CafeChatNoir

So, little bro had to go to the DMV to get the title on the beater transferred to his name only so we can donate it to charity. He’d already done one title transfer on the other car, went in w/the court docs, death cert and wham, bam, thank you ma’am, shiny new title in his name.

Well, today they insisted that I had to be present to sign the old title as well since my name is also on the court documents. Oh, and that other person, too. Then my brother explained 2 of the 3 names on said document were me, and that f/k/a means “formerly known as” and as such there would only be the two of us at the signing ceremony.

So, I go over there, we get back in line, wait about 45 minutes, get a different clerk and wham, bam, thank you ma’am, he’s got a shiny new title in his name. Please note I did not mention that I did anything besides sit around waiting for 45 minutes with him. I’m not even sure this particular clerk even looked at the court papers. As the clerk is off collecting his change for the transfer, he’s mouthing “I am so sorry!” to me – hell, it was exactly what I expected would happen.

With this spectacular level of consistency, in the same branch no less, how is it even plausible that ID fraud could be occurring in our great state??!?

I am greatly lacking in motivation right now. Or overdone with frustration, one of the two, or quite possibly both.

Got a call from the painters today, they’re coming on Monday. Mind you, this was originally scheduled for the 16th, and I guess got moved up – except that this was the first I’d heard of it being changed.

Just seems like there are so many hurdles to get from point A to point B and I just want to fucking get to point B already. Except that point B is several years away. Which obviously means I need to find some closer points in between to work towards so I don’t lose my mind. At the moment, I guess that is getting things ready for the painters on Monday. Fortunately it shouldn’t take much of anything, as there really shouldn’t be much of anything left on/near the walls. Next step – wrangling an approval out of the ACC for the windows so I can actually schedule an installation. (I may just schedule the installation anyway and if they drag their feet I’ll reschedule.)

Estate stuff is not as critical at this point, cause we’ve missed the “try to get it all done before the end of the tax year” goal anyway, and it’s not like we’re broke because of what is still unsettled. Still on the radar, just not the “Oh fuck gotta get it done RIGHT NOW” it was before. The brain trust over at Computershare managed to do the distribution the day before another dividend posted…so now I have to find out if I have to fill out another set of papers to get *that* distributed… So freakin’ close.

Also need to start making inquiries next week as to how long it would take to have the DVD drive on this laptop pulled out and replaced. It’s not under warranty anymore, so it’s not like it would have to be shipped off to Toshiba. In theory, that should be a quick fix, shouldn’t it?

Guess there will just be a flurry of activity of fixing a bunch of little things I don’t give a damn about in order to ignore the fact that I can’t figure out how fix the things I do care about.

It’s probably a good thing I know that drinking myself into oblivion doesn’t fix things, make time travel possible or any number of other things. But damn, I can understand why people try it.

We have to leave here to pick up my grandmother in approximately 20 hours. Now is not the time for the vacuum cleaner to break.

I’m in a completely foul mood and it will likely not change for the next two weeks.

I honestly can’t remember at this point when this time of year was actually about Christmas, instead of being about surviving my grandmother. Christmas is just this additional piece of stress on top of it that gets really no attention because everything has to be focused on her.

If I thought that she would ever accept that I have different priorities and just be happy to be here, it would be nice. Instead, it becomes putting aside everything that I care about to cater to her damn whims.

Makes for quite the meaningful holiday.

Cox Communications is going to get such an angry letter…if I can ever actually get the damn account switched over.

And I need more trance for my ipod.

OK, I’ll admit, I am easily spoiled in the first place…

But, there is a reason that 9 times out of 10, I’ll take the extra time to go to Wegman’s to do the marketing, even if it is 20 minutes away vs. the 5 minutes to the closest Giant. However, since I am somewhat pressed for time today, I went over to Giant this morning to get what I needed so we’d have something to eat tonight down at the beach.

