Monthly Archives: April 2005

books, movies and tv, pru, work

Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great….

Mark Morford’s article this morning depressed me. I mean, he’s still my new boyfriend and all, but it was still a downer. I came home from work, read it, and immediately had to go hide under my covers and hum softly to myself. Eventually, Pru came and sat on me, and I felt better. So I got up, took a nice long bath, got something to eat, and then watched Revelations. Which is about, naturally, the End of Days. So I can’t type long, because I’m going to have to go back under my covers in a minute. It’s a good thing I’m not diagnosed with depression or anything. Or have a bookclub in Satan’s name. ummm…

Today was my first Stability Ball class, the exercise class I signed up for, which so shocked the world. Turns out, I’m not very stable, kids. I already knew that. I spent some time on the floor…. it’s hard to not just roll right off that so-called “stability” ball. The teacher said things like “Now for you, let’s just concentrate on staying on the ball, we’ll work on form later,” to me. Tessa was on the ball next to me, but Louise was across the room, and she was struggling as much as I was. The teacher would demonstrate the next exercise, Louise, slightly behind her, would make a horrible “you are fucking joking, right?” face, Tessa and I would start to giggle, and the teacher asked if she was going to have to separate us. I think we’ve talked one of my favorite ex-managers to sign up as well. We need a fourth for when we partner up. The worst part was, for warm ups today, we did squat thrusts. SQUAT THRUSTS!! I haven’t done that since 8th grade PE class when the coach decided it would be fun to pretend we were all in boot camp, and had us do hundreds upon hundreds of calisthenics like squat thrusts, push ups, sit-up and chin ups. And then made us run. Fun. But eventually, he was caught cheating on his wife, the cheerleading coach over at the high school, with a girl from her soccer team, a student. So I guess he got his karmic payback for that.

Aaaanyway, I’m already feeling “it” in some muscles. Oh yeah, you really feel “it” after one of these ball workouts. No, you do. I’m not kidding. I’m already sore. Leave me alone, I’m headed back under my covers now.

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work

Iron, sugar or wood would be appropriate. All three would be fine.

Today was my 6th anniversary at my P.O.E. Six years I’ve worked in the same building, same secure parking garage. This morning I pull up to the security gate, lower my power window and fish my badge out from its cubby hole in the dash, thrust out my hand and THWACK! I hit glass. I furrowed my brow and thought, that can’t be, I pressed the window button, I heard it go down, I hear the outside right now! And looking at the window I thrust my hand out again and hit glass. Once wasn’t enough to make me believe that I had rolled down the rear driver’s side window. So, rectified that, reached out, held my badge up to the security box – nothing. I did it again, and again. I swiped two or three more times, and someone pulled up behind me, my co-worker M-roo. I made the international waving gesture of “I don’t know! It no working!” Wagging my card back and forth. She got out of her car, with her badge, and said, “let me try mine.”

She held hers up against the scanner, and the gate opened. Like magic. Or, actually, just like it always does when you swipe your badge across the scanner. Instead of the intercom speaker, like I had just done. About seven times. “I don’t understand!! Why isn’t it working! What’s wrong!”

guh.

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Uncategorized

Please keep your hands outside the car at all times, baby!



See what amusement park ride you are.

From Judes.

My uncle and I are going to go on a roller coaster tour of the US, someday. Canada too. It’s going to be called the Big Ass Roller-coaster Fun Fest. AKA: BARFF. No barfers allowed. We are going to have t-shirts with the sign safety man, leaning over a garbage can, with the big red circle/slash thingy. We are going to rent a winnebego, and my aunt is allowed to come because she is going to cook for us. It’s going to be awesome!!

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Amelia, work

You also learned that I have twice your upper body strength, so shut your pie hole.

I’m in a baaaaad mood. Really wrath of god type bad, you know what I’m saying? Sure you do. In my new location, at my Place Of Employment, my dept. butts up against another department now. And right behind my little pod is someone notorious for the volume of his phone voice. and he is on the phone ALL DAY LONG. We shall call him Monkee. The people in Monkee’s dept. have relegated him to his current position because it is as far away from them as possible. The problem is, that current position is near me. Management, on my side, is unsure they can do anything about this. I am totally sure I can do something about it. If given permission. Right now, I’m going all laissez faire about it. It’s not my place. But, if there is nothing we can do about it, I don’t think it is out of line to go over there and tell him to STICK IT IN HIS PIE HOLE if I can still hear him above the music playing in my headphones. Is there? No. Politely of course. The whole reason we sit in cubes, instead of offices is because “we” [and by we I mean not actually us] consider the interaction valuable, a certain kind of knowledge gained by osmosis. Which may have been true, back in the day, when we were all phone techs and needed immediate reaction/help. But now, not so much. And if one has to wear headphones all day to block out Monkees, well then, the point is moot, is it not? Not that there are enough offices for us. It’s kinda too late for that. And I am really disappointed and sulky about that. Because I wanted really tall walls, up to the ceiling. And a door. More than anything else. Instead, I get Monkee.

