File under: Rant

List of today's horribleness, off the top of my head:

1. Got an email from the car rental place that they have no car for me for my trip on Saturday with my guide. They took three days to tell me this. So now I have to find another car, quickly. My guide offered the name of a place, but I thought I already had it settled, so I said no, thanks. And so I emailed her back to ask for her rental place, but haven't heard back. And the closer it gets to the weekend, the less likely it is I won't have to spend a million dollars on a car rental.
2. Realized I hadn't edited a paper I was supposed to send back a few days ago. Did that, while I was supposed to be at the archive.
   
3. Still had to go back to archive, but never quite made it for reasons that will become apparent (possibly; if they do not, I recommend you don't say so).
4. Haven't heard back from anyone here that could possibly help me at the archive.
5. Really did not want to go back to archive (though I tried anyway) because this feels stupid to expend the energy to get all the way over to the building on the other side of town, where I feel unwelcome, only to pour over documents, which are unlikely to have any info in them for me because I can only guess at years for the one town they do have records for, and are written in two languages that I cannot read. And even if I could read them, they are written in that old, loopy, swirly handwriting that is hard to decipher anyway.
6. Stressed about it getting late and still had stuff to do before I left for the archive.
7. It was already late enough by the time I would've gotten there, that I would only have had a few hours anyway.
8. Hadn't had breakfast or anything and was in such a 'screw it' mood that I stopped at the coffee shop for a croissant and cup of tea, and got shoved by the impatient woman behind me. I didn't move and just stared at her.
   
9. Finished and resigned myself to going to the archive. Found out I didn't have any minutes on my phone to call a cab (because the archive is so far away I have to take a cab).
   
10. Had to go to a kiosk to buy more minutes for my phone and deal with the cranky lady who stands in that small box of a shop, trying to communicate what I wanted through hand gestures, pointing, and props.
11. Tried to add the minutes to my phone, but the piece o' crap wasn't working. Sometimes it just doesn't work on the first try, or second, etc. because the service provider seems to be on crack and has a monkey who pulls out the wires at their central office, so sometimes the phone calls work and sometimes they don't.
    
12. So I had to walk back to my room to get the paper that helps with adding credit to the phone. Which of course they charge you for the help. Even though it's their fault. And I can't argue in Lithuanian.
13. Got stared at on the walk back to the house. Because Lithuanians stare a lot. And I stared back. I wanted to punch, like, seven people.
    
14. Finally added the minutes to my phone so that I could call a taxi to get over to the archive. But decided not to because I was so fuming by this point because of everything not working.
15. I know that I can't give up on the archive because if I leave saying that the archive was there and I didn't try something (never mind my functional illiteracy for reading the files, in this case), people would be like, "You didn't try the archive?!?!?!? You were there and you didn't use it?!?!?" So I have to go back tomorrow. And that makes me angry and frustrated and feeling trapped. (And this is supposed to be my freaking vacation?!)
16. Still haven't heard back from the woman at the Kaunas archive to see if there is anything in their files for me to search.
17. I have to call the student loan people and credit card people who are incompetent and have all screwed up various things that I took care of before I left. Most of them are asking for documents that I already sent a month ago. And ignoring my questions, but still asking me for money that I do not owe them.
18. And because I'm doing this, I haven't set up the "fun part" of my trip yet, which keeps dwindling in days because I keep getting stuck here for longer and longer. So who knows if the places I want to visit will have availability by then.

I'm sure once I actually look at my list of what has to get done, I'll find more things....

Are we having fun yet?

PS - I currently want no "helpful tips" about how I can have a super time at the archive anyway. I will go back and try again because I am too stupid not to, but it's not going to be good, fun, or productive in any way, unless you count "exercises in futility" as productive.

EDIT: So the outcome, in case you were curious, was that I came home for the phone thing and never left again, and watched tv online and ate a piece of chocolate. I probably could've gone to the archive and had almost three hours there (and they may be refiling away my requested books as we speak), but I decided that I was just a big quitter and that I quit for the day. Except for all the other things I should be doing. Stupid, fucking vacation.