New Year Ramble

New Year’s eve was such a blast. Fancy dinner, all dressed up, then dancing and drinking to a live band, confetti and optimistic good hopes.

Ok, who am I fooling, we stayed home because it was freezing and the wind was blowing small farm yard animals all over the state. Ok, who am I fooling again, even if it was 90 degrees and no wind, we’d probably still stay home.

I vowed to stay awake to ring in the New Year, hoping for a much better New Year, as opposed to the last fucked up New Year of last year, where my 401K is now worth the jar of coins we have upstairs, and all manner of corruption and crap made for a bad 365. I wanted to see that clock strike midnight, the ball fall and zillions of people in New York kissing and getting stuck on someone’s face because it was freaking cold out there, and the Dick Clark animatronic slurring a “Happy New Year” to one and all... except I fell asleep.

I just lay down for like 5 minutes to watch Terminator, like the original Terminator, you know, the one where Sarah Conner has the big hair and the special effects are lame. You didn’t realize just how bad the special effects were until about 50 years later, and then you watch it and go “damn, that’s lame”. Yeah, so about the time I said “damn, that’s...zzzzzzzz”

Woke up at 6:30 am when the dogs wanted breakfast. Fed them and went back to bed until 9:30, so that’s probably a whole 12 hours of sleep right there. Yeah, this year is so much different than last year already.

Ok, its different in that today I’ve been on some kind of Donna Reed productivity day thing. I have no idea what’s up with that, other to say that I managed to re-arrange all of my cabinets, put in new shelf liners, throw out a bunch of junk we never use, used and it was almost gone and for some reason we kept a mostly empty container, discovered that we have no less than 14 cans of air freshener in various and sundry foresty smells, an overabundance of steam cleaner formulas (enough to steam clean the Kennedy center), cleaned the trash can, finally put up the doors to the cupboards that I painted over a year ago and never put back up (then had to relearn to open the stupid doors to get something instead of jamming my fingers on the door), then I made dinner and baked oatmeal cookies. I’m a wild woman! Next thing you know I’ll shave my legs... nah.

After resting for a minute or two, I went into the ghastly back room and cleaned the bejezus out of there too. Hung all of the yard implements on hooks on the walls, put all of the painting supplies away (even though I haven’t finished painting the upstairs, which now comes in a charming half white half primer motif with glaring spots of missed both all over).

I (for the most part) caught up on a bunch of e-mails except for the stuff that I’m so totally avoiding because I just don’t want to deal with it), read blogs, read the news, read more e-mails, answered private Facebook e-mails, but ignored all of the “requests” because accepting a “new year’s eve” invite now seems a bit... stupid. Did some laundry, a few loads of dishes, drank two lattes and a few pots of coffee, ate the oatmeal cookies and shared some with the pups, and now I’m downstairs blaring my iPod to drown out the sound of the local fireworks display because yesterday they couldn’t have them, and if Meeshka could hear them, she’d be clawing my leg... she’s asleep... thanks to “Tainted Love” playing full blast (that is what is on right now... not over and over and over).

So, now that I probably made you feel totally inadequate for laying in bed hung over and only leaving to hurl up whatever it was you drank in mass quantities last night, I would like to point out the following link where annoying words are being banned.

The Lake Superior State University Words to be banished from the Queens English for mis-use, over-use and General Uselessness

While I agree, for the most part, with all of their selections, I feel that something else needs to be added for the safety and sanity of the world... the use of “i” before a word. Sure its a blatant pile on used by everyone to fool people into believing that their product is somehow used with an Apple product. Apple came out with the ultra cool iMac, then iPod, then, iPhone, people use iTunes, and other “i” Apple products, but soon everyone was jumping on the “i” bandwagon. Most of these gizmos were things that were meant to be used with a cool Apple item, but then it got totally out of hand. For the love of gawd I actually bought an iCrate. An iCrate? What makes it an “i” crate? Why the “i”????? WHY????

Excuse me, I have to go iPoop on my iToilet now.

The weekly general brain spew

Once again I wish that I had some kind of interface that would just transcribe all of the wonderful blog posts that I compose in my head while walking through the mall, or in the kitchen, or sitting on the toilet, or wherever I happen to be when I’m NOT sitting in front of my computer where I can actually type them instead of sitting down with nothing in my head forgetting all of those witting things that happened in my life 5 minutes ago because I have the brain of a may fly.

Was that all one sentence?

Whatever. Ok, I’ll try to recreate my day in the usually weekly brain spew of things, which won’t be nearly as funny as they appeared in my head hours ago.

I spent most of the day reading this all 188 pages of it. Before you ask, its for my work, and before you ask, yes I’m insane, and before you ask, no I don’t work for that place listed on the site, that’s just a place that I found that didn’t have the whole PDF file of pain, I was being nice and sparing you all from that horror. If you, for some odd and sadistic reason, want to read the whole thing, you can download the PDF here.

I did manage to tear myself away from this gripping document long enough to go have all you can eat mongolian BBQ with hubby for lunch, then came back and finished it, only to find out that the butler did it and didn’t provide adequate audit control.

As tomorrow is somewhat an “off” day (I still have to write up a monthly status report of what all I did this month, which consists of looking through scraps of paper and trying to decipher what all that scribbling actually means, and research more incredibly boring documentation stuff), hubby and I decided to go to the mall for a latte and walk around.

As I walked out the door, I nearly fell over the two very large boxes that had been plopped in front of it. The APC UPSs had arrived. Wow, holy crap! I only ordered the replacements from APC on Saturday when, tragically, two of our computer UPSs died an hour apart from each other. How convenient. Instead of going to the mall for new ones, hubby mentioned a trade in program that APC has, so I checked it out and found that instead of getting new batteries for these discontinued brands, I could new ones for about the price of the batteries. Cool, so I did that and forgot all about it, thinking it would take a very pissed off and herniated delivery guy a looong time to deliver them. Turns out it took less than 2 days. Impressive! So, since I bitch a lot about stuff that doesn’t work... go to the APC site and trade up your dead UPS. Doesn’t even have to be APC UPS, they’ll take anything.

Anyhoo, there was an accident on the way to the mall and traffic was backed up. I was actually relieved to hear that there was an accident because I was convinced that the 2009 Christmas shopping season had started and the crowds were backed up going to the mall. Thankfully it was just a horrible accident. There was actually ample parking and most of the mall loonies had left, which was good in that I wasn’t being stepped on from behind, but bad in that the even more desperate kiosk vendors were like pirana.

The most notable mall thing was that there was some woman walking past us. She had a really cool gray dress on (casual type) with a really cool black sweater on over it, and really cool black tights... AND BROWN BOOTS!!! I mean seriously! I’m no fashion maven (I was wearing jeans and my wooly mammoth crocs) but come on! If you have a cool outfit like that and don’t have the black boots, then bag the outfit until you get to a freakin shoe store! BROWN BOOTS??

Yep, so that was my mall excitement of the day.

Oh, and earlier I had to go pick up two Christmas cards for my in-laws. Yes, we suck and haven’t sent them anything, but we plan on it. Yes, its the 30th, but there should be SOME christmas cards just hanging out... apparently not. There also aren’t any cards that say “Happy Anniversary, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Years” because yes, we forgot their anniversary too. So, instead... I bought about 7 birthday cards that made me laugh, which I’ll send to my friend... whose name I won’t say, so we’ll just call her Icky, and her daughter Lebeebee, who has a real name, but I’ve called her Lebeebee even before she was born, so that’s her name to me. Ok, so it won’t even be their birthdays when I send them, but hey... why should you just send a birthday card on one day, when you can send them all the time and make people feel that good way that they feel when they turn another year older and that much closer to death?

The problem that I have with sending cards is:
1.) writing something humorous in them. If you just sign your name to it, why not leave it blank so they can re-use it.

2.) Finding stamps, even though I keep them in the same place (my dayplanner) but then there’s the whole “ok, what is postage nowadays” because I have stamps there of several denominations and never know if that’s the right amount, so I end up slapping 2 stamps on... just in case.

3.) Getting the signed, sealed, stamped letter into a mailbox that I check every night after work 10 steps from my front door. Its HARD!

Ok, as I really have no idea what day it is, I’ll stop with the rambling for now. When I started this, I really thought that today was Friday, but apparently not.

Deep Discounts

All day we heard on various and sundry news programs how nobody was at the malls, nobody was shopping, stores were slashing prices up to 90%. Reporters stood in virtually barren mall parking lots intoning the death of retail sales, and what great sales were going on, but nobody was there, nobody was buying.

