2003 Archive – July-Dec

2003 Archive – July-Dec – 152,376 words total. Not responsible for broken links.

July 1st 2003

The next time the shit hits the fan, someone shove me out of the way….please.

After yesterday dealing with WS and his pissy-ness of late, today, my job finally proves to be more than I can handle. I’ve spent the vast majority of the day bawling my head off so you’ll have to excuse the delay in my daily update.

All was going about as well as it could considering I had to get up this morning after sleeping like crap the past 3 nights and I felt like,…well, crap.

So we have this company conference call this morning with the rest of our department who works at company headquarters and MrSmartButFakingIt didn’t attend for reasons only known to him. And so after the company conference call (where MsNoManagementSkills punches any self-esteem any of us might have left into submission), MsNoManagementSkills, WS and I stay on the line, usually with MrSmartButFakingIt to have an admin sort of meeting. Only MrSmartButFakingIt still wasn’t online with us. So the three of us are all chit-chatting about little work stuff here and there and out of the blue, MsNoManagementSkills asks WS if he has heard anything about BikerDude and FatHead coming back to work for our company. I just about fucking lost it at that point but keeping my mouth shut (and only threw my notebooks in hand across the room once), I listened to WS tell her that he hadn’t heard a thing. Which was the truth.

Now, we all suspected that she would be trying to get both of their jobs back, even after the company got rid of the 2 of them for near-company extortion reasons. But this was just about too much for me.

Suddenly, MrSmartButFakingIt joins us in the conference call and apologizes for being late and interrupting us and for us to continue talking as to not lose our trains of thought (Were there any passengers on that train??). MsNoManagementSkills instantly changes the subject to something completely out in left field and not at all related to hiring BikerDude and FatHead back. So WS let her babble on briefly and then, said sternly that we were talking about BikerDude and FatHead being rehired.

MsNoManagementSkills must have been fuming at this point to have WS bring the topic up in front of us all (and not at all in private as she prefers with all her scheming) and she blurts out, “Is there any chance that BikerDude and FatHead could get their jobs back?” Now sounding like she was pleading their cases to be rehired, I was now seeing RED, RED, RED! and angrily whispered to WS that he had better figure out our personal long term budget plans because if and when these 2 losers get rehired, I’m quitting on the spot.

MrSmartButFakingIt hymn-hawed around and basically said he couldn’t work with BikerDude and FatHead because they were too independent and he never knew what they were doing and he didn’t see them getting rehired but that BikerDude had been trying to get in touch with him for quite a while now just for that reason.

Just what this company needs; someone who tells everyone he only wants to be rehired long enough to reprogram all our security and information structure so everything fails and the company may consider rehiring him? How delightful, huh? Oh, but it doesn’t stop there.

During our 2 hour conference call, MrSmartButFakingIt promises to hold another conference call with us 3 on Thursday evening at 5 pm to go over new organizational restructuring which has heavy lay-off implications for several people in our department. He won’t indulge to either WS or I who is getting the axe, or even if it is either of us, but I have a strong feeling MsNoManagementSkills knows.

And I have an awful, pain-in-the-gut, pain-behind-the-eyes feeling that my head is on the block with several others. That the decision has already been made and there is no going back. That our department will end up consisting of MsNoManagementSkills and WS, fighting it out between themselves to see who will outlast the other and who will do anything to takes to make sure the other fails.

I’m already going into survival mode. I can feel it. It’s merely a waiting period until I’ve lost everything; my car, the house WS and I built, all the little worthless, stupid shit I’ve bought over the past 4 years that now means Not. A. God. Damned. Thing.

God, I am sooo stupid to have thought, no, to have assumed, along with countless millions of other people on this planet, that I could actually have something that somewhat resembled a career with a company that lasted more than 4 years, let alone a working lifetime. I almost made something of myself there. Almost. And I was too wrapped up in the daily grind to step back, take a deep breath and smell the roses.

I caught myself more than a few times today, taking very shallow breaths.

I finally ate something for the first time today around 8:30 this evening.

My stomach is nothing short of knots.

I just want to sleep.

My eyes hurt.

Just sleep.

July 2nd 2003

Life is like a box of chocolates. You know exactly what you’re gonna get if you bother to look at the inside of the lid where a full description of the chocolate assortment can be found. Thus, coconut haystacks can be distinguished from strawberry creams, caramel chews from the chocolate covered orange jelly and you can avoid almond clusters with ease.

Waiting until Thursday’s nights job organizational restructuring meeting to see if I still have a job. Of course, that meeting might not happen now because the CEO of the company just sent out an email asking everyone to gather outside the company headquarters (a little hard for me to do as company headquarters is 1800 miles away) at 4:00 pm (remember, our meeting is supposed to be at 5:00 pm) to celebrate the upcoming 3 day weekend (as if we ALL get 3 days off – we don’t) with hotdogs, hamburgers, and get this….a keg of microbrew.

Now, I don’t know about you and maybe it’s just me, but time sometimes gets a little askew when I’ve got good, free beer in my hand on a warm, sunny day and I’m being fed by the company I work for. Being as we remote employees don’t get to partake in this, or any, celebration, methinks we’ll be sitting here, waiting, waiting, waiting for 5:00 pm to round around, then 6:00 pm, then 7:00 pm and so on, waiting for MrSmartButFakingIt or anyone from company headquarters to remember that there was an IMPORTANT organizational restructuring meeting at 5 pm.

This is sooooo the way things go at this company. Give the employees at headquarters stuff. COMPLETELY and TOTALLY ignore any and all remote employees.

Of course, I could just be jumping way ahead of myself here.

So, until then, the only thing left to do is continue to work.

Oh, and occasionally watch The Happyman Dance.

And maybe visit Odd Todd.

July 3rd 2003

How can you tell you are not having a good day? When you open the fridge and the rump roast farts in your face..

The keg party at company headquarters has started early this afternoon. Still no word from MrSmartButFakingIt on whether we’ll still have that conference call this evening at 5, but I’m not holding my breath. WS won’t be at all happy about not hearing anything either since he’s coming home from his main job early just to be here in time for a conference call that we’re probably not even going to get. Sooooo…in the meantime, I’ll just stay logging into work through 5 pm and maybe start drinking something with a bit more zip to it than the filtered water from my refrigerator door. WS reminded me just last night, that if all goes terribly awry, we do have enough alcohol in the house to stay more than comfortably numb for several weeks straight. Of course, we’ll have to be sober enough to apply for unemployment if it comes to that. But that should only take a day or two, right?

Today, I’ve:

Logged in to work
Vacuumed downstairs and the garage
Vacuumed out my car
Ate carbs because they were there
Set out sun tea
Avoided the laundry room at all costs
Added a Dr. Evil wallpaper to my computer
Played a trance-mix playlist real loud
Worked on about 200 emails for work
Applied yet another coat of polish to my car
Did the obligatory IM chat with a coworker who I can stand to chat with hoping she’s heard anything (no)
Gotten an update from the car club people who are driving back home from Kentucky and are now in Las Vegas
Sat here and pondered why I didn’t just go on that Kentucky trip if I was just going to lose my job anyway
Added a couple more links to this blog
Read journals and laughed out loud more than once
Stuck my tongue out at my work computer only twice

All-in-all, a fairly productive day considering we’ll have to sit through a 2-3 day weekend not knowing if we’re going to have jobs after next Monday. Of course, we might still have jobs by then, but have to go through this whole thing again for July 14th, which is coming to be known as Black Monday and when the whole company finds out who is staying and who is going. Ought to be a fun, fun week. In the meantime, I can work on more of my lay-off survival skills.

Gosh, I really need an Odd Todd fix right now.

July 7th 2003

Procrastinate now and avoid the rush!

We’re STILL waiting for last Friday’s 5:00 pm work conference call that never came on whether we still have jobs or not. Of course, we all knew it wouldn’t come given that company headquarters threw a kegger party last Friday and up-ed the time from 4 pm to 2 pm. From what I’ve already heard this morning, no one was standing under their own power by 5 pm. Still, at least for today, and while this week is promising to be chalk full of job-or-not stress, we still have our jobs today. Another day. Another dollar and fifteen cents.

So this job week will be interesting to say the least. Next Monday, July 14th is when company-wide organizational restructuring is made public. That means that everyone who is getting laid off probably won’t be told until next Sunday afternoon. Possibly, at the latest, Monday morning but I’m thinking it will be late Friday or late Sunday. Employees let go after Friday tend not to steal stuff. I’m not exactly sure how us remote employees are going to “steal stuff”. Virtual post-it-notes, maybe? Please. I stol……er……liberated enough of those from my last job to cover the planet.

MsNoManagementSkills has been making bids to become a stay-at-home mom for other people’s kids. In particular, the guy’s kids (the guy everyone believes she left FatHead for). But the problem with this is that the kids she’s watching are constantly sick with the flu, colds, what have you and she’s caught everything to date. Which means she does nothing by whine about how sick she is on her Online Journal…oh, and make her coworkers live’s a living hell. When chosing between what mood altering drug we’d most like to see MsNoManagementSkills affected by which in turn affects us, Nyquil or Zoloft, we’ll take Zoloft hands down.

So, WS and I have nearly gotten over the whole crying jag about the real possibility of losing our jobs and have been exploring ways to make this into a positive. We’ve talked a lot about this in the past and I think we’ll make it without selling my car. Hell, we’ve been in tougher situations in the past (I just never owned a car, let alone something so expensive before) and I’ve got confidence that we’ll get through this. Of course, every other minute, I get depressed again. It’s a back-and-forth, up-and-down thing that I’m sure will even out one way or the other in the weeks to come.

Saturday’s semi-big car show went very well (if you don’t count having to listen to one of the biggest bullshitters to move west of the Mississippi for 6 hours straight). We won first in our class and brought home an award that is a first for anyone in our car club.

Yesterday, our car club friends got back from their 2-week trip to Kentucky. We drove a hundred or so miles out to meet the group back and for the most part, they were happy to see us welcoming them home. The Competition Boys were no longer talking to each other; an interesting development, and several people were no longer talking to Drill Sargent Dave; no big surprise there. We’re happy to see them back home and hope they patch up their differences. What a way to end a once-in-a-lifetime trip with 20 of your best friends on a down note on account of the combination of stress, nerves, the hot weather, and all that driving. I’m sure they will all forget the squabbles given a few weeks away from each other.

Hope you all had a good weekend and for our U.S. readers, that you still have all your fingers and toes after the 4th of July. Tomorrow, let’s talk about The Dimmers newly discovered water problem (remember DrunkTank Willie’s water under the house problem?) and the new neighbors moving into the old Baseball Team’s house. We think they may have howler monkeys over there.

July 8th 2003

Don’t laugh. You’ll only encourage me.

Just had that conference call that we were supposed to have last Friday. According to them, WS and I still have jobs. At least for a while. And they’re sending us down to company headquarters in early August, where, we’ll get to cart MsNoManagementSkills around because she refuses to drive when in another city and she’s going on the trip too. FatHead had to drive her wherever she wanted to go and before him, BikerDude did. Fun. But at least we still have jobs for the time being and that is just fine with me. And is just the wake up call we needed to get our financial house in order. Of course, we’ll have to make doubly sure WS is applying the payments to the correct bill accounts so we don’t get hit with another late payment fee. We hate Providian with a passion now and as Odd Todd would say about MCI, “They are scum-sucking liars!”

Now, where were we?…..Water and howler monkeys, I think….

The Dimmers next door to us have discovered that little water problem that DrunkTank Willie temporarily covered up and covered his ass over long enough for them to move out. So, Mr. Dimmer talks to me Sunday morning and tells me he thinks we have a water leak in our sprinkler system and it’s running (uphill, mind you) over into his side yard which is a complete and total mud hole. Let’s not bring up the fact that Ms. Dimmer and the Dimmer screamer children have been running water for their SpongeBob SquarePants slip and slide every single day, 10:30 am to 5:00 pm, Monday through Friday, and conveniently putting it away just before Mr. Dimmer got home from work each day. “Naw, our neighbors are always watering their plants and they have a fountain. Therefore, they have lots of water so it HAS to be coming over here and flooding our yard.”

Gee, exactly what DrunkTank Willie tried to convince everyone of only to discover that A) every-fff-ing house in this development has a low spot between the houses that collects water. B) in every fff-ing one of those low spots is filled with 100 percent clay soil that Will. Not. Drain. Any. Water. Ever., and C) he fucked up the water system when he half-assed installed his sprinkler system before he moved.

I can hardly wait until Mr. Dimmer discovers how much water must be under his house by now.

Howler Monkeys. It seems that the people, yet to be named but I’m willing to bet the word “monkey” will be in there somewhere, who moved into the old Baseball Team’s house which sits kitty-corner from us, has howler monkeys. Or something that sounds suspiciously like howler monkeys. It could have been some dog with his ear caught in a door. Or someone with a tit in a wringer for all I know. All I do know is that whatever “it” is, it is loud. And howls unlike anything I’ve heard before. With the exception of that Discover Channel episode last month on….you guessed it: Howler monkeys. (I’m frantically searching the Internet right now for a Howler monkey sound clip for you to hear without being nailed by RIAA for downloading a file…..no dice.)

MsNoManagementSkills has shared in her Online Journal that a big time slacker coworker of ours (now forever known hereto as BTS) has moved into her old house with FatHead, probably to help with the mortgage payments. BTS has the hatred of nearly everyone in the entire company because of his highly refined slacking abilities. Only MsNoManagementSkills and FatHead liked and praised him and that is why BTS is still employed with this company after 3 miserable years. I’ve been asked several times over the past few months by my coworkers at company headquarters if I knew if he was going to be fired hopefully anytime soon. How should I know? But I did get a glimmer of light during the conference call today. It was implied both that BTS would be part of the upcoming “reduction in head count” and that he wouldn’t be laid off. Confusing to say the least. MrSmartButFakingIt seems hell-bent on making a new work process that is soon to start as different and complicated as anything we’ve ever seen or heard of before and that, says MrSmartButFakingIt, could result in people quitting. Ah HA! So, that’s how corporate human resources department work! And all this time I thought everyone always played fair. (bullshit!)

July 9th 2003

Pizza, wine, the Blogeois Blog. 3 key essentials to regular bowel movements.

Is it really a week into July? July 2003? Wow. I really need to pay more attention to the world around me. *sniff* And take a shower too.

After yesterday’s 3 hour conference call and 2 hours of debriefing each other (git yur minds outta the gutter) about not losing our jobs just yet, the work day whizzed by fairly fast for me. WS probably wouldn’t agree as he usually works 10-14 hours on Tuesdays. So, partially in celebration of the whole job situation, we opened a couple of bottles of wine to go with our Papa John’s pizza delivery.

Tamarack Cellars makes a GOOD Firehouse Red (2000) wine that goes very well with pepperoni pizza and we highly recommend it. For all you wine snobs who only buy wine when it’s highly rated by wine judges, this Firehouse Red rated an 85 with a publication we find worthy of the occasional purchase. This Firehouse Red ran around $15-$18, obviously something we bought when we were more comfortable paying close to $20 for a single bottle of wine.

The other bottle was also a red wine, this time from California. Seven Peaks central coast Cabernet Sauvignon 1999. Smooooth was the word here for a red wine and a Cab that we expected to be a bit on the bite-y side. This wine wasn’t rated which is just fine with us. It was an experimental purchase for around $10 and it was good with pizza but not something I’d purposely hunt down another bottle of anywhere. I’d rate it a decent wine, worth drinking, but not anything of note.

So, with 2 bottles of wine and a large pizza under our belts, we hit the sack earlier than usual. WS was snoring almost immediately and I couldn’t have been too far behind. Then I had a disturbing dream about upcoming car shows and people not allowing me to enter my car and right then, well…not exactly right then, but shortly thereafter, I woke up and lay there for over an hour trying to get back to sleep, knowing full well that I should never, NEVER eat pizza and drink wine just before going to bed.

Of course, I’ll forget all about this in a few weeks and probably do it again. Only 90+ bottles of wine left in the closet.

Isn’t it strange how 2 completely different people will start hanging around each other and pick up each other’s speech inflections? And then, when they post on their Online Journals, they start sounding like the other and not at all like themselves, the very selves that everyone else has come to know and love (or hate)? Rawr.

July 10th 2003

I used to have a handle on life. Then it broke.

For whatever reason, we’re both up very early this morning and both off to work. The way I look at this is that means my work day ends that much earlier. Checking MsNoManagementSkills Online Journal from last night, I suspect she won’t be in a good mood today at all. The guy she’s been getting all hot and heavy with completely ignored her last night when he got wrapped up in a computer game. According to his Online Journal, he didn’t even notice that she put his kids to bed and left herself. Gee, I think that’s what his soon-to-be-ex-wife was bitching about a month ago according to him and I’m under the impression that this somewhat related to what MsNoManagementSkills left FatHead over. But whatever. I plan on lying low at work over the next couple of days just in case.

Work is going well given we just had a U.S. holiday. I suspect the India outsource company had a lot to do with that and that they are vying hard to get more of our jobs here. I used to be very, very angry about this, knowing that someday, my job will be going to a company in India where people are paid nothing compared to us here. But now I see that this company is doomed anyway as well as most of the jobs in it. Man, you CEOs should have sold to Microsoft when you had the chance 3 years ago. Sure, none of the rest of us would still be here but according to the daily sales figures I get, this company has turned into a money pit.

WS’s wine of choice last night was a 2000 Willamette Valley Dry Gewurztraminer from Erath Vineyards. This winery is located within 100 miles of us and is an okay place to visit. Personally, I think Erath Vineyards makes better Pinot Noir and dessert wines than Gewurztraminers. I personally didn’t like this one too much although it tasted a bit better along with dinner: leftover pizza and grilled chicken sandwiches. Very floral smelling, a bit bite-y with citrus something tastes and a lingering honey flavor. WS really liked it though. I think we picked up this one at the local grocery store and that generally means we paid less than $11 for it. I want to say this was an $8 bottle but I’m not certain on that.

Still only 90+ bottles of wine in the closet.

I finally washed my car last night after last weekend’s couple hundred mile trip to greet the car club back from Kentucky. I still don’t know if I’ll drive anywhere this weekend or not but after this weekend, it’s detail, detail, detail time in order to get ready for the second BIG car show of the season. This one is being held about 40 miles from our house so I’ll be able to get more cleaning and detailing done before we go, and have less to re-clean and detail once we get there. This was the first big show I attended last year and although I didn’t enter, I did see all the political backstabbing that goes on in the car show world (big surprise there). The club that is putting on this show is notorious for making scores up to ensure that non-members of their club crash and burn on the score sheets. I think the highest score anyone got last year from this bunch was a 79 out of a 100. Normally, a low score would be a 94 out of 100. Everyone, even people not members of any club, agreed that people were being unfair and I think that club has gotten a bad reputation because of it. Not that the club would care. That particular club lives for reputations such as that. So we’ll just have to see what kind of treatment we get this year. There are 5 BIG shows in a season and only 4 are counted with the lowest score of the 5 automatically thrown out. If you can’t make it to all 5, then you better hope you do well on the other 4. If you can’t make it to 4, then you’re out of the running. We plan on making it to all 5 and this upcoming show will most likely be the low score that gets tossed out. So, while we plan on being cleanin’ fools at this show, we won’t feel bad if they slight us like they did to everyone else last year.

And finally, why is it whenever I mop the floors, some pet has to choose that time to barf all over it? Every. Fricken’. Time.

July 11th 2003

I’ve almost decided that I must be the Messiah. People expect me to work miracles and when I don’t, I get crucified.

MsNoManagementSkills has completely given up even thinking of dieting. I’ve gotten the strong feeling that FatHead used to bug her about her weight and that’s why she talked about it so much. Since she’s moved out, her Online Journal has been filled with talk about food, food, food. Pizza, pancakes, ice cream, donuts, pastas, burgers, the works. After seeing a 4th of July picture of her just the other day, I was stunned. Our trip together to company headquarters ought to be interesting to say the least without FatHead, but I can honestly say she won’t be telling me that I’m the one who’s gained 50 pounds. Sure. I’m no nubile little waif by any stretch of the imagination and anyone who’s seen me could liken my similarity to that of a full term water buffalo carrying triplets. But even that is a long way from Jabba The Hutt. Frightening how slug-like a person could look. Right down to the “my gut covers my legs down to my knees now when I sit” part.

Since when has the word “with” been replaced with “wit”?

“We’ve secretly replaced some of the words in the English language with Folgers crystals. Let’s see if anyone notices.”

Hello people! As George Carlin says, let’s all stick with the spelling and pronunciation of the English language that we’ve all previously agreed upon.

Getting my hairs cut today in pre-preparations for the company trip. Since my hair grows ever so slowly, I haven’t had it cut since the last time we were sent to headquarters and it only recently started to look like it needed cutting. WS’s hairs, on the other hand, could stand a weekly cutting to make him happy. I can practically hear his hair growing.

Today at work, I’m now completely overwhelmed, something I don’t do very often. Too much information coming at me at once on top of too much work I haven’t done yet. And just as I was getting ready to do that work, I get piled with more legal mumbo-jumbo than I can digest that may mean that everything I’ve worked on to date, will need to be changed. And then, a coworker sent out instructions to the coworkers under him allowing them to do part of my job. Fine. I have no problem with that. Except that most of these people can’t spell and have little to no concept of English grammar. I’ll have to review and correct all that work now too. The weeks ahead ought to be too fun for words.

Of course, it would be worth it if I would have gotten that raise I was promised back at the end of May and haven’t seen a peep of yet. Okay, all this would really be worth it if I didn’t have to go through weeks of tears and stress of being laid off again.

July 14th 2003

In the words of Homey the Clown, “I don’t think so…”

Thank god our weekend is over. Yes, you read that right. I was actually looking forward to getting back to the crisis I face everyday at work over the crap we had to deal with here at home over the weekend.

A short history leading up to the weekend problems: About 6 weeks ago, we had to have the fountain guy come out and fix a pipe that blew on our fountain. While he was out here, we had him clean some of the large rocks to rid them of scale and algae. This meant he had to drain the fountain at least 2 times and refill it. 6 weeks later, we get a water bill for $250 dollars, over twice what we planned and budgeted for. Ouch.

Last week, WS turned off the automatic refill valve on the fountain because he was concerned that it was adding to our water bill. I didn’t think it was, but whatever. Friday night, around midnight, he turned the valve back on because the water in the fountain was quite low and the frogs that live out there seemed to moved out possibly because of this.

Saturday morning, I got up just after 5 am, looked out the back window and noticed about 6 inches of water flooding half of our backyard. The shutoff valve had stuck open. All night long. And we were in serious possibility of flooding Cap’t Dan and the Smokin’ Clan’s backyard behind us if the water soaked through our ground cover bark and over our rock wall. WS turned the valve back off and later, discovered it was no longer working. No shit, Sherlock.

The water eventually soaked up into the bark and ground and very little drained over the rock wall. Not enough for Cap’t Dan to notice a thing. Okay, so we need a new auto refill valve. $35 plus shipping at the most.

Completely stressed out, and around 7 am, we went back to bed but WS eventually got up for good. I fell back asleep until nearly noon which surprised the hell outta me but hey, it was a deep sleep and something I hadn’t had in well over a week.

Around 1:30 pm, I happen to look out into the back yard and now notice one of our sprinkler junction boxes pouring water out of it, draining down the sidewalk, and starting to flood the other side of the yard. Once again, Cap’t Dan’s yard is in peril of being flooded yet again if we can’t stop the water, which appeared to be pouring out of a broken pipe or valve. We frantically tried to bail the water out of the junction box but it was filling back up just as fast as we could bail. The only recourse was for WS to shut off the sprinkler hookup at the main water valve in the front yard. After that, he also shut off the main water valve for the entire sprinkler system just in case another PCV pipe or plastic valve broke somewhere else. We bailed out as much of the water as we could but because the water was muddy, we couldn’t see or feel exactly what the problem was. We just know we don’t have use of our sprinklers anymore.

WS called the fountain guy, who had the sprinklers put in and of course, we didn’t hear anything from him until this morning. Good thing we didn’t have to shut off the water to our entire house, huh? We’d just be shit outta luck then I guess.

So, WS makes plans to come home early this afternoon to meet Fountain Guy before he starts doing any work and repairs. 2:00 pm was the scheduled time. Fine with me, I say. After the last few unpleasant encounters with Fountain Guy, where I felt he took advantage us and our usual nice-guy demeanor, I just won’t deal with the guy any longer.

At 12:30 pm, guess who shows up and starts ripping stuff apart? Fountain guy. Upstairs in the office, overlooking the fountain area, I grab the phone and quietly call WS at his other job to tell him and it turns out he can’t get away just yet to rush home. The moment I hang up, I overhear Fountain Guy tell his helper that he just wants to get this working and “get out of here.” I call WS back and tell him this and this time, WS is ready to head home. Fountain Guy then takes off, I assume to go get parts. WS should be here when Fountain Guy gets back. Is it just me, or does it sound like this guy may have planned to purposely miss dealing with WS in person completely? Who knows…I hate situations like this.

I realize that we can’t afford another bill right now, but I think this should be the absolute last time we call this flakey guy and find a REAL company to work on any future problems with our sprinklers and fountain. I am so tired of having something go wrong and being at the complete mercy of this loser to call back whenever he feels like it, which if more often than not, weeks after our call. We have no way of getting a hold of him right away when something goes wrong. We have no way to get a hold of him over the weekends (gee, sorry if we disturb your weekend but we are still under warranty here for your work and your work is nearly flooding our neighbor’s home!), and it is obvious, the guy wants nothing to do with us anymore anyway. We need a real company that cares about the quality of their work and who we can count on to be able to talk to when a problem arises, not some guy who runs his business out of his house and who’s wife screens his calls, making us wonder if he’s running from creditors or something. So much for us thinking all this time, he was one of those “creative” types who just took their time doing the work. No one can convince me now that he isn’t anything but just flakey and not worthy of doing any business with. And while I won’t go out of my way to slam this guy or his business, I will let everyone know how I feel about it when specifically asked about him. I can only thank god now that I didn’t recommend him to any of our neighbors because I’d be willing to bet I’d never hear the end of it.

Sunday, between doing “water checks” around both our front and back yards, and hand watering everything because of the hot weather, I did all that icky car detailing stuff that’s too easy to put off until the last minute: repainting brake rotors, touching up rock chips, re-polishing the exhaust under the car, painting the brake pedal lever inside, painting some worn spots on the inside door hinges and hood latches, re-polishing some engine parts, cleaning my rims and tires, vacuuming the interior, etc. Next Saturday, I’m considering going to a large show across town that I avoided last year because I heard it was run by a rival car club that didn’t treat our club well. But over the weekend, when I mentioned this to one of the Competition Boys, they told me that wasn’t the case after all and that he won 2 awards there last summer. So, I’m thinking of going. The problem with this show is that it starts around 7:30 in the morning and ends after 8 at night. A LONG day to say the least, especially when the weather looks to be up around 90-something that day. So, hot and long. Hehehe, sounds like a dream date, huh? Maybe not….

July 15th 2003

I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.

So Fountain Guy never returned yesterday and WS missed him by a good 20 minutes. No big surprise there. For chuckles and grins, I asked WS to look up exactly when we paid Fountain Guy last year for his work so we’d know the exact date that our 1 year warranty ran out. You know, just in case we receive an unexpected bill for all these repairs. It turns out the last day of our warrant was last Saturday. The day that both of those valves blew. Had this happened Sunday instead, we’d legally be shit outta luck. So, should we happen to receive a bill for this latest work, Mr. Fountain Guy will be SOL instead of us for once.

Fountain Guy and his assistant arrived back here after noon today and got right to work. Although by now (2 pm) it sounds like there is a water leak somewhere in one of our sprinkler lines and they haven’t a clue as to where so until things dry out around the sprinkler valve leak area, they can’t do anything. This means we still don’t have sprinklers, the temperatures will be from the upper 80′s to 100′s for the next few months, I’ll have to water everything by hand but carefully if at all around the potential leak area meaning we’ll probably end up losing a few plants to the heat, and we get to wait around for Fountain Guy to come back at some undetermined date and really fix the problem. All while getting that 4 day business trip handled when we won’t be here to water anything. Grrr..

We finally got our itineraries for the business trip to headquarters in a couple of weeks. It looks like they were originally sent to that vast black hole on the Internet somewhere last week and we just received the re-emailed plans today, which have to be okay-ed by us today or we’re back to being SOL for making the trip at all. Looks like they reserved a cheap rental car in my name this time around. Remember: MsNoManagementSkills refuses to drive at all when on business trips and WS’s reputation for driving a bit on the wild side last time around must have gotten back to the company CEOs, probably from MrSmartButFakingIt’s wife who isn’t at all impressed with anyone who drives up near the actual speed limit. I think she’s one of those “I’m generally scared of everything” kinds of people but I’ll know more after the company trip. I’m sure we’ll be in each other’s presence for at least an hour or so then.

I need to make up a list of things to get done before the trip. Starting next Monday, the following 2 weeks are going to be incredibly busy with a BIGGIE car show for season points and the business trip preparations. However, the last week of July looks to be somewhat fun too. After the car show, I’ve got 2 vacation days scheduled, my birthday being one of them, then one work day, then we’re off to company headquarters which means lots of meaningless meetings but no actual work followed by dinners out and a company luau Saturday night at the CEO’s mansion. At the luau, I expect to see lots of fake-baked people there, most drinking heavily, overly loud boring music that the main CEO will think is “cutting edge”, lots of sexual undertones in overly loud conversations about inside jokes that won’t make 1 iota of sense to us, tons of cigarette smoke, a few coworkers strumming on their guitars together, and MsNoManagementSkills, the entire time, angrily standing around the outskirts, not participating in any conversation or activity, in her Pacific Northwest ghostly white skin and her usual over-sized Old Navy t-shirt and shorts, over-sized purse over her shoulder and notebooks and pens in hand, complaining for hours about how she just wants to be driven back to the motel. In essence, nothing any different than any other time I’ve seen the company get together.

Let’s see: Call Pet Sitter (because no one in this entire development is pet-friendly or gives a rat’s ass about animals), get more pet food, tell Vet about trip, schedule car for airport pickup and delivery, think about what clothes we need to take, come up with a list of any questions or project plans we may get to discuss with MrSmartButFakingIt, CEOs, engineers, and coworkers, find a credit card that isn’t maxed out that we can take to pay for stuff (that company often “conveniently forgets” to pre-pay for like motel room, rental car, and return flight ticket)…I’m sure I’ll think of more in the coming days.

I’m leaning more toward going to that long and hot car show this coming Saturday. I can come up with all kinds of reasons why: I’d like to get more sun, especially on my legs this time around, I’m a slut for winning awards on the car I work so hard to keep looking nice, I want to beat the Competition Boys at their own game…..Ooops! Did I just type that out loud? Yeah, well, I’ve gotten the impression on and off this summer that the Competition Boys don’t really like me butting into their territory too much. One of them has really started to give me that impression. The verdict is still out on the other one. Well, sorry guys, but there is enough room for all of us. And get used to it. Others will follow me soon enough. God, I hate overly competitive people. I just can’t come up with any reason to drive a hundred miles or so to go to a show I kind of wanted to go to Sunday. So I won’t be going to that one, I’m pretty sure.

July 16th 2003

Consciousness is that annoying time between naps.

Ever have one of those Aunt Flo visits that just sucks all the life out of you? This describes my current state. After her scheduled visit yesterday, I felt drained throughout the day but thought most of it was due to the stress over Fountain Guy yesterday. I finished up work around 5:30, wandered around the house not doing anything of importance for a couple of hours, and was in bed by 8 pm and snoring away by 8:30. This is just not like me. Then, I didn’t even wake up until after 9 this morning. Yeah, okay, maybe I really needed the sleep. We all know how screwed up my sleep schedule usually is, but all I want to do today is go back to bed, which I can’t do because there is that whole job thing I’m supposed to be doing. Not even drinking caffeinated tea and taking a Xenadrine has helped. Not only do I want to go back to sleep, I’m in a funk as well. I have things I have to get done: Laundry, dusting, cleaning this office, going to Lowe’s, and I just don’t want to do any of it. Of course, just DOING any of it will only help. I need a cattle prod. To use on myself. Thank god, Amazon.com sells cattle prods through their Red Hill General Store link. Too bad I don’t have any money to spend.

MsNoManagementSkills and her boyfriend (while she’s deciding to divorce FatHead) have publicly announced their affair in their Online Journals. All that’s missing is the grunts and squeals of orgasms. Both MsNoManagementSkills and the boyfriend are separated from their spouses, making us wonder if those spouses will be citing adultery in any upcoming divorce papers. Seems rather stupid to me to announce “We’re having sex” to the world less than a month after moving out from a marriage. We also wonder if this will affect what MsNoManagementSkills will get out of her divorce, knowing that she’s already said she’ll be demanding everything. Silly, silly, silly. Oh, and let’s not forget she also told the world she went off The Pill. Things could get complicated here. Now, she’s telling everyone she’s going off Zoloft. Pray for us coworkers.

Cap’t Dan and the Smokin’ Clan behind us is brewing up another change to their pieced-together wood deck and backyard layout. Changes start with Cap’t Dan himself standing around various areas of his backyard for up to a half an hour in any one spot, scoping out his yard from different angles with his one good eye. The next step in the process includes his insistence that his youngest son, the one who used to be Harry Potter’s identical twin before he discovered punk rock, piercings, and heavy eye makeup, to help walk out measurements that are jotted down on a legal pad of paper. Next, out comes the rusty yellow tape measurer and more jotting. Then, in anywhere from a few days to a few months, a load of bad, cast-off looking 2x4s will be hand carried to his side yard and left there through rain and sun until they are sufficiently warped and anything but straight. It’s then and only then, that Cap’t Dan will drag out his wobbly sawhorses from the other side yard and fire up his power saw, rusty from sitting out in months of Pacific Northwest rainy seasons, and begin to saw away. Only until the very end, will we know exactly what his vision was, and sometimes even then, we still won’t know until someone uses it.

July 17th 2003

A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.

Don’t feel like doing anything again today, only today, I’m really not doing anything. Yesterday, I cleaned, worked, took a nap, and went to Lowe’s after all. Today, I’m working…kind of. I did some laundry…kind of. I talked on the phone to someone from company headquarters and made myself sound like I cared…kind of. Is this what it feels like to be burnt out? Of work? Or of life in general?

Don’t tell me I need a vacation. I don’t do vacations. Especially since I might need any un-taken vacation pay if I get laid off later this year (oh yes, the lay off thing will sprout it’s ugly head again in late December or January). Besides, taking a vacation requires money of which we have none and a major rescheduling of both our budget and our 3 job schedules. Yeah, I know. We got ourselves in to this mess and now, we have to live our lives with rarely, very rarely ever taking a vacation.

Take a vacation but don’t leave home and don’t spend any money, you say? Well, I suppose I could, but when you work from home and when you take a vacation but stay at home, you kind of feel cheated somehow. Like you still go into your place of employment every day but you don’t have to do any actual work. Definitely not the same as say….going to Disneyland, or going camping, or visiting a foreign country.

But hey! Am I complaining? Well, yeah, kind of.

I’ve been spending my mornings before work picking the latest ripened handful of blueberries from our blueberry bushes out back. I think WS is actually starting to like them nearly as much as I do because I’ve heard he eats a couple right from the bush. He never did that before and I’m not complaining.

This morning, I found our first dead bird in a long time. A yellow goldfinch lying under the tall birch trees. I didn’t touch it, with the West Nile Virus in birds thing going around and instead, scooped it up with a long handled shovel and placed it well out of the way under a bush along the back rock wall. It’s sad to see any dead animals in our backyard since we’ve had so many of them thanks to the Cat from Hell. But it’s been a long time since we’ve had a dead bright yellow goldfinch. We both really enjoy these birds and have lots of them at our feeders all summer long. So I guess if we lose one, I shouldn’t complain.

Some of the ideas and suggestions I had planned to bring to light at work have been brought to light first by a coworker down at company headquarters, making me wonder if anyone is wondering what I’m doing. “Well, I’m coming up with ideas that are then somehow channeled into BrightBoy’s brain, and then he shares it with everyone and gets all the credit. THAT’S what I’m doing and quite frankly, it’s exhausting work, thankyouverymuch!” But if it makes work for the company easier for us all, I shouldn’t complain.

A general car club meeting tonight. The first one since everyone got back from their Kentucky trip. I’m not looking forward to it for a couple of reasons: I don’t care to listen to potentially hours of “how cool our Kentucky trip was; too bad you didn’t go”, and WS will be handing in his club newsletter editor resignation tonight to take effect at the end of September (I believe). I’m sure this will affect our “status” in the little club clique’ that we’ve become a part of and I can’t help but feel odd about that. Like I don’t really belong anymore somehow although that is ridiculous and not true. It’s hard to explain exactly. All I can say is that neither one of us has any spare time left to create a monthly newsletter, especially WS, who doesn’t even own the car that got us into this club in the first place. Neither do we have the time to constantly be begging for articles, stories, columns, and pictures every single month, then format them into the newsletter itself, then decide whether to print them out ourselves and eating the cost or playing the back-and-forth games with the club sponsor’s Tight Wad secretary, who is also a club member, on whether the sponsor will pay for the printing costs that month (only to have the printing costs stipulations change the following month). When we first joined this club, we both saw a lot of things that could be drastically changed for the betterment of the club and the club’s image. The newsletter was a big one that needed change since it looked as though a 10 year old had been putting it together (and writing it as well). WS knew he could improve this and signed up for the job. However, club politics and changes got in the way, not to mention job stresses here at home, and I think WS only had fun creating it the first month of two. After that, I think he downright hated creating it. And I don’t blame him. Hell, the first time I had to bump heads with Doormat Dick’s control freak wife who used to create the newsletter, I would have been imprisoned for outright murder.

This weekend promises to be hotter and hotter every time I watch the weather report on our local news channel. First, Saturday was going to be 85. Not too bad. Then it was up to 91. Ugh. Now the latest is that it’s supposed to be closer to 96 or higher. And I’m going to be sitting in a black asphalt parking lot, next to my black car from 8 in the morning to 8 in the evening? Crap! What was I thinking??

So, am I complaining? You betcha I am now.

July 18th 2003

I thought I wanted a career. Turns out I just wanted paychecks.

Good grief! By 8 am this morning I was pleading for my work day to already be over with. Look, I can instantly get out of bed in a matter of split seconds and perform any kind of manual labor or any kind of life saving maneuver necessary. My parents made damn sure that I could from the age of 5. But start throwing me technical crap about my job that I don’t give a shit about and you’ve lost me. You’ve probably lost me until sometime in the middle of next week.

I just can’t deal with this job right now. I do not know what I’m supposed to be doing anymore (like I did anyway) and I am so very, very tired of faking it like I do know what I’m doing. I need a day or so off maybe. I so need someone to sit with me, show me without all the technical, engineer-ese mumbo jumbo talk, the exact steps I’m supposed to be taking to get a job, any job done so I feel okay about my job again. Oh, and can I ask for no interruptions, no long, drawn out explanations about shit that I will never need to know about (trust me on this), and for everything to work the way it’s supposed to work the first time around?

We’re revisiting the idea of moving to company headquarters and giving up all we have up here to keep our remote jobs (which wouldn’t be remote jobs anymore). Yesterday, the word got out that all remote jobs are going away, something we know is coming someday, but we’ve been reassured by headquarters that WS, I, and MsNoManagementSkills will still have our jobs. The question really is, for how long? I think within 2 years, our jobs here will be gone and we’re okay with that. WS will still have his real job, the one that pays the most, and the one he is starting to like again for the first time in years. The one that really matters.

If we move to company headquarters, we have a good chance of keeping these jobs, however, WS may not be able to keep his real job, which just happens to have a location just up the street from this company’s headquarters. Do I want to move there? I think I want the change in my life but not all the baggage that could go with it. I think I want to feel like I belong somewhere by people who seem to like me when I visit there, but may end up not liking me when they really get to know me. I have no delusions that moving to company headquarters will improve my ability to do my job or will magically help me feel better about my job in general. I don’t want to lose what we’ve built here.

I don’t want to lose time in pursuit of the almighty dollar at this job. I don’t want to be torn between the choice of living in 2 vastly different places of the country after the job goes away. I like the green, the trees, the often denied possibility of snow here in the pacific northwest, but when I was a teenager, I told everyone that I was going to live in southern California by the beach for the rest of my life and that’s something I never did. I don’t even know if I would like it day in and day out. Beach sand gets into everything and the constant wind could drive a person mad. We definitely couldn’t afford to live anywhere near the beach there. I don’t know if I could handle living somewhere where the landscape turned all brown and crispy from April through October. I’m afraid that working at company headquarters would prove to everyone that I was just a big fake; that I really didn’t know anything and didn’t bring anything valuable to the company after all. That I will have been drawing a fat (to me at least) paycheck for almost 5 years for not doing anything more than just answering emails that the lowest paid employee could do. We’d be paying up to 3-4 times more for housing than we are paying here, not to mention utilities. My car and most of our stuff would have to sit in storage somewhere. We’d need a place that allows our pets. I refuse to give up our pets. They are our only family. I’d hate to rent out our house up here only to return in a year or two or 5 and find we need to spend a huge wad of cash just to repair everything: the house, the landscaping, the fountain, the sprinklers,…regardless if we hired a good rental management property to watch over the place in our absence.

All these fears. All these indecisions. All this noise in my head. I guess if I were bringing home the most money, I’d jump and move. If I were 10 years younger, I’d definitely jump and move. I’m a jumper. But I’ve learned to cherish the feeling of safety in not always jumping or feeling like I have to jump to survive., thanks to WS (who is generally, not a jumper – Thankfully so!)

We’ve had a visit from the raccoon 3 nights in a row. Unusual but nice. I’m helping something in the world I want to believe. The dead bird I scooped up yesterday and placed under a bush is gone today. WS gave his newsletter editor resignation to the car club last night. Drill Sergeant Dave was visibly sad over the whole thing. Not angry. Just sad. Only a couple more issues and he’ll get back 2-4 hours of his life a month. I’m going to take the bottle of Hawaiian Tropic tanning lotion/sunscreen tomorrow to the hot and long car show. When we go to company headquarters in 13 days, I won’t look like I live my whole life indoors, sitting in front of a monitor screen.

I had mac’n'cheese for breakfast and although I really don’t feel good about that, it beats being hungry. It’s going to be over 90 degrees today. Ditto for tomorrow. Hotter still all next week. Welcome to summer, the season I hate.

July 21st 2003

There’s a very fine line between “hobby” and “mental illness”.

Another reason to hate the desert southwest region of the U.S.: Heat lows

Up here in the Pacific Northwest, where you would think it would be wet, green, and raining every day of the year, it’s going to be 100 degrees today thanks to a big, fat heat low coming up from AZ and just sitting here. No rain for weeks and weeks now. No rain anytime in the future either. Probably not until October something. Ugh.

The car show we attended last weekend was a bust. We didn’t win anything, but got lots of compliments and lots of sun. In fact, we pretty much baked all day as the temperatures got 10 degrees hotter than predicted. It wasn’t fun in the least, but we did see our next door neighbors, Mr. & Ms. SportsOrNothing who for some reason showed up to get drunk in the pub that the show was held at. They were hanging around with some horrid-looking woman who very obviously had fake everything from head to toe and trying much too hard to be 20 years younger than she was, right down the “Fast and Furious” extreme painted and overly decal-laden type of car. Upon meeting her, I couldn’t help but notice that she also smelled really bad, like someone who’s had lots of sex in hot, sweaty places and hadn’t showered in 5 days. I still don’t understand why the SportsOrNothing family was hanging out with her and I don’t think I really want to know. She definitely isn’t the type of person SportsOrNothing associates with from everything we’ve seen over the past 4+ years.

BIG, season point car show coming up next Saturday. Unfortunately, the weather is looking to be hot and sunny yet again. These kinds of show really drain me and honestly, I don’t need anymore sun. I’m baked to a nice, crispy brown already. But today, I need to work on a cloudy area of my hood and then apply the first of 5 coats of polish to the entire car. Tomorrow, I’ll be cleaning the engine from top to bottom. Wednesday, I vacuum and detail the interior. Thursday, it’s tire and wheel day and Friday, I detail all the nooks and crannies as well as do the all-around check of everything and then pack the car for the show. Pre-registration is Friday night at a car dealership about an hour’s drive away. Real show registration begins at 7 am Saturday at the show location, which means we have to get up at 5:30. Thankfully, the show is only about 45 minutes drive away. And remember, this is the show that we’re expecting to be run in a biased fashion and may well be the show scores we throw out at the end of summer.

I just found out that MsNoManagementSkills is taking this coming Friday off. Nice how she gets to take days off without any notice or pre-planning yet she refuses anyone else’s request to do so. And really! Did she really have to refer to her new boyfriend’s hairy private parts online? Double Ugh! Again, I don’t know why people tell the world about their new sexual adventures before beginning divorce proceedings. I’m just hoping at this point that FatHead is reading and keeping note of all this so he doesn’t get too raked over the coals.

5 hours of work left. Tonight, we desperately need to go grocery shopping, something we haven’t done in over a month. To make it worse, we need to strictly keep to a grocery budget which may not be easy considering it’s been so long since we’ve shopped and we’re out of everything. No more grabbing and buying everything. No more unnecessary purchases for stuff that’s overpriced anyway. We are working hard to get our debt paid off, gather some savings for the first time in a long while, and prepare for the next time we’re threatened with losing our jobs and keeping the grocery bill down can really help.

July 22nd 2003

Where are we going and why am I in this hand basket?

It’s hot here today. Damned hot. 100 degrees with 90 percent humidity. No, I wasn’t looking for your sympathy. Just stating a fact and the reason for a delay in my usual posting time.

I just put in a LONG work day. Nearly 12 hours as of right now. Probably not so surprisingly, I didn’t do much either. Answered lots of customer email, mainly stuff I could do in my sleep, chatted for a while with the company info insider I have connections with, and listened in on 2 long, painful company conference calls that the contents of both went completely over my head. I also had a quick dentist appointment to get my dental implant finished up, we went grocery shopping, and used WS’s free Starbucks coffee card to treat ourselves to a couple of drinks (we hadn’t been to Starbucks since last January because of the whole Atkins’ diet thing).

After suffering through a stomach flu bug or something equally nasty last night and sitting on the toilet on and off for 4 hours, I was a half a day behind on car show preparation stuff, but I’m nearly back on track now after working my ass off to catch up. On a somewhat related note, I have to face reality at this point: I sweat like a hog in a broiler. Most unattractive. But there’s never been anything feminine or much that was attractive about me in the first place (I’m thinking WS might interject something here – we’ll see). It’s definitely not a dry heat out there in the garage. Too bad sweat drops can’t make my car shinier. I’m just gross looking after I work out there.

That flu bug last night enabled me to fit into a pair of levis for the dentist appointment today. Sure, it was my biggest pair of levis, but it was also a pair I couldn’t fit into a couple of weeks ago. I really need to get back on that rowing machine. I was good 2 days last week. I can be good 2 days this week too. And all this car polishing I’ll be doing this week certainly can’t hurt the shape of my arms. God knows I don’t get these biceps from typing (but wouldn’t that be too cool??)

July 23rd 2003

You can’t lick the system, but you can certainly give it a damn good fondling.