Simple things: chicken, mayo, mustard, croissants. Mayo & mustard, no problem. Chicken? Well, they didn’t have any “generic” chicken breasts in anything less than a 4# package. I don’t need 4#s. I don’t want 4#s. I don’t care that I could freeze them, I just don’t like buying more than I need. (If I freeze it, I’ll forget it’s there anyway and it will never get used.) So, I had to get the Perdue’s, which are fine and all, but more expensive and not *that* much better than the generic chicken. Annoying.

Croissants? None. This is a store that supposedly has a full service bakery. I asked if they would be coming out anytime soon. Nope. Great guys, thanks. Fortunately, The Swiss Bakery came through for me, and were rewarded with an extra sale for having ham & cheese croissants ready to go to boot. I’ve got lunch now. :)

But honestly, it seems every time I go to Giant anymore, they don’t have at least one thing that is on my list.

Dear Dateline NBC,

Tonight I listened as one of your “reporters” rather patronizingly implied that people don’t recognize what Memorial Day is all about. This based on his skimming several blogs that mentioned folks being happy for a long weekend and talking of barbecue plans with family.

Kind sir, I take great exception to what you had to say tonight.

Your “report” is pathetic on several levels. First, your inability to comprehend that folks do not necessarily put every thought in their head on their blogs. Second, that if they are writing about a welcome day off and spending time with family, that they’re not somehow capable of remembering our war dead as well. Third, you decided to cut a rather wide swath there and decide that a large proportion of the population isn’t being respectful of Memorial Day based on source material of…weblogs. I cannot even imagine how you can consider that to be representative of an entire nation, considering that as of March of 2005, only 6% of the US adult population had created a blog*

Just because the entire internet isn’t writing about remembering their war dead tomorrow doesn’t mean they aren’t doing it. Some of us think about it near every day. All in all though, it did make for a nice lead in to the stories of the soldiers remembering their fallen comrades, as though no one else would. Hopefully they have more faith in the rest of us than you do.

*Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project

Forever Pregnant – Guidelines: Treat Nearly All Women as Pre-Pregnant

New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves — and to be treated by the health care system –as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon.

Among other things, this means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control.

OK, this has struck an ugly nerve with me this morning. Granted, for the most part it’s just taking care of yourself in general – and that’s certainly not a bad thing. If you’ve got a chronic condition such as asthma or diabetes, you should be taking care of that ANYWAY. They’re going on the whole “so much can happen between conception and when the pregnancy is confirmed” track and as such, you should always act like you may have just gotten knocked up and don’t know it yet.

Dear feds, while the attempt to reduce me to nothing more than a baby making factory is admirable to some I’m sure, I don’t feel the need to be treated as though I could get pregnant any day now, and I don’t like the direction I see this going. No more alcohol – can’t do that if you could get pregnant. Stay out of those smoky bars, even if you’re just having club soda. No more carpaccio, brie, caffeine, or deli meat… (There goes my chicken sandwich for lunch…and Starbucks’ profits are gonna tank if I can’t get a latte anymore…) What about all those women training for Ironman Florida in November? Should they really be doing that level of training if they could get pregnant?

Can you tell this annoyed the crap out of me this morning?

Does anyone know ANY way I can get hold of an actual live person at Verizon without having to wait until tomorrow morning??

Edit: Damn, y’all are quick – I got through on the repair line, and I’ll be calling customer service again tomorrow anyway. So, yeah, 7:30 at night, the doorbell rings, I do my normal open-upstairs-window and ask who is it. “Verizon” I say, “You’ve got to be crazy if you think I am opening the door, go before I call the cops”

Then I call Verizon, they say they don’t do that and tell me I should call the police. Nice. Call the cops, they said they’d be on the lookout in the area. Of course, I have no description or anything of this idiot.

Seriously, I think it was someone selling Verizon crap door to door – someone came by today when I was working and I didn’t even bother to ask who it was, but I saw a college aged kid w/a clipboard walking off – I bet it was the same person. And Verizon saying they don’t do door to door? Bullshit.

When I have a flag up on my IM that says, “I am at lunch until 2:15″ and you IM me and get the auto responder, do NOT then AIM me 10 minutes later asking if I have any suggestions on your problem. I AM AT LUNCH.