GREAT! Sales and no people at the mall, lets go! After spending 2 days in the house first hiding from the last minutes shopping hordes, and then because nobody was open on Christmas except Starbucks (thank you Starbucks, we love you and are totally addicted to your caffeinated drinks, tell us oh great Starbucks, what do we do next? Take over the world in the name of latte? Set myself aflame, sure, just hand me another venti 3 pump Peppermint 3 pump white mocha latte please), we needed to get out, so off we drove to the nearest mall.

The first indication that the reporters were liar, liar pants on fires was the line of cars off the highway waiting to get to the mall exit ramp. Hm, this didn’t bode well. We should have just called it quits, zoomed by the mall and gone to our favorite strip mall Starbucks, but no... how bad could it be.

Really bad apparently. As we crept around the parking lot at -.01 mph, we realized that this was far worse than any holiday frenzy. Since Christmas was over, all that make believe nice through clenched teeth was now gone, laying bare the utmost in hostility and anger buried deep during the just ending holiday season. The gloves were off, no need to be nice anymore because people were in a hurry to get what they wanted or return what they didn’t, and nothing was going to stop them.

We thought we saw a car leaving, only to find that another was already in place to take its spot. As the leaving car eased out of the space, we watched with mixed terror and curiosity as a little compact car whipped past the waiting car, nearly did a two wheeled turn to avoid the leaving car, and whipped into the barely vacant space. We were trapped between the leaving and waiting car and the cars behind us with that feeling of “gosh, I wish I had my glock” because we pretty much felt that bullets would be a’ flying at any moment, especially when the leaving car passenger rolled down the window and started pointing and screaming (I actually ducked because I wasn’t sure the hand was empty) and then the waiting car’s driver got out and started screaming. The woman simply got out of her car and walked away. What kind of person does that? What concept do they have in their head that allows them to do something so callous, dastardly and downright WRONG and simply walk away? We finally squeezed through the hatred and drove away and I really do hope that the waiting driver let all of the air out of that bitch’s tires.

After circling the entire mall we happened upon a nice fellow that was leaving and actually pointed to where he parked to let us know. He must have been a seasoned veteran because he backed up in such a way as to block anyone coming from the other way and allowed us to pull in. So, that was only 20 minutes of trying to find a parking spot.

We went inside and immediately got in line at the Starbucks (because there was no way I could face the onslaught of sadistic, uncaring humanity without a latte), then ventured around looking for all of those wonderful bargains the media shills had screeched about. Yeah, nothing. At least nothing that wasn’t already on sale, and the “bargain” junk was just that, junk. Crap you wouldn’t buy ever, unless it was 2 for a dollar, which is was. Its as though stores actually thought that if people were forced to go a day without being able to shop, they would rush in and buy 2 goofy cat book marks for a dollar, when normally they wouldn’t.

All of the cool stuff was the same outlandish price as before, nothing new. Either the economy isn’t as bad as everyone says, or people are just loading up their credit cards with whatever they can shove in a cart because tomorrow they may lose their jobs and default on their credit cards and mortgages, but by gawd they can play Xbox until the authorities come and repossess everything they “own”.

We made our way through a majority of the mall, only because it took us so long to park that DAMMIT we were going to get our time worth out of it. Finally when I was about to elbow a small, screaming child being drug out of a store by her mother or at the very least yell “SPANK HER, NOBODY WILL SAY A WORD!” we decided to leave. Yeah, don’t get me started on that, because it was the same wreck mentality driving out of the mall.

We stopped at the usual Starbucks on the way home and got another latte to calm our nerves. Ahhh.

The Most Depressing Day of Television

Its Christmas, so you’d expect that the networks would just be dripping with all of those nostalgic christmas shows, perhaps a Jesus movie or 40, and of course the marathon showings of “Its A Wonderful Night” and “A Christmas Story”.

Ok, those are on there, on the “regular” channels, but the movie channels, good lord, what were they thinking? Nothing but doom and gloom, and sadness. Guess they’re preparing us for the New Year, but still, come on, how about a little movie magic to make us forget the foreclosures, bailouts, and general ick of the world?

Nope, what we get is stuff like “What Dreams May Come”. I first saw this film a few years back, shortly after my father died. Hubby was off on some business trip and I got sucked into the movie like a car in a Bethesda pipe break. I spent the entire movie sobbing and didn’t stop until the end of the week practically.

I usually don’t cry in movies. I don’t count wailing and weeping during the Jar Jar Binks parts of that horrible first (or 4th or whatever it was) Star Wars, I mean movies that totally just make you curl into a little ball and cry like a 6 year old. Friends would tell me “oh, I cried during this movie”, and I’d watch it and feel like a heartless bastard because it didn’t bother me.

From Amazon.com, here is a list of “sad” movies that I’ve seen:

Philadelphia - yeah, sad, but eh.

Saving Private Ryan - Frankly, I was so sick of the whole thing by the end I was hoping they didn’t save him, especially since he made them all stay and got most of them killed in the process.

Beaches - Sad, but when they start playing “Wind Beneath My Wings”, that pretty much killed the sadness for me. I love the song, but good gawd, wasn’t that a bit too much?

Forrest Gump - What’s sad about that?

Titanic - HURL! I mean really! There was plenty of room on that door for Leonardo and with all that extra fat, she could have tread some water and gave him a break.

Castaway - I admit that I did get a little misty when he lost Wilson

Schindler’s List - Ok, I admit it, bawled like a little girl at the end. I knew I was in trouble when my husband (who saw it before I did) said HE cried at the end.

Glory - Sad, but no tears

The Passion of the Christ - um... euw

Ghost - I got a bit misty at the ending scene, but then was horribly grossed out thinking “Wait a minute, that’s Demi Moore kissing Whoopi Goldberg EWWWWW!”

Awakenings - Sad, but uplifting in a strange way, I do love this movie, but no tears.

Simon Birch - Never saw it because I read the book “A Prayer for Owen Meany” and figured they butchered the book. The book did leave me sad.

My Girl - Actually laughed when Macaulay Culkin’s character died (ok, I said I was a heartless bastard)

So there, that pretty much proves that it takes a lot (or at least a believable plot and good story with endearing characters that you grow to care about throughout the film) for me to even begin shedding a tear. Not that “What Dreams May Come” had all of that. I typically despise any Robin Williams flicks (ok, except Awakenings, and this one) but it took me a while to get over waiting for him to do some schtick in this film, and frankly he was a right bastard of a father and all, but I think that’s what made it better. His character expected something different from his kids than what they wanted, and I expected Williams to be a clown, but somewhere in the movie I actually forgot I was watching Robin Williams. I also forgot that I was watching Cuba Gooding Jr. and wasn’t expecting his character to scream “Show me the money”, so that in itself is movie magic.

Yes, I know that the film isn’t true to the book, but it still makes me cry.

So, before I end the “movies that made me cry” post, I just want to throw out this one movie title that I’m sure nobody has seen, I’m certainly not recommending it (because it pretty much scarred me and my hubby for life) and for the love of GAWD don’t watch it if you are even a tad bit depressed or have easy access to weapons, knives, or even a pencil.

That movie: ‘night, Mother.

Hubby (before we got married) and I just happened to watch it one night, didn’t know what it was, started watching and couldn’t leave. It was like being glued to the chair, car wreck, but worse. Its one of those movies where if you felt fantastic, on top of the world, life is good... when its over you want to crawl in a hole and cover the hole and weep. Its not one of those tear jerker films, its more of a WTF??? films as the credits are rolling by. The kind of film that makes you want to kick a kitten, or just walk out into the night and live under a bridge. This movie will literally suck the life blood out of you.

Oh yeah, now you just have to see it, don’t you... I warned you.

Holiday Greetings

Since I don't "do" Christmas (by the way, happy winter solstice everyone!), this is the closest thing to a holiday greeting card that I could muster:
So there you have it.

Um

I was intrigued by the following story, which is titled:

Human-sized Mystery Heart Found at Michigan Car Wash

Ok, that’s a good story. Random heart found at car wash, police trying to figure out who or what it belongs to. Great story, very mysterious... but the best part is this quote by the owner of the car wash:

“The owner told police that animal parts had been left before at the car wash, but never a heart.”

This is where the “um” factor comes in... why does the story end there? Much like the tennis shoe wearing severed feet mystery, this story just begs for more information! Really? Is it common that animal parts are left at car washes? Does this happen all over the U.S. or is it just something unique to this car wash? Do people go get their cars washed and drop off a deer leg or spleen they had sitting around in the back seat?

Time for a good car washing, oh, and when you vacuum the trunk, can you toss that old bear head, here’s an extra 5 for ya.

Is it so common that its like “oh, that’s weird, we’ve NEVER had a heart before!” A heart is the unique aspect to this story? If it had been something like a horse torso, that’s not news?

