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.

My To Do List

For the first time in about a year I don’t have to wait for a plumber, or heat pump person, or phone person, or any other type of repair person. Oh sure, I do have to call the put a new attic fan in my roof people to come out and put a new attic fan in my roof, replacing the old one that sounds like a chipper/shredder when we flick the breaker back on, but I wanted to savor one weekend where I wasn’t waiting on a repair person, and to catch up on the list of things I need to do.

Its 10 am, and so far on my full page list of things to do, I’ve crossed off 4 items. These were items that required that I sit on my ass in front of the computer and order things, like: Father’s day gift. Check, that’s done. Of course, this gift isn’t for my father, as I’d be a bit silly to be sending something to someone that sits in a box in my mom’s living room (please note, he’s cremated... there isn’t a casket sitting in my mother’s living room, nor a mummified body or anything like that). I did (to do item #2) order a bug zapper for my mom though. I figure that since I have no gift to give to my deceased dad, she might as well benefit from this. She likes killing bugs, so what better gift could there be than a bug zapper. That and the starbucks card I promised would be in the mail for her birthday back in March.

Item #3 was to update my work resume. Ok, so I actually did that last night, but its on the list, its crossed off and I’m calling that a minor accomplishment of this day. Item #4, same thing, did it last night, but hey... I’m the one keeping score here.

I look at the rest of the items and scowl. They all pretty much require me to get off my butt. Some require me to travel, and some will no doubt cause me to sweat.

Staining the back yard stair railing, for instance, makes me nauseous. If it were a matter of just going outside with a brush, can of stain, slap it on and be done with it, then no biggie. No, it can’t be that easy, as we’ve (and when I say “we” I actually mean “me”) not stained that railing since it had been put in and there’s this green stuff growing on the stop, which probably needs to be cleaned off prior to applying the stain. This would require the use of water, a scrub brush, and energy, of which I only have two of those things. Then I would need to let it dry, then I could stain it.

Of course I didn’t mention the fact that there is a robin’s nest perched on our deck lattice barrier thingy on the deck, which just happens to be above the staining/cleaning area, which is filled with baby birds that poo a purple vile concoction. My dogs call it the “tweet dispenser” (if my dogs could talk, they don’t, nor do I hear their voices in my head, just wanted to be clear on that) There is a good chance that my standing in that area will result in a not so pleasant experience and a general hatred for baby birds. If I have a general hatred for baby birds, then I will be more likely to allow the dogs in the yard around the time that the baby birds are just learning to fly and allow nature to take its course (removing said dead baby birds from the mouths of my dogs before they can be consumed because baby birds are filled with nastiness).

Now I have justified why I shouldn’t go out and stain the railing, as it will cause innocent baby birds to die.

Get propane for the grill. I have no idea how this chore befell me, as the whole deck and grill thing was suppose to be my husband’s responsibility. I guess its that whole “you only work 4 days a week therefore you should spend that friday being miserable and doing things you hate doing, exactly as if you were at work” mentality he has. He’s miserable, therefore I should be miserable too.

My thoughts of hauling an empty propane tank, then hauling a full propane tank are not very happy. Although you rarely hear of propane tanks exploding for no reason in cars transporting them, I’m sure it does happen, especially if you are caught in some high speed chase involving Steven Seagal and a random bullet hits your car, striking the tank and blowing you and the bad guys up, but collateral damage is to be expected when thwarting bad guys.

Sigh, I’m guessing not a lot will get done today, as usual, except now I don’t have an excuse.

Never Happy (Nobody Does it Right)

I got the bag today, and it was the right bag, the one I ordered. The other one I have to return, which requires me to actually go to a UPS place, but I also have something for my mom, which requires a post office place, and frankly actually SENDING things isn’t something I do very well. At one point I dragged a box in my RAV for about 2 months before I managed to mail it off. Luckily there wasn’t anything it it that required immediate attention, refrigeration, or would spoil.

I digress...

So its the perfect size, its the perfect container for the crap that I carry with me on a daily basis, but there is one very disappointing feature. The zipper pouch in the front that is designed to carry your electronic entertainment was designed by a moron and isn’t big enough for my iPhone.

Heaving sigh! The ONE reason I liked this bag was because of the cool zipper front pouch for easy access to my iPhone so I could play music or pull it out when it rang without having to take the bag off. So... I’m debating on solutions/alternatives/sending it back with the fanny pack.

I mean it really is a cool bag, but who designs a music device pouch without including THE most popular music device, the iPod (same size as iPhone). That’s just stupid and it makes me want to find the designers and beat them.

Hubby and I always moan and bitch about the fact that things are typically designed by morons. They just don’t take into account the real reason a person would buy a bag that has a front pouchy thing would be to hold a cell phone or a music device. Hmm, so what kind of phone or music device would go in this pouch? Why most likely an iPod. So if we design it to hold an iPod, then that or anything smaller would fit into said pouch and there would be a happy bag person. But no. I think they just slapped a zipper pocket on this thing without even measuring any cell phones or music devices. Hey, here’s a pouch, and we can say you can use it to carry your itty bitty music device (such as shuffle).

