Six degrees of suckiness

Three things That Made Today Suck

1. Bob Hoskins died. I doubt anyone who reads this journal needs to ask what that makes me feel. Yes, he had officially retired from acting a year ago, but my world was a little richer with him still in it.
2. Gerry Adams was arrested. I don't agree with much of what he stands for, but it's hard not to see a political motivation given that (a) local elections are three weeks away and (b) no Loyalists have been hauled into the dock crimes committed forty years ago, despite much better evidence than what is essentially hearsay. I'm very troubled by the fact that the prosecution's case seems to rest on accounts which were collected as part of an oral history project under strict assurance that they wouldn't be made public during the participant's lifetime.
3. My all-but-useless joke of a student continues to disappoint and my first choice of a replacement isn't sure he can start before summer. This was at least the third time I'd scheduled for us to tackle an off-site project but he (a) showed up for a half a shift at a completely different time than promised and (b) had to spend half of that redoing work he bolloxed up on Monday. So I went over to do it myself--dirty, nasty, boring, annoying work--and had to wrestle with an obsolete PC for an hour in a broiling basement before I could even start.

Three Things That Made Today Suck Not So Much

1. Cards won! 9 to 3 over the toughest team in their division, saving them from falling below the .500 mark.
2. I started reading Miriam Toews' A complicated kindness which is so far delivering on its good reviews. I want to finish reading it sooner rather than later so I can gift it to my sister when I see her next.
3. We had the first meeting for a new project at work and it looks dead interesting not to mention even a little fun. I like the team and I'll finally have a chance to do some work with image metadata, which could be just a foretaste of things to come.