dolly's world

Micro, Macro and all the disappointments in between

2008-09-14T21:30:00.004-04:00

A quick update. I have had no sales at dreamstime and their interface is as annoying as ever. I've had a sale at snapvillage and two sales at 123rf. I finally got accepted to fotolia (what's their problem, it's microstock, you're selling my images for pennies, get over yourselves) and had 2 sales.

One of the sites I had wanted to review was photoshelter. They were different. They weren't micro, they were about the photographer and they showed promise. They accepted my images and they had a great community going. I was ready to pull out of micro altogether. Then on September 11 (how auspicious) they shut down. Those that had been with them awhile claim to have seen the warning signs and I suppose given time I might have seen it too.

So Photoshelter collection is no more, as of October 10 they will delete all images in the collection. I didn't have that many images there (a bunch waiting in the queue though). There are some very disgruntled people. I partly understand that, it is work to upload all those images. Still, I think putting on our big girl panties and moving on is appropo, in fact, it's the only recourse aside from wallowing in self-pity. Of course if you like that sort of thing then have at it, for myself, I've already moved on.

One of the members of PSC (short for photoshelter collection) opened up a forum where the mostly genial community could congregate, lick wounds and decide what to do next. It's an interesting community, it is certainly trying to be forward thinking and pro-active. Through no fault of the founder/administrator of the forum it just isn't all that helpful. There are still those whining over their "time wasted" on PSC and how the founders of that site did them wrong (as if it were a tragedy and not a disappointment that things didn't work...get real). Additionally, there are a lot of pro's (and by that I mean egotists) that either a) think they are the only ones who ever figured out an f-stop or b) completely forget that they once didn't know their aperture from their iso. It's a bit snobsville. I must say the administrator is trying, he really is, to include everyone but if you're a hobbiest and poor no one talks with you. Not so bad for me, I have dealt with that ilk before, I feel bad for anyone else trying to glean some information from the alleged pros.

My biggest beef with the people that call themselves pro is that they have lost all objectivity. I know I shoot some great stuff and a whole lot of garbage. But I've scoured the macro sites and frankly, there's a whole lot of garbage being sold as pro. For every 100 images I can count maybe 5-10 that really show some artistry as well as technical brilliance. And ok, you sold an image for a few bucks maybe a lot of bucks. Are you really so afraid of competition that you can't help out a newb? If you really are that good, you wouldn't worry about it because you would know it took years to garner your skill and your talent comes naturally as far as composition and artistry so throwing a hobbyist a bone wouldn't make a ripple in the ocean.

So, I've posted in those forums, been duly ignored and click away when I see another of them whine about their wasted time. Pfft. A pro picks himself up, dusts himself off and gets on with things. A pro doesn't snub the little guy because he's starting out, he gives him a boot up because ultimately improving the craft can only help. A pro has class.

I want to meet a real pro.

Three stock sites I am unsure about

2008-08-08T11:07:00.004-04:00

These are a few sites I recently joined up with (within the last month) so I don't know much about them or how well we will work together.

The first site is SnapVillage which was recently re-designed and now out of beta. It's run by Corbis which is owned by Bill Gates. They have a reasonable upload interface which allows you to upload up to 5 images at a time as well as create "sets" for series of images. They accept most of my images and you can set your own price for each from $1 to $50 for per image sales. They have an opt in/opt out subscription offering which gives contributors $.30 per image on downloads. The review time is very good, within 24 hours. They have forums which seem friendly and helpful, if not a bit sparse. I'm not sure anyone has made a sale there yet but the site does have Corbis backing it up, so maybe as it becomes better known.

This is a fairly young site and I think as they grow and get more popular they will become more stringent with their acceptance. It's nice to be able to set your own price for images but pretty much useless if they don't sell. We shall see how it all works out.

The next site I've recently joined is 123rf. Like SnapVillage they accept nearly everything I have submitted. They have many upload interface options and there is no limit on how many images you can upload at a time. That is a very nice feature. Review is lightening fast, with hours. The forums are pretty active and but not much interaction between contributors yet. Judging from some of the posts some people have made sales and there are some good images on this site.

Again it's young and no sales for me so far, but we shall see how it goes.

The last site in today's review is one that I am probably going to pull my images from, it's called UnlistedImages. There are no forums, there is no way to see where or if your images have been used. There is no interface between your upload account and the site(s) that are selling them. They are allegedly connected to several sites which provide CDs of image collections. It's damn near impossible to navigate those sites in hopes of seeing if your images are on them. Review time is good and I don't think they've rejected anything that was within their image size requirements. I did email to ask how to tell where my images might be used and got a quick but unsatisfactory response of "we're working on it".

I might leave one or two images up there to test and see if they ever finish "working on it" but as of right now, I'm not impressed.

2008-08-06T20:20:00.004-04:00

I started to contribute to istock back in July '05 so this is likely the first microstock site I signed up with and was accepted. I was thrilled, and my first sale happened in October of '06, it was exciting. My sales were sporadic after that but the per sale amount was good. IStock was a top site then, their prices were reasonable and their collection was pretty extensive. We used them somewhat in the first Worth1000 book (which I was main administrator/editor for) and damn near exclusively (the exception being if we found a worth1000 photographer) for the second worth1000 book, for which I was an assistant editor. Oh how we loved our istock.

So wtf happened?

Review times have slowed to a crawl. Don't even consider complaining about that in the forums, I saw someone banned for that. They reject for some pretty shady reasons too. Which isn't to say all their rejections aren't justified but many are just pure crap, they reject over lighting when all other sites accept the same image and those images sell on those sites. Not to mention their favorite players whose images get accepted with some gawd-awful lighting, this isn't sour grapes, how do you have a half orange/half white isolation (not going to link here out of respect to the artist but search on strawberry there if you want to see what I mean)?

While the per image subscription payout is better than shutterstock and not as good as stockxpert, I don't get any warm fuzzies from istock anymore. They come off as elitist without the clout to back it up. Sure they have long standing and exclusive contributors who make them some money, but for the average photographer giving them the icing on the cake they do not treat us as equals or even as humans. They even have some sort of weird algorithm for uploads/acceptance rating vs searchability or prominence. I have yet to see one of my images on the "newest uploads" area and believe me, I've looked.

Now I'm being somewhat harsh but that's because I've looked at what they let through and what they reject on istock and it seems to be a popularity/personality thing there. I haven't participated in the forums, it really seems cliquish there and after I saw the guy banned for voicing an opinion about review times (which really are abysmal) I don't think I want to join in the revere of them.

I wish that were the most negative but they lack in upload interface too. They have no interface for multiple uploads for PC users (there's a third party one for MAC users, can't comment on it since I don't have a MAC and haven't tried it, but it's third party, they didn't even bother making it easier for their own contributors). Their upload process is arduous at best. You have to click through multiple screens and checkboxes and their disambiguation (interpretation of keywords to over-simplify) is seriously lacking. They have 2 definitions of layers and peel, neither of which could fit my description of an onion recently submitted, yet both are pertinent to the image. In fact my most recent rejection was for keywording which was inappropriate. Mind you I'm probably the most careful keyworder in microstock, and I also have an extensive vocabulary. I put an old jalopy on the site, it was an old Fleetline truck with a "for sale" sign on it. I did take out the phone number and the copyrighted truck name but they were completely pertinent to the image in keywords, if only the reviewer had looked at full view and/or had a clue.

To summarize I think the reviewers are burned out or disinterested, for the most part, on istock and the whole site needs an overhaul. Shutterstock and stockxpert have moved along with the times, gotten fresh people in (or multiple opinions) on images before a rejection, neither takes anywhere near the time to review an image and they don't have the punishment/reward thing for searching on images that istock has (how archaic and just stupid that system is).

I hope that if Avi and Worth1000 ever do another book that they will consider a different site to negotiate a deal with too. Just getting them to agree on a contract for book 2 image use was agonizing and damn near stopped us from meeting a deadline.

All in all they have a professional facade and not much backing it up. Have I made sales there, yes (not enough for a payout though), but I almost wish I hadn't (then I could walk away, because really I like them less with each passing day). They should take this as advice and do something to improve the site, grow with the times and not rely on their "once was" status. Instead I suspect they will do their usual and punish the observer.

istock rating: B

Shutterstock

2008-08-05T21:28:00.003-04:00

I don't recall exactly when I joined Shutterstock, it was around 2 years ago. I submitted my 10 images for review and they accepted all of them, in spite of those same images being rejected by other microstock sites. In the years I've been with Shutterstock all but three of those images have sold at least once, so kudos to them for some vision.

Shutterstock is the largest (in number of images online) of the microstock agencies. I hear they are more stringent with their acceptance policy for newcomers now. There are far better photographers on there than I am who have had their initial submissions rejected so perhaps it's true.

Nevertheless, I have sold more with them than with any other microstock site. Though I'm still not raking in huge money and in 2 years have yet to have a payout (minimum payout through paypal is $75, accumulative). But I've only gotten serious about it in the last few months and in those months my earnings have jumped, so I'm hoping it won't be long.

Shutterstock probably pays the least of the agencies I've signed up with in so far as subscriptions rates go. At $.25 a download it'll take awhile to accumulate $75.00. I have not had anyone purchase an extended license of my images so far, I understand that pays better but still less than many other microstock sites. Still if you're looking to cut your teeth in the microstock world, this is the place to do it. That's not to say you can and should submit crap, they're still looking for good stock images, but they do seem to have a more open mind when it comes to what will sell and at the price they're selling images, you can do pretty well with a healthy portfolio.

For a fumbling hobbiest I don't get rejected nearly as much as I probably should but more than any other site I take the rejections personally (I don't know why, maybe because I like this site so much). I don't participate in the forums there they seem a bit too competitive but not in an unfriendly way. I do read the forums to glean any tips I can, sadly there's not much in the tips arena there. I don't believe they offer an exclusive artist or exclusive image option but this site is still growing (massive as it is) and improving, it seems a bit impersonal at times but I'm not sure Walmart greeters would make me like the site more, I already like it a lot.

Nonetheless, Shutterstock still often accepts images rejected by istock and they sell. I don't care if they sell for $.25 or $25, I'm earning money I didn't have 5 minutes ago.

Technically Shutterstock is easy. They offer multiple upload interface options, read IPTC data and review time is exceptional. I try not to resubmit too much that's rejected and if rejected 2x I don't resubmit any more. I've never interacted with staff there but the forums are hopping and people do post helpful suggestions in between comparing their earnings.

If you accumulate $500/mo in sales you get a raise, don't know what the raise is since I haven't hit it but I know others have (from reading the forums) and with over 4 million images online they must be doing something right

In the last months, since I've gotten more serious about photograhy and microstock I have had record (for me) sales on this site. Today they accepted all of my latest submissions and I have more waiting in the queue.

Shutterstock rating: A+

Microstock and the extra money

2008-08-03T10:19:00.010-04:00

I am a hobbiest photographer. I've had a camera in my hand for years and got pretty good at shooting film. Then digital came about, I bought a cheap camera and took crappy images (mostly) but I tried. When I upgraded I decided to go dslr for more creative control. I'm still learning how to work it well, 2 years after purchase but I am getting better at it. Obviously the hugest advantage is no film developing and the larger flash card capacities mean shooting multiple images without fear of running out of storage. The ease of uploading to the computer immediately, getting rid of bad shots and printing your good stuff (or sharing it electronically) is a huge advantage. The downside is if you shoot raw you will have adjusting to do (even if I shoot jpg I often make at least a levels adjustment). That part is time consuming but can be done whenever you want and once you get pretty good at a) taking the pic right (exposure, focus, etc.) the post-processing is minimal and b) as you get more experience post-processing it gets to be quicker too. My post processing will mostly consist of white balance, levels, evening of horizon, noise reduction and cropping (not necessarily in that order). I use sharpening and bumping the saturation sparingly.

There are quite a few sites/blogs explaining how to do these techniques so I won't detail them here, I use PS for this and sometimes Neat Image for the noise reduction. I hear Adobe Light Room is good but I don't much care for it myself so I don't use it.

What I like though is that I can offer these images for sale on various sites. There are dozens of microstock sites out there, some good, some less so. Some are well known and some are damn near unheard of (from what I can tell). I am going to briefly review my experiences with them. I might do a post on each of the three I've been with the longest and then another post for those I just joined.

Stockxpert.com run by Jupiter Images, over a million images for sale.

Stockxpert was the first site I joined up with, I don't remember the requirements then but my first image went online in March of '06. I've been on that site for two years and didn't realize you need to self-promote to sell your work. I only found out this summer so I tried it (I hate writing about myself, if I liked it this blog would be updated more). Well it worked and I made my first sale (and 2 more since). Still not taking off very well but I don't shoot for stock so my images are eclectic and not your average stock. I may work my way to a niche but I'm not sure it won't stunt my creative juices.

Images on stockxpert are high quality and reasonably priced for the buyer. They offer pay as you go pricing and subscription-type credits (there is an opt-out). Extended licensing is available on an opt in basis. Images range in size from xs to xxl (depending on the size uploaded). Uploading in .jpg format only and rgb color. The upload interface is easy and quick (by comparison to some others) and you can upload 3 images at a time and a series (of up to 3 at a time). Their interface with read IPTC data embedded in the image so you don't have to retype keywords, titles and descriptions over and over. It will automatically number series images and there's no issue about submitting the same subject from different angles or lighting situations.

Image approval process is very quick compared to some other sites. I don't get notified by email if my image is approved or rejected though because I never ticked the box to do so. They have a newsletter which provides tips and site information.

Stockxpert accepts a lot of my images with fewer rejections than the other site, their per image payout is best of the three main ones also. They have forums that you can participate in gaining tips from other members.

What I like about stockxpert is their acceptance rate and speed, their upload interface and their pay rate. What I dislike is self-promotion, seems that's what they get part of my sales revenue to do.

I rate this site an A.