Asshats.

I swear, one of these days I’m going to kidnap a seamstress to design my perfect bag.

Have you seen this suspect

Be on the look out for this tomato. This tomato, aka: Round red tomato, has been implicated in an outbreak.

This tomato is to be considered armed and dangerous. Do not approach this tomato if you should happen to see it. Please contact your local law enforcement representatives so they can apprehend this tomato.

Ok, that's an actual picture and caption from the CDC alert about the tomato salmonella outbreak.

It just seemed very "America's Most Wanted" to me, but then again I was out in the heat today too long without water.

Gosh Its Hot

The end of the week is here and I’m counting on Monday to be a fresh start, clean slate, everything will be wonderful, it will be cooler, it will be in technicolor and little cartoon bluebirds will sing on my shoulder...

To end the week, as Sunday for me is the end of the week, I packed all of my event gear crap into the RAV and stopped at Starbucks for that ever delish venti iced three pump mocha, then drove a gazillion miles in my very expensive gas sucking RAV to a rescue event where me and a few of my friends and fellow volunteers would melt in the horrendous heat under a tent begging for donations... except when I got there... THE FREAKIN THING WAS CANCELLED AND NOBODY BOTHERED TO CALL OR E-MAIL THAT IT WAS CANCELLED.

Lucky for my friends and fellow sweaty volunteers, they hadn’t left their air conditioned coolness so they didn’t have to spend $596 in gas getting there.

I drove home, pissed, but yet relieved that I didn’t have to stand in this freakin heat all day. So I came home and bagged up limbs I had cut and summarily tossed over the gate. 4 bags later, I’m totally drenched in sweat and decide that the rest of the day will be spent indoors doing nothing productive. Ok, so that’s what I usually do, why should today be any different.

My dogs REFUSE to go out unless their bladders are bursting. I don’t blame them.

I keep thinking of Monday, the Monday of change, the monday of when good things will happen, unlike last week, where everything that could go wrong did... except I notice that tomorrow its suppose to be 100 degrees. Hmm. Ok, not exactly the good start I was planning, but then I can look forward to tuesday, where the bag that I was suppose to get on friday will arrive... and most likely be another fanny pack... watch the news if it is, as there will be some interesting film at 11 for that.

To keep this topical on the whole “bad things” week, we tried to grill bratwurst on the grill and of course, yep, ran out of propane. Frankly if we had tossed them all on the hot deck that would have cooked them, but no, I finished them up in a vat of sauerkraut in the oven.

So, there you have the perfect finish to the week from hell. I have some very high hopes for next week, which I’m sure will be dashed the moment I step out of the RAV at work and spontaneously combust.

Icing on the cake

Ok, so there’s the waiting on the plumber fun-fest of this week.
There was the whole tornados all over our area thing this week.
There was the usual crap going on at work thing this week.
Then there was the ONLY bright spot of my week, which was the friday delivery of my new bag.

Friday morning (bright and early) my dogs decided that I really needed to get up at 6:30 am and be all active and productive. Ok, so I got up (because I preferred getting up to being stomped on by 70 lb dogs), and sat bleary-eyed in front of my laptop and hit refresh to track the delivery of my bag, while waiting for the plumber.

Around noon time, the bag arrived, but still no plumber. I was ok with that, as I would have time to try out my new bag (putting things in it, taking things out of it, wearing it around the house, looking at it in the mirror while I wore it... hey, I told you I was a bagaholic, you just didn’t take me that serious, did you?)

I feverishly open the bag that it came in... and pull out a fanny pack. A fanny pack? WTF???
Sure its the right manufacturer, and its the right color, its just not the bag I ordered, its a fanny pack. Who wears fanny packs nowadays except for old men on golf courses?

It took me about five minutes to ramp up into a good insane madness, and during that time I stomped around the kitchen, looked at the fanny pack, up-ended the plastic bag, looked for some sort of invoice that said “oh, here’s this complimentary fanny pack, your bag is still on the porch”, looked on the porch, stomped around the house uttering obscenities while the dogs scattered and made themselves disappear because they knew... hell hath no fury like a bagaholic receiving a fanny pack.

I called ebags, the customer service rep was very nice... until I launched into him with a clenched teeth here is what was suppose to happen when I opened the bag and then moving into a shrieking this is what I found when I opened the bag, into a what are you going to do to instantly transport what I ordered into my hands before I get into the car and drive to wherever your headquarters is and stuff this fanny pack into an uncomfortable place of the person responsible for botching my order.

Many apologies later, my order was researched, re-placed with the shipping charges credited to my card, expedited with no extra charge and we’ll get that bag out to you in about 5-10 business days. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME THAT’S EXPEDITED? Apparently that last screech caused someone in the warehouse to receive the red alarm sending them shrieking and racing around to locate my bag, throw it into a box and drive madly to UPS because its actually on the way now. Scheduled to arrive Tuesday... still not soon enough for me, but better than 2 weeks later like the rep said.

Once off the phone with ebags, I then called the plumber and did the same, explaining that I thought it was a bit ridiculous that I had to get this fix rescheduled five times because of some hapless plumbing fiasco. More apologies and explanations and the guy finally showed up at 1pm and fixed the thing.