Oh Boy, The Christmas Spirit Just Reeks

I don’t usually blog about work because of what I do, but I just wanted to send out this little snippet of advice to anyone that starts a project that others have worked on for 2 years:

If you feel the urge to “take the initiative” to do something, don’t go leaping straight to the boss and tell the boss that you need something because you are going to change a bunch of stuff. If you do choose to do that, also expect that the next day when you skip into your office, all of the people that you jumped over will be standing in line to stomp on your head.

I’ll be wearing my Doc Martins tomorrow.

So, that sets the tone for the rest of my posting.

I had to brave the evil grocery store in the dark and rain after work for taco fixings. Oh sure, we had other things we could eat at home, but since most of my money is either being drained from my 401K like a plug being pulled out of a bath tub, or being spent to bail out the auto industry I figured that I wanted tacos, so dammit I’m going to have tacos.

I get home, cold and wet, and as I’m trying to prepare the tasty tacos, still stewing about work and wondering where I left my Doc Martins, the phone rings.

Typically I don’t answer the phone. If they can’t tell me they’re foreclosing on my house, then I must be allowed to stay in it. Ok, things aren’t that grim, I exaggerate a lot... actually I’m avoiding the phone calls from desperate charities, or my mortgage holder telling me I need to refinance my house. Yeah... AHAHAHAHAAAAA. The charities I tell that we’re poor and eating cat food but if they want to give ME something, then we can talk. The mortgage company I just say AHAHAHAHAHAAAA, then hang up.

Tonight I was hoping for either, because I was going to give either of them a piece of my mind (taking out work frustration on innocent strangers is a lovely way to keep from bottling it all in and going postal someday. Hey, its not like I asked them to call.) but I couldn’t even get that satisfaction... it was a recording... from the local pizza delivery place.

Hey (some very perky woman shrieked in the recording) you are a V.I.P.! As a V.I.P. (shrieking and way to freakin perky woman says) I’m “entitled” to a large pizza with one topping for only (enter some amount here, I don’t remember).

Frankly, I do like pizza, but ONE topping? Does that include sauce and cheese?

My questions were interrupted by perky recorded woman who couldn’t hear me muttering into the phone, and who, instead, shrieked with glee that all I had to do was press “1” and she would stop her shrieking so I could speak to my local pizza place and order this wonderful one topping cheap pizza.

Are you kidding me? Are things THAT bad that now pizza places are calling their customers to get them to order pizza?

I hung up on perky recorded woman, made tacos and enjoyed them so much that I literally had to hose myself off. Have I mentioned that I’m a messy eater? I’ll save that for tomorrow.

All Over the Place

I’m pretty sure that this post will go in strange directions, so I can’t promise a meaningful end to it.

So last night I became some techo-geek Goldilocks trying to find the most comfortable sleep number on my bed. Too soft, too hard, too soft, too hard, sonofa... I think it has something to do with having me and three large huskies on the bed when I was trying to adjust it, and I’m amazed the thing didn’t pop at any one point in my inflating and deflating of it. The dogs were slightly amused at the ride, except for Meeshka who clawed my forehead, so I kept it at 30 and struggled to get enough covers out from under Loki so I could cover a small part of my body and not freeze to death. You would think that if two meager puppies could keep a three year old boy warm out in the cold, that three full grown huskies would generate enough heat to keep me warm in a house, but I prefer to have my entire body warm with a blanket and not just specific bits of me warmed by huskies.

Incredibly enough, I woke up this morning in a foul mood. Let me restate that... I woke up in the same foul mood I’ve been in for the past... several months or so. Snoozing the alarm until the last minute, rushing around to get ready for work and then arriving late and having to park 7 miles away further added to the mood, if that’s even possible.

I managed to survive an entire day of work, and thought I’d be in a better mood leaving work until I realized that since I had forgotten the shopping list on my desk yesterday, and because I was in great gastro-intestinal distress from the poisoned hot dog consumed on Saturday, I had managed to only grab ONE thing that I needed from the store, so I had to go back and get the rest of the stuff that I needed. Ok, need is a stretch as I’m pretty sure we could have done without grape juice, but I did need to get liverwurst for the dogs and showing up at home without that would have been catastrophic or at the very least... scarring.

I think part of what has contributed to my foul mood is the fact that all day its been overcast and gloomy, and when I leave work its pitch freakin black out, making me believe that its time to go to bed and I shouldn’t be forced to go grocery shopping when I should be in bed... even though its only 5 pm. I managed to get into a reasonably short line at the cashier, only to find out that the reason it was so short was because all of the people that had been in the line died of natural causes waiting for the “cashier in training” to figure out that no matter how many times he tried scanning an item and listening to the beep, he would need to hit the “clear” button first before the stupid thing would work. This happened no less than 14 times before my items were ready to be rung up, and each time he needed someone from customer service to come over and smack the “clear” button for him. He didn’t seem very appreciative when I screamed “HIT THE CLEAR BUTTON!” the 4,596 time.

I got stuck in the usual night time traffic cluster fuck because some asshat thought it would be ok for a 2 lane road to close up to 1 lane near a major intersection (which we happen to call “The Intersection of Doom” for the amount of daily carnage), and I finally get home sweet home to very anxious dogs happy to see that I come bearing liverwurst.

Once again, I look at my “to do” list and laugh. Nothing getting done tonight again. Instead I think I’ll e-mail my congressman and senator and tell them they’re worthless, corrupt scum. That may make me feel better.

Hiding Out

Either I’m smacked upside the head with some kind of seasonal affective disorder (SAD... yeah, cute fucking acronym) or that hot dog I ate while freezing my ass off at some non-profit standing in the freezing cold trying to sell cute stuffed animals event thing has poisoned me. Since I’ve been unmotivated going on two weeks and I just ate the hot dog two days ago, I’m guessing I’m in a pissy mood from the season and a crappy mood from the hot dog... if you get my drift.

While most people look forward to the Christmas season, I only look forward to the wonderful time off of the Christmas season, certainly not the manic, glazed eyed, rude butt heads that crowd the malls and trample innocent people to death in their quest for a $20 off DVD player. I have a routine, that routine is that I drive to a Starbucks, expect to find a parking spot within 5 miles of the Starbucks, and not have to stand in line behind 5,000 people who have apparently never been to a Starbucks and require the cashier to explain each and every ingredient in each and every drink. I also don’t like the people that order, and even though there are 4,000 people waiting on their drink, feel compelled to rush the bar where the completed drinks are placed and hover, waiting for their drink and blocking the little landing pad area. I also hate those hovering people that feel that the very first venti latte plopped on that landing pad area is their venti latte, even though 3,499 people ahead of them ordered a venti latte... and heaven help them if they’re reaching for my venti latte.

Yep, Christmas only means inconvenience to me, I hate it. I don’t “do” Christmas, and don’t go rushing off and assume that I’m jewish, I am not. There are other religions that don’t celebrate Christmas other than the Jews, so go enlighten yourself and find out what they are, then maybe I won’t smack you upside the head when you exclaim to me “I didn’t know you were jewish”. You can wish me a Merry Christmas, if that’s what you celebrate, but don’t expect me to wish it back, although I may say “same to you”, but I do that with travel agents too when they tell me to have a good trip. “You too!” I yell... then fall to the floor and convulse because I’m an idiot and have been trained to just spew random niceties at people without first thinking about what I’m saying. “Sorry for your loss” “You too!”

Ok, back to my lack of motivation... its very lacking. So lacking that I’m surprised I have enough motivation to remember to breathe, and frankly I did feel somewhat faint at work today, so maybe I did forget to breathe. I have just enough motivation to go to work, sit and stare, come home, sit and stare, go to bed. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem, except that I have things that I told people that I would do. Maybe that’s the whole problem right there... commitment. Seems like a lot of work, even though its not really work, but the moment I told someone I would do something and assigned a rather generic time frame to the moment of when I would actually do it... it immediately became work.

Maybe I don’t have SAD. Maybe I have WAD... but that sounds rather vulgar. I’m so unmotivated.

Next stop

Amen

This Can't Be A Good Sign

Tonight while I was driving home from work, a pigeon swooped into traffic, smashed itself into the side of the car in front of me (that was traveling 50 mph), exploded in a flurry of feathers and was propelled by its own momentum into oncoming traffic. Pigeon suicide.

Two things crossed my mind:
1.) this can’t be a good sign
2.) what made it do that?

Could the pigeon have looked at its online 401K statement and felt that flying into a car was the only alternative?

At least it was a pigeon and not a stock broker. I’d mourn more for the pigeon though.

My husband is currently ranting about the sheet he received from the “sleep disorder” clinic. He’s never been able to sleep well, so he finally went to the doctor who referred him to the sleep disorder clinic. Before bed he’s suppose to either:

read a boring book
write in a journal

He’s claiming that these are women things, men don’t read books and they don’t journal. I can see how this is going to be a rousing success. I think I’ll get some ice cream to eat in bed so at least I have something tasty to eat while he’s ranting about not sleeping.