Thank you, caller ID

2008-04-15T20:16:00.002-04:00

So, I've had some turmoil in my life. I know, who hasn't? I used to own a home in NJ. When my husband and I separated we decided he would get the home and I would move to an apartment, etc. For the time being he went to live at his mom's and I stayed in the house. We both paid the mortgage on it. That was the plan. But then I discovered he'd cleaned out our bank account and used it on cocaine and he was on shaky ground. So, even though I could barely afford it I said I'd pay the mortgage and he should get some help for his problem and we'd precede as planned with him taking the house and the payments over.

But, he decided it would be better to lose his mind entirely. So, after attacking me one night, in the middle of the night (3 a.m. or so) by chloroforming me and handcuffing me to the bed and then threatening to kill himself and me spending about 13 hours talking him out of it all and a bunch of other things...suffice to say, the initial plan didn't pan out.

So now I have this house I can barely afford on my salary but I decide to make a go of it. I work 3 jobs and I am doing well. My bills are paid and I have some extra for necessities and fun stuff. I also decide to study computer networking and I get my MSCE+I.

Then, about 7 years later, the company I work for decides to merge with another company and they're going lay off everyone. Since I have my new certification in computers and I've worked for them for 10 years, I decide to take their retirement package (it turns out that the first one they offered was the best one, but I digress). I leave the company with 10 years of severance pay and a nice little retirement savings in 401k which I rollover. This is April 2001.

Because I've worked for 10 years and I have a bit of money, I decide to take the summer off and look for a job in the fall, in my new career. I'll have enough money to cushion me through an entry level tech position and those jobs were plentiful. I'm in the cat bird seat.

Fast forward to Septemeber 2001. The 11th to be precise. The world is falling apart, for everyone. I used to work in the WTC. 103rd floor of the North Tower. That was back in the 80s for the Home Loan Bank Board. Wonderful people. I watch those towers fall that day. I don't know if my ex-coworkers and friends are in that building. I don't know anything but shock. Who does?

For weeks I'm in a daze...well, it was longer than weeks but weeks after I decide I MUST start working. I look for a job in tech, but it's October, the market is down and the tech sector has died. DIED. People with 10 years of coding experience are taking entry level help desk jobs at 1/10th their previous salary. I get no calls, none for computer work. I start looking for administrative work. I have years of experience in that. There's no calls. I sign with agencies, I get no calls. I have never, in 30 years of working, not be called back, interviewed at least. I'm getting NOTHING. When I didn't have skills I would get hired. Now I can't even get a toenail in the door, nevermind a whole foot. The months drag on and I start to have to pull from my 401k to survive. To eat, to pay the mortgage and keep the heat and electric on. The credit cards aren't getting paid. I take any temp job that comes along, $11/hour isn't going beyond food and bare essentials though and I have to drive 40 minutes to get that salary.

This lasts for years. It gets a bit better but drops off some. My 401k is dwindling. Finally I land a job at a law office. Law, something I'd gotten out of 18 or 20 years earlier and I was back in it, and it was inspiring. I was actually helping people who'd lived through 9/11. Yeah, my bank account and mood changed. But of course by now I'm 2 years behind on the mortgage and bills and I need to fix this. I can get refinancing but only if both my husband and I signed off. He's still on the deed. I never got divorced! I send him a letter (he lives far away now) and a quit claim. He refuses to sign. He's paid nothing into this place in over 10 years but he wants a stake in it. Uh, not going to happen.

I hire an attorney to get me divorced and get the house in my name. The lawyer strikes some shady deal and then screws me. I'm 3 days from a sheriff's sale, my husband has signed all but one paper that's needed that the lawyer never sent him and my lawyer does NOTHING about it. NOTHING. In fact he threatens me! So, I have one option and one option only and that is, file chapter 13. I do this. The bankruptcy attorney charges me more than double what it should cost but I'm desperate, I have only a matter of hours to file or lose the house.

I can't afford the chapter 13. It requires I pay my mortgage and my bills and nearly $700 a month to bill collectors. I don't make the kind of money but for several months I do this, sending my checks by certified return receipt to a trustee. Then my bankruptcy attorney screws me and doesn't show up at the confirmation hearing. He's "busy" and tells me to "wait" (he's already 1.5 hours late when he tells me this and thinks I'll sit there for another 2 hours waiting for him). I'm freaking out at the hearing and though they weren't suppose to, the bankruptcy people hear my case without the attorney there. Shortly thereafter I get a letter saying I need to pay $50 more a month to the "plan". I don't have it. It doesn't exist. There is no $50 more. It's not there. I default on the bankruptcy. They have several thousand dollars of mine but because the case is confirmed already they are suppose to distribute that to my creditors and not return it to me. I asked for a breakdown from the trustee of which creditors received the funds and in what amount but never heard back. Nice.

That is when I sell my house to some sleezebag for about $100,000 less than it's worth and decide to move to the country where I can afford a house.

I just received a call from one of those creditors who tracked me down. I'm not sure how, some government document I'm sure since I don't give my real phone number out on anything else. I could tell by the number that came up that it was someone I didn't know, either a sales call or a debt collector. So I answered with a strange partially East Indian accent. They asked for me, I said "who is calling?" and they said "NCO" I said "what is NCO" and she said "debt collectors" I said "I am sorry, there is no here by that name". She then said "well why all the questions, why didn't you just say you don't have the right number" and I stepped the accent up a bit and said "you don't have the right number" and she said this isn't XXXX (my address) and I said "no, sorry". She hung up.

I do believe I shouldn't have to deal with this. They should be contacting the trustee. They should leave me alone. It's done. You're not getting your money, that phase is over, move on.

I am not a dead beat. If I won the lottery I'd pay all my back money, in full, with interest. But I didn't get into this situation alone but I'm the one who has to fight it alone, constantly, forever.

I'm tired. But thank God for caller ID.

Of bosses and other demons (ok, just bosses, who needs other demons if you have a boss?)

2008-04-02T21:05:00.004-04:00

So, I'm going to rant about my boss. I know. I know. Who does that? Everyone loves their boss (I need sarcasm tags)...but I digress.

I've had a few great bosses in my day. Not many. Some were ok, some were downright awful and some where, as I said, great. My boss, Rich, was great. He was as scattered as they come in most areas. The typical overworked guy trying to keep all the plates spinning. I was just the person he needed to help with that. He loved me and it showed. I could laugh at his foibles and peccadilloes and he laughed right along with me. But when he needed something from me he got it and that kept him primed for dealing with the stuff he needed to deal with. He didn't expect stupid things out of me, I never spun my wheels for no reason with him. If he needed something I already knew why and half the time I could anticipate it and have it before he asked. It was the most symbiotic boss/employee relationship I ever had. But Rich isn't selfish, in fact quite the opposite. He is generous of his time, money, energy, and gratitude. He would NEVER take credit for something someone else did. He cares about his clients, his family his employees (in no particular order). He isn't just mentally intelligent, he's emotionally intelligent.

My current boss. She's a smart woman, I mean sharp. She's made a business for herself and done very well at it. In many ways she's similar to Rich. Smart but scattered. In need of someone to reign her in, to anticipate needs and to leave only the most complicated stuff for her. But she is so difficult to anticipate. It's not because she's female either, at least, I don't think that's the reason. It's because she's selfish. I do believe that might underlie her biggest failing.

She is completely disorganized and never takes responsibility for that. For every little thing that goes wrong she looks for someone to blame. For me to list the myriad of things I've seen her try to blame other people for would lead to a post that would be almost endless. I can site a few examples though.

Her desk is a mess. It's stacked with papers of all sort. Her personal stuff, her client stuff. Some of import, some of no import, doesn't matter, it's all there. She has a big desk, it's U-shaped, it's covered with piles. She "thinks" the piles are organized. I can assure you, they are not. She has various bins on her desk. Some are almost empty except for odds and ends (a picture, an errant computer cable, a broken wheel from a desk chair) and some are stacked with an odd assortment of papers. There's no rhyme or reason. So when I need to leave her something I put it on her chair. When she meanders in she picks up what I put on her chair (carefully collated and paper clipped or stapled to keep it in order) and dumps it into the black hole of her desk. Said item will vanish. She will ask me for it and I will say "I just gave it to you, I put it on your chair". She will then throw her hands up in the air and say "no you didn't, I can't find it, do it over". Whereupon I think "no, pick up a piece of paper and look for it" But instead I get up, ruffle through some papers and find it. I always end this with a grunt or a smug look. I can't help it, I'm tired of doing everything over 6 times.

She will also ask me for things she won't need for months or weeks, if ever. I've learned to ignore her requests until I find out she actually needs them. I'm a fast worker, no pointing in re-inventing the wheel ever other day.

One of her worst attributes (?) is that she believes she knows everything about things of which she has no knowledge. She was planning to buy the building next to ours. From the beginning she wanted to get it for less than the asking price (which was pretty cheap). It's a bad market though so if she'd held out, she might have. But no, once she's decided she should have something she's all gangbusters about it, she cannot control herself. So she goes for it, but finds out the funding isn't going to be what she wants. She gets to near the end of the deal and pulls out. Now she wants me to read her contract and find her a loophole. And I do, because, lucky for her, there is a loophole. I tell her that per the contract she has 45 days to get a commitment from the lender. This is known as the "commitment date" and as long as she hasn't asked for an extension of the commitment date and hasn't gotten said commitment she can withdraw. She then started talking to me like I'm an idiot. She said to me "just because they both have "c's" in them doesn't mean commitment and contract are the same thing". I wanted to slap her. She thinks she has some clue about legality of stuff but she shoots from the hip and often misses. I explained that the commitment and the commitment date were two separate things. The commitment was what the lender would issue but the commitment date was a contractual obligation. I know it's rather complex, but omg I wanted to throw the documents in her face. I was doing her a favor, she doesn't pay me for my paralegal skills and then to insult me?

But the thing that is chapping my hide so much is that she has taken credit for finding the clause that got her out of the contract. She insulted the attorney I referred her to by directing him to the lame ass clause she found and insisting he write the seller's attorney using that. Then she fired him because she got impatient when he went on vacation for a week (which she was fully aware of) and fired him, blaming him for using the wrong clause (which she found) instead of the one *I* found which she ultimately took credit for. I feel bad for the attorney. I'm suppose to pick up her file from him on Friday and I'm going to apologize to him for the referral and recommend strongly he bill her stiffly for the hours he put in putting up with her nitpicky non-sense.

She complains about everyone and everything. Thank you is an afterthought, followed by an insult.

What's screwed up is I like her in many ways, but she cannot accept her flaws and faults and that turns her into a shrew. When I get testy with her she asks how I handled Rich and I haven't yet told her that Rich would never treat people the way she does, that he accepted his flaws without argument, in fact he did it with humor and he never would take credit for someone else's work. And while Rich thought most everyone was an idiot (except me, and he told me on more than one occasion) he also knew that he could be just as idiotic as the rest of us. She doesn't see that. She blames everyone else for her lack of focus, her scatter-brained antics, her sloth and her lack of comprehension.

There's so much more to this but it would take too long to explain. I have adapted as best I can to it, but I don't know how long I can last.

Some days it's not worth gnawing through the straps

2008-03-26T13:54:00.002-04:00

Today, is one of those days.

It started early with what seemed a simple task of gathering information on a family of clients. They are big clients and together have at least 30 insurance policies as well as numerous investment accounts among other things all totalling in the multi-millions of dollars. We have access to a website where you can type in a client's last name and get a listing of everything policy and investment they have. Except the people at the "home office" haven't typed the names in correctly so I can't get a complete listing. Now I have to stop everything and make a list of all the different accounts and spelling changes that need to be made. Ok, so nothing much else is getting done this morning.

Then I go to lunch. I have errands to run so off to WalMart for cat food. On my way out I pass the eye glass section. I ask the lady if they fix glasses and hand her the pair I'm wearing which has a bent nose piece. She attempts to fix this and breaks the nose piece. Then she looks around for a frame in house that will fit the lenses. She's not an optician or optometrist so she can't grind the lenses to fit. She finds a pair that's close, there's a gap in the corners since the lenses are rounder. She puts them together and then wants me to pay $61. WAIT, I walked in with glasses that were slightly annoying and you broke them and I have to pay? I balked and she reduced it to $52. I paid but I'm definitely going to see if I can get my money back from WalMart, I didn't have time to argue with her.

I then go to the gas station. I'm filling the tank but I'm watching the counter/meter thing to see how much it's going to take. When it gets to 11 gallons I thought, "that's a lot" at which point I look down and there's gas all over the ground and pouring out of the tank and onto my sneakers. The spring thing never popped back. I complain to the guy/owner and he offers me $1. I refused and thought I should be compensated for a few gallons (it was a huge puddle, don't ask me how I didn't notice it, I was just not focussed on that). He gave me the info for his insurance company (it was an amicable discussion but sheesh, I wasn't asking for replacement of my now gas soaked sneakers and socks, and we could have negotiated it, what a pain to have to deal with his insurance company).

In a few minutes the "tech" guy, Mike, is going to come to swap my bosses brand new monitor out and/or test to see if it's the video card acting up. I've got the feeling that is going to lead to a complete fiasco. My boss isn't here and some complication always comes up that I have to make a decision on when she's not around to deal with it. I'm willing to bet the monitor isn't "flickering" now and he'll not want to replace it. I dislike Mike, I wish he was sending in the other guy, Darren. Darren has a great personality and Mike is an idiot.

Why are some seemingly smart people so utterly stupid?

2008-03-24T20:29:00.002-04:00

My job is as an assistant to a financial planner. She's certainly savvy when it comes to picking some good mutual funds and she's not just earned money for her clients but managed to protect them pretty well in this volatile market. It seems her life skills start and end there though. She fancies herself organized, she's a micro manager (on details that are not vital, while leaving the big things go), she's too anxious to be a good negotiator and she's at best, scatterbrained.

She loses everything. Literally, everything. She loses her keys, cell phone, documents, pens, post-it notes, rulers, calculators, her briefcase (full of client personal information) on a regular basis. She isn't technically savvy in the least and she continually screws up her computer. She makes odd choices and decisions in her rush to do something and then regrets it later. She cannot accept these flaws in herself, she doesn't see them, she argues for them.

