then just fall silent, all the lights blinking.

I got on the floor, next to the thing. As this is only day two of my being back from Maine and not working and all that, I decided that this afternoon and this afternoon alone it would be ok if I wore some comfy, not-fit-to-go-out-in clothes. Because I'm being productive, you know? And soon, tomorrow and all the days after, I'm going to have to be very professional and clean and on top of things because I'll go crazy if I'm not, so what's the problem if I'm wearing my grey tank top and these cotton drawstring shorts that are a different shade of grey, and oh, yeah, I haven't showered yet?

So I got on the floor in that little ensemble, saw that the ink light was blinking red and proceeded to open up the printer and try to figure it out like the natural mechanic I am. I looked at the illustrated instructions pasted inside for determining if the ink has, indeed, run out, and followed them, pressing one button, then waiting for a small plastic pointer to show me the culprit. Cyan. According to the illustration, my color printer is out of Cyan. Not black. I decided to take matters into my own hands and pushed a number of buttons until the ink cartridge holder slowed it's wild dance and came to a stop so I could grab the black ink cartridge and shake it, which is exactly what you're supposed to do, right? Thankfully the damage was minimal, the black ink only reached my hands before I realized there was some left in there. I washed them, and of course it's still there, but that's evidence that I've worked hard. That's what I say. Plus, the effort helped me figure out that the printer isn't out of black ink, really. It's just broken in other ways that I'll never, ever be able to fix. Therefore I won't be listing skills concerning printers on my resume. Come to think about it, I don't think I'll be listing any skills, administrative, or otherwise. I can't fix the computer, printer or copy machine and I can't make an Excel spreadsheet, but I can use Spellcheck and am generally decent in the grammar department so, honestly, I'm a pretty great candidate for the job. Take my word for it.