And no, I am not going to wait tail I have 0 calls to quit, just an amount that can be reasonably closed in two weeks so there is as little as possible to dump on my coworkers – and I am actually getting there, 30s now vs over 60 at one point week before last. (Yes, I know, it shouldn’t matter, but I am a dork that way.)

Some people just do not get it.

If you’re going to IM a coworker with a question, at least have the courtesy to start with something along the lines of “Do you have a minute?” or “Hey, can I bounce a question off you?” – don’t just launch straight into it.

Common courtesy folks, give it a whirl.

Dammit, some people just need to have a 2×4 taken to their head.

Well, a good weekend has been fairly well trashed by now, between work and people going out of their way to piss me off. Exceptionally bad idea.

Safeway is having yet another “grand reopening” – they seem to do this about every 6 months. This time they seem to have succeeded only in making the store smaller and more crowded. While of course, rearranging everything so you can’t find anything to save your life.

Only took til 3PM on a Monday to hate 97% of the general population.

FUCK. God damn it all to hell, I ask a small favor of someone – “Please take db X to the guy that loads ‘em up cause it was delivered to my desk and I am not in the office” and no one knows where it is now. FUCK FUCK FUCK. She doesn’t even remember me asking (I have a log of it.)

And I am talking to another coworker who is hunting it down – and my god we have bad hold music.

She found it. Apparently coworker #1 completely flaked and never did it even though she said she would.

Well, fuck.

There was supposed to be a midnight game tonight in Anaheim, but apparently the schedule was changed. Dammit!

As completely selfish as it sounds – when am I going to get the Christmas that *I* want? Christmas Eve on my own, Christmas Day with the people I love, screw the presents, forget the stress, just remember what it’s really all about. What is it going to take?

FUCK.

Well, I WAS going to just go watch hockey at 7 and take the damn beeper with me, but instead I am actually physically stuck here until 8. Why? Because my coworkers declined to pickup a call in the queue, I had to get it, this client IS IN HIS CAR and of course, can only give me the vaguest of information on the problem, and has to wait til he gets home to fax me the info so I can actually look at it. I did warn him, I am on call until 8PM only, and after that, he is SOL until 9AM tomorrow morning. I did not mention that I would likely have a raging hangover at that time as well.

And of course, this is “holding up everything” – then why the hell are you in your car?

I know, I know, it’s part of being on call, you get to deal with the “OMG emergency!!” stuff that comes in at the last minute of the day, but dammit all to hell, I wasn’t even supposed to be picking up any new calls today!!!!!!! (Quite the Clerks moment there…)

I’ve been dealing with a lot of shitheads this week, and most of them are my coworkers…

OK, gonna go get a few things done around here while waiting on the fax…

Oh, and my grandmother called to remind me to please bring her winter coat. Done this drill for 20 years now, yet she still thinks I don’t know that she doesn’t take her winter coat home to Phoenix every year.

Hello from Amazon.com.

We are sorry to report that we will not be able to obtain the following item from your order:
   
Laurence Bergreen “Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe”

Though we had expected to be able to send this item to you, we’ve since found that it is not available from any of our sources at this time.  We realize this is disappointing news to hear, and we apologize for the inconvenience we have caused you.
   
We have cancelled this item from your order.

I was really looking forward to getting that.

It just occurred to me, we moved here 20 years ago.  20 years, and I’m back right in the same house where I started when we got here, and frankly, feeling about the same way I did then, too, aka “WTF do I do now??”  To be honest, I can’t decide if I am surprised or disappointed at the fact that I never left the area.

I didn’t get enough sleep last night.

To the asshat in BMW turning onto my street this morning – sorry I slowed you down by actually forcing you to STOP at the stop sign you so wanted to go blowing through, but I was already in the intersection you putz.

Oh, to the client that was pissy because I repeated myself FOUR times – had you actually taken two seconds to listen the first three times, I wouldn’t have had to keep repeating it.