Today we moved a co-worker's office from a small area she had set up to a new small area (it's a different configuration though, so somewhat better setup). This probably cost her a bundle with having to wire the office for the computer (they both though because there was a jack in there that it'd be fine until I tested it with the laptop and found it was dead). She had the phone hooked up in there but neglected to tell the guy to switch the intercom assignment and is astonished this person doesn't have the same intercom number. She bought new furniture for this person and is having shelves put in there. The best part? This is a part-time employee, she's in the office at most 2 days a week.

The other day I was sitting at my desk, doing work when the wheel on my chair broke. It just disintegrated. I dragged a spare chair in and it was too low, not adjustable and quite uncomfortable. My boss knew this because she had used that chair for a bit. I told her I needed a new chair and the part-timer says "why don't you drag my chair in and use it when I'm not here". I wanted to say "why don't you accept the fact that your fat ass would be better off walking to the shared printer instead of us having to buy you your own" but I didn't. I looked at my boss and said "I need a new chair, today" (I'd already been in the munchkin chair for a week and was ready to call out on workers' comp if she refused. That day we went to Staples, I found a good chair, on sale and very comfy, it was $129 (I negotiated the price, the store didn't have it on sale but the website did, so we got it for the sale price). My boss bought a printer for the part timer (which I picked out, she was going for a printer that had very expensive cartridges) and she bought herself a ruler, exactly like the one I bought for her a few weeks ago and she lost. Surprise.

As we were driving back to the office she said "we need to have some money coming in". I know this was in confidence to me and I felt bad because I don't think it was so much directed to the fact that I needed a chair but to the outlay of money overall. BUT...this is the same boss who doesn't come to the office before noon and she lives UPSTAIRS from the office. She called me at 9:30 this morning and said "I'll be down in 10 or 15 minutes". It was 11:00 before she came down and that's early for her. Then we spent the whole day listening to the part-timer whine and complain (I like the woman but I want to tell her to shut up already, she does complain about EVERYTHING). I'm sure in a few weeks they'll be something wrong with the new office.

But back to my boss. She gets 3 workers in to help with this move. Then she calls them off to do personal things for her, specifically to take some enormously heavy objects from her storage units and bring them up three flights of narrow victorian windings stairs to her guest room. The movers that brought the stuff from downstate refused to do it, so she hired some schmucks. They drag this stuff up and she decides she doesn't like it and makes them take it down 4 flights to the basement. 2 of these guys had never met her before, and they all had the same impression when they left that I have. She doesn't really think things through.

The laptop. It was her work computer but it wasn't very powerful so we opted to get her a desktop. The tech guys came in and set up the laptop and it worked fine, I know because I was there and watched it work. Two weeks later she complains it's not working but doesn't give me a chance to fix it because other crisis arise. Finally allows a "techy friend" to try it (I'm not there when this happens) and he declares that the wireless router isn't hooked up. I tell her that's not the case but she won't believe me. She leaves me the laptop to test but it doesn't have the wireless card (which is what was used to configure it to the router) in it. I tell her. She says her friend claims there's a wireless card built-in and he can access a neighor's wireless but it's secure so he can't really do anything. I try to explain but it's useless her friend knows everything. Now she wants me to call the techy people and yell at them. I ask her to let me try, with the wireless card installed first, before I call (I HATE being in the middle of her disputes, mostly because she's wrong and looking for someone to blame and also because I don't like to be in the middle of someone else' argument, passing the information back and forth). Finally, when she's out of the office I grab the laptop and play with some settings (I'm not even sure what I did). It connects. I walk around the entire building, including her personal bathroom upstairs and it never drops the signal. I leave it with a note that it works fine and set her home page to CNBC. She hasn't said "thank you" yet.

It's a constant battle, she thinks she's smart, rich and organized. She's pretty smart, kinda rich and a walking tornado.

Much ado about nothing much

2008-03-23T09:04:00.007-04:00

It will be one year on May 1st since I officially moved out of (godforsaken) New Jersey to upstate NY. I owned a home in NJ, a tiny one on a postage stamp of land smooshed in next to a mob of other identical houses (some expanded, but all with the same original bone structure) on identical postage stamps of land. For the average home in NJ that postage stamp was actually a fairly large lot. I had a fenced in yard and no privacy. Everything I did in my own yard became a fight with the neighbors. After 15 years of it, I'd had enough.

I was born in Queens, NY and grew up in Dobbs Ferry, NY. How I ended up in NJ is a long (and not very interesting) story and I had wanted out of NJ for many years. I sold my house and searched for one in the Catskills since my brother lives up here and it would be nice to be closer to family. It was also less expensive to buy a house here with any sort of land and I wanted space. Big space between me and any neighbor and enough land for my cats to roam and for me to have peace and quiet. I searched for 4 months and found a nice home on 4+ acres complete with streams and waterfalls. No neighbor within eyesight or earshot.

One of my favorite things to do is take pictures. I'd like to call it photography but I'm not that good yet so it's just taking pictures for now. My new life offered abundant scenery and new sights and locations for doing just that. Unfortunately, having spent the first several months trying to get settled and starting a new job I only got out a few times during the past year to do so. Then the cold weather hit.

I'm not a fan of very cold weather and I'm less of a fan of snow. Assurances from my brother, my real estate agent and most everyone I encountered during house hunting led me to believe that there hasn't been that much snow here in (and I quote) 14 years. LIARS. Or maybe their version of "not much snow" means "less than 30 feet deep". No. They're LIARS.

I also seem to have purchased the only house in 3 counties (I live in Albany County and work in Columbia County and need to pass through Greene County during my commute) that continues to have snow when everyone else has lawn. The nearest neighbors have none as I type this and I still have at least 2". It also snows every day. It snows when the sun is shining, it snows when there are no clouds, it snows all the time. Snow can be beautiful. On a postcard.

I have a bunch of cats. I don't know how many. I am a crazy cat lady. I'm not a collector though. I don't go to shelters to seek them out, they are all born here. I don't give many away. I don't trust many people to take good care of them. My cats are well fed and well cared for and pretty damn healthy for a bunch of inbreds. They all have distinct personalities and most of those personalities I like. The cats are very attached to me but don't much like other people. Most will run and avoid others, even my brother and sister-in-law who they have seen more often than anyone else.

I don't have a boyfriend, significant other, partner (whatever the popular term is for a love interest). I know, shocking that no one is interested in the crazy cat lady. Well, that's partially true I suppose. I don't really interact with many people that aren't on the internet. I don't have much interest in a relationship, I'm not very good at them. I tend to be opinionated and stubborn and not all that domestic. My cooking isn't great and my housekeeping is nearly non-existent. My laundry skills are superlative though.

There are a few things I miss about NJ. My friends. I miss them. We talk on the phone but it's not like I can just pop over and see them whenever I want. I miss that. I miss the gas prices in NJ too, they were easily $.50 less than here and I miss having my gas pumped for me. That's not the biggest deal except when it's cold out. I miss having gas heat too. Never worried about running out and it was a damn sight cheaper than oil. I sometimes miss having the convenience of stores nearby. I have to drive at least 10 miles to get to the supermarket. However, since traffic is so bad in NJ it took nearly as long to get to one that was 1 mile away than it does to get to the one 10 miles away. I don't miss the look of strip malls everywhere though. I don't miss that one bit. I like being able to go to the grocery store, look up and see beautiful mountains just off the parking lot, as opposed to another strip mall and miles of cars.

Everything is a trade-off, but in this case, I still think it's a trade-up.

Been forever

2006-02-15T18:44:00.000-05:00

I haven't blogged in almost a year and a half. But I am ANGRY. I'm angry about so many things and I don't want to bore people by starting rant threads in forums, but I gotta get this out.

On a private level, I'm angry about my co-worker. She's a nice girl, I like her, except for the whole backstabbing thing she did to me shortly after she started, but I let that go and we made a kind of peace. She is never at work though. She's been there since September and hasn't worked a full week yet. At first she was just taking time off and nobody said anything. Then, after she backstabbed me by demanding I be fired because she couldn't work with me (she allegedly, it turns out, was having her period for 3 weeks and it was making her crabby, not that she apologized to me or retracted anything to anyone else), I finally mentioned her lack of attendance to my boss. That called our time cards into question and then she just decided to leave in the middle of the day for several hours and not punch out. I should have recorded all these times but her leaving makes me extra busy. I have to take care of everything by myself and that leaves little time for policing, which I don't want to do anyway. Last week she MAY have worked a full 35 hours, but that makes 1 week out of 22 or so. Not a great record but then there's no proof of her leaving without punching out so I just end up looking like a troublemaker. This week she took 3 days off. Her regular boss is on maternity leave (and close to being fired anyway for not showing up and working herself) and she doesn't like the new guy. Now her kid is sick (she has 3 kids and one is always sick and she always has to go when they are) but sorry, I can't fill in ALL THE TIME. My boss says "tell the other guys no, you can't do work for them" but that's not going to fly. They'll just say I'm not being nice or cooperative. To top it all off, she's making more money than I am and my boss will not defend me in needing a raise. It's time to seek other employment but I don't want to have to do that. So my first rant is people with kids. They pay less in taxes, they use more resources. If they live in an apartment they don't pay school taxes, but if a single person owns a home they do pay school taxes even if they don't use the school system. UNFAIR. They get out of work whenever they want because "little so-and-so is sick". No one made them have kids, it's not a forced situation. They should have to suck it up and deal with it? Why am *I* stuck making it up and dealing with what is really THEIR problem???

Ok, second rant. Lawyers. I work for one, mostly I like him, he's a good guy (except for today, I'm totally pissed he's not helping me get a raise, but he's going to find me far less enthusiastic about working unpaid OT and busting my ass for him, oh well). But I've had to hire 2 lawyers in the last 6 months and they are both assholes and they cost me a bundle. The first one screwed up my paperwork so bad he forced me into bankruptcy. I should pursue a malpractice case but it's just the thought of that nightmare that keeps me from it. Plus, it means hiring another lawyer. Gah. So, I hire a bankruptcy lawyer to prevent losing my house due to the utter fuck up of the first lawyer and the new lawyer charges me more than 4 times what an average bankruptcy lawyer should but ok, I'm desperate to save my house and I agree. He seems ok, whiney and petulant and a pest but at least he calls and keeps me informed, until yesterday. I'm suppose to meet with the trustee at 1:00. My lawyer calls like 4 times to make sure I'll be there. I even take time off to get the documents I need to bring (well, the ones he told me to bring, he forgot some, but I found that out later). And so I go to this thing in Newark, NJ. Newark is the East New York of NJ. Harlem is a nicer place (it really is). Newark is a place I avoid at all costs. It's not that it's just poor and ghetto, that I've been to before, it's dangerous, you know you're a target when you're there, it's crowded and confusing and impossible to navigate by car. I want to take the train but I can't because there's no parking spots at the train station and I can't walk to the station because I've injured my foot which is throbbing in pain. So all around a joyful start to this. I get there early, the security guard at the desk is really nice to me, tells me where the cafeteria is, the ladies room, chats with me about my injured foot. Ok, maybe this won't be so bad. Ha! I'm so naive. I grab a bite at the over priced cafe, use the ladies room and head up to the Trustee's waiting room. There are several people there, all for the same thing. The *shame* of bankruptcy. I'm not here by my own design though, I'm here because another lawyer screwed me. Our appointment time comes, our appointment time passes. I'm sitting there, reading the paper, look at my watch and it's 25 past 1:00. I call my lawyer's office, he's not there (of course). They patch me into him. He says "just sit tight I'll be at least another hour" A WHAT? NO, no no no. I paid way too much money, lost a day's pay and I'm in throbbing pain from a sore foot. Not acceptable. He didn't even call. I flipped. The trustee had to come out and ask me to keep it down. I called his office back and demanded to speak to the senior partner. He "just left the building". Big surprise. So they put some other dude on the phone with me. He manages to calm me down but I can't stop chanting "I want my money back". I mean $2500, shouldn't that mean my lawyer shows up or at least CALLS? Damn the dude calls me 72000 times when I don't need him. Anyway, I convinced the trustee to see me in spite of the fact that I had legal representation and they aren't suppose to see me without a lawyer. But for the life of me I don't know why, it's not rocket science. I told the truth in my application and so there wasn't anything to get "caught in". And of course, I need to send him documents my lawyer never told me to bring with me. Idiot.

On a more public level I'm mad at the government, at the US and it's citizens, at the muslims, the military, the israeli's the world.

How stupid are we? Collectively, myself included, we are complete morons. We fight over the stupidest things. We lie and cheat and steal and betray with no conscience. We vote without thought or reason. We are sheep and sheep are stupid. We do not look to the future, or the big picture or what is common sense.

The military brainwashes it's minions. I know, I was in, I know I was brainwashed. They didn't get me 100% but I was a mess when I got out and I never saw a moment's combat. But I had a hard time thinking for myself (not something I ever had a problem with before) after I was discharged. You see soldiers beating up prisoners, don't blame them, blame their superiors. And in fact, you'll have to go up to the highest rank, the Commander in Chief, because he's the one responsible.

Our VP says his "shooting of a friend" is a private matter. He didn't have the required stamp on his hunting license, but no charges. The man he shot has had a heart attack and is in ICU at this time because of him but you know, the White House just puts their spin doctors on it. Former President Clinton had an affair it became the basis of impeachment procedings but you know, shooting a friend, that's a private thing. AHHHHH.

The President, that twit, he lied about WMD, he went against the UN, he lies about knowing Abramoff, then lies about his associations (well there are photos of them together, duh, you must know him, ya jerk). He lies, he lies, he lies. He has spent billions on a war we cannot win and won't recover from easily, if ever. He has cost us more lives than the WTC disaster and he still hasn't caught the man responsible. I'm not even sure, from all his chatter, he is even trying to catch Bin Laden. In fact, I'm not sure Bin Laden isn't a lie too...how can I be sure?? How can you?