No, seriously, I should be able to go over and request he lower his phone voice. Right? Seriously. [stickitinhispiehole]

On the positive side, I currently have this poster in my cube. We had a collection of them lining the walls in our old space. No one really knew where they came from, or who they belonged to. So we sort, quietly, appropriated the ones we wanted for our cubes when we moved. She’s not in mint condition, but she sells for $250 on the web. So it’s pretty cool. I’m digging Amelia.

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Uncategorized

Hilda, Hilda, get me a map of everything.

I can’t sleep because I’m having vicious allergy attacks. I think the whole neighborhood mowed their lawns this weekend. Green grass is my very best allergy. I’ve worked very hard in my life to make it at least 7 x’s as bad as all the other allergies in my head. My head is full of cement, stuff is dripping out of my nose and down my throat and I’ve given up breathing. Which is making me very light headed and dizzy. But it’s worse when I lay down. Of course.

So I was standing there in the kitchen, breathing through my mouth, staring up at the halogen lights that I don’t really like. And I lowered my sights to the butcher block beside the fridge that held the diet coke my stepdad left behind when he headed back up north today. When I spied some cookbooks. Which I had not noticed in the six months I’ve been back in the house. One of them was called “Help, my Apartment has a Kitchen.” That sounded my speed. So I was browsing through it and, low and behold, the most craved food I never ever ever get to eat… Beef Stroganoff. It said it was an easy recipe. Maybe I’ll try it. It requires me handling food, however. And then preparing it. And I never feel like eating food, if I have to prepare it.

Then I saw a Pictorial Cookbook from Nova Scotia. And that made me laugh. Fucking Nova Scotia! You see, about six months after the divorce was final, my stepdad asked me to stop by the house and water his garden for him, while he went camping. I asked him where he was going and he said he was going to to go up to Canada… drive around… camp a little. At this point, he still had not admitted he was seeing someone. So he takes off, when he gets back, he gives me a cd that he bought for me. In Nova Scotia. He did not drive up to Canada and do a little camping. He went to FUCKING NOVA SCOTIA!! Look, here’s Seattle and ….. here is Nova Scotia. You’ve got Seattle, Venezuela, Beirut, Africa, Cincinnati, Hanging Gardens of Babylon… Nova Scotia.* In my family, it is tradition to tell someone when you are leaving the general area, especially if you are getting on a plane, so if it crashes, we know to drive to wherever and look for your body. You certainly do not go to the OTHER SIDE OF THE FUCKING CONTINENT, leaving the Country, without maybe a little note. It was apparent that my mom used to take care of such things. Anyway, when I relayed the story to her, I was still rather stunned, so every time it came out “He flew to fucking NOVA SCOTIA!! Nova fucking Scotia!!”

So, it’s become a bit of a personal joke that whenever someone does something so stunningly different from what they told you they were going to do, because they didn’t want to tell you something. Like the fact that they are seeing the woman that maybe they were sort of seeing before the separation and she happens to be from Nova Scotia so you are both going there. I like to call that “Going to Fucking Nova Scotia.” I have absolutely nothing against Nova Scotia. It looks absolutely gorgeous! In fact, I’d like to go there some day. I’m going down on record to say that I would like to visit fucking Nova Scotia. As well as Montreal. And Nunavut! I’d like to go to Nunavut to visit Elle. Just not in the winter, as I don’t think I have the proper coat for the climate.

*I love you Eddie Izzard!

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Uncategorized

Damn you, ice cream, come to my mouth. How dare you disobey me!

I just got back from picking up a 44ozer – Dr. Pepper. Edgar 16 – Sullen Weekend Edgar, was eating a soft serve ice cream cone from Dairy Queen, explaining to me how she never got off work in time to get one, I guess someone had brought her this one. Or maybe she picked it up on the way to work. Anyway, it reminded me of a story I was telling my coworkers earlier this week. Which I shall share with you now.

When I was in high school, my second job ever was at McDonald’s. I lasted from about the beginning of the school year, until just around Christmas. Shockingly, I did not get along with all my managers. Even as a innocent 16 year old, I seemed to expect to be treated with a modicum of respect. Scheduling someone’s shift to end at 9, but the making them ask permission to leave is bad enough. But when you then send them on 45 minutes of stupid tasks before letting them go, is just down right rude. I don’t have to ask permission to start my shift, I think, under normal circumstances, it should end fairly close to what’s written on the schedule. But I didn’t hold the power, did I? That was just one of my problems with my career at McDonalds. The polyester uniform itched. I smelled like french fries constantly, they never let me work drive thru, which honestly, was my best position. Probably because I wanted to work it. I had to work the birthday parties. oy.

