Perhaps, if I catalog the sequence of events, it won’t look quite so bad.

• In my mad dash to get out the door so I could catch the bus to work this morning, I forgot my phone.
• The bus, which came a little bit late, got me downtown to SW Morrison just in time to watch the Blue Line MAX leave.
• Since I had 15 minutes to kill before the next Blue Line train, I decided to put some cash in my empty wallet and maybe even buy a cup of cocoa. Hey, the WaMu branch was only a block or so away. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
• Immediately after I inserted my debit card, the automatic teller machine displayed an oh-so-friendly error message, something along the lines of “Oops, there’s been some kind of problem. Support has been alerted, and soon everything will be sunshine and roses. Tee hee!”
• This would’ve been bearable, since the downtown WaMu branch has two outdoor ATMs, but for the fact that the ATM I selected chose not to return my card.
• I checked the business hours on the door: the branch opened at 9 o’clock. I checked the clock overhead: the time was 7 o’clock, sharp.
• Several facts collided in my mind. These included such tidbits as, “I have no phone,” “I can’t call work,” “I can’t call WaMu,” “I have no cash,” “I have no debit card,” “Without said card I’m totally screwed,” “It’s awfully damned cold out here,” “If I want my card back I’ll have to wait for two hours in the cold,” “I haven’t eaten yet,” and “These guys from Knez Building Supplies must be having a jolly good snicker at my expense.”
• For two hours I warned would-be automated banking customers away from The Bad Machine That Eats Cards. I also watched seagulls bullying pigeons around, and I watched the guys from Knez unload drywall onto a small cart and lower it on the lift to… somewhere below WaMu, I suppose. I heard one homeless woman berate another homeless woman at full volume, with exquisitely uncreative language. I watched the crane above the Meier & Frank Macy’s building swing ’round and ’round, but never did the operator lower the hook to hoist any material. This disappointed me greatly.
• At 9:00, a cold and sore (I was expecting my feet to hurt, but after an hour my knees were killing me) and tired and hungry Yours Truly entered the bank branch and informed the first available (I waited politely, thank you) employee of what had taken place two hours earlier. Oddly enough, the woman behind me in line had experienced the same thing… at six o’clock, a full hour before my card was taken. Aha! I reveled in my Good Deed Vigil, as the line in the bank lobby would’ve been considerably longer had I chosen to leave for those two hours.
• My card returned (and tested, in the other machine), I hurried to the westbound MAX station, only two find that two of the three ticket validators were out of order. Third time’s the charm, yes? That’s right, folks, it took two all-zone Tri-Met tickets to get to work this morning.
• Once off the train at the Hillsboro Airport station, I hurried (as best I could, given how worn out I felt) to the office. At first the skies were clear, but then I felt moisture. Then I saw moisture. White, fluffy moisture. By the time I made it to the office door, I sported a nice light dusting of snow.
• I regaled my coworkers (who were, to be sure, quite concerned since I was more than two hours late and hadn’t answered or returned any calls) with the tale of my morning. I knocked back the lukewarm cocoa (hey, I’m not complaining!) that The Roomie had provided (back when I was expected “any time now”) and settled into my workday.

Hmm. Well, it could’ve been worse, and all’s well that ends well, right?