He's cutting back on Medicare and he's screwing up Social Security and he's spying on Americans illegally and he's lying about telling congress or at least full disclosure, he's lying about the very need for this. He is deteriorating our freedoms and playing on our fears to get there. And the sheep just bleat along. AHHHHHHHHHH.

Ok, I'm done for now. I feel trapped. I really want to become a recluse. I wish I could afford that. I think, if I can hold out, the next housing boom that comes along I'm going to sell this house, take the profit and find myself a little shack on lots of acreage. I don't care where, just so long as it's remote.

Anybody got any suggestions?

Progress!

2004-08-02T05:06:00.000-04:00

Yesterday the kitten started to eat again. In the afternoon I decided to leave the door to the laundry room open for awhile. I talked to her and "trilled" and eventually she came out from behind the furnace where she'd taken up new residence. I was making some eggs for dinner and I broke one into a bowl and gave it to her. She lapped that up, then ate canned food, dry food and bacon fat, and more egg. Yeah she got her appetite back :)

I kept the door open and we played a bit of "tap the string" she really didn't play enthusiastically but it was some interaction. She came up to the threshold between the laundry room and kitchen but wouldn't cross the barrier. She did a lot of looking around and seemed more relaxed.

At around 2 am I was shutting down the house for the night, I walked into the dark kitchen to find yet another baby possum helping himself to the cats food. He ran under the microwave cart. I grabbed the static cling duster and proceeded to chase him around the house and eventually under the sofa. Since I couldn't reach him there I surrendered.

I went to check on the kitten and found her cowering behind the dryer so I guess he might have gone after her food in there too. She came out with only a little coaxing and went back to her spot behind the furnace.

I turned on all the lights in rooms I didn't want the possum in, closed the door to other rooms and hoped he'd find his way out through the cat door, which is nearby where he had stationed himself. I have no idea if he's still under the couch or not, I'm not looking.

This morning when I woke the kitten it was apparent that she was getting pretty grimey from sleeping behind the furnace. She ate and drank and got a little brave and stepped over the threshold.

Dishing out the last few cans of food left in the house meant going to stock up on more. I read that L-Lysine might be good for her eye (she may well be blind in that eye judging from the way she moves her head to look around) so that was on the shopping list.

The store manager couldn't find any supplements for cats with L-Lysine but she offered an expensive bottle of "holistic calming formula" for her, offering to accept a return if it didn't work. I didn't have my glasses on me so I couldn't read the ingredients but I bought it figuring either it'll calm her or I can bring it back.

When I got home I read the bottle and among some unpronouncable "herbs" it has alcohol. So it's basically a kitty cocktail. Great, $9 for kitten MD 20/20. Maybe she and I can do shots of it next possum invasion.

I made a bed in the laundry room out of an old towel and a bath mat. The kitten watched me put this together. I told her it would be more comfy and she should try it. Later I went to check on her and she was quite comfy there, stayed there for hours.

Well I'm awake here in the middle of the night and that means all the cats are stirred. I fed them and the kitten decided to come into the kitchen a bit. Quite bravely she walked in and then it became clear what the attraction is, she has a crush on Big Fat Red Cat (BFRC). She just wants to go up to him so bad. She was inches from him while he ate. He turned around and walked away (which is better than ripping her to shreds I suppose). On the other hand he's not totally against her, when Trixie went after her the other day I yelled at Trixie and then Red went after Trixie. That was the first time I encouraged that. Right now he is sleeping by the kitchen door, not a usual spot for him. It's like he's guarding her. Well, I could be imagining that, he may be laying in wait.

So I'm considering calling the kitten Suki. It's a dumb name but I've now said "it's okay" so many times to her that she probably thinks it's her name, or else she thinks it's "brrrrrrrrrrt". I would call her brrrrrrt but I'll feel silly telling a vet that's her name should we ever get that far.

Well if anyone comes up with a better or more clever name for her I'll try it out. Oh and I'll post pics as soon as I can.

For now at least, there's some peace and relief.

What was I thinking?

2004-07-30T21:13:00.000-04:00

For awhile now I've had feral kittens in my yard. The mother's go into my garage and have a litter and in a few weeks I see little kittens running about. They run away from me. I feed them and they eat my food but they don't want anything more to do with me.

Well that was until a recent litter. The mom seemed to have only 2 (surviving?) kittens. The three of them would come for food, mom would come to my door and I'd bring food out. She would wait while her kittens ate. Pretty soon the kittens were coming by themselves mostly, she'd stop by now and then to check on them. This went on for a few weeks before she disappeared completely. I continued to feed the kittens who came when I called. Then I noticed one of the kittens had an eye infection. I spiked the food with antibiotics. They were pretty used to me and while I couldn't pet (oh I snuck a few pets but it wasn't really appreciated) or pick them up at least one of them was quite bold. They were about 10-12 weeks old now I guessed.Then one day they vanished. They were gone for 4 days. Only 1 of them came back, the bold one.

Her eye wasn't looking too good, but she was pretty acclimated to me. She'd sleep on the lawn furniture and play with some string. Still no touching though. A few nights after she returned we had a bad storm. I opened up my screen door and put the food just inside the door. She came in and ate. I left the door open and the food there and went off to do some chores. When I came back she wasn't there so I closed the door. A few minutes later a LOUD clap of thunder sent her scurrying from her hiding spot under the sofa and BAM into the screen.

Now terrified she ran wild around the house hissing and bouncing off things in a frenzy to escape. I tried to grab her (mistake, I wasn't thinking) and got bit and scratched. She ran behind the clothes dryer. While pouring alcohol on the bite I decided to "keep" her at least long enough for her eye to heal.

She had chosen to hide in the laundry room so I set up a litterbox, food and water in there. I closed the room off so my cats couldn't bother her (they are NOT happy about this decision) and let her calm down.

She uses the litterbox and had been eating the first few days. Now we are in day three, she's hiding and when I go in there she mews like she is miserable but won't come out. She doesn't seem to be eating or drinking anything, though it's hard to tell.

There is not much information on taming feral kittens on the web and what there is certainly indicates that for the most part I'm doing it wrong (small cage first, lots of handling, get them while they're 4-6 weeks...so far haven't done any of that). They all say it'll be 2-6 weeks, maybe more. I can certainly be patient for that time but I don't want her to starve or dehydrate out of fear.

I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. I don't actually know what I'm doing or why I feel compelled to do it.

I just want her to be a happy kitten and instead she's miserable. Now I'm afraid to let her go anyway because maybe she'll run off and never trust a human, or her eye will get worse.

I dunno....

Not much to blog about...

2004-07-22T11:47:00.000-04:00

But I did get this letter in e-mail and it's a political bias b.s. letter (no author, no mention of their expertise, no citing for where these alleged facts come from). A friend sent it (she didn't write it), but she sends information on both sides of the political fence, good and bad so I know it's not bias on her part. It just annoys me that so much gets passed off for "fact" or for any sort of meaningful data when it has no basis in fact or no bearing on the situation.

I don't normally rant on political stuff but I had nothing else to blog about and iZ twisted my arm, he's really a bully!! ;-)

Anyway, here is the letter, my comments are in bold, cause I'm more right (hehehe). Mind you these are my comments, if I have a fact I'll give you a citing where I got it.

Following is a brief background on Mrs. John Kerry .. She hates being called that, by the way: (so?)

Maria Teresa Thiersten Simoes-Ferreira Heinz Kerry. Married Senator Kerry in 1995. She only took his name eighteen months ago (and this is a problem because...?) and she is an "interesting" paradox of conflicts. (so she's a female then.)

If you thought John Kerry was scary (scary? what is scary about John Kerry? He's a war hero? He can pronounce the word nuclear? he isn't a war monger? yeah I guess to the brainless that is frightening), he doesn't hold a candle to his wife Maria Teresa Thiersten Simoes-Ferreira Heinz Kerry was born in Mozambique, the daughter of a Portuguese physician, was educated in Switzerland and South Africa (you mean she didn't get an inane US public school education? Why she probably can pronounce nuclear too, STONE HER). Fluent in five languages, she was working as a United Nations interpreter in Geneva (she worked outside the home in a job that requires intelligence and precision, what a radical thing in the year 2004! I'll bet she doesn't even know how to bake!!) in the mid-60's when she met a "handsome" young American, H. John Heinz, III, who worked at a bank in Geneva. He told her his family was "in the food business." (sounds duplicitous on his part, oh wait he was a Republican). They were married in 1966 and returned to Pittsburgh where his family ran the giant H. J. Heinz food company. He was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1971, and in 1976 he was elected to the first of three terms in the United States Senate. A Republican, he wrote a burning diatribe against some of the causes backed by young House member John Kerry (gee, a Republican writing something scathing about a Democrat, will wonders never cease?). Several years later, in 1991, he was killed when his plane collided with a Sun Oil Company helicopter (wonder if the helicopter was owned by a company run by a Republican, hmmm) over a Philadelphia suburb. The senator, his pilot and copilot, and both of Sun's helicopter pilots were killed. He was survived by his wife, Teresa, and their three young sons. Four years later (was this not enough mourning time?), having inherited Heinz's $500 million fortune, she married Senator John Forbes Kerry, the liberal then-junior senator from Massachusetts. She became a registered Democrat (OMG) and the process of her radicalization (I love the Republican finger pointing that everyone who doesn't believe what they believe is a "RADICAL", well thank GOD for those radicals) was set in motion. Heinz-Kerry is not shy about telling people that she required Kerry to sign a prenuptial agreement before they were married (oh so he wasn't after her money and he still married her? Well dammit, that's downright upstanding and totally against the money monger Republican way!!!). John Kerry may not have check writing privileges (um, that's not what a pre-nup is, but who cares whether he can write a check on her account?) on the Heinz catsup and pickle fortune, but he is certainly a willing and uncomplaining beneficiary of it (so they share? Imagine a husband and wife sharing, HOW FUCKING RADICAL). A lot of hard-earned money, made through many years of hawking catsup, mustard, and pickles has fallen into the hands of two people who despise successful entrepreneurship (er, now here is a problem, what they despise is UNFAIR successful manipulation of what SHOULD BE entrepreneurship but turns out the bidding is rigged by um REPUBLICANS...or does Haliburton not ring a bell?) and who believe in the confiscatory redistribution of wealth (and your facts come from????). So how does Mrs. Heinz Kerry spend John Heinz's money (oh see, he's dead he LEFT HER THE MONEY, so therefore the money is HERS, or do you not understand Wills and Bequeaths either)? Just one example: According to the G2 Bulletin, an online intelligence newsletter of WorldNetDaily, in the years between 1995-2001 she gave more than $4million to an organization called the Tides Foundation (I can't access the G2 news bulletin without a $200/year subscription but the headline of this article reads:
Who's funding GOP unrest?
Mrs. Kerry linked to groups planning demonstrations, disruptions.
So she's backing her husband?)
And what does the Tides Foundation do with John Heinz's money? They support numerous antiwar groups, including Ramsey Clark's International Action Center (here is the website for Tides Foundation, a non-profit beneficent organization http://www.tidesfoundation.org/index_tf.cfm , which has seems to be very open about what they do and what they support). Clark has offered to defend Saddam Hussein when he's tried (this may be a very unpopular thing for Clark to do but it is the right of every individual in this Country to be represented by counsel, or do you hate the Constitution too?). They support the Democratic Justice Fund, a joint venture of the Tides Foundation and billionaire hate-monger George Soros (you mean the guy who survived a Nazi concentration camp and campaigned against aparthied, that HATE MONGER?). The Democratic Justice Fund seeks to ease restrictions on Muslim immigration from "terrorist" states. They support the Council for American-Islamic Relations, whose leaders are known to have close ties to the terrorist group, Hamas (you know what, let me just cut to the chase here and send you to this link, http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_teresa_heinz_kerry.htm , doesn't the url say it all?). They support the National Lawyers Guild, organized as a communist front during the Cold War era. One of their attorneys, Lynne Stewart, has been arrested for helping a client, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, communicate with terror cells in Egypt. He is the convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. They support the "Barrio Warriors," a radical Hispanic group whose primary goal is to return all of Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas to Mexico. These are but a few of the radical groups that benefit, through the anonymity provided by the Tides Foundation, from the generosity of our would-be first lady, the wealthy widow of Republican senator John Heinz, and now the wife of the Democratic senator who aspires to be the 44th President of the United States.
Aiding and supporting our enemies is not good for America (you should have told this to GWB when he sent $30 million to Osama and his cohorts in May of 2001, guess what they funded? Where was the accounting of that money?, oh yeah I *think* Bush said he regretted that, so it's all better now, right?) regardless of your political views. If voters will open their eyes, educate themselves and see the real Teresa Heinz Kerry (I'd like the voters to grow a brain stem too and see things for what they really are instead of getting drivvel such as this in their e-mail and deciding that it's a fact or not completely biased and shows none of the failings, misdeeds and secrets of the Republican party) they will not appreciate her position as ultra rich fairy godmother of the radical left (no instead they'll see her as a rational intelligent woman, supporting her husband and his campaign and has clearly documented EVERYTHING). They will not want to imagine her laying her head on a pillow each night inches away from the President of the United States (so this is how you think of Laura or worse, Barbara Bush? That's twisted...oh wait, Republicans don't sleep in the same bed!). Hopefully they love this country enough to decide that the only way these two will ever be allowed into the White House is with an engraved invitation in hand (oh I for one am voting them an engraved invitation, because if your narrow minded, unfounded diatribe represents the other side I KNOW I'M RIGHT). Instead of deleting this, pass it on. Let everyone know these people are unfit to represent this great nation (they don't want war, they want to improve the economy, they want to make conditions better for everyone, they want to offer fair bidding on government contracts, they want to make sure Americans are taken care of in old age and in health crises, what kind of evil anti-Americanism is THAT?). The uninformed will never hear the truth (you said it) from the press (you mean like the NY Post, the Wall Street Journal or The Washington Post who printed utter inaccuracies about Kerry and the above organizations? Yeah, in that you are correct), who wants Kerry elected!

