A couple of weeks ago, someone had a box of Tagalongs at work. Girl Scout cookies. Now I have put in an order for girl scout cookies, with the first order form I saw put up by some parent at my Place of Employment. But they won’t be in until the first week of March. And yet… someone had a box of Tagalongs already. So, today, when I went to Safeway, I was hoping to see some Gscouts outside the store, hocking their wares. Sadly, no scouts.

Speaking of fundraising, however, I don’t know if they do this were y’all live, but here organizations take coupons to the products with a sticker that says “oh, you can use this coupon if you want, but if you are a GOOD PERSON you’ll donate the savings to the St. Muckymuck Academy Varsity Cheerleading Team.” I don’t know why, but I always resent these stickers. They piss me off. Like you have any choice! Of course you are going to donate the money. Otherwise the checkout clerk will look at you like you are a cold hearted bitch. And she’ll point you out to all the other clerks, “there’s the girl who wouldn’t give TWENTY FIVE CENTS to help the St. Muckymuck Academy Varsity Cheerleading Team raise money to go to the Cheerleading Championship in Daytona!” Boo-hiss, cold hearted bitch. It’s true, I don’t care about cheerleaders. I don’t let them wash my car, when I see them standing on the corner in their bikini tops, holding up signs and whooping. I wash my own damn car. Well, I drive it through the touch free car wash. I think the parents of the St. Muckymuck Academy Varsity Cheerleading Team should fork over the cash so their privileged children can go to cheer camp. I’m less inclined to get annoyed when it’s something like a softball team trying to raise money for equipment, but I still harbor this irrational resentment.

When I was a kid, we never taped coupons to things in grocery stores, we had to sell things ourselves. And I was shit at it. Which is probably why my career with the girl scouts was so short. [although, I like to tell people I got kicked out of the scouts for beating up a Brownie.] In high school, I belonged to the more service oriented organizations; Red Cross, Key Club. Or academic ones like French Club and National Honors Society. Key Club fund raisers weren’t bad, because we sold candy to our Ritalin deprived classmates. Blow-pops, I believe. They were a big hit. but NHS was horrible! They made us sell terrible trinkets door to door. Christmas tacky christmas ornaments and shit like that. Nothing you could sell to your fellow students. I think, one year, I went to maybe two houses before I decided that a career in sales was not for me. I never did well at fund raising. Some kids had parents who would take their order forms to work with them, and hit up their coworkers. Not me, my mom said I should do it myself. She probably thought it would build character or something. But I am chock-full of character! So I’d sell one to my parents and two to myself but make up fake names. That’s it.

So today, I when I took down a box of Honey Bunches of O’s [with Strawberries] a millisecond before before this mom was going to tape a coupons on said brand of cereal, I didn’t give in. She gave me a look, with a little smile, and I think I was supposed to hold out my box of cereal so she could tape a coupon on it. Instead, I gave her a look that clearly stated, “get your god damn fund raising coupon away from me, soccer mom! Let your kids go out and shill crap themselves! I hear it builds character.”

Love #2

I believe that I have mentioned, in the last few days, that I have just started watching Season Four of Oz. And so has Fee. We are, more or less, in sync. So we’ve been discussing and dissecting. My absolute favorite character is Ryan O’ Riley. That is the best character ever. He’s so sneaky and manipulative; and utterly charming. He gets away with everything because he’s slicker than snot. Of course, he’s a bit psychotic, and he’ll order your husband killed if he falls in love with you. Oh, such passion! It’s ok, I don’t even have a husband. Earlier this week, I declared my love for Ryan O ‘Riley, he is my Fictional Prison Inmate Boyfriend. Fee says that he is “too cocky” for her. *snicker* cocky!

“Fee, I want to save Ryan O’ Riley from his life of incarceration and violence. I know my love will save him, it will bring him peace. If I just love him enough. And really, it’s my fault, if I didn’t make him so angry, he wouldn’t have to hit me. He apologized for it! Said it would never happen again and that he loved me. If I just learned to be sweeter, have dinner ready on time, fix myself up a bit, and never ever ever run out of beer again, we would be so happy!”

Yes, I know it’s a television show. I’m joking. Some guy ever hit me, I’d flatten him.

Oh Valentine’s Day… love is in the air. There’s just a whole lotta love, and don’t think I am immune. I declared my love 5 times in the last week. Here is the first installment of my touching stories of love. A Valentine’s Day special, if you will.

Love #1

When people come to you with technical problems, they don’t always posses the communication skills to tell you their troubles. An example would be a customer calling up phone support and saying, “My Microsoft is broken.” You don’t know if they mean windows, or word, or office or what. Although I do live in Redmond, I don’t work at Microsoft, but I have heard the equivalent with my customers. So customers or coworkers that give clear issue statements gain a special place in my heart. After having just such a “my microsoft is broken” experience with a coworker, I was blown away by my next issue. The customer had written a 3 page letter describing, in great detail, the workflow followed to create their document. To the most minute detail. The minnie minnie minnie minute detail. The only problem was, with that much information, it was impossible for me to really understand what was going on, couldn’t see the forest through the trees and all that. And the letter had a spooky sort of cadence to it. I read it out loud to Evildeb. “It places a .5 point keyline around the graphic. It does this whenever it is told. Or it gets the hose again, doesn’t it Precious?”