Yesterday was another hot day and another long, long 12 hour work day. Yes, I actually did work. For-my-job kind of work. I also worked on my car and am completely back on track to getting that done by tomorrow evening so I’ll be ready early Saturday morning for Biggie Show #2 of the season. Today is glass cleaning, inside and out, and wheels and tires cleaning day. Should be too bad. Only 3 more coats of polish to go too.

For dinner last night, we tried out one of those new Rosarita’s dinners in a box things. Chicken enchiladas it was and it was way much faster than making our own. Pre-cooked chicken comes with it, even if it did look like chicken paste with chicken-y looking strings of chicken meat in it. Tortillas, sauce and cheese are also included. Took us less than 5 minutes from taking the box out of the fridge to putting it in the oven (for 20 minutes at 375 degrees). And they were good too. Especially with shredded lettuce, sliced green onions, and sliced fresh jalapeno on the side (not included in box). We are truly Mexican food sluts.

I was good only one night this week in hitting that rowing machine. I’ve just been completely spent after work and car cleaning. On top of all that polishing I’m doing on my car and all that sweating, I’m either building up more muscle and gaining weight, or actually losing some. Let’s not hold our breaths just yet. The true test will come the next time I have to squeeze myself into a pair of levis. I’ve been living in shorts for well over 2 months straight now. Shorts with elastic waists and draw strings. Nothing button or zip up here, meaning, a person could blow up like a balloon and not really even realize it until they have to wear something else. Something restrictive. Something tight. Something they used to wear all the time with little to no trouble only to now be alarmed that they can’t get the zipper up or the top 2 buttons buttoned and then, oh dear! There isn’t a long enough shirt or blouse to wear to cover up all that protruding fat and those unbuttoned levis buttons and….

…oh, sorry. I hate it when my fears get the better of me and I start babbling like that. Just smack me next time I do that.

WS just submitted my requests for a few days off here and there in August and September. Since we are no longer allowed to take time off around any holidays (but we all know MsNoManagementSkills will find a way to take time off then anyway), and because I still have my job for the next 6 months, I figured I might as well take a few days off. I prefer to take my days off in the late fall/early winter and around Thanksgiving and Christmas, but we can’t do that anymore and I’ve found that I need down-time after the biggie car shows for a day or two. I used to worry about needing the unused vacation pay if I got laid off, but since lots of companies that lay off employees aren’t giving unused vacation and sick pay anymore (even though they are supposed to, I think) I figured that I might as well enjoy some of it in lieu of potentially losing it. And I promise to try to enjoy those days fully, meaning, I won’t spend the entire time cleaning.

Sure, I will.

July 24th 2003

Procrastinate now and avoid the rush!

Why, oh why, couldn’t have today been the car show? The weather was absolutely perfect! High temps at 81 degrees, mostly cloudy with spurts of sunshine here and there. On cloudy days, my car looks like a perfect piece of carved black glass. You can’t see any scratches, no rock chips, no swirl marks, no imperfections whatsoever. On completely sunny days, all these things are noticeable. Today’s weather news says Saturday will indeed be 90 degrees and not a cloud in sight. Blaaaaah. Another baking weekend coming up. I’m ready for fall already.

Now, if we only had a pool…

Earlier, I heard Cap’t Dan behind us fire up his power saw and I excitedly thought, “Oh good! Now we get to see what kind of new backyard contraption he’s going to build!” But I was denied. He was only trying to fire up his grass edger which looks and sounds like perhaps he shouldn’t have left that sit out in his side yard for the past year and a half either. No sign of any building. No lumber sitting out there yet, warping in the sun and he hasn’t been back out there measuring anything.

I hope The Dimmers are paying attention to their cute little dog. She’s been puking in their backyard on and off all morning. I’ll keep watch, but from past experience, I know there is nothing really I can do without pissing the neighbors off. Why is it that I’m the only one who seems to realize that nothing, especially animals, should be ignored and made to suffer needlessly? People who say, “Geez, get over it! It’s JUST an animal!” like it’s an expendable life, really piss me off.

I just found out that MrSmartButFakingIt is going to India and taking his teacher’s pet coworker with him in 2 weeks and that MsNoManagementSkills is staying at company headquarters to “run” the department in their week long absence. The company is sending us back home after just a few days, but MsNoManagementSkills will be staying an extra week. How fucked up is that, knowing that SHE HAS NO MANAGEMENT SKILLS. I’d sure like to stay there a week extra on the company’s tab.

WS had what I think is our final discussion on moving to company headquarters this evening and I’ve decided to give up my one big dream in life. NOT because I HAVE to, but because I WANT TO. Moving to that part of the country, while a dream of mine since I was 12, is in no way logical or intelligent in today’s world. I realize that people do it all the time and that people do it and lose everything they currently have just to do it. But living there is too similar to living where I grew up, a large city that I still hate with a passion. I would be returning to something I hated all my life just for the chance to advance in my job which may not be in the plans anyway. Moving there only holds 2 appeals for me: A change of scenery and a chance to live within 100 miles of an ocean. Currently, I live 200 miles from an ocean but rarely find time to visit it because of our current work schedule. The cons of moving there are now running in the double digits; vastly outweighing the pros. A move is just not in the cards for me in this lifetime. But then again, you never know what’s coming around the corner.

July 27th 2003

There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.

Ah, Friday. And a Friday without MsNoManagementSkills who has taken the day off to drag her “mommy” and “daddy” to the malls so “they can buy me stuff”. Gag.

I only need to work a little over 4 hours today. So, I started work late after cleaning a bit on my car. Now, I only need to clean the glass, finish packing cleaning supplies, and do a final wipe down of the outside. I’m nearly as ready as I could possibly be for the big show tomorrow. I wish I could feel better about how that show might go, but again, at this show last year, the car club that put it on blatantly cheated by low scoring all the cars from our club, a rival club in their minds, and inflating scores for their own club members. I’m not expecting anything tomorrow but I think if that club is smart, they will have learned a lesson from last year and all the complaining that they had to have received from what they pulled (btw: it wasn’t just our club that complained, their tactics were noticed by lots of other car clubs.). I just want to know that I looked as good as possible and didn’t give them any legitimate reason to mark me down.

As an additional bonus, I have next Monday AND Tuesday off work. I nearly forgot that I applied for these days off months ago. I’ll still be posting here though, in-between cleaning and sweating. Next week’s weather is supposed to be the hottest we’ve had all year, which means temps will be well over 100 degrees. It seems so wrong for some place so green and lush to be so hot. I’m sure it can’t be good for growing things here. Except maybe jalapenos and agave.

So, this means 5 whole days without MsNoManagementSkills. That in itself is worth celebrating (after the car show tomorrow of course). Then next Wednesday I work all day, followed by flying to company headquarters Thursday morning with WS and MsNoManagementSkills. So really, I’ve only got 1 day of actual work and a couple of days of sitting around in meetings, acting like I’m interested in and understanding what’s being said, while trying to stay away from MsNoManagementSkills who is already claiming to feel another nasty cold on the way. If she didn’t already have the nickname of MsNoManagementSkills, we’d call her Typhoid Mary for all the colds and flu she catches and passes around.

During lunch today, I happened to look out in our backyard and saw sitting on the fence a Lazuli Bunting! These are beautiful teal-ish blue finches and while they do migrate through this area, it’s still rare to see one in an urban residential backyard. I sighted one last year back there but didn’t see another one all year. To see one today really got me excited. I really wish we’d get more of these, if for nothing else, so that WS can see one in person.

Well, only 3 hours left at work. I’m working on laundry right now, then I’ll vacuum and then go out and clean my car glass, followed by finishing up pack up the car. Tonight, driving WS’s newly washed car, I have to drive out to that far-away car dealership to pre-register for the show tomorrow and I want to have my car completely ready before I leave. I don’t want to have to do a thing when I get back home. Except fret.

July 28th 2003

Give me ambiguity or give me something else.

The car show Saturday was an emotional roller coaster as usual. The skies were cloudy and a nice breeze was blowing, just like we had hoped for and we were beginning to believe the weather people were wrong about it getting up into the 90′s. But just before judging, the skies cleared and the heat started pouring on. But we were confident my car looked good. Every square inch was clean and shining. The first 2 of the 4 total judges were personable and complimented us on the car. We were feeling good.

However, the 3rd judge threw a wrench into things, telling us we didn’t have our glove box open, something that apparently was in the rule book as he then so pointedly showed me; a detail I missed in my reading. So I ripped open my glove compartment, which was full of car stuff: a flashlight, the car’s owner’s manual, my tire warranty papers, and registration, and threw the stuff into a nearby cleaning bag. But the judge stood there the entire time, writing notes and comments on his score sheet which means, he has taken off points and is writing down why (a requirement). I was crushed and knew I had lost the event right then and there because I wasn’t thorough. Unfortunately, ignorance of the rules doesn’t win you back any points.

The 4th judge was a very nice guy and his judging session flew by with no problem. In the meantime, WS walked around looking at all the cars in my same class that hadn’t been judged as of yet and noticed that about half of those cars had their glove box open while the other half didn’t. If it turned out that I was the only one who got marked down for that not being open, we’d be pissed and knew that something strange was going on.

After our car was completely judged, we moved our chairs, cleaning stuff, and ourselves over to where the car club had their pop up shade tent pitched and shortly thereafter, as WS was getting up out of his chair, the chair arm he was leaning on completely sheared off, making the chair unusable and fit for nothing but a trash bin.

So there we both sat the rest of the afternoon, me in my folding chair and WS sitting on the ground, surrounded by the rest of the car club, both of us mentally beating ourselves up and not really listening to anything being said; Me for not reading the rules in depth and probably losing the event, and WS for breaking his chair. Yes, I know it sounds petty, but that’s just what we did anyway. Matters were made worse knowing that we wouldn’t find out where we placed in our car class judging, if at all, until later that evening, or maybe not even for several days. Results weren’t being announced until that evening’s banquet, something we couldn’t go to. In fact, no one from our club was going to the banquet and all we could hope for was that someone from another car club would call one of us that night with the results.

That evening, some club members and us met at a local restaurant for dinner. We made up for how bad we both felt by ordering lobster. What the hell, right? It doesn’t all have to be bad. We’ll get over ourselves. We had a good dinner, had a lot of laughs, and afterward went back to play darts and relax at one of the Competition Boy’s house.

Around 9:30 pm, Competition Boy got a call from someone at the banquet with results. Unfortunately, neither Drill Sergeant Dave’s wife or Competition Boy did do well in their classes for some very, VERY odd reason, but we took first place in ours! And we won the People’s Choice award! A-friggin’-MAZING! And all that whining and crying for nothing. I’m sure now that we drove everyone around us insane. Why someone didn’t just smack us is a puzzle because we really did deserve it.

We’re at a point now where we are starting to feel a bit uncomfortable because we seem to be doing very well at car shows, while the Competition Boys are doing poorly. I’ve planned on attending several other lesser shows (meaning shows that don’t count toward season points but still offer awards for class winners), but now I’m worried about potentially taking away any win that the Competition Boys might get, something I’m sure they wouldn’t care about if the situation were reversed. I guess I could just stick to the summer’s remaining 3 season points BIGGIE shows and forget about attending any other ones. It certainly would be less stressful and require less cleaning time. But dammit! I’m proud of what I’ve got here with this car and what we’ve created. My car is never going to look this good again and I’d planned to show it off all summer long. There’s no guarantee that I’d win anything else from this time forward. If winning an award over someone else creates a riff in the friendship or ends it completely, would that friendship have been worth it anyway? I just don’t know. Maybe I’ll just keep going along just as I’d planned and see how things feel at the end of summer. I can honestly say that when I nicknamed these guys the “Competition Boys” I didn’t realize exactly HOW competitive they really were and as it stands now, we really don’t think they are too happy with us.

July 30th 2003

I know I have a life. My computer says I do.

Okay, so I didn’t update anything here yesterday. It was my birthday, WS had things planned for me to do most of the day, and there were record setting high temperatures here. In short, it was a good day but the weather totally sucked my will to do much of anything.

Today, I’m scrambling left and right in trying to get everything ready for our trip to company headquarters early, early, early tomorrow morning. I can already see me staying up until well after midnight tonight if I don’t get my butt in gear. WS took a sick day off his regular job and is helping me a bit, but he does still have to tele-work to both jobs all day. At least I’ve got most of the laundry done, got my clothes picked out and ready to go into a carry-on, and just need to dust and wipe the entire house down, move the rowing machine into our bedroom (to make more room for the pet sitter in the pets room to, well….sit with our pets), take out the garbage, fill the bird feeders, and supplement our emergency instructions for the pet sitter in case something really bad happens. Anything else left to do can’t be done until tomorrow morning after we get up and out of the shower.

I’m starting to eat my Ginger Trips tablets to keep me from feeling whoosy on the hours-long flight. I don’t always feel icky, just sometimes, but I want to be prepared just in case. Eating ginger tabs and/or something made with fresh ginger for dinner the night before really helps.

Weather at company headquarters looks to be mostly sunny days at 85 degrees with nights around 63 degrees. I’ll be taking lots of shorts and sandals. I was hoping to get a break from all the sun and heat. Oh well.

Now, WS is wishing we could cancel the trip saying he doesn’t feel good about how it will go. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I say. “So, you’d rather sit here for the next few days and do actual work? C’mon, this is our only chance this year to do exactly what MsNoManagementSkills does every day of her life…NOTHING! Well, okay, just because YOU, WS, got signed up to give a major presentation to the entire department…and I have to sit there for countless hours listening to it, imagining all kinds of things of any interest just to keep myself awake.”

The corporate world worker’s secret is out: When sitting in meetings, rarely is anyone really listening to what is being said. We are all thinking of other things: Can’t wait to get home to see my dog, is the house hot?, what’s for dinner?, what’s on TV?, is my significant other hot?, will I get any sex that night?, will my dog get any sex that night?… Trust me. Anything is more entertaining than sitting through one of these dry meetings in an overcrowded room with no windows and little fresh air, listening to MsNoManagementSkills sigh every few minutes and watching one of the CEO’s compulsively flick her pen. At least FatHead isn’t here this time around to add his constant and nonstop complaining.

And speaking of MsNoManagementSkills, I’m expecting a big power battle between her and WS the entire time we’re there. Since she refuses to drive, undoubtedly, she’ll expect WS and I to shuttle her around anywhere, everywhere, and anytime she wants to go, as if we were her personal chauffeurs and not her coworkers. Undoubtedly, she’s already picked out awful restaurants for us all to eat at, once again, without consulting us beforehand and will undoubtedly make the big stink if we refuse to go. Undoubtedly, she’s already decided that she needs to go shopping Saturday and Sunday morning, and that we’re driving her because in her mind, we’d want to go shopping too (“What’s your problem?? Everyone loves shopping!!!”). And undoubtedly, she’ll expect us to cater to her every whim, from waiting for her to pick up her luggage at the airport (something WS already agreed to do) to waiting for her to eat a couple of breakfasts at the low-class motel we have to stay at every morning before going to work (“Because they are FREE!! More money saved for SHOPPING!!”).

And about her getting to stay at company headquarters an entire additional week, I strongly suspect this is just the CEO’s way of giving her a paid vacation for “all the trouble she’d had to endure lately with separating from FatHead” which we all know is a load of crap. She’s already taken all her vacation for the year, going to Las Vegas and Mexico last spring, and it wasn’t like FatHead kicked her out. She left him. The only good thing about her staying that additional week is that perhaps everyone will see that she really doesn’t do anything, really doesn’t know how to do anything, and maybe everyone’s eyes will be opened.

But I doubt it. Often, people only see what they choose to see and this company isn’t any different. At least she won’t be here in my hair and I can live with that.

August 4th 2003

The only thing wrong with a perfect drive to work is that you end up at work.

WS and I are back from the business trip. We put lots of stress on ourselves nearly the entire time worrying about whether we want to (or not) move to company headquarters. We didn’t, however, have to worry much about MsNoManagementSkills and her demands. WS put her pretty much in her place right off the bat but in that polite, diplomatic way that only he can pull off. We didn’t have to drive her all over. We didn’t have to drive her anywhere except to headquarters in the morning and back to the hotel in the evening and to the company party Saturday evening.

WS and I spent most of Saturday driving around a few areas looking at home prices (outrageous!), then we drove to the beach which was also conveniently located near a place we were looking at for houses. After that, we needed to get back to the motel to get ready for the company party but we had enough time to hit a fast food place we wanted to eat at before leaving. To be honest with you, other than being stuck in a meeting from 8:35 am to 6:45 pm on Friday and the stress over trying to get seats on the plane coming back (the airline intentionally overbooked the flight and it seems that everyone, including MsNoManagementSkills knew it except us), I thought it was an okay trip. WS, crammed in a seat way too small for him and unable to move his legs at all will undoubtedly disagree. He was highly stressed the entire time and doesn’t get any relaxation that I have ever seen from getting away from home and standing on a beach.

So MsNoManagementSkills wasted no time posting on her Online Journal how bored she was and how she wasn’t enjoying the area and that she was stuck at the motel “w/o a car!” while we, her coworkers, did have one and conveniently left out the fact that she refuses to drive outside of our hometown. No doubt her countless online friends will sympathize with her and her situation. She also posted that the company party was “great!” when in fact, even the company CEOs agreed that it was “just okay” and fairly subdued because about half of the company didn’t show up. Really, the party was just that. Fairly subdued. And as I predicted, MsNoManagementSkills stood around like a slug, arms crossed most of the time looking bored. She didn’t participate in anything and just wanted to go back to the motel. But later she said it was great. The world according to her.

And you know? I’m okay with that.

Maybe that’s because in the back of my mind, I’m thinking that moving to company headquarters would get me away from her and her negative, morale draining personality and that is not a good reason to move halfway across the country. On the car trip to the company on the first day, she mentioned that if WS and I moved there, she would assume that she would lose her job (JOY!) because she’d be the only remote employee left and she WILL NOT move away from home. Interesting.

So, we’re back home. MsNoManagementSkills is still at company headquarters until Friday and out of our hair for the most part. Our pets were well cared for when we were gone, we didn’t have any sprinkler valve break, no backyard flooding however, one of the water bottles we use for filtered water for our pets leaked all over the floor for some reason (the pet sitter cleaned it up) so that was weird. I don’t even think any of our neighbors knew we were even gone for 4 days. That tells you how often we are seen outside of our house. If WS didn’t drive to and from his real job 4 days a week, barely anyone around here would know what he really looked like. I know this would remain the same if we moved elsewhere in the country although WS doesn’t agree.

August 5th 2003

Warning: Dates in calendar are closer than they appear.

Today has been productive for both of us. WS updated his resume last night and sent that off to company headquarters. I’ve actually gotten through quite a bit of customer email as well as performing most of my new job duties (that used to be FatHead’s job). I was finishing up with that last part when our ISP went down yet again. I am so very tired of Comcast already and WS downright hates them. Our connection fails at least once a day for anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour. If we are supposed to be logged into work during that time, we have to make up the time later on in the day, or evening.

Last night, I made up a 2 page list of Good and Bad reasons to pick up everything and move to company headquarters, 1500 miles away in another state. Of course, ultimately, the move will depend nearly 100 percent on what salary the company is willing to pay WS for the job he is officially applying for. Anything less will nix the whole thing. We just can’t afford anything less.

Car club meeting is this coming Thursday night. WS is supposed to have the newsletter done but I don’t even think he has started it. He really wants out of being newsletter editor but promised 3 more issues. I don’t know what to do to help him with his feelings on this. This weekend, surprisingly enough, we don’t have a single car event planned to go to. There was some parade somewhere but I don’t want to go and so, I won’t. The following weekend’s BIGGIE car show number 3 in a city a couple hundred miles away is coming soon enough. We need the break.

When we were down at company headquarters, MrSmartButFakingIt had a cute little poster pinned up on one of his walls. It’s a World War II coffee ad about rationing coffee use so the military could have a share. There’s a military army guy holding a big coffee cup and smiling cheesily into the camera. Someone, somewhere, replaced the rationing text with “How about a nice big cup of Shut the Fuck Up? Think before you say something stupid.” For some reason, this poster struck us both as funny. Maybe it was the jet lag. Maybe it was because we were with MsNoManagementSkills who didn’t find any humor in it. Maybe it just struck some odd chord but I had to have a copy of it. So this morning, I found the original coffee ad and photoshopped it to mimic MrSmartButFakingIt’s poster. Okay, perhaps it’s crude and rude,…but how about a nice big cup….?

Day 2 of no MsNoManagementSkills except in company chat. She’s whining constantly now about being at headquarters and not being home. She’s also eating up to 6-8 full sized meals a day, not that she’s complaining about this – she isn’t. All her meals are paid for by the company so she tends to eat double when on these company trips. She’s still whining about not having a car but isn’t telling anyone that this is of her own choice. I guess she gets more sympathy this way. One of those “LOOK AT ME!” attention-getting things she’s supposed to be taking medication for but isn’t any longer.

I’m looking forward to watching “OC”, a new drama series on FOX tonight. I haven’t had a real TV show to watch with any regularity in years with the only exception of Survivor. (shuT-UP!) I’ll turn it on in our bedroom and get in some rowing since I haven’t moved the rowing machine back into the pet’s bedroom (which may be a good, long term idea. Rowing + TV = extra rowing time).

In the meantime, I have to finish laundry from the trip and need to vacuum upstairs. I need to get WS to mow the front lawn soon and I need to start looking at my car to see what all I’ll need to do before that next car show. And eventually, whether we decide to move or not, we ought to go through all our stuff and get rid of crap that neither one of us would want to move. Maybe a good eBay project?

August 6th 2003

Make it idiot-proof and someone will make a better idiot.

I am so hoping we can move from this neighborhood now and that WS gets good news (someday soon) on a new job possibility. While I was planning on doing a neighbor review today, I won’t but will share that I’m livid upon finding out that a flyer has been posted on the neighborhood mailboxes that advertise “Your Friendly Neighborhood Detective Agency”. While I am all for people finding out if anyone is creeping around your house at night, or stealing items or pets, I have a hard time with the “We will operate Stake Outs, Questioning, and Eavesdropping (We have Special Equipment)” part. WTF?!??!?!!? Now someone will be listening In to our private conversations in our own home? Is someone sitting around in our neighborhood with a listening device, listening to day-to-day conversations?

The flyer goes on to say “No job too small – Small jobs $4.00 up to Big jobs $10.00.” Now, I don’t really think that any “real” detective agency is going on charge only $4-$10 for a job and this is probably being run by some kid looking to make some summer money before school starts, but what the fuck is this eavesdropping “We have Special Equipment” crap? Is this even legal? I can’t help but wonder how anyone else in our neighborhood feels about this, that is, if anyone in the neighborhood cared about anything but breeding. I wonder how they would feel if they thought that someone with “Special Equipment” was listening in on their lovemaking.

Now, run with me on this: If you had the chance to investigate who might have stolen a broken down and rusty power saw that had been sitting out in someone’s yard for the past 2 years, or secretly eavesdrop on conversations or activities that could be about anything, which would you think would be more interesting, especially if you were only being paid $4-$10?

I wonder if someone heard me take a big shit this morning. It was one of those ploppy, noisey kinds. I thank god at this point that we usually have a TV or stereo blaring 18 hours a day and it often drowns out what we might be saying to each other. We also have our fountain running all the time, which is somewhat noisey in itself. Since we don’t participate in sexual activities much, if ever, I guess we’re okay there but I can definitely say without reservation that if we ever did it again while living in this neighborhood, there will be one more thing running through my mind, instead of what I should be concentrating on. I wonder if I can sue for mental distress over this and causing sexual dysfunction.

I’m sure I’m blowing this all out of proportion and I realize this is a strong possibility. What worries me is that this potentially opens the door for other people to feel they can do this too. Soon, we may all know everything our neighbors do within the walls of their own homes, and frankly, we’ve got some neighbors that I don’t WANT to know what they might be doing in their own homes, nor do I want to hear about it later in one of the quarterly neighbor gossip circles.

This is just wrong and probably illegal. I have to wonder, since there was no business or investigation license number on the laminated, professional-looking flyer, if “Adam” even realizes that he needs a license or even what he is saying. Sad. The whole thing is just a sad sign of what society is coming to.

MsNoManagementSkills is flexing her fat arm today across the country (she’s still at company headquarters) and has assigned some work to me. Problem is, she needs to keep her nose into her own business and out of mine. I don’t need her “assigning” me anything especially since I DON”T WORK UNDER HER. Jesus on handlebars! This shit really pisses me off!

At least luckily for me and the rest of the world, no one needs to secretly listen in on her activities. She’s all too happy to tell the world in her Online Journal how much she’s eating, how much she misses home and missing all those long nights with her new boyfriend in her large glitter pajamas. Ugh. Shut off the special equipment!

August 7th 2003

Not all people are annoying. Some are dead.

There’s nothing quite like getting up first thing in the morning and recieving a nasty email complaint from a customer….that was sent by someone at our company to everyone else in our department and the company CEO. I can only guess who sent it and made sure my name was smeared in front of everyone else – MsNoManagementSkills. Apparently, I’m doing too good of a job here and making her look bad or something. This is so typical behavior for her although it’s been quite a while since she’s reared this ugly head. I guess we’re back to playing little baby games at work, and if I’m right about this, it shows me that it wasn’t all FatHead who pulled this kind of crap, it was her. What a bitch!

I only technically need to work 2 hours today, or I could work 4 hours today and 6 hours tomorrow, or any combination of the 10 hours I have to put in before Friday evening. Yes, even though I’m salary and don’t need to punch a time clock or fill out a time card, I still need to get in a minimum of 40 hours a week or else face the wrath of MsNoManagementSkills, who can’t get it into her head that I DON’T WORK UNDER HER.

So, as you might be guessing by now, I’ll be making this day short.

In neighborhood news, The Dimmers next door have actually had DrunkTank Willie back to help figure out why their side yard continues to be a bog. If you recall, DrunkTank Willie used to own the house next door, but recently sold the house. Before selling it, he had installed a sprinkler system himself and then found that he was flooding the space under his house. We suspect that was part of the reason why DrunkTank Willie sold the house and we’re fairly certain he didn’t tell anyone about the flooding. Now, The Dimmers have tried everything to figure things out, including not operating the front yard sprinklers (yet they still hand water often), digging up the boggy side yard area and installing a French drain system, and blaming us for their boggy issue. Nothing has helped, but I don’t see how bringing back DrunkTank Willie is going to do anything productive. Do The Dimmers really think Willie is going to ‘fess up now? Not very likely and in fact, I suspect we’ll get re-blamed somewhere down the line.

The new neighbors kitty-corner across the street, who have been going by the nickname of Howler Monkey House in our world, have been very, very quite. The howler monkey sounds we heard coming from the open windows (the house doesn’t have any air conditioning) over the first week they were moving in, have nearly stopped. The only thing we hear from them now is the occasional yelp, not too unlike a howler monkey with a muzzle on. What is really unusual is that no one really knows anything about them. They keep very much to themselves and we all know that people who keep to themselves are prime suspects in this neighborhood to get blamed for everything. Why do things work that way?

The Blinders across the street are in the middle of their separate vacations from each other. We just don’t understand married couples taking separate vacations from each other. It tells us something was never quite right in the first place. If you can’t handle living with the person and you have to take a vacation or two or three every year away from your spouse, you might ought to be considering splitting up. Or are you “staying together for the sake of the kids?” Great. Let’s teach the kids how taking separate vacations is normal. How do you think those kids are going to view relationships when they grow up. (Yes, I realize sometimes people can’t just split up under any circumstances. I was there. Twice.)

SportsOrNothing next door have left for their yearly “Take off for the month of August and let all the landscaping die” vacation. They were watering their front lawn every day for at least 2 weeks up until now, thinking that the grass and plants are going to ration their own water for the next 23 days. September will come as will their bitching to anyone who will listen how pissed they are that everything is dead over there. Since the Baseball Team moved out (the Howler Monkeys live there now), SportsOrNothing haven’t asked anyone else to keep their yard watered and if they did, they were probably refused. SportsOrNothing has started a pretty good reputation of being cheapskates and won’t pay for anything they don’t feel they have to pay for and prefer to “trade” for things. Their favorite item to trade for services is a case of beer. I’m still surprised that DrunkTank Willie didn’t take them up on the sprinkler system SportsOrNothing wanted installed, although, something tells me that the SportsOrNothing house would be regularly flooded by now if Willie had. The deal must have not included enough beer…

Cap’t Dan and the Smokin’ Clan behind us have not done anything in their backyard, construction-wise. yet. Last month, Cap’t Dan was back there viewing and measuring away with his one good eye. About a month later, he’ll get his kids to haul old, badly warped lumber back there and a month later, he’ll start building something. No sign of lumber yet so things must still be in the planning stages. The oldest Smokin’ Clan member seems to have moved back into the garage and I was shocked to see him just the other day. He’s gone from a tall, gangly teenager, to a tall, fat-tire laden, balding, scruffy-haired man all in the course of about a year. Wow.

No sign of who might be the neighborhood “spies” yet (see yesterday’s entry). Maybe it’s the Howler Monkey House. See? This is how quiet, reserved people get blamed for stuff.

Car club meeting tonight. WS stayed up until the wee hours of the morning finishing up the club’s newsletter and printing out 20-something copies. Congrats, WS! Only 2 more issues to go and you are free! Of course, Doormat Dick’s wife, the ex-editor of the newsletter and current “webmaster” for the club’s web site wasted NO TIME WHATSOEVER posting the need for a new newsletter editior on the FRONT PAGE of the club web site, which is not how things are normally done. Geeze, I can’t wait for us to get out from under that control freak’s thumb. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear her and MsNoManagementSkills were related.

And WS did mow the lawn earlier in the week as I had hoped. It looks like a golf course out there. Good job!

August 8th 2003

Work harder. Millions on welfare depend on you.

Two words: Dave Attell.

Four words: I don’t get it.

Yes, I’ve watched the show and frankly, it bores me to hell. I guess it’s just me. BONUS INFO: I didn’t get into Dr. Who or Mystery Science Fiction Theatre either. I’m all too aware that these shows are vastly and totally different from each other. The one similarity that I can see now is that everyone thinks Dave Attell is the shit, just like at the time, everyone thought the Dr. Who show was the shit. Insert BIG YAWN here.

Car club meeting went okay last night. Nothing to report on there.

Our raccoon came way early last night and ate all his grapes. They were gone by the time we got home at 9:30 pm. Usually, he shows up between midnight and 4 am. So I put out another bunch of grapes, just in case he wanted another snack sometime in the night. Less than 5 minutes later, as we were standing around in our kitchen, up the back steps to the kitchen sliding glass door comes the raccoon. Then he saw me inside the door and frozen solid for a minute, his eyes as big as saucers, then turned around and ran down the steps and out of the backyard. Obviously, our raccoon isn’t as bold as My Life is Mess’s raccoons, who sound like they are ready to move into a spare bedroom and start ordering delivery pizza.

MsNoManagementSkills comes home tonight from company headquarters. She has peppered her Online Journal with constant comments on how much she just wants to come home. I have no doubt that the company CEOs have talked to her countless times about moving down to the company headquarters area. And I have no doubt that MsNoManagementSkills has refused every request. She just won’t budge and I’m hoping that this will play against her. Sure, there is nothing wrong with not wanting to move halfway across the country just for one job (and a job that doesn’t pay all that well), but there is a good way to decline and a bad way. MsNoManagementSkills doesn’t do much of anything in a good way and that includes visibly shutting down every time the CEO brings the moving topic up. At least we’re entertaining that idea right now for the first time and have put out feelers for job offers, salary expectations, and housing/lifestyle costs and differences. And yes, I don’t necessarily agree with moving across the country just to chase the all-mighty dollar. But knowing her current lifestyle, she needs to be thinking about how she’s going to pay for everything she wants, no, DEMANDS, of life. Unfortunately, she’s hardwired to believe that just because she’s a woman and an only child, she deserved nothing less than a free ride. Funny how FatHead used to think exactly the same and in that way, they did truly deserve each other.

Back to the possibility of us moving, WS hasn’t heard anything yet. I suspect it will be a long, drawn out process of finding a fit in the company at the salary he needs to continue paying the bills. In my mind, this is all a test anyway. I think the company CEO is trying to see how far WS is willing to go and how serious he can be. I know WS. And he can be deadly serious if he wants to be. Which puts the ball back in the company’s court. Give us a salary figure and that will seriously make our ultimate decision.

We’re going out to dinner this evening for Mexican food, across town with one of the Competition Boys (the nicer of the 2) and his wife, as part of a car cruise in kind of thing. Over the weekend, I’ll go ahead and wash my car and start the polishing ritual before leaving next Friday night for the couple hundred mile trip to the 3rd BIGGIE car show. Sure, the drive there will only splatter bugs and road gunk all over the car and I’ll have to wash it again once I get there. That’s not the point. The coats of polish I apply just before leaving for a show puts a VERY high and hard shell kind of gloss on the car that makes the bug splats and road gunk come off way too easily with the next wash, plus the high gloss stays Mega-shiny. And I’m convinced that it’s this high shine that is helping us win these shows. Seriously, there aren’t many other cars that have this depth of shine when we’re at these shows and I get asked about it all the time. As long as it works, I’m not ready to change my routine just yet.

I’ve been good all week and have hit that rowing machine for a few minutes each day. While it doesn’t seem like much work, I’ve already seen an improvement. Last night, my levis fit decent and didn’t dig in or pinch anywhere like they had been for the last 3 months. It probably helped that I didn’t eat much on the company trip last week because of nerves and disgust in watching MsNoManagementSkills eat a ton of food every hour and a half. I really need to do this more often. The pullover tank top I’m wearing today also isn’t as tight as it has been. I have big boobs, even after a reduction back in 1996, and usually everything I wear is tight. Because I’ve had these big, floppy things most of my life, I wish I didn’t. Luckily, hard exercise can reduce their size fairly well; it’s just that I don’t like hard exercise for the most part. I need to start getting my head back into the “exercise is GOOD” mode. I can do this.

Our weekend looks like it’ll be fairly low key. No car events things, although there was one I originally wanted to go to (I’ve changed my mind). We need groceries badly and plan to check out a newly opened store across town and we need to go to to pick up a new folding chair since WS broke his a couple of weeks ago. Oh, and sleep. There might even be a bottle of wine or two enjoyed in there somewhere. Only 91 bottles to go.

August 11th 2003

Have a day.

This entry would have been posted MONDAY but Comcast was down for 26 hours in our area. Comcast sucks ass.

It’s funny how different 2 days can be from one another and how one day’s feel about it can affect the rest of a week. Saturday was a good, relaxing day, purposely set aside so WS could get away from work and car stress. For the most part, this worked well.

Sunday, however, we both got off on the wrong foot somehow and ended with me wondering if I’m going through one of those times where everything I say is oh, just so wrong. That feeling has continued over today, not because I wanted it to, but because, again, I said something that given any other time, WS would agree with me. This time, however, he questioned me on how my thought process got to the point I was making, and in turn, made me feel once again that I, the messenger, was close to being shot.

Fine. Until this “thing” (whatever this “thing” or “spell” or “time” is) blows over, I don’t have to verbally say anything and I’m sure that will prevent me from feeling like an idiot.

Our ISP has been down since 11:30 am Monday. This means currently, I’m 5 and a half hours short on work so far this week. Being as I’m leaving Friday afternoon/evening for BIGGIE car show #3, this could turn into a problem if I can’t make up the time before then. But I refuse to stress about it until Wednesday.

Okay, maybe Tuesday night, I’ll start worrying about it. I hate Comcast.

I’ve got a mobile auto glass repair guy coming over early Tuesday morning to hopefully fill some of my bigger windshield and side glass chips. Turns out, the nicer of the Competition Boys has been losing major points in the BIGGIE car shows lately because he had “too many” windshield rock chips, meaning he had about 5 that people would notice only as specks on the glass, and a dozen or more that no one would even be aware of….unless you were one of those car judges with a burr up his/her butts. Being that I have at least as many chips as this Competition Boy, I figure my time for getting nailed on my judging sheets is only a matter of time and I better get those chips fixed ASAP.

I avoided the rowing machine all weekend, and no, I’m not happy about it. I plan on hitting it every single day this week at least once a day.

The good thing about our ISP being down is that I do have time to get other things done. Thanks to WS yesterday, the laundry is almost finished and half the vacuuming is out of the way. See? I have no excuse not to use that rowing machine.

August 13th 2003

Hard work may have a future payoff. Laziness pays off now

Well, WS and I were supposed to hear about a possible raise we were going to get yesterday, but MrSmartButFakingIt said he wasn’t ready, a mere 4 hours after he said he would be. Looks like the company is stalling again. If we get raises, it’ll be raises that we were supposed to get months ago. I suspect the company’s been holding onto the money, gathering interest, before having it pulled from their death grip-like fingers. MsNoManagementSkills was also supposed to get a call about her raise too but she doesn’t mention it on her Online Journal so she might have got shafted too.

MrSmartButFakingIt also seems to have lost his short term memory (jet lag?) as during our last conference call yesterday, he kept asking WS the same things over and over again. It really sounded like he was holding information back or something. It was an odd call and I got an odd vibe from it. Now, we’re both scheduled to get a call back from him on Thursday at separate times. Something tells me this won’t go quite right either.

Yesterday, I had a windshield glass chip repair guy out to work on some minor chips I had in my windshield. I couldn’t stress to the guy enough how he couldn’t set his toolbox down on the hood of my car (“No. That would be a bad idea”), he couldn’t set his sharp and pointy tools down on my hood (“That’s not a good idea either.”), and could he not allow the poly resin stuff to run down the glass and into the glass rubber and engine compartment (“Gee, I’m sure glad I bothered to clean the engine last night just so I could do it all over again today!”). But the major rock chips are somewhat diminished so that’s a good thing I guess though I’m not happy about having to clean the car yet again. Of course, had I known the car was going to become a gooey, slimy, snot-laden mess (the guy’s nose was running like crazy), I never would have called to have the guy come out. That nice Competition Boy who recommended him told me that when he had his rock chips fixed last week, his car wasn’t made a mess at all. This may or may not be yet another one of those “competition” things where the competition has been known to mis-lead others to gain the upper hand at a show. Petty, yes. But it has been known to happen. Or it could have just been an odd day.

But whatever. I cleaned the car and it’s now sitting happily under another coat of polish. Only 3 more coats to go after this plus vacuuming and tire and wheel cleaning. Then I pack the car and off I go on Friday afternoon/evening.

Unless MrSmartButFakingIt has plans for yet another conference call regarding a raise that he’s not ready for in that time frame.

Ah, screw it. I’m going to the show regardless.

In other news, MsNoManagementSkills is going thru a big hissy fit with a couple of other online friends over her new boyfriend. It seems the boyfriend is one of those online friends…and is still married to another online friend. A different online friend, now an ex-friend, had been sending the boyfriend’s wife all MsNoManagementSkills Online Journal entries, which are mostly torrid sexual innuendos minus only the grunts and squeals of ecstasy mixed with eating and shopping trip details. Needless to say, the boyfriend’s wife isn’t too happy, yet has her own Online Journal filled with talk of HER new boyfriend mixed with talk about the numerous kids that are shuttled back and forth between her and her husband, MsNoManagementSkill’s boyfriend.

Are you still with me? If this gets any deeper, I’m either going to stop paying any attention to her soap opera or start making out a genealogical chart so I can keep everyone straight. Luckily for everyone involved and helping to keep things less complicated, no one has heard a peep from FatHead so we can’t link him in here anywhere just yet.

Odd news in our neighborhood: the owners of the Cat From Hell, The Blinders, have put their house up for sale. That makes 3 houses immediately around us put up for sale and sold in just the past year. Maybe that taking separate vacation thing I mentioned last week about The Blinders wasn’t all it was cracked up to be after all? Or maybe it’s just us. Too bad this didn’t happen sooner, before all those hundreds of little animals had to be needlessly killed and left in pieces in our backyard.

And finally, 3 words for today. Daisy Fuentes. Why?

August 14th 2003

Remember: Traffic stop lights timed for 35 m.p.h. are also timed for 70 m.p.h.

Too much stuff going on today.

Today is possible raise day. The possibility hinges all on whether MrSmartButFakingIt remembers or not. My natural negative side says he’ll forget until late, late, late in the day, just about the time I’m leaving the house to sit in for WS at the car club board meeting. WS is supposed to find out about his raise tonight in a conference call with MrSmartButFakingIt, which is why I have to go to the board meeting in WS’s place. Raises come before car meetings so if need be and if MrSmartButFakingIt completely forgets about me today (as he usually does), I just might have to give up that car club meeting too. That would be okay with me, however, the meeting is being held at a person’s house whom I’m supposed to set up a web site for. Of course, that person never returned my phone call earlier this week about that web site, so maybe I shouldn’t bother to go at all anyway. Just too much stuff to do today including finishing up cleaning my car. I still need to vacuum it out, get the final coat of polish on it, clean the inside glass, and smear that shiny tire goop on the tires and all the window rubber. I really had hoped that I wouldn’t have to do anything tomorrow other than just get through the work day before leaving for the couple hundred mile trip.

Which reminds me that I have to go to the car club board meeting tonight after all. I have to talk to the other people I’m traveling with, Drill Sergeant Dave and the nice Competition Boy, to find out exactly when we are all leaving and where I’m supposed to meet them.

Okay. One decision made today.

Our fountain shut itself off sometime overnight, meaning a problem with a short is still somewhere, probably in the lights and/or light timer, and meaning that Fountain Guy didn’t fix anything. Big surprise there. But we’re through with that bozo, both because our warranty is up with him and because we don’t think he really had any clue as to what he was doing (or didn’t care anyway). Now we have to schedule time and money for a real electrician to come out and hunt down the problem. Since the fountain isn’t running today and there is no waterfall action, the dozens of birds that visit here everyday are pretty much confused. Really, it’s a bird and small animal paradise for them out there when the fountain is going. I’m sure they’ll get used to it. We sure could use a break from the high electric and water bills (even though those bills weren’t SUPPOSED to be that big according to Fountain Guy.).

The Blinders are selling their house for more than I thought it would be worth. We’ll have to see if it sells as fast as DrunkTank Willie’s did next door and what moves in. Since the house is a 4 (small) bedroom, 2 1/2 bath, I’ll assume right now that someone with a tons of kids will buy it. That house has been one of the few quiet houses in the development. It seems that everyone who has bought something here after the original owners have moved out, have brought in a load of kids, turning half of our original quiet street into big daycare center. Truly, I long for some nice retired couple to move there, but of course, that won’t happen because if nothing else, it’s a 2-story house and all the full bathrooms are upstairs. (Yes, I realize that lots of retired people continue to live in 2-story homes and have no problem with the full bathrooms being upstairs. I just don’t know any personally.)

MsNoManagementSkills’ new boyfriend is starting to feel a bit like he’s got no time to himself lately I think. His Journal entry talks about his strong desire to have time for just himself. 20 bucks says MsNoManagementSkills will read it and believe he means time for himself with her because, with MsNoManagementSkills, it’s ALL about her. I’ll have to watch this possible development closely because it’s things like this that directly affect her mood and how badly she treats her coworkers. If I start getting stuff assigned to me that I shouldn’t be doing, or getting lots of instant messaging and/or emails from her that sound like she’s heading for the deep end, I’ll know I’m right and it’s time to take cover until she gets over it. Or goes back on heavy medication. This is the exact reason why rebound relationships are never, NEVER a good idea and when both people are rebounding, it can be twice as bad.

Note to Aunt Flo: Please visit today or tomorrow. I can’t stand the bloating any longer and I won’t be able to deal with your first visit day on Sunday.

August 15th 2003

Sometimes, Life is just a Big Comedy – (Director’s Cut. Now with added BONUS MATERIAL!)

Scene 1, Take 1: Back when DrunkTank Willie, Leona, and their 2 little BITs lived next door, the BITs seemed to own every stereotypically little girlie toy available on the planet. How I did I know this? Because all those toys were strewn all over their backyard which, unfortunately, we have a too perfect view of.

Scene 2, Take 5: Since The Dimmers have moved into DrunkTank Willie’s house, I realize now that there are too many stereotypically little boy toys in the world too. Yeah, those are all over the yard over there now. Hundreds of them, nay, thousands of them.

Scene 3, Take 4: Yesterday afternoon, as I was walking down our hallway which is lined on one side with windows that overlook the houses across the street, I was startled to see The Baseball Team’s BIG, HUGE SUV sitting back at their old house. Upon closer inspection, it turns out the Howler Monkey family now living there have turned in their minivan and have bought the exact same kind of SUV, make, model, and color, to that of what The Baseball Team used to own. I’m guessing they aren’t quite finished with having just one kid and a monkey…

Scene 4: Yesterday was raise day, even though I had to remind MrSmartButFakingIt late in the afternoon. During his call to me about any potential raise, it became clear quickly that he had his figures wrong on how much I make a year. His figure was about $1500 less per year than what I’ve actually been getting. But he promised to investigate and get back with me. Then he told me what my raise would be. Uh, not that I want to complain or anything because I did get a new company-owned computer to use and all, but this is in NO WAY half, or even a third of what I was told I would be getting, which basically means the CEO lied to us. Again. See, we were told WS and I would be getting FatHead’s old salary split between us as merit raises for having his old job duties dumped on us. That amount on top of what we were already scraping by on could have easily put us into Fat City, baby! But noooOOOooooo.

Just before WS got his call for his potential raise, MrSmartButFakingIt told me he investigated the company’s records on my current pay rate, and yes, I was correct. Their figures were wrong. I had been getting the right pay all along but their figures were just wrong. So, being as they based my “raise” on the wrong figures, shouldn’t that mean my raise would be adjusted as well?

Scene 5, Take 43: No. Oh, you would think so but it won’t, meaning it’s already been written in stone. Once again, I feel screwed over and again, I find myself imploring to my inner self: “Why are you busting your ass for this company? Why do you care so much for this company? Why do you care about this company’s customer base? Why, oh, Why?”

And I don’t know the answer, except to say that I’m 47 years old and it’s a bad, job-tough economy out there right now and this company, as well as many other companies know they have their employee’s tits in a vise. Employees around the world are already doing 3 times the work they were expected to do just 3 years ago to make up for all those lay offs the economy insisted upon. Since 9-11, employees around the globe have seen the most pathetic and low pay raises since the Great Depression era, and some have yet to see a pay raise at all. There are lots of us out there who somehow have been able to hang onto their jobs by their torn and ragged fingernails, foregoing vacations, and time off, and spending time with their own families just to keep their jobs; just to keep up the appearance that they care about the company that has yet to spit them down to the curb with the rest of the expendable head count.

Someday, someone important will stand up, smack a few mega-large companies around and let the world know that the time of treating employees badly is over. And it will be.

Scene 6, Take 6: Immediately thereafter, the One Ring will be cast back into the Fire of Mordor and world peace will dominate the earth.

Scene 7, Take 1: In 6 hours, we’re off on the trip to BIGGIE car show #3 of the season. WS has decided to ride along with me instead of driving up in his car tomorrow afternoon. I’m packing for 3 now, as I suspect Aunt Flo will visit tomorrow or, dread of dreads, Sunday morning, most likely right smack in the middle of one of my 4 judging sessions.