Not from the above letter:

Now just a side note. Our current resident, GWB, belongs (as did his father) to a secret society. He admits this in his autobiography (so you know I'm not making this up). The secret society is Yale's "Skull and Bones". The History Channel did an interesting documentary on this the other day. They gave a fair reporting, offering both positive and negative dialog on it. Some of the things that both sides agreed upon was that the society is "elitist", no "riff-raff" allowed. The inductees are white, upper class, "connected" individuals who foster the doctrine that everyone else is to be excluded in all society. (That's not even the scariest part). They also agree that the ideal is to groom their inductees for "political and high powered positions" so that they can foster this doctrine further! Ok, now that's FRIGHTENING. See I gotta believe you don't have a secret society unless the secret shouldn't be shared because it's not a wholesome one...if it was in any way benevolent wouldn't it be a WIDE OPEN SOCIETY? Yeah these people aren't sending any money to starving kids, that much they all agree on too. Oh and as an amusing side note each member of this society gets a "secret society name". George W. Bush's name? "Temporary". Yeah, even they don't want him permanent.

You learn something new everyday.

2004-07-04T03:30:00.000-04:00

Today I learned something new about myself. I learned that I have a logical side to my brain and a practical side and that the two are not always in agreement.

I came home from a holiday bbq, sat at my computer and was about to blog the things I'd learned from that little fete when I heard a noise. The conversation in my brain went something like this:

Logical side: it's a cat
Practical side: look down (direction of noise)
Logical side: it's a baby possum
Practical side: it cannot be a baby possum
Practical side: look again
Logical side: it's grey, has a skinny tail, pointy nose, it's a possum
Practical side: it merely appears to be a possum, it's an ugly kitten.
Logical side: it has beady eyes and is adept at climbing vertically up your desk.
Rational side: OH MY FUCKING GOD THERE'S A BABY POSSUM CLIMBING MY DESK
Logical side: calm down
Practical side: oh great, now we have to freak out.

Practical side: what do we do now?
Logical side: remove it
Rational side: OH MY FUCKING GOD WHERE DID IT GO WHILE I WAS FREAKING OUT?

Logical side: look for it
Practical side: it's under the desk behind the computer burrowed into the nest of wires that looks like a plate of spaghetti and that you didn't feel it "logical" to organize because they'd only get mixed up again.
Logical side: sue me
Rational side: Stop bickering you two THERE'S A FUCKING POSSUM IN HERE.

At this point the logical side and practical side attempt to work in unison. Rational side proves useless in a crisis and is left to quietly decompose on it's own.

Logical and practical sides decide to query fellow onliners who suggested my best course of action would be to bathe and name it. Much as this option seemed to be my only recourse I was stymied on how to actually go about this task. Retrieving oven mitts (the good ones that aren't all burned up and still have quilting in the finger pockets) I attempted to soothe the little beast by petting it. It could not have been less enthused. It displayed various defensive tactics not unlike that of an angry crocodile.

I pondered this dilemma for quite some time whilst rational side sent my blood pressure soaring to new and uncharted heights. Logical and practical ran through the options: Animal control is closed, it's a holiday weekend. Cops will come, they will laugh a good laugh and one of them will try to grab it and get bit and they will then take it and kill it. They will take it and kill it even if no one gets bit, it's the stupid law. All nearby friends are asleep or drunk or out of town on vacation. Get friends who have better timing. Go back to online friends.

Several of the suggestions made by fellow Worthians were actually a catalyst in the successful conclusion of possum relocation. The pillowcase suggestion seemed the best but due to logistics would not work, nor did the towel suggestion. However I will now provide a tutorial on possum removal for those who find themselves in a similar situation:

1. Put on oven mitts and get towel, hold flashlight in mouth, take metal yard stick and tap on possum buttocks in an attempt to move said possum while attempting to throw towel over him.

2. Remove oven mitts, they are a hindrance.

3. Repeat step one sans oven mitts.

4. Give up yard stick and crawl under desk very close to possum and attempt to get edge of towel behind possum wedged firmly in corner. Hope possums can't lunge.

5. Watch as possum begins to crawl from spot in utter terror and climbs into your open computer case.

6. Consider ripping all the wires out of your computer and running outside with computer case.

7. Abandon step 6.

8. Terrorize possum a bit more by trying to grab it with the towel from the computer case, watch as he wedges himself in a corner by your filing cabinet.

9. Trap him in this area.

10. Realize that possums hang by their tails, at least in cartoons. Decide you should pick him up by the tail.

11. Put on oven mitts.

12. Try to grab tail. Fail. Try again. Fail. Repeat as necessary.

13. Realize you can force him into a box or container from this spot.

14. Look quickly for box or container. Spot wastebasket.

15. Grab wastebasket and dump contents on floor.

16. Tip wastebasket with opening facing possum location. Offer possum only 1 possible option out.

17. Catch possum

18. Swiftly tilt wastebasket up while rapidly moving toward rear exit of house.

19. Watch in horror and panic as possum proceeds to scale the side of slippery plastic waste can.

20. Exit premises just as baby possum breaches the lip of wastebasket. Place wastebasket on ground.

21. Reenter house and swiftly close door (optional, but highly recommended).

22. Spend several hours trying to regain composure.

So we have now all learned some valuable things today. I hope this helps you in some small measure.

I'll blog another time about the bbq experience.

Spending too much time...

2004-06-23T08:00:00.000-04:00

How do you know you've spent too much time on one activity? You start to dream about it.

Most of the people who read this know about Worth1000 and spend a lot of their time there too. Lately, I've been flagging or dqing images that don't comply with the FAQs from that site. Some off theme, some copyright issues and some that are just bad.

Last night I dreamt I was going to adopt this little dog. Such a cute little dog. He had a problem though. Someone had used the Mosaic filter from ps on him. He was all little boxes.

I told the pound I wouldn't adopt him until the filter was removed. Even in my dream the people at the pound looked at each other funny. But I stood firm, I didn't want a dog with gratuitous filters all over him.

Yeah, I need to get out more.

My neighbor is a saint...

2004-06-21T20:24:00.000-04:00

My neighbors came up to me today and asked about the house, what the status is. Well I haven't heard anything so I don't really know, and too scared to find out.

Frank and Elena are really nice people. We get along well, help each other when we can and generally do the neighborly thing. They've told me more than once they don't want to lose me as a neighbor, which I find very flattering because all in all, they've helped me out a lot. Every time I have a leaky pipe or a wiring problem, Frank comes drops everything and comes over. Great people.

So they said they are considering buying my house in foreclosure. His dad passed away a few months ago and he's selling his dad's house. He wants to invest the money in property because he won't get much from the bank. He figures he can buy my house and rent it to me. He doesn't want a different tenant because they'll expect too much and he knows I don't care if the driveway is all chewed up or the garage is still standing by some miracle. He'd only have to do immediate repairs and that's not a lot. I would also do most of the general maintenance myself. He wouldn't have a mortgage so he wouldn't charge a lot in rent.

Besides all that they really don't want to live next to anyone else. That alone makes me feel great.

So I've got to make a few more calls to the mortgage company and figure out how this works but if it works out (keep your fingers crossed) I may not have to move. It's really win-win for everyone, he can get another tax write off too.

Even if it doesn't work, it's made me feel so good to know there are such wonderful people in the world. They've made me feel loved and I love them too.

So to Elena and Frank...THANK YOU FOR THE REAFFIRMATION!

w00t!

2004-06-14T10:44:00.000-04:00

As you can see from the nifty little thermometer (thanks lette) over to the left, my Vegas fund is growing nicely. I think I might just make it there!!! :)

To those who donated: Thank you so much for your generosity! I will happily acknowledge you publically if you want, but since I don't have your permission yet I won't reveal your identities :)

You are awesome!!

Strange and sad week...hope next one is better

2004-06-12T19:49:00.000-04:00

Seems everytime I mentioned "them" in my blog the minion would show up at my door. He showed up 2 days in a row. When he left Wednesday he said he'd be back on Thursday. I decided not to blog about it as a test and sure enough, he was a no-show. I hope this mere mention now isn't enough to bring him back. If it is, last post about them ever.

I found out on Friday that my neighbors dog, Dutchess, had to be put to sleep. Dutchess was a great dog. I would tell everyone she was my dog and I just let the neighbors keep her at their house.

Dutchess loved me...no, she worshipped me. She did anything I told her to, almost uncannily. She would come to me, she'd lie at my feet, she'd pee out of excitement to see me. I would dog-sit her when they went on vacation and take her for long walks in the park during good weather. I could let her off the leash and we'd roam the wooded areas, she never went too far away from me and always came back when I called her.

I was there when they brought her home, seven years ago. I little six week old puppy that weighed maybe 4 pounds. She was a cross between a Jack Russell and a Dalmation (don't think about the logistics of that too long) and she was just adorable. She grew into a beautiful dalmation size dog with the markings of a Jack.

A week ago Friday she suffered a massive stroke, tore the house up leaving huge dents in brass door knobs. Then she laid down and wouldn't move. They brought her to the vet but never thought she wouldn't be coming back home.

They were afraid to tell me, knowing how upset I'd be. I miss her barking at nothing. I'll miss seeing her jump up into their living room window when she heard my car in the driveway. I'll miss the walks exploring the park. I'll miss being worshipped a little too.

Goodbye Dutchess, you sweet pup!

Be careful what you say in your blog...

2004-06-09T07:44:00.000-04:00

So having avoided, up until yesterday, putting anything really angsty and pithy into my blog I finally broke down and did it. Thank you to everyone who commented and wrote, for the well wishes and offers and advice. It's given me a very warm feeling to be so loved.

It was mistake to blog all that though, and for far different reasons than I thought it would be. In that blog I mention my ex boyfriend, Satan (that's my pet name for him, but it's really unfair to Satan who I'm sure is a much nicer character).

Late in the afternoon yesterday, I hear a knock at my door. It naturally crossed my mind that it was the bank people or the sheriff or someone so I meekly peered around the corner and there is this handsome guy holding my newspaper. My ex boyfriend's best friend! I'd deliberately stopped speaking to him months ago because he is my ex boyfriends best friend. And yet there he stands.

So I go to the door because it's obvious that I'm home since my front door is wide open and both my cars are in the driveway. I'm a wreck, I need a shower, I'm in comfy clothes (read: slob) and my house is in dire need of a straightening up. I've been on the verge of tears all day and it's showing in my face. All of this will be reported back to the ex (in the past I've made sure that whenever I might encounter him at a social gathering I look my absolute best). But yesterday I didn't even care.

He leaves his car running on the street, a very expensive car...you know the kind that compensates for physical shortcomings. Anyway, he leaves this running to so I know that he's merely on a reconnaissance mission. So I told him...everything. I'm leaving, don't know where to. My life is in turmoil and I'm broke. Go back and tell Satan all this, maybe he'll leave me alone!

I've evoked and summoned the demons with my blog.

Don't read this...seriously

2004-06-08T14:17:00.000-04:00

I need to purge some stuff, bad, depressing stuff. I don't want to be bothered starting a new blog. Please don't read this if it's going to bring you down. This isn't for sympathy or attention. I'd rather just do a primal scream and move on...but I got to get this out. At least if you read it you'll know what's going on I suppose. No sad faces, no "I'm sorrys" though, k? It's a given, it sucks and I know how I'd feel if it were happening to you.

I'm going to lose my house. I've known for quite some time it would happen just not sure when. I still don't know the date but I know it's imminent. Today a guy was sitting in his Mercedes SUV across the street and taking pictures of my house. A real estate appraiser sent by the bank. That was bothersome enough but the guy looked exactly like my ex-husband. I mean identical. It was terrifying.

My ex-husband is a mixed up soul. After we had separated he came into the house at 3 a.m., while I was asleep, and chloroformed me. I woke up handcuffed to the bed and bound at the feet. I didn't know it was him until I heard his voice. His plan was to rape me and kill himself (had a noose set up in the garage). He wanted to traumatize me so I'd never want another man. He could have killed me just with the chloroform (as he put it, "that was a chance I took"). Well skipping over a bunch of details here but it took me from 3 am until 7 pm to talk him out of his plan and get free. Subsquently he was to see a counselor and blah blah...but utimately he left my life and that's just fine with me. Unfortunately, he remains on the deed to the house (not on the mortgage thanks to a refi-type thing the VA did) and I cannot sell the house.

I used my $10,000.00 severance and $40,000.00 401k to try to keep the house. That left me destitute. I've been unable to find a suitable job that pays enough for even my monthly bills not including the mortgage.

Rents in this area are about the same as my mortgage, at least rents in any place you wouldn't fear for your life living.

I have precious little money to even pay the first month and 1.5 month security on an apartment anywhere anyway. I have way too much stuff for any apartment. I also have 3 cats that I'd have to lie about since most places don't want any pets. I'm tired..really, really tired of having to rebuild my life every few years, I think this is the 4th time.

And you know all of this sucks and is really hard to deal with and depressing on it's own. But then I know of other people, liars and scam artists and scoundrels just gliding through life. People who have never made an effort to get anywhere but always step in rose-scented shit. Like my last boyfriend, scuzzball that he was, he never worries about anything he always manages to get away with everything and flourish even. It's no wonder people do drastic things :(

Anyway, not sure how much I'll be blogging or even participating. I need to do something but it all feels so overwhelming. Where do I start? What is my first step? Find a job? (well if I could...) Find an apartment (they'll want me to have a job). Start packing? Just have a total breakdown (I like this option best, but I can't even get a good cry out...tears well up and then dissipate).

shit

New blog link

2004-06-04T07:03:00.000-04:00

I added a link to Redbull's blog. Go check it out, it's so HIM. He chose an appropriate picture for his profile too. Sicko! :D

I want to go to Las Vegas

2004-06-03T20:02:00.000-04:00

There's now a donation button over to the left so you can help me get to Las Vegas for the Worth meet in September. Any money collected will go to that cause, anything over the amount I need will go to help others get there :)

Thanks if you contribute!