Anyway one afternoon I was working with my arch enemy of mangers, an tough young woman who really should have just gone ahead and joined the military, she was a perfect fit. She did not find me delightful at all. It was really quiet and I was the only one behind the counter. A woman came up with two kids and ordered two soft serve ice cream cones. I made the first one, and up came the manager.

“that’s too big!” she hissed. I’ve not had many people actually hiss at me, but she did.

“what?” I asked, innocently, blue birds and woodland creatures gathering around me, to bask in my joie de la vie.

“THAT is not a regulation sized ice cream cone! Make a new one!”

I glanced over at the mother, who was only a few feet away with an apologetic look, and set the ice cream cone down. I made two other ice cream cones, of regulation size and shape, under my managers watchful eye and handed them to the mother. Who seemed sympathetic to the fact that it was not me, but rather that nazi manager.

At my McDonald’s when food needed to be thrown away, you would yell back to “the grill” and say “WASTE ONE WHATEVER!!” they would return the yell and mark it down on a sheet. One cheeseburger wasted. Seeing as tho there was nobody in the lobby, I walked the offensive ice cream cone over to the sheet, and standing next to a giant trash cone turned to look at my manager.

“WASTE ONE ICE CREAM CONE!!!” I yelled. and then brought the cone to my mouth and inhaled as much ice cream as I could in one mighty brain freezing suck. There was ice cream all over my face, I took one bite of the styrofoam cone and then tossed it the trash, marked it down on the sheet, and walked passed my manager, still looking her in the eye, as I took my place behind the counter, wiping my face with napkins.

It is, to this day, one of my proudest moments.

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50 Word Fictions

Oh, I almost forgot… Fifty Word Fiction Fridays

I though, hey – Jodi… you don’t have any regular features on your blog. Nothing that people can count on. How about you make one up. And so I did. Welcome to the first 50 Word Fiction Friday. In which I write a 50 word fiction. Pretty simple. Now… let me think….

Good Listener



He glanced up from the bottle on the table, the label torn all along the edges, “Thanks for listening to me…you’re different from the women I usally meet in this place.”

Under the table, her fingers flexed as her claws extneded. “Let me guess, I’m not like the other girls.”

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books

Firefox…. it’s FREE!!

My house is mere minutes from Microsoft’s main campus, in Redmond. I was about thisclose to driving down there and chucking rocks at it’s front door until someone came out and told me why IE for windows sucks so very very hard. Louise and I were trying to fix a problem with our three column layout on Satan’s Bookclub and Win IE. Frankly, my first inclination was to just say “fuck off IE!” I probably did a few times. I don’t have a pc to test with at home, so fixing the problem meant me trying anything I could think of and then pinging Louise on AIM and saying “look at it now!! look at it now!!” So I was going to drive down to the main campus and ask them what made them so special that they could just blow off any and all CSS compatibility? We have received sooo many comments and emails today! I don’t know where people are finding Satan’s Bookclub, but they are already stopping by. So we wanted it to work for everyoe. We fixed it. Louise had some old CSS that worked and I compared it to the new stuff and BAMF! three columns all in a row. Even in microsuck IE.

Everyone who uses IE… switch to Firefox now. I have two words for you, two words that will forever change the way you deal with the internet. Those words are “tabbed browsing.” Trust me.

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movies and tv, work

Are we sure it’s not Monday?

Because I just had a bunch of New Yorkers ambush me from their speaker phone, question my intelligence, my experiences, my honesty and worst of all MY PRODUCT!!! Usually, happy stuff like that only happens on Mondays. Dr. Stevil said it was painful to hear, so he put his headphones on. And he was only hearing my side of it.

meh.

I want to listen to some tunes to help reduce rage levels, but I haven’t had time to unpack, so everything is still in boxes which are stacked around me. I can’t find my headphones. Guess I’ll have to blog instead. Remember when I posted the song from Shivaree? I told you that I would post the song that hooked me, made me a fan. Since, if everything goes according to plan, I will be seeing them live tomorrow, at Neumo’s, I thought I’d play that song for you today. It’s called “Goodnight Moon” and for a wanna be gal detective, lover of mysteries and puzzles, is the perfect song. It’s a noir novel put to music.

Now I am going to see if I can dig out my headphones. I think I’ll keep everything else packed. It’s like working in a fort built of boxes. And cube walls. Except Kermie… I’m going to unpack my Kermit.


MP3 File

EDITED TO ADD: Dag nabbit! That’s not what my audioblog posts are supposed to look like. They are supposed to have cute little purple buttons. WHY ARE YOU PLOTTING AGAINST ME, WORLD??

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