BONUS MATERIAL – Blogeois OUTTAKES

Scene 2, Take 1: Jesus on a shopping spree! Do you suppose they have any toys INSIDE their house?
Scene 2, Take 2: “Hey, could you slobs over there possibly fill your yard with any MORE toys? I think I can see a patch of grass poking through!”
Scene 2, Take 3: “It’s a good thing you have a 6 foot fence over there. I think you’ll be able to go another 3 months before all your toys start spilling over into our yard.”
Scene 2, Take 4: Got toys? HELL, YES!

Scene 3, Take 1: WTF!?!?
Scene 3, Take 2: Holy *bleep*! What is it with new neighbors around here who have to invite the crappy old neighbors back??!?!?
Scene 3, Take 3: F**K ME RUNNING! How many monkeys do you suppose they can fit into that??

Scene 5, Takes 1 thru 42: No. NO? WTF!?!?

Scene 6, Take 1: Immediately thereafter, New Yorkers will discover they didn’t need electricity after all.
Scene 6, Take 2: Immediately thereafter, the neighborhood will jointly bulldoze The Dimmers house and build a Wal-Mart Superstore next door.
Scene 6, Take 3: Immediately thereafter, I’ll discover I can lick my own nipples and get paid obscenely big bucks for it.
Scene 6, Take 4: Immediately… Uh….*laughter*…”I’m sorry. I’m sorry. *laugh* I forgot what I was writing…it’s just that I was thinking *laugh*…lemme do it again.”
Scene 6, Take 5: Immediately thereafter, a group of warm, soft bunnies from Omaha will run for governor of California. And win.

August 19th 2003

I HATE COMCAST.NET

How could a company completely take over another company who’s system was working perfectly, and fuck it all up so quickly? My connection been down more than up over the last 2 days and NO ONE at Comcast thinks this is a bad thing. FUCK YOU PEOPLE AT COMCAST!

Okay, now that THAT is out of the way, some words on developing situations in our little corner of the world. The Blinders have had countless people looking at their house for sale. Ms. Blinder has moved out completely which is a HUGE surprise to everyone in the ‘hood. Mr. Blinder seemed for a day or 2 there to not be exactly cooperating with the whole “Real estate agent stopping by to show the house off to buyers” because he either wasn’t answering the door, had changed the locks, or hadn’t left any word on how to get into the house. Several groups of people had to drive away without seeing the inside because they couldn’t get in. I haven’t seen The Cat from Hell in a few weeks now and I bet the few remaining brave birds left in our backyard are celebrating in their own little bird way.

The SportsOrNothing family next door have been gone on their August vacation for a couple of weeks now, with the exception of the SportsOrNothing teen star, who spends all his time walking around his front yard on a cell phone. Either he can’t get a signal inside or he’s showing off.

I believe Cap’t Dan and the Smokin’ Clan are off on vacation too. Very quiet back there.

3 words about the youngest Dimmer next door: Just say Yes. This little girl, who appears to be around 3 years old, cries and screams at the top of her rather healthy sounding lungs, not when she falls down, not when her brother hits her over the head with the plastic baseball bat, but ONLY when someone tells her “No”. To that, we find we are constantly yelling here, “JUST SAY YES TO WHATEVER SHE WANTS!”

Every.Single.Day.

I want to believe this is just a phase that little Dimmer is going through but we’ve listened to it every single day since they moved in a couple of months ago and have witnessed, first hand, how just saying Yes stops her screaming in mid-decible.

Trust me, this kid will most likely scream at the word “No” all her life, regardless of how old she is if you people (The Dimmers) Do.Not.Stop.This.Behavior.NOW.

But what do I know? I don’t have kids. I never wanted kids. I only have to suffer with bleeding ears because of everyone else’s kids because “It take a village (of bleeding ear villagers) to raise a child.”

Bullshit.

The car show last weekend went fairly well, with only 1 hitch: Half of my exhaust nearly fell off on the trip up. We all stopped for dinner halfway through the trip and when we came out of the Yak-Burger serving restaurant, my exhaust had loosened up and was just hanging there. One side had been giving me fits for months now, but nothing this bad. Drill Sargent Dave and the nice Competition Boy crawled under there, in the dark and on the gravelly parking lot and retightened it. They did that again for me twice a day all weekend long after that. I’m taking my car down Thursday morning to hopefully have it fixed permanently.

I took 2nd place in my class meaning I think I’m still in first place as of right now but it is very, very close and I won a Best Engine trophy too. Great. More garage dust collectors. Just gimme the points and let me know my entrance fee money is going to a good cause and that’s all I want.

Only 2 more BIGGIE car shows left of the season, both in September, and because points in my class are so very close, boy, do I have a lot of work to do to prepare for both of those.

I am sooo looking forward to fall already. Unfortunately, fall weather is 2 months away.

August 23rd 2003

This space intentionally left blank. OOPS!

Amazingly, comcast decided to be up and running in our area today after nearly a 4 day “outage”. I’ve since read elsewhere that comcast has sold off all attbi.com’s good working Cisco equipment for some cheap-ass equipment that was considerably cheaper and works only half-assed half the time and not at all the rest of the time. And through all this, I’m supposed to be making a living working online. Sucks to be me.

So, I took a couple of vacation days last week and a sick day from work. WS had the entire week off from both jobs for the first time ever and I think he enjoyed it. We didn’t go anywhere and we really didn’t do anything, but he did have a birthday mixed in there and I spent way too much money making him feel special and pampered on french soaps and candles that he loves, a painting/drawing kit for that creative side that we were certain he has somewhere inside him, some books and DVDs, and cheese fondue dinners. He’s happy. I wonder what people do when they have more than a week off for vacation, other than actually go somewhere?

We met car club friends last night for a bad dinner at a crappy Mexican food place that they all like and today we met some other car club friends at someone’s house for a going away hawaiian party. The guy who’s going away, isn’t going to Hawaii – he’s from there – he’s volunteering to go to Kuwait to help with some contracted government work. It sounds completely crazy for a 60 year old guy to want to do this, but it’s kind of one of those “last hurrah” kinds of things for him, I think. His 50-something, mean and mild mannered wife sure isn’t happy about it, but she doesn’t seem to want to have much say in most things.

So our week is nearly over, we haven’t been able to really do anything computer-wise in several days, it’s hot outside, and that awful “your vacation is nearly over” feeling is starting to wash over me. Tomorrow, I suspect, we’ll both be cranky and snappish. Other than death, I’d love to hear of some ideas of avoiding those End-of-Vacation-Back-to-Work blues.

August 24th 2003

Good health is the slowest form of death.

C’mon Fall weather.

Actually, it’ll be around 90something degrees here all week and well into next. I just live for every season EXCEPT summer which is a complete reversal of how I grew up. I used to LIVE for summer every summer before I turned 37 years old, the year I discovered quite to my surprise that summer only made me hot, sweaty, and cranky. I guess it would help if I wasn’t constantly working, if I ever took a real vacation, and if I had a pool or at least private access to someone else’s pool. But alas! I don’t know a single person up here in the Pacific Northwest that has a pool or even someone who knows someone who has a pool. Pools just aren’t that cool of a thing to have up here, although I know a couple exist because I saw them in people’s backyards the last time I flew out of town.

After a slightly bumpy start to our morning (we were asked to attend a car club thing BUT ENOUGH ALREADY with the car stuff and we both woke up with caffeine headaches), we realized we didn’t want to snap at each other all day just because we were headed back to work tomorrow after a few days off. So we headed out to check out a new Starbucks, then hit a local wine shop that is now open on Sundays. After blowing through a hundred dollars on good, recommended wine and a fine 20 year aged tawny port, we stayed home the rest of the day. WS played master chef for the afternoon, whipping up one of our favorite Dean & Deluca wild rice dishes and WS’s soon-to-be gone cheese spread while I cleaned and reorganized the living room. After wolfing down most of the rice dish and a goodly portion of the cheese spread, we headed upstairs to do some cleaning up there just so we’d end our vacation with the knowledge that we didn’t let the place become a complete pig sty. WS is being very productive and is washing his car right now. I, on the other hand, am having a hard time staying awake which is why I’m in here typing. It’s just too early to go to bed just yet.

I so wish we had another week off from all our jobs although, I don’t think our bank account could handle it. I’ve just had so much fun the last few days buying good food, good wine, great smelling soaps and candles, and little decorative things for our house – things that we really don’t need but look so right here at home in our Old World-look kitchen. But tomorrow, it’s our noses back to the grindstone, our backs facing the whips, and our debit and credit cards back to the vault. Damn me for not being born Paris Hilton.

August 25th 2003

We have enough youth. How about a fountain of smart?

It’s no longer Comcast causing problems, it’s my own coworkers who keep re-infecting the company’s email servers, which in turn infects the mail program we use to get replies out to our customers. I’m currently sitting here, waiting until things are cleared up again so I can get some work done. Not that I really want to do ANY work for them, but after being off for several days in a row, I need to show that I’m producing something. I’ve been waiting over an hour now. No word on when things will be fixed. This is how all of last week went, I’ve heard.

Sooooo….I’m sitting here drinking ice tea, thinking about doing laundry, debating scooping up some homemade salsa to eat, watching TV, and listening to one of our pets outside our office door whining to be let in. He’s not coming in. It’s a too much fur issue.

La de dah. La de dah. Oh! I almost forgot! We have a squirrel visiting us again! It seems the Cat from Hell didn’t kill every single last one of them after all. We’ve kept the squirrel feeder box full all summer long, hoping that another squirrel would find us worthy, and that the Cat from Hell wouldn’t show up to eat it. I’ve been keeping an extra sharp eye out for the Cat from Hell ever since I learned from Ms. Blinder that she thought it had run off (I seriously doubt it), but I haven’t seen a peep of it in a couple of months now. Remember, that cat used to LIVE over here in our backyard, killing (but not eating) all the birds, every squirrel, every rabbit, every living thing just for the point of killing something. Just like Ted Nugent.

Anyway, squirrels are good, even if it does mean trips to the bird food store for unsalted peanuts and nut hearts. We need a trip to that store in a few days anyway. Those flying pigs, commonly known as Gold Finches and Pine Siskins, have gone through an entire 20 pound bag of nyger thistle in the past 8 weeks. Their feeding habits will start to slow down in mid-October, just in time for the fall and winter birds to show up and start scarfing down sunflower seeds, cracked corn, and millet. But hey! We love feeding these birds because it means life is back in our development, a development which was void of any life whatsoever just 4 years ago when construction crews ripped this part of the earth apart.

We both really need to get back on the Atkins’ track. I’ve been good on and off for a couple of weeks but not good enough to lose anything. I’m back up, weight number-wise, to where I was last spring and that doesn’t bother me. I’m not into numbers. However, I can’t fit into any of my levis and this means I’m a fatso and only have myself to blame. 2 weeks ago, I was good about hitting the rowing machine every day for almost a week. I now have the rowing machine sitting next to my side of the bed so it’s more convenient and so I can watch TV while rowing. But last week, I didn’t do anything with it other than trip over it a few times. I really want an elliptical machine, but I’m too afraid that if we squeezing the budget to get me one, I won’t use it and that kind of behavior has always pissed me off. We don’t really have space for it anyway. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself. Plus, I’d only want one of the fancy ones that measures heart rate, changes courses, pours champagne, and answers email and not one of those cheap pieces of crap like MsNoManagementSkills bought for $400 and then abandoned 6 weeks later when she moved out of FatHead’s house. Blame WS for spoiling me.

This morning, as I was and still am waiting to hear if our company email program is okay to use again, I checked out several journals from people we used to know. You know, those emotional vampire people I sometimes mention that try to weasel their ways back into our lives. The more things change, the more they stay the same. All of them, every last one of them, is still living in the filthy gutter of their own creation. Running from the law, running from creditors, running from reality, refusing to get a job, panhandling for tax-free money, spending every day in a drunken, pot-induced stupor and publicly slamming everyone else for not doing the same. One day, all of these people, or at least the ones who don’t end up in prison or dead, will wake up and find that 20 years have been lost in a haze and their situation still hasn’t improved. Sad really.

For the last 2 weeks, an ice cream truck, technically, an VW ice cream van with a multi-pierced Pink-wannabe has been cruising our neighborhood. Sound suspiciously to me like they found a sucker who can’t live without their daily fix of ice cream. Or maybe this is one of those cases where more than just ice cream and popsicles are being sold if you know what I mean. It’s weird. And I can tell you that if I have to listen to another day of “The Entertainer” blaring so loud, I’m calling someone to report their distorted decibels.

I guess it could be worse. She could be blaring “Camptown Races.” God, I hate that song.

1:30 pm and I’m still waiting for our company’s email program to be operational again. Stupid coworkers still continue to re-infect themselves and the entire system by opening up virus emails. You’d never know this was a technology company and you’d swear that none of these people had ever heard of an email virus before. “Hey! What’s this file? *clickity-click* Oops!”

August 26th 2003

On the Internet, no one can hear you scream.

Today was busy, busy, busy. But I’ve gotten through most of my job work thanks to WS who sat with me for an hour or so, nearly holding my hand because I was so overwhelmed with so much work that was piled on me when I was off work last week. To make matters worse, all day today, a coworker down at company headquarters who is annoying at best, was the Golden Child today or something. It seemed that everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, this guy emailed the company about was approved and smiled upon. Usually, most of his email, as well as most of everyone’s email, goes unnoticed, ignored and deleted. Then the CEO will usually step in and tell everyone to stop sending pointless emails throughout the company. But that didn’t happen today. And leading this parade of email approval? MsNoManagementSkills, who has never wasted any time before letting anyone and everyone know that she couldn’t stand this guy. Odd.

Then, while trying to make a point about something MrSmartButFakingIt laid down as law just 2 weeks ago, he then did a complete turnaround, saying he remembered things “differently” and ended up making both WS and me look like idiots who were completely out of the loop.

Yeah, I’d like a loop. A loop of rope to yank around some coworker’s necks today.

So, when WS is halfway through helping me get through my mountain of work, today’s Golden Child and MrSmartButFakingIt starts replying to all my work emails, arguing what seemed like every single fricken’ point, making me have to stop what I was doing just to make sure I didn’t screw up the next thing I had been working on. Trust me when I say I wanted to scream so many times today. But don’t feel sorry for me. Feel sorry for WS who had to sit there and try to calm me down. All. Afternoon. Long.

Watched OC tonight (there is no “The” in OC). Even though the show is about as cliche’ as it can be, we’re sucked in. I can’t explain it. Maybe because we’re burnt out on listening to all the commercials for stupid reality shows. I’m personally looking forward to a time again when reality TV doesn’t rule the networks. Really now, some of these plot lines are really ridiculous. What are they feeding (or maybe NOT feeding) those television writers anyway?

August 27th 2003

When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.

I can heard the TV from the house next door through the walls of my office. Scanning through the TV stations here, I can positively identify the loudness as that of a soap opera. So, this is what the SportsOrNothing teens do during the day. Not quite sure I understand the volume thing though.

So, I get to busting my ass at work today, getting through all my usual boring stuff before getting to what I’ve been looking forward to work on for a couple of years now – Correcting all the misspelled company name identifiers in our online response documentation. Years ago, our company paid some marketing group a billion dollars just to have them tell us that we needed to have our company name all in CAPITAL letters. The people who were in charge of this online response documentation refused to comply and were allowed to get away with not complying, even though some of the rest of us were told anyone who didn’t comply would be fired. (yeah, right). So, all the online response documentation was a miss-mash of mixed versions of the required company name spelling, none of them technically correct per the change.

Fast forward a few years and now I’m in charge of the online response documentation and I’m been looking forward to making sure everything is in compliance. MrSmartButFakingIt has hindered my eagerness to do this however, I suspect, for his only personal reasons for several months now. Then yesterday, he said he remembered differently and had changed his mind, saying he wanted the change to go into effect ASAP for all new documentation and that we’d get to all the old documentation on a case-by-case basis.

So, since the new documentation is slow in coming in, I thought I’d take the spare time and start going through each one of the several thousand document pages, changing the company name from mixed case spelling to the correct spelling. Yesterday afternoon, I had got through about 100 pages of documentation. This afternoon, I had gotten through maybe another 60 pages when the email flurry started up again. MsNoManagementSkills reminds everyone who is working on new documentation to use the correct company spelling – All CAPITAL letters for the company name. This is immediately followed by the company CEO saying not so fast, that the marketing department is going to change their stance to that of the old mixed case spelling (and probably shelling out another billion dollars to some other marketing group just to make it official) and don’t put the company name in all CAPS. The CEO laughs at the effort some of us are putting into getting the “required” compliance into place years later. I don’t find it funny in the least as I’m several hours into something that may or may not be a complete waste of my time.

The company CEO’s email is then followed by an email from yesterday’s Golden Child who says he has just spoken to that same marketing group and that group says there won’t be any change, all CAPITAL letters are to be used in the online response documentation, and thus, firmly sticks his foot in his mouth and chomps down. Hard.

Lesson #1: Don’t ever go behind a company CEO’s back to another department head and dis’ something the CEO says, especially in a public forum such as company-wide distributed email.

In the meantime, MsNoManagementSkills gets into the fray by sending her own email saying she figured some change would occur and includes a reference to “rolling her eyes”. Yeah, like she’ll have to do any of the work. NOT!

Then the company CEO replies back to everyone that they just spoken to the heads of the marketing group as well as the heads of the company itself and yes, there will be a change but it will be to the one that the originators of the online response documentation used in error, and NOT the one that the rest of us were told we HAD to comply with. So, we’re back to using the mixed case spelling of the company name and all the people who worked on new documentation who haven’t sent it in yet, will need to correct it from using all CAPS. Anything already sent in? Well, that’s my job to correct. Fun.

So….tomorrow, because I sure as hell aren’t going to go back today and undo all the work I’ve just spent hours doing just to get things back to the now correct/then incorrect state, I’ll work on getting things back to whatever they will have decided to do by then. I’m sure their minds will have changed once again and probably a third time as well. Look, people, make a fucking decision and stick the fuck to it. Oh, and while you are giving billions of dollars away to a group of idiots that are only going to tell you to do the exact opposite in a couple of years, you might want to think about asking the very people these decisions are going to affect. LIKE YOUR OWN EMPLOYEES. Just an idea.

And don’t even get me started on the new “employee badges” we’re all going to have to start wearing. I know I’m sure as hell am glad that I wasn’t able to get a real raise just so the company CEOs could spend the money to have real dog tags stamped up for all of us to wear.

August 28th 2003

“I need this parade like I need another hole in my head” – John F. Kennedy, shortly before his ill-fated Dallas trip.

The Labor Day 3-day weekend is coming up….for some people. I have always hated how most people assume that everyone has a 3-day weekend, when in fact, most people do not. WS has to work Sunday and this means I won’t have a true 3-day weekend either. We can’t go anywhere, we can’t do anything, yet everyone keeps saying , “Have a good, long weekend!” I know they mean well and I know that they are just saying what society has taught people to automatically say without really thinking. But really, if people only knew how stupid and insensitive they sound when they speak without thinking, I’d like to believe they would all just stop talking.

The good thing about the upcoming weekend, whether we have all 3 days off or not, is that school starts shortly thereafter, meaning it ought to be a bit quieter in the neighborhood during the day, and then the real excitement starts: In only 2 months, Fall weather begins in earnest! And I don’t have to remind you how much we LOVE Fall weather. Plus, we have a house full of libations, all of which are just begging to be sampled.

But until then, it’s forecast to be hot for the weekend. High 90 degrees kind of hot. WS is depressed but he doesn’t think it’s the weather or pre-Fall season depression. He thinks it might be those post-vacation blues I was talking about last weekend. I think we just need to figure out how much time we have available for our next week of vacation, then plan on actually doing something this time – whether that be stay here and do planned activities or spend the week elsewhere. I know Willcox House is beautiful in the off season as is Kalaloch Lodge on the coast or Salish Lodge but they are all expensive. If we want to have a Christmas this year, perhaps, we ought to just stay home. God knows I could come up with 30 places I’d like to spend a week at but I can’t come up with any of the money to do so.

I found a new cat wandering around in our backyard this morning looking at the birds. Bad kitty! Looked like a cream, seal point Himalayan. It ran off like a good cat should when I yelled out down at it from our office window. We don’t want any more cats looking for a feathered meal back there, especially since several Fall weather birds (mostly ground feeders) have come back. No more dead and dismembered birds! That’s what really depresses me.

And speaking of depression, MsNoManagementSkills is back on heavy doses of Zoloft and Paxil. In fact, in one breath she talks about being happy about her upcoming 3-day weekend (she actually gets one) and taking half a day off today and tomorrow (supposedly not allowed but the CEO and MrSmartButFakingIt always look the other way) yet she’s sitting at home having a “pity party” because FatHead has told her to get all her stuff out of his house by the weekend. She’s been moved out for nearly 3 months, bought all new stuff because she didn’t want the old stuff (none of which was older than a year or 2), yet hasn’t wanted to go through anything she left behind (pets included). If their relationship and marriage was a violent one, I could see not wanting to go back. Ever. But it wasn’t. In fact, I’m not the only one who thinks that she was just looking for a reason to buy all new furniture and decor. And now, she’s planning on decorating her new boyfriend’s house, provided he doesn’t lose it to the foreclosure he’s in. I’m thinking she’s gearing up to ask him if she can just move in soon and if she does, I’ll bet she’ll leave all her newly purchased stuff at her 3 month old apartment just so she can buy even newer stuff. The whole thing is still just very, very odd. And neither WS or I have heard a peep from FatHead personally, which is odd in itself but very comforting at the same time. FatHead was always one to never know when to shut up or when to just go home.

MsNoManagementSkills also can’t believe that everyone on the planet (meaning her own little world) isn’t taking some kind of anti-depressant medication. She’s really stunned to learn that there are some people out there who don’t need it. Her new boyfriend feels the same and acknowledges that he’d be dead without his. Which brings up an interesting point: I truly believe the world would be a better place without some people. Zoloft and Paxil, medication that I see as frivolous ONLY because I don’t need them myself I’m sure, is keeping these people around. We’re not talking cancer medication or anti-stroke or heart attack medication or transplanted organ anti-rejection medication. We’re talking about someone who can’t get over that the economy sucks and they are in debt so they want to feel numb and legal, rose-tinted glasses happy kind of medication. If all of these people stopped taking their Zoloft, and someday they will ALL have to stop and face the music, will the world face a huge suicide epidemic? I for one hope so. Yeah, I know, this sounds bad. Maybe I need Zoloft. Maybe I need a bullet. But just maybe, I’m right.

And to Bert, who asked me if I ever post short entries? No. Sorry. I just have a lot of words in my head and too little time to get them all out. My apologies.

August 29th 2003

The face is familiar but I can’t quite remember my name…

Good bye to August. I don’t like Augusts. Hello shortly to September. I like Septembers even less than Augusts, but I’ll feel better come October.

In the off chance that the rest of the world didn’t get my memo, sent October 11th, 1997 at 8:33 P.M. PST, let me restate that I officially hate rap music. Oh, and an addition to that memo: last night’s MTV video music awards was awful and a complete waste of time from the pre-show through to the very end. And Metallica can lick my scrotum. Again.

So, last year I planted a Quince tree in an area of our yard that is just short of being called a bog. It’s at the base of the gutter waterspout and the soil is very clay-laden, meaning water just doesn’t drain away. Quince trees LOVE wet roots so it seemed like a good fit for that spot which is right outside one of our living room windows. Birds like to sit there in the branches and look inside. In spring, the pink flowers look nice from inside. And now, we have actual Quince fruits growing. And they are HUGE! Apparently, they are called pineapple quince fruits, being as large as pears with a faint pineapple scent. Quinces have to be cooked before eaten because they are just awful tasting when raw. After searching the Internet for Quince cooking recipes, I found a sizeable amount of info at Ask Jeeves. Now, I’m excited about harvesting our quinces in a few months and am thinking about using them both for baking and for a stuffing with wild rice and pine nuts with Cornish Game Hens. Yums.

September 18th – Survivor preview! Spoiler – They don’t get to take any other clothes than what they have on their backs. Ha! Nice wet Dockers there, dude.

Car club people want us to go to their usual Friday evening cruise in tonight, but I just can’t. Not that I don’t want to, but I have got to start working in earnest on my car to get it ready for BIGGIE car show #4 that’s 2 weeks away, so I’m not going. I’ll see them all tomorrow though when we have a pre-show meeting and judge’s training at one of the Competition Boys homes.

Ever have one of those days when time seems to be just dragging and you feel like not doing anything? Including taking a shower? Yes? Today is my day.

September 2nd 2003

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.

Sorry for my delay in posting. Yeah, I could blame it all on Comcast.net but they were only down half of the Labor Day holiday weekend. I, on the other hand, have been here, all along, and ignoring computers in general…

….until today when it’s “back to work” time. No joy. Work is piled up, we’re supposed to be testing a new program (but only between certain hours of the day – WTF??), but hey! We got our employee dog tags today. Funny, how they are only dog-tag shaped. They don’t have our names on them, just the company logo. “Uh, can I have some of the money you (the CEO) spent on these worthless things that we won’t be able to get past airport security with if and when we ever have to go to company headquarters again, as part of the raise I was supposed to get but didn’t because your HR people had my previous salary figures wrong? No? Well, it was worth a shot, wasn’t it?”

I just noticed, in typing in a customer name on a work thing that if the customer’s first name is Miles and if your right hand is off to the right by one letter, it spells out Nukes. Weird. And weirder still that I would comment on that. And weirder even still if I had sent that customer email out addressing him as Nukes because I’d probably get fired over it. Yes, *sigh* I do actually have to be awake to do my job.

I found a dead goldfinch in our backyard this morning. No sign of what might have ended it’s life but I didn’t exactly do an autopsy on it either. Since West Nile Virus is found in birds around here, I don’t touch dead things in our backyard anymore and just scoop them up with the long handled shovel and put them well under one of the larger bushes out of the way to decompose. Kind of like natural fertilizer. REAL natural fertilizer. Surprisingly, this only makes a couple of dead birds in our backyard this summer. Opposed to the hundreds we had last year when the Cat from Hell was ruling our yard with iron claws.

Only 10 days until BIGGIE car show #4, the one that will more than likely tell me where I will finish out the season. Currently, I am barely in first place. I have to get a 99.50 or higher score in the last 2 BIGGIE shows (September 13 and September 27). To date, I have received a 99.50, a 99.91 (Wow!). and a 99.56. The guy who is breathing down my back has received a 99.58, a 98.41, and a 99.75. We’re basically within a point of each other and the whole season could go either way since the next show is on my turf here in town and the last one is on his turf, about 200+ miles away. Remember, we get to throw out one score out of the 5 shows, the lowest score, to see where we end up. I really, REALLY want to end the year in first place, but I won’t be too disappointed to end up second. WS strongly disagrees and wants first or nothing. He’s SOOOooo competitive, just like me.

Okay, I’ve lied all along. I want FIRST PLACE! Second place or less just won’t cut it. But you didn’t hear that from me…

Unfortunately, this kind of stress is starting to eat at me and cause me to not sleep well again. To be honest, I expected this to start weeks ago, so I’m not too worried so far. However, I STILL haven’t been able to even wash my car to get it to the point where I can start detailing it. The temperatures around here have just been unseasonably too hot and too hot an air temperature, even in the shade where I always wash the car, means my car will waterspot instantly. I won’t be able to get the water off fast enough when washing it and I do NOT have the time to re-clay bar the car to remove the etching waterspots before the car show. Still with me? Okay, so I need to wait until later in the week when clouds are supposed to roll in and the temps should drop down into the 80′s at least. Since it’s rumored to rain a bit over the upcoming weekend, this will give me perfect timing to apply a few coats of polish and detail the remainder of the interior and engine that I haven’t already finished. (It’s really just the exterior that looks like crap.) So, I still have time to get it all done.

I’ve been pretty good in the “eating good” department over the weekend, but I can assure you that had we been able to get Krispy Kreme donuts over the weekend, they would be gone by now. Stressful day today. Fortunately, the line at both the drive-thru and around the KK building was too ridiculously long to even attempt to stand in. Really, no one needs donuts that badly. I am willing to wait months, maybe a year or more before trying to pick some up here in town. Now, you all know that this Krispy Kreme donut craze is just going to die out in about 5 years so buy your Krispy Kreme stock now, sell it in about 4 years, and reap the bucks. After taxes, that is.

I’ve also been very good in the weight-lifting department, even increasing both poundage and reps and have added some shoulder workouts too. My arms and shoulders take no time to build up (something that both WS and I really like) but my stomach and legs take forever. So, why didn’t you start with your parts that take forever to shape and build up, you might ask? Well, I’ve learned in the past that if I concentrate on my legs, for example, I will be working on they clear up until Christmas and I won’t see any change at all, thus, I’ll give up. If I build up my quickly built up arms and shoulders, by Christmas I’ll be saying, “Damn, girl! You need to get working on those stick legs to match your awesome arms!” and I’ll do just that. It’s all about fooling the mind, I guess…

*NOOOOooooo…..don’t say THAT! Now I know that you’re trying to fool me and maybe I’ll just have to do something different now*

I don’t know where that came from.

And lastly, we have a sizable dairy close by. I’d say it’s about a mile from our development here. Some days, you can certainly tell the cows are happy over there because the air has that “Cow Farty” smell. The last 2 days have been particularly…uh…fragrant. Sucks to be us.

September 3rd 2003

Life is like a shit sandwich and on bad days, you get no bread.

Since I know that most of you are thinking about it, I think I have the perfect answer to the question: “What would make an average work week above average?” A random day off taken sometime during the week. Every week. And not including usual weekend days off. It could be a Monday, it could be a Friday, or any day in between. Since Americans were so hell-bent a decade ago to begin working more hours every week, every month, and every year than those workaholics, the Japanese, I think it’s time the pendulum started to swing back the other way. I think us American workers, wherever we’re working, deserve some time off. Paid time off, of course, as payment for how far we’ll all gotten this country, ESPECIALLY after the 9-11-2001 thing. I could go on and on about exact reasons why, but I won’t. If you’ve been reading here long, you’ve probably already figured out why.

If there was ever a day I wanted to take off from work, it would be today. Of course, tomorrow I’ll probably say the same thing. I just really didn’t want to get out of bed this morning. I still feel like I’ve yet to wake up and it’s 3 in the afternoon. It’s stress, and going to bed too late and apathy and disliking my job and been so tired of seeing other people get away with stuff that if I did the same, I’d get nailed for every single time.

Well, now that I’ve gotten all that off my chest, I have at least 4 hours of work left. I should really get all that laundry done and I really should vacuum. You know, all that “Suzy Homemaker” stuff while not getting overheated. Today, the temps will be reaching around 100-something, a record high. I don’t think our house ever cooled down from yesterday or the day before’s near 100 temperatures. And we even have air conditioning. A forest fire to the east of us has created hazy skies and the local news stations are advising anyone with breathing problems to stay inside. I don’t think I would have any problems but my nose is running a bit more than usual today in an allergy reaction kind of way.

Lots of people have been stopping by the Blinders house across the street and picking up their For Sale flyers. So much so, the flyer box has been emptied and they’ve had to add more. This is much more attention than the Baseball Team’s house ever got both times that one was on the market. I’ve seen a white Dodge Intrepid over there several times with other vehicles and I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the realtor. The only vehicle I never see over there anymore is the one that belongs to Ms. Blinder. She’s gone.

Just around the corner from us, a family that we’ve called The Posers since before they ever moved in, have apparently moved out and someone else (renters maybe?) is moving in. That house never went on the market that anyone knows of so we think they have rented it out to relatives or friends. The Posers were just that; people who from the start worked very hard to make people believe they were something better than what they really were. It was at Ms. Poser’s insistence that the entire development’s house color scheme policy be changed or else. No houses of the same color were supposed to be built next to each other, yet she insisted that hers be white, just like the house next door and frankly, that portion of the development looks like crap now because of it. Although, that could also be partly due to the tacky, half-assed, partly-falling down fence that Mr. Poser nailed up incorrectly, also against development regulations. But the development builders did get their way on one thing and there was nothing The Posers could do about it: Ms. Poser also insisted that their house be built up, nearly 3 stories up and over all the other houses in the development, so she could have an unobstructed view of the tall, snow capped mountains to the east. Well, THAT didn’t happen. Not by a long shot. In fact, before The Posers moved in, I walked through their house while it was under construction and she didn’t get ANY view at all. Unless you count a perfect view of the entire side of the house across the street. Shortly after The Posers moved in, she with her black Jaguar and he with his brand new black Mustang, a Mopar project car in the garage, and assorted company trucks parked on (and completely blocking the use of) the surrounding sidewalks, they let the neighborhood know that they wouldn’t be fraternizing with anyone. They were too good for the rest of us. Except the Cat-Killer living nearby whom feels it’s his God-given American right to race his dirt bike up and down the neighborhood streets without a helmet and at speeds that would frighten even me (and I’m just not afraid of speed). Shortly after this, Mr. Poser lost his business and had to sell his precious new Mustang but within a year, had bought a used Mercedes, which he often drives very fast in and out of the development while snubbing his nose at us all, just like his wife always did.

We walked around the development just last weekend, a first since last Christmas, and found about 6 houses for sale here. I have to admit I’m surprised and a bit worried. I know that technically, every neighborhood could be labeled as a “starter home” neighborhood, but when this development was first built, just over 4 years ago, most of the people moving in here said they would be staying here for a long while. That doesn’t seem to be the case. Things change. The economy changes. Jobs and family situations change. It’s gotten to the point that we don’t know most of the people who live around here anymore, something very different from just 2 years ago, and of most of those new people, most aren’t taking care of the appearance of their homes. Unfortunately, pockets of homes in our development are starting to take a nose dive. But this is in it’s early stages and at least for now, the prices of these houses for sale is going up. I just hope that if and when we ever sell ours, that we’ll get more for it than we put into it (probably foolishing put into it).

Tomorrow night is a car club meeting. I should get my newly polished stuff back from the nice Competition Boy who promised to buff them out for me in time for that car show next week. WS should have his second-to-last club newsletter done and ready to hand out, but I don’t even think he’s started it yet. It could be an interesting and long evening if he’s thinking of doing the whole thing tonight. I think it’s going to be a relief to the both of us when he’s no longer responsible for putting together that newsletter. He did it better than anyone else did to date for this club, but he doesn’t have the time it took and I hate these “wait until the last possible second” projects every month.

September 5th 2003

Tuesday night, my allergies got so bad, I was reduced to going to bed and stayed there until last night. I really think it was all the forest fires going on in our area and all the smoke filled air. It wasn’t fun at all, but at least I got out of a day of work and WS stayed home from his real job to babysit me. That’s real love.

MsNoManagementSkills has started her hardcore push to move into the likely future foreclosure house of her new boyfriend. Early last week, she started going on and on about painting one of his 3 children’s bedrooms and has been spending a lot of her paychecks on school clothes and supplies. She recently asked all her Online Journal fans for decorating ideas and decorating catalogs and books. I would think she’d be saving her money for a divorce lawyer, but that doesn’t seem to be important to her right now, even though FatHead seems to want to be completely rid of her and all her stuff finally. Someday, we’ll hear his side of this whole story, I’m sure of it, and I’ll bet it’ll be a doozy.

For some reason today, I can only access about 1/8th of all the sites I usually visit on any given day. I don’t know what is going on but I’m fairly certain it isn’t on my end. Annoying.

I drug my ass (and my drippy sinuses) to the car club meeting last night. This club is slowly breaking up. I can just feel it. The next meeting, in 2 weeks will be key in telling how fast this club will go down the shitter when new board members will be voted in. In the last few months, there has been a definite division of the club – The Boring group – boring members that don’t want to do anything or do any work for anything, and The Working group – the group that currently runs things and does everything. I think the main division occurred after the club’s trip to Kentucky back in late June/early July and now, there has been a strong push by the majority, The Boring group, to get all The Working group members out of board offices. If The Boring group wins out and the result is that all the board offices are filled with Boring members, I suspect this club will disband as a car club within a year, and it will probably change to just a social club, which is what The Boring group wants. I also suspect that several of The Working group will up and quit the car club altogether, perhaps to start a new one elsewhere, perhaps just to get out of car clubs entirely. Either way, I think the next meeting will be interesting, in a most uncomfortable way, to say the least. Because I have 2 more BIGGIE car shows left this season, I’m not going to worry about what the outcome will be however. I have enough to worry about and I just want to finish the season well.

Another hot day here. We’re supposed to get cooler weather and maybe even rain next week. We’ll see. We should could use it.

September 8th 2003

Life is great, but the hours are hell.

Our company is all proud of themselves for getting the new version of their software out according to the company conference call this morning. The problem is, the software hasn’t been released yet, and in fact, doesn’t have any documentation for the customer and little-to-no documentation for us, the workers who will need to answer customer questions by the thousands each and every week. Listening to the conference call, as usual, I’m wondering what they are all smoking at company headquarters and is that related to how good I feel whenever I’m visiting there. Maybe something is being piped through the air conditioning ducts? It wouldn’t surprise me that THAT is the reason why morale is so high there and so non-existent here.

It finally rained here yesterday evening. It had been something like a month or so since we’d had any rain in this area. It was just enough to make things look like they could still use a good dousing to clean all the dust and dirt off things. I’m really looking forward to true Fall weather and when the rainy season starts here.

I think my Outlook email program is corrupt on my work computer. It just wants to close when I try to print out an email or 2. I really don’t have time to deal with this right now as I’m trying to figure out why MrSmartButFakingIt is being extra forgetful this month and making my life much more difficult than it needs to be. Really now, since he got married back last spring, he’s become very “managerized” and somewhat of an ass.

Car cleaning and detailing is on track for next weekend’s BIGGIE car show #4. I have Friday off from work to finish up any cleaning I can do here before driving the car 25 miles or so down to where it will be on display. Once there, I’ll work on detailing anything left that it needs Friday afternoon/evening and then roll it out for the Saturday show. If things go well, I won’t have to worry much about how I do in the final BIGGIE show (#5) at the end of September and then I can relax a little.

Yesterday, while WS was working here at home, I drove over to one of the Competition Boys homes and picked up another chrome thing for my engine – chrome hood latches. When I got there, both of the Competition Boys and Drill Sergeant Dave were there, talking about how they think the car club is going to dissolve within the year after board elections this month when The Boring group takes over control. It was weird how similar their conversation sounded to our own last week after last Thursday’s general meeting. I’m kind of glad now that I ran my car in this area’s car show circuit this year, because it is very likely this club won’t have one next year. Next year, my car won’t be car-show perfect anyway because I plan on actually driving it more (which exposed it to potential road damage – rocks chips, scratches, door dings, weather damage, being stolen, etc.).

Today will be a busy work day. I have to get on MrSmartButFakingIt’s butt about something he said he did last Friday but didn’t. I want to avoid MsNoManagementSkills like the plague because she seems to be on one of those “Let’s assign a bunch of work to her (me) because she hasn’t done anything that I can see lately” kind of moods. I need to remove one coat of polish on my car and apply the next coat, number 3 of 6 total. I need to detail my engine compartment and wheels and tires which should take no more than about a half an hour. I need to do laundry, have a real lunch today, and refill the bird feeders (They aren’t birds…they’re flying PIGS!) and I want to spend some “me” time with just myself.

Yeah, I can get all this done. With LOTS of caffeine. Have a good day.

September 9th 2003

It’s sad that a family can be torn apart by something as simple as a pack of wild dogs.

Ms. Blinder has been visiting her ex-home a lot over the last few days. She moved out about a month ago and then, their house was put up on the market. We still don’t know what’s going on over there, but she’s usually there when Mr. Blinder isn’t. I’m sure it’s an arrangement. No word if the house is in the process of being sold yet.

Mr. Howler Monkey continues to look longingly over at our garage anytime we have it open. I think he has a thing for my kind of car but he hasn’t said a peep to us yet. Of course, we could yell something over to him, but we’re just not yellers like that. Besides, any adult yelling in our neighborhood just gives people something to gossip about for months on end and people are still taking about DrunkTank Willie and Leona’s domestic squabbles.

SportsOrNothing has been amazingly quiet since the first of the month. We’ve noticed them packing up their SUV (they ALL have SUVs in this neighborhood) with various sports equipment. Baseball camp equipment. Football camp equipment. Soccer practice equipment. Funny how we’ve never seen any books loaded or unloaded, nor seen any sign of any reading material over there (other than flyers for various sport camp activities). One wonders how these kids are ever going to survive in the real world if their sports abilities don’t take them to a professional level (highly unlikely).

But hey! How could anyone have a bad day after listening to this? NO! I’m NOT talking about the annoying embedded “Cheers” tune! I’m talking about the download tune and video. Go! Download it. It’s okay. No one is going to come after you. Really. The Junior/Senior people want you to have it.

Here’s another treat: Stealth Disco. It’s not dead. I wish people would do this behind my back…

…which brings me to my day today. I’ve finally chosen to go back to Atkins’ after spending the past week bloated like a 6 day old dead whale. Last night, after pizza for dinner, I drank an entire 1.5 liter bottle of water mixed with the juice of 1 lime (approx 8 – 12 grams of carbs) to start to flush out my system. Today, I’ve consumed one Atkins’ Chocolate carb drink, a mug of tea without sugar (I NEVER consume sugar knowingly anyway), and a banana protein shake (3 carbs) made with water (my preference of liquids). Lunch will most likely be a plate of luncheon meats and cheeses. Dinner? Maybe shrimp. Maybe chicken breast. I’m feeling good about this and it’s about time. Weight changes are my fall/winter project and WS is signing up soon too.

I need 3 more coats of polish on my car, some fast detail work and printing out a map of where I’ll be heading Friday afternoon and I’m ready for the BIGGIE car show this weekend. I still need to finish that laundry though. I swear dirty laundry reproduces. It’s never finished.

At work, I can’t do anything until other people do their part. I’m completely stuck and getting pretty damned sick of it. This is how I spent last Thursday and Friday, waiting, waiting, waiting. There seems to be some squabble over whether some documentation should be in one category or another and I can’t do anything until that is decided. On the other hand, MsNoManagementSkills doesn’t like a certain word being used in another portion of some documentation. It’s a simple word but one she might have heard too much of when living with FatHead. It’s something you’d tell a dog to do. But I don’t see why things should be held up just because someone doesn’t like a simple word in the English language. I mean, I don’t exactly like the word “task” but that hasn’t stopped this company from assigning all kinds of tasks to me or in using the word “task” in all forms of company correspondence and documentation. Personal preference over a common word and holding up work is just petty and unprofessional.

So, here I’ll continue to sit. All afternoon long, working, but not working. At least I’m getting paid for it.

September 10th 2003

“Would you, could you, with a goat?” from Green Eggs and Ham Dr. Seuss

Today is a wonderful weather day. While it hasn’t rained hard, it’s been misting on and off, it’s very cloudy and less than 70 degrees. The leaves on the maples and oak trees on the hill behind us are just starting to get tinges of yellow. The one squirrel who’s left has been emptying the peanut box and burying nuts everywhere. Our flicker woodpeckers are back for the upcoming fall and winter months. Life is good.

Unfortunately, it will be back to summer heat by Saturday. Grrrr.

Work, work, work. I worked a 12 hour day yesterday with massive help from WS, who regularly works 12-16 hour days (I’m sure he has little pity for me working one 12 hour day every other month or so) but with his help, I was able to get a massive amount of work done. It was massively cool to feel that good when I was done. I even slept most of last night and didn’t worry about it. Of course, I spent the other half of the night tossing and turning and worrying about the upcoming car show and all the things I haven’t done yet on my car, so…

…this morning, immediately after that SOLICITATION call from 24 Hour Fitness at 8:15 am, I got up, took polish coat number 3 off my car, detailed my engine, all the window rubber, and my tires along with most of my interior (I can’t do the whole interior until I get to the car show location – I mean, I DO have to sit in the car to drive it down there and butt smudges mean point deductions.) Within the last hour, I did a final engine detail inspection and installed a couple of new polished stainless parts before closing that part up and applying polish coat number 4 (of 6 total). Tonight, I need all the interior and exterior glass cleaned and all that’s left is to do is exhaust polishing.

Sounds exciting, huh? Sometimes, people ask me WTF? which is perfectly acceptable because I ask that very question all the time. I just like car shows. I appreciate the hard work and creativity that often goes into cars that are held at a level above just using it to drive around. You could probably blame this all on my parents. Both of them were into cars long before they met each other on a blind date. Because I was the result of that blind date, both of them gave up their cars and any dreams of having a special car forever more in lieu of having many, many more children. Later in life, when I got my first car, they both told me countless times that I would never have anything nicer. That first car was a broken down VW that my dad had never washed, never even changed the oil and basically abandoned. I guess they thought I would meet someone on a blind date and have loads of kids just like them. I’m sure if they were both still living, I will have disappointed them greatly because I have a show car and no children. Gee, I know I’m all broken up over that decision.

My dad really did seal the deal with me having a nice car when the day before I bought that car, I received my first tax return and he screamed to me and the rest of the neighborhood (he was a screamer) that if I ever “customized” any car, he’d take my driver’s license away for life.

Now, I have to admit, from the second I turned 16 years old, I heard that threat more times coming out of their lips than I heard my own name.

“If I ever catch you speeding, I’ll take your license away for life!”

“If we ever see you turning a corner like that driver just did (said while riding in their car), we’ll take your license away for life!”

“If you forget to make Jell-O for tonight’s dinner, I’ll take your license away for life!”

“If we catch you parting your hair down the middle like HIPPIES do, we’ll take your license away for life!”

It got absurdly ridiculous. I started hearing that threat anytime the neighbor dog barked. Anytime my parent’s TV shows weren’t on, if my siblings did poorly in school. But not once did I ever believe anyone was going to take away my driver’s license just because I liked cars and car customizing and car shows. Of course, taking away my license for speeding, turning corners fast, forgetting to make Jell-O for that night’s dinner, and parting my hair however I want is another story for another time.

September 12th 2003

If you have a Providian credit card, be very careful where you are sending your payment. They are changing their billing address every couple of months so that they can then charge people late charges when the payment “doesn’t reach their offices in time.” Unfortunately yes, this is legal. They got us 2 months ago with this tactic. This month, they have changed their billing address yet again. We’re become a bit smarter since then.

Well, the car club that I was part of for just over a year is all but defunct now. Saturday is BIGGIE car show #4 of the season and the car show that our club is putting on. Friday night is the pre-show activities. It seems that The Boring group, who will be taking over all the board offices as of next Thursday is trying to derail all future club activities that was planned out by The Working group, the members of the club who did all the actual work. Since there are more Boring group members, The Working group will be out voted on everything starting next Thursday. So, Friday night, The Working group will be getting ready for Saturday’s show. The Boring group, some of whom had signed up to actually work, has planned a last minute party elsewhere across town. I suspect most of them won’t show up to the show Saturday, leaving only about 8 people to do the work of 40.

Whatever. I don’t need any car club. It was simply a fun little adventure that only proved one thing to me – just because people are rich and can buy expensive cars, doesn’t mean they will act like anything other than spoiled babies and unprofessional, immature brats. I’m fine with this. BUT…I swear to God, if they fuck up this car show for me and others that I know are in their class leads and it is proven that I lose my season point standing because of their little games, some fucking heads WILL roll.