Tropical Storm Hanna (montana)

Brother-in-law of doom

Yep, its the first week of September, and like clock-work, my brother-in-law is here for the week, and so are the horrible catastrophes and we’re waiting for a famous person to die.

This happens every time he visits. We, at first, thought that catastrophes and horrible things only happened during vacations. How many times does your hotel have to burn down before you begin to think its a family curse? The second one had us wondering, but after the third, you pretty much realize that it can’t be a fluke.

We narrowed it down to the amount of family members gathered in one small area determines the rough magnitude of destruction and bad mojo. If its us and Brother-in-law, then typically a natural disaster occurs, and a famous person dies. If its us, Brother-in-law AND my in-laws, then very horrible things like terrorist attacks, a natural disaster AND a famous person dies.

Don’t worry, this year its just Brother-in-law, which explains Gustav. I’m glad to see the call for mass evacuations, unlike the year he came to visit and Katrina hit. Yes, that was his doing too. He was no where near us during that whole Tsunami thing... actually my mom was here, but we haven’t quite correlated the effect of my relatives visiting and horrible natural disasters. I may need a grant to study this phenomena.

This seemingly odd happenstance causes my somewhat rational friends to giggle happily and submit guesses for the celebrity death pool. Nobody guessed Princess Diana, that was a huge surprise (and yes, he was here), and Steve Irwin, that was totally out of the blue (yep, day 2 of his visit). We get the usual guesses of old celebrities that should have died years ago, and some people will go for the not so obvious (although for some reason I felt that Marie Osmond was a bit cruel in some way).

So, people of the gulf coast region, I’m very sorry that my brother-in-law is in town. We have no way of directing his odd power of natural catastrophe and celebrity deaths, so its nothing personal or anything.

Have You Seen This Bag?

An APB (all purse bulletin) has been released.

Have you seen this bag?

This bag is wanted internationally.

Name: Adrienne Vittadini
Description: soft leather bag
Wanted for: being the perfect leather bag
Last seen: October 2003 issue of Real Simple magazine
Whereabouts: unknown

If you have seen this bag, please notify this blogger immediately.



This bag is to be considered soft and perfect. Care should be taken when approaching this bag as you will undoubtedly want it and must have it. Don't attempt to buy this bag if it is the only bag available because if you flaunt it in front of this blogger, she will hunt you down and become hysterical, wanting to touch it and just put it on her shoulder just once, really, I'll give it back to you after I try it on.

Knock offs of this bag are acceptable if the leather is buttery soft.

Please find this bag and make a bag-a-holic (or two, or 5,000) happy.

Its all fake (well, some of it)

So, Fox news was all up in arms today because they found out that some of the fireworks for the opening ceremony of the olympics was computer generated, and that one little girl was lip syncing to the voice of another little girl who wasn’t “pretty” enough to be in the ceremony.

Let’s see. They had a reportedly 15,000 people performing during the opening ceremonies, which was one of the most impressive displays of synchronized performing, with amazing computer generated and video generated accompaniment, and Fox is miffed about some things not being what they appeared to be.

Hmm, read no further if you don’t want to read spoilers:

1.) Singers lip sync ALL THE TIME DUH!
2.) Actors don’t do their own stunts
3.) Everything in the movies is computer generated, fake, false, misleading and totally bogus.
4.) There are no real superheros!!!!

Get over it Fox, it was still pretty impressive and if the U.S. tried to pull something off like that, invariably they would have been forced to use a Windows product for the floor screen and would have been required to reboot it no less than 6 times.

The press has revealed that the latest “fad” is Pregorexia. Women with eating disorders get pregnant and do everything they can to not gain weight during the pregnancy, namely actresses. Of course, this doesn’t bode well for the poor baby, but really, do we need another name for it? These stick thin actresses are ALREADY anorexic, so do they get a whole new disorder name just because they get pregnant? They are anorexic and happen to be pregnant. I’m guessing that like everything else in their faux, pretend, bend over backwards to give them whatever they want lives, that the reality of having to gain weight in order to have a normal child is beyond their capability... except after the birth when they whore out the kid’s pictures to a tabloid for a million.

I need to start drinking more, or allowing my sanity to slip some more.

Weekly Rambling

I really need to find a job where I can blog during work hours so I can keep up with the thoughts in my head.

1.) We've had an invasion of little red ants in our kitchen. They invaded my lucky charms, they were climbing on the cabinets, very annoying. The last straw was opening the simple human trash can and seeing the contents moving around. There was a whole ant reunion party going on in there. Since we have dogs and since I don't want to poison my dogs, I tried putting cornstarch baby powder at the bottom of the door (where the ant congo line was forming) and they just figured a way around that, so toxic spray was the only way to go. Since I didn't have toxic spray, I squirted some Skintastic mosquito spray on them. I figured it would just piss them off and make them go away, but actually it killed them on contact. Hey, cool! So, if you want to kill ants and don't want to poison your dogs or cats, use Skintastic on ants. They're dead, mosquitos will stay away and it has that lovely smell.

2.) I caught a summer cold (that I'm still blowing green crap out of my nose, and yes I know its probably a sinus infection, just shut up I'm in denial), and realized that out of the shelves and shelves of over the counter medication out there, there's never anything that totally fits the symptoms of your cold. I wish they had Garanimal drugs for people, mix and match stuff that you could take for your symptoms. I'll have 1 runny nose, 1 sneezing, 1 watery eyes, but no cough and no aches please.

3.) I saw a commercial for "The National Review" which stated "Liberal Democrats are readier than ever..." Readier? Doesn't that just sound totally wrong. Not "as ready as ever", readier... liberal democrats are morons. (Author note: This last part was suppose to read "... and liberal democrats are morons?" but apparently in my lack of sleep, over the counter medicated state, totally botched that ending and apologize to Michelle and the other tree hugging liberal democrats for not making it perfectly clear that I think "The National Review" isn't even fit to use as toilet paper)

4.) Some moron on FOX news was complaining that ICE raids deny the rights of illegal aliens. Um... if they are illegal THEN THEY DON'T HAVE ANY RIGHTS.

5.) Nancy Pelosi... when did she become Queen and rule the U.S.?

6.) The Orlando Anthony family - I'm pretty sure that this whole missing kid thing is just a totally elaborate reality tv show joke on the entire world. Nobody could be that stupid, gullible, and so over the top whack job. If it isn't a cruel joke on the world, then the kid is certainly dead, the mother did it, and grandma will still think that it was a conspiracy.

7.) Olympic athlete denied a visa to China because of the athlete's outspoken opinion about China's involvement in Darfur. Um, if you are there to run a race, shut up and run and do the politic crap in your non-running times.

8.) Bret Favre... who cares.

9.) Electro shock therapy is the new rage in depression treatment. The side effect: short term memory loss.... hmmm, that might make work a bit more bearable actually, where do I sign up?

10.) Osteen lawsuit. I'm sure Ms. Osteen was a bitch and threw a hissy in first class, but causing the flight attendant to get hemorrhoids? mmmmm nah. I'm sure the flight attendant will win anyway.

That's your weekly news wrap up.

Now Here's Justice

Shia LaBeouf (pictured right) was involved in a late night auto accident that has apparently "crushed" his hand. Lucky for him he has a slew of lawyers, independent investigators, and a movie studio behind him to "make his DUI go away" and throw the blame for the whole distasteful incident on the other driver, who now, apparently, was speeding, running a red light, not even looking where he was going, rolling coins, and doing his laundry when he happened to run into the mega movie star. I'm pretty sure that during the star studded trial, he will also be fingered for kidnapping and subsequently killing the Lindbergh baby despite the fact that he probably hadn't even been born yet. What dumb luck for this poor schmuck that he couldn't just run into an average citizen and merely have some points taken off his license. I smell definite jail time and a ruined life ahead for this guy.

But never fear, that new Transformers movie will still be coming out, because Mr. LaBeouf's employer has vowed to wait as long as necessary for Mr. LaBeouf (pictured above) to recover, and if they must, they'll write the injury into the script. Isn't it great that others who suffer injuries through no fault of their own have their jobs held or modified to accommodate their injuries. Why are you laughing?

Mr. LaBeouf (pictured above) is preparing himself for future roles that accommodate his new injury, and is expected to bring the "one arm man" in the Fugitive to new dimensions.

It Makes the Brain Bubble

It doesn’t take much to make my brain bubble these past few weeks. Yes, I haven’t blogged in a while, that’s because after the whole Benadryl gulping poison ivy incident, I actually did catch a summer cold that really kicked my butt and threw me into bed for a few days doped up on whatever I could find in the medicine cabinet that would make the niagra falls raging out of my nose stop.