Yet another WTF?

2004-06-02T17:50:00.000-04:00

As I'm entering the grocery store I see a shiny new sticker on the door. It says they have a defibrillator. HUH? Why? Yes I could see why having a defibrillator would come in handy. I just imagine the stock persons, late at night, exploding aerosol cans in the employee lounge. Do you want to trust your life to someone who can't remember you want a 1/2 lb. of roast beast and not a lb.?

Would it matter anyway? I mean even if they saw you drop to the floor clutching your chest they have to navigate their way past the lady who always has her cart perpendicular in the aisle and the family of 10 that has to shop en masse, engaging in a 15 minute debate on which jar of pickles to buy in some language other than whatever one(s) you speak so saying "EXCUSE ME" is fruitless.

Forget it, by the time they get to you if there's anything left of the machine to use, you'll already be dead. I'd rather they just took the time to call 911, thank you very much.

Wonder what they charge for the defibrillation?

New link

2004-06-01T18:54:00.000-04:00

Check out the link to the pictures from our mini-Worth meet this past weekend. There's at least 3 pages so be sure to scroll through them all :)

Wow!

2004-05-31T19:25:00.000-04:00

Well I laughed so much this weekend I feel totally rejuvinated. If there's a better couple of people to spend time with than Sliq and lette and add hb and Ax into the mix well I'd be amazed. Even doing the most mundane things we couldn't stop laughing. I'm sorry they had to leave, I wish I could have gone with them, or kept them here.

I'm also exhausted. I don't even know why, maybe just from laughing so much. We got the hotel room from hell in CT. Ok the room wasn't all that bad, but the clerk at the desk was a complete twit (hereinafter "the twit"). The room we were suppose to have was actually 2 rooms, one with a pull out sofabed and then a separate bedroom. What we were offered was 1 room and 1 king size bed. I asked the guy "did you think 3 people were going to all three get into a king-size bed?" The twit just shrugged. If lette and sliq weren't there I'd have hopped over that desk and ripped the twits ears off as souvenirs. So we opt for a room with 2 double beds. We get in this room we find out nothing is plugged in; not the phones, not the lamps, nothing! The wireless internet connection (a feature they brag about with bright yellow posters everywhere) isn't connecting and is requiring a password, thus they don't actually have it. When Sliq called the guy at the desk and told him the twit just grunted and mumbled. Sliq had to go back to the front desk for a network cable. We made the best of it, cause what can you do? Complaints to management will be forthcoming.

Well I won't tell about the rest of what happened cause there's pictures and I don't have them, they're in the possession of lette and I'm sure she'll tell the story better :) Suffice to say it was way too much fun :)

Oh yeah...added the picture of the strange statue person thingy creature from Red Bank.

OMFG What fun

2004-05-30T08:06:00.000-04:00

Sliq and lette (aka Jerry and Nicki, though I think I only called them by their RL names 1 x each) drove out from Detroit for a mini-Worth meet with hbomb (Heather, again, I don't think I called her Heather more than 1x) and me. WE HAD THE BEST TIME! Jealous? You should be! It was so much fun! We talked for a good long while and then packed into the car and headed to Red Bank, NJ, home of Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash. Unfortunately, we got there a bit past their closing time.

We sat in Starbucks for a little bit trying to locate the "Quick Stop" and watching some weird person (turned out to be female) across the street (picture to come) all dressed in white with white grease paint on her face and hands and just standing there, very still. Apparently a gimmick for some religious organization, but it sure got people's attention.

We then drove off in search of Leonardo, NJ, home of the Quick Stop and that was a bit of an adventure. Freaking NJ has the worst road signs ever, but we found it and it was open and we bought some stuff and moved on in search of SKIBALL!!!

We'd thought about heading to Long Branch but when we passed a sign for Keansburg Amusement Park (the worst amusement park on the planet) I detoured to it. The guy behind the counter was a real character and there are some serious skiball players there. We had so much fun. Lette is secretly a skiball wizard, a skill she didn't let us know about earlier. We all collected our major awards. Sliq and Lette went practical, getting a large coffee mug with a scene of the NJ shore, hb got a totally nifty propeller launching gun thingy, which I'm totally jealous of, and I got a squirt pistol. I plan to use my water gun to launch an attack against hb's forces and steal her armory.

After that we went in search of food. We decided on Perkins but it was closed (it was only 9:00 pm fer chissake) and so we opted for Bennigans. By the time we got there it was nearly 10:30 and exhaustion was setting in on all of us. We all had some delicious food and relaxed and talked some more. I'm not sure Sliq got to talk all that much between the three women.

Everyone got back to their respective homes/hotels safely and today Sliq, lette and I are off to meet Axiom in CT. Wish hb would be coming too. Not sure what activities there are for us in CT but I'm certain of one thing, we'll have a great time :)

I so wish I could make it to the Worth meet in Las Vegas this summer. Even if it's just a chance to spend some more time with these guys, just way too much fun.

Cyrus

2004-05-28T13:31:00.000-04:00

Somewhere in the range of 5 years ago a beautiful marmalade tabby showed up in my back yard. He set my cats off (they sound like sirens when they're mad) but he remained unphased by their racket. I stepped outside and he came right up to me, not something your average stray cat does. Yet he was "intact" and had no collar so I really couldn't be sure. He then proceeded to strut into my house. I was amused, my cats were not. He was young and quite healthy but he ate the food I gave him, loved being petted and sitting in my lap and generally behaved as if he were my cat, well, better than my cats behaved anyway.

He'd stick around for awhile getting food and loving and annoying the bejeezus (you're welcome, arsi) out of my cats. He'd play in my yard chasing squirrels or just lounge in the sun. Then he'd wander off for parts unknown. I tried to see where he went but he had a varying agenda and never seemed to go off in the same direction twice.

I asked the neighbor directly across the street about him and she said she'd seen him and but wasn't sure who he belonged to. She ended with the statement "did you see the size of the balls on that cat?" Well, yeah, I had. They were quite impressive and mind you, he was quite proud of them and often showed them off to anyone within eyeshot.

Well I finally saw him going towards another neighbor's house a few times and then one day the door to that house opened and the cat strode inside. AHA!

I went over and knocked on their door and asked "do you own an orange tabby?" The kid (ok he's in his 20s but he looks like a kid) reluctantly admitted it and said "oh I'm sorry is he bothering you?". "Oh no! I love him, I was going to keep him if nobody owned him, he's wonderful." The guy looked relieved and said he'd keep him out of my yard, I begged him not to, I looked forward to his visits. He told me the cats name was Cyrus.

One morning at around 7:00 a.m., as I was making a pot of coffee, I heard a thumping on the outside wall of my house, followed by "meow". It went on a few times, *thump* *meow*, *thump* *meow*. I peered out the kitchen window and there was Cyrus flinging himself into my house (he was attempting to jump on the window sill but it was either too high or too narrow for him to land on) and meowing to catch my attention. It looked and sounded so funny I couldn't stop laughing...what a goofy cat.

I didn't see Cyrus for a few days and wondered what was up, turns out he got "fixed" and was laying low in the house, possibly embarrassed. But a few days later he was back to his incorrigible self and coming around...maybe only slightly less enthusiastic.

Then he stopped showing up altogether. When I saw the neighbor kid I asked about him, worried that something might have happened. Turns out the kid moved out and took Cyrus with him, they lived in an apartment now and Cyrus no longer had adventures.

Well, the kid moved back about 6 months ago. I went over to inquire about my cat buddy and was told he was doing great, had put on some weight and wouldn't be coming out till he got his shots. I gave the kid a picture I'd taken of Cyrus lounging in my yard.

Well yesterday I was driving past their house and the kid was outside with Cyrus in his arms. I slammed on the brakes and parked the car. I ran out shouting "Cyrus! I want to see Cyrus!" (Yeah, I'm the neighborhood looney) and he put the cat on the ground. And...Cyrus ran RIGHT OVER TO ME! He remembers me!!! He got some loving and rubbed on me and purred. He's HUGE...he weighs 17 lbs but looks 30. He's still friendly and sweet and smart. They don't want to let him out to roam because he is too good a hunter. It's probably better, he'd get himself into trouble and fights and not be the gorgeous cat he is. But it was so good to see him and have him remember me. I still miss his visits and his morning wake up *thump* but I'm glad to know he's well and cared for and still precocious. I love CYRUS!

I've added a pic of Cyrus to the collection.

Hey I accomplished something today!

2004-05-26T21:22:00.000-04:00

I've been putting off cleaning the house, well I've been putting that off for many months but since company is coming for the weekend I wanted it to be a little less frightening to them. Being the lazy person I am though it's hard to get motivated to clean months worth of no upkeep. Today out of sheer boredom though I managed to get a bunch of little things done.

I was e-mailing some HUGE files to someone and the uploads were taking in excess of 10 minutes and then several more for the mail to actually go through. With 4 files to do this was almost an hour of computer down time for me, so I straightened up a bit. Tomorrow and Friday I'll be doing the big stuff, like slaying dust rhinos and de-lacing (cobwebs) the ceiling and corners.

I've also managed to work on my first ps entry in awhile, jotted down a quick story for the text contests (needs serious refining, but it might just come together) and managed just now to feed 2 stray cats who were about to have a battle over some burnt chicken crumbs.

I'm feeling darn good, I might just do the dishes...

NAH!

Due to a minor glitch...

2004-05-23T19:35:00.000-04:00

Nobody could see the pictures...well Axiom could but I don't know why he could, maybe he's looking through my window. Anyway, simple resolution, just host the dang pics :)

Well I'm so happy now it seems to be working. I did manage to resize them width-wise, but making them all the same height would do weird things, it's best to just hit the start button and let the slide show plays on it's own.

Thank you to everyone for your help! :)

Weee!!!

2004-05-23T09:42:00.000-04:00

Added this little (ok, rather large) slide show so I don't have to keep changing pictures. Now I can just add a picture to the slide show. Also, don't need a host for my pics which is a real time saver.

Yes it needs some tweaking. I'll need to make all the pictures the same size so the page doesn't resize with each click. All in all I think it's pretty nifty :D Oh yeah, you need to enable javascript to view the slide show.

Oh and the new pics added are: the house chicken, Daisey, from my brother's farm and some images from the tulip festival. I'll add more later, I'm just all jazzed that the thing works at all.

I knew what kind of day it would be when I spilled coffee all over this morning...

2004-05-20T18:58:00.000-04:00

I work a temporary part-time job for an accountant. Specifically I am working on his never ending divorce litigation (9 years and counting). Today we finished a huge motion and I was in the process of reorganizing the legal files, nothing exciting but was really getting into it.

By 3:00 all the other girls have left for the day, and now the boss leaves. At 4:00 I remember I'm suppose to call Sue to see if she can cut my hair tonight. I grab my cell phone and step outside into the fresh air. Sue doesn't answer but I leave a message for her to call back. I turn to go back into the office and...

THE FREAKING DOOR IS LOCKED!

I'm standing outside with no keys, no money, no purse and no way to get back inside!!

I rummage through my car (which I left unlocked) and come up with a credit card type thing, I try to slide it in to pop the latch but it merely chews the card up. I find an awl, I could break a window but I don't want to pay for it. I try it on the lock, but I chew up the weatherstripping and get nowhere. I circle the building but everything looks locked tight.

I try to call Sue back but still no answer, she's sleeping off whatever she tied on last night. Then I call Sandy. She is having a bad day too, she is swearing, loudly, at her computer or her boss I'm not sure which. I hang up.

Just then I notice that 1 window to the basement has only a screen on it, no storm window. If I can get the screen off I can get in, all I need is a phillips head screwdriver. I pop the trunk of my car, rummage around and voila! I start to unscrew the thing, it's got 9 screws. The window is behind a rhodadendren bush which is poking and jabbing at me like a prize fighter. 7 screws off but one is a flat head and one is stripped. I go back to the trunk and rummage some more...YES! I get the rusted flat head out and start yanking against the stripped one...which wasn't actually stripped, yet.

Now I've got the screen off and I realize that this tiny window requires me to be a contortionist to get through. The whole thing is coated in a 2" layer of brown greasy spider-webby-leafy-godknowswhat. I'm wearing good clothes and heels. There is nothing to put my foot on for the 5 foot drop. There's stuff piled there, but it's not going to support my weight. Cars on the street will be able to see me and I'll probably be arrested, but I'm going in....

I knock a bunch of stuff over and give the window opening a good cleaning with my hair and nice clothes. I run up the stairs and unlock the door. I go back down stairs and pick up some of the stuff I knocked over. As I ascend the stairs again to go out and put the screen on the UPS man walks through the door. His expression gave a complete description of how I must have looked covered in spider-web-grease-muck. He practically threw the package at me.

Well I put the screen back on and washed up/brushed off as much as I was able. I tried to do a little more filing after that but I must have pulled a few muscles trying to get through the window so I packed up and left and did a triple take to make sure I had all my stuff with me this time.

Now I'm debating whether I should mention this to the boss tomorrow. I might need to use that entrance again and I'd hate to have him block it off.

Space Age

2004-05-18T08:09:00.000-04:00

First of all a huge thank you to arsi for designing my new titles and headers, they look awesome. He also sent me a whole bunch of nifty fonts to use too, so I'll probably test them out.

Thanks to everyone for their great comments, they are very helful and encouraging.

Main issue now is to change the sub-titles "The fine art of bitchcraft" (though I'm very partial to the word bitchcraft) and "What the...?" aren't really in keeping with the populuxe theme. So I've been wracking my one remaining and overworked brain cell to try to come up with something more appropriate. I've been considering something in the style of googie architecture, just to keep it alive! :) Still accepting ideas if anyone has any.

I've also cleaned up the code quite a bit, the bad thing about using FrontPage is that it will put the font code/color/size in front of everything, that's messy and unneccessary unless you use a different font for every line. All that extraneous code made publishing take too long.

