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.