Last week was a blur, so I decided to catch up on some news. Hmm, random bus riders hacking the heads off of sleeping passengers, workers getting fired and going postal and shooting their former co-workers, anthrax scientists committing suicide... wow, where is a really good “feel good” story.

Well, there it is: Woman attempts to drive all summer on one tank of gas.

Ok, admirable, not only from a cost saving aspect, but she’s getting all that attention because of the “climate change” fanatics out there applauding her pluck and courage to downsize her life and save the earth (insert sarcastic laughter here).

Being the cynic that I am, and still hopped up on cold pills, before I even clicked on the link to read it, here was my spin of the “story”:

A stay at home mom who uses cloth diapers (which actually waste more water in their cleaning and are worse for the earth because of the detergents spewed into the ground than dumping crap-filled plastic diapers in a landfill) and walks to the grocery store with her re-usable grocery bags has sacrificed her daily drive to the mall where she walks with her children lashed into strollers with the rest of her non-working yuppie public breastfeeding moms in their goal to get better calves for summer skorts while talking trash about their friends over starbucks and a cinnabon.

Side rant here - why do people actually DRIVE to a mall to walk? Can’t they simply walk out of their front door and walk around the block? Must they actually drive to a mall? Sure, its nice and air conditioned there, but isn’t the whole purpose of walking to sweat a little and get exercise? And why is it that when I was lined up outside the Apple store for the new 3G iPhone, that a gaggle of old mall walkers actually cursed us for being in their “walking route”? Um, excuse me but I’m here supporting the stores that are in the mall by purchasing their wares, keeping them open for business, while you simply take up the air conditioning with your old, don’t flush the toilet every time you use it to save on water, reeking of perfume because your sense of smell died around the same time your sense of fashion did old person odor, so stop the tude old dude.

Anyhoo, I digress, back to driving all summer on one tank of gas woman. I was pleasantly surprised to read that miss save gas woman was actually a working person who was utilizing alternate modes of transportation in her bid to... well, I’m not sure exactly what the whole point of her trying to go all summer with only one tank of gas, since there were references to her being “green” but that she wasn’t a tree hugger by any stretch, and she wasn’t exactly trying to save money really, it was more like “hey, lets see if I can do it” so there really wasn’t a purpose to her doing it. It wasn’t as though she was going to lose her house if she didn’t cut out the gas consumption, or she was going hungry because of it, it was more like a “hey, I wonder if” thing... so she really had no reason other than just trying. Ok, sorta defeats the whole purpose of reason, but whatever... she’s trying... um, wait a minute... she’s mooching rides from her mother, and friends and borrowing cars.

Ok, so this is the problem I have with this story:
1.) if she were saving the earth, then it would be about her using earth friendly modes of transportation
2.) If it were about her saving money, then it would be about her finding ways to find cost effective public transportation, or alternate and cost effect modes of transportation like biking.

but its not about either of those things, its about someone that said “hey, I just want to do this, so I’ll mooch rides off of people, and use other people’s gas and blog about it and get semi famous in my local news which gets picked up by CNN who probably didn’t realize that it was a story about nothing really”. I mean seriously, I could use only 1 tank of gas for months if I quit my job, mooched rides off of people and had PeaPod deliver my food (shortly before the bank foreclosed on my house and sold all of my belongings), so big freakin deal about this chick.

P.S. I just went out and checked out her “blog” and apparently a lot of people gave her crap about mooching rides and using her mother’s car. Her blog sucks, btw, just my opinion. She says that saving gas isn’t a big deal, but what is different in her case is that she’s “writing about it”... apparently she needs to stay home more and check out the millions of energy saving blogs out there... moron.

Blog Brain Interface

That’s what I need. Invariably I’m upstairs in the kitchen doing something and a fantastic, wonderful, very wise rant will come to mind and I totally write it in my head, but by the time I get in front of the computer... gone. Total blank, lost the whole wonderful rant.

Therefore I need a direct interface from my brain to blogger, although that might get a bit dangerous as I could be (for instance and not like I actually do this or thought of this or had this happen, this is just an example so I don’t want anyone saying that this has actually happened to me and spread it around like it actually has, this is just an example) in the bathroom and find a strange pimple thing somewhere private and I could think “gee, that’s a strange pimple-thing somewhere private” and the next thing I know, that’s being posted on this blog.

Ok, so I’m trying to think of what I did tonight that I got all riled up about:

I was cooking and, of course, had to cut open the big bag of cheese that has the “easy opening” that is impossible to open and the re-sealable bag that is impossible to reseal so it got dumped into a gallon zip lock bag. No, I’ve already covered that one.

Pulling out some reynolds wrap only to have a little end of it get trapped so that I’m pulling out a bit less than a full sheet and will end up with a tiny shred on the roll when the whole thing is gone if I don’t put a stop to it right now. No, that’s annoying, but not rant worthy.

Cursing for going to 14 different stores today with a list AND coupons (watch out, the world could be ending) and forgetting something that I didn’t have on the list, but really needed, like liverwurst and coffee. Ok, liverwurst is for the dogs, I hide their pills in there, but the coffee is vital. Luckily I still have enough beans in the grinder for a day or two, so its not total freak out run to 7-11 at 2 a.m. for my fix type of need to get coffee moments... but it could end up that way if I don’t write it down, then remember the stupid list.

I’m also pretty much convinced that the poison ivy era has passed, but now we have renegade mosquitos in the house that are eating me alive. How one of them could land on my forehead without me being aware is beyond me, but I have an itchy bite on my forehead and on my neck. I think they are stealth mosquitos. I look like a chewed corncob or a leper.

The big laugh of the night came from the Real Simple magazine I bought. When that magazine first came out, I thought it would be really cool to read about how to do simple things. After reading it, I realized that it must not be a magazine on how to do simple things, because everything in there is so obvious and I already do it... therefore the magazine must be called Real Simple for its audience, who must have no brain whatsoever.

I digress, anyway I saw an ad in the magazine for “a way to easily remove embedded pet hair from upholstery” The bold is what they put in their ad. I laugh, I laugh hysterically at their claims. I even watched the “demo” on their site and laughed some more. The mere pittance of dog hair they demonstrated that thing on. Sure it looks amazing on the video, but I’ll be going out to get one of those beauties tomorrow to test out on REAL fur, the fur of three Siberian Huskies. Now THAT’S fur!

The results of my test will be published on the Husky Review.

What a relief

I know that all of you have been really concerned, and somewhat frightened, but thankfully the list came out today... and we aren’t going to lose ANY of the starbucks in my area.

Yes, you can all come out of hiding now, there’s no reason to be afraid any more. I’m thankful to say that the Starbucks at the Arundel Mills strip mall, the one at the Safeway in the strip mall, the one across the street at the mall, AND the brand new one less than a mile down the road from there will all remain open... THANK GAWD!!!!

Of course, I won’t be going to Annapolis any time soon, because there’s only 1 Starbucks every mile as opposed to one per block, so dang, how can I survive there?

In case you need to check the list, here it is I hope you aren’t forced to go an extra block to get your fix.

We interupt the previously scheduled blog post...

I was going to tell everyone all about my exciting time at a Star Trek convention yesterday, but that would require being able to type and think at the same time, which I'm not capable of right now.

No, I'm not drunk, I'm actually hopped up on a butt load of Benadryl. No, I don't have a cold (my gah you have a lot of questions, just shut up so I can tell you already)!

Last week I was doing yard clean up. Seeing how we prefer to let things grow wild until either we can't find our front door, or we feel that the neighbors are about to contact the county and bitch about our suburban woodlands effect, it was a full time fun fest that left me sweaty, tired, and with a clogged nose. Toward the end of this exercise in futility (as wildlife tends to continue growing unless you totally poison the yard), I came upon this vine thing that was growing out of control in the side of our yard. Undaunted, I proceeded to cut and pull this vine thing out of the ground and shove it into a garbage bag, pretty much slathering the vine thing all over my arms and legs in the process. While I was doing this I thought to myself "now does poison ivy have 3 or 5 leaves?"

Well, turns out it is 3 leaves, and turns out that yes, I was wallowing in poison ivy last weekend.

FYI: poison ivy takes a few days to kick your butt, so I was getting really mad when I started breaking out in little bumps and blamed the dogs for bringing in fleas, or for allowing illegal mosquitoes to hitch hike on their backs and bite me. When the rash broke out, I was still in denial, an itchy, agonizing denial, but denial nonetheless.