Last Tuesday, I was very, very good and stuck to Atkins’ all day. Wednesday, I stuck with Atkins’ clear up until 6:30 when I ate carbs in the form of corn chips and homemade hot sauce. It wasn’t very good and I regretted eating them. I didn’t eat anything else and dreamed of food all night. I’ve been working out fairly hard every day this week and my shoulders and arms are bulking up nicely. I’ll be working on my legs and stomach all winter long. I hate my stomach and always have. If I were to let things get way out of hand, my stomach could easily become one of those large-women stomachs that are fricken’ HUGE and bulge grotesquely out from pubic bone to breasts. MsNoManagementSkills has one of those now. My mother had one of those. My grandmother had one of those. My grandfather had one of those. I refuse to have one of those and I’m pretty proud of myself that I only have a huge barrel chest and poochy stomach.

Technically, I only have to work 3-4 hours today. Actually, it’s more like 2 hours but I’m sure someone would notice my absence online if I were to log off too soon. So, I’ll be starting the work day late and taking off early. Tomorrow, I have the entire day off from work, but of course, I’ll probably find something to clean on my car. Really, I promise, I only have 2 more of these car shows to yak about and then it’s all but over until next April.

September 15th 2003

Close only counts in horseshoes and Pentiums.

I’m in idiot-mode today. I had taken today off months ago but had forgotten all about it. MsNoManagementSkills, who is responsible for posting our vacation days off, never did post the day, so all this time I was thinking that either it had been denied or that she never got my day off request.

So I get up and log into work this morning only to have her IM me instantly, asking what I was doing. Not skipping a beat, I said I was there for the company conference call and after the meeting, I promptly logged off. I am truly an idiot. I didn’t even have to get out of bed this morning, not to mention lying there awake since 8 am, dreading work today because it is going to be hell for anyone working there. A new software product is coming out that doesn’t work right, has lots of problems and no one is willing to share any info on how we’re going to answer customer questions about it. I’d love to say right out that this release will be a cluster fuck but sadly, it’s no different than from any other major software release and happens here 2-3 times a year. *sigh*

But hey! I still have a job!

BIGGIE car show #4 over the past weekend was stressful as usual but I had 2 hours extra to detail literally every square inch of my car. That meant early Saturday morning, at 7 am, I was working on cleaning and detailing my already fairly clean car in the car show parking lot. Cleaning stopped at 12 noon per the rules and judging started immediately afterward. By 2:45 pm, my car was finishing being judged by all 4 judges. By 4 pm, I was announced first place winner in my class, beating out my closest competitor AND beating him in full season year-end points by 8/100ths of a point. This means for the final show in 2 weeks, BIGGIE show #5, on his turf in a city 200+ miles away, he could score a perfect 100 and I could decide not even to show up and I will have still won 1st place overall, just as I had set out to try to accomplish this year.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that there was no grumbling about how other clubs felt they were slighted by the judges, but at least in my class, there were no judges from our club. All the judges were from all the other clubs so there was no way anyone could complain about this class. I won fair and square and no one showed me any favoritism. While I will be attending the final show in 2 weeks, I won’t be stressing out as badly as I had been all summer long because I’ve already won the class. Remember, everyone running for season points gets to throw one show’s score out since the judges only count 4 of the 5 shows. Since I’ve yet to have a bad show, the final show could be the one I throw out, meaning technically, I don’t need to get a good score or even show up. But to support the club that is putting on that final show, and because I know and like several people in that club, I will go and try to make a good showing.

The weather over the weekend returned to summer temps. Hot, hot, hot! WS and I both got sunburned because there was no shade to be found anywhere. I had to stand around in the sun cleaning my car and WS was judging a few other car show classes in the sun. Up until last night, my feet and shins still throbbed from standing for over 12 hours and today, we are both still sore. After the show Saturday evening, we went out for lobster dinner with several other club members and it was so good, lobster is the first thing that has popped into my head for the past 2 mornings upon waking. I think I’ll need to stock our freezer with some little lobster tails over the Fall months. Frozen lobster is better than no lobster at all.

The weather today and for the next couple of days is supposed to be very Fall-like – cloudy, sprinkly skies and cool temps in the 60′s. So far, no rain and it’s a bit more sunny than I’d like. I suspect the weather people were incorrect again but who knows at this point. The night temps here are still close to 60 degrees so there hasn’t been any significant leaf color change in the trees on the big hill behind us yet but it sounds like we might have gotten a couple of croaking frogs back in our fountain. We generally have frogs back there from fall through spring. It’s been very, very quiet all summer long.

Today, I’ll be cleaning the entire house since it was ignored all weekend long. Vacuuming, dusting, tackling that ever-reproducing pile of laundry, organizing car stuff in my notebook binder, then I’ll squeeze a workout in since I haven’t done that since last Thursday. We really need to get some Fall yard clean up done before it gets too cold and rainy. (No one wants to trim bushes and pull weeds in the cold rain when we’re putting up Christmas lights at the end of November!) Tonight, I need to get to the grocery store. This house is practically barren, unless we want to eat nothing but can after can of tuna fish (someday, I promise to get through all those). I probably should work on getting that last music CD created since I wanted to get that done over a month ago and I need to get together the list of things I’d like to purchase for my car over the winter for next year’s car show season when I’ll be attending more FUN car events and avoiding all the stressful, points-laden shows that I participated in this year.

And I need to remember and relish that really, I DO have today off from my paying job, even if I do have a ton of stuff to get done here.

September 17th 2003

Arrrrr….and don’t fuck wit me parrot!

Across the street, no one has checked out The Blinders house for sale in nearly 2 weeks now. Don’t know what’s up with that. It’s like all interest in the house died off. Hmmm….who else did this happen to? The house right next door to them, when the Baseball Team lived there and spent over a year trying to sell their baby-cheese laden home.

Next door to us, the Dimmers have gotten more and more similar to DrunkTank Willie’s family who used to live there. Every weekend, the garage door goes up and all the kid’s toys go out onto the driveway and yard. Mr. Dimmer starts puttering around in the garage with various power tools and the kids try to learn to ride their bicycles up and down the sidewalk. On trash days, no one brings in the trash cans or recycle bins for days on end (I’ll bet you anything they lose them all this winter when the east winds race down our street on a daily basis). The youngest Dimmer continues to scream randomly for no reason whatsoever, just like DrunkTank Willie’s youngest. At this point, the only way anyone would know that DrunkTank Willie and his family no longer lives there would be the absence of LOUD power tools running 24/7 and the short fence in the backyard is falling down. At least DrunkTank Willie kept up the place. You never know how good you’ve got it until it’s gone, I guess.

In my own little world, yesterday I woke up with a raging sinus infection that I picked up sometime over the weekend or late last week. A person would be alarmed at the sight of what I was blowing out of my nose but I’m used to it. My sinuses have been screwed up since childhood when my nose was regularly broken and sinuses smashed by overly zealous parental “guidence”. Basically, yesterday I felt like crap. My eyes wouldn’t focus until well after 12 noon, my throat was dry, my ears plugged. Then the sinuses started flowing and the smell of yeasty bread filled my head. Yep, this is a sinus infection but one that’s on the down side, thank goodness.

Today, I feel much better with exception of feeling bloated. Aunt Flo is coming my way sometime in the next week or so and I’m so tired of feeling fat. None of my levis fit for some reason and no amount of sit-ups seem to be working in flattening my stomach. Completely stopping eating does nothing either and doesn’t fix the problem because a person just wants to eat everything in sight after just a few days. I refuse to buy bigger pants but cold weather is coming and I can only fit in shorts (with elastic waistbands). I just don’t know what is wrong with me and I’m extremely irritated at myself. My dead mother is winning because I’m growing to look just like her. I need to think and believe that food is medication (because it usually is for me anyway). Since I hate taking medication, I should only eat when I really need it, not to comfort some inner emotional issue, like feeling shut out by an over-enthusiastic coworker who has stepped on my toes way too many times in the past few months and making me think that he is going after my job. See how emotional I can get? Now I want to eat something, anything. But I won’t!

This evening, I have 2 things planned – Safeway grocery delivery around 4 pm (neither one of us had time to grocery shop over the past 3 weeks. really!) and there is a car club cruise in at a local bar close by. I’m not sure I’ll be going to this cruise in, but I am seriously considering it. I mean, my job just sucks today so why not do something different for a couple of hours, right?

September 18th 2003

It’s all fun and games until someone gets SARS.

Ever want to buy something or do something only to find out just before you make your decision that someone you REALLY, REALLY don’t like has already bought it or done it and then the thought of doing the same disgusts you? I’ll never get bottled water delivery now and I thought of it first!

Fun, fun, fun at work today. MrSmartButFakingIt left for vacation. The problem was he didn’t tell anyone except workers at company headquarters, none of whom told anyone else. So, WS and I are sitting here for the past week or more trying to get a hold of MrSmartButFakingIt without success only to find out late last night that he’s gone until the end of the month. This kind of crap just happens over and over again and really chaps our asses. NOTHING ever changes here and I for one am really tired of being slighted all the frickin’ time just because I work outside of company headquarters.

Do I think things would be different if I worked at company headquarters? Not for an instant. I know better. This company blows in the “human resources” department. It’s all about money, people. “We don’t care about individual people….unless you have a couple of million dollars to give us. Oh, and when your money runs out, we won’t care about you either. Welcome to the corporate world.”

But hey! It sure beats the hell out of working at a grocery store and walking in on your department supervisor and another department’s supervisor fucking on a pallet of Valencia oranges… Especially since neither one of them were attractive in the least and then threatened me with my job if I told. Since I no longer work in the grocery store business, you can guess how that turned out.

And I thought the corporate world would be more honest and treat corporate workers better. hahahaha The joke’s on me.

Tonight is the 90 minute Survivor start. Because I’ll be sitting uncomfortably in what could very well be the last car club I’ll ever attend whle The Boring group gets elected in and takes over things, I’ve already set the PVR timer. I even included a half an hour before Survivor start time and a half an hour after just so I won’t miss one minute. Last season, we discovered our PVR cuts off the last 30 seconds of most shows when they run up to the very last second allowed. Therefore, we routinely missed the last 30 seconds of the show where the voted off person gets everything off their chest and we see who all voted for whom. Annoying. I hope we’ll be much brighter about this, this year.

Tomorrow is Official Talk Like a Pirate Day. Yes, it’s silly but it’s official. Lucky for my coworkers, I don’t actually “talk” to any of them. I have to chat with them via company instant messaging from time to time, but I won’t be in Pirate mode. They wouldn’t get it anyway and they would probably complain to MrSmartButFakingIt when he got back from vacation.

Because I am hungry, it’s time for late lunch/early dinner. WS made the most incredible bean-less chili last night and I’ve been thinking about soft chili tacos all morning. He also made a big batch of our infamous homemade salsa which I suspect will be gone before the weekend. He’s incredible when he gets into this chopping, dicing, cooking mode, especially since he was supposed to be working the whole time. What a stud!

September 19th 2003

Avast, ye maties! It’s Talk Like a Pirate Day and just in time for the Survivor – Pearl Islands review:

Rupert – Arrrgh, this guy looks a wee odd but he just might have somethin’ goin’ there. You have to love a guy who thinks like a pirate right off t’bat, ye maties, and steals t’ temporarily abandoned shoes of t’other tribe and who isn’t afraid to wear a handmade skirt when those new jeans, sea water and sand rubs things t’wrong way, if you know what I’m banterin’ ’bout. He’s a brute too. Good for heavy manual labor, totin’ that bail and swabbin’ t’decks, but he’ll have to shut off his brain and not let things get to him as it looks like happens next week.

Andrew t’Lawyer, or whatever t’elected leader’s name is, I already can’t stand. He’s got too much swagger already ‘n’ be a strength threat, people! Smartly, get rid of him before it’s too late!

T’ Buff boys – Shiver me timbers! Please, do NOT show your dangly yardarm parts agin. And Osten? Please. What chum bucket did this bilge rat crawl out of? Fucking staple those shorts to yourself if you need to. Just do NOT show us your crack again.

Blimey! What be IT with this show’s castin’ captains continuously choosin’ young “beautiful” scruvy dogs over the past few seasons? I really, really like this show, but nothing will make me blow chudder quicker than to see a majority of “I’m all into myself and look at my muscles/breasts/piercings” scallywags prancin’ around, talking shit about hookin’ up and droppin’ anchor in each other’s lagoons while snubbin’ the older geezers because “they don’t have anythin’ in common with us.” Or just maybe this really be t’majority of REAL lubbers out there in t’wide big sea. If so, shoot me now before I start shootin’ first. If I wanted to see ALL shallow pool people, I’d tune into another “reality” show that features a house and a bunch of cameras.

Unfortunately, I can see Survivor turnin’ into a joke reality show sometime in t’future. It’s not fresh in that too many people who are now competitors have seen previous seasons. They all start out talkin’ t’same lingo created in t’very first Survivor season, they all instantly start workin’ on t’same strategies that worked in t’very first Survivor season, and too often, most of the competitors fall into the same stereotypical slots that we saw in t’very first Survivor season. I try not to yawn, but it be a case of “Been There, Done That” just with different faces. It’s very good that Mr. Burnett, t’show creator, introduces new twists here and there, but sadly, I can see an end to this entire barnacle-laden series. But lad, what a ride this show has been and I’ll still be a fan until t’very end.

While we were taping Survivor, we had a car club meetin’ to attend. Actually, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The Borin’ group got voted in, The Workin’ group didn’t give the Borin’s what they wanted: No one bailed out of t’meeting and no one scuttled the ship. But I do expect membership to drop like a rock over t’winter months. I know I’m reconsiderin’ renewing our membership which technically be due October 1st (but I won’t pay until t’end of October because they are supposed to give us a month’s notice and they didn’t – It’s a rebellion thing.) I don’t need a clubt’get togethert’do car thin’s with t’few people I’ve comet’enjoy t’company of.

Nothin’ but work today. The temps were supposed to be upper 70′s/lower 80′s and sunny. But joy! It’s rainin’. Course, I told t’nice Competition lad and Drill Sargent Dave I would show upt’a cruise in tonight but I won’t go if it be rainin’.

Nothin’ planned for t’ weekend. I have a photo op to attend to Saturday afternoon at a local air base port but aft that, nothing but sleep. Sunday, I may just wash me car and scrape t’barnacles off me rudders in preparation of t’final car show next week.

Septempter 21st 2003

This space intentionally left blank. OOPS!

It’s late. Not as late as when I usually hit the pillows, but late enough. WS went to bed an hour ago but I’m just not tired. I should be; work was hell this week even with a vacation day off last Monday and I drove 50 miles across town Friday evening to go to a really crappy Americanized “Mexican” food dinner and attend a car cruise-in that had, unknowingly at the time, been cancelled. But at least I put on a happy face and people think I’m really nice.

Acting like you care can really drain a person.

On the drive home from across town alone, in my shiny car, well after dark, loudly listening to my 80′s/90′s compilation CDs (created with tracks from CDs we have previously purchased and currently own, you RIAA greedy sucks!) and thinking about the car club I’m leaving behind, I couldn’t help but feel both a little rudderless without a car club and a little free. It’ll be nice to be away from all the stress of having to work on some club thing and having to answer to people I don’t plan on seeing much more of ever again. If something makes you feel giddy, like you just moved away from under your parent’s thumbs for the first time ever, you probably ought to take a good look at what it is in your life that is squashing that feeling and drop it like a bad habit.

So I was feeling pretty good with my bad self, cruising across town. More often than not, and probably because we live in a hick-sort of town, people spend too much time looking at my car driving by than the road and their own driving and I’m always watchful of cars wandering into my lane, or veering off the road. At stop lights, sometimes, guys in big trucks or Camaros rev themselves, which then gets the “ricer” cars in the other lanes all hot and bothered and those drivers rev their little Hondas, Jettas and Acuras while I just sit there the entire time watching for the sign of a cop. If I’m feeling frisky, I’ll sit there at the stop light, listening to all the testosterone and I won’t give any sign that I’m up for a race. The key here is to look uninterested, stupid and frankly, like the middle aged, fat woman I am, driving a car that I couldn’t possibly know how to drive with all that horsepower. Surely, I must have gotten this car out of a divorce settlement or something. But that never seems to stop those youngsters revving, revving, revving their often-too-tiny engines at me.

So, provided there is no cops in sight, my radar locator shows nothing around, there isn’t any kids or elderly wheelchair-bound patrons in the crosswalk and I’m feeling my oats, I’ll race them nearly every time. And often, win. Silly boys in their silly ricer cars with Nitrous bottles and computer chip-enhanced engines. You’ve got to be quicker than that.

By the way, and this is especially focused at all those law enforcement officers who are surely reading this, hanging onto every word and salivating at the very thought of finding out my address so they can send me a nice, fat speeding ticket: This is all just a dream…. because street racing is illegal.

September 22nd 2003

As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big.

After the frustration of Saturday afternoon’s local air base car club photo shoot and us walking out of the group lunch by the river, we had a fairly low-ley rest of the weekend. WS had to work all day yesterday (Sunday) as usual but we were able to get a lot done around here in the home ownership department, including removing a Sweet Flag iris that had mysteriously shown up in the middle of our landscaping and threatened to take over the entire side yard. Getting that mutha’ out was a bee-yotch! But who’s yer daddy? WS ruled the day after that.

Of course, the garbage men today hate us because we had 5 additional garbage bags, all containing big, heavy root balls of most of that plant. God help us if we didn’t get all of that plant tumor out.

We also got all the fall yard clean up done for the front yard. In November, all I should have to do is remove what’s left of the daylilies and the alyssum. The east winds will remove any other fallen leaves. I still need to tackle the backyard which should fill another couple of bags with branches, dead flower stalks, a couple of short, dead trees and the tomato plant. I might start working on that in the evenings this week because next weekend…

…is the last BIGGIE car show in a city a couple of hundred miles away on Saturday afternoon, immediately followed by the final show banquet, immediately followed by our long drive home, immediately followed by getting the car re-cleaned up for the last local show of the season early Sunday morning a few miles across town from where we live. We ought to do well at both shows and end the car show season at the top of the heap. Sunday’s show was a last minute entry for me and I’m participating in it simply to prove a point. Sure, the timing of the show completely sucks but I’m going to do it anyway.

You see, back when I decided to buy my car, we went to a total of 6 car dealerships, and the first 5 wouldn’t give me the time of day. They all tried to steer me into buying a mini-van or a SUV instead of my sports car. I mean, they ALL felt that I didn’t really know what I was doing and they wouldn’t believe that I could possibly want this kind of car. None of the salesmen would even talk to me, referring instead to WS, who kept pointing out that they needed to talk to me because I was the one buying the car. None of the salesmen understood it, so I continuously got ignored. Sunday’s last car show of the season is being held at one of these car dealerships. In fact, it’s being held at the worst dealership of the bunch. I have a point to prove here – that I DID get the car I wanted, I DID know what I wanted and I DIDN’T get it from them. AND it’s currently the most winning-est sports car of it’s type in the entire Pacific Northwest. Ha! Fuck you very much, [dealership name excluded until after the show] Chevrolet!

Today, I’m really getting stuff done already. I’ve got 6 hours of work left for my job which I expect will be low-key this week, laundry is going and the 1st coat of polish is on my car. I’ll be detailing my engine. tires and exterior window rubber today. House vacuuming is on the list and then there that back yard fall clean up to start on. And I should put out a jug of sun tea.

Oh, and I’ll be making Beef Bourguignon from scratch today. Delish!

Yes, I’ll be a working fool today and probably most of this week. I’ll think about relaxing after next weekend.

September 23rd 2003

If ignorance is bliss, some people must be orgasmic.

Even though the weather promises to continue it’s summer hold on us with cloudless, sunny skies and temperatures up in the high 80′s/low 90′s, we are ignoring it the best we can. For example, I knowingly put flannel sheets on our bed Sunday night. We’re still running the osculating fan in there and it can get a bit too warm overnight, but at least until the cooler weather gets here, the flannel sucks up the sweat better than the plain cotton sheets do.

MsNoManagementSkills has done zero work since last Thursday when MrSmartButFakingIt took his unknown vacation. She claims she is sick. Everybody is sick so it’s possible she really is. But since she’s took all her sick and vacation time allowed for the year back in March, she can’t take time off. So, she’s connected online to work but isn’t doing anything. Including ragging on me or anyone else that I’m aware of. It’s like she’s on vacation too only she’s getting paid for it. While this is a good thing, it also sucks because her work is piling up. Whatever. But if she starts feeling better by the end of the week and does her usual, “Let’s get to work, everyone!” crap, I’m going to lose it.

As a precaution, I’ll be working extra hours in the beginning of this week so I won’t have to pull a full 8 hours on Friday.

During today’s company conference call, she indeed sounded sick but I fail to understand why someone would purposely interrupt a meeting with LOUD, horrible mucus-laden, chest-wracking coughs aimed directly into the phone if not just for going for the sympathy vote. Of course, we won’t mention the silent coworker who constantly crinkles candy wrappers in the receiver. Yeah, he was on this conference call too. Can I just work with all mature people just once in my life?

Yesterday, I watched Dr. Phil, which is on at 3 pm around these parts. He’s doing this whole weight-loss thing and yesterday was like fat people Survivor. Today, 5 people will be going home from the house 13 are living in because Dr. Phil doesn’t think they are serious about losing weight. I’m learning some stuff that I never really thought of before about weight – Everyone has an excuse why they are overweight, and being overweight is a choice, something I’m starting to believe after hearing for years that your genes will determine what weight you are. I choose to be fat and I have reasons for being fat, the biggest one being that it takes too much work and effort not to be fat. I’m going to work on letting this sink into my head for a while along with the whole “treat food as medication and only take it when you need it” philosophy. Being as I HATE taking medication, this last part ought to help me a lot if I can remember it 24/7.

For entertainment during today’s company conference call, I found these Vintage posters both mildly disturbing and worth a quiet chuckle or 2. Isn’t PhotoShop cool?

The Blinder’s house for sale brought in a wad of interested parties late yesterday afternoon in their SUVs and PT Cruisers. Every one of them were Malibu Barbie-types: all bleached blonde, overly tan and too thin in their tailored shorts and belly shirts with flashy ankle bracelets and loud, musical cell phones. At least they all left their undoubtedly Baby Gapped kids strapped in the various vehicles car seats while they meandered through the house. One can clearly see now how kids die of heat stroke from being left in a car. If I cared, I probably should have called 9-1-1 on them. It was 80′something degrees outside yesterday. If one of the group decides to buy the Blinders’ home, I think you can imagine how easy it will be for me to come up with a nickname for them.

September 24th 2003

I’m trying to see things from that point of view but I can’t get my head that far up my ass.

To sum up the way the rest of this week looks like it will go at work, I give you The Corporate Bullshit Generator.

So last week, our company CEO pays some marketing dorks some ungodly amount of money (most of the raise money that most of didn’t get) just to have them tell us that we need to start capitalizing the LAST part of our company’s software program name and stop CAPITALIZING the first part of the program name. Furthermore, we no longer have to CAPITALIZE the company name itself, allowing us to not look like we are SCREAMING our company name in each and every customer email we address.

This means lots and lots of work is in store to get the company name spellings correct in the miles of online web information. The odd thing about all this is that in the latest software release, the spellings and CAPITALIZATION is using the OLD policy meaning our online web site and documentation doesn’t match our software. Okay, whatever.

However, today, I’m notified by Golden Child, the coworker who is filling in for MrSmartButFakingIt while he is on his unknown vacation, that all my work anywhere from a week ago to a year ago, isn’t showing up online due to an Index.htm file that nukes overwriting. And that the online push of this file was originally set up to work this way.

Oh, I am sooo disheartened about work today, but….

I refuse to let it get to me. Today is a Positive day and I have enough other non-job stuff to do to keep me from getting all depressed. I’ll be vacuuming out my car, cleaning interior glass, checking my rims and interior door jams for waterspots (the door jams just waterspot for the hell of it, I’m convinced), and getting that last coat of polish on the body and painted engine parts. Remember, the upcoming weekend is the last car show weekend of the season and I plan to go out on top with the last BIGGIE show on Saturday. Then and only then will I exhale.

In the meantime, while I dicking with car detailing stuff, I’ll be in and out of the bathroom. A word to the wise: No matter how hungry you think you are, don’t eat a big pile of pistachios on an empty stomach. What ensues is just.not.pretty.

That backyard fall cleanup isn’t going to happen this week. I have too much other stuff to get accomplished and it’s been too hot. Temps this weekend promise to be in the 90′s now, the weather people say. The good thing about this is that this will most likely be the last big hot weather push in this area. Next week, I’ll be dragging out all the fall and winter house decor things: The fireplace mantel arrangement, the pretty fall print, wire-edged ribbon to wrap around things, the dried fall leaves, the pumpkin and apple/cinnamon spice scented candles and potpourri. I’ve got an entire box of this kind of stuff that I wisely marked “Fall Stuff” last year so I could find it easily.

If I could just remember exactly where I wisely stored it…

And finally, SportsOrNothing next door are mowing their backyard “lawn” again for the second time in 3 days. “Hey! Forget about it! It’s dead! You didn’t give it a drop of water since last April. Mowing it isn’t going to make it grow green now.” God help them if they put down another overdose of fertilizer. I think that’s what killed that “grass” in the first place. Some people never learn.

September 25th 2003

Trust me, this journal isn’t as interesting as porn. And there are more clothes here

Someone explain to me the point of Hillary Duff. No, never mind. People are all too willing to jump on the “I’m cute, blonde and can’t sing or dance worth a crap!” bandwagon nowadays. She’s a fricken’ mutant.

I love period films. I love the costumes and sets of really good period films such as Amadeus and Out of Africa. It’s possible that this Luther film will be decent but I just can’t handle the religious aspect. I’m not about religion.

I have determined that this week shall be my bitch. I am kicking ass and taking names and this week is mine. I’m so far ahead of cleaning and detailing my car, so far ahead of work hours at my job and so far ahead of getting this place into shape before leaving for the last car show of the season Friday afternoon, it’s scary. Of course, it could all fall apart tomorrow but I don’t think so. I’m in charge here and I couldn’t possibly pencil in any problem at this late in the game.

Unfortunately, today, unless I get up and go make a pot of coffee, I’m not worth Jack Squat (as WS fondly notes about himself sometimes). I’m not exactly sure how much Jack Squat is actually worth but I suspect it’s reasonably low. Online, I’ve found that several people claim to not know Jack Squat, which only makes sense because not everyone can know everybody. But I did find over at Ask Jeeves that lots of other people refer to Jack Squat not being worth anything.

I’m not sure how Ms. Squat feels about this.

A momentous event: We have a change in the Cast of Characters above today. Ever since Ms. Blinder moved out from Mr. Blinder across the street, Mr. Blinder has taken up to playing his home stereo loudly every evening. Sometimes it’s Grateful Dead which is very grating on my nerves, but mostly he plays….Madame Butterfly. As in the opera score from Madame Butterfly. The depressing opera part where the Japanese character commits suicide. This presents an interesting scene when prospective home buyers are driving slowly by to look at the for sale flyer out front. None of them stopped last night. The music really was loud. So today, I’ve renamed The Blinders, which really is just a single Blinder now, as Butterfly Garcia. Make a notation in your Palm Pilots. Things could get interesting over there at last.

September 30th 2003

Blogeois – Bringing you the finest in Blog reading enjoyment. Doodle doodle dee. Wubba wubba wubba.

Today is a rush, rush, rush day. Yet at the same time, until we reach our destination a couple hundred miles away later this evening, it’s a “calm down and save your energy” day. We’ll be leaving here in a few hours. While I’ll be driving my car, WS will be driving his own car as the “Support” vehicle, carrying everything we will need to secure a decent finish in the last BIGGIE car show of the season – cleaner, polish, detailer spray, microfiber towels, more towels, tools, tire gloss, sticky roller lint picker uppers, duct tape (because you can fix anything with duct tape and if you can’t fix it with duct tape, it can’t be fixed), even more towels, my car cover, a couple changes of clothing and toiletries, the camera and various modes of communication via walkie-talkies, CBs and cell phones. And lots of bottled water. Temps are supposed to be record highs up into the 90′s or higher. Trust me when I say if this show wasn’t important, I wouldn’t be caught dead outside this weekend. The end of September in the Pacific Northwest and it’s 95+ degrees? Ridiculous!

List of things left to do before leaving:

Vacuum upstairs and downstairs
Unplug everything non-essential
Extra food and water for pets
Work 4-5 hours (3 hours left)
Pack car cleaning bag
Pack WS’s car when he gets home
Run dishwasher
Get in shoulder and arm workout
Finish laundry
Take shower
Finish packing toiletries bag
Set house lighting and adjust blinds
Take out garbage
Check CB radios
GO

Piece of cake!

We still haven’t decided whether to stay for the banquet later that evening. We really want to get back home as soon as possible and out of the heat. We won’t have a motel room at that point to shower and change in and after cleaning my car for 3 hours, we will be sweaty messes. And sunburned, sweaty messes by 6:30. But unfortunately, we won’t know how we finished for the day or for the entire season until the banquet so I’m guessing we’ll be staying. Maybe Drill Sargent Dave or the nice Competition Boy will let us hang out in their rooms until then to cool down and clean up.

Later, comes the long drive home, then unpacking and bed before I get up at the crack of dawn Sunday to get ready for the very last car show of the year. Luckily, this last show is just across town. The un-nice Competition Boy is expected to be there and has already told anyone who would listen that he’ll be winning everything. Well, not if I have anything to say about it. He isn’t expecting to see me after knowing that I’ll be out of town the night before. Surprise!

Another change to the Cast of Characters above – Golden Child, the company headquarters’ coworker who has been put in charge in MrSmartButFakingIt’s vacation absence has been Officially Renamed “Ego”. This coworker has been making all kinds of changes and holding all kinds of meetings, some of which I don’t think MrSmartButFakingIt is going to appreciate, but until he gets back next week, there is nothing stopping Ego. I’m sure I’ll hear more about this next week and will fill in details then.

Update:

Scratch that “calm down and save your energy” line of thought today. Ego (formerly Golden Child – see Cast of Characters to the right) decided to hold a mandatory training meeting today from 12 noon to 2 pm. EEKS! This is the exact time that I was going to use to do all those things on the list below to get ready to leave. Also, Ego knows that WS works his other real job during the day today and couldn’t be here even if he wanted to. Ego is trying their damnedest to make themselves look like Super Employee today.

Ego also is under the impression that both WS and I will be working this weekend “because the rest of the company will be working too.” Yeah, right. I know better. Also, Ego says, “You’ll get emails tonight that tells you what you’ll want to work on through late Sunday night.” I’m dying of laughter here because I’m officially on vacation after 3 pm today through early Wednesday morning, something Ego forgot to check on. I couldn’t care less about any email or any work I’m supposed to be doing. Ego sent out an email yesterday telling us to limit our vacation time over the next 3 months, that no vacation time will be allowed, in fact, through the first of next year (yet we know from past history, MsNoManagementSkills will “need” to take time off for her imaginary 10th and 11th grandparents death and funeral, usually taken both Thanksgiving and Christmas weeks.) Too bad had my days off scheduled for months now. An emergency in your job doesn’t necessitate any change in mine. Blow me, Ego. And you can be sure we’ll be letting MrSmartButFakingIt know how fucked up you and your last minute mandatory meeting was, in which a good 3rd of all the stuff you were touting about didn’t work because it wasn’t live yet. Mass confusion and apathy ensued.

October 1st 2003

Welcome October! I’ve been waiting for you for 11 months!

What a weekend that was! 4 days off is always a good thing and a thing that doesn’t happen much around here. Last Friday’s drive to the last BIGGIE car show of the season was fairly uneventful. WS and I took both cars, his as the support vehicle that carried all the car cleaning supplies that I would need for my car.

Saturday, we were at the car show location just before dawn. The car dealership was dark and quiet and the location itself was beautiful with lots of big trees and a view across a small valley. When the club putting on the show finally arrived, they got us parked right up front of the dealership windows, in the shade, which was mercifully cool. The day later on turned into a baking 90 degrees. Shortly after a ridiculous waiting period for our final 2 judges (out of 4 total) to actually judge my car, we got word that we had won 1st in our class, which barely put us 1st in the entire class for the season. Additionally, we had amassed the highest number of points overall in all the classes combined. It was a huge relief to have accomplished a 1st place win overall and one that was much better than we had expected. We really believed that this last show would be the one that we would toss out, since everyone is required to toss out the lowest score and we had yet to score a low one. It turns out, we tossed out one of our first show’s score. We did good.

After the boring banquet Saturday night, we hauled ass back home. I was working on getting laundry done by 10 pm and was in bed by 11. Sunday morning, I had to get up at the crack of dawn to attend the last small car show of the year that was being held just a few miles from our house. That show was an adventure because the car club’s new officers, the Boring Group, were mostly all there…and bad-mouthing Drill Sergeant Dave and the nice Competition Boy, calling them Saddam and Osama for reasons only they understood. It was very uncomfortable, so since my car was parked away from this group, I sat with my car and avoided the Boring Group at every turn. Who needs that kind of negativity? Certainly, not me, especially since I had such a great day the day before. This last show was supposed to be relaxing and fun and I was determined that this was how the day was going to go.

Near the end of the show, I was told that I had won my class. Another 1st place was a good way to finish the year. Unfortunately, the not-nice Competition Boy was there with his car and he wasn’t too happy that he didn’t win. I don’t think he’s won anything this year with that car after winning everything last year but hey! At least the Boring Group that now controls the car club isn’t calling him names in public. I think he’s got something going on with that bunch.

Monday, I spent the entire day digging out fall decor things for our house as well as cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning. Most people do their hardcore cleaning in the spring. Us? We do it in the fall and Monday was the day. My legs throbbed badly that night and I was completely exhausted by 8 pm.

Tuesday, WS and I went out looking for bedroom furniture, lamps and candles that smell good. We were originally going to buy a new TV since the 15 year old one in our bedroom died a week ago. That was one good NEC TV (back when NEC made TVs – NEC has recently started making them again) and we hated to see it ever die. But it did. After researching the exact TV model we wanted, we discovered that model is out of stock most everywhere. When we finally did find some place that had it in stock, WS decided he wasn’t ready to purchase it.

We’ve been going back and forth on whether to have a TV in our bedroom at all anymore. Watching TV in there before going to sleep is just a bad habit for us and keep us both up much later than we need to be awake, making us both very tired the following day. The idea is to get night stands and individual lamps (something we don’t currently have) and read before bed (something that puts us both right to sleep). This way, we’ll get in some reading that we usually need to do anyway for our jobs, and we’ll get to sleep that much sooner than if we were watching TV. I think we just need to exhibit some serious self control over our bedtime TV viewing but I’m not sure I have enough of it myself. It’s too easy to crawl into bed at 10 and watch the news, then the video crack channels – HGTV/Discovery/TLC/National Geographic/Travel Channel until 1 or 2 am.

Today, it’s all about the job. Ego has stepped on my toes so many times, I no longer care, which has only increased my apathy level for my job to Condition Yellowish/Orange. Today is the first day I can finally get that company name change started in all 283,000 documents that need corrections. And while I am hard at work on that, MsNoManagementSkills keeps popping in the company IM system, wanting me to change something else to suit her. I suspect the rest of this week will be the same, as she seems very put out that I took a couple of vacation days Monday and Tuesday, something she can’t get away with right now. Typical. But I couldn’t care less right now because…

…it’s OCTOBER! Finally, the fall month we both love because it officially kicks off the fall season. The past 2 days has been very foggy here, as if someone suddenly clicked a switch from hot, cloudless, sunny days to cool, misty, foggy days. I haven’t been able to see the tree covered hill (small mountain actually) behind us since Monday afternoon. Once our nighttime temperatures go down below 50, we should get to see some leaf color changes up there. When that happens, I hope to get some time to get our backyard cleanup done. It’s very overgrown back there and looks awful.

Today, also starts our Winter project – Ourselves and the shape we’re in. Most car enthusiasts have a time of year when car events slow down and they can work on car projects. Since I won’t be working on car things most of this winter, I’ll be taking on myself as my winter project. I’m in awful shape. So I’ll be back on Atkins’s, working out on the rowing machine and weights and hoping to look visibly different in 6 months. I can do this! I will do this!

October 2nd 2003

I’m trying to talk my boss into joining a bridge club. If she joins, she’ll jump next Tuesday.

MsNoManagementSkills has started a new diet and an aerobics/walking program at home AND has stopped her medications. I don’t know what you think of this, but I’ve always heard and read that someone taking anti-depression meds should never go off them cold turkey and without doctor’s supervision and approval. Reading about how much she’s spending on her non-divorced boyfriend’s 3 kids for clothes from Old Navy, I think she’s looking for ways to save money to continue her shopping habit. God knows, the kids mother and father are buying them clothes and stuff. It’s just MsNoManagementSkills thinks the stuff she buys them is better, and makes them like her more. These kids are being played between the 2 women purposely.

Last week, there was a kid event that required both these kid’s mother and MsNoManagementSkills to be in the same vehicle together and things did not go well. MsNoManagementSkills pulled her usual “I’m going to keep an eye on you via the car mirror but you won’t see me do it” thing that she does when we all travel to company headquarters together. The kid’s mother saw this and threw a fit to which MsNoManagementSkills outright denied doing it. More name calling went back and forth in both of their Online Journals until MsNoManagementSkills deleted her entries. You’d never know that these 2 people used to be friends and are now mortal enemies, all because they’ve slept with the same guy.

And soon, they might have another issue to hate each other over – I think MsNoManagementSkills is considering getting pregnant with her boyfriend, the kid’s mother’s soon-to-be (maybe) ex. Hence the real reason why she’s trying to quit her medications.

At work today, MrSmartButFakingIt is back from his belated honeymoon and is in one of those “I’m too busy to talk to the likes of you” moods. For months, I’ve had a report in to get instructions on how to do a very important aspect of my job, an aspect that only MrSmartButFakingIt knows how to do and too often doesn’t have time to do. Or at least that’s what I used to think. It turns out, MrSmartButFakingIt gave instructions on how to do this task to Ego just before leaving on vacation. And for some reason, Ego won’t share the instructions with me. WTF?

So today, I asked MrSmartButFakingIt to do this task. Since I spent 10 hours updating all our company information available to the public, the information needs to go live and this task needs to be done. After about an hour, MrSmartButFakingIt finally replied to my request with a “Can’t you get Ego to do this? I’m busy!” kind of response. Well gee, MrSmartButFakingIt, I COULD do it MYSELF and never bother you again if you’d only share the instructions with me instead of the company SUCK UP!

Naturally, I didn’t actually say that back, because I need to keep my job for at least another year but I was thinking it awfully loud and sent back a much more gentle reply to which MrSmartButFakingIt came back with “I’ll send you those instructions.” Yeah, I bet you will. When pigs can fly. BTW: I’m STILL waiting for those instructions or for my task to be done.

Another wonderfully foggy day here. It sprinkled here last night and early this morning. The air is somewhat cool, not that crisp, fall air feel just yet and that’s what I’m waiting for. And the fall leaf color. Where I grew up, we didn’t have spring or fall seasons. The year went from cool to burning, searing heat back to cool. I never saw the yellow, orange and red fall leaf colors until I was well into my adult years (and I had to take a vacation alone to see it at all). Now that I live in a place that allows me to see it all the time, I know I will never take fall color for granted. It’s beautiful here.

If you’ve visited here for a few months, you’ll recall that we have a raccoon that visits occasionally. One night, we had 2 raccoons but that was months and months ago. Because I have this thing about helping the natural wildlife make a come back into this development that was built into a small valley along a stream, I keep bunches of grapes, unsalted peanuts and nut hearts outside our back door. Yes, I know, this makes animals and birds dependent on me but if it weren’t for me, they wouldn’t be here at all. Technically, they would be here if no one had sold this land and developed it, but there’s nothing I could have done to stop that. Since we didn’t see any other living thing around here for the first year and a half we lived here after the development was built, including ordinary birds for some strange reason, we thought it would be a good thing to help bring back the birds, at least. Now, we have a dozen or more different birds that visit regularly, 2 squirrels that I verified just this morning and at least 1 raccoon. If we could just get rabbits, heron and deer up here, I’d be squealing with delight!

So over the past few nights, I’ve put out a small bunch of both red and green grapes and twice now, the raccoon has eaten the red grapes while completely ignoring the green grapes. Why? I don’t know. Just a month ago, the raccoon was scarfing down green grapes like they were a gourmet delicacy. Now, they aren’t being touched. Which tells me, the raccoon feels comfortable enough around here to think that I will cater to his whim and only set out red grapes. Well, homey don’t play that game. I’ll still set out a few red grapes, but he’s getting green ones as well. I’m spoiling him already as it is.

Tonight is a car club meeting. After saying I wouldn’t be going to anymore since the Boring (and bad-mouthing) Group took over the club last month, I think I’ve changed my mind. I really feel like driving my car. WS won’t be going and probably won’t go to any more meetings. Since the club has a Fall Tour party coming up in mid-October (for which our hotel room has been reserved since last July), I’m interested in finding out the logistics on where we are meeting and when. WS won’t be going to the party and I suspect the party will be the last thing I do with this group. If I wanted this kind of constant, back stabbing crap in my life, I’d work with MsNoManagementSkills and Ego 24/7. And seemingly today, MrSmartButFakingIt too.

October 3rd 2003

This blog entry is offered by weight, not volume. Some settling of it’s intellectual content may have occurred during the posting process.

Today at work, I’m kicking ass and taking names. Don’t ask me why I have any motivation at all today but I’m not questioning it. Even the fact that the company (now forever known as The Company) is holding a big barbeque party this afternoon at headquarters that includes free food, at least one keg of microbrew beer and live music. We NEVER get this treatment up here, yet they fly us down there once or twice every couple of years so I guess it makes up for it.

Oh, and yesterday, we got a Company goodie bag that contained an official Company pen, an official Company plastic car trash bag (what are they trying to say here?), an official Company bottle opener (aren’t most bottles twist tops now?), official Company stickers and a small tin of official Company breath mints. At least that’s what I think they are because that’s what they sound like when I rattle the sealed metal container. I’ll pack these away with the rest of The Company items that they’ve decided to send us over the years – the Company t-shirts that never fit and fall apart when you wash them, more of those official Company bottle openers, assorted Company memo pads and pens, a couple of hideous Company-logo-ed swim towels and those employee ID dog tags that ended up containing enough lead to be seriously concerned about. Uh, guys? Next time, can you save the money on crap you think might elevate our already toilet-level morale and just increase our pay a bit? Thanks!

Just as I predicted, MsNoManagementSkills is trying to get vacation days off around Christmas this year WHICH IS SUPPOSED TO BE A BIG NO-NO and something she just sent out an email about last week. God, this woman pisses me off!

Okay, I gotta calm down here. I need to be calm to keep getting this mountain of work done today even though everyone at The Company will be drinking, partying, NOT working…..

Hmmm…that didn’t work. Okay, don’t think about it. Think nice, calming thoughts. About nice things. Like bunnies. Warm, snuggly bunnies and baby alpacas.

*deep breath*

Ms. Blinder showed up yesterday afternoon across the street and Mr. Blinder left immediately thereafter. I was sitting out front of our house, trying to get a rock out of my shoe (really) and usually, she says something to me. Not yesterday. We all move on in life.

Other than The Dimmer’s daily screaming daughter next door (“Damn it! Give her anything she wants to SHUT HER THE FUCK UP!”), the neighborhood has been very, very quiet. Certainly more quiet than it was last year at this time when the SportsOrNothing kids next door just got a car to share and raging cases of hormones and pimples. Last year, DrunkTank Willie was busy polluting the air with various woodshop machinery sounds and untrue rumors about his neighbors, including us. At least The Dimmers haven’t spread any rumors that we know about but we’re not sure about those sounds coming from his garage until the wee hours of the morning. What’s with all the hammering and slamming doors anyway?

No fog today. Just a light haze that will probably burn off by late this afternoon. I can see the small, tree covered mountain behind us but there isn’t any sign of fall leaf cover change yet. Our nighttime temps are still too high for that. But next week looks like it’s full of rainy days which brings cooler temps. Maybe fall is really here at last.

I’m saw a very unflattering picture of myself yesterday from a car show about a month ago that someone else took. I’m keeping this imagine in my mind when I think I’m hungry for anything other than Atkins’ approved food. Whatever works and it’s working today. Protein shakes and jerky. MMmmmmm.

This weekend requires a trip to the birdseed shop, a local gourmet grocery store and possibly a paint store (provided we have any extra money lying around – like THAT ever happens). I need to get cracking on that backyard fall clean up and I really want to paint a Mariner’s Compass design around the ceiling lamp in our bedroom, with WS’s engineering help and approval. Actually, I’d love to paint this around the chandelier in the entry way but there is no way that I’m going to dangle myself 22 feet above the floor below just to paint something on a whim.

October 5th 2003

It’s Sunday night and I feel like crap. Earlier, it was Sunday afternoon and I felt like crap then too and just before that, when it was Sunday morning, I really felt like crap.

Feeling like crap makes one not do anything worth Jack Squat and if you were hanging around here last week, you’ll remember that little discussion we had about how much Jack Squat is worth.

Let’s not go there again just yet. It’s not making my head or stomach feel any better.

I don’t know why I feel like crap. I just do. I didn’t drink anything over the weekend. And I know I didn’t eat anything that had gone over. In fact, I had been eating good Atkins’ approved food. But feeling as I do makes me wonder if I picked up something last week. And being as I didn’t go anywhere but to the car club meeting Thursday night, where the club’s Typhoid Andy was coughing and sneezing as usual, I’m wondering if that was it.

But being as I mostly, well…sometimes, believe that if a person believes something that they think might be the case, then it could come true, I refuse to believe that I caught something.

I didn’t catch anything.

I just feel like crap today.

October 6th 2003

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, ‘Where have I gone wrong?’ Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to take more than one night.

I don’t feel like crap today. Well, other than the “I have to work today” usual kind of crap feeling. But I did sleep like crap so the crap feeling didn’t abate until early this morning. So as to not repeat last night’s adventure of lying there, alternating between thinking I was going to barf and debating whether to get up and surf the ‘net, I’ll be indulging in a Tylenol P.M. this evening, thankyouverymuch.

Today, while I briefly surfed around during a lunch break, I found an awesome online Spiro Graph program. I loved Spiro Graphs when I was growing up and who knows? If my parents let me play with it more often, I might have grown up to be a great mathematician or something. Or at least understood math. And I’m talking about more than just adding and sometimes subtracting. I hate math. In the hours, that I’ve played with this program, my favorite setting is Radius1: 56, Radius2: 73, Position: -90, Velocity: 10 and Resolution: 452. Then part way through the drawing, I change the colors from Red to Green to Blue to Purple to Yellow and end with a Rust color. Gorgeous. And the really cool part? I don’t have to know what Radius, Position, Velocity or Resolution means.

The Blinders house for sale across the street has been reduced in price. I guess someone really wants to sell it now, but my guess is still that that person isn’t Mr. Blinder, a.k.a Butterfly Garcia. He was playing Grateful Dead music fairly loud today through his open windows as he slowly painted all his formerly green tinged walls a stark, boring white.

The Dimmers next door popped in those styrofoam vent plugs under their house to ward off the upcoming cool fall air last weekend which their cute little dog found and tore to shreds all over their backyard today. It’s a nice addition to the 2.9 billion toys that cover the grass over there. The rain has finally come to our region this evening. I don’t think the Dimmers will be out there anytime soon to pick any of this mess up. Again, I really don’t want to know what their house looks like if their backyard is any indication of how they maintain things.