Thought bubble: If I'm understanding the function, my font choices should show up even if they aren't loaded on someone else's computer (or is that setting unique to each individual's browser?). Otherwise browsers can be set to a default font if one isn't specified in the code. Also I can code in alternate fonts if the first choice isn't available for a visitor. If you can understand that babble, please let me know if I'm way off base on that.

Enough of this for now.

*****

Moving onto the food court... I made pizza rolls the other day. Pizza rolls, in case you've never seen them, are simply pizza rolled up. You spread out your dough, layer meat and cheese (I used pepperoni and prosciutto-is that spelled correctly?) roll the whole thing up, slice and bake. Once they are done you get some sauce; pizza sauce, spaghetti sauce, etc., and either dip the rolls or pour on top. I eat these with my fingers so I do the dipping method. There's a before and after picture over there to give you an idea of what they look like. They are delicious, you can add whatever ingredients you would add to any pizza or make up your own combination. They pack well as a lunch too! Mmmmmm.

Well off to work. I might be getting a little bit more business redesigning a web site for this guy I'm currently working for, I'm going to look at his site today and see what needs to be done.

I'm almost done...

2004-05-17T09:28:00.000-04:00

Yes!!! I got most of the things tweaked the way I want them, finally. That was a solid 24 hours of work. The guestbook should be set up, though I'll probably change the "alt" tags (on the e-mail and guestbook) later.

Special thanks to Jago for the little script to get rid of those gawdawful underlines and let me have a cool "hover" color.

Also, special thanks to galoot for the anti-spam script, thanks so much for working that code out, I doubt I could have figured out how to get the image to work, well at least not before I'm ready for Social Security.

Please let me know what you think. I want to change the font to something more retro for at least the posts, and possibly the colors of the fonts too. So if you have any suggestions (or know of a good "atomic" feeling font), I'd love to hear them.

Not sure I like the posts bolded but I am concerned about the contrast, some people are color blind and that's a problem, maybe the color should be changed (hint, hint if you're color blind, let me know how this whole thing shows up for you please). (removing bold for now)

If you find anything not working on the site, let me know. I've heard that those with "wee little" monitors (you know who you are) can't see the whole screen so I'll probably put some cell padding on the right, or reduce the pic size a bit further.

Anyway, I'm all excited about this now and yet I'll probably want to redo it all by next weekend! :)

Happy blogging...

2004-05-16T15:48:00.000-04:00

I've been working since last night on redesigning this blog. I've started a little "image corner" over to the right with an updated image (if any) that corresponds with current posts. If there's no new image the old one will stay there and wait (and behave itself, dammit) with the date of the corresponding post.

I still have some tweaking to do. Whatever is ailing the archive links, making them look so funky, needs to be fixed. Also, I hate the underline for the hyperlinks but haven't figured out how to get rid of it.

Lastly I want to change the font and color of the posts themselves (including the date). This little piece of code has eluded me thus far. Most of the coding was done in Front Page because I'm too lazy to look up and code manually. Looking back if I'd coded this by hand it would have taken only 1/2 the time it utlimately has taken.

P.S. The guestbook is offline at the moment. I'll get there...

2004-05-15T19:36:00.000-04:00

Moonman has a music feed site too, it's great stuff and now it's in the links for you to check out. Have a listen, you won't be disappointed!

Jaymeekae's Grab a Book Game

2004-05-15T13:01:00.000-04:00

Instructions:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

Thus skill and science both must fall;
And ruin is the lot of all. ~~The Hurricane, by Philip Freneau/Treasury of American Poetry

2004-05-14T21:16:00.000-04:00

I haven't blogged in a few days so I figured it was about time to update. My plan was to do that when I got home from work today since I got off a bit early. Just as I was about to though all the power on our block went out. I checked with the neighbors just in case, it somehow feels better if everyone around you has no power then if it's just your house. I really didn't need to check though, next door didn't have their perpetual air compressor running so that was a sure sign. So at 3:50 I decided to take a nap instead.

I fell asleep and had a weird dream about filing legal papers for my boss and the post office and some guy who let me cut the line. Anyway, as I was getting up to the line in the post office I told the guy who was letting me cut in that I was in a hurry because the electricity would come back on soon. As I put the postal item on the counter I woke up, looked at the clock which was still black (digital) and a moment later the power came back. Weird.

I wanted to post about the present my brother bought me while I was visiting him. There's a German "Pork Store" (deli) near his home and he was excited about bringing me there. He bought himself some weird stuff called yeager-something that looked like spongy ham. Oddly, it tasted like spongy ham too. No thanks! What he bought me and I love is cervalat wurst. Cervalat is a small hard salami-type sausage (wurst). It smells like salami, strong salami. It's not as big around and not as long (about 2" diameter and about 6" long...get your mind away from that for a moment...sheesh!) Well it comes in a natural casing and sometimes they import it in plastic. I'm a no-plastic type, the plastic keeps it from drying out a bit. Noooooo...I don't want plastic and in fact I'll hang the sausage to get some of the oil to drip out. So now that I'm home I've done just that. The image at top right corner shows the cervalat hanging next to my panties on the clothes line. Yeah, that's right, my panties. Yeah they do smell like salami. Yes, I am single, why do you ask?

2004-05-11T10:12:00.000-04:00

Ooooo you gotta listen to UCSBM. Why are you listening to anything else?

And while you're listening, play Jaymeekae's book game:

Instructions:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

According to Egyptian theology, the structure of a man is not limited to only his mortal shell and spritual self, but is a complex and interconnected structure where his physical body, spiritual body, mental and emotional states play one off the other. ~~Awakening Osiris: The Egyptian Book of the Dead. By: Normandi Ellis

2004-05-10T23:43:00.000-04:00

Mission accomplished, I'm safely ensconced in my own abode once again.

The trip was not without incident. Firstly I left much later than planned even factoring procrastination time in so I hit traffic. In NJ there is always traffic and at 4:30 pm we are just beginning peak rush hour but what I hadn't anticipated was that the "great migration to the shore" traffic would have started this early. So it was bumper to bumper on the connecting road to the Garden State Parkway. After sitting in this for about 1/2 hour and only moving 5 miles I was preoccupied with the location and logistics of the cars around me. I noticed the car behind me was traveling very close so I kept an eye on her. At one point a guy in a van cut me off and I looked into my rear view mirror, it was close but she managed to stop. Unfortunately the guy behind her didn't and...the chain reaction began. I was pissed, I was positive my car had gotten damage and I would have to cancel the trip. We inched over to the side of the road (because New Jersians are nothing if not rude and inconsiderate. Therefore no one lets you over to the shoulder for any reason in traffic). The guy that hit her in the pick-up pulled behind me and she pulled in front of me and I saw that the whole back end of her car was a wreck.

I jump out and go right to my rear bumper and and and....NOTHING!!! The gods have smiled on me. Her plastic bumper hit my plastic bumper and voila...no damage! But his metal truck hit her plastic bumper and well, you do the math. As far as it goes though, we were three very friendly, amiable people. No one was hurt, no one was screaming, we all were joking (me mostly, I was in the catbird seat) and we had a chance to relax (an hour to be precise) before the cop got there.

The rest of the trip was ok until I hit exit 19 on the Thruway. I wanted to call my brother and tell him I was 2 exits away but my cell phone doesn't work, it's searching for a tower (I only passed 20). I'm trying to drive and search for network service...this is AT&T. They're NATIONWIDE...wtf? They have coverage everywhere except where ever I happen to be at the moment. They suck. No new contract. End of that story.

I meet up with my brother and we travel to his house and I meet his girlfriend for the 2nd time ever. The first time was at my grandmother's funeral 5 years ago and was brief and we were all crying so much I don't remember too much about her. But I meet her now and I nearly instantly hate her. Ok not exactly, I don't have that much time because one of their dogs, Trooper, wants to rip the flesh from my body and I can't sit down and Jesse (my brother's g/f) is just holding him calling him a "good dog". Uh, no. That's not my definition of a good dog.

Eventually, we get to talking and laughing and it's all ok. I'm too tired from the trip to think and they ask me what music I want to listen to. I don't care, I seriously, really, truly, honestly don't care, but they keep asking. I probably should have cared though because she decided to put on some gansta rap at top (no conversation, even sign language can't be heard over this) volume. Eventually they put on something else but I think it was that moment I decided I didn't like her. "Hi, welcome to our home" "You must be tired after your long drive and the terrorisation of our pet, let me soothe and comfort you with the soft sound of DEATH"

They made a nice room for me and I settled in exhausted. I left the door open a crack hoping one of the cats would crawl into bed and snuggle like my cats at home do. At one point I rolled over and about 1/2" from my ear I hear this low, menacing growl. I don't breathe, I don't so much as twitch a muscle. I learned this technique of utter stillness riding on the NYC subway through East New York, who thought it would come in handy when bundled in a cozy country bed? The dog then proceeds to bark at me for 20 solid minutes. This does not wake my hosts. I can't move because I need my legs and he's sure to eat one. Eventually he decides my motionlessness means I'm dead and goes into the hall. I creep to the door and close it. He barks at the closed door for 1/2 hour. This still wakes no one else. I don't sleep so well.

The next morning we go to the tulip fest. This is where I learn to really despise Jesse. She does not stop complaining about anything and everything the whole time. "why are we walking here" "why are you eating that, can't you chew?" "where are the tulips" "look at that guy peeing on a tree" "I thought dogs weren't allowed in here" "look at those girls all tan, what a waste of time tanning is" STFU ALREADY.

I have to say this. My brother used to be very aggressive and a tad violent. He maintains his cool so, soooo well now. They've been going together for 7 years and maybe this is how it is for people after awhile. She bitches, he tunes out, they live happily ever after. I don't know, it was hard to walk into unexpectedly. My relationships usually end long before the bitching point. I got the feeling she was hoping for an ally, someone to say "yeah, Eric, why are you doing this or that?" She found no ally in me, he did nothing wrong. If you are in a relationship and you're female and you do this...STFU, PLEASE. You should hear what you sound like. The tulip festival was fun anyway, we had laughs and good food and made fun of the freak show that was the crowd.

After the festival we went to a barbecue at one of their friend's homes. This is never a comfortable situation for me. I don't socialize a lot anymore and I'm pretty quiet even around my own friends. Put in a circumstance where I know no one and I'm destined to be the wallflower. At the same time, I don't want to be the wallflower. I know the wallflower gets "talked about" more than anyone after the party. "Did you see her?" "What was her problem?" "Weren't we good enough to talk to?" It's nothing to do with them but if you don't socialize everyone thinks it's a matter of being not good enough to be talked to...so...I tried to find a niche. Everyone migrated to the garage and fired up blunts and bongs and what have you. It's not something I indulge in with any frequency anymore. An occasional hit when I know I'm not going anywhere for awhile but not toke after toke. I took a few hits, drank a beer, drank a few concoctions people made (quite good, vodka and some kind of twister thing) and then they set up poker (next best thing to a pool game). I coerced my brother and Jesse to play...everyone played.

At some point it came down to me and "their best poker player" as one person put it. We were both all in, he had $30 more in chips than I did (this, let me add, was not real money or I'd have lost by the second hand). I kicked his ass. We left. I'm pretty sure no one is speaking to my brother anymore :D

The next night was a little better for sleeping. The dog was outside and Jack the cat (who I couldn't help but call Jax or Jaxom) curled up with me to sleep, he even put his paw around me. The dog didn't growl at me too much the next morning and we had a nice breakfast with Jesse's mom (now I know where she gets it) and her grandma (who I really like).

All in all, I had a good time and while I'm glad I don't have to live with Jesse I think she's been good for my brother. They have a nice life and wonderful little farm and I'm so very happy for them. I'll go back to visit, I've even entertained moving to that area...we'll see.

But all in all...it's good to be home.

2004-05-07T11:43:00.000-04:00

Last blog for a few days...

I'm off to upstate NY for the weekend. Catskill to be exact. I've been through there once before, accidently. I was on my way home from Albany and was admiring how well my 3 year old windshield wipers were working in the horrible storm I was travelling in along the NY Thruway and at just that moment the one on the driver side (the one I needed) flew off into oblivion. So I crept along the shoulder until I got to the next exit, which was Catskill. At the end of the ramp was a convenience store where apparently the cast of "Deliverance" works. I asked if they carried windshield wipers and I swear the kid behind the counter stood there, mouth agape, a line of drool hanging from his lower lip. He slowly mouthed the word windshield wiper. I made a swiping motion with my hand, which I think frightened him. I suppose I'm lucky I didn't get burned as a witch.

Yeah, even with that memory still crystal clear in my mind I'm venturing back there.

My brother lives on a farm in Catskill. Not a working farm a "drop your stray critter off here" farm. He has cats, dogs, goats and chickens. Most of the chickens roost in the trees, but apparently they have a "house chicken" that is imprinted on his cats. Also I understand that some of the goats meander into the house, this should be interesting. I hope they don't steal the covers...it gets cold up there at night.

Before I leave I have a ton of chores to do which I'm procrastinating doing and rationalizing away about what *really* needs to be done. Eventually I'll have found a reason not to do any of them and still won't get on the road at a reasonable time. I'm a master procrastinator, that really should be a craft, it takes really skill to find avoidance techniques and excuses without feeling guilty.

Hope everyone has a good weekend, I expect to see everyone's blog updated so I will have good reading material when I get back (I'll need some excuse to avoid having to unpack).

Bye...(hope my car holds out)

2004-05-06T09:02:00.000-04:00

Added some new links today. Nothing much else to post (or that I feel like posting rather) for now, go read someone else's blog! :P

2004-05-05T09:56:00.000-04:00

Welp, gotta go to work today. I don't have to, I mean there's no gun pointed to my head, but I still like food and that's where the money comes from, so I "gotta". Of all the temporary, part-time, god-awful jobs I've had this one isn't too bad. Boss-wise the guy is great, totally easy going, no pressure, gives me the stuff, tells me what he needs and lets me deal with it. He just called and said "we talked about you 'stopping by' today". "Stopping by" ...I like that. He wanted to know what time, and I told him. How easy!!! On top of that he pays me well and in cash. The drawback (there's always one, you knew it was coming, right?) the work itself. I'm organizing the mess his divorce has become, or rather, the after-divorce which has been going on for 9 years...NINE YEARS.