I've used about every topical ointment out there that promises "fast, long lasting relief". I'm sure their definition of "long lasting" is all of an hour, but my definition of "long lasting" would be a year if not more, so I'm going to sue. They also say "doesn't burn", but the fine print does say "this product will burn and cause you to run screaming from room to room in your underwear about 3 seconds after applying this lotion to insect bites or rashes caused by poison ivy if you've spent the past 15 minutes using the sharp end of a scissor to itch that spot prior to apply this lotion". That definitely needs to be in bigger print somewhere.

So, thanks to WebMD and other poor schmucks who have posted pictures of themselves all rashy and swollen from poison ivy, I was able to determine that yes, I have it, and that I should continue slathering anti-itch lotions on it (but not right after using a cheese grater to get some relief) and that an antihistamine would help with the swelling and irritation. I took 50mg of Benadryl, which is why I am now able to write a rambling three page blog entry that only includes 1 period.

Its been 10 minutes, I'm going to go lather up in more ointment and fall asleep while sitting on the toilet now.

Mystery Feet Discovery

I’m sure you’ve probably heard about the feet that keep washing ashore in British Colombia recently. Nobody is quite sure where the feet are coming from, or who they belong to. There is a lot of speculation on the origins of the feet and how they came to be washed ashore and found.

The latest information about the feet came in the form of DNA testing which shows that one full set of feet actually belong to the same person, a man. Another foot belonged to a woman. The authorities have released pictures of the shoes in hopes that family members recognize the shoes and can help reveal who the feet belonged to, and how they washed ashore.

Amazingly enough, some of the shoes that contained the feet were manufactured and sold as far back as 1999! All of the shoes are running shoes. I think the most important thing we’ve learned about this case so far is: RUNNING SHOES ARE NOT BIODEGRADABLE!

We must thank these feetless people for showing us that a running shoe can float for years and not decay in the least. Just think of all the shoes that people wear and how many of them are clogging our landfills and killing the earth! I think we need to immediately enact a law that states that all running shoes must meet certain decomposition properties and should decay within a reasonable amount of time (lets say a week) in a landfill, or better yet, just outlaw these pollutants altogether!

We must unite and ban the running shoe, as it is doing nothing but clogging up the shores of Canada, causing an eyesore!

iPhone update

Its 10:03 pm

Just got off of online chat with AT&T. A guy (whose last name was Schwarzenegger... no I didn’t ask) actually spent about a half hour resetting my whole account and junk and FINALLY got my iPhone to work.

I love it

LOVE

IT

really, I do.

In case you were wondering, he had to practically reset my entire account to get it to work. Some forums are saying that the problem is that the old SIM didn’t get turned off, or the current SIM needs to get replaced, or you have to have AT&T manually reset your stuff, which apparently worked for me.

WHOOT

Adventures of the new iPhone 3G

Having totally shunned buying anything brand new right when it comes out because of the lines, the hype, the problems, the angry crowds with pitchforks and torches when there are the problems, funny thing was that at 7 a.m. this morning, there was hubby and I at the mall camped outside the Apple store for the grand unveiling of the new iPhone 3G.

One of the reasons why we wanted to come so early was that so hubby could get some pictures of the fun to post in ireporter on CNN and to hone his photography skills, and since we were there, why not get into line and get the latest piece of wonderous apple technology.

The first guy in line, who had been there since midnight was a teenager. He wasn’t even going to get a new iPhone, he just liked to be the first in line for things. I found that odd, and a bit funny.

There was approximately 44 people lined up at that time, so after some pictures, I got into the line before more people showed up and made fast friends with the people around me, most of whom didn’t have an iPhone, so I was explaining how it all works using my “old” iPhone. I even convinced the one guy to call his wife and convince her that she needed one. I really need to start finding a way to get commissions on things like Dyson vacuums and iPhones.

I have to hand it to the Apple staff at the Annapolis mall, they walked around handing out water, provided us with Starbucks coffee and donut holes. They kept us up to date on what we would need to do, how they would run the show, everything. Fantastic staff, very cheerful... until the problems started.

Even though I was 45 in line, it took about an hour just to get to the front of the store. Apparently they were only letting in a few people, and frankly, the kid who was just there to be the first in line and was odd and a bit funny now really pissed me off because he was still in the store, lounging around and not buying anything which meant another person couldn’t be let in until one left. He was no longer odd and a bit funny, we all wanted to strangle him.

After an hour and a half, we finally made it into the store and it became quite clear why their estimate of taking only 10-15 minutes to buy and activate your phone was not working out as planned. First, AT&T was having issues with people who had corporate accounts with discounts. Then there were some issues with existing users being charged full price for the phone when they should have only paid the existing user charge, then the Apple store network got bogged down, then the iTunes store died a horrible death, therefore nobody could get activated.

While we waited in line to be “seen” by someone, we went and got all of the necessary accessories for the new phone: new case, new screen covers, screen cleaners, a protector for hubby’s laptop, etc. We carted those around with us while we slowly shuffled through the line.

FINALLY our turn came and we told the woman that we wanted two black 16gb iphones, we’re existing iphone customers, get us our phones!!!! The problem with us started the moment she tried to ring up our purchase, and like clockwork, AT&T said we needed to pay full price. We were then handed over to Pam K who was on the phone with AT&T trying to straighten that out. Pam was wonderful, and so was Mike who also pitched in to get us our phones for the right price. She spent a loooong time on the phone, so long that I actually left the store, went to Starbucks to use the bathroom and get lattes, come back and she was still dealing with them. FINALLY they had some sort of solution and AT&T activated my phone, then we went through a similar process with hubby’s phone and they insisted it was for the full price. Sigh. The apple store employees decided that it would just be better to “finagle” the price for us rather than deal with AT&T again, which they did.

By now its 12:30 pm, and although there were some not so very happy people in the store going through similar issues that we did, not to mention others that had sat around for a few hours while their phones were activated, we continued to joke around and be happy people because its not the employees’ fault all of this was going on and there were glitches in the system, so why take it out on them.

Our good behavior got us ALL of our accessories for FREE. Yes, they totally rang in our stuff and discounted it all down to a penny for us because we were so nice. So, nice gets nice things for a change. Since iTunes was clogged and since we’ve activated our phones before with the old model, they suggested that we just go home and activate them from there rather than wait who knows how long before they could activate them. Totally cool.

The only non-totally cool thing was that we didn’t have phones any more. The moment they activated the new phones, the old ones stopped working. Not having a cell phone after having one for so long is pretty much like having a lung removed. You are lost, can’t function, and know for certain that your car will break down on the way home at the exact spot where wild hungry lions have escaped from a zoo and are circling the truck hungrily. We raced home after stopping for gas even though we didn’t really need it, but was convinced that we’d run out anyway.

Got home and sure enough, still had issues with connecting it to iTunes because of the masses of people trying to activate their phones. After about 2 hours of hitting reconnect over and over and over, I finally got through and went through the screens to activate the phone, sync’d my phone and TAH DAH... no service. What? It also says that its January 17th of 2017 and 9 a.m. Um...

Hubby finally got through, activated his phone, sync’d his phone and his worked flawlessly. WTF???

I called AT&T and said WTF???

They said that it may take a while for my activation to go through. Sometimes it takes up to 24 hours. That sounded an awful lot like tech support telling me to reboot my computer and call back if that doesn’t work and then you’ll get someone else to yell at, but I said ok. I actually went through the effort to restore my phone, install everything again, re-sync... no service. BASTARDS!

The WiFi works great, I can get e-mails, and cruise the internet... I just can’t call anyone. I went two hours, stewing, then call AT&T again. They clicked some keys, verified my phone’s ID, said they were doing something to push the activation through... nothing. No service. Heaving sigh. They transfer me to apple support where I got to listen to some very nice hold music for a long time.

Jump through the hoops with them, and they said that there’s nothing they can do because that’s AT&T’s thing and yes, it can take up to 24 hours to activate. SONOFA......

So, hubby is very happy with his, very zippy quick on the 3G network, works great, wonderful, life is good... I have the equivalent of an iPod touch at the moment. I have my pictures, I have my songs, I have my e-mail, I can cruise the internet (as long as there is WiFi) but no phone. Frankly I don’t know who to be mad at.

Rather than sit and stare at the “No Service” thing until it changes, I put it aside and tried to go on with my life, but I keep going back and checking it, cursing at it. If its not activated by tomorrow (and frankly I have no faith it will) then I have to call someone back and get something done about it.

Its like half of my brain is gone without a phone... I can’t even think straight. I hate technology. When it works, you’ll hear nothing but happy things, but until then... I’m going to sit and sulk.

What Next?

Mrs. Paul is a liar

I buy fish sticks for those nights when I just don't feel like whipping up a gourmet meal after I leave work. Ok, frankly we practically live off of fish sticks or anything you can throw in a microwave because the only gourmet thing I prepare after work is ice cream, which involves scooping it out of the container into a bowl.