The coworker to my left is on the verge of a total meltdown.  I don’t even begin to know what to do about that to help her – she’s totally freaked out all the time cause she doesn’t know everything yet, and it’s hard to convince her that she’ll do better and absorb more if she just relaxes a bit, and she doesn’t have to know everything yet – but cause she’s in a panic, she’s not picking up anything at all.  She’s also locking horns with the manager, and that’s not helping.

I got home to a message from my boss asking if I would go on 10-7 the next two days due to some scheduling cockups.  At least that’s what I think the message was, the answering machine is quite the piece of junk and really needs to be replaced.   I left her a voice mail on her cell saying I’d see her at 10.

Rain…  Yep, we need it, but it hosed the drive home, which I was an hour late starting anyway.  Trying to explain to the dog that we’re not going out as I am just not tough enough for outside exercise in the rain just isn’t working. 

The lawn folks accidentally left the side gate unlatched yesterday.  Found this out when I called the dog and he came to the door in the carport – apparently he was waiting at the other gate to get back in the yard.  Oh you can bet he got TONS of praise for not running off.  I know it had to be tempting to go wandering.

Couple things on my mind I just can’t shake that are starting to get to the point of being a distraction, and I simply cannot figure out what to do about it, short of bashing myself in the head with a stapler and hoping for selective amnesia.

However, there was a bright spot to the day – I got a coupon for a Starbucks freebie cause they lost my order this morning.  Totally unnecessary, but really nice.  I cashed it in on the way home. :)

QE did a makeover on a nudist this evening.  Highly entertaining.  And I’ve found a new drink recipe I must try – rum, grapefruit juice and lime juice all thrown into a blender w/ some ice.

Someone was attacked in Rock Creek Park the other day.  Apparently police & media are saying that joggers and such should be carrying cell phone with the police number preprogrammed in.  Personally, I’m thinking brass knuckles might be slightly more useful, then call the police after you’ve bashed an attacker in the face and run the hell away.  Seriously though, yeah, it bites to have to think about this kind of crap wherever you are if you’re not in a position where you’ve got an exercise partner that sucks as badly as you do to go and workout with.  Yeah, I could just pony up the money for the gym now, but I really do like to get outside if possible to exercise.

Note to self: I’d best come up with a different activity for my 47th birthday…

What an absolutely CRAP day. It’s good to know that I am busting my ass at work so that others can pretty much sit around and not do a god damn thing all day.

Yes, I’ll admit, I didn’t have the shiniest outlook going into the day, but DAMN, I log on, 10+ calls untouched, we’re short because of training, and some folks are simply NOT stepping up to the plate. YES, it’s busy, YES we’re short, so TAKE A CALL ALREADY!

It’s days like this that the thought of handing the housekeys to my brother, saying “Congrats, you’ve got two cats to go with the dog” saying “Sucks to be you” to the office, getting in my car and just GOING is damn tempting.

OK, so I don’t really have anywhere to go, and I’d feel too guilty about the people that DO actually work in my group to do it, but still, what a damn piece of shit day.

And the dog decided it would be a GREAT idea to chew the top off a brand new bottle of baby powder today.

Edit: It also didn’t help that my clients today should not be touching anything more advanced than an Etch A Sketch.

I don’t even have words to describe how incredibly pissed off I am at the world today.

I am tired of being everyone’s fucking doormat, being lied to or just completely ignored, professionally AND personally.

I am tired of setting what I think are reasonable expectations and only finding out that they’re obviously set too high, and then being incredibly disappointed and pissed off because I am so gullible as to think that people actually give a damn.

Fuck.

and I’ll be getting the long distance switched to Sprint here – not only are they soaking me for basic long distance ($20 a month for the privilege of saying AT&T is my long distance provider), the dumbasses applied the payment under the old name to my name, so I’ve got a 3.52 credit on my name, and another bill saying I still owe them 3.52 under the old name.

I am now on the phone with the billing department (transferred from customer service) and they cannot find an account for this phone number. It would seem that even though I repeated my phone number three times, SLOWLY, they still couldn’t get the area code right.

OK, so, I just need these two items netted together, so there is a zero balance on both names. That’s all. Now I have to be transferred to another department. Insane.

I have a confirmation number! And now I am on the phone with Sprint. AT&T, you suck.