Rain forecasted for the rest of the week. I am one happy camper.

MsNoManagementSkills is proudly bragging about being off her meds for almost a week and claims to be on cloud nine. Good for her. Unfortunately, we all know what happens to bi-polar people once their cloud nine drifts away. God help the rest of us.

Today, MsNoManagementSkills made herself sound all important by claiming that she was required to attend one conference call after another. The problem here was…there were no conference calls today that anyone at company headquarters knew of. Just lots of online boasting by hers truly. This is one of the typical signs of her mental instability when things aren’t going as well as she would have everyone else believe. And she and her boyfriend insists that both of their Online Journals are now drama-free. Yeah, right. Not if the boyfriend’s wife has anything to do with it. The barbs have already been slinging but MsNoManagementSkills deletes those entries after a few hours.

All this, and her obsession with getting her hair cut every other week. Unless you are in the military, a person who’s very thinning, already very, very, very short hair shouldn’t be getting their hair cut this often. The woman is already nearly bald, but she doesn’t see it. But hey! I never see how large of a body I have until I see it in pictures, so I guess I could just keep my mouth shut.

I could, but you know I won’t.

October 7th 2003

I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people.

Working really long hours this week. I’m changing all those thousands of work documents to reflect the money needlessly spent to announce to the world that The Company no longer needs the use of CAPITAL letters in it’s name. Unless they are referring to the second half of The Company’s software name WHICH IS NOW ALL IN CAPITAL letters. Some people would call this kind of work “Busy work”. I call it a paycheck. It’s a great time waster in a time when everyone else in The Company is running around like their asses are on fire. Why, you might ask? That’s their kind of “Busy work” and they think it makes everyone else stand back in awe of their work ethic.

Yeah, whatever.

I guess another weekly questionaire came out on the Internet today and naturally, MsNoManagementSkills had to take 2.3 hours out of her “work” day to fill it out and post it in her Online Journal.

Except this one asks everything EXCEPT for Social Security numbers. Date of birth, name on birth certificate, city or town of birth, hospital of birth, mother’s name and maiden name, father’s name and dates of birth for both, address and phone number of current residence, department store most likely to max out a credit card in, number of credit cards currently own, type of car currently own, etc. And yes, she answered them all and then posted it in a public place. I really hate to be one of those people who wish bad things onto another person, but with all the years of crap, dread and downright fear this woman and her husband has purposely and maliciously thrust into my life for the only reason that I just happen to work with them and live in the same town, I’m having a hard time not wanting her to have her identity stolen just because she stupidly posted it for the entire world to peruse. Yes, I know karma comes back. I’m hoping it really does for her because she’s due for a big dose of the bad stuff.

We made a big batch of lentil soup today, using all the best ingredients we could afford: Applewood-smoked bacon, Yukon potatoes, fresh garden thyme, organically grown leeks, french grey sea salt…and 3 cups of lentils that had been sitting in a big jar up in our cubboard since we moved here 4 and a half years ago. Okay, so I didn’t want to spend money on new dried lentils when these old dried ones looked just fine. It turned out pretty good. Of course, we’ll have lentil soup for the next week and a half…but that jar up in the cubboard is nearly empty now.

It was supposed to rain today. It didn’t. No, I wasn’t too happy about that but I was working 11 hours anyway. The last hour or so I worked, I admit I was slightly under the influence of lentil soup and a big glass of an Oregon Pinot Noir.

Tomorrow, I might just regret that.

October 8th 2003

Anti-stress agent. Bang head here.

It’s noon and I haven’t done a single thing at work today. Sure, I’ve been logged in for nearly 3 hours. I just haven’t done anything. Maybe reading this article about toxic workplaces wasn’t such a good idea this morning. Especially points – What’s the difference between a factor of production and a human being and why nothing changes #1: Wishing doesn’t make it so. Damn. I’m just all depressed now. Seeing in print what I already know about The Company I work for didn’t do me any good today.

In happier news, MrSmartButFakingIt has set up a special online area for me and me alone in a software bug area of The Company. Goodie for me. Unfortunately, every time an engineer changes the location of something or changes the name of something in a new version of The Company’s software, instead of letting everyone know of the change (that, more often than not, was only done because someone wasn’t paying attention to the way things have been in the past), I get a notice to change all the company documentation. Pronto. How’s that saying go again? A fuckup on your part doesn’t necessitate an emergency on my part. Pronto, my ass.

MsNoManagementSkills has been off her Zoloft for a week now and is nearly completely freaked out. Apparently, she’s experiencing what everyone experiences when they stop anti-depression medication – brain shivers. Hello? What did you expect when you’ve been taking something to avoid brain imbalances and reality?

And what is with all the talk of something called “Piss shivers”? WTF is this? Apparently, everyone thinks that everyone gets a shivery feeling when everyone urinates. I must be the only person on the planet that doesn’t and has never heard of this before. WS claims to be the second person on the planet who’s never had these or heard of them.

Of course, the topic probably would have never come up had MsNoManagementSkills Online Journal hadn’t started of the day in her usual posting fashion:

“I wanted to keep sleeping but I had to get up and pee.” And all of her Journal friends chime in saying they have this all the time and they were so proud when they witnessed their sprogs having this for the very first time.

Yep. Absolutely, fascinating, isn’t it? Every frickin’ day. Thank you for sharing this with the world…….and your coworkers who have to read your Online Journal every day in order to prepare themselves for what crap you’ll more than likely hurl our ways.

Like this week. Not only is MsNoManagementSkills freaking out because of going cold turkey off her meds but she’s taking this Friday off as well. I guess all that talk last week about not taking time off unless scheduled 2 weeks in advance doesn’t apply to her.

And now you know why I’m so not motivated today. And as for working overtime this week?

Uh….no?

October 9th 2003

Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. Same as it EVER was…

Because I’m working such long hours at work this week and am starting to sound like a broken record, I’ve dug up some thoughts I posted on my journal back on October 9, 2000. For the record, I worked for the same Company then as I do now. Here’s how my days then used to go:

From October 9th, 2000: I am having the worst day in a long time (not that many of my days actually go well).

I sent out an email today to my co-workers basically smacking a certain LARGE group of people who use a certain HUGE ISP who advertises about instant messaging and they’ve got mail, etc… Somehow, and no one knows just how yet, somehow the email was sent to the customer from which I got the original email from. What’s more, a co-worker replied to my email yet again smacking this large group of brainwashed people and THAT email also went to the customer. Fun, fun, fun. I spent nearly 3 hours crying and worrying about whether I would lose my job or not. The email department of the company I work for is looking into why and how this happened and it looks like it was no fault of my own but the fact remains that if I didn’t have anything nice to say about this customer, I shouldn’t say anything at all. No word from the customer yet. He’s probably talking to a lawyer and will demand my job.

It’s been very, very windy here for the last 4 days. Everything is blowing down or blowing away. Half of our bark dust has blown away from our house and I have to keep watering it down to keep it.

WS isn’t having the greatest day either but he can whine about that on his own journal of which he doesn’t have.

Yeah, okay. Octobers have historically been bad months for me. I don’t know why that is. I love the month of October. The air gets that crisp, fall feel to it. It starts getting cold at night but warms up in the day. The rainy season begins up here in the Pacific Northwest. People start burning wood in their fireplaces and setting pumpkins outside their doors. I start thinking of caramel apples and popcorn balls…but Octobers don’t seem to like me.

The month of October has always brought me more than what I feel is my fair share of heartache, in the form of relationship breakups, deaths in my family and/or close friends (enough so that I don’t have much family or any close friends left), traffic tickets, financial ruin and plain ol’ bad luck. The stock market always does a big belly flop and we’ve lost close to 20K so far. I’ve made an idiot of myself twice (or was it three times) already in front of my bosses and co-workers (later discovered to not be all my fault thanks to BikerDude and MsNoManagementSkills). Nearly all the new relationships that we’ve established with all our new neighbors have gone sour. And my computer is in the process of taking a big shit. Already, my new Outlook program has become corrupted, my work program has become corrupted, and my newly reinstalled copy of Age of Empires II has become corrupted. The cause of the corruption has been narrowed down to one of two programs – a public beta version of the program the company I work for has released and that I need to run and learn in order to do my job, and/or the ICQ program, a program I also need to communicate with my co-workers, bosses, and friends.

Even though I’ve taken a few big hits to my self esteem lately, I’m continuing to try to work though it. I’m hitting the gym 4 nights a week and am considering getting back into bodybuilding just a little, I’m only 1 and 1/2 assignments behind in a Flash Animation class that I’m enjoying, WS and I are learning to become gourmet cooks and are taking a beginner’s wine appreciation course at the end of the month. I’m continuing to take my vitamins and supplements including an increased dosage of St. John’s Wort and later today, I’ll be moving everything over to the bigger, better computer in the house. No more using the wimpy, hand-me-down computer. In the bigger, better computer, I’ve even got a CD burner and will finally, FINALLY learn how to burn CDs (something I feel that WS has hogged 100% of for the last 2 years).

So, even though October is throwing it’s weight around, I’m trying hard not to wallow in it and instead, am taking steps to use this time for some well deserved self improvement.

October 10th 2003

If a kid asks where rain comes from, a cute thing to tell him is, “God is crying.” And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is “Probably because of something you did.”

Well, our involvement in the car club we were part of is nearly at it’s end. Next weekend, I’ll be joining the club on it’s fall cruise to a resort city 200 miles away to party and spend the night and personally, I think it’s going to be awful. WS won’t be going; he outright refuses to go and rightfully so after the mess The Boring Group made of the club since taking over from The Working Group. I suspect the whole thing will be one of those uncomfortable “Us versus Them” kinds of affairs, where no one wants to be in the same room without each other, lots of alcohol-induced name calling (first under one’s breath and then louder and more pointedly as the evening wears on) and someone in the corner, from The Boring Group, taking names and notes for future reference. I was going to renew my membership for this club at one time. Now, I won’t be. This is no longer the club we originally joined as I rudely discovered last weekend at the last car show of the season, when new members were obscenely bad-mouthing members of The Working Group.

It’s a free feeling, not being encumbered by a club who you feel you need to be loyal to when you no longer agree with the way things are being run but you still have a valid membership to. I suspect after next weekend, I, as a solid member of The Working Group, will be blacklisted for any future event, car show or cruise that this club ever puts on again. I’m okay with that. I don’t need a club to feel like I belong and I accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish this past summer anyway with this club, all the while members of The Boring Group tried to talk me into stopping my participation in car shows (“Car shows bore us to tears!, they all cried. “You’re too old to be working this hard on your car! Come with us to play shuffleboard!”)

Okay, I made up that “shuffleboard” reference but they did say all the rest, including the “too old” part. Fuckers.

The weather yesterday was wonderful here. Lots of rain, some thunder (it rarely thunders here for some geographical reason), a little lightening and hail and the power flickered a few times. A funnel cloud was reportedly spotted a hundred or so miles away and that was exciting until the guy admitted he was drunk and everything looked like it was spinning to him.

Tomorrow morning, bright and early allegedly, we get our big Rio Grande 5-drawer chests (that we’ll be using as nightstands) delivered. Because we have a tall bed, we’ve never really had nightstands. (Yes, I’m purposely avoiding all mention of those hideous end tables that originally came with the bed that I gleefully helped take to the city dump for obvious reasons.) Most nightstands are short and look ridiculous sitting dwarf-like next the Paul Bunyan bed I brought into our relationship 15 years ago, the very same bed I fought long and hard to get back from my first husband when he took it in the divorce after giving it to me for my 20th birthday when we were first married. Had his second wife not been a very rich paraplegic who couldn’t get into the tall bed, and had he not been looking for a way to make me pay for something else I technically “owned”, I probably would have never seen it again. And just as he lied to me over the course of our entire sham of a relationship and marriage, I learned well from him and lied when I “promised” to make weekly payments to him in the amount of $20 until I had paid him the entire $600 for the bed that was mine in the first place. The fact that he knew I didn’t have a job at the time we made this arrangement and known that I’d been living in near squalor and sleeping on the floor of a roach-infested apartment with no electricity, had to have alerted him that just maybe, after my first $20 payment, he’d never see me or the bed again. But don’t think I didn’t pay for it in other ways. He left me with $38,000 in debt which took me 8 long years of working minimum wage jobs to pay off while he enjoyed spending the $1.8 million his second wife brought into their relationship. I just never paid him for the bed. Oopsie!

But I’m not bitter. Not anymore. Really. And it’s only taken me 23 years to get nightstands I like for my bed, thanks 100% to WS, his sharp eyes and his sudden desire to finally look for them. Thanks, WS. We deserve these!

October 13th 2003

Happy “Let’s celebrate killing Native Americans and raping the countryside” Day.

4 years ago today, my right index finger was broken in an unfortunate rock wall building accident. MsNoManagementSkills still holds this against me because she had to do extra work that day. Back then, we were the only employees The Company had to deal with it’s customers.

Yet another change has been made to the way The Company wants to spell it’s product name. Last Friday, I had finally finished changing all those million or so documents to reflect the new change, which is now all incorrect again. No, I won’t be busting my ass to change it all over again, for the third time in a row. But it does infuriate me to know that millions of Company dollars are being spent every week for each and every one of these changes. This is part of the reason why we all got shafted in our pay raises this year, so The Company can waste money like this.

After a weekend of spending time with a friend who’s due to pop out a kid next month, MsNoManagementSkills announced in her Online Journal that she wants a baby. Not to have a child to love and raise, but to have one so she will get “lots of presents and gifts and attention.” I am not kidding. Hello? Can you say selfish bitch?

And now we are fairly certain why she and FatHead split up. She wants children, he didn’t. What we don’t understand is why she thinks that he was immature in not wanting children. But can you blame him when she thinks this way?

Yesterday, I worked on a car project for the nice Competition Boy because he was so kind as to help me work and polish parts on my car all last winter. He’s having his car painted with flame graphics. Because I used to do this for money on the side 15-20 years ago, I volunteered my services in the design of the flames. No problem. But his ISP keeps eating the pictures I’ve sent him on the progress. And no, the pictures aren’t large at all (file size-wise). Annoying. If he hasn’t received them by this evening, even though I sent them yesterday, I’ll have to wait until he gets his new connection tomorrow when he goes from dial up, crappy ISP used by millions to cable modem using the slightly less crappy comcast service. This will give me time to create the second of 2 graphic designs so he can decide which one he wants. He’ll be having his car painted the first weekend in November. Yeah, I’m a bit jealous but I’d never have my car painted by the guy doing it. He’s just doing it to pay off a debt to someone else and this means, he won’t be doing such a great job of it. A person usually gets what they pay for and I don’t expect this paint job to look good for long. I also think this nice Competition Boy has no idea what he’s in for in regards to maintaining this paint job. The guy just waxed his car for the very first time a month ago and believe me, his paint looked like crap beforehand. He just doesn’t get it.

It rained all weekend, making this place a nice and cozy spot to be. But because of the strong rain, I didn’t get any backyard clean up work done. I’ll get to it. Someday soon. The night temps are still in the 50′s around here. No fall color leaves yet and no dropped leaves. Last year at this time, it hadn’t gotten down to freezing at night until the first week of November, a full month later than usual. Hmmm…maybe there really is something to that whole global warming thing.

October 14th 2003

Words within may contain moments of sheer boredom. Parental Guidance is advised.

Listening to WS help set up someone’s new computer connection and email accounts over speakerphone is interesting. Real interesting. Add extra interest bonus points if the other person barely knows what a keyboard is let alone what sttp and pop accounts are. This is downright painful.

Speaking of painful, my deep dental cleaning was today and because WS is working from home today, I didn’t bother to log out of work (What? MsNoManagementSkills does it all the time for her chiropractic appointments in a city 70 miles away). My cleaning wasn’t painful at all, except a little nerve shock I had at one of my back molars. 4 out of 5 dental hygenists agree it’s probably a cracked tooth and I do too. But we’re not worrying about that right now. It doesn’t give me any problems or trouble if that’s what it really is. I picked up a flyer for teeth whitening for WS who’s talked about it for years but now I agree that he needs it. No insurance help with this procedure but it’ll be worth the $275 if we can find that money sometime next year for him. I also asked the hygienist if eating different things affected how much plaque builds up. I was wondering if eating Atkins’-style would cause more plaque to build up than if I ate,….say…nothing. Nope, was the answer. Doesn’t matter. It’s bacteria, not what a person eats.

So I can continue eating and have to continue having my teeth cleaned. I can deal.

Filling the bird feeders today, I found a pile of feathers on the back walkway. Someone didn’t have a good day and someone else was still around. As I was approaching the feeders in the back corner, something cat-like scrambled up and over the fence. Because there is a big evergreen juniper in the way, I didn’t get to see who it was. Please don’t be the Cat From Hell…

That thing that I ordered for my car should have been delivered here today according to the FedEx web site and my tracking number. According to the FedEx web site, my package is on a delivery truck for delivery. But it’s nearly 7 pm. I don’t think I’ll be seeing any package here tonight, which is tragic because it contains some car lens that I wanted to have installed by Saturday morning’s cruise to some resort town a few hundred miles away. Oh well. I’m not going to get my panties all in a bunch.

And finally, I re-found my journals from 1997. Periodically, I’ll post tidbits from there, but only tidbits. If you think my life is boring and dull now, just wait until you read this shit.

October 15th 2003

All the crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw.

Being as I work from home and online for a software company located 2000 miles away, I usually have the TV going in the background. It helps structure my day – Morning news followed by Good Day Live (from L.A.) means I need tea or coffee and I really should make some effort to do some work. Montel Williams follows which I really don’t like, so this is a good time to catch up on other people’s Blogs and Journals and get vacuuming and laundry done. At 11:00 am, the first of 3 local news programs come on which I watch nearly religiously. I like knowing what’s happening in town and what the weather is expected to be for the coming week. I get most of my work done during this hour and a half. In the afternoon, there’s the crappy Entertainment Tonight which is a rerun of whatever played the night before followed by a Seattle show that is mostly annoying but occasionally has something of interest. This is another good time to finish up laundry or any other cleaning I might have left. I do a lot of car cleaning during this show.

At 2 pm, another episode of Montel Williams comes on for some reason. It’s not like we didn’t get enough of him the first time around. I usually surf the channels looking for something good on one of the video crack channels – Discovery, TLC, HGTV, Biography, etc. I’ve still got my nose to the grindstone for work and I continue onward through Dr. Phil at 3 and Maury or Oprah or Cops from 4 to 5 pm (depending on which is less annoying). After 5, WS usually gets home and we start our nightly conversation about what to do for dinner:

WS – Are you hungry?

Me – I’m always hungry (a phrase I learned from WS).

WS – So we could have this or we could have that or we could order that over there…

Me – Um….I’m not hungry after all (and that’s usually when we find our own dinner from something in the fridge or the cupboard unless I feel perky enough to create some culinary masterpiece like last week’s lentil soup).

I think we’ll have buffalo tacos tonight. Yes, we’re meat eaters. A local grocery store had buffalo (actually bison) on sale last week and we love this stuff.

We always have the TV going during dinner and more often than not, we eat in the living room (where WS does more living than I do) in front of the TV, which I know is bad but hey! I’m a rebel that way. We don’t really watch anything regularly except Survivor and sometimes West Wing. Occasionally, we remember to catch a few other shows but mostly, WS will find something on one of the movie channels or he’ll ask me if I want to watch a DVD, which I usually don’t. Like I said, WS does more living in the living room than I do. Usually, I retire back up here, in the office, to play a mindless computer game until I’m tired enough to go to bed. If I’m still here when the nighttime local news comes on, I know I’ve probably stayed up too long.

Today, the weather outside is wonderful. It’s dark and gray and gloomy and for several hours this morning, I turned the lights on. I like being able to turn on the lights during dark, rainy days because I love the golden hue it gives everything. It’s like camping deep in the thick forest where little sunlight gets through and you have to have the Coleman lanterns going to see the boundaries of your campsite (and scare away whatever might be lurking out there). The weather is supposed to be just like this for the rest of the week and I am one happy clown!

October 16th 2003

I am in shape. Round is a shape.

The Caloric Restriction Society or CR Society. Now there’s something both scary and interesting. People who purposely restrict their caloric intake because studies on other creatures have found that life can be extended. Would you reduce your food, voluntarily and only so you lose 1-2 pounds a month, if you knew you’ll live anywhere from 7 to 30 years longer? Provided, of course, you don’t get hit by a bus or ferry anytime soon.

Unfortunately for me, I would need to reduce my calories for years before I’d see any of the results that these people claim “upsets” their friends and family as being “too thin”. In a way, WS and I already practice a form of CR. We rarely eat breakfast, skip lunch fairly regularly but boy, do we ever make up for it over dinner and on the weekends.

Besides, I can’t live with severe hunger pains, so I guess I won’t be living long then. It’s a matter of quality of life at that point I would think. Live long and rarely eat, or die fat munching on spaghetti, donuts and fast-food burgers.

I am so craving French fries right now. The good thing is, I haven’t had any French fries in a couple of months. French fries and potato chips are definitely my weakness. Never saw a potato chip I didn’t like. Fries, on the other hand….Jack-In-The-Box has the suckiest fries on the planet and it’s safe to say that if everyone made their fries like Jack does, I wouldn’t have a weakness for them. Either way, I don’t want fries.

I won’t be going to the car club meeting tonight. I have better things to do, like make WS’s famous cheese spread to take on the last cruise of the year this coming Saturday (where I will only be sharing it with Drill Sargent Dave and his wife, and the nice Competition Boy and his wife. I’m thinking of taking Little Smokies too. I have to be snack mom or something for Saturday evening.

Yesterday, when I should have gotten that package from FedEx, I was very dismayed to see on the FedEx web site that they had Incorrect Address listed for the whereabouts of my package. WTF??? I thought. So I called them. It turns out, someone put an incorrect address on my package and it was sitting in some dead end box. Crap. I really wanted to install those parts before Saturday’s cruise, but something tells I won’t get it in time now. I gave them the correct address, but I don’t expect to actually get the package. FedEx can be such “that address doesn’t look right so it must not exist” assholes. We had this problem with them a few years ago. I’d never use FedEx if I had a choice. The guy who sent me the parts must be wondering if he’ll ever hear from me again. I was supposed to let him know when I received the package. I don’t think it will be anytime soon. Hopefully, we won’t have lost our $100.

Survivor on tonight. Rupert is playing both sides now and what a spot to be in – getting both sides to like him. Of course, we all know how that can come back to bite one in the ass later but we’ll see. I think I’d like to see him win, but I don’t really think he will. But really, that sneaky, smarmy blond, curly haired John guy (or whatever his name is) HAS TO GO. Pronto!

October 17th 2003

“Nuts!” – General Anthony McAuliffe, 1944

Don’t you just hate it when you start off the day on the wrong foot? So do I and I have a scraped up back and a pissed off significant other to boot. Yes, it ought to be a fun day. I blame it on the unseasonably warm and windy few days we’re in the middle of. Who can sleep in this weather? Not I.

But I only have 6 hours of work left and I’m going out of town tomorrow for an over-nighter car cruise.

I finally got that package from FedEx. WS was responsible for the incorrect address. Whatever. Shit happens.

I installed my new car parts and may go later today to fill up my car with gas so I’m ready for the trip tomorrow morning. I also put on my car bra so the front end won’t get rock chipped to death as one of the Competition Boys recommended I do. He went on this trip last year so I’m pretty sure he knows what he’s talking about.

I’ve done situps all week now and am really working out my arms, shoulders and upper back. Last night, I did squats and calf raises, enough to make my legs hurt. But surprisingly, today, they aren’t sore in the least. No, I don’t think it was because I didn’t work them hard enough.

Next door at the SportsOrNothing house, the kids have been taking off school again this week and ordering Papa John’s delivery pizza every day at noon. That’s what happens when you give your teenage kids their own credit cards without making them get jobs to pay for their expenses. But what do I know. I don’t have kids so I couldn’t know anything.

October 20th 2003

You can drink away ugly, but you can’t drink away annoying.

Another work week. I knew I should have taken today off, but who would want to go back to work on Tuesday? Not I.

So I do a bit of work this morning, determined to get through today, when I hear some serious hard-core knocking on our front door. I’m not expecting anyone or anything delivered. I peek out over the railing and see 2 stern faced women, each carrying something tucked under their thin arms. This could only mean one thing:

[running screaming through the house: "The MORMONS ARE HERE! THE MORMONS ARE HERE!"]

Wait a minute…..we have a CLEARLY WORDED and PERMANENT sign on our door that reads – NO SOLICITATIONS.

If religion isn’t a solicitation, I don’t know what is. Obviously, the word SOLICITATION isn’t in the Mormon bible. Or in anyone’s bible that I’m aware of. And religious people just don’t get it when you try to explain it to them.

So…..I ignored the repeated knocking but viewed them when they walked down the driveway in their dowdy skirts and high-necked, long sleeved pressed blouses ruffling in the wind as they went to the SportsOrNothing house next door where they certainly got an even frostier encounter than mine. I then saw that a similar group was across the street, trying to convert and save the Monkey Howler family from certain fire and damnation. (Don’t the Mormons already have their list of 100,000 people they believe are going to heaven?)

The weekend was strange and strained at times. Driving to the resort town through twisty country back roads with a group of 15 cars from the car club and 13 drivers who are scared shitless to drive over 42 mph is always an adventure, mostly to not fall asleep at the wheel and worrying about how many of them are drinking while they are driving (most of them apparently which PISSES ME OFF TO NO END!). But hours later, we finally get there and I get into my very nice room which overlooks the river. The restaurant half the group was planning to have dinner at rudely let us know that they didn’t accept reservations after all and we’d be on our own to try to get that big of a group in. So the word went around that we were all on our own for dinner. There were no more plans discussed at the time (other than more drinking later on in a hospitality room at the motel.)

So I had a great steak and lobster dinner at The Crossing at the Riverhouse with Drill Sergeant Dave and his wife, the nice Competition Boy and his wife, and another couple who are generally very, very quiet but very nice. Later, we all purposely avoided the loud, drunkenness of the rest of the group out in the motel parking lot – mostly The Boring Group people who now run the car club – and had a civilized drink together in Drill Sergeant Dave’s room before heading off to bed early. I was pretty tired and worried about WS, who had stayed at home and had nearly fell down the stairs here Saturday afternoon, I learned when I call him to let him know I arrived okay. WS ended up being okay but it didn’t ease my mind much.

Sunday morning, I got a ration of crap from The Boring Group asking where I was the previous night. I just shot back with a “Where was I? WHERE were YOU?” Sure, the lack of communication was enormous the night before between the main, Boring Group and the small group of people I hung out with, but I wasn’t going to let them know that I didn’t care to hang out with that bunch of drunken, foul-mouthed, back stabbing losers. After breakfast, Drill Sergeant Dave, the nice Competition Boy and I wasted no time in taking off for the long drive home. The rain had finally arrived and it wasn’t going to be any fun trying to drive home with a bunch of hung over, cross old farts who can’t drive well on dry roads, let alone wet ones. Over the mountain passes, the weather was fairly treacherous – light hail, heavy rain, visibility down to 25 feet – Scary but I got through it okay. Yes, my car is a mess. I’ll wash it sometime this week.

The fall leaf color is starting here at home. The hill behind our development is starting to color up with yellows and light oranges mixed with the greens of the pines. During my drive, I saw some of the brightest colors imaginable on wild blueberry and huckleberry bushes. So bright, if I had taken a picture of it, it would have looked fake. After living most of my life in the dry, brown desert southwest, living here now is truly beautiful.

I also got to see the result of the huge B&B Complex fire in that area over the summer months. Nothing but mountains upon mountains of blackened earth covered with bare black spires of charred, ghostly trees. The feeling was eerie.

October 21st 2003

Please remain seated until this Blog has come to a full and complete stop.

MsNoManagementSkills has been more than worthless lately. All she ever talks or posts about is how much she wants a baby. Uh, she’s in the middle of divorcing her husband, her new boyfriend has 3 kids, she’s horribly in debt and now she wants a baby. She even went so far as to have her picture taken with her new boyfriend and someone else’s baby just to see how “cute” they all look together. The new boyfriend is already paying child support, has custody of his kids and isn’t through with his divorce yet (to the same woman twice who lost custody because she threatened to kill the kids before she’d allow them to be put on medication for hyperactivity and depression – not a good idea to state, especially in front of a judge). Since MsNoManagementSkills has been trying to get off her Zoloft and anti-anxiety medications, I have a very strong feeling she’s going to announce someday soon, “SURPRISE! I’m Preggers!”

Please shoot me on that day if I still work with her because if she’s a royal bitch now, and she is, I don’t want to have to work with her then. Please let her wait a least a year.

Tick, tock. I can hear her biological clock ticking from here…

WS is finally taking his car in for service today. It was due for an oil change last month but the dealership he leased his car from couldn’t get it in until today. His car also has several other problems that needs looking at – passenger window no longer works, entire car squeals in protest whenever he gets in and out of it, CD player skips, truck immediately relocks itself when you try to unlock it (you have to be fast to get in there at all) and I think that’s it. He should be getting a loaner car and since he’s so tall and doesn’t fit in too many cars anyway, it will be interesting to see what kind of car he’ll actually get. Last time, it was a BMW series 7. Luxury, it was but oh, so big! We just aren’t big car people but we’re also not looking a gift horse in the mouth. If he had bought an American car, he’d be on his own without any loaner car at all or get stuck with something he couldn’t fit in to drive home. American car customer service pretty much sucks, even for the kind of American car I bought. 50K for an American sports car and they treat me like I bought a used Chevy Vega.

WS was in a real funk yesterday when he got home from work and I guess I really wasn’t in the mood to be the ever-happy cheerleader. No one has ever played the cheerleader role for me. Why do I beat my head against the wall repeatedly, and for nearly 15 years for someone else when it does no good? Seems like such a waste of energy and brain cells upon looking back over the years and today, I’m the one who’s feeling down. Bech!

Yet today, I have house cleaning to do, laundry, washing my car, get to the grocery store, find a vacuum food sealer online, changing the sheets and working out (it would seem that all that other work would eliminate the need for the workout part but it just doesn’t work that way).

Oh, and this ever-continuing warm weather sucks! A week now of record high temps. This is October, damn it, and the end of October at that! It should NOT be 80+ degrees here. Especially after all the local weather people keep saying every day, “Today is the last of the warm weather blah, blah, blah.” We’ve been hearing that for a fricken’ week now! And where is that rain we’ve been promised every day? Can’t weather people just admit it, just once, when they are blatantly wrong??

October 22nd 2003

“Money can’t buy you happiness. But it can buy you a yacht big enough to pull up right along side it.” – David Lee Roth

The overly warm weather continues here. Ugh. Duck season started in this area last weekend. Since our development backs up to a stream, a green space, a flood plain and farmland and because we are just outside the city limits, we have duck hunters shooting at things less than a half a mile from our house. If the possibility of a dying duck or goose dropping into our backyard isn’t annoying enough, we hear shotgun blasts anywhere from 3:30 am through noon. And since it doesn’t get anywhere near light until 7 am, we can only assume that people shooting at things at 3:30 am are poachers. Poachers rank up on my list of things I hate somewhere in the single digits.

We both need to get our hairs cut badly. WS, who looks good 99.9 percent of the time, is looking shaggy, he says. His hair grows fast anyway. My hair, on the other hand, grows about a half an inch each decade on most of my head; the other part of my head, it tends to grow at medium speed. I’m seriously thinking of getting it slightly trimmed and letting the rest of it grow out. There was a big thing going around the Internet last week on how as women get older, they cut their hair shorter and shorter and in effect, look terribly old and non-sexual. Well, I’m not ready to get old and as for the sexual part? I’m already non-sexual. It’s the old part I’m not willing to embrace and skip hand-in-hand with just yet. It’s sad to think that I, at the age of 47, have never had a good hair style (if you don’t count November 6th, 1979 at 8:56 pm before I stepped out of my car and into a full blown dust storm.)

The last quince fell off the tree today. That means it’s time to learn how to make quince jelly and if that turns out well, we’ll use it to glaze whatever we might have as a meat product for thanksgiving/xmas this year (could be turkey…could be corn dogs..). Now you know what I’ll be doing this weekend.

Didn’t get to the car washing chore yesterday. To be honest with you, I completely forgot until it was already dark. Since it’s been so warm, it didn’t make any sense to put myself at risk of West Nile Virus to try to wash the car in the dark on account of all the mosquitoes. (“Sure, she’s got a fantastic-looking car, but too bad she croaked of West Nile. Can I have her car?” I can hear car club members saying.) Looks like we may be going out to dinner tomorrow night with Drill Sergeant Dave and some of the car club members who used to run the club before The Boring Group took it over. I suspect we’ll hear of some plan to start up a new club or something that I’m not really interested in at this point.

But I will be out there sometime today, washing it because I want to get it done before we go grocery shopping tonight. Oh boy! We just might finally get a vacuum food saver thing. We need this badly ever since I bought that cheese last week.

What cheese?

Uh, didn’t I already mention the 8 pound block of havarti? Well, WS bought just as big a hunk of smoked gouda….

Jesus Cheeses. We’ve got butt loads of cheese here. It’s an Atkins’ dream thanks to someone we know who works for a food distributer, but I really don’t think I’ll do this again anytime soon. I mean, c’mon! NO ONE needs 16 pounds of cheese all at once.

Anyway, I need to vacuum seal all these cheese chunks I’ve cut up. If these things go bad before I get to eat them, I’m not going to be happy.

Speaking of Atkins’, I’m been the model of Atkins’ eating since last Friday and I’m feeling really good about it too. Too easy once I get into the swing of it. I’ve also upped the weight on my arm, back and shoulder workouts. Goodie for me.

Pamela Anderson says she doesn’t have long to live. Her Hepatitis C can cause death in 10 years. Not soon enough….not soon enough…

October 23rd 2003

Do I sound like a people person??

Damn, this woman is pushy. First there was the posing for cuddly-appearing pictures with someone else’s newborn baby and the new boyfriend. Now, there is something very, very wrong about a person, who has no children of her own and is not divorced from her own spouse insisting upon, paying for and posing with the new boyfriend and all his kids for professionally taken “family” pictures at Sears. This isn’t her family. This isn’t even anyone she’s related to. She’s only known this family for 3 months. It’s like she’s so desperate to fit in anywhere, so desperate to make herself believe that she could have a family with kids and the minivan, that she’s forced herself into and onto this unsuspecting family. She even bought matching outfits for them all to where during the professional picture taking session. This is just very wrong but no one else seems to think there is anything odd about this. There have been horror and true crime books written about this kind of behavior and I really think maybe she needs to go back onto her medication.

Over at The Dimmers house next door, things have been getting interesting. Oh sure, little girl Dimmer is still screaming at the top of her lungs (literally) every day for one reason or another, mostly because she’s horribly spoiled and this is how she’s learned to communicate that she isn’t happy. But now, Mr.Dimmer gets to listen to what his daughter does during the day. He’s quit his job and is now living almost exclusively in his garage.

Now, before you say, “Hey, isn’t that exactly what DrunkTank Willie did when he lived there??”, let me add that he and Ms.Dimmer haven’t been getting along at all, according to him when he felt the need to spill his guts to me last week when I made the mistake of trying to work in my own back yard. He popped his head over the fence and starting jawing away about something or another. I couldn’t hear him because of our fountain and finally, dragging my feet, walked over to the fence.

Well over an hour later, he had told me he and the little Mrs. wasn’t getting along (“Gee, half the neighborhood knows that thanks to your sarcastic back lashings at each other”), that he had started hating his job over 6 months ago (Boo-hoo. Welcome to the REAL world.), that he was going to quit AND sue his employer for taking an idea of his and trying to market it as their own (double Boo-Frickity-Hoo), that his life had become surrounded with negative people (shouldn’t have moved next to us then), and that because he was going to start his own business, he might not be able to pay his mortgage for a month or 2 or more.

So, yes. Everything sounds just like when DrunkTank Willie used to live there with the exception of the constant noise of power tools, which should begin shortly if he is planning to work from home in his new construction business, and the lack of vicious lies and rumors spread around. So far, so good in that last department. This guy doesn’t seem to want to know too many people in this neighborhood with his standoffish, know-it-all manner.

Yesterday, little Dimmers’ screaming started around noon and continued until just after 12:30 pm, not too different from most days. I’ve found it doesn’t do any good to yell “GIVE HER ANYTHING SHE WANTS!” anymore so I don’t. But around 1 pm, I could hear doors being slammed over there. Loudly. At 2 pm, Mr.Dimmer jumped in his work truck alone and peeled out down the street to parts unknown.

Unfortunately, the screaming started up again just in time for WS to witness it around dinner time. Mr.Dimmer still wasn’t home but at least someone was still alive over there…

I did get my car washed late yesterday and I think it looks awful. That rainy, dirty drive last weekend didn’t do the paint any favors. I might try to rub out a few nasty looking areas today and detail wipe the rest to see if it makes any difference.

Looks like we’re still on for going to dinner tonight with the old Working Group of the car club. I have yet to renew my car club membership dues but plan on it for late this month. I’m making a point here in delaying payment. I’m sure we’ll be talking about this over dinner tonight with this bunch of people.

This week is just dragging by. 3 and a half hours of work left, yet it feels like I’ve already worked a good 8 hours. Back to work, I guess.

October 24th 2003

Survivor last night: Jon’s still around. Feh! But next week ought to be….interesting. Don’t go looking through Google for Survivor spoilers unless you really want to know what’s coming (I really wanted to know and now that I do, I can’t wait!).

Dinner last night with Drill Sergeant Dave and selective car club members was actually quite good! Tons of laughs, reasonably decent food. We’re both glad we went. It’s made working today not so bad. I didn’t start work this morning until 11 am and don’t plan on working too late. Technically, I already have 40 hours in this week but everyone, except MsNoManagementSkills is working overtime this week. MsNoManagementSkills thinks the rules don’t apply to her and I think that’s the basis of why I have such a problem with working with her.

The weather still continues to be unseasonably warm here in the Pacific Northwest. This should be a warning (or a blessing if you like warm weather) to states east of us. Warm weather is coming. Enjoy the extra summer months. We’re really hating it here. Can we just get on with the rain and cold? Some of us moved here just for that.

So, the weekend here will be warm and sunny. Good thing my car is clean. I just might have to drive it somewhere.

October 27th 2003

“Sometimes, the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all the unhappy people” – www.despair.com

I feel like absolute crap today and it’s not because it’s a Monday. Something I ate over the weekend definitely and positively didn’t agree with me and I’ve spent the last 16 hours lapsing between being hot and chilled along with waves of nausea. I went to bed yesterday around 5:30 pm, barely able to get all the way up the stairs and feeling that if I just got some sleep, I’d be okay. I spent the night before getting up 4 separate times in hopes of being able to see the aurora borealis because there was a chance that we would around here (we didn’t). But I couldn’t get to sleep until after 8. Or maybe it was 9. Either way, I felt bad all night and I still feel bad today. Not a chance of taking today off though because…

…the wildfires in the country has caused the CEOs of The Company to tell everyone there to take the day off today with pay so absolutely nothing is being done at work. That doesn’t mean we remote workers get the day off. Sure, some of my coworkers in that area are in danger of losing everything they own, but I don’t recall The Company giving us the day off with OR without pay the last time we had a bad ice storm or snow storm up here. In fact, I remember being told that I’d have to make up any time I missed or I wouldn’t be paid.

Just another nail in the empty morale coffin. But it is odd to see areas where the fires are raging where we were looking for property just a few months ago. Boy, what a cluster fuck that could have turned out to be.

We very, very briefly saw the Peep Mobile (a painted school bus with a giant marshmallow Peep chicken on top celebrating the existence of Peeps for 50 years) Friday night. All I can really say about that is that, yeah, I saw it. It was parked. It was dark outside. It wasn’t exciting. End of story there.

Yet another unseasonably warm day today. The local weather people are promising the possibility of rain and cold temperatures later this week. Yeah, right. Whatever. I’m feeling so cheated out of fall weather. Maybe all the trick or treaters will be wearing shorts, swim suits and flip flop thongs around here.

The Blinders house across the street is sporting a new Sale Pending sign. Last week, they had a house inspector over there going over the place with a fine toothed comb. Next door, Mr.Dimmer had to give up his work truck when he quit his job. So he bought a new truck. It’s the exact same damned truck everyone else on our block has – a silver Dodge pickup. This place is looking more and more like an Edward Scissorhands neighborhood, where all the houses look the same and everyone has the same vehicles. There should be a law against this kind of thing.

I tried to get motivated yesterday to do a bit of back yard fall cleanup, but I really was feeling off and I didn’t really do anything but wish I was in bed. I’ve come to believe that I’m just never going to get that chore done this year. Oh well.

I’m feeling better today. If I hadn’t after spending so much time in the bathroom yesterday, I would have been a bit concerned. I still can’t figure out what the problem might have been.

October 29th 2003

No single ember believes it is to blame for the raging inferno.

I woke up around 4 this morning thinking, “Crap. I forgot to update my journal yesterday!” But, no, I didn’t get up to rectify the matter. It was pretty cozy in bed this morning. Fall just might have finally found it’s way to our area and the flannel sheets and down comforter with the ultra suede cover was sinfully toasty. So I just snuggled back down and fell asleep. But really! It was the first thing on my mind this morning followed immediately with the 40 other things I need to get done before we leave for the car show season end banquet Saturday evening.

I’m feeling much better today, although I still have the headache I’ve had on and off since Sunday afternoon. Before starting work this morning, I colored my graying hairs and showered and picked up some stuff around the house to put away. We’ve been fairly good at keeping the place clean of clutter lately and WS was wonderful last night at going through a huge stack of about 30 mail order catalogs to get rid of. That alone has vastly improved the look of this office. My job today will be to clean up my side of the office. I’ve got old car show stuff to file away, CDs to put away and past journal print outs to add to my notebook.

I’ve always wanted to get all my old journal entries printed out and put into one place and I’ve been working hard on doing just that. With WS’s help in the correct printing format, I’ve got everything from the year 2000 through 2002 printed out. I’ll be working on gettting 2003 into the right format today but I won’t print it until the end of this year.

As for previous years, starting in 1997, I hand wrote everything in a large day planner and yes, I’ll be transferring that into Microsoft Word and print that out too. My goal is to have one big-ring notebook for every 5 years of journal entries. Then, ideally, I’ll get them professionally bound so I can feel like I had an important voice during my life, not about politics or the world, but about the real, every day life of a relative nobody. Someone asked me once why would I want to go through all this when I don’t have any family, no children or anyone to pass this on to and I just had to say that wasn’t important. That wasn’t the point. I just feel the need to write and get all this out of my head. It’s very healing for me. That’s all.

The big solar flare is hitting the Earth today. Around 10 am, it was very, very bright outside even though it’s overcast. It was misting earlier which is not really rain even though everything gets wet eventually. We’ve got more Stellar jays than scrub jays now begging for peanuts. We’ve finally got chickadees, juncos and female towhees scratching around the ground under the bushes and trees and enjoying a millet tray I set out under a plastic lawn chair on the patio. Tomorrow, I’ll be stacking all those lawn chairs for winter storage, taking down our seasonal wreath outside our front door and tossing the door mat into our garage in preparation for the Halloween vandalism that sometimes occurs around here Friday. I have 2 large pots with ivy that sit on either side of our front door that will just have to stay put though. They are very heavy and I still haven’t bought a hand truck even though I talk about getting one every time we go to Lowe’s or Home Depot. One of these days I’ll have to just shit or get off the pot on that topic. As far as Halloween goes, we no longer celebrate it or hand out candy due to the really bad experience we had a few years back after moving to this development with a few bad apples that still live in this neighborhood (and probably still terrorize and trash-talk other households on Halloween). It was never a holiday WS had any fun with anyway even though he looked incredible with his 7 foot white dragon costume.

Looks like most of the big fire drama is over at company headquarters. No one’s house has burnt down. The weekly drama is around Ego’s big, fat ego getting in the way and instances of yelling at other workers out of the blue. It’s safe to say that Ego’s coworkers wouldn’t be too negatively affected if someone were to feed Ego to one of the big fires burning nearby company headquarters. Ego has been over-stepping his bounds and firmly stepping on my toes over the past month, but to remain looking like I’m all about being a “team player”, I haven’t complained. That will come later.

I’ll be willing to bet that MsNoManagementSkills will be taking some time off very soon. Her friend in another city far away is getting ready to pop a kid any minute now and for some reason, MsNoManagementSkills feels she is telecommunicative with this woman to the point of “I’m having problems breathing because I think she’s going into labor.” Yes, this is our supervisor and this is the kind of crap we have to deal with while trying to do our jobs. Every.Single.Day.

Maybe while she’s gone (using time off that she doesn’t officially have), maybe MrSmartButFakingIt will give her “job” to Ego and it will get Ego out of our hairs for a bit.

October 30th 2003

I was considering working a short day yesterday after my stomach starting feeling queasy again but then The Company’s Internet connection started crashing left and right. Not one to waste a perfectly good excuse to knock off a little early when one was already presenting itself, I just hung around online until my official 8 hours were up. Then, I put on an extra hour just to look good. The Company’s IT department claimed to not know what the Internet problem was but it sounded like they weren’t aware of the solar flare problem that was expected to cause this very thing. But then again, it could have been the nearby burning fires. It’s just a matter of time before the power lines go down around company headquarters that is basically surrounded by tinder dry grassy hills.

Thinking of the fires, I’m reminded of a story MrSmartButFakingIt told us about a couple of our coworkers who started a serious grass fire down there once…

Nothing new yet on The Blinders house across the street. Sale is still pending. They emptied their attic last night. God, I hope the potential owners don’t have a wad of kids. The little (and loudest) Dimmer next door is causing my ears to bleed with all her screaming today. I want to yell out, “Let her freeze to death so she’ll shut up once and for all!”

This morning, I awoke to real fall weather at last. Cold skies and even colder east winds blowing right off the fresh snow of Mount Hood, down the Columbia Gorge and weaving it’s way right through our development. Finally, I feel refreshed. Yellow leaves are blowing high in the air off the tall, orange and golden oak trees down by the stream, and in the distance, amid the green pines, the top of Mt. St. Helens has her first coat of snow of the season. On our street, any trash cans that any neighbor has carelessly left sitting curbside is now somewhere far away as the wind is howling down the street, reminding me to get our plastic chairs stacked and put away for the year before we lose them. I also stored away the front and back water hoses and installed the insulating water faucet covers. Then, I followed that up with installing the Styrofoam under-house vent covers to help keep the place warm this winter. At noon, I was delighted to see on the local news that this weekend, the overnight temperatures should get down to a crisp 30 degrees or below. Oh, GOODIE!

Unfortunately, we won’t be here for Saturday night but I feel good now, knowing that things ought to be toasty here for our pets while we are away at the year end car show banquet (where I’ll be getting a nice trophy for my season win).

Tonight, it’ll be nice sitting in front of the fireplace, even if it is natural gas and not wood, watching Survivor and the big surprise twist there, eating something toasty and drinking a bottle of our favorite fall weather wine, Pinot Noir.

And to think tomorrow ought to be exactly the same! I just might not mind working so much.

October 31 2003

George Bush is to literacy as pelicans are to roller blades.

Survivor. Okay, I guess. Osten is exactly what I’ve always thought him to be. And did you notice that he didn’t get to say anything at the end like all the voted off people get to do? Odd.