I was drawn to the Mrs. Paul's brand of fish sticks because the container exclaimed "Sealed in FRESHNESS POUCH" (see picture above). Ok, tell me if I'm insane, but doesn't that "freshness pouch" look as though it contains 2 very large beer battered whole fish fillets? Those things look huge, and the product picture with the gigantic fish filet almost over flowing the plate, those are BIG fish filets!

So, not only am I going to get 10 of those humungous fish filets in this box, but they will come in the wonderful sealed freshness pouch, and by my horrid math calculations, there should be 5 freshness packs that contain two fillets each. This is much better than those regular non freshness pouch fillets that just clatter around free inside the box, which goes against all product safety rules. Since the great tylenol poisoning, everything has to be hermetically sealed and banded for our protection... except fish sticks. Apparently nobody bothers to poison fish fillets, so they just get shoved into a box too large for the meager portion they give you, to clump together in a freezer burned, ice encrusted lump by the time you get them home. Having my fish fillets hermetically sealed in this wonderous freshness pouch is ground breaking!

Um... right. This is the part where I accuse Mrs. Paul of being a total liar, liar, pants on fire.

1.) As you can clearly see, the "freshness pouch" is nothing more than a plastic bag. Not only is it JUST a plastic bag, but its a single plastic bag. Not only is it JUST a plastic bag, but its not even a resealable plastic bag. Like anyone would eat 10 of these vile things in one sitting. Apparently the freshness pouch theory was wrong, as all fillets are lumped into just one bag, and not lovingly placed in twos into a pouch, therefore, they became one ice encrusted lump just as though they had been tossed into a plain old box.

2.) The humungous fish fillets depicted on the box are NOTHING like the tiny little fillets that are contained in the plastic bag. They're tiny compared to the picture, I mean, just look at them, they aren't even the same shape as the ones pictured on the box.

So, I tried to recreate the picture on the box using one of the frozen fillets. Sure, if I put it on a tiny saucer and get really close to it with the camera, I can make this tiny fillet look like a 50lb fish fillet on a normal plate.







In reality, here is what it looks like on a normal plate.
Clearly it doesn't meet the container's specification, nor the expectation of what that picture tries to sell you. Oh sure, they got me to buy the stupid fish fillets through their cunning use of lying and deceit, but you can bet I'm not going to be buying any of Mrs. Paul's fish crap any more.

I guess I should have trusted the Gorton's fisherman after all.

What chance do we have?

I felt that I needed to report back on the success of the “product” that I bought to control my totally out of control hair. I wanted to give it at least two tries because invariably I would rant and rave and shill this product on the first try, only to have it fail miserably the next day.

Hair is like that. I’ve noticed that hair requires constant change. It gets use to a certain shampoo and stops behaving, or it defies a cream rinse after a week. I truly believe that the stuff they use in salons is made from products that are not available to the general public, therefore your hair just sucks that crap up and looks wonderful. You buy gallons of the stuff they claim is what they used on your hair, but when you get home and try it out... same crappy frizzy hair, except now its cut in a hip fab style that you will never be able to recreate short of hiring a personal hairdresser.

So, yeah, the Nexxus expensive grocery store stuff actually does work, or at least its worked 2 days in a row, by next week I’ll have sprouted a squeeking red rubber nose to go with my frizzy bozo the clown do. (Please note, I didn't do that cartoon, but that's exactly what I felt like earlier this week)

Which leads me to Heather Locklear (you’re probably wondering how I got there, but you’ll see in a minute). Poor Heather checked herself into the looney bin because she’s “dealing with anxiety and depression”. Heather “the only reason T.J. Hooker stayed on the air for so long” Locklear is apparently depressed.

T.J. Hooker, now there was a classic show that had something for everyone. Heather Locklear, the babe for guys, Adrian Zmed, the babe magnet for the women, Bobby Darren, the babe magnet for women who liked older men (yum), and William Shatner... I really have no idea what his purpose was actually. I also have to point out that there is an actual Wikipedia post all about T.J. Hooker and once again have to sigh and wonder who on earth has the time to post a whole write up with links and pictures of T.J. Hooker. Shouldn't these people be working?

So, Heather “Melrose Place, Dynasty, rolling in residuals, married and divorced from losers, Locklear is depressed. Heather ”large amounts of dough for being the spokesperson for some hair color stuff when all along she had perfect hair and didn’t need any hair color stuff but made you think that if you bought that stuff you’d have hair like hers and not like bozo the clown“ Locklear probably had a bad hair day and needs some Nexxus ”product“ to cheer her up some.

She’s not getting mine, screw her.

Its the little things

Lately my hair has gone insane. I’m sure its the heat and humidity and all that, it could even be that I’m probably one of the laziest people there ever was when it comes to “styling” their hair in the morning. That’s one of the reasons why its all one layer and is suppose to just lay there all straight and look somewhat “styled” without any real effort. Lately it has poofed into cottonball out of control, frizzy Roseanna Roseannadanna hair.

No amount of slathering of cheap hair product seems to tame it. This afternoon I actually pulled it back into a pony tail and threw a head band on to control it, but part of it escape and I could feel it waving at people as I talked to them. I also noticed a hypnotic gaze from the people I was talking to, and they seemed to follow my hair bobbing around with their whole head. It was very disturbing and needed some immediate action.

I went to the grocery store, because where else do people buy quality hair products but in a grocery store next to the tampons. I perused the row upon row of amazingly, brightly, and uniquely bottled “product” and ruled out any that I had tried before, which would be about 95% of the “product” on the shelves. I chose a brand and type of “product” that I’ve never had before, and which claimed to tame even the wildest hair. I’m sure the makers of this product have never seen my hair right before a thunderstorm.

The instructions say to start out with a dime-sized blop on your hand, rub your hands together and then through your hair, style as usual. Dime-sized? Like I believe that one. I’ll be going more for dollar bill-sized slathered through my hair, then style as usual, which entails turning the blow dryer on high and pointing it at my head while I shake the hair with one hand. Sometimes I’ll even attempt to brush it down, but it won’t stay there. My hair does what it wants, no matter how much torture I put it through. I once told a stylist that “my hair does what it wants” which she didn’t believe until after 15 minutes of trying to straight iron one part down and having it spring straight up again... yeah, she believed me then.

So, I’m very excited about trying out my new “product” tomorrow in the hopes that I’ll look even a little less like Bozo the clown at work, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

How do I even function sometimes

Last night I was downstairs in my computer nook and the phone rang. Normally our computer answers the phone. Its a cool program called Phlink that does some pretty cool stuff. We set up boxes for each other, and then there’s one that is for telemarketers which either sends them into a flurry of pushing buttons to nowhere, or tells them never to call again and hangs up on them. My mom still can’t figure out that she can just start talking and it’ll record her message without any button pushing.

Last night it didn’t answer the phone, which meant the answering machine down here picked it up. The answering machine down here is a piece of crap that we barely can figure out how to use. It still has the message on it that we put on there a few years ago when my mom got put on the wrong train and instead of stopping at BWI, she was heading for Boston, but they threw her off at Penn Station. She left a message to that effect, but instead of Penn station, she said she was in Baltimore, which happens to be a very large city, so specifics would have been nice. With no way of reaching her, we left a message saying that we were on our way to Penn Station (hoping that’s where she ended up) and to wait for us. She claims to have tried my cell phone, but actually had the wrong number, so it was a comedy of fun on Christmas Eve that year.

Anyhoo, the answering machine down here got the call, so I decided to listen to the message... only to find that there were a LOT of messages on there, including one from the person that was doing my clearance investigation. Um, I thought that was done for another five years, OH NO maybe something happened, when did she call?

Piece of crap answering machine only gives a day and a time, not a DATE and a time. It said Monday. Monday as in this monday, or monday as in last year monday? Who knows. Just to be on the safe side I called and left a message explaining that my answering machine is a piece of crap, just got her message, didn’t know when she left it. Of course, then I worried all night that perhaps something was wrong and I’d end up hauling garbage for a living instead of sitting in a cube writing complex technical documents that nobody reads.

This morning she called, and we had a good laugh about the fact that she left that about a year and a half ago. She suggested I throw that machine away, I agreed.

My shower curtain is trying to kill me

I thought it odd that a week after receiving a “gift for good work” from my company the plastic my coveted company branded water bottle was made out of was called a “killer”. Yes, my company gave me a lame water bottle with the company name on it for doing a good job. Hey, I get a paycheck, shut up, at least I got a water bottle, except now its slowing killing me.

