So you’re handed an opportunity on a silver platter; it’s the chance of a lifetime. You take it by the reins. You work your butt off, learning a variety of new skills in the arenas of finance, diplomacy and technology. You hear phrases like “saving angel” from those who’ll be responsible for deciding your future in this endeavor.

After many months of this effort, a lot of it unpaid-for, at quite literally the last possible minute… you’re told, “Sorry, we’ve decided to let someone else reap the benefits of this opportunity.”

I cannot begin to describe how intensely furious I am that someone would pull that kind of crap on a good person who’s poured their heart and soul into something for most of this entire year. Words fail me.

As anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock is well aware, there’s been some severe weather down around the Gulf of Mexico. In what could be construed as a sympathetic action, our own weather decided to go into “sturm und drang” mode… just a bit. Okay, so it rained off and on, and there were lightning strikes. It’s as if our climate was attempting to show some solidarity with the climate elsewhere in the country.

And if that’s not an egregious use of anthropomorphism, I don’t know what is. I do know for certain that the heaviest rainfall this evening was saved until the very minute I got off the last bus before home, however. The sky absolutely unloaded for the three or four minutes it took me to get home from the bus stop. Things cleared right up by the time I got inside and up to my room. Go figure.

If one were the highly paranoid sort, one would take that event coupled with the earlier “it’s not raining, I guess I’ll take this box out to be recycled, oh look it started raining just as I got all the way out to the dumpsters” event as a sign that someone up there isn’t happy with me… good thing I’m not that paranoid, huh?