"The Ultimate Blonde Moment"

Today was not a good day...at all.

I set 3 alarms this morning, 7:50am, 8:15am and 8:45am. Did not get up until 9:50am.

I called the Franchise Tax Board because it's been more than a month since I've filed my California taxes and I still haven't gotten the refund that I was supposed to get. Apparently, I owe them money. No. Fucking. Way. They have my Employer's withholding down as a different number -- way less than what is shown on my W-2, so they told me to fax it to them.

And the fun starts here. I went to my apartment office because I had to take care of something else (way to start the work day on time...x_X). When I was about to be done, I realized I could just fax the W-2 from there. So I asked them if I could and they said yes. So I went to the fax machine and tried to fax it. Turns out, faxing something is more complicated than just dialing the fax number!! I tried to fax it 3 times. Did not work. Fuck. I'm soo fucking late for work now.

I didn't want to leave this thing hanging so I decided to go to the nearest FedEx to try to fax it from there. Same--did not work. Ok did I write down the fax number wrong?! I asked the FedEx people to get the fax number for the Franchise Tax Board for me and 10 minutes later, the lady returned with 5 pages of numbers for the Franchise Tax Board...W.T.F.!? There's like a different fax number for each department!! So I scanned through the whole thing to try to guess which department I should fax my W-2 to (the number I wrote down wasn't on the list). Finally, I found 2 that I thought could be the right department--Filing Enforcement Notice Information and Withholding Services and Compliance.

So I went over to the fax machine and punched in the numbers for Withholding Services and Compliance. Did not work. On the other end of the line, some lady starts talking...What is wrong with these numbers!? At this very exact moment, a guy next to me asked if I have the right number down. Yes, I believe so, I said. "Did you dial a 1 before the actual number?"

...

No!!!

Wow, I can't believe I was so out of it.
Damn it, not only did I not save any time, I LOST ABOUT HALF A DAY!
It turned out the original number did work--I just had to dial a 1 before everything. If I had been more alert, I would have thought of that.

I swear, this will be my downfall on the Amazing Race--constant grogginess.