Now my shower curtain is also trying to kill me. Until recently the only things trying to kill me were morons that drove around here as they put on makeup, read the newspaper and wrote to their loved ones via e-mail while driving... all at the same time. Now my shower curtain has a vendetta. I can’t even get up in the morning without fearing my shower curtain. Will today be the day that it gets lucky and kills me? Will I be found in a tangled lump in the shower?

Tomatoes have wanted posters on the CDC website. Shower curtains are evil, my water bottle sneers at me each time I fill it, and oh, yeah, any moment now I’ll keel over from an invisible heart attack, the same one that killed Tim Russert (well, different heart, same issue) because the media has discovered that sometimes even if you do everything right... you still keel over. Its just that now they have to shove it in your face every chance they get. Unlike the rest of the people dying of sudden heart issues (my father included) Mr. Russert will get a televised funeral. Um, seriously, he seemed like a nice guy, but really, a televised funeral?

Ok, what next, oh yes, the lightbulbs I’m being forced to use have a low amount of mercury in them. Grand. Oh, but its not enough to hurt anyone, except for the fact that if every person in the U.S. buys 1 lightbulb, that’s 301,139,947 lightbulbs in the landfills all over the U.S. which contain 5 mg of mercury, which means there will be 1,505,699,735 mg of mercury seeping through the ground because nobody is going to dispose of those things properly because we’re lazy, and will soon all die of mercury poisoning... if our shower curtains don’t kill us first.

In general

Its sunday night and, of course, I’m dreading going to work. The only good thing about going to work is that I got a new “planner” that I’m going to be trying out. Its an “At-A-Glance” bright red binder, normal paper sized, plenty of room to write in there all of the exciting appointments I have, meetings to attend, social engagements. Ok, who am I fooling, I really have no idea why I have a “planner” because my life consists of:

Monday through Thursday at noon I go home for puppy duty

That would be about it. I do have the once in a blue moon meeting, but I seriously don’t need this big impressive day planner thing to deal with that. A sticky note shoved in my bag would do probably. Its not like I’m such a social butterfly that I need something this cool looking to deal with all of the stuff I do (or actually don’t do). Granted, if I could bring my iPhone into where I work I wouldn’t need anything, but no, it sits out in the RAV baking because of restrictions.

Of course, now that I have my cool new sling bag (and the understanding of how that works) and a cool new dayplanner thing (complete with the type of cool notebook paper I love to doodle on) that means that I’ll need something to carry the cool new dayplanner in. Ok, don’t go leaping for the phone book looking for a handbag intervention place to come lock me in a room and scream at me about accessories, I already have a cool timbuk2 bag that I’ve been meaning to find a reason to use and this is the perfect opportunity.

So, at least I have sling bag and timbuk2 bag, and cool new planner to look forward to tomorrow at work. That’s at least something.

I just want to say that I’m saddened by the sudden passing of Tim Russert. My dad went in a similar fashion, and by that I mean quickly, not that he had just jetted back from Italy and was hosting a major tv show. I guess his passing and the fact that today is father’s day is a bit of a bum out for me, but ... was it really necessary to use the ENTIRE NBC news broadcast on friday to talk about Tim Russert? Is it a bit pompous of newscasters to think that the passing of a guy that read the news or asked questions of politicians is soooo important that they just throw all of the other news away to memorialize their friend and colleague? Floods, fires, tornados, death, and destruction all over the world... and none of that was mentioned because a newscaster died. Wouldn’t it have been more fitting if they had mentioned his passing briefly and then actually did what he loved to do most... THE NEWS?

NOBODY is so important in this world to preempt the goings on of the world. By not even doing the news, the only thing NBC proved was that there really is no need for the “big 3” nightly news shows. In this internet, 24 hour news, click, zip, world we live in, where just about everyone can access the news at the touch of a button on their cell phone, pda, computer, etc. do we REALLY need a half hour of snippets of news (and a special interest piece du jour) each day? I don’t think so, and neither does most of the population, based on the ratings of the “nightly news” broadcasts.

I doubt the “big 3” will figure it out, or admit to it if they already know.

More To Dos

My list keeps growing. I guess the fact that I start something, don’t finish it, start something else has something to do with the length of it.

I can’t help it. Yes, I’m still in the middle of painting the entire upstairs white, but the weather turned nice so I’m trying to do all of the stuff that needs to be done outdoors while its nice out, and saving the painting for icky days. Unfortunately the icky comes after doing a lot of work outside, so during the icky days I’ve been lounging inside recovering from all that outside work. Hey, there’s always winter, where the paint fumes will be lovely.

Today I was standing outside watching the dogs look for baby birds (thankfully they flew the nest and didn’t land in the yard to be killed immediately) and noticed that our back entryway thing is just plain nasty. If you can picture it, you walk out the back door to a concrete thing that’s below ground, then go up 4 stairs to the yard. Its always wet, there’s always bugs, it collects all manner of gunk and there’s mold growing on the wall. On top of that, the last owners had thrown some concrete up to make the walls look nice, but over the years that concrete had chipped off in massive hunks and it just looks like crap.

Fine, while the dogs were sniffing around I decided to chip a little more off the concrete, then I got a hammer and a screwdriver, pretty soon I had most of the gunk off the walls to reveal the concrete blocks behind the concrete. Ok, so where the deck people had to drill through the concrete pad, there’s a bit of shifting of concrete block, so that will need to be patched, and there’s some cracks that need patched, and then I realized that the dogs had dug so far underneath part of one part of the concrete pad that it had broken off at the corner and was leaning. Sigh.

Off to Lowes I go. I love Lowes, they have such cool things there. I grabbed some patch stuff and some water proof patch stuff, and then I thought I might need some wood putty, (turns out I did, part of the door frame at the bottom pretty much rotted out, so I have to fix that) and they had some disposable shop rags like paper towel rolls, so I got those and they had more damp rid, which is working wonderfully in that back room where the sump pump is. Yep, most women go buy shoes, I buy home repair crap and dance gleefully through the aisles.

I spent this afternoon chipping at the concrete and sanding down the concrete blocks, going inside to cool off, going back out. I was going to start the patching process today, but then we had a storm and since wet concrete and rain don’t mix well, decided to wait until tomorrow to do that. Of course it barely rained at all.

At one point I had a wild hair about actually putting decorative outdoor tile up on the walls of the concrete, but thought better. Just patch it and make it look nice enough to sell the stupid place in two years. That is if the housing market recovers by then.

Tomorrow I will be attempting to roll over the big slab of concrete to put more dirt under it and level it, then roll it back into place and patching it. Yeah, there’s a hernia just waiting to happen right there. Broken foot, hernia, wrenched back. I could use some quiet time in traction.

How my brain (doesn't) work

Ok, I'm sure you're all familiar with the keening and gnashing of teeth about the sling bag I ordered and instead got a fanny pack. You are probably aware of the whole snit about the front pocket not holding my iPhone (ok, I tried it without the cover, and it does fit, but its a pain in the butt to get it in and out). Some of you have even asked if I had sent it back yet... I was this close.

It wasn't just because of the whole iPhone pocket not fitting an iPhone (ok, they didn't specifically say iPhone pocket, but they INFERRED IT), I almost sent it back because it was a pain in the butt to deal with.

Ok, its great for carrying all of my crap and leaving my hands free of purse, bag, or other carrying device. It wasn't hanging there rubbing on my pants and getting in the way, it was actually comfy to wear and pretty dang perfect except what a huge pain to deal with. Take it off to get in the car, put it on when you get to the store, take it off to get wallet, put it on leaving store, take it off to get keys out of it, juggling stuff all over the place. HUGE inconvenience.

Now, for those of you who already know, you are probably already laughing at me. Go ahead, I'll just sit here until you're done.

Are you done yet?

Yes, while I can make a living writing complex technical documents about complex technical junk, it took me a full week to figure out that you don't take a sling bag off, you just sling it around to the front and unzip it to get your wallet and other things out of it. it just hangs there open, allowing you to grab whatever you need and put it back, then you SLING it around to the back. For those of you like me who have difficulty with simple concepts, here's a cartoon demonstrating the simplicity of a sling bag.

Wear it on the back, sling it to the side or front and grab your junk out of it. Duh!

You would have also laughed hysterically at the moment of my epiphany at the local Superfresh when the concept hit me in the head and I did the happy dance in the self check out line. I did refrain from demonstrating it to the woman behind me, as she seemed to be in a hurry to pay for her food and get on the road, plus she probably would have told me how big of an idiot I was to buy a bag and not know how to use it.

So now I really love the bag, now that I don't have to take it off all the time, that I can get to my iPhone easily (even if its not in the front pouch, which I use to carry my headphones at least), and I'm pretty damn happy with this bag... for ONCE. Now if I can only get it on right the first time without doing a sort of dork dance outside of the RAV.

I have a long way to go.