Halloween. I used to really like Halloween. I have a great costume packed away that I really like (with the exception of needing a new cloak) and I used to really enjoy freaking out people with it. I don’t know why I’ve always been drawn to this particular character for Halloween dress up, I just am and I’ve had several great costume models to get tips from. My favorite is a character in a sketch in the Monty Python movie “The Meaning of Life”. Now THAT is a good costume with the ribbing showing and the bony hands. I really scored big time when I found that real scythe at a yard sale up the street a few years back.

You see, I dress up as Death and I think I look pretty darn good too.

Unfortunately, a few years back, we had a couple of bad experiences that forever changed our minds about participating in Halloween activities. First up was the neighborhood Halloween party where we were told we were dressed too morbidly and forced to spend the evening banished to the garage with the smokers of the group so we wouldn’t keep scaring the kids (even though the party was advertised as an Adult’s Only party). Being called morbid wasn’t bad. That was the point and what I thought was the point of Halloween. Apparently, I was wrong because the next scariest costume was Little Bo Peep and her husband dressed as Austin Powers.

Gee, I thought it was a HALLOWEEN party, not just another COSTUME party.

Then, later that week, on Halloween night, a group of kids that still live in our development tried to rip my costume off me, tried to steal my scythe, picked on and pushed WS in his costume, stole our candy bowl and then promised to come back after midnight and vandalize our house. Where were the parents? Who knows, but hearing and knowing enough about them now, they firmly believe that it isn’t them who should be raising their children. They believe it’s the village’s responsibility to raise their kids.

After staying up most of the night that night, waiting to see what kind of vandalism we’d receive and after getting the frosty reception from everyone at the neighborhood Halloween party, we vowed never to bother again. And we haven’t and have saved ourselves from eating bags of candy ourselves (it was always so odd how we hardly ever gave away any candy…).

So tonight, we’ll leave our house looking dark, and won’t have to worry about anyone ringing the doorbell since it’s still not working from last spring anyway and we’ll retire to sitting in front of the TV and probably watch a movie or something.

Maybe I should start looking for a SpongeBob Squarepants costume…

November 1st 2003

We’re leaving for the banquet trip shortly. We should get there in a couple of hours. It was incredibly windy and cold last night and should be the same tonight. Hopefully, the roads will be frost-free by the time we drive back home tomorrow.

Drill Sergeant Dave and his wife should be here shortly to try to fix my CB radio before we all leave together. A couple of weeks ago, it stopped working for some odd reason and to try to avoid buying a new one (this one is less than a year old), Drill Sergeant Dave thinks he might be able to fix it. We’ll be taking along a couple of other hand-held CB radios just in case (one of which also works only went it feels like it –sigh-).

November 3rd 2003

The weekend included:

driving to Mexican food lunch to more driving to a motel out in the boon docks followed by rain and someone dressed much nicer than I could ever be while watching someone play with a large bead on a ribbon, cracking glass and more mediocre food following attention and a table full of awards, a scare about snow, listening to someone snore in front of a fireplace while leaning against a Jacuzzi, actual snow, sleep, a bit more snow, a bad breakfast, the revenge of the Mexican food lunch and then having to drive home in snow only to find not a flake here.

Today, I took a day off. And because I didn’t relax today like I wanted to, I’m taking tomorrow off as well just for the hell of it. Heck, MsNoManagementSkills is already looking for a way to take off early this week. I might as well do it before she does.

November 5th 2003

The meaning of Cluelessness is that there are no stupid questions but a LOT of inquisitive idiots.

Back to work today and no, I’m not liking it. But to keep up with the manner of life I’ve come to expect, I gladly work. I mean, really, I do have it easy right now: I work from home on a computer The Company bought, I don’t have to dress up for work and I don’t have to put on a physical happy face for my coworkers every day. And I can surf the ‘net and play the occasional computer game not to mention clean the house or do those other chores that would otherwise have to be done in the evenings and on weekends.

Like painting the living room.

That’s what I’ll be doing on and off all week. We finally bought new paint for our living room, which is currently a deep, orange-red color called Chili. Give me a week or more and it’ll be less orange and more red with a new color called Henna. Oh, and it’s in eggshell latex paint, not flat paint which really sucked with the orange-y paint because it showed every fingerprint and got all dried out-looking and tinged with gray. Most people don’t like red-painted rooms and we weren’t sure one would work with us either, but we knew we wanted to try the color out somewhere in our house and the living room really looks good painted red. I think it’s the combination of the Pergo-like wood flooring and the old world look we’ve currently go going on in there.

Outside, it’s been very cold lately (and finally). Highs in the upper 40’s and lows around 28 degrees. Everything is frosty white in the mornings. The next couple of days is going to be filled with cold east blowing winds too. Delightful! But no snow. We’ll be lucky to see any snow anyway. It rarely snows here anymore.

Yesterday, WS and I went out for lunch after picking up the “Saving Nemo” DVD (cute but no outtakes – major disappointment!) and had a wonderful Bavarian-style lunch with fondue and German pretzels (even though my taste buds have been craving salsa too often of late.). Unfortunately, and becoming more the case than not, we had some family with small children seated next to us. This usually means we have to listen to screaming fits of hysterics from the kids and we can barely hear each other talk meaning we eat in “silence” and don’t say 2 words to each other. Sometimes, this also means that we get toys thrown at our table and “visits” from the kids that are allowed to run around (as though the restaurant was, in reality, a day care center), but this, thankfully, wasn’t the case yesterday. We just got to listen to detailed talk about visiting the dentist. To a 5 year old. For well over an hour.

How appetizing!

So during the talks about laughing gas and shots and pulling out teeth and how much that can hurt, I decided to start talking about my recent visit from Aunt Flo, including how this past visit was very heavy in the early days, requiring a change of the tampon cork every hour and a half or else I’d get to spend time doing laundry and cramping and possible spotting and…

No, I didn’t say any of this terribly loudly although I should have. The dentist family wouldn’t have heard me anyway because they were too busy letting everyone know how much they didn’t like getting their teeth scraped and cleaned.

Across the street, The Blinders and Butterfly Garcia continue to empty their attic. Who knew they had 2 weeks worth of shit packed up there, especially since the attics in these houses aren’t really that big!

Next door at The Dimmers, Mr. Dimmer is really losing it mentally. He is absolutely convinced now that his employer is hacking into his computer on an hourly basis and looking through all his files, via a program that was attached to an email he received from them. He’s grabbing neighbors and inviting them into his home to watch it happen, but then can’t explain how he knows any actual hacking or spying is going on. He’s not even sure what normal behavior on his computer looks like to be able to determine what, if anything, is different now. Last Saturday, he allegedly paid a computer company to come over and tell him what was going on. Since we haven’t heard a peep of what was found and we were assured that he would tell us, we can only assume at this point that the computer company didn’t find anything but gladly accepted his money anyway.

Can you say, “Paranoid”?

Me thinks this guy just might have a bit too much time on his hands. And apparently, too much money to throw away. Since quitting his job 2 weeks ago, he’s bought a new truck, bought chrome rims to put on it and is paying a company to probably tell him what he wants to hear about his computer. Yet he continues to tell everyone he might lose his house because he won’t be able to make his mortgage payments. Okay….

I did a bit of backyard clean up Monday afternoon, but between finding dead, frozen birds (that looked like they tried to find a warm spot in between rocks around our fountain and failed) and Mr. Dimmer wanting to yak at me over the fence, I gave up after filling half a trash bag with debris. I’ll work on getting more done sometime this weekend maybe.

November 6th 2003

It’s never too early to finish.

VERY windy here today. Temperatures are around 48 degrees (F) but with the wind chill, it’s more like 38 degrees. Good thing the sun is shining. Fun for me because I have to wash my car today so I can drive it to probably one of the last car club meetings I’ll be attending for a while. Sure, I’ll be renewing my membership this evening but that’s just so I will continue to be able to vote against on stuff over the next year. No, I won’t be able to change anything, but I will be able to voice my displeasure for one more year.

Today is officially “Men Make Dinner Day”. Being one day early, WS made a huge batch of lentil soup last night, enough to last us nearly the entire winter, I swear. This was definitely the best batch ever. The addition of apple wood smoked bacon really makes this stuff good!

I’ve got a good third of the living room painting done and boy, is it really red now. You can see the difference really well now between the old orange-y chili red before and the new brighter, shiny-looking red. It definitely looks better and ought to be much, much easier to take care of (regarding fingerprints, scuffs, pet paw prints, etc.).

I’m hoping to get at least 4 extra hours in for work tonight so I don’t have to take 2 entire days of sick time this week. Yesterday, I got my paycheck and saw that they have me down for much less sick/vacation time than I thought I had. Taking 2 entire days off will really bite into this time so I’m going to try to make up some of this time. If I’m really dedicated, I might be able to make up all but half a day before Saturday night. It’s not like I have to sit right here, exactly in front of the computer monitor, every waking minute of that time.

SportsOrNothing next door is fully engaged into the high school sports scene already. They’ve been taping up posters on their garage door with sayings that are an obvious bitch-slap to one of the other local high school’s sports teams. The SportsOrNothing teen’s car is religiously painted up with shoe polish-drawn football and soccer ball shapes and various “Go Team!” logos.

Sports. Uh…big yawn. Because we don’t share their interest (infatuation), these people barely grunt in our general direction anymore.

Cap’t Dan behind us emptied his hot tub yesterday (and I’m sure the water promptly froze into a lake under his deck). He had his youngest Harry Potter-look alike kid out there yesterday evening, raking up leaves that were mostly coming from our trees and given the strong winds today, I seriously doubt it looks like anything was raked at all.

Really, I am going to try to get out there this weekend and get a bit more back yard clean up done.

November 7th 2003

This blog is meant for recreational purposes only. Any resemblance to real persons, living, dead or otherwise, is purely coincidental.

The “Saving Jessica Lynch” movie is due to air sometime next week on TV. There is something very odd about the information that is coming out about her just now. Since Prez Bush is big on revisionist history during his term and has very, very powerful people in his camp that help make this so, I strongly suspect Private Lynch and her “ordeal” is being used as a pawn.

And no, the “marines” that went in to “rescue” her didn’t need to burst into the building. They had keys to all the doors. There was electricity in the building. There were “good” people there at the time. She was placed there on purpose to “find”. All this was done so the military could film it and look much more in control than they really are. It’s all fake and meant to make you and me think that our country is a bad-ass and our military is a bunch of heroes. Welcome to the Bush administration. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out later, much later, that Private Lynch was thoroughly brainwashed by our own side. (but then again, joining the military is a kind of brainwashing, isn’t it?)

You don’t have to agree with me, but just keep this info in the back of your head. And when the real story comes out 20 years from now, remember that you read it here first.

God help the next few presidents of this country. It’ll take years to undo all the crap Bush has changed and when this all comes to light, I really don’t think people are going to be happy over it. It’ll be too late then.

I’m really liking November so far. Cold and gray with bits of sunshine here and there is a perfect start to winter weather for me. Unfortunately, it’s not windy today (at least not so far) like was predicted, but yesterday, the wind did do a good number on removing lots of leaves from our trees. We need more wind to get rid of the rest. Next week should start our rainy season but we’ll have to wait and see. Yeah, you could say I really like fall.

Strangely, however, everyone seems to be in a cranky mood today. Usually, this happens more often when it’s windy for several days in a row, not on a calm day around here. The birds outside are all fighting with themselves. Our pets inside are all fighting with themselves. My coworkers sound like they are fighting amongst themselves. At least WS seemed to be in a relatively okay mood when he left for work this morning and I didn’t snap at him for anything. Odd.

Yesterday, Cap’t Dan planted several new trees in his backyard along his back side fences. A couple of cedars and a nice looking pine tree that ought to grow fairly fast and huge; bigger than anything we currently have. I really should let him know that I really appreciate his plantings back there. Anything that helps re-forest this development from it’s barren look and helps provide cover for wildlife is a wonderful thing. But we don’t speak.

Last night’s car club meeting was awful with the Boring Group now in charge shooting down any suggestions that the old Working Group brings up. Very elementary-school acting. I truly felt that I wasn’t wanted there. And because of this overwhelming feeling, I didn’t renew my membership. I’m back to seriously and strongly considering not renewing. I’m just very confused over the whole thing and it’s become a negative experience. I don’t need any more negativity in my life and neither does WS. Tomorrow night, we’ll be having dinner with Drill Sargent Dave and his wife, the two people that this whole change in the car club has most affected (since they were the ones who originally started the club, have been now pushed out and had numerous bad things spread about them since), and no doubt this topic will be forefront in our dinner conversation. I’m now somewhat jealous of the nice Competition Boy who has pulled back from any participation in the car club due to problems with his marriage, not because of those problems, but because he’s not around to have to witness this club meltdown.

But let’s not go anymore into that now.

I’ve got half of the living room painting done. When it’s finished, I’ll post a picture or two. I hope to get more done today on and off during my work hours because with tomorrow evening’s dinner and both of us getting our hairs cut just after noon tomorrow, I won’t be able to paint much then. Sunday, I think I’ll be able to finish the job. Again, I think this painting was a good idea. The color and shine is really a big improvement over the crusty-looking orange-y paint that was there before.

I did wash my car yesterday and with WS’s help, got 4 extra hours put in at work. Today, I’ll be working a full 12 hour day and will have made up one entire day that I took off earlier this week. If I really wanted to, I probably could work tomorrow to get that last day made up….but I won’t. Taking one day off on Paid Time Off won’t be so bad. Taking two days would be bad.

WS is going with his work department this afternoon to see the movie, “Matrix Revolutions”. A true geek thing. I can’t stand Keanu Reeves and this entire movie line lost me when it came out that Keanu’s character is supposed to be Jesus. No thanks. I’ll pass.

November 2003

No matter how fun something is, someone will find a way to take it too seriously.

We finally broke down 2 weeks ago and bought a new TV for our bedroom. Our old TV that was nearly 15 years old had developed a bad habit of losing the sound completely. Turning the set on and off no longer worked to restore the sound. It also started snapping loudly sometimes making me wonder if it was going to catch fire sooner or later. Other than that, it was a good TV and I really liked it. If it is possible for someone to have feelings for a TV set, I definitely am. I think I’m going through separation anxiety over giving it up to the Salvation Army. Well, either it’s the TV set or also giving them my monitor from my old Amiga 500 computer that was taking up way too much space in the hall closet for the past 5 years

I finally did some of that back yard clean up last Friday instead of getting the living room painting done earlier than it could be. Too many things needed my attention during the daylight hours. Sometimes, projects like this hit me all at once. WS helped tremendously by removing a short, dead pine tree. I don’t know how or why this cute little tree died but even though I really liked it and it cost a bundle because it was a fancy, specimen tree, I don’t miss it out there. I think it was just planted in a bad spot, beneath the main bird feeders, and it finally got tired of all the bird poop collecting on it. I know I’d consider croaking if I had that much crap on me.

Tonight, for the first time in about a year. I went for a walk around our development. If you’ve been reading here for a long while, you’ll remember that I used to walk around our development 2-4 times a week, mostly in the late evenings. But being as we are located very near a stream, a green space, a dairy farm, and several natural flood overflow ponds, we have mosquitoes. Lots of them. So last spring, West Nile Virus potential took my walking habit away and I’ve been waiting for the cold weather to come in and possibly wipe our area clear of the little buggers.

Another housing company has built a really nice housing development just on the other side of our neighborhood. While I am still furious that they had to cut down every single one of the old growth trees that were so thick over there that the ground hadn’t seen sunlight in decades and wipe out a huge field that was home to rabbits, raccoons, birds of all kinds, a couple of grazing horses and enough blackberry bushes which produced enough berries to feed a small third world country for months, the houses they built are absolutely and utterly charming! Old World/Barvarian styling with a touch of Pacific Northwest woodsy-ness. Lots of stone work, big front porches, a water fountain or two out front and so far, perfectly manicured lawns. Obviously, the neighborhood is new and people still care about their places. Our neighborhood used to be very much that way until just about a year and a half ago. Just about the time that the original home buyers and builders decided 3 years was long enough to live here and it was time to move on, and new people moved in. New people who came with bad habits and even worse home and yard maintenance skills. Within 10 years, our once-beautiful development is assuredly going to be one of those crappy, decaying neighborhoods with lawns filled with stripped-down cars, primary-colored Fisher-Price children’s playhouses and dead, brown grass. Old motor homes and boats in each driveway and all the SUVs parked along the streets and half up on the sidewalks. Basketball hoop setups sitting in the street at every other house, busted out screen doors and missing window screens. Houses missing singles, tarps covering broken out windows, fences bowing and leaning on rotted center posts and trees and bushes overgrown, spindly and unattended to.

Sounds bad, doesn’t it? Or does it sound like neighborhoods you know? And how do I know this is our neighborhood’s fate? Because so far, I’ve been a really good judge of people and things around here are already heading in that direction. So you can imagine how exciting it was to get a sense what a fresh, new development felt like to wander through. It ought to be a great walking area all winter long and I can’t wait to see how people over there decorate those cool-looking houses for Christmas!

November 10 2003

Motivation – If a pretty poster with a cute saying on it are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon…

Don’t you just love new policy changes at work? Especially, when the responsible party for making the change doesn’t tell anyone? I just about blew a brain artery this morning when I started getting slammed with work from The Company’s lovely outsourced job-stealers because of a “new policy put into place by MsNoManagementSkills and MrSmartButFakingIt”. Uh, you assholes might want to tell everyone else about your policy changes.

God, I love my job.

Apparently, MsNoManagementSkills has been taking off from work but while logged in and “working” and going over to her new boyfriend’s house during the day and cleaning while he and his kids aren’t there. And then, she guilts him into taking her out for dinner and shopping all weekend long. Okay, maybe she deserves something in return other than the lots of sex and hickeys she’s constantly bragging about on her Online Journal anymore.

But the problem here is twofold. First, she’d make sure anyone she caught doing this would be fired immediately. Second, her boyfriend is losing his house. As in Foreclosure. In fact, because it’s currently in foreclosure, he hasn’t even been making any house payments at all. Neither has he been paying the water and electric bills but something tells me he’s been able to guilt the power and water companies into leaving things on because he’s got 3 kids living there with him.

Yet, MsNoManagementSkills insists that he entertain her and spend his paychecks on her every single weekend.

This whole “I left FatHead for a slacker who won’t pay his bills” affair can’t possibly end well.

But then again, maybe it will.

Now she’s pushing HARD to have them all find a new place and live together, even though his kids don’t like her (she thinks they do because she buys them toys all the time). Then there’s the whole “we’re both way over our heads in credit card debt” right now, not to mention ruined credit because he had a house foreclosed on him. And I really don’t think the boyfriend wants to jump into another commitment right now, especially since neither he or MsNoManagementSkills is divorced yet. He’s since upp-ed his medications. I think he senses that he’s about become trapped.

And let’s not forget MsNoManagementSkills’ huge desire to get pregnant, something she talks about every day.

She was able to get off work most of this week to go visit a friend who just had a kid. Her “I want a baby!” talk is only going to get much, much worse in the coming weeks. How uncomfortable for everyone involved. Let’s see if she gets holiday time off too, which is supposed to be against The Company’s policy. Or maybe someone’s changed that policy too. Technically, no one was supposed to take time off after mid- October per the email we all got back in September. It’s this kind of “Oh, that doesn’t possibly apply to ME!” attitude that just chaps my ass about this company. Apparently, nothing applies to anyone but me and WS and frankly, I am more than just sick of it.

But let’s think happy thoughts. It’s misty-rainy here today but not terribly cold. Highs in the upper 50’s. Most of the fall color is gone, having not lasted very long this year due to the prolonged hot, summer weather. Trees and bushes are alternated green and brown without anything much in between. I still really like this time of year.

The Quiet family who lives kitty-corner across the street from us (and rarely have anything to report on) looks like they are getting ready to send daddy off to war. He’s a big military supporter and has served in the reserves for years and years. Talking to him, it is very, very apparent that this guy Just.Could.Not hack it in the real world so he chooses to work in a military atmosphere only and works at the military base close by. All this guy wants to do is to have someone hand him a guy and tell him it’s okay to shoot people.

Fine. Whatever. Send him. I’m tired of listening to this guy and his “military is great” and “my wife made my life suck because she wanted kids” talk all the time.

This morning, I couldn’t turn up my speakers on my work computer for a few hours because someone in the area was broadcasting over their ham radio and it was coming in load and clearover the speakers about all of us “stupid Americans on meth”. Our military neighbor dabbles in ham radio stuff, has a big antenna and it was odd that it sounded very much like him. Maybe he was spouting off to the world before leaving for duty.

November 11 2003

I love management meetings where an employee asks a simple question and the management comes back with an “answer” that consists of a bunch of buzz words all scrambled together but nothing that even remotely addresses the original question. For example, today, during a conference call with MrSmartButFakingIt, WS asked if we were doing what we were expected to do, given that we’ve had little to no communication with any of management in well over a month. Basically, we were simply wondering if we are all on the same page, work-wise. Are we still all working toward a common goal.

What we got as a response was not too dissimilar to:

“We are all working toward a buy-versus-build strategy with out of the box flavor implementation systems with the opportunity for all to wrap their arms about rubber-meets-the-road, drilled down robustness. We’re curtailed your scope reference through iterative processing and matrixing, and we feel we’ve got all the exit routes surrounded via fast-track methodologies transitioning from leveraging descents to directory-based synergy.”

Uh….okay, I guess. So, I’ll guess us remotes are doing okay?

“We appreciate your image realignment to re-emerge as energicity and a new visual presentation, symbolizing your strength and sense of belonging.”

I get the feeling that this is the way these people actually talk in their day-to-day living. When conversing to each other over lunch, for example, they don’t just comment on how good their tuna fish salad is:

“Hey! This tuna fish salad rocks!”

Instead, they say:

“Yes, this somewhat subdued marine and greens fusion, represents a collaboration and intersection of several key beliefs of polarizing a sense of freshness and renewal of intake!”

Does that make your brain hurt just to read it? Imagine what it is to hear it. I have a very hard time not laughing out loud sometimes during these conference calls. That is, when I’m not infuriated by the lack of a REAL, understandable answer.

MsNoManagementSkills is off until Friday or so. Ego ought to be butting their head into the work situation picture any moment now to turn everything on it’s ear and today, The Company CEO has decided that everyone has to start filling out weekly time cards, even us salary people. Okay, we’ve gotten away without having to fill a time card out long enough. No problem. But when the time card has to be filled out in extreme detail so that “we can determine if the project or work flow you are involved in gives us an accurate cost of your time spent”, I start to worry. Sure, it’s more corporate-speak but I’m wondering if they are looking for reasons to lay off more people due to low ROEpe – low Return On Investment per employee.

I wonder if I could put that on a resume or application:

“Why did you leave your previous employment?”

“The company I worked for found, through matrixes and paradigm shifts, that re-engineering brought to light negative ROI per employee and I suddenly found myself in the midst of a transformational, mandated shift in my employmental environment.”

November 12 2003

Yesterday was a looooong day. 12 and a half hours long. I’ve been approved to make up any time I missed last week when I took a couple of sick days off. This means I won’t have to use any paid time off and can go through the rest of this year happy as a clam, knowing I have at least a week’s worth of paid vacation coming that I can carry over for next year. So far this week, I’ve got 25 hours in. If I can end today with 32 hours worked, I’ll be all caught up. Go me.

For WS who may read this sometime today – Your pants are here.

A wonderful foggy, gray November day today so far. I love fog. Growing up in a desert area where fog is extremely rare, I only saw fog twice when I was young. Later, in my young adult life, I loved going to southern California a few times a year during the fall and winter months, mostly because of the fog that would roll in heavily every night along the coast. I would dream of living some place that had foggy days. To me, it was like living in the clouds where everything looks softer and not so sharp and stark.

If only it were snowing…sigh. Last night, the weather media talked about how we are overdue for a snowy year and this year should be it. Yet just last week, they talked about how the National Weather Bureau has predicted a warm winter and a wet spring for us. Whatever. No one knows.

We’re to that point when the birds we get outside are all the usual winter visitors – Juncos, Mourning doves, flickers, thrushes, red house finches, blue jays and tumor-ridden pine Siskins. Sad really, to see pine Siskins out there at the feeders with oversized leg tumors or head tumors. I don’t know why we seem to be a magnet for these poor birds. Maybe it’s just because they know we’ll have food out there for them, regardless of weather and that we aren’t people who only cater to the “beautiful” birds.

WS frightened me a bit this morning. I had gotten up just before he did and started work. Usually, he drags himself out of bed, hair all askew, and heads right for the shower. Like clockwork. But today, he got up and started vacuuming. Both levels of the house. Says he had a hidden agenda. A top secret hidden agenda which revolved around wanting me to have a better day knowing that I didn’t have to vacuum today.

Very odd, but hey! I’m not going to complain.

I’m glad to see the dullest blog in the world finally back up. Was that long of a break really necessary? Probably. Sheer poetry in its simplicity. But it still can’t beat MsNoManagementSkills daily journal entry, “I woke up and had to pee.”

I still have that final big-ass wall to paint in the living room to get that project done. It’s the wall that’s got all the bookcases and electronics sitting in front of it. I couldn’t move those bookcases if I wanted to (Note to self: try to move those bookcases today.) I’m finally to that point where I really want to get that done so I can get on with my life.

November 13 2003

Update day: My car has retired for the season in the garage and has been lovingly covered. Still, in the back of my mind I know it needs about 4 coats of polish…

Butterfly Garcia’s house (formerly The Blinders before Ms. Blinder moved out) is still in the Sale Pending status. Yesterday, they had a heating and cooling service out there fixing something. And surprisingly, they finally got rid of their Halloween carved pumpkins. Last year, they loft those things rotting next to their front door until February.

Not a peep from The Dimmers next door. I was watching a special report on our local news station the other night about bi-polar children and I now am convinced that the screaming Dimmer-ette is definitely bi-polar. There is just no other reason why this little girl can just be minding her own business and the next minute, have a complete and total screaming fit.

SportsOrNothing next door have been very quiet lately, with the exception of the kids loud music during the day (when they are supposed to be in school). Strangely, the loud music doesn’t bother me. It’s usually something with a good beat.

Behind us, Cap’t Dan and the Smokin’ Clan weeded the back rock wall that divides our property. From our view high up here from our office window, it looks really, really good and it means I don’t have to do it. It was really looking bad, full of weeds and dead brush. I’m still amazed they keep their backyard looking that good, even if there are still power tools lying on the side of their house out in the elements. Doesn’t look like they’ll be making any more additions to their deck any time soon but JOY! They bought another big blue cedar tree and a bunch of short arborvitae-hedge trees. Hopefully, these are all going in their backyard, and not their front yard. I really like people who plant big trees.

Some stuff is going on at work this week and there’ll be some changes in duties next week. More on that when it becomes more clear. WS and I have another conference call with MrSmartButFakingIt this evening when WS gets home from his real job. I’m just hoping I’ve got the brains to do what might be expected of me in the coming months and that I can catch on quickly. I think The Company is looking for ways to streamline things and employees again.

We’ve decided to wait to finish the living room painting until the weekend. I’ve got too much job work to do between now and then to take an hour or so out to paint during the day and I can’t see well enough out there to paint in the evenings. I’m thinking by Sunday it’ll be done.

Survivor’s on tonight. Will tonight be the end to Rupert? I’m thinking some serious shit and a meltdown of sorts is coming up.

November 14 2003

We’re supposed to discuss what we want to do around the upcoming holidays. Since we don’t have any family and just ourselves, we usually just do some shopping and hang around here, watching TV and putting up Christmas lights outside. I don’t think this year will be any different and I’m okay with that. This year will be the first one in a long while that we weren’t inviting friends over or participating in any neighborhood holiday progressive dinner party. We won’t be throwing any parties and we don’t plan on attending any either. If we had money and could get time off work, which again, isn’t allowed during the holidays anymore, this would be a perfect year to go away on vacation or something. But we’re not.

Since we both come from poor pasts, which did not include any Christmas gifts, we’ve spent the 15 years of our relationship only really celebrating Christmas with gifts 2 or 3 times. In fact, the thought of actual Christmas “shopping”, as in going out, finding and buying something for WS specifically for Christmas, scares me. Even in the couple of years that we did scrape together money for gifts for each other, I never, ever, knew what to get WS and failed miserably. I “fondly” remember the year I bought him a car floor jack because he mentioned it once and I wrote it down, thinking this would be something good. It turned out to be a really crappy gift and after the jack sat in our garage gathering dirt and spider webs, we eventually gave it to Goodwill. Or maybe it went to the dump. Who knows. And I don’t think I’ve bought him anything since. We’re both people who, when we want or need something, we just go out and buy it, or save a bit to go out and buy it. We don’t need a holiday to buy shit. When we want something, it’s like Christmas all the time for us. (It’s a good thing we don’t want shit all the time, isn’t it? Who could afford that?)

So, we need to discuss if we want to try this whole gift-giving thing, or do we want to use the $1500 to pay off bills (what we usually do), or do we want to do some shopping after Christmas for shit that’s left over at half price? (We’ve found in the past this is a bad idea since anything we’d want is usually boxed up and packed away for next year by the store merchants.) Do we want to just fritter away money by spending a day or two here and there shopping at specialty shops around town like Pottery Barn, Williams-Sonoma, Barnes & Noble, Interior Motives, Starbucks, Pastaworks, etc like we’ve done in past years, or do we purposely not do anything. I can tell you one thing you won’t find us doing – volunteering our time or money anywhere. We’ve got very strong feelings around this and while this might be good for some and was good for a while for me in my past, it’s not for us now.

I absolutely did not feel like working today and made only a half-hearted attempt to do any work. It could have been because my allergies were acting up big time and I slept like crap last night because of it. Nothing like lying there and having one side of your sinuses pour water while the other side was so swollen and stuffed up that closing my mouth actually caused pain. Pleasant, huh? Sucked to be me.

Around 2:30 today, our Internet connection went down. By 3 pm, I was thoroughly bored to tears so I took a quick shower and decided to take my car out for probably the last spin of the year. An hour later, I was back home and cleaning the house when WS got home from his real job and wanted to go get something for dinner. I was wanting to go back out anyway to pick up duct tape (I gave my last roll away to someone who really, really needed it. It was someone who was trying to fix his life or something.) So we went to Lowe’s, who improves home improvement, and I discovered, contrary to the Lowe’s commercials, they DO NOT have every kind of Christmas decoration and ornament imaginable. I don’t know. Maybe I just have a really good imagination or something but the decorations and ornaments I saw there looked like Wal-Mart hand-me-downs and I was not impressed.

After Lowe’s, we ended up walking out of a Mongolian Grill place because the waitress kept telling us she’d get to us to take our order, then she’d forget us, only to tell us again she’d be right over and then forget us again. When she finally did get around to taking our order, it became painfully obvious that she’d done the same thing to all the other 25 customers there and then taken all our orders at once, causing a massive traffic jam up at the serving line, which until then, had been completely deserved. So we walked out and ended up at a new sushi place a short drive from our house. Sure, we could have eaten at the Mongolian Grill 4, probably 5 times, for what we spent at the sushi place, but it was worth it. And the wasabi was fresh and hot, hot, HOT. Yums!

The weekend, we’ve got planned a trip to the mall to hunt for shirts for WS at J.C. Penney’s One Day Sale (and I thought they sold stuff everyday), and maybe a trip way across town to a snooty décor shop to look at their Christmas decorations. Like we need anymore Christmas shit. Definitely my addiction. That and wasabi. Sunday, I WILL get that living room wall painted and be done with that, I swear.

November 16 2003

Words to describe the weekend:

Blinder confirmation, posted lies, a new store location, a downpour, a more chocolate than coffee latte, a full-sized Christmas peacock comes home, a pushy and unfit decorator, suede man shirts, no nose hair clippers, BIG discount, Santa noticing WS, twice, hormonal beef burger cravings, Ruby Tuesday, couch snoring, a long walk in the rain, removed journal posts, Queer Eye marathon, paint, work, bad eggnog coffee, dehydration, furniture moving in two different homes, Butterfly Garcia pissy-ness, nosy helpers, windy, sweat, unnoticed tent collapse, sunny rain, homemade rolls, no books and more glitter and socks than you could shake a stick at. (Explanations available upon request).

Currently, we’re waiting for the paint to dry along that big-ass back wall in our living room so WS can play around with changing the furniture placement. This means the big rug needs moved, the couch, the tables, and all 13 feet of bookcases. Too fun. I’m glad I only had to do the painting part and I am soooo happy to finally get all the painting supply stuff out of the kitchen and living room. I was nearly at the point of screaming if I had to look at the rollers and brushes sitting on the counter one more day.

Could there be a fly in the ointment which is MsNoManagementSkills’ relationship? If her husband FatHead and her boyfriend’s wife have their ways, there will be. It seems the ex’s have been talking between themselves and the time line for when MsNoManagementSkills and her boyfriend hooked up and when the ex’s were actually dumped doesn’t quite add up, leaving the divorce lawyers to greedily rub their hands together in glee. Looks like she won’t be getting the fat alimony or the house proceeds like she’s been banking on after all and her parents are going to have to help pay off all her new credit card debt or it’ll be bankruptcy court for her next. Too bad her boyfriend lost the house to foreclosure. She won’t be finding any money from his side as he already is paying alimony from his first divorce and child payments for his three kids. His ex is already considering taking him to court again because he’s spending his money on MsNoManagementSkills and his kids are going to school without shoes. Tsk, tsk.

Across the street, Butterfly Garcia moved out today and he did NOT look happy in the least. I think it was the potted house plants literally thrown out onto the porch that really gave it away. Or maybe it was because he was waiting until the very last minute to get out and kept nearing backing the huge rental moving truck into the house gutters. According to Ms. Blinder who was getting the last of the stuff she wanted yesterday while Butterfly was gone, the new owners of the house move in tomorrow. The couple, with two small children (why can’t we have any neighbors WITHOUT KIDS??) are from California and go by the names Skip and Buffy. I’m not kidding. From what I hear and for this journal, I couldn’t have made up better names (unless I called them the “Cal-LEE-fornians” as Arnold would say). I didn’t think Skip was a real name. That’s really more of a children’s gesture than a real name, isn’t it? And Buffy. Maybe we can become great friends and she can come over and help me wax my car.

Ms. Blinder says they are very “California” people and come from the big capital city of Sacramento. I give them two rainy, Pacific Northwest winters, tops, before they move back to the endless summer and the “golden, tanned image is everything” mentality. But who’s judging? I’ll know more once I see them in person.

November 17 2003

Skip and Buffy are moving in across the street. Expecting to see a big, professional-type moving truck containing all their possessions and being told that they were moving from Sacramento, Cal-LEE-fornia and very imagine-conscious, I was surprised to see a fairly-well beat up U-Haul truck pull up along with the family vehicle – a mini van. That only makes, what,….12 mini vans on just our block alone? I’ll be willing to bet they trade it in shortly for the preferred neighborhood status symbol, a fricken’ huge Chevy Suburban with limo tint windows. And he’ll get a big silver Dodge Ram pickup.

In the rain, Buffy has been assigned to unpack the mini van as one of their small, 3 year old-looking children run around in the street (without looking for traffic!) and she doesn’t look too happy about her job OR the rain. Her velour jumpsuit is getting all wet, but no worries. Skip tossed her a big yellow slicker raincoat that she didn’t look happy to wear either. Welcome to the Pacific Northwest! The mini van appears to be completely and totally stuffed with children’s toys. Fun. Let’s hope they keep them in the backyard for the long haul.

Skip is rather nerd-looking, in his dark polyester pants, white dress shirt and high top, tacky-looking navy and white basketball shoes. I get the impression that maybe he isn’t the imagine-conscious one.

Unpacking, unpacking, unpacking. Nothing much seems to be packed in boxes but rather, in big, plastic garbage bags. Finally, Skip yells out “You’re not helping!” to Buffy who has apparently unloaded and dumped all the contents of the mini van directly in the path into the garage, completely blocking any entry. And with that, she slammed the van door shut, pulled the child inside and slammed the front door.

Later, when Skip left in the truck, Buffy returned to empty the mini van and I don’t think I have to tell you where she dumped the remaining items, but let’s just say Skip probably isn’t going to be happy.

Aren’t new neighbors just FUN?

Shortly thereafter, a Jeep drove up, blocking our driveway completely, and out piled a group of smartly dressed people to help unload the U-Haul truck and to unblock the garage entrance. So far, they have unloaded countless garbage bags of personal belongings, a couch that looks very suspiciously exactly like ours (maybe it is time to find a new couch after all), 3 pairs of snow skies (that’s a first on this block), a stair climber machine, 9 full-sized and very heavy-looking Coleman ice chests and god help us, the dreaded primary colored plastic Fisher-Price children playhouse (PLEASE LET THIS STAY HIDDEN FROM OUR VIEW!).

Within the hour, while the plastic Fisher-Price toys were still thankfully out of view, Skip set up a pre-schooler-sized kids chair and table set right outside the front door on the front porch, which is only different from the pre-schooler-sized kids chairs and table set The Blinders had set up there in that this set is wood and The Blinders was bright, molded plastic. From Fisher-Price. (and let’s not forget that The Blinders had teenage children, not pre-schoolers. Go figure.)

Ms. Howler Monkey from next door acts as a welcoming committee and brings over to Buffy what looks like a pile of mail and a bundt cake. Or maybe it was a Jell-o ring. Probably with fruit cocktail added.

Over here last night, WS did an incredible job with rearranging our living room. It’s so cozy now with a definite TV viewing area and a separate living space area that I’d love to get a game table and a couple of leather club chairs for someday. What was once a room that looked like we had just dumped some furniture in it and never looked back, now feels warm and inviting. Most of the pets seem to like the change, giving their stamp of approval by sleeping on the couch, while one of them, who isn’t too keen on change, promptly barfed.

Things will be very tense in the coming weeks at work (aren’t they always at this time of year?). A new time card system has been put into place and, apparently, I have to fill one out too for the first time ever. Not good, mostly because it entails entering a social security number online to start the time card account. No sir, I don’t like. I might be on The Company shit list for a while until I can figure this out. MsNoManagementSkills has already sent out emails reminding us all to use it. Yeah, whatever. This is coming from someone who regularly posts all her personal information on the Internet anyway. Why she hasn’t had her identity stolen yet is beyond me. I just know that trying to sort this online time card system has me feeling a bit like Spicoli in the movie ”Fast Times at Ridgmont High” when he was late to Mr. Hand’s class and says something like “This new schedule is totally bogus.” I half expect MsNoManagementSkills to look at what I’ve got so far, rip up my card and tell me “I think you know where the front office is.”

As which I call her a dick. Yeah, like that’s going to make anything better.
November 18 2003

I’ve used up all my sick days, so I’d like to call in dead…

I hadn’t mentioned my sleep pattern in a long time, mostly, because I didn’t want to jinx anything. I’ve had problems sleeping since as far back as I can remember existing. Most of my childhood was spent having severe nightmares, probably brought on by my parents severe child abuse and incest. When WS and I met and eventually started spending the nights together, I still had the nightmares regularly 4 nights a week. But over time and once my subconscious accepted that while I was sleeping, no one was going to throw something heavy on me, no one was going to start beating me or try to light my bed on fire or try to stick something in me, the nightmares began to fade to only once or twice a week.

Finally, years later, they subsided to once or twice a month and now sit at around once or twice every few months. I haven’t been having nightmare problems, but it did directly tie into how I slept every night. Which was basically, like crap. But some reason, over the last 4 months, I’ve finally experienced what I’ve been led to believe nearly everyone experiences (if you listen to all the TV commercials), and that is, a good night’s sleep. No tossing and turning. No back pain. No too-soft or too-hard mattress issues. And no insomnia. It’s been absolutely wonderful.

However, for the last two nights, sleep has eluded me almost completely, making each day miserable to slog through. Today, I woke up with a horrible overwhelmed feeling. I think I’ve got too much on my mind and too many unresolved things going on at once that I really need to take care of. I’ve got a CB radio to return and WS needs to write up the letter that goes with it. He’s also got a pair of pants that I think he wants to return. We are desperate for groceries. I’ll be dining on my forearm later today if we don’t get something in this house. I need to tell the mean Competition Boy firmly that no, I won’t create the flyer for next years car club event (and boy, are there a lot of mental anguish over that right now). And by refusing to have anything to do with helping out the car club, which by the way, I didn’t renew my membership for and I won’t be either, will this affect the friendship we’ve developed with Drill Sargent Dave and his wife, who still, even though they both have been shunned by the club now, still wants to participate in that event.

I’ve also got work things to finish today. All those Company documents to change because The Company continues to change their mind on how they want their product to be labeled. Only a couple thousand pages left to change. And I’ve got four new documents to create today and a bad conference call meeting to sit through where MrSmartButFakingIt will mumble and assign tasks to each of us that we don’t have any idea of what he’s babbling about, and MsNoManagementSkills and Ego will agree with everything he says. Whatever. Maybe WS will translate it all for me into something that resembles English. I’ve been assigned some stuff already that I haven’t a clue about.

I’ve got some web work to do. A bit of book shopping I wanted to do. I need to move a big desk and a peacock in our bedroom, although I’m now wondering now if the peacock would be detrimental to my sleep. Our office is a pig sty again and full of pet fur (Note to self: Get Nair at the grocery store). And finally, I’ve really been sucking at watching my diet. Basically, I’ve been eating anything. But, strangely, I weighed myself yesterday and my weight was exactly the same as it was 3 months ago when I was gung-ho on Atkins’. I think I’m the only person I know that never lost weight on Atkins’ and at one point, actually gained weight.

So, you could say I’ve got a lot on my mind and I need a mental house cleaning. Especially since the holidays are less than two weeks away and I’ll have two big dinners to create, two trees to decorate, the house, inside and out, and both front and back yards to decorate and light up (good thing I like this part), a New Year’s party to attend and I don’t even want to think about tearing down all the holiday decorations afterward.

Now that I think about it, I think this is exactly what I whined about last year. Hmmm…okay, never mind.

November 19 2003

Age and knowledge don’t always come together. Sometimes you just get the age…

You know my love/hate relationship with our own local weather people. This group couldn’t tell if their own asses were wet or not. But sometimes, just sometimes, I absolutely love it when they are caught with their pants down. This morning was such a time.

WS woke me up at quarter to 9 and said, “I think it’s raining with snow mixed outside.” Instantly, in my sleep even, I shot back, “No way!” and jumped out of bed. Sure as shit, there was snow mixed with the rain which rapidly, and I do mean really rapidly, turned to nothing but snow. And lots of it. Too cool!

It’s now noon and there is a good 3-4 inches of snow outside. This NEVER happens here and is already being called a very rare event for our area. The last time it snowed enough to stick before Thanksgiving was back in the 1980’s. The last time it snowed here enough to be measurable in inches was in February of 1994 but it only snowed in select areas of town. We’ve been promised snow here and there and every time, we’ve been denied. Coming from the desert southwest, I have dreamed of living some place where this kind of weather is the norm. It is just so beautiful outside and as goofy as it sounds, everything looks just like a Christmas card.

I spent the first 3 hours this morning just sitting in our living room with the blinds rolled up, watching the snow and taking pictures for WS who is at his real job, stuck in meetings all day. But I knew that eventually, I’d have to start work myself, where, apparently, there also seems to be some excitement going on. Big Time Slacker (BTS from the cast of characters) has been fired. Sure, his firing is only 3 years too late and his bad work ethic was one of the major causes of poorer than poor job morale right now, but better late than never, right? Good riddance to him and a big hello to an extra mountain of work and life back under the microscope.

The interesting thing is that BTS was FatHead’s roommate after MsNoManagementSkills moved out. As you recall, FatHead himself was fired within days of his wife, MsNoManagementSkills, left him for her new boyfriend and word through the grapevine is that he was really struggling to make the house payments, all the car payments and all the credit card payments that MsNoManagementSkills rung up before moving out. So, BTS was invited to move in to help out. BTS had previously been living with his parents (he’s 27 years old) and had to learn quickly what it was like to pay for rent, utilities and food for the first time ever. Now that he’s been fired too, I imagine he’ll move back home, leaving FatHead in an even worse spot. It’s usually at stressful times like this that FatHead lashes out, if his past history is any indication. Last week, he tried to contact WS through work email and WS was smart enough to ignore him. Should he have replied back, through his work email, WS could have gotten into big trouble as using work email to talk with fired employees is against Company policy. I’d be willing to bet FatHead will try to contact us again soon. He might be thinking we’d make good character witnesses for his upcoming divorce and I’m thinking this would be really stupid since we still work, although regrettably, with his wife, MsNoManagementSkills. Or maybe he’s got something else in mind, but I can guarantee, what that is, it isn’t anything good and most likely, not something legal. FatHead was just a bad guy and no one to mess with.

November 20 2003

I got up at 4 a.m. and was really pissed at myself for not remembering to take a Tylenol P.M. before going to bed. At least that way, I would have gotten some sleep. But this time, I didn’t lie there tossing and turning. I got up and started working online at 5 a.m. I also got most of that web work done that I needed to do (see whining in November 18th post). Going back to bed when WS got up at 8, I ended up being proud of myself for getting in a few work hours before most of the rest of The Company got online. At 11 a.m. I got back up and back to work to finish up the day. Only 1 more hour to go today that I’ll work on tonight, maybe during “Survivor”. Go me.

We were supposed to get a mix of rain and snow on and off today, but it just rained and washed away the snow left from yesterday. I probably should have gone out walking in the stuff yesterday or last night, but with BTS being fired, I couldn’t find time to get away from work and by the end of the day, I was just mentally exhausted.

Yesterday, I was feeling a bit giddy with all the snow coming down and all and I really didn’t want to work. But I played the loyal servantemployee and put in a good seven hour day. I’m still ahead for the week so that hour short of eight is okay. I won’t make a habit of it like someone we know who’s name I don’t need to mention.

WS suggested soup or some such boring dinner that I really wasn’t too keen over so he started work at his other job, the one he works with me at online, and after a bit, I felt bad for blowing him off on having soup for dinner. Now, let me explain that I have never been, nor ever will be, a “soup person” to being with. In my mind, soup is for old people who have little to no teeth. Like my father who ate soup (with green Jell-o) for every meal for years before he died. But we had this lentil soup in the freezer that WS had made back in October and even I thought it was very good.

So feeling bad, I thought I would heat up some of that soup and maybe even make a couple of good, hearty ham and cheese sandwiches to go along with it. As I was heating the soup, and preparing the sandwiches, I decided to add dill pickles, which we both really like. But damn, if I could not, for the life of me, get that new 5 pound jar of pickles open. I was even using one of those cool, OXO jar opener things. The lid just.would.not.budge….

…until suddenly, the jar shot out from my grip, sailed across the room a good 8 feet, slammed into the kitchen wall, and exploded onto the floor. And the refrigerator. And the pantry. And my legs. And WS’s shoes. And my new slippers. And the door mat. And as far as I know, the neighbor’s house next door. There was that much widespread destruction. Glass and all that dill pickle juice. Everywhere. No sir, it wasn’t pretty and I was not happy in the least.

Needless to say, we didn’t have sandwiches for dinner. Or the soup. After making that big of a mess, I was pretty much disgusted with myself because this kind of thing never happens to me and my heart just wasn’t into making or eating anything. Hours later, I found this and just had to believe someone up there cares after all.