Netflix sucks in one very important way right now – there are no phone numbers on the site, and you can’t email customer service without a login ID. So, I had to sign up for a trial run in order to get an email to customer service to cancel my Mom’s account.

Sheesh.

Dog doesn’t seem to like DSL as much as I do – he’d prefer I was downstairs watching TV with him, so I think I’ll go do that for a while.

Oh, how I love being a “professional” – nothing as much fun as paying to reinstate/renew a license I’ve never used and probably never will use… (For those of you thinking, “Why???”, the answer is: Damned if I know. May need it someday I guess.)

Stumbled across this in another LJ Comm I read: Photos that will never make the news Work safe, nothing graphic, but if you’re a smushy sod like I am, they may make you a bit sniffly.

They’re calling for snow again tonight/tomorrow – no surprise given that my crocuses came up last week. :) 1-3 inches overnight and 4-7 by the time it’s all said and done.

For anyone that follows the Oscars, you know about the Razzies that come the night before, giving out awards for the worst crap to hit the screens… Halle Berry won worst actress, and actually showed up to accept it. Props for having a good sense of humor.

Thread in another forum I read, gal was talking about how she just doesn’t take a vacation that’s more than 5 days long, and she can’t figure out what it is in her head that is keeping her from taking long vacations anymore. Me? I’ve never taken more than a week’s vacation before, and frankly, I’m a tad unnerved by the two weeks I’ve got coming up this summer. I’ve never actually been away from my house for that long. Still don’t have a solid plan for the cats yet, either. Mom is checking out a kennel on Monday that our vet recommended that takes both cats & dogs, hopefully it will check out well. Two weeks is just a lot to ask of someone to come to the house and tend to them.

Ah well, it will work out one way or another.

On the very rare occasion (and actually, the first at that) that I would like to sit down and actually use my DVD player, it would be nice if it actually worked.

Much better day at work today, not nearly as frazzling as last week was – even left the office ON TIME!! New guy has jumped into the queue feet first and seems to be doing OK so far – even if he’s only taking a few calls a day, it still makes a difference.

Gently voiced my frustrations with the appliance people over the coordination issues on this project – I think I got my point across without being awful. Windows Media Player 10 is being less hateful today as well, which is helping.

Not going to be a late night for this chick – despite lots of sleep this weekend, I am still beat tonight. However, a good dose of clarity & enlightenment that resulted from a much too late night is worth it. Here’s hoping I don’t squander what I’ve learned.

It’s probably a good thing this headline didn’t come around on Saturday night:
Grinchy Thief Steals Salvation Army Kettle

Onward & upward.

Is just about 3 feet away.

If you want to disappoint me with words or deeds, get in line. This is apparently the week to do it. I have pretty much no faith left in humanity at this point.

I am *this* close to canceling the order for the kitchen, my computer has been rendered damn near useless thanks to Bill Gates and his POS WMP10, I’m getting hangup calls on my cell phone and I’ve spent a good hour and a half just trying to get a DVD to play up here in the office, and it would seem that just isn’t going to happen.

At the rate things are going, I fully expect that the next news headline I see will be something along the lines of “Salvation Army bell ringer mugged & money for the poor stolen.”

I’m tired as hell, cynicism has kicked in full force and taken over.

Spent yet another 8+ hours at my job, followed by 2 more hours sitting in technical trying to figure out why our ESS product keeps breaking. (Because it’s PIECE OF SHIT, that’s why, but I digress…)

10-12 hours has been the norm the past couple weeks, because of this POS add-on product. I know there are other people out there with more important jobs that work longer hours, but this is ALL ABOUT ME, dammit. My life is once again revolving around work, with a break for eating and sleeping, and that’s about it. Damn, what a life that is.

I’m right smack where I never wanted to be, which makes me think that it’s all predetermined and free will is just another crock that someone came up with because it sounded better than jumping off a cliff.

Despite all efforts to the contrary, I’m right back where I was 5 years ago.

People who say, “You have all the time in the world” are full of shit. They just can’t remember when it was that they ran out of options…