Mondays or... Taper-Madness?

Today was not the best of days. I finished up getting some inspections uploaded on the computer when I got up this morning and was having coffee. I printed off my inspections for the day to go out for today's physical inspections. I get all my stuff in order, grab a granola bar, my travel cup of coffee, clipboard, paperwork, camera, and "Norma", my GPS, and go to head out the front door.

As I open the storm door, a wind gust catches the door like a spinnaker sail on a sail boat and rips the door out of my right hand, which in turn makes me drop everything in my left hand - clipboard, with camera, GPS, and coffee balanced atop. So I pick up Norma and my coffee mug, which is now broken, go in the house, pour the remaining coffee into another travel mug and rinse out the broken cup - don't ask me why since it was garbage at that point - and head back out to the car. I put in my first stop into my GPS, look about me in the car to make sure I have everything and, drive off to my first inspection about 30 miles away.

I arrive at my first destination and begin to diagram the home from the car and go to get my camera before I get out of the car and... whoalla! No camera! Grumble, grumble, grumble.... brainstorm, brainstorm, brainstorm... nothing. I have to drive back to my house to retrieve my camera, which I figured I left somewhere in the vicinity of our front porch and forgot to pick up after my little debackle trying to leave earlier. Sure enough, I get home and there it is in front of one of the middle bushes on the other side of where all my other items had landed.

So, camera retrieved, equipment check again, I head back to my first inspection. I get that one completed and then have to travel to Grosse Ile, an island in the Detroit River downriver from Detroit, for my next inspection. As I pull up to the next place, I note it is a newly constructed home as I had expected given I had a bit of difficulty in tracking down the address on my mapping program. Being a new home and springtime in Michigan with a recent heavy snow thaw, there was a vast supply of mud around the property. The homeowner happens to be there and I explain that I have to get photos and measurements of the exterior of the property to which he replies, "good luck with that".

I get the home measured and diagramed and my boots are just caked with mud to the point that each foot feels as though it weighs 10 pounds. Fortunately enough, there is a new, small drainage ditch with running water in it just in front of this property so I grab my snow brush from the car and go to the ditch and start scrubbing off and washing my boots as best I can to get the worst of the caked on mud off. This is working quite spledidly until, I bend over to get my right boot a little more and my camera falls out of my right coat pocket and into the water in the ditch. Anyone ever told you electronics and water don't mix? Well, they don't.

Back in the car, I try and dry out and blow out the water from the camera as best I can and fire her up to see what we have. The viewing screen came on momentarily, flickered three times and then, fade to black. I drive back home, two inspections completed in 3 hours and, 21 more to go.

I'm just trying to figure out if this is part of my "tapering madness" related to the race or, just a bad Monday? Bob (my boss), if you read this... sorry bout the camera and unproductive day.

Tomorrow will most definitely be better as I am attending the spring agency meetings at the Hyatt Regency in Dearborn, which will be very entertaining, followed by a tasty lunch. Then on to the 21 inspections I botched today. :)