I immediately ran out of the house when he was done and went mall surfing to find a cheap bag to placate me until mine actually arrived, but I was disgusted by the lack of viable bags they have. What is up with those smarmy cloth old lady pattern bags they have out now? Or the metallic gawdy things that hold nothing?

ok, thank you for sitting through that disjointed ranting.

Knock Knock

Who’s there?

Not the freakin plumber, that’s for sure.

Yep, you guessed it, they called last night to tell us that the plumber (apparently they only have ONE plumber who either has a tremendous backlog of clients or you automatically get thrown to the end of the list) was running late. Would we mind if he came the next night.

Um, actually yes, how about you haul his ass to our house on Friday morning so I can sit all freakin day and wait for his ass to call and reschedule, but at least I’ll be off that day and not just getting off work and trying to juggle 14 things before he shows up (ahahahahaaa) and feeling all stressed about work the next day.

They were fine with that. Of course they’re fine with it, because they probably don’t even intend on putting it into their schedule and 7pm Friday I’ll be calling and get their patented and well practiced “oh, we’re sorry... insert lame excuse here”.

Ok, whatever.

So today we had some right nasty butt kicking storms. I was out looking at the clouds... ok, I was smoking, bite me, and it got DARK. It was like 8pm dark out there and it started to rain, so I ran inside. No sooner did I walk the 500 miles to my basement office (which looks amazingly enough like a humungous cubicle farm) and begin working on a ponderous document that is now all of 57 pages of fun filled crap, that the lights went out, so did my computer. Cursing ensues throughout said cubicle farm and luckily the emergency lights came on, or else there would have been injuries.

I’d like to point out that mere miliseconds before the lights and computers died, we all received a mass e-mailing that said: Tornado spotted... and that’s about as far as we all got when we were thrown into darkness. Oh, grand! We’ll be like those people that went into their basements to fix something and come back up to discover the entire world is dead! We stood around and discussed what fun we would have being the only survivors of the world in the dark until about 15 minutes later the lights came back on. We cursed.

Around the time I wandered back to my cubicle area to see if my work of technical writing art was eaten, they announced that only essential systems should be turned back on, all non-essential things had to be turned off. We.. being a contractor, I can’t think of anything that could be more non-essential than me (I’m pretty sure in the dictionary under contractor it says: “See: non-essential”) so I packed my crap up and left.

Unfortunately the world didn’t end, as a matter of fact they were all leaving the building like me and I was trapped in a horrible traffic back up, as nothing was working, not even the stop lights. It took me 45 minutes to drive 7 miles, but thankfully my house and most importantly my pups were fine.

We’re about to get another doozy of a storm... sigh. I JUST got all of the clocks back to the right time.

Where's the Plumber?

Its 6:30 pm, do you know where your plumber is? Because we don’t.

Remember that little Memorial day incident (no, not the one where I’m puking peach activia in my hair) the one where I went outside and saw that my house was crying? Ok, so it wasn’t crying, that was me crying later on when we called the plumber who told us the leak was most of our kitchen sink plumbing needing replacement for a mere $500 but he couldn’t do it that day because he didn’t have the parts. We schedule his return for Friday and put a bowl under the sink in the meantime.

Friday, wait all day, nothing until 7pm when we got a call saying that the plumber called in sick at 3pm when he was suppose to report for duty. Great, so we sat around for an additional 4 hours until they bothered to call and tell us when we could have left the house and gotten a latte you rotten plumber dispatcher bastards. Ok, fine, how about saturday, the dispatcher asks all chipper. FINE.

Saturday, wait and wait and wait and 1pm they call... oooh, we don’t have the parts. Um, you didn’t have the parts memorial day, its now 5 days later and you still don’t have the parts? So if Mr. Plumber hadn’t called in sick would he have had the parts then? Did he use the parts between being sick and right this very second? Whatever, how about monday after 5pm? Sure.

Monday, rush home from work, get the dogs out, fed, out, played, etc. and wait and wait and wait, 7pm phone call from the plumber dispatch, all chipper and happy. Oh, the plumber’s truck broke down. You’ve got to be kidding me. How about Tuesday after 5pm. SURE, FINE!

Here it is, tuesday at 6:30 pm. We’re taking bets:
Plumber had a death in the family
Plumber got called to jury duty
Plumber used the kitchen sink parts to fix his truck and now doesn’t have the parts
Plumber just freakin forgot us, yet billed us for the work.

We’re just waiting on the phone call notification now, its just a matter of time and we know it. I think the bowl is very attractive under the sink, but frankly I’m tired of moving all of the things that use to be under the sink in order to get to my freezer and my crappy frozen meals that I’ve been preparing while we wait for the plumber to show up. I’m also tired of reaching under there when I need to put dishwasher soap in the dishwasher, because its not there, and I know its not there, but I reach into there each and every stinking time. I’m guessing that once its fixed and all of the cleaning crap is back under the sink... I’ll walk to the chest freezer to get it EXCEPT IT WON’T BE THERE!

So, there you have my waiting for the plumber fun.