People who have money fight over the stupidest things. Truly the guy's wife is a bitch but he won't let go of the silly stuff either. Who knows what they've run up in lawyers fees, forensic accountant fees (yeah, cause when you got money you need a forensic accountant to ferret it out), court costs, expert witnesses, etc. Not to mention the hurt feelings, alienation of their children and therapist costs.

His major issue is having to pay his ex $24 a month in alimony. She doesn't need the money, she makes $75,000 a year and got a large inheritance from her father's estate. I see his point BUT...why are you willing to spend thousands in legal costs just to avoid that? He can afford it, he makes in excess of $100,000 a year, it's a pittance. It's all "the principal". Isn't there a time when you just say "this is stupid, here's your money, be gone with you?"

Hey, but I'm willing to take a little piece of this action. I'll happily organize your legal documents, type up your motions, make lists of your assets and debts. I might even tell you you're right, because based on principal you are, based on intellect you're dumb but heck you're right and that's what counts isn't it?

Gotta wonder.

2004-05-04T11:06:00.000-04:00

First phone call of the day comes from Sue (see post of April 30th for insight). She informs me it's her, she has no idea how distinctive her voice is, nor that it's volume is a dead giveaway. She is babbling about speakers and road-blocks. I have a spare set of computer speakers she wants (and if Sue wants something she will chase you to your grave to get it). They are cheap and I don't need them so I offered them to her. She is going to come by and pick them up but apparently whatever road she's on there are police roadblocks. They are stopping uninsured drivers. She is an uninsured driver. She spent all her money on a new car and the remainder goes towards drinking in pubs at least 4 times a week, certainly there's no money left for insurance. I'll put the speakers on the bench in front of the house so I won't have to have a close encounter with her, but I'll be getting a call in about an hour asking how to hook them up or why her sound card doesn't work.

I have a lot of stuff to do today and no motivation to do it. I've got to clean this house and pack and get to the store. It's already late morning and I'm still sipping coffee and bumming in my jammies. Seems the more I have to do the more I drag my feet, must be a law of physics at work. Guess I should mow the lawn too, it's about a foot high. Wonder if there's someplace I can rent a goat.

2004-05-03T16:42:00.000-04:00

YAY!!! I'm happy to say the petition has worked and iZ now has a shiny new blog. From what I've read so far it's great, how could it not be? So please, look to the right and scroll to his link and enjoy! :)

2004-05-03T13:24:00.000-04:00

Oh yeah, I'm starting a petition, right here on this blog page, to get iZ to start his own blog. I'm sure he has something to say, nobody is THAT quiet. Besides, he's like a humor sniper. He's all quiet, sometimes for hours and then all of a sudden he comes out of nowhere with some funny line, then goes back into hiding. I think he needs to blog and I intend to get him to start one...if you agree then post a comment.

C'mon iZ, it's time to let your font be heard!!!

2004-05-03T13:22:00.000-04:00

Decided to give my blog a new look. It's not exactly where I want it to be yet but it's getting there. I have a few more tweaks I want to do. It's been so long since I coded and things have changed a bit, now there's all sorts of javacssdhtmlbleh. It's not simply background= and text=...ah, the good old days where a blinking banner was the only annoying part of webdesign.

Played poker with kitten, hb, iZ, Sliq, Scarlette, MC, Galoot, D1, Groggie, Chris!!!!, moonman and a few other folks who frequent the worth chat rooms/forums. It was so much fun. Sliq was the big winner of the evening and moonman was nipping his heels. Hb probably would have mopped the floor with all of us if she'd gotten there earlier. Looks like this might be a regular Sunday night event. Maybe I'll get so good I'll be in next year's World Poker Tournament on ESPN. It's easy to have a poker face over the net, well except for Chris due to his addiction to !!! :).

2004-04-30T16:02:00.000-04:00

I've got a birthday party to go to tonight. As much as I love Sandy and want to celebrate her birthday I do not want to go to this party. That's mostly because of the other people that will be there. They get drunk and loud and incoherent, yet they insist on speaking and they try to talk over each other and it just gets louder and louder and none of it is intelligible. This leaves me nodding and smiling a lot because I don't really know what they're saying but I refuse to ask them to repeat it.

I'll give you a synopsis of the party and it's key players (the usual suspects) because well, if I have to suffer...misery loves company, so join me:

Sandy (hostess and birthday girl, sweet, intelligent warm...love her)
Darren (host and hubby of Sandy, sweet, bright, great in a spirited debate)
SuperSue (aka catlady, owns 30+ cats, loud when sober, loud and incoherent when not sober)
Jay (boyfriend of SuperSue and totally obnoxious drunk, whispers things to me such as "When I break up with Sue it'll be you and me, right?" Not unless I happen to be in a persistant vegetative state, Jay)
Mary (always accompanied by Pat, sweet, reserved, tragic Mary, never stays at the party long, would be fine if she would not bring Pat along as Pat can't drive and usually won't show by herself.)
Pat (always accompanied by Mary, loud, always has a new affliction, rarely "had time to" pick up something for herself to drink at the party and always covets what I'm drinking, several slices short of a baloney sammich)
Kokomo (don't know his real name, is on a continual marijuana buzz, mumbles stuff and laughs at nothing in particular, eyes are usually 2 slits)
Foot (my ex-boyfriend. Likely he won't show up tonight but then again has a tendency to show at these things with his babe-du-jour just to make sure I see her, ignoring him does not work, he's there to make sure I notice him and will find a way to get that done)
Tim (has been barred from parties at Sandy and Darren's due to his total obnoxiousness and the fact that he burns the furniture, rugs etc.)

There are varying other players that come and go, most are pleasant but have the good sense to leave after a short time.

One of the things we like to do is play games, board games, cards, yahtzee (we make up different rules). This always seems like a good idea and rarely is. Invariably there's a 40 minute argument about what game we play another 30 minutes deciding who will play, 20 minutes explaining the rules to Pat for the umpteenth time, 15 minutes to get Jay to shut up and eventually to get Jay and Sue to stop shouting shut up at one another...got all that? Ok, eventually we get down to playing the game and that's fun for a while. Till another Jay/Sue fight ensues or Darren starts debating the validity of someone's response (as in Trivial Pursuit) with another member and everything is halted.

At some point Jay will go to the stereo and find some Acid Death Metal Rock which he will put on and crank up to top volume, it being around 2 am this sets Darren and Sandy off because of the neighbors. Of course, Jay can't hear them yelling because the music drowns them out. Meanwhile Jay is bouncing around the room playing air guitar and singing badly and loudly to some song, usually not the one playing.

On occasion one of the men will drop trou and share his hairy and/or pimply butt with the room at large.

Yep that about sums it up. Why do I go you ask? Because I like Sandy and she would be highly offended if I did not go and my friendship with her means enough to me to suffer through this. It's her birthday, her 40th, it's only going to come once, I can beg off another party, but this one's important.

Ok, I'm leaving soon...cover me!

2004-04-28T12:06:00.000-04:00

While shopping at the grocery store it occurred to me that there's a national disaster (maybe even international) that no one seems to be talking about. I'm referring to the shortage of cows! Yes, COWS! That must be it, there is nothing else to explain the price of a gallon of milk.

In some parts of the U.S. gasoline is going for over $2.00/gallon and people are outraged. Naturally the stuff is imported in very expensive, double-hulled oil tankers, then shipped via truck or rail to a refinery where it goes through some magic process to become gasoline. It's a fossil fuel, that is in short supply and is not renewable in our lifetimes. Certainly it's expensive, but that really seems logical to me (it's a lot more expensive in other countries).

In the Northeastern US milk is at or above $3.00 a gallon. As far as I know you get a cow, you milk it, you put the milk through a "homogenization" process (which I think merely involves heat) and then you bottle and ship it to the grocery store. As far as I know there are no threats of a hazardous dairy spill so that takes a bit of the expense out (no DOT, Hazmat, special double-hulled trucks). If a duck gets covered in milk it's pretty much going to waddle off, albeit, it may fuss a bit.

Ok, there's refrigeration and most milkers are automated and there's all the hormones we have to feed the cows but pretty much they're a renewable resource. Unless there's something I don't know about cow reproduction (and frankly, I'll keep it that way if there is) I don't think we'll be running out of cows anytime soon. As I drive through farm country I see hundreds, maybe thousands of cows grazing on grass, are they cardboard cut outs, are they holgrams? Am I "mooing" out the car window at them in vain?

Why are we not hysterical about this? Imagine if we run out of cows...no milk, no yogurt, no ice cream, no cheese!!! Oh wait...we have goats, (but goat ice cream just doesn't sound appealing does it?) I say we rally people, we must make others aware of this dilemma, we must have government intervention to ensure that we never run out of the bovine blessings we now take for granted. Are you with me...let's raise our voice to make this travesty known!

SAVE THE COW!!!

2004-04-18T16:41:00.000-04:00

Ever had a dream that you killed someone? I had 2 of these in the past, both times after eating peanut butter during the day. I had to give up peanut butter because the dreams were so disturbing. And really, as supremely lazy as I am it's unlikely I'd ever commit a murder. I just wouldn't be able to get the energy up to do it. Nevertheless, just in case I suddenly got slipped some speed or got a rush of motivation, I gave up peanut butter.

Last night, I had another murderous dream. Not peanut butter induced but I realized that whatever brought it on I still don't have to worry about it actually coming to pass. I know this because in my dream the murder was not premeditated and immediately after I killed this person I realized I'd left all kinds of evidence...like big ol' greasy fingerprints everywhere. I had to remember all the things I'd touched in the moments preceding the act and then I had to find something to wipe up the fingerprints with. In the process of this I ended up leaving even more fingerprints. Then as I'm wiping down EVERY SURFACE IN THE ROOM, I realized that this is entirely too much like housework which I LOATHE! I won't even dust when I have all the time in the world and there I am in a panic trying to scrub every surface.

Guess I can put peanut butter back on the shopping list.

2004-04-17T17:26:00.000-04:00

I pulled a muscle in my shoulder, it's been bothering me all day. So I decided a nap would help, for me a nap cures everything and if it doesn't work the first time, take another nap. Anywaaaay...

I can't sleep, I foolishly put on "A League of Their Own" which for some reason makes me cry like a baby at the end (I'm tearing up now writing about it...wtf is that?) and so I can't get my nap to stick. I switch to some police story garbage and finally I nod off.

I awaken to the noise of a jet engine being run next door...or maybe it was a compressor that sounded like a jet engine. My neighbor is building something. My neighbor is always building something. He built the extension on his house, well he has been building it for 4 years now.

He tore his garage down and put up three huge sheds in it's place. Three. Each year a new shed. He's building an empire.

I have a theory about him. If he ever stops building he will kill all his family members and stash their bodies in the sheds.

If the compressor stops running I'm calling the cops.

2004-04-17T00:09:00.000-04:00

Crows have the power of reanimation.

One early morning, the sun barely cracking the horizon, I'm awaken by a tremendous ruckus happening on the street side of my house. Groggily I make my way to the window and peer through the levelours to see a circle of crows near the utility pole across the street. They are cawing and screeching at top volume. I watch this for awhile and notice that in the center of this circle is a crow, splayed flat on it's back, feet jutting into the air...apparently dead. Nice, a crow funeral. I felt kind of bad for them but really couldn't they mourn quietly? I went back to bed. Over the course of an hour the sound of screaming crows got fainter and fainter. I got up a few times and noted that one by one the crow circle was dissipating.

Finally I could distinguish only the sound of one crow. I looked out again wondering who was going to get the pleasure of cleaning up the dead crow carcass and watched as the last crow did a dance about his deceased companion, wings flapping and cawing his poor lungs out. I went back to bed but gave up trying to sleep and just lay in bed listening.

Then the sound stopped altogether. I had to look. There was one crow out there...one...not one and a dead one, one live walking around crow. I watched as he just stood there for some time, silently. After several minutes he flew off. The dead crow had been revived, fully recovered and flew off to join his friends!

Dunno, still kind of haunts me.

2004-04-15T18:22:00.000-04:00

I have apparently just broken the blogger application. I get a message that "an internal server error has occurred" and I should notify the blogmaster and inform him of what I did to break it. All I did was blog, so apparently I am so boring that the server has cut me off. *sigh*

It's having a ripple affect as several other blogger friends are now caught in my error vortex of doom. Bwahahahaha. Soon all your blogs will fail! I will be the evil overlord (lady) of the blogging world....fear me.

I need a nap, where's my blankie?

2004-04-15T11:26:00.000-04:00

Ok, day 2 of my blogging experience. I had no original thoughts last night, not that that's so unusual. I tried to make changes to the links but they don't seem to have taken. Not sure, maybe I didn't publish. I'll try again. I tend to not like pre-created html/web stuff and prefer to do my own so I might just change this whole thing up, it's all about the control.

I haven't been going to work. I have a bad infection in my jaw which, while it's currently on the mend, is very unpleasant and uncomfortable. Also, I dislike my job. It's only part time, the people are very nice, but it's boring and not what I want to do. I need to carve out a new niche and get over this inertia in my life.

I'll post more later when I have a better grip on this whole blog set up.

2004-04-14T13:18:00.000-04:00

I want to start this blog out on a happy note, unfortunately my old trusty user name was not available and I had to modify it slightly. I've had that user name since time immemorial, or at least the last 13 years (when you have a bad memory, there's really no difference between infinity and last night, it's all ancient history). Anyway, someone appears to be squatting on my user name, worse yet, that someone could actually be me and I've merely forgotten the password. So I don't know who to be angry with...well, that's the way it goes.

Let's hope I'll have better news to post, or at least something more interesting. I'm not a great writer and lead a rather dull existence so let's see if any of those ingenious ideas and thoughts that come to me in the middle of the night, yet which I neither write down, nor share with others due to the late hour, still seem as clever in the scrutiny of broad daylight.