Thanks. If you’d like your own church sign, you can make one here. Have fun.

BTW: WS took complete pity on me and eventually, went out and picked up Taco Hell for dinner. Yeah, I know. No one like Taco Bell, but it’s been nearly a year since we had it and you know, it wasn’t half bad.

November 21 2003

Tofu – the other white meat substitute.

Anybody watching all the JFK assassination shows on TV recently? All I can say after watching several of them is, “Whom are you trying to convince?”

This morning, it was looking like the weather was going to be a repeat of last Wednesday. It was raining but turning to snow. Big, puffy flakes, but it didn’t last. Less than an hour later, the snow ended and melted off. Poop.

Next door, at the Blinders, for the past 8 days, they have left their water facet outside turned on which is pouring water down their driveway and into the gutter drain. We have no idea what the hell they are doing but I can assure you, their water bill is going to be outrageous! Maybe it had something to do with why one of their back yard torches was lit last Monday night at 1 a.m. Who knows what’s going on over there? But I swear, if Mr. Blinder mentions to me one more time about any back yard flooding he’s experiencing, I will not be able to keep my mouth shut.

Finally, after several months, I’ve discovered the source of the Howler Monkey sounds coming from where else? The Howler Monkey house. This morning, a Pomeranian dog was running around the neighborhood, making very odd sounds. Mr. SportsOrNothing from next door was out there, trying to herd it into the house’s back yard. Don’t Pomeranian dogs make normal dog-like sounds? This one sure didn’t!

5 and a half hours of work left. The day is dragging and isn’t helped along by the sore throat I woke up with this morning . Or my strong desire to take a nap. I don’t think I’m sick or anything. I think it’s related to a popcorn husk I still have stuck in my throat from a popcorn ball I ate last Monday. Cough, cough, cough isn’t helping any.

The Company has several things going on today at Company headquarters – they have Company pictures being taken for their annual Christmas card (one that remote employees have always been sorely missing from and not even mentioned) and they are having another keg party this afternoon around 5 p.m. Which really means around 2:30. Coming up in the next few weeks is the annual Company Christmas party, where employees get to be limo-ed around town to some swanky restaurant. Us remote employees don’t get to participate in this either. But we get to receive the emails talking all about it. I’ve often wondered if anyone in The Company realizes how demoralizing this is to outside employees. Probably not and if they did, they’d probably just tell us to remove ourselves from the mailing list. Like ignorance supposed to make us feel better? Like we’re supposed to close our ears when we fly to Company headquarters and hear talk about the free weekly massages and car detailing?

WS should be excited today. He’s just hours away from starting his week long vacation from his real job. He still has to work next week online with me at The Company, but only Monday through Wednesday. He’s also got both this weekend off and the four-day Thanksgiving weekend off, a first in a very long time. Hang in there, WS. Only a few hours left.

We still haven’t decided on what we’ll be having for Thanksgiving dinner. It’s just us two here. Hopefully, a trip to the store this evening or tomorrow will give us an idea. I am just not a turkey fan but I may be swayed by one of the good, free-range, “chemical-free” turkey breasts from the snooty store across the river. Or give me enough wine, and I’m bound to eat anything.

November 24 2003

Monday and I’m sick as a dog. It seems that sore throat I got last week from a popcorn husk stuck in my throat turned into something serious. A serious cold, complete with fever, chills, racking cough, aches and pains, stuffed nose and loss of voice. Sunday was our 14-year anniversary and we had a great dinner here planned. While I couldn’t make it as nice as we had liked because I was not feeling well, we did still get to enjoy the lobster and meat-stuffed pinwheels from Zupan’s Market. Afterward, WS surprised me with a gorgeous pearl and diamond pendant necklace. We never even talked about getting each other anything and naturally, I didn’t have a thing to give him back. Living in sickness-La-La land hasn’t been helping either and even now, my head is swimmingly swimming along. And I’m craving chocolate cake. Lucky for me, we just happen to have some as the dessert to our anniversary dinner last night. I’m sure chocolate cake isn’t a cure for colds, but I’m going to indulge in a small piece anyway. Maybe the calories won’t remember to stick to me.

MsNoManagementSkills has taken a sick day off from work today. From reading her’s and her boyfriend’s Online Journal, it sounds like he food poisoned them both as well as 2 of his 3 kids. I’m sure he’s a good cook. It’s just all that filth they live in over there. No one likes to clean and all MsNoManagementSkills likes to do is fold laundry and clean out cabinets. “Really, organizing shit isn’t cleaning. You need to WASH DOWN those countertops every once in a while. Yes, even that one that had the veal defrosting on it for days.”

November 25 2003

You’ve heard me whine constantly about how bad morale sucks at my place of employment, The Company, especially for us remote employees. So, in the medication haze that I’ve come to embrace while I’m suffering this horrible, racking cold, I’ve decided to try to help raise morale from my little corner of the world. To do so, I’ve blatantly stolen a dorky idea from the movie, ”Legally Blonde 2” in the form of the “Snap Cup.”

The Snap Cup is a cup wherein people write nice little things down on a piece of paper about a coworker. When it’s Snap Cup Time, determined at will and usually for no reason whatsoever, someone pulls out one of the comment notes and reads it out loud. Dorky-sounding? You betcha! But would it work at The Company? Let’s see, shall we?

First Victim: A coworker who is very, very nice, fairly bright and knows darn well what is going on in the work place. She is a good worker, one any company should be proud to have working for them and one that I’d come close to trusting my employee life with. Unfortunately, MsNoManagementSkills dislikes her and so, she hasn’t gone far at The Company. For the sake of this little game, let’s call her Joan of Arc:

Me popping into The Company approved Instant Message program to coworker Joan of Arc during the work day: Hi, Joan! It’s Snap Cup Time for Joan of Arc!
Joan of Arc (after a few moments): Huh?
Me: Joan is a wonderful and well liked coworker, especially when working with pissed off customers on particularly difficult online problems. Snaps to Joan! Snap, Snap! (and I snap my fingers).
Joan of Arc (after several more moments): Okay…thanks?
Me: You really are. Have a good day!
Joan of Arc: …

Okay, that wasn’t so bad. I might have just helped someone have a good day. It’s also possible that I might have caused someone to question my mental health, but given that no one really gives a crap at The Company, I don’t think that’ll really be the case. Obviously, no one there has seen ”Legally Blonde 2” and that little tidbit could serve to make this real fun.

I decide to try it again. Let’s see….who needs snaps. Hmmmm….MrSmartButFakingIt! Amazingly, he’s online. He might even answer too!

Me popping into Instant Message to MrSmartButFakingIt: Snap Cup time for MrSmartButFakingIt!
MrSmartButFakingIt doesn’t answer.
Me: Thanks to MrSmartButFakingIt for working on that report over the weekend! Good job! Snap, Snap! (and I snap my fingers here).
After about 40 minutes, MrSmartButFakingIt replies with a smiley face and then instantly logs off.

I don’t think he got it.

November 26 2003

Just remember, if the world didn’t suck, we’d all fall off.

I really don’t get all those online quizzes that people gladly fill out and post on their journals. You know the ones I’m talking about. The ones that ask for personal information like full birth name, date of birth, hospital where born, parents full names, make and model of car, etc. Why, oh WHY do people fill these things out and then POST THE INFORMATION?? Don’t they know that this is how identity thieves gather info? Are people really this stupid?

In case you didn’t already guess, MsNoManagementSkills filled out yet another one and posted it. Me and the world knows more about this woman than anyone should ever know, including just recently, the size of her boyfriend’s penis. Not sure how I.D. thieves would use that tidbit of information though. Maybe after she posts pictures of it?

It’s been raining on and off all week but looks like it will be dry tomorrow. WS and I will be cooking a turkey breast for ourselves tomorrow afternoon with wild rice, yams and potatoes. We might start working on putting up our holiday lights sometime during the day, in between watching our favorite Christmas movies: ”Scrooged”, “A Christmas Story”, “A Christmas Carol” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” .

Here’s our big yearly tradition. Get up in enough time to watch the very, very end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade to see if the Santa they used was a good one or a crappy one (believe me, just that alone makes all the difference in the world), then immediately after judging the Santa, put in the 1950’s version of ”A Christmas Carol” with Allaster Sim on DVD to play in the background while getting the meat of choice in the oven. After that, we work on getting all the other food stuff ready, while snacking on cheese and crackers and sipping cider or some other libations, and then we consider tackling any outdoor holiday lighting stuff we can start on, depending on the weather. We really wanted to find a company that does professional holiday lighting for residential homes this year, but we just couldn’t find any until just today, and they say we are too late in the season. WTF? Maybe if you made your company a bit easier to find, we could have called months ago. So, if we put up any lights on our house, they will once again be limited to just the first story. We still don’t have a tall enough ladder for me to get up on the roof of the second story.

I’m feeling better today. Just wads of crud in my sinuses to blow out and a mild cough. I guess all that extra sleep and eating some decent meals lately was a big, engraved invitation for Aunt Flo to visit nearly 2 weeks early so I’m dealing with that on top of the cold. I’m not sure what’s up with that and it isn’t too fun having two periods in one month, I can tell you but I’ll deal with it. Thankful for it? Maybe. Maybe not. But I am thankful that I have a home to live in this Thanksgiving. 25 years ago, I couldn’t say that.

November 27 2003

A so-so Santa, turkey-lovin’ moms and just say “no” to rope lights.

And a good Thanksgiving Day was had by all. Because it’s just WS and me, that means we both had a very good day. We hope you all had a good day too.

We took our time getting out of bed this morning and then, I worked on sweeping off our back yard walkways while WS vacuumed and cleaned inside. We finished up in time to pass judgment on the Macy’s Parade Santa, who was NOT a great looking Santa in the least, but one of those more traditional, German, Old World kind of Santas. The whole Santa judging thing is not too unlike the groundhog seeing it’s shadow thing: If it’s a good Santa, the season will be wonderful. If it’s a crappy Santa, the season will be so-so at best. The only thing that can rule out a Bad-Looking Santa year is seeing a REAL Santa sometime before Christmas and both WS and I saw him last week at a local mall. In fact, he singled out both of us from the crowd, winked and told us alone to have a very Merry Christmas. Not once, but twice. It was a magic moment. At the Macy’s Parade this year, they could have had Don King himself at the Santa and it wouldn’t have mattered. This will be a wonderful year.

Immediately following the Santa judging, we popped in the Alaster Sim version DVD of “A Christmas Carol” and promptly recited most of the lines, memorized after years and years of watching it, while we cleaned and chopped veggies and herbs for Thanksgiving dinner. The Christmas Carol movie was then followed by “Scrooged”, a movie very, very dear to both WS and myself. We saw this movie together when we had only been dating a couple of months and loved it. So much of it is just so us. Scrooged was followed by “The Santa Clause” which brings me to needing to mention the importance of knowing a real Santa from a fake Santa (story to come later) and finally, over dinner, we watched “The Santa Clause 2” that WS picked up just last week. Cute.

As for dinner, nothing burned, nothing was dropped and nothing was forgotten. Okay, technically, the hormone-free turkey breast didn’t roast in time meaning everything else was done 45 minutes before the turkey, which I eventually finished off in the microwave after cutting not-quite-done slices off it. But it was still excellent! I made homemade cranberry sauce this year and we made candied yams from scratch – no canned stuff. WS made his awesome wild rice, apple wood bacon and pine nut dish as a stuffing substitute and we rounded the feast off with fresh Brussels sprouts (we both love ‘em, go figure), gravy, egg bread and a good German Riesling.

And just now, rereading all that, I think we did pick up some butter rolls last week that I packed away in the freezer just for today and forgot. Oh well. We’ll just use them to make mini turkey sandwiches for the next few days.

Which reminds me of the months upon months us kids would have to eat turkey following Thanksgiving when growing up. My mother loved turkey and would buy the biggest one she could find. I think the smallest one we ever had was a 32 pounder. Anyway, none of the rest of us liked turkey and we would just pick at our portions, doled out for each of us by our turkey-lovin’ mother. It wasn’t that we hated turkey really. It was dreading all the turkey we’d have to eat for the next 4 months. Turkey sandwiches, open-faced turkey sandwiches, turkey roasts, turkey meatloaf, turkey burgers, turkey steak, turkey with oatmeal, turkey snacks, turkey ala king, turkey pot pie, turkey waffles, turkey with noodles, turkey soup, turkey barbeque, turkey shakes, turkey, turkey and more turkey. And our dog wasn’t any help at the dinner table. He wouldn’t even touch the stuff past day 7. Sure, it was the only time of year we didn’t have to take mayonnaise sandwiches for our school lunches but I can assure you, by day 26, the mere sight of turkey anything was enough to make the heartiest of turkey eaters queasy.

That is, anyone but my turkey-lovin’ mom.

Back to the present, after dinner tonight and 2 huge loads of dishes, we walked around the neighborhood. It’s been dry all day and the temperatures has been in the upper 40’s. A couple of families have started in on their Christmas decorations and it looks like the fresh, new housing development right next to ours is going to be the usual case of “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” when it comes to Christmas lighting. I love seeing how others decorate. This is always a fun time of year for us. If the weather holds, and it looks like it will rain tomorrow but be dry for Saturday and Sunday, I’ll work on getting our own lights up. We’re thinking of using a bit of restraint this year by using less lights and using them only on the house roof line and mini lights on the white birch trees out front. No one in our development puts lights on their trees or bushes, something we’ve always done and something we’re surprised that no one else has picked up on. But that just keeps us different. As for that first official day of holiday shopping, no way. Luckily, we don’t have anyone to shop for, other than each other, and since we do that all year long, we don’t generally do the whole Christmas gift giving thing. Christmas for us isn’t about gifts; it’s always been about enjoying the decorating, having a good day away from work with good food and each other. Yeah, I know, we’re weird. I guess we can live with that label.

December 1 2003

It could be that the purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.

Hey-ho, it’s back to work we go. Let’s not talk about how high that mountain of work is, okay? MsNoManagementSkills has already been sending out the “GET TO WORK!” emails all morning.

I’m nearly over that nasty cold I had last week. A bit of a cough left, usually coming on around 3 a.m. and some tightness in my chest affecting my asthma a bit, again, usually coming on at night. Yesterday, I finally became aware of how out of it I really was on Thanksgiving Day when I thought I was doing a really good job of faking like I felt better. I’m usually much better at this. I completely forgot half of what I had bought days before to prepare for our T-Day dinner and just found all those potatoes, green beans, etc in the fridge. Guess what we’ll be eating all this week. Looks like a grocery shopping trip won’t be needed until next weekend.

The biggest thing that happened over the weekend is seeing first-hand how mental Mr. Dimmer next door has become since quitting his job. It’s gotten to the point that WS is becoming concerned about me being here alone during the day. I really think I can handle myself but mark our words: This guy is going to go off some day and it isn’t going to be pretty at all. More about this shortly.

Last Saturday, when it was supposed to be dry outside, weather-wise, it was anything but. So we spent the day running errands around town and decided on what holiday lights we would need for decorating. Not that we don’t already have enough strings of lights to open our own holiday lighting store. We just didn’t have white lights with white wire, and it’s that we needed to light up those white-bark birch trees we planted last spring.

Sunday was very cool, windy and partly sunny so I wasted no time getting up early, getting the last of the front yard work done and then tackled lighting those birch trees. A big, fat piece of cake that was. Much, much easier than I thought it would go. I might change my mind on this when I have to take those things down though. We were also able to get the lights up on our house, again, only the lower level because we have no way to get up to the second floor roof. That lighting place we called last week never called us back. Big surprise there…not! I guess according to WS when he talked to them, they sounded like we were mad to be calling them at this time of year. It sounded like they start scheduling work during the summer months (for December house lighting!). If we can remember, we’ll try calling them again next August or so.

So, we were working on lighting the birch trees in our side front yard, with me up on the ladder and WS stringing the sets together and guiding me, a sheriff SUV screeches up about 8 feet from me and a sheriff gets out and runs up to The Dimmer’s front door. Yikes! What’s going on, we wonder but keep working and minding our own business. A few minutes later, the sheriff comes over and asks us if we knew if anyone was home over there because they received a 9-11 call and they couldn’t call back to confirm if there was an emergency. We told him that their kids were outside riding their bikes about 40 minutes previous but we hadn’t seen anyone else. Since we assumed someone had to be there, we suggested pounding hard on the door. And the sheriff did just that and within a couple of minutes, here comes Mr. Dimmer walking out to the SUV with the sheriff, whom didn’t look terribly happy. At that point, WS could overhear Mr. Dimmer babbling about ISPs and IP addresses on and on and on. After a few minutes, the sheriff drove off and Mr. Dimmer wandered over to tell us that he was still having problems with his computer and “hacking” and that he couldn’t get out on the Internet so he had called 9-11.

That’s right. He called 9-11 because he couldn’t get onto the Internet.

Gee, and I thought the stupidest thing to use 9-11 for was to call for pizza and a movie rental. I guess I was wrong.

So Mr. Dimmer goes on about all his “hacking” problems and it doesn’t take too long for us to understand that this guy hasn’t the slightest idea what he’s saying. He starts interjecting computer words and terms into the conversation, completely unaware of what he’s saying. It’s ridiculous and we have a hard time not laughing at him. He starts talking about JAVA, thinking that’s the “hacking virus” he’s got. “There’s JAVA all over my computer and I can’t get rid of it. It’s messed up the 3 last computers I bought in the last 5 weeks. I bought a phone last week and there’s JAVA on that too and I’m going to have to take it back. I’m going to have to buy a firewall for my cell phone to keep the JAVA off it! I’ve got a lawsuit going and I’ve got JAVA now.” He tells us he spent nearly 400 dollars to some computer tech to come over and fix his computer when all it sounds like the guy may have done was do a complete restore, something Mr. Dimmer frantically says he’s done 12 times since then and he still has JAVA. And every time we tried to tell him what we thought and what he should look for, being as we are computer techs ourselves, he interrupted every time and obviously, did NOT want to hear anything we had to say. Okay, whatever, man. We hope you get it and your head straightened out.

A few minutes later, Ms. Dimmer and her visiting father comes home from shopping and he pulls them into their open garage and tells them what he did and the 9-11 call and the “hackers” and how he’s going to have to buy yet another computer. Ms. Dimmer did NOT sound happy in the least and I could hear her father questioning Mr. Dimmer about this and that and his unemployment and all but not getting any answers he was looking for. Thankfully, after a while, they closed the garage. We really didn’t want to hear any more. I think the holidays are going to be a bit stressful over there this year and all I can think of is remembering listening to Mr. Dimmer when he first moved in back in June, telling us how much they all got into the holidays and wasting no time covering the house with lights, before Thanksgiving even. Currently, there isn’t a light or any sign of the holiday to be seen. It might as well still be July over there.

We got our bedroom Christmas tree up and decorated. It took longer to set it up at first, but we ripped right through hanging all the ornaments. Last night, we drug out all the plastic bins from the wine cellar that hold the downstairs holiday decorations and I redecorated the big-ass buffet in our kitchen with greenery, gilded fruit and pine cones mixed in with our big tea chest, different kinds of hot chocolate and cider mixes and libations of the alcoholic persuasion. We’ll work on getting our downstairs tree up this week. At a very bushy 12 feet tall, that one takes a few days to finish.

And we’ll be working on staying away from Mr. Dimmer. We’re going to start using our home security system 24-7 religiously. The Pacific Northwest has the highest depression and suicide/murder rates in the country around the holidays and we don’t want any part of that. JAVA or not.

December 2 2003

A company is known by the people it keeps…

I was having so much fun today, I nearly forgot to update anything here.

No, really, that’s sarcasm. I was so furious last night after I logged off of work, I seriously questioned why I was even working for The Company any longer. I mean, all I do is complain about the place that has shamelessly drug me and several other employees through the muck and lowered our morale to that what must be experienced every day by animals cruelly tested on in laboratories around the world. The latest blow comes on the heels of WS and I asking for clarification on when, exactly, employees are allowed to take vacation and being told that absolutely, under no circumstances, will anyone be allowed to take vacation around any holidays, especially around Christmas. Then we see that MsNoManagementSkills gets to take both the day before AND the day after Christmas off, in blatant violation of this company policy. What really stabs one in the heart is that on the exact same page that her days off is posted publicly is The Company policy itself, stating that absolutely no time off will be given around the holidays. Now, what kind of message does this send to the rest of us? It’s like The Company no longer cares about it’s employees. Maybe they are hoping some of us will get mad enough to quit?

And let’s not forget that MsNoManagementSkills has taken every single Christmas season off since she started working for this company. That’s five Christmases in a row and I should know. I’ve worked with her all five of those years and in fact, I was refused when I asked for Christmas time off three years in a row by her!

I could just scream.

But that was yesterday and today is a new day. Or at least a different day. I’ll just take my 30K a year and my perk of working from home and keep my mouth shut and not ask MrSmartButFakingIt what the fuck this is all about. I really want to see MsNoManagementSkills go down in flames now. I’m just daring someone at The Company to say that the reason why she gets the time off is because she’s had a “rough” year. There is no way I’ll be able to contain myself then. Just no way.

But in other news, the Howler Monkeys and The Cal-LEE-fornians across the street had interesting times getting their holiday lights up last Sunday. All we can say is, the way to get lights up into a 15-foot tree is NOT to throw the string of lights up there and let them smack the pavement on the way back down. Countless times in a row. But sometimes, people can only learn by doing and let’s just say, the Cal-LEE-fornians do not have working lights in their big front tree. I don’t expect all the fake deer and 3-foot candy canes to stay lit or even remain in their front yard either. Not with the kind of winds we’ve been experiencing lately. I think these people have already lost most of their recycle bins to our howling wind and they’ve only been living there 3 weeks.

And I’m really getting pissed off at how the Howler Monkeys leave their nice cat outside 24-7, regardless of the weather conditions, while that rat-bastard yowling dog of theirs gets to stay indoors. Do they really think this cat is living just fine and dandy on it’s own and finding it’s own food and water? And obviously, they don’t know that they live right next door to the CatKiller people, who feed cats to their Akita and St. Bernard dogs when they run across one. Unfortunately, I don’t see a happy life for this cat and that knowledge, as well as a horrible visual I saw on a recent National Geographic Explorer show, has screwed up my sleep pattern lately. I really hate people who mistreat animals (I say as I am craving burgers and I realize I’m part of the problem) and sometimes, this seats itself deeply into my subconscious and makes me have nightmares on top of what nightmares I’m already having that month.

The Quiet Family that lives on the other side kitty-corner from us put up their holiday icicle lights last night and in what has become a neighborhood tradition around here, a goodly portion of them are already burnt out and will not be fixed. Or are still burnt out from what burnt out last year. All that’s missing is for us to have a decent wind storm, causing most of the dangling icicle lights to blow back up on the roof, where they will stay the remainder of the season. And well into next spring. It seems these people don’t care either.

Still no sign of any holiday doings over at The Dimmers. Or over at SportsOrNothing. Or back at Cap’t Dan’s which is odd since both of those families decorate their houses before nearly anyone else does and it’s always an adventure to watch. Maybe this coming weekend?

December 3 2003

Want to cause snow globe havoc? Have fun.

My motivation was high this morning, but now that I’m three hours into work, I could care less. I worked a full eight hours yesterday (in nine hours of work time) and I did get a lot done this morning. It’s just that I don’t see anyone else doing anything but making busy work for everyone else. Oh, and there’s all those private Company Christmas party and group photo emails flying left and right that us remote employees don’t get to participate in. Apparently, The Company has hired a big name rock band to perform at Company headquarters this year for the party to go with the free beer, food and gifts. Whatever. I no longer care. I really don’t want to go back to Company headquarters, ever. It such a waste of Company money and our energy and just an exercise in frustration as nothing we accomplish on these trips ever, EVER comes to pass.

Over the last couple of weeks, and in between having that nasty cold, I got to walk around our development a few times in the evening and I realize now how much I really miss doing that. I used to walk almost every night, but West Nile Virus put an end to that this past summer. I’ve been waiting for it to get cold enough to kill off most of the mosquitoes around here (we have TONS). Last winter, we never got down to freezing temperatures so the mosquitoes were never killed off causing this past spring and summer to really be bad around here. A person would only walk around if they didn’t mind taking their lives into their hands. Or if they were the kind of person who didn’t care. Unfortunately, that’s not me and not because I’m paranoid. It’s because, eventually, I catch everything and I’m not quite ready to die just yet of a mosquito bite.

Back on track, WS and I walked to a different development this past Saturday night and it was really, really nice. I really like walking and I’ve actually lost a few pounds and fit better into my pants. I was planning on walking again last night, but just as I was starting to get ready, the clouds let loose and it poured outside. For several hours straight. So, no walking for me. Maybe tonight if the rain holds off I’ll be able to go out. It’s sunny today but it’ll be the last sun we’re supposed to see for the entire rest of the month. Welcome to December in the Pacific Northwest. I love it but I’m thinking of figuring out how to buy a treadmill, one of those fold-up-when-not-in-use kinds, sometime next spring when the mosquito clouds get thick again.

But then again, I remembered something I wanted to watch on TV tonight and I forced myself to decorate the fireplace mantel (which I’ll probably hate tomorrow when there is some light in there and I can see what kind of mess I made), so no walking tonight for me. For some reason, I feel so blah.

I know! I just need more hot salsa!

Back to trying to get motivated to work today, I mistakenly turned on Dr. Phil and was repulsed by visions of hugely pregnant women.

WARNING: Rant dead ahead!

Now, before you all fire off a nasty comment or email, keep in mind that I’ve posted before how much I don’t like children and I don’t like anything having anything to do with the whole” Pregnant Consumerism” market. It’s shameless and I hate that marketing departments around the world take complete and total advantage of pregnant women, at a time when most pregnant women seem to be thinking about nothing but “baby, baby, baby” and not thinking clearly enough to see that they are being taken to the cleaners financially.

Another sore spot for me on Dr. Phil’s pregnant episode – Could he get some REAL pregnant couples and not just couples who look, sound and act so clean, financially secure, sticky sweet and white bread that it’s enough to give all of us cavities? Ugh. Even Phil’s “family in crisis” series is white bread in that even though the teenage daughter had a baby, the family wasn’t living in squalor or struggling to put food on the table. I know, I know. That’s what the Maury Povich show is for and I do realize that if I don’t like this pregnant topic, I can just change the channel. But it’s not that easy.

I’m terribly, terribly tired of having my rights as a Non-Child oriented human stomped on and having to tolerate other people’s children everywhere I go. Restaurants, Movie Theatres, shopping malls and stores, television shows and commercials and even my own sidewalk and back yard areas. I can’t enjoy my own home without having to listen to some kid somewhere screaming at the top of their lungs or having to pick up someone else’s kids toys out of my yard. I can’t go anywhere without driving though ever-increasing traffic that consists mostly of SUVs and mini vans bought not to cart around sporting equipment or groceries alone, but children. I can’t even pay my taxes without some of it going to local schools and education WHEN I DON’T EVEN HAVE OR WILL EVER HAVE A CHILD! And it’s not like I can choose to have my tax dollars go somewhere else. The government just assumes, just like everyone else on the planet, that I am a breeder. Here’s a shocker: The government wants everyone to produce children. Children are future taxpayers. That’s all.

Yet if I complain too loudly about all this, I’m the one who’s seen as a monster and have to be a child abuser or molester or something. Why, doesn’t EVERYONE love children??

Uh,….actually, NO!

Whew! Sorry about that. No, wait a minute! No, I am NOT sorry about that. I have rights too!

December 4 2003

Happiness is like peeing on yourself. Everyone see it but only you can feel its warmth.

An adventurous weather day today. We’ve had very high winds since late last night. Gusts up to 60+ miles per hour and sustained winds around 40 mph. Trees are being blown down onto houses, cars, power lines and major streets. Windows and roofs are being blown off. Schools are being shut down as I type this. Power in a vast portion of the Pacific Northwest was out from 4 this morning until just around noon and is still out in most of that same area. WS, not being able to get much sleep because of the strong winds buffeting our house constantly, causing our bed to actually shake up here on the second floor of the house, making our windows and skylight creak and groan, and making us worry if we’ll lose any shingles and then suffer water damage when the heavy rains arrive later this afternoon, got up, took a shower by candle light since our power was out (I don’t think he thought it was romantic) and left for work early. He had to open the garage door manually to get his car out. It’s a good thing we didn’t have a garage door opener at the rental house we lived in for eight years (well, other than me) and we know how to get around that whole “no electricity” thing. I can assure you there are people right now in our neighborhood who think they are trapped in their homes because of the lack of power. (In fact, Mr. Dimmer next door is probably blaming this whole weather thing on JAVA. See December 1st entry.)

Outside, the Quiet family have lost a good third of their icicle lights which are dangling off their roof. The Cal-LEE-fornian’s plastic kids furniture has blown out into their front yard but strangely enough, they haven’t lost their holiday yard decorations or that fake, wildly swinging plant that Butterfly Garcia left hanging there when he moved out. Down the street, the Breeder family have lost their American flag and flag pole as well as their porch furniture and even further down the street, someone has lost their holiday lawn deer. Behind us, Cap’t Dan’s garbage cans, recycle bins and pizza boxes are everywhere except where they are supposed to be. No big change there. The trees we strung lights in last weekend in our yard look good still and if the wind hasn’t ripped down those lights by now, I don’t think we’ll have any problems. Again, I’m glad we spent so many years in that rental house which was located in a very, very windy area of town. It’s prepared us well.

I was just starting to get nervous about the power being out and hoping we’d get it back before “Survivor” tonight, but it looks like we’ll be okay. You all know I want Jon gone, gone, GONE, but I think someone else will get the boot and maybe that’s okay. I mean, who would you like to have against you in the final two? Someone nice and sweet? Or someone that has burnt every person they talked to? Ah, the strategies galore!

Looking at my attempt to decorate our fireplace mantel last night didn’t turn out too badly. Yes, I know it looks crammed full of stuff. That’s our Christmas decorating style. The illusion of abundance and all that.

I feel lucky that I got in a few extra hours of work earlier this week so I won’t need to make up any time tonight or tomorrow and this means it should be a low-key rest of the day with only about four hours of work left. Our house is finally warming back up and the rain has finally arrived. Sounds like a good time to whip up some hot apple cider and finish up my work day.

December 5 2003

I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn’t looking good either.

I don’t know why, but I’m feeling cranky today. I shouldn’t be. It’s Friday, for god’s sake and the end of my work week. It’s December, my favorite month of the year. It’s windy and rainy outside, my favorite kind of weather (well, I do like snow a bit better). And I’ve gotten sleep this week, with help from Tylenol P.M. Maybe I just have to get some stuff out of my system, so here goes:

If my mother were still alive, she would be 65 years old today. If I live past June 15th, 2004, I will have outlived both of my parents, who both died much younger than they should have. But then again, a person does need to take a bit of care with themselves and not do stupid things like obsessively eating and drinking, chain-smoking and throwing violent tempers daily while refusing to take badly needed blood pressure medication. Oh, and a person should NEVER say, “Oh, NO! I’ll NEVER catch that disease!” ‘cause diseases have a nasty way of latching themselves onto to people like that, especially when you lead an irresponsible lifestyle.

Someone asked me about my tagline on yesterday’s entry. Yes, it was directed at someone who posts every single day on their Online Journal, without failure, that they had to go pee. If I didn’t have to read that person’s Journal every day in order to keep my job perform my job better , I would never visit it again and subject myself to reading about someone’s early morning urinary habits.

I’m not happy to find out that at least 14 Americans are fired every minute of every day in the month of December. Unless, it was one of my coworkers (Name withheld), but apparently, it’s true because the Internet says so.

Maybe this mood has something to do with smarmy Jon not being voted off last night. Naw….

But just to break up all this whining for a minute, here’s another decorating picture from around the hacienda: I’m pretty proud of those skinny little birch trees. No one else in the neighborhood has anything like them. They ought to really look good lit up given a few years to fill out.

I took a walk around the neighborhood last night after “Survivor” when the rain stopped for about an hour. I noticed Mr. Dimmer next door sitting in his truck in his driveway with the engine running but didn’t think anything of it at the time. Adding to the list of items blown around the neighborhood from the high wind yesterday, let’s say that no one has “icicle” lights any longer, or more accurately, there is no longer anything “icicle” about them. The wind has blown down the lights on all but one of the 14 houses with them. And you can bet that having those big inflatable holiday figures, the ones that sound annoyingly like a vacuum cleaner is running constantly, is just a bad idea in 60 mph winds. Other found items were full-sized pumpkins rolling down the street from Halloween (apparently, there’s some confusion on exactly what season it is around here), assorted trash cans left out since trash day which was last Monday (c’mon, you lazy people!), branches from every tree imaginable including some pine branches that were as big as my car, lots of shingles and my favorite: those huge, free-standing basketball hoop things. God, do I ever hate those things. I also saw lots of fence gates blown completely off their hinges and some fence boards missing on the other street over.

On the way back home, I found a flyer blowing around for the annual holiday neighborhood progressive dinner that no one really cares about anymore. Frankly, both WS and I are surprised there even is one being planned this year, the fifth year of the thing that I and Ms. SportsOrNothing originally helped start. The first three years of this neighborhood get together was an absolute blast, back when the neighborhood was small with only 30 or so houses built. We all knew each other then and looked out for one another. Everyone looked so forward to meeting new people in the neighborhood and to see what each other had done to the insides of their newly built homes. That was before DrunkTank Willie, his prissy wife Leona and the white trash renters on the back street took over the whole thing, pushing anyone out who didn’t share their loud, intentionally hurtful rumor mill mentality and made it the Wal-Mart lovin’, X-Box playin’, drunken Karaoke/wife fondling-esque joke that its grown into; where the best appetizers served are partially frozen Totino’s pizza nuggets and the drink is cheap, twist-cap wine drunk out of paper cups left over from the 4th of July. Gone is the time when people truly welcomed each other into their homes. Now, it’s all about hearing and spreading the latest neighborhood gossip and to see whom all stands in line to hold back the neighborhood beauty’s hair when she starts puking. And like past years, this evening is advertised as being “Adults Only” but of course, everyone thinks that means the other families and rug-rats run amok throughout everyone’s home. Sorry about that mud on the carpet, the chocolate smeared on the walls or that broken chandelier! Hey! Happy Neighborhood Holidays! Let’s go outside and shoot our handguns into the air!

And just so you don’t think I’m all about the grouchy sarcasm today, create your own Picasso. It’s good for a chuckle and who knows? You might find you are more creative than you thought.

December 6 2003

Does not having extended family make one feel that there is no point to celebrating Christmas?

Does having icky chores that need done around the house, for months on end, make one feel that they don’t really own a house?

Don’t mind me. I’m just depressed for some reason and babbling today.

December 8 2003

Oh yeah, it was because we had sushi for breakfast Saturday, then went grocery shopping. Actually, I’ll take sushi over Christmas shopping any day. It really wasn’t for “breakfast”. It was just the first thing we ate that day and we didn’t eat until noon. It was still a great way to start the day for us and the rest of the day went pretty well. The weather was supposed to be gray and wet but it ended up being partly sunny and dry all day, so we walked around the neighborhood and checked our roof to make sure we hadn’t lost any shingles in last week’s wind storm, unlike a lot of our neighbors who did. Our roof is fine.

During our walk, SportsOrNothing yelled out to us that they would be putting up their Christmas lights Sunday, to which we just snickered to ourselves, “yeah, right” because we had seen the weather forecast and it didn’t look at all good for Sunday. Needless to say, SportsOrNothing didn’t put up any lights yesterday.

But they did hold some kind of teenage party for the teen SportsOrNothings, including a stretch limo that sat out front of their house for a l-oooooooooong time before driving off. I don’t know what was going on over there, but the driver of the limo had plain view of what all the teenagers were doing and they weren’t getting ready to go anywhere. They were all huddled in front of the big TV in the front room, watching a football game. I’m sure it was annoying to just have to sit there waiting for a bunch of rich kids but I’m sure the driver was getting paid regardless.

The Quiet family, who lost most of their Christmas icicle lights in the wind storm last week, also yelled out that they were going to fix their mess Sunday. That didn’t happen either.

However, The Dimmers next door did put up lights, but there was nothing pretty about the process. First, they started after 3 p.m. (it gets dark here at 4:30) and while both Mr. And Ms. Dimmer worked on the display, The Dimmer children were completely ignored. At 8 p.m., we could hear the littlest Dimmer screaming at the top of her lungs, while the other little Dimmer yelling that he was hungry, followed by Ms. Dimmer screaming that no one was eating until the lighting was finished. WTF? These are 3 and 5 year old kids here.

So The little Dimmers ran around, played and screamed in pitch darkness in their backyard until nearly 10 p.m. Too fun for us. I guess their Christmas lights were worth it. All I know is that while we weren’t listening to their kids screaming, we had to listen to the Dimmers argue with each other over plugs and electrical tape and extension cords and moving the ladder here and there and the obligatory, “Get me another beer”. The whole thing was fairly disturbing….and not too unlike DrunkTank Willie when he used to live there. We’re beginning to seriously believe that there is something about that house that causes all the occupants to act the same.

Across the street, The Cal-LEE-fornians finally took up working on their holiday lights again, after not being able to get anything to light up last weekend. I can personally guarantee that any display you see at any local Wal-Mart, AFTER Christmas looks better than the half-lit, partially broken, miss-mash mess of decorations they have stuck in the ground and stapled to the house over there. And I’m not even going to go into the use of indoor electrical cords criss-crossing their half-dead, unmowed lawn. If a fire breaks out over there, I could easily point to half a dozen possible sources of half-burnt out Christmas lawn gnomes, a few broken plastic holiday flamingoes or the over-stretched extension cords that run up and over dead and tinder-dry bushes.

Next door to The Cal-LEE-fornians however, The Howler Monkey’s added strings to their single icicle light set and actually show tact in their simple, yet somewhat elegant display of white lights and a outline-lit manger scene in an upper window. I’m not big on the religious aspect of decorating, but I can certainly live with looking at that from my windows.

All but five houses are lit up on our street, the main drag into our development. Good job, neighbors! (but really, do we need holiday flamingoes?) Pictures to come soon.

Late Saturday night, we took my car out of storage for a drive (to keep things charged up and parts lubricated. REALLY!) and surprisingly, no one tried to goad me into a street race, which I think disappointed WS. Not that I would go. That would be illegal…

Sunday was such a blah day and best forgotten.

Four hours of work left. No talk of lay offs at this morning’s company meeting which is a switch from last year at this time, when FatHead was talking about how he was going to force The Company into hiring him full time and talking The Company CEOs into getting rid of some of us that he felt weren’t needed any longer. We all know where he’s at now. Still, The Company is bleeding money and if this continues into next year, I’d be willing to bet that lay offs will occur sometime around July 1st next summer. WS and I need to prepare for this just in case the CEOs outsource our jobs too. If we are good from now until then, we just might squeak by okay.

Sounds like we’re going to have homemade pizza for dinner tonight and not the Beef Bourgeoning that I thought we’d be having. We didn’t get to the other grocery store Saturday where they have the best meats. Maybe tomorrow.

December 9 2003

Short rant warning: Thanks, Producers of “Average Joe” for showing the world what all us Average Joes and Josephines have known all along. What a rip-off show. End of short rant.

Back to real life, if it weren’t for the upcoming holidays, car club people would notice that we were no longer attending their meetings. It’s been nice not going anymore and not getting all wrapped up in all their stressful, back-stabbing, bigoted crap. I am expecting to get a call or two from Drill Sergeant Dave and perhaps one of the Competition Boys before New Year’s Eve, when we were supposed to go to dinner with them. If we’re no longer part of the car club, I doubt they still want us at their dinner and that’s just fine with me.

Last year at this time, we were highly stressed over our upcoming trip to Company headquarters with MsNoManagementSkills and FatHead, both of whom were having daily, nay, HOURLY conniption fits and tantrums. We were working overtime in getting our house decorated for the holidays due to two holiday parties we were having the day after getting back from the trip. Not having to deal with any of that this year has been nice and much more relaxed, but in a way, it feels odd not being around other people at this time of year. This is probably a really good thing, being as the flu season is actually killing people off in our region this month. Then there is that whole worrying part about whether you should have bought someone a gift or not and the uncomfortableness about not giving the right thing or spending the right amount. I hate that part. Why can’t we all just buy each other used door mats like my mother-in-law preferred to buy me and just be done with it? Oh, wait. That’s what fruitcakes are for. Silly me.

At the same time, when we open our house to others, we clean every square inch of this place days beforehand. This year, we’re not having anyone over and this means we’re not cleaning that much and things have gotten…..crusty here and there. I’ll leave exactly where up to your imagination but who in their right mind enjoys cleaning those things?

Back to reminiscing, two years ago today, we were invited to a Christmas cookie decorating party around the block from us that went a bit off the less-than-politically correct side when I decorated a gingerbread man who’s leg then promptly fell off. So I icing-glued it back on and created crutches for him out of toothpicks. In all actuality, it didn’t look bad at all and everyone got a big laugh out of it. But then I started making all my gingerbread men cripples. I mean, gingerbread men shouldn’t all be model-perfect pretty boys how everyone else was decorating them. I think that’s when things digressed into creating blind Santas, burnt trees, three legged reindeer and the most hideously colored stars and bells imaginable. But at that point, we were creating reality Christmas cookies for the real world. And what the hell! We were just going to eat them anyhow. And trust me, everyone should eat a cookie with 3-inch thick icing on it and 100 of those edible silver balls just once.

I’m sure that was the reason we were never invited back BUT THEY STARTED IT! They LAUGHED at my crippled gingerbread man!

They insisted we take our “cookies” home with us. We could clearly see they didn’t want to keep them, so we obliged. On the short walk home, we ran into some neighbors we hadn’t seen in nearly a year and after a long chat in the freezing temperatures, well after our faces were frozen and our brains weren’t working quite right, we offered them our plate of cookies as a gift. It was much later, after we got home that we remembered how those cookies looked. I’m sure that’s why those people never talk to us anymore either.

Ah, the Christmas memories. Later I’ll tell you about the year I received a roll of quarters as a gift to do a boyfriend’s laundry. I’m welling up just thinking about it…

December 10 2003

Okay, I am stating here, just so it’s official and no one mistakenly announces that they never hear me say it before:

I am sick to death of retro EVERYTHING! Isn’t anything new anymore? Can’t anyone think of anything fresh and new? Do we really need to re-package everything and pawn it off as “New”? Do we really need to listen to countless renditions of bad 80’s and 90’s pop tunes to sell everything from sweaters to toilet paper? Are we so devoid of any new idea that we find the need to remake “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” for god’s sake? (even as much as I can’t stand Gene Wilder who vowed to Gilda Radner on her deathbed that he would never marry again but did so anyway; remaking this movie is just plain wrong.)

I am well aware that most younger people (that I have had the misfortune of running into), think they know everything and cannot be told anything. They all think they have invented something new when the sad fact is, and you all just need to face it, that they are just rehashing something that’s been around since the dawn of time.

We really need to put an end to this retro crap. It’s sucking the creative brain cells of everyone.

Now that THAT is out of my system….we had another windy day here in the ‘hood and surprise, surprise. Guess who lost their garbage can and their recycle bins? The Dimmers. Sometimes, first impressions really do fit. Garbage day was last Monday and it’s a good week if they remember to take in their cans and bins before Saturday of the following week. It’ll just be another thing Mr. Dimmer will bitch about when he’s talking about not having a job yet (JAVA is responsible!)

….which leads me for the oddest reason of wondering exactly what is under Cap’t Dan’s eye patch. You’d think that living behind someone for the past two years, that you’d see him without it sooner or later. And obviously, it’s going to be later. I mean, this guy scurries outside to pick up something blowing around his yard (see? I knew there was a connection here somewhere) and he has the eye patch on. I’ve seen this guy when he’s obviously just woken up. I’ve seen this guy in his bath robe. I’ve seen this guy in his underwear (NOT pretty!) and you’d think that he’d not have it strapped to his head at least once by now. Maybe, the strap is a ploy. Maybe, it’s actually glued to his face. Does he wear it to bed? In the shower? Is he like one of those people who never take out their contacts and it becomes all mucky and disgusting and is then permanently attached to their eye, only this is his eye patch and it’s become a physical part of him. And does he have multiple eye patches, one for every day of the week? From what I can see, they do look fresh and not all nappy or wrinkled so he’s got to be taking them off sometime if for nothing else but to put on a fresh one. Are there expiration dates for eye patches? And how many eye patches would make up a large load in your washing machine, I wonder. Fifty? One hundred? More? At least they’re not like matched pairs and you always lose one in the dryer like socks.

Are they soft, pliable cloth eye patches, or are they hard and plastic in case you’re prone to poking your eye out which might have been the case in the first place (oh my god, maybe Cap’t Dan was the real life kid in “The Christmas Story” movie and he really did shoot his eye out with his official Red Ryder blue-steel, carbine-action, two-hundred-shot range-model air rifle with a special Red Ryder sight and a compass in the stock with a sundial!).

All I know is that I’ve seen some ugly things in my day (my sister instantly comes to mind for some reason), I used to maintain a web site that had all kinds of highly gross pictures and stories on it. At one time, I wanted to be a paramedic and knew I wouldn’t have any problems with the gore one witnesses there. Hell, during surgery, I demanded and got to see the lump they cut out of my own breast (I figured since I grew it; I should get to see it – Looked like an uncooked chicken nugget) so whatever Cap’t Dan has going on under there couldn’t be that bad, could it? Maybe it really is, though, and as a courtesy to his family, he keeps it covered 24/7. Maybe he’s got one of those eyes that sees the future and it isn’t all that bright, or maybe using that eye makes him see double like WS suggested (WS is definitely the more practical thinker). Or just maybe, as a young ‘en, he was attacked by a cave bear just like Creb in the Clan of the Cave Bear book…

Whatever he’s got there, I suppose someday I could just walk down there and say, “Hey! What you got there?” even though I’ve never spoken a single word to the man.

Sure would be an interesting icebreaker, don’t you think?

And damn it! Either the wind blew those holiday flamingos away that the Cal-LEE-fornians had displayed across the street, or a vandal stole them (god bless his heart!). If more show up, I’m marching right over there and demand to know where they got them. Really, you just HAVE to see these things.

December 11 2003

For all you budding lawyers out there: The legal occurrence of the night prior to Christmas.

Whereas, on or about the night prior to Christmas, there did occur at a certain improved piece of real property (hereinafter “the House”) a general lack of stirring by all creatures therein, including, but not limited to a mouse.

A variety of foot apparel, e.g. stocking, socks, etc., had been affixed by and around the chimney in said House in the hope and/or belief that St. Nick a/k/a/ St. Nicholas a/k/a/ Santa Claus (hereinafter “Claus”) would arrive at sometime thereafter.

The minor residents, i.e. the children, of the aforementioned House were located in their individual beds and were engaged in nocturnal hallucinations, i.e. dreams, wherein vision of confectionery treats, including, but not limited to, candies, nuts and/or sugar plums, did dance, cavort and otherwise appear in said dreams.

Whereupon the party of the first part (sometimes hereinafter referred to as “I”), being the joint-owner in fee simple of the House with the parts of the second part (hereinafter “Mamma”), and said Mamma had retired for a sustained period of sleep. (At such time, the parties were clad in various forms of headgear, e.g. kerchief and cap.)