Regardless, it was a thing of beauty. And I told Evildeb, “I love this guy! I love this customer! I. LOVE. THIS. CUSTOMER. This letter is priceless.”

“Why don’t you marry him then?”

“Maybe I will, except I don’t know his name, or even if it’s a man. Our love, and union, may be damned in the eyes of our current administration.”

I played Lunchtime Intraoffice Interdepartmental Poker today. I had not been able to play since this summer. The regulars had all received nicknames since I last played. Miss Kitty, Ace Barracuda and Boss. Here’s the thing about my Poker Playing stratagem, you will never figure it out. Never. Because it’s fluid and depends on the phases of the moon, my blood sugar level, what day of the week it is, how much sleep I had the night before, the total number of ounces of Dr Pepper I have consumed, and whether or not I want to make my co-players cry. And whether anyone has brought any candy to the table. My stratagem floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee, baby! Sometimes, I play with my cajones. I’m all up in their faces, betting hundreds with only a 6 high. Distracting everyone with my witty color commentary. Other times, I am cautious and quiet, and I use that time to learn about my opponents. But, most importantly, no matter how many times I watch Celebrity Poker, I cannot recall what one with any skill at all would do. I don’t like to be limited by the advice of experts anyway.

Today, I played with my cajones. Big bets with nothing to back it up, and for the most part, it was working. I did get pocket Ace’s, which I decided to call pocket tee-pee’s. However, I think they are called pocket rockets. At one point, I took all of Miss Kitty’s chips. And I was in the lead major. But I blew it. I lost everything. Boss took all the chips, i don’t know how, I thought I was a shu-in for Big Poker Kahuna today. Oh well, my sparkling poker personality, color commentary, and cajones did earn me my poker nickname. Miss Conduct. Can’t win if you don’t play, baby.

We join Evilded and Jodi, midway through, what started out as, an actual conversation about work related items.

Jodi: Wow… you’re right, that is bad. You should write that up.

Evildeb: I’m gonna.

Jodi: Excellent, see that you do that, Deb.

Evildeb: I’m on it, Jodi.

Jodi: Good to know.

Evildeb: I am on top of it.

Jodi: Are you all over it?

Evildeb: I am on top of it and all over it.

Jodi: Like white on rice, except for brown rice which is, obviously, brown rather than white?

Evildeb: Like lightening on that one guy who played Jesus in that one movie.

Jodi: errr… What?

Evildeb: That movie, about Jesus…

Jodi: The Mel Gibson movie?

Evildeb: Yeah. The actor that played Jesus was hit by lightening 3 times. While filming the movie.

Jodi: No way… did they not see that as a sign that God was pissed off about the script? Or the direction of his character in the film?

Evildeb: No, they thought that it meant God was happy!

Jodi: Uh-uh, sorry, that was Jesus… that was the Son, and he was saying, “Wait a minute… that’s not how it happened!!”

Evildeb: Definitely unhappy.

Jodi: “Oy… you guys… hey…. LAY OFF MY PEOPLE! Quit picking on the Jews.”

Evildeb: “Lay off my peeps.”

Jodi: “Come on… give the Jews a break already.”

Evildeb: Yeah… give the Jews a kit-kat bar.

Jodi: Deb, as a partial Jew, how do you feel about that?

Evildeb: as a half Jew? I’m totally in favor of it. I love kit-kat bars. I bet my dad does too. Except he’s diabetic.

This is a transcription of a spoken conversation, as such, it has been edited to maintain flow and because there is some stuff I don’t remember. But the gist of it is there. I author of this blog takes no responsibility for accuracy with regards to the statement “that one guy who was jesus in that one film was hit by lightening three times while filming.” I asked for no verification, nor was any provided.

My sanrio.com Hello Kitty* horoscope for today:

(February 8th) Try a new way of expressing yourself creatively. Don’t worry about making a perfect piece of art; start telling your story and it’ll go from there.

Which was a coincidence because I was just thinking about the way I blog. I don’t spend a lot of time on word-smithery when writing my blog entries. [although, I did give a serious two seconds to thinking before I came up with the word “word-smithery”] I just write off the cuff. By the seat of my pants. And other metaphors involving clothing. And I guess that’s a good thing. All the books on writing say you should start your draft off by writing without editing or critiquing. It’s just, this isn’t a draft. This is basically it. I do go up to the blog to check to see if things look ok, and sometimes, I see mistakes which I go back and fix. But that’s mostly spelling, punctuation or missing words. So I admire the blogs I read that show a great deal of care and thought in regards to the words used, the tone set. And I ask myself, “why can’t I take that time and that amount of care?” But then I see a shiny object, and I’m off somewhere else.

Wait a second… that’s yesterday’s horoscope! Sun of a bitch. [I actually typed the word “sun” and as I went to change it, I decided to leave it because your horoscope is your sun sign and there’s all this symbolism and shit. Which is really deep. Straight from the seat of my pants.]

*footnote: The sanrio.com horoscopes list my favorite things, as a Libra, to be: Winning Arguments, Designer Clothes, Sugar. I’m not sure about the designer clothes, I’m not really a clothes horse. However I do like shoes and handbags. I am in total agreement with the winning arguments and sugar.