No, My Nine Year-Old is NOT Having a Breaking Bad-Themed Birthday Party and Yes, Andy is a Genius

I was feeling pretty smug about  personally graphic-designing all of the elements for Little Kid's mad science birthday:  ORIGINAL CONTENT!  AT A BARGAIN-BASEMENT PRICE!  Only expense was the cost of printing (yeah, there's a color printer around here somewhere - probably in the attic, but I never go up there, soooooo . . . .).  Correction:  only expense is printing if you ignore the human cost (measured in brain cells) relating to the following:

1.  The Black Screen of Death Approacheth.  Went to upload everything from my laptop to Office Depot's "Print & Copy" Web site when said laptop started acting major-league squirrely.  Running hella-slow.  Sensing that the end was nigh, I decided to rebudget my time and email all of the would-be Office Depot print jobs to my work desktop, to be processed over my lunch break today, and giving me enough time to upload vacation photos to Picaboo so that I could finish our summer scrapbook before the dang Groupon expires.  Once Picaboo pics were safely in cyberspace, I went to email the party stuff - and discovered that all of my files were too large.  Spent a good bit of time splitting the baby.

(In case you are wondering, Spouse bought me a replacement for the dinosaur computer - um, about two years ago.  Haven't gotten around to transferring anything over to it.  Guess I need to do so now.  The irony that, if anything goes wrong when I fire it up, I have probably blown past the warranty is not lost on me.)

2.  Somewhere, Walter White is Smiling.  As I went to upload the party invitation to Office Depot, I realized that the graphic at the top kinda, sorta looks like the Breaking Bad logo.

I swear that this wasn't intentional.  MORE time wasted, questioning whether it is appropriate to mail out a Breaking Bad-esque invitation to small children.  Ultimately decided that we, as a people, cannot abandon the periodic table solely because a savvy graphic designer came up with an iconic logo for a TV show.

3.  E-commerce is So Convenient!  It took forever to upload various files to Office Depot's site (and that was after I opted to do things in two batches - had I done everything at once, it would have taken close to an hour).  I thought I opted "store pickup" on all items, but when I went to the payment page, it informed me that the cost of mailing my items to my home would exceed the cost of the actual print job.  Um, right, which is why I opted to pick the sucker up - or did I?  Impossible to know, because when I tried to page back, I was informed that my session had expired.  Decided I would be DAMNED if I had to upload everything a second time.  Availed myself of the Web chat feature.  A nice lady in Bangladesh couldn't tell me why the system glitched, but ultimately gave me the email to my preferred Office Depot location, along with the phone number.  Spoke with another nice lady, who confirmed that I could email her the file (at this point, I had decided to cut bait and only focus on getting the Salute to Walter White printed an in the mail).  I did so, with an explanation that the job was time-sensitive and a clear explanation of number of copies needed and preferred paper stock (glossy card).

4.  Andy is a Genius.  No, seriously - I actually titled the screen capture below "Andy is a Genius.jpg" under "My Pictures."

Andy was not the name of Nice Lady #2, and at the risk of stereotyping I'm guessing that Andy is male:

 

WHEN will you be getting more in stock?

YES.

Reminds me of many fun childhood dining-out experiences with my frequently distracted mother:

Smoking or non?

Thanks.

Booth or table?

Okay. 

Yeah, so maybe more than just the cost of printing.  But the print job is now safely with ANOTHER Office Depot location.  Hoping that Andy is not a floater.