Suddenly, and without prior notice or warning, there did occur upon the unimproved real property adjacent and apparent to said House, i.e. the lawn, a certain disruption of unknown nature, cause and/or circumstance. The party of the first part did immediately rush to a window in the House to investigate the cause of such disturbance.

At that time, the party of the first part did observe, with some degree of wonder and/or disbelief, a miniature sleigh (hereinafter “the Vehicle”) being pulled and/or drawn very rapidly through the air by approximately eight (8) reindeer. The driver of the Vehicle appeared to be and in fact was, the previously referenced Claus. Said Claus was providing specific direction, instruction and guidance to the approximately eight (8) reindeer and specifically identified the animal co-conspirators by name: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen (hereinafter “the Deer”). (Upon information and belief, it is further asserted an additional co-conspirator named “Rudolph” may have been involved.)

The party of the first part witnessed Claus, the Vehicle and the Deer intentionally and willfully trespass upon the roofs of several residences located adjacent to and in the vicinity of the House, and noted that the Vehicle was heavily laden with packages, toys and other items of unknown origin or nature. Suddenly, without prior invitation or permission, either express or implied, the Vehicle arrived at the House, and Claus entered said House via the chimney.

Said Claus was clad in a red fur suit, which was partially covered with residue from the chimney, and he carried a large sack containing a portion of the aforementioned packages, toys, and other unknown items. He was smoking what appeared to be tobacco in a small pipe in blatant violation of local ordinances and health regulations.

Claus did not speak, but immediately began to fill the stocking of the minor children, which hung adjacent to the chimney, with toys and other small gifts. (Said items did not, however, constitute “gifts” to said minor pursuant to the applicable provisions of the U.S. Tax Code.)

Upon completion of such task, Claus touched the side of his nose and flew, rose and/or ascended up the chimney of the House to the roof where the Vehicle and Deer waited and/or served as “lookouts.” Claus immediately departed for an unknown destination.

However, prior to the departure of the Vehicle, Deer and Claus from said House, the party of the first part did hear Claus state and/or exclaim:
“Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!”

Or words to that effect.

December 11 2003

Be Naughty and save Santa the trip.

Yesterday was Beef Bourguigon day. This is a made-from-scratch, 3 hour recipe from prep time to dishing it up and we love it. We’re both competent cooks and sometimes, it’s relaxing in a Zen sort of way to stand in the kitchen, chopping and cooking up something. But there are few recipes that will get me to gladly spend 3 hours cooking. I’m all about creating something that looks like I spent half a day, but I rarely ever actually do it. I know all the shortcuts, thanks to growing up having to raise younger siblings and feed those starving, ungrateful mouths every day. But they never got Beef Bourguigon.

When I was first divorced, before I was aware of all the forged checks and credit card applications, once every 3 months or so, I would pool together my pennies and take myself out to a restaurant called “Café Casino”. It was a buffet-style, non-foo-foo French place that had the best croissants, cream puffs and Beef Bourguigon. Unfortunately, the restaurant doesn’t exist anymore. Years and years later, when WS and I bought a set of recipe cards from someone, I was thrilled to see a recipe for it. Of course, I had no idea if it would taste like the real thing from Café Casino or not but I guess you get the idea now that it did. Okay, I’ll shut up. Here’s the recipe:

Beef Bourguigon

Serves 6-8
(Best served the next day but don’t let that stop you from enjoying it right away)

2-2 ½ pounds lean beef roast – I use rump roast if I’m poor that month or top sirloin steaks if I’m not.
1 ½ cups burgundy wine – I use a Pinot Noir wine because of the richer taste that goes perfectly with the beef.
¾ cup cream sherry – Don’t use anything fancy.
¾ cup ruby port – Again, don’t use anything fancy. Yes, this sounds like a lot of alcohol but it cooks off.
1 tablespoon fresh thyme, chopped
4 tablespoons butter
1 dozen white pearl onions, peeled and cleaned
1 cup fresh, small button mushrooms, cleaned
1 cup baby carrots, chopped
1 dozen small, baby red potatoes, whole – These should be the really small baby ones.
3-4 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon potato flour OR 2 tablespoons regular flour
1 8-ounce can of beef broth
2 whole bay leaves
1-2 cups water – Depends on how saucy you like things.
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup fresh parsley, chopped

Add butter to large stew pot. Trim fat from beef and discard fat. Cut beef into 1-2 inch cubes and add to stew pot. Place over medium heat until beef is brown on outside. You are only browning the outside, not cooking the meat completely through (that will come later). Add fresh thyme. When beef is evenly brown, remove beef from stew pot and set aside. Retain any liquid in pot.

Add cleaned pearl onions and sauté until slightly browned on edges. If you had a lot of liquid left in your pot, this will take a while. Once onions are slightly browned on edges, add button mushrooms and stir constantly for 5 minutes to prevent sticking and burning.

Add tomato paste, flour and beef broth, in that order, and bring to a boil.

Add wine, sherry and port and bring to a boil again.

Re-add the beef. Add carrots and potatoes. Add bay leaves, ground pepper and salt. Do not add the parsley yet. Add water to your preference depending on how saucy you like your stews.

Reduce heat to a low simmer and place a lid partially covering on the pot. Simmer on low for 1 ¾ to 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Do not let anything burn on the bottom. Your house will smell like wine because the alcohol taste from the wine is cooking off.

After 1 ¾ to 2 hours cooking time, and when potatoes and carrots are tender, turn off heat completely and sprinkle fresh parsley over top of Bourguigon and replace pot lid for 10 minutes. Do not stir parsley in.

After 10 minutes, stir parley into Bouguigon and serve. Best eaten with warmed croissants.

When I make this recipe, I double everything and make a huge batch. If the weather looks to be cold and rainy in the coming days, we usually eat this every day until it’s gone. Otherwise, I freeze half of it for later on. It does freeze well.

I’ve re-read the recipe several times to make sure it’s correct, but if you choose to make it and it comes out looking like cream pie, shoot me a comment and I’ll fix it.

December 12 2003

It’s official. A small hawk has taken over the air space around our back yard. I spent the better part of the past four years trying in vain to keep The Cat From Hell out of our backyard and from eating all our visiting birds and squirrels and thankfully, I haven’t seen that cat anywhere since last spring. Now we have this hawk. And he does like our visiting birds. We’re serving up fresh, warm birds over here for breakfast and lunch.

I actually shoo-ed it away twice, once throwing water on it. It’s not afraid of me in the least and I can get within six feet of it. For a hawk, which all have sharp talons, this particular hawk is all feet and talons and if it survives, and measuring how big it might grown up to be by looking at those feet like you would a puppy, it ought to be a whopper.

But because I’m now such a nature lover and have really come to enjoy birds of all kinds, something I really didn’t like previously, I’ve decided to leave the hawk to do what it will. It’s truly a natural, nature-y thing, unlike a domestic cat killing everything in sight just for the hell of it. And unlike having to clean up bird bodies left and right from The Cat From Hell, at least the hawk takes it’s kill off to the top of Cap’t Dan’s roof and eats it there (I really wouldn’t want to clean his gutters!) Still, it’s a bit depressing to look out and down onto the feeding area and not see a single chickadee, finch, junco, mourning dove or wren in sight when just a couple of weeks ago, the entire area would be fluttering with birds.

I’m starting work late today…on purpose. The Company Christmas party is tomorrow and no one at Company headquarters has been doing anything all week anyway. Nor can they be much bothered with answering questions from me. Especially MrSmartButFakingIt and Ego, who are both all charged up about the party activities. Even MsNoManagementSkills, who works remotely from headquarters like me, can’t be bothered with giving me information that I need to do my job efficiently. But that’s been going on for months now. So why the hell should I bust my hump today? I only need six hours in today anyway.

I was going through my handwritten journal from 1998 and found that I had made Beef Bourguigon then on this same date. The same week five years ago, WS was starting to take anti-depression medication (which made him robot-like) and still hated everything in life. But he did make the decision to put up our Christmas tree after I had long given up on caring about it. It must be an every five-year thing with me not wanting to bother with Christmas trees. This year, we put up one of our usual three trees because….I didn’t see any point in doing all that extra work, of course.

Nothing is planned for the weekend. WS is off work both days again. If the weather were going to be dry, I would consider driving to the coast, but we don’t have any money to spend doing so anyway. WS probably wants to sit around here and watch DVDs. Maybe I’ll get to work typing out all my 1998 and 1999 handwritten journal entries so I can post them somewhere. Fun for me. I am going to make an effort to post at least one day every weekend instead of taking two days off. I think I need the writing time.

December 14 2003

Christmas is weird. It’s the only time of year we love to sit in front of a dead tree and eat candy out of our socks.

Last Friday, I completely forgot that our neighborhood progressive dinner was last night. We won’t be attending or participating this year, after doing so for four of the past five years. After visiting the French store, a quaint little shop in town that sells French soaps and candles and stuff Saturday afternoon, we returned and cleaned the house and lit things up though, just in case anyone thought to stop by to ask us why we aren’t part of it this year. Surprisingly, no one on our entire street participated this year, so there were no groups of people passing by outside. I’ll bet, if there was a holiday progressive dinner at all, it was limited to just one or two houses on the back side of the development, really the Wal-Mart-sponsored wrong side of the tracks as it were, a big change from the twelve or fifteen houses that used to beg to participate.

Last night was also the car club’s Christmas party. I wonder now if they understand yet that we’re not members anymore. And gladly so. I really came to hate some of those racist, bigoted, drunken, boob and butt-grabbing old fart assholes.

Friday night, I typed up nine months of my hand written journal from 1999. I plan on posting this somewhere someday. I’ve been toying with creating my own journal web site and keeping archives there from this blog all the way back to when I first started writing in 1980. Since I didn’t write that much throughout most of 1999, it’s going pretty fast although I have trouble reading my own writing sometimes. I used to have the best handwriting. Then I went to college. That was before laptops or computers really and you had to take notes, miles of notes, during class lectures, by hand (for anyone reading who couldn’t comprehend note taking with pencil and paper). Anyway, I’ll let you know if and when I might do this. But of course, I’ll stay right here too. I couldn’t put any of my readers through another move so soon after asking them to follow me here back in September.

The weather has been non-stop rain since Friday night and caused some flooding in our area yesterday. And a few mud slides. No real news there. This happens every year. Blah, blah, blah.

Keiko, the “killer” whale died. He stayed at an aquarium at the coast five years ago before they flew him to Iceland. It’s sad that he died, but we’ll all die someday. I don’t think it was a waste of money to try to get him to live free. I think people learned a lot from the experience and the last five years of his life was very, very good. It’s just that people were his pod, not Orcas related to him and that’s why Keiko preferred to be with people. If anyone really wanted to make a difference, the news would report on how many dolphins, walruses, seals and other whales die every day of the year in aquariums and sea parks around the world.

Saddam was captured….allegedly. Exactly how many body-doubles did this guy have again? I lost track around a dozen. Watch for the stock market to go ape-shit in the next couple of days. I’m glad we’re in. But I have to wonder how it is that everyone just heard about it today, but the stock market and Bush’s rating went up last Thursday. Coincidence? I can’t help but think that this is just another Bush-media thing to take our minds away from something else that he’s pulling in the background. Maybe the Halliburton thing, maybe something else…It’s not like he hasn’t done it before. Over and over and over again already.

Today is a very low-key day here. WS is working for The Company. I’m getting ready to finish up typing the rest of my 1999 handwritten journal entries before looking at my 1998 entries, which has a ton more writing in it. I’m also dealing with one side of my sinuses that’s completely stuffed up. Too much cheese fondue yesterday, followed by an entire half-bowl of WS’s famous cheese spread, followed by this morning’s breakfast of what else? Homemade cheese nachos. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I dreamt of Mexican food this morning and so I had a craving for the next best thing we had in the house. Someone stop me before I’m this idiotic again.

December 15 2003

Random morning thoughts:

Sandra wins. Good. I liked her. I realize that outspokenness doesn’t always equate to intelligence, but it did in her case.

All-Stars? I’ve dreaded such an idea from the beginning. I HATE All-Star anything. Ugh, ugh, ugh. Let down news for me.

My sinuses completely went off on a tangent last night after consuming all that cheese (it’s heroin, I swear) and I was miserable most of the night, sleeping with wads of tissues and my own trash bag close by. I was delightful to sleep with, I’m sure.

Which brought me to odd dreams I had this morning while WS was in the shower. More dreams about my car and how all the old car club people I knew had done major customized stuff to their cars, only it all looked really, really bad, but everyone around kept saying it was too cool for words. It was like the Emperor’s Clothes story. Just because someone says it’s cool, doesn’t make it so. And then there was something about making friends with an old guy who had collected flower seeds from a garden that had been paved over fifty years previously. He didn’t think anyone would care that he could have recreated this old garden but I convinced him that people would. Of course, he never got around to actually doing replanting it so everything was eventually lost. I think the whole dream had something to do with dropped things around here that affect me after a while.

At work, everyone at Company headquarters is flooding email with congratulations and pats on the back for a great Company Christmas party over the weekend. Just more morale hits as far as I’m concerned for us remote employees, who were not invited but have to go through all the email, mostly from Ego. Of course, this means no work is getting done and we’re a good ten days behind now.

I’m tired of putting in extra effort that goes unnoticed while getting emails from MsNoManagementSkills telling us all to work all the harder.

Outside, behind us, high up on the rolling hills, there is a dusting of snow. It poured rain all weekend long, but today is supposed to be dry before another ten days straight of rain. I need to start up my car today for 15 minutes. You would think that people would take advantage of the dry day to fix their Christmas light display from our big-ass wind storm of two weeks ago, but I’m not going to hold my breath. The Quiet family living kitty-corner across from us still have their icicle lights strings dangling off the side of their roof by the cords, slapping in the wind against their side window and house siding. That would drive me bonkers. Still no replacement holiday flamingos across the street at the Cal-LEE-fornians. I’m hoping maybe sometime next week? SportsOrNothing have given up putting up lights at all. Too many high school football games, basketball games, baseball practice, soccer games, fencing tournaments, ski meets, swim meets, etc. Big surprise there.

Not a peep from The Dimmers next door in over a week. Not even from their screaming children. If their trash hadn’t been taken out this morning (in a new trash can since they lost theirs in the wind last week) I might start to worry. But, thankfully, that means no talk about JAVA taking over all their kitchen appliances either.

December 16 2003

Can I trade this day for what’s behind Door #1?

Have you ever had one of those days when your computer gives you nothing but fits? Email slow, system crashes, program crashes and then your ears stop working because you’re so focused on trying to reboot your system and then people get upset because you’re not listening?

Ever have one of those days when you wake up looking forward to some place your significant other mentioned you should go to but then that significant other completely forgets all about it, and if you mention it in a small voice, you get blown off by being told that they have too much other work to do today, so to prevent this from happening, you have learned to not say a word and go through the day being pissed off because you were forgotten?

Yeah, me too. Can I just go back to bed?

December 17 2003

The Company’s motto: READY – FIRE – AIM!

I finished typing up all my handwritten journal entries for 1999. Easy to do when you are pissed off at something. I either work hard or do nothing when I’m mad, which usually explains why our house is relatively so clean. Next up is typing all my hand written 1998 journal entries which will take a lot longer. I didn’t have a job in 1998 so I had time to write a lot, mostly about mundane gardening and house cleaning stuff or something I was mad at WS about. It happens.

MsNoManagementSkills’ boyfriend is practically begging, in his Online Journal, for time for himself, but she doesn’t think it means from her too. Almost daily, she posts a comment on his Journal that he needs to participate with her at some party or get together. What this all translates to me is that sooner or later, she’ll see the writing on the wall and all her coworkers will pay for it. I plan on being well out of the way of the upcoming storm.

A house behind us, next door to Cap’t Dan, had missing shingles replaced yesterday morning by a couple of teenage-looking kids and personally, we think they did a crappy job. They replaced all the shingles along the very top of the roof peak but didn’t put the top cap piece all the way to the ends of the peak. This means that the plastic cap isn’t protecting two feet on either end of the peak and just the shingles are protecting the roof peak from damage. Shingles don’t last as long as plastic and I’d be willing to bet that there will be interior damage within five years, given our mega-rainy seasons here. In addition, The top peak line is now uneven and really looks like crap from our point of view directly out our office window. You can tell something odd is going on up there but you’d have to get up there to see what exactly is going on. If we hadn’t watched the “work” being done yesterday, we’d be asking, “What’s wrong with those shingles?” I would be so pissed off if this was the kind of work we received. The people living there have got a different company out looking at the work that was done yesterday and the guy up there is picking up nails left and right. I could have told them that those kids were sloppy, sloppy, sloppy with paper and cellophane being dumped off the roof and into Cap’t Dan’s backyard, shingle pieces and nails being thrown in play at each other while they were working and what looked like sandwich crusts being left up there from the lunch they enjoyed with the view up there.

Very foggy here today. I can’t see the hills or mountain range behind us at all. I love days like this. I wish I had the day off to just enjoy this but knowing me, I’d either want to go shopping or just sit home and clean, meaning I wouldn’t really be enjoying the fog at all. How goofy is that?

I’ve taken up physical activity yet again and have rowed for eight minutes each of the past two days. Monday night, I also walked through the development and felt good about it. I’ve tried to talk myself out of wanting an elliptical machine since last spring, first because of the cost, then because MsNoManagementSkills demanded she get one (that she didn’t use more than two weeks and promptly left with FatHead when she moved out), then because I didn’t feel we really had any room for it, then back to the cost issue. But, plain and simple, I really want one. And I’m telling myself that I’d use it all the time, but a small voice in my head wants to derail that thinking. I think that voice is my dead mother’s and right now with my out-of-control weight, eating and lack of movement, she’s winning. She’d love to see me end up just like her, thoughts she beat into me hundreds of times throughout my childhood, with a disabled, abusive husband, unloved and unhappy, with out-of-control weight, high blood pressure, a chain smoking habit, prone to violent temper tantrums and a non-existent retirement account that guaranteed that she’d have to keep working every day of her life for eternity. Or move in with one of her children. Lucky for us, she died when she was 47, my age now, of a massive stroke. Currently, I share four of those nine things. I would be mortified if any of my relatives saw me as I am now. I need to use this as self-motivation, not my strong suit. I can motivate others to do nearly anything, but as for myself? Uh, yeah, right, whatever.

December 18 2003

Don’t you just hate people who start a Blog and then never update it again? Me too. Yes, WS, this is pointed at you today. You are going against common blogging rules. Don’t be like half of the blogging community.

And speaking of another large portion of the blogging community, do we really need all the political blogs that are nothing but direct copy and paste jobs of various government and/or war stories from other online publications? Trust me. If we all wanted to read this stuff, we’ll all run over to those various online publications and read them there. Stop cluttering the Internet with stuff like this. Don’t we have it posted in enough places already?

Today is The Company Christmas gift exchange. Just another thing us remote employees aren’t included in. Insert big sigh here.

I was very sorry to have watched Dr. Phil yesterday on TV. I really, REALLY hate people who choose to breed and then afterward, complain about not being able to afford the children they have. THEN these people go public with their whining AND THEN people feel all sorry for them and give them the fucking bank. We are rewarding people for breeding irresponsibly, and this on a show talking about not rewarding kids for bad behavior. Hello, Dr. Phil? You are an idiot. Thanks for making me have to support someone else’s kids via all the crap you gave them through various government agencies. Just what I need more of in my life. I am so tired of this kind of discrimination.

And yes, I know I could change the channel anytime. I chose to watch the entire show so I would know what to bitch about when I wandered over to the doctor’s web site and told him, via his email black hole, how offended I was.

For anyone reading who might have watched “The O.C.” last night (there is no THE in O.C.), that episode was taken right out of my own life, right down to the irresponsible sister holding parties and trashing a house, to my first husband who got into swinging parties, except he didn’t take his watch out of the pot and I walked out hours beforehand. BTW: back then in the community I lived in, you put your wallet in the pot and tried not to be offended if you picked the town pastor’s wallet.

What IS it this year with people stealing neighbors Christmas decorations? I’m not talking about kids here. I’m referring to the 30-50 year old adults, with help from spouses. It seems to be rampant in the area I live in, though thankfully, the other side of town for the time being. I can definitely see a time when we will no longer decorate outside.

According to the last car club meeting minutes, the Boring group that took over the club decided that after the club Christmas party, they would officially dissolve anyone’s membership who had not paid for a renewal. It’s about time. Technically, this should have happened back on October 1st, another sign that that club is no longer what it was when we were members, and I am very glad that we are no longer.

DrillSargent Dave finally sent me an email the other day, telling me that a car event that was going to occur next summer, now isn’t. Apparently, the car club putting that event on is having the same kind of problems that the club I just quit is having and people are quitting there left and right. I replied to him and it sounds like he isn’t too happy that we’re no longer members. Funny thing coming from him, who founded the car club and was then ousted from participating in any club event by the Boring group, but he continues to be a member. Fine. I’m guessing we won’t be invited to his New Year’s Eve dinner get together. Whatever. As I recall, nearly everyone was asleep or close to it last year at midnight. Great fun there.

I think tonight would as good a time as any to make Christmas cutout cookies, at WS’s request.

Years and years ago, when I had more time and more faith in the whole Christmas thing, I used to make a minimum of a dozen different kinds of cookies. Then, a large group of people that I used to respect told me I had too much time on my hands, and they weren’t smiling when they said it, and even WS agreed. WS used to positively hate Christmas and I know he really despised me spending money every holiday season on real butter, new cookie cutouts and sprinkles just for cookies. I would have to beg him to help me. I don’t even think he liked most of the cookies I made and I know that at the time, the people who received my cookies and homemade breads as gifts, thought it was a cheapskate deal. Those people were all about spending a ton of money for Store-Bought-Gifts only. To receive something homemade was akin to receiving a sack of dog shit. Fine. Whatever. I don’t know a single one of those people anymore. Emotional vampires they all were.

So, I think I’ll be whipping up a batch of cutout cookie dough. A small batch. Three dozen, tops. We’ll see how that goes. Believe me, I was just as surprised as anyone when WS mentioned WE ought to make some. I still think he is faking all this niceness lately, but stuff like this really makes me wonder.

And if you see weird characters throughout my entries online, blame Blogger. They had my blog completely screwed up for most of today anyway. I’m just lucky I didn’t lose the entire thing. Looks like it’s time to find a new place to post.

Five years ago, we had decided to have this house built and we were still living in the old, rental house we had called home for eight years. I was serious about finding a job to help pay for that house but neither Burgerville or Target had called me back. After enjoying, more or less, being out of the work place for five years, I had no self esteem (like I do now….not) so I didn’t think I could get a job doing anything but cheap, manual labor and I had just heard about The Company and their need for a second employee.

Next week will be my five year anniversary with The Company, who for some reason, has my anniversary in late January, and this is WRONG. But I can’t find records to prove differently except the entry of my hire day in that 1998 journal. As usual, I’m also Employee number Two but no one EVER mentions that. The Company CEO who ran accounting back then, wasn’t that good with keeping records or doing paperwork. Nothing has changed there and it still amazes me that The Company is a multi-million dollar one.

So why does a month difference matter to me? Because this company is all about seniority in our department and I am so tired of hearing about how MsNoManagementSkills is “Employee number One!” every time that CEO joins one of our conference call meetings. It doesn’t matter how much more work I have done than her and the records show I have done three times more work than she has over the past five years. I’ll never be more than the position I’m in now, even if MsNoManagementSkills were to die in some horrible smelting accident tonight. The Company no longer allows remote employees to hold management positions. Everything is “in-house” now. I didn’t know it then, but I helped train Ego for the position Ego now holds, the very one that I had hoped to have one day. And there is the whole principle of the thing. Every December, just before Christmas, I sit back proudly and reflect how I’ve stuck with this job for as long as I have and secretly hope I will receive an email of acknowledgement from someone, anyone, in The Company. Or even MsNoManagementSkills, who spent Christmas Day, five years ago “training” me (so even she knows the correct date that I was hired). But I never receive anything.

December 18 2003

Oh, but I am so upset at Blogger for the crap I went through over the last 30 hours in trying to get my Blog here updated and posted. To make matters worse, yesterday, remote access to The Company here went down, over and over and over again. So I just said fuck it for the rest of the day. Now, I have to make up three hours from yesterday. Grrrr….

But no worries. I’ve been working on a secondary place to post my journal entries and it’s just about ready to be unveiled. The plan is to mirror this Blogger location until either Blogger eats my journal here for good, which almost happened yesterday (and is still barely readable because of their character corruption) or until next summer or fall when I release Blogger’s teat here and go out into the world on my own.

Obviously, yesterday was one of those days when I just shouldn’t touch anything electronic. Which might explain why I didn’t make those Christmas cookies after all. Maybe.

Christmas is coming. Since it’s Christmas here all year around for us in the form of buying stuff and supporting the economy, we don’t do that whole Christmas shopping thing. So, if one more person asks me if I’ve got all my Christmas shopping done, I’ll calmly visualize strangling them. Then I’ll just say “yes.” And leave it at that.

If one more person asks me if I’ve got lots of family visiting for the holidays, since I don’t have any family, I promise to calmly visualize beating them with their own arms, then answer “no.” And leave it at that.

Let’s face it. Christmas is a crock to people like me and I just don’t see the point anymore. Blame it on currently having the ability to buy stuff whenever we want it, instead of having to wait until one day of the year. Blame it on choosing not to have emotional vampires and constantly unhappy relatives in our lives who’s idea of the holidays is to make each other feel as guilty as possible. Blame it on intelligence to see that Christmas really is all about the spending, spending, spending and personal debt. Yes, even on that supposed “religious” side of the holiday.

So, no. I haven’t send a single Christmas card. Not even to the few people I’ve received cards from. Again, it’s a crock. If I want to send someone my best wishes, I’d prefer to do it sometime other than when billions of other people feel obligated to do it..

I haven’t bought a single Christmas gift. Not even for WS. I trust he hasn’t bought me anything either because if he has, we will be having strong words about it.

Sometimes I think that if I didn’t like the beauty of this time of year, I wouldn’t decorate a single square inch of space and definitely wouldn’t have a Christmas tree. It sure would cause less effort and work. And sometimes, I get pissed that people around me, who used to hate Christmas and resent that I pushed it in their faces, now all love the holiday. It’s like this time of year has been corrupted for me. Or maybe I grew up. Or maybe, instead of believing once that I was Ms. Claus, I’m really Ms. Scrooge.

Bah…HumBUG!

December 20 2003

So we’re sitting here trying to figure out what to have for our Christmas day dinner. I’ve pushed for ham this year because it’s the only pork product I really like and we’re not Jewish (although WS says Oy Vay a lot and he likes bagels). Making a mental grocery list isn’t easy when a person is still asleep. We watched “Finding Nemo” again last night in bed at 2 a.m. which brought about some interesting dreams. Note to self: Next time we go for sushi, ask for extra Nemos on my California rolls.

Okay, I can’t think. Must consume coffee. And does anyone know where we can get a pineapple corer?

Back from coffee and grocery shopping. We’ll be doing Christmas dinner shopping Tuesday. No sense buying fresh stuff today when it’ll just go off before Thursday.

I’ve got WS cleaning his car windows, inside and out so we can actually see out of them tonight should we decide to go Christmas light viewing in a small, rich neighborhood nearby. If the weather holds out, that is. It was supposed to pour rain all day and be dry tomorrow but it’s been mostly dry all day today.

We both kicked the llama’s ass last night when making three kinds of Christmas cookies. Not to give to anyone, but to enjoy ourselves. WS was looking for a soft, cut out cookie recipe and we found one but I don’t think they will be soft enough for his taste. You just can’t make a soft cut out cookie and be able to actually cut it out, although he insists he had them as a kid (well then, you should have got the recipe before you disowned your entire family). We’ll be testing and decorating those tonight. The other cookies we made were the no-bake chocolate, oatmeal kind and my family’s traditional old Russian tea cake cookies.

So WS is off from his REAL job until after the New Year. We both still have to work for The Company, but at least he’ll be working days for them instead of putting in five to eight hours every night after the eight hours a day at his REAL job. And he’ll be working with me, meaning we can motivate each other to do actual work and not scream at the computer screen when MsNoManagementSkills sends instant messages telling us how behind The Company is. We do fairly well working together, here in the same office and it’s good to have someone to bounce ideas and questions off of during the day work hours. It ought to make the next 15 workdays not suck as bad.

Oh, and I’m working hard on getting all my previous journal entries typed up in a form that can be read at my own web site. More information on that will be coming soon.

December 21 2003

Why, oh, why did I not add HTML tags to all of my journal entries, back when I typed them up. This part is taking me for-EVER. But I am getting through it, slowly but surely.

Last night, in the pouring rain, we went out looking at that Christmas light community close by. Nice, but nothing really to write home about so I will leave it at that. Afterward, we finished decorating those cut out cookies. I iced, WS decorated because I felt it was the only way to get WS to participate. And if you recall, it was his idea to have the cookies in the first place. He whined for a bit about not creating good looking cookies, but I assured him that chances were good that he would not be any more creative any other day so he might as well slog through getting them all done then. I think they are pretty good looking, and even though we did not create any handicapped cookies, we seriously thought of creating a bunch to match the personalities of some of favorite online readers, but just decided to create a couple to match our neighbors instead. For example, we created a brown, crusty looking Christmas tree cookie to match The CalLEEfornians indoor Christmas tree which appears to be already brown, crispy and dead looking. Another creation involved a green wreath that has half of the lights burnt out. I think you get the idea.

Today, I drug WS all over god’s creation to look at reindeer. Yes, there are a couple in town, that a person can get close enough to smell their breath. And I can assure you that reindeer breath should be avoided at all costs. Oddly for me, I did not touch the reindeer, although I really, really wanted to. WS reminded me to keep my fingers to myself. He knows me so well. I just knew that if I got my fingers too close, someone would have yelled at me and people just should not yell at 47 year old women without good cause. Petting a reindeer would not be good cause.

The rest of the afternoon was spent having lunch and driving around foggy neighborhoods, looking at fancy houses we saw being built last spring and looking at the decline of other neighborhoods that are only a couple years older than our own.

Tonight, I am looking forward to a walk around our neighborhood. Someone WS works with lives close by and we need to drop off something for them that WS as asked to drop off from another coworker. I guess that means I need to come up with a little something to take from us too. See how complicated this whole holiday season can get?

Today, while it has been dry, it rained so much last night, the roads are still soaked. We had about fifteen minutes of sunshine about an hour ago and now the foggy is starting to settle in. I will not be taking my car out for a spin today. Maybe tomorrow if things really dry out..

December 22 2003

Knowing that the urban legend is true surrounding poppy seed causing blood tests to come back as a positive for heroin usage, I gladly picked up a four pack of poppy seed muffins over the weekend. I am going to need all the help I can get to get through the next few days. Our customer email work load has jumped toward the ten thousand mark and continues to climb which means either no one worked over the weekend or the latest software release is truly the crap I knew it to be before it was unleashed onto the unsuspecting public.

Another windy Monday. At least it is clear today. WS grabbed our newly emptied trash can before it blew down the street. As of this very moment, there are four other trash cans rolling way, way down the street toward the intersection. But not everyone will lose their cans today. The Howler Monkey house never put out their trash today. I think that makes three times since moving in. Let us all hope someone is not filing their garage with trash bags. That is what happened in the last neighborhood we lived in and after the seven ton mess was discovered, there was talk that authorities were going to have to evacuate the block. Shiver.

I had an odd dream last night about helping talk Nicholas Cage out of buying a supposedly completely restored old car. It was not restored at all. Someone had used a lot of Bondo and paint to cover up where the car had been hit. I dreamed that while I was not an official authority on restored cars, in real life, I am a bit knowledgeable on the subject. After going over the car with Mr. Cage and coming up with pages of wrong stuff with this particular car, Mr. Cage and an older, business type woman and I sat around looking at video of other cars for sale and he asked if I would be interested in buying a luxury home of his that he was selling for two million in some remote, small town in California called Mill City. I distinctly remember that name, but not wanting Mr. Cage to find out that I had about eighteen dollars to my name, I faked that I knew something about Mill City and said that the economy was poor out there, there was not anything much in jobs and the one highway in and out of the town was often blocked from landslides, so sorry, I was not really interested. Amazingly, all that information was correct. He then continued with the chit chat and thanked me genuinely for my time.

I do not know what that was all about.

Homemade pizza was dinner last night. Homemade pesto will be late lunch today. Tomorrow, we shop for something to make on Christmas day. I am leaning toward glazed ham with pineapple rings and cherries and scalloped potatoes, and salad for me and asparagus for WS. I really do not think we need anything else at this point but that could be that I am not having a crystal clear day so far. I have a bad case of the Mondays. I am sure I am forgetting something.

December 24 2003

Things I DO NOT want for Christmas, not that I am ungrateful or anything:

A fucked up Comcast.net connection.

Is that asking for too much?

Lots of stuff going on here EXCEPT having a reliable Internet connection which has had getting our work hours in interesting to say the least, but we are now both nearly done with our work day. I was actually thinking of working at 11:30 tonight just to see the responses from customers when they saw that someone was trying to help then that last on Christmas eve. I have been required to do this in past years and it really takes the wind of out even the most angry and pissed off customers and there is nothing like spending the following work day starting out by reading dozens of amazed and happy customer emails. It is just my way of spreading holiday cheer, I guess.

I will expand on all the stuff going on in the next day or two. For now, WS and I would like to wish everyone out there, and you know who you are, a very happy and merry Christmas to you, your families and friends.

And here is to hoping your beef dinners are all Mad Cow disease free!

December 25 2003

Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone is having a good day! “Hey! No family arguments over there!”

My connection seems to be stable today but don’t think that when it was down a few days ago, I didn’t take the opportunity to do some web work anyway. I’ve been frantically typing up all my old journal entries from 1998, HTML formatting them and getting ready to be uploaded to my own web site www.Blogeois.com I hope to get permanently moved over there in the coming weeks, but I won’t be giving up this place anytime soon. They will simply reflect each other for a while.

A Christmas miracle happened here yesterday. WS decided to paint our laundry room. Himself. If he gets those cabinets from Lowes, you’ll definitely see pictures.

No work today. Ham, roasted potatoes, asparagus, gold beets, cranberry sauce and rolls were on the menu here today. We were finished eating and cleaning up by 3 p.m. and in between rain showers, we took a plate of cookies and a tea assortment to the singing Alaskans that live down around the corner that we missed the other evening. Very nice people.

Sounds like MsNoManagementSkills didn’t get the ring she secretly had hoped for from her boyfriend who is still married to his wife, who did get a ring from her new boyfriend who is still married to his wife. But MsNoManagementSkills did get earrings with a stone in them she used to claim she hated.

Unbelievably, there was no kids playing outside with Christmas toys this year. You could have heard a pin drop outside all day long. Odd. I would have at least expected The Dimmer kids to be outside with something. No one has seen anyone over there in days.

Enjoy the rest of the evening. It’s back to work for us tomorrow, but not for MsNoManagementSkills or MrSmartButFakingIt. More on this tomorrow. Key word is disgruntled.

December 26 2003

Happy Boxing day to our Canadian neighbors.

Today, at work, hardly anyone showed up which is a BIG, FAT No-NO. Unfortunately, there isn’t a manager, supervisor or Company CEO to be found. They have all taken off themselves, leaving only us truly scared to lose our jobs loyal types. But after 6 an ½ hours, I’m tired of being the only one obviously working.

Last Monday, both WS and I were very surprised to find out that there is LOTS of disgruntleness going on at Company headquarters, in our department. And most of it revolves around MsNoManagementSkills getting to take the day before and after Christmas off when posted in CAPITAL letters on our personal company web site that NO TIME WILL BE GIVEN FOR VACATION OFF AROUND THE HOLIDAYS. When we outright asked MsNoManagementSkills about why she took time off when it was posted that we couldn’t, she once again said the information posted there didn’t apply to her.

To merely say our coworkers are pissed would be an insult to those people. Some of them are literally on the cusp of quitting over it. Good thing MrSmartButFakingIt ALSO felt the need to take this entire week off for vacation, unannounced to everyone except MsNoManagementSkills and WS, who both “forgot” to tell me. I spent last Monday sitting around, waiting for MrSmartButFakingIt to show up to work so I could get some answers to some things I had been waiting on for over a week and surprise! He’s on vacation, Ego seemed way too happy to inform me of as well as information that MrSmartButFakingIt is expecting twins next spring. Hmmm…that would explain part of the lack of interest in his job any longer but do the rest of us have to suffer because he’s thinking with the wrong head right now? That does not, however, excuse MsNoManagementSkills.

Okay, whatever. So WS and I are considering NOT taking 12 hours of vacation time off around New Year’s eve like we had planned. No need to have this many coworkers pissed at us too, when there is more than enough intensive hatred for MsNoManagementSkills. Really, I was shocked to find out that other workers felt the same as I did about her. All this time, I just figured I just let too much of this stuff get to me for too long. It turns out people are more than ready to quit their jobs just to get away from her. And the bad part? They live and work a couple thousand miles away from her already!

So, it looks like in retaliation, nearly every coworker took today off and many of those, took the whole day off on the day before Christmas too, when we were all supposed to work a ½ day. I am certain we are all going to hear about this after New Years if not sooner. I can guarantee that MrSmartButFakingIt is not going to be happy.

Tonight through tomorrow night, we might get a snowflake or two. The temperature has been around 38 degrees all day and rain is due later tonight and tomorrow. Temperatures are supposed to drop down to 33-34. Sometimes, that is low enough around here.

Still very quiet in the hood. We heard Mr. Dimmer take off around midnight last night but we haven’t seen anyone else over there in a week. I think Ms. SportOrNothing and their teens took off on a separate vacation next door, leaving Mr. SportsOrNothing home alone, which really means he takes off all night long and their big dogs bark constantly for hours. The CalLEEfornians fixed their half-burnt out Christmas lights across the street, making them look nicer than they did all month long. No sign of Cap’t Dan and the Smokin’ Clan either or that hawk that was patrolling our air space a couple of weeks ago.

Back to work. Only two hours left and the weekend is ours.

December 27 2003

Nothing happening around here at all so let me fill you in on some other stuff.

Yesterday evening, just before I was done with work, I was going downstairs to turn on our Christmas lights when I slid down the stairs and landed partially on my right elbow and smack center on my spine. Knocked the wind right out of me. My first thought was, “Great. I broke my back.” Then my arm started hurting pretty good. No tingling and I could move everything just fine. Lots of pretty bruises today. I’ve lived here nearly five years and never fell or slid down the stairs before. It was odd.

Drill Sergeant Dave invited us for his private, annual New Year’s eve dinner after all. It’ll be at a local restaurant close to us which is surprising that it won’t be on his side of town, some 30+ miles away. The only thing “New Year’s” about the dinner will be that it’s occurring on that day, hours and hours earlier than around the actual “eve” part. We’re the only people of the bunch that can actually stay awake until midnight.

The nice Competition Boy who is going to the dinner has separated from his wife. We really did like her but they had been having relationship problems halfway through the summer’s car show season. He thought that backing out and away from the car show circuit back then would patch things up, but it didn’t. They split up, then got back together, then split up again; this time for good. It will be a bit uncomfortable to talk to him now at first. I have no idea if he has to sell his car and his house and if we’ll even ever see him again after this. He had so much time and money sunk into his car and had so many more plans for it. And he still has a mirror car part that I paid him for that I kept forgetting to get from him. I might not ever get it now. How does one ask for something like this, knowing that the whole car thing might be a very tender subject? And it’s a good bet that I won’t have anyone to help me work on my car anymore. When it came to this, he was the best. Hand’s down.

The other, not nice Competition Boy, who was purposely not invited to Drill Sergeant Dave’s exclusive New Year’s eve dinner because of his fence straddling behavior regarding the Working Group and the Boring Group who run the car club now, invited both us and Drill Sergeant Dave to come over to his own New Year’s eve party, which is just up the street from where we’ll be having dinner with Dave and a few miles from our house. No word whether we’ll be stopping by there or not. It’s too early to decide anything at this point. If I had slid down the stairs later in the week, I could have had an excuse to bow out of all the above.

Since we didn’t celebrate the actual Christmas holiday this week, don’t think that we didn’t buy anything this month for ourselves and each other, including books, chocolates, coffee, an elliptical machine, a new PVR for our dish network, candles, a bedside clock, mint shower soap and lotion, some clothes and slippers. We did our fair share of supporting the economy.

December 28 2003

I have a philosophy that I hate but one I must live by: I can’t save them all. Mostly, I refer to this philosophy when I can’t accept yet another animal into this household and I’m sure WS thanks me for this.

But sometimes, it refers to people as well. Back 25 years ago, when I was married the first time, my in-laws were very religious and preferred to live in a very real state of denial. They didn’t subscribe to any newspaper, didn’t own a TV and only listened to church hymn stations without any news about the outside world. My father-in-law worked for the phone company in a highly sheltered engineering management position and read his bible at work every chance he got. My mother-in-law worked in the church office in the highly sheltered position of putting together all Sunday school schedules.

Once, over dinner, because we just HAD to have dinner with them all the time (I believe it was actually in the marriage contract), I mentioned a scare we all had in our apartment complex about a rapist who had hit there a couple of times recently. Mother-in-law banged her fork down, announced loudly, “Rape never happens. No one rapes anyone! You have ruined dinner.” and ran bawling from the room. Apparently, she had never hear of a rape before. Imagine that. Thereafter, I became known as the difficult one.

The following year, I watched a mini series called “Holocaust” on TV, even after our church pastor told everyone to boycott it. That it wasn’t altogether true and would just be upsetting. My then-husband watched the first part of the series with me, then forbade me to watch the rest. When he was discussing why I shouldn’t watch the rest, he told me that it was because he felt that it was all about God’s will and any of those people who tried to save themselves or talk others into saving themselves were doing the devil’s work. All those people were supposed to die. It was what God wanted. And that was all I had to know about that.

This truly frightened me as I was told that had we all been in that same position, no one, not my father-in-law, my mother-in-law, my brother-in-laws or my husband would try to save themselves. And I would be forced to go to my death with the rest of them. There would be no attempt at saving ourselves and I was expected to think the very same.

It became painfully aware to me then, that these people, people I was supposed to love as my own family, could not be swayed to think any differently. They were solid in their belief that certain things were inevitable. If a towering wall of water was expected and pre-scheduled to crash into their houses at 2:25 in the afternoon, just as they were previously scheduled to sit down to a lunch of sandpaper dry, overcooked slab of pork roast, and everyone would certainly drown, it was just God’s will and they wouldn’t lift a finger to drive or move out of the way of their normal routine.

But since my then-husband worked nights at the phone company, I sneaked and watched the rest of the series in its entirety and was certain then and there that this family was a bunch of religious idiots, and if I hadn’t questioned that before, I was certain of it then.

You just can’t save them all, because sometimes, they don’t want to be saved. The movie I watched the other night, “The Pianist”, brought back those painful memories.

Speaking of being saved, MsNoManagementSkills has vowed to start another diet this week. Her boyfriend is not being helpful in the least, as most other halves aren’t. Sounds like rice and veggies are her choice of diets this go around but it’s Taco Bell, KFC and burgers if he has any say in the matter. We all remember how FatHead used to sabotage her diets previously. Let’s see if the boyfriend is any different. So far, it doesn’t seem like it.

Work tomorrow is just going to suck. MrSmartButFakingIt and MsNoManagementSkills will be back from their suspiciously allowed vacations and when they go through last week’s schedule and see how little anyone else worked, there will be hell to pay. Thank god neither WS or I should be on that shit list.

December 29 2003

God, do I ever hate work today. The day is dragging. Five hours in and three ungodly hours to go. By 6:30 p.m., I’ll be ready for a bullet in the head. We are getting slammed with customers who all, every single last one of the six thousand, are pissed off about something and are taking out their frustrations on us.

Didn’t get that PS2 for Christmas? Rip your friendly online help desk service worker a new asshole!

Get another ugly homemade sweater from Grandma this year? Threaten to mail bomb our email system!

Not enough cash left over from holiday shopping? Teach your friendly online help desk service worker fun new words!

Stores refuse to exchange those six Salad Shooters you received? Report our software company to your local Better Business Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission.

I know that I really want to help people after I’ve been called every name in the book and threatened, yet that’s exactly what I have to do. All. Day. Long. And happy fucking holidays to them all.

Less than thirty miles from here, at a lower elevation no less, up to twelve inches of snow was dumped last night. We received nilch. Nothing. Not a flake. Listening to the local news, which is broadcast in the center of all that snow, you’d think this area was buried in eight-four feet of the stuff, just like last week’s earthquake in California was made to sound like the entire state had been leveled and the entire land mass was finally sinking into the ocean. I hate the local news people. Too animated. Too perky. Too sensationalizing.

Yesterday, from my desk, where all the real magic happens, I worked hard on getting my Blogeois.com site working and prettified. I even added an about me page. What is the world coming to when I finally take advice from the great other blogs I regularly visit. Hey, I only need a few pokes in the eyes to get me motivated.

December 30 2003

We’re firmly within that un-holiday time, the uncomfortable short period between a holiday and another holiday, where Christmas stuff is sitting around to do double-duty as New Year’s decorations. I want to pack xmas stuff up and put it all away, far out of view for another eleven months. But there is that possibility that someone will want to stop by between now and New Year’s day and what kind of non-celebratory bastards would we look like without a single Christmas babble in sight?

I’m debating adding my rant essays to my Blogeois.com site. Debating for a reason. I liked these rants back then. I don’t mind them too much now, but I haven’t the faintest idea when, if ever, I will be able to ever write another one. I have zero time for true essay-level rants, which are definitely not to be confused with the everyday, but oh, so mind-cleansing rants you read here. These are real rants, based on long thought out theories that have been tested on unsuspecting humankind over the course of several years. I mean, I just wouldn’t peck out a bunch of words without thinking a bit about what I choose to rant about that day.

Unlike this entry.

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, I think Mr. Dimmer is working on an insurance scam. He bought that big, new pickup truck a week before quitting his job and he still isn’t working. For the past several nights, he’s left his truck’s windows open overnight with lots of stuff sitting in plain view inside. Still, no peeps from Ms. Dimmer or those screaming little Dimmers since before Christmas.

No snow yet in this area but they keep saying that we will get some by tomorrow. I know I’ll be doing a dancing gig if we do get any.

December 31 2003

Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow It started late last night and the weather people kept telling us that it would probably not last. That the rain would come in anytime and a warm front wipe the snow out of the area.

It’s just after noon now and it’s still coming down. Everything looks so pretty and our house, to date not tested by snow, is performing beautifully. It’s not drafty in the least, like our last residence. We’re pretty happy. Tonight is Drill Sergeant Dave’s New year’s eve dinner. Luckily, we only have to drive about eight miles to get to the restaurant whereas he and the nice Competition Boy have to drive about thirty-some miles through this weather. I don’t envy them at all. The other Competition Boy sent me an email yesterday reminding me about his little party tonight and let me know that the separated wife of the nice Competition Boy will be there. I think this guy thinks I know more about that relationship problem than I really do. I haven’t talked to any of these people since mid-October and as it was, I heard secondhand about that split up anyway. For once, I really don’t care one way or the other about this couple and that’s probably just due to the negative experience we had with the car club.

Have a very happy New Year. Drive and celebrate safely. I’ll be thinking of you, in all your different time zones, throughout the night and celebrating your midnight hours with a toast.