N-U-G-G-E-T-S
There is a woman at my job who spells "Arkansas" as "Arcansaw." Seriously. This same woman apparently inhabits a universe in which you can board a plane in Raley, North Carolina or North Folk, Virginia. I suggested to a supervisor that we make up a sheet which lists the spelling of common cities of origin, both domestic and international, so that we could help this woman out without making it obvious that her lack of spelling skills is a problem. Although I'm still having the greatest time laughing at these mistakes, I realize that they could really make life difficult for the people who are taking these trips.
Final note: my brother, who works for the same company as I do, told me about how this same woman spelled a certain Canadian city as "Taran." Apparently, he said, not only is the "to" silent, it's also invisible. And let's not even talk about the missing "o."
Still haven't found what I'm looking for...
I need a new job. It doesn't have to pay much (more than my current job), but I'd like to be able to leave my place of employment not hating everyone who works with me. I look in the classifieds, both in the papers and online, but so far, nothing. It depresses me that the nursery school where I applied doesn't think I'm worth $8 an hour. I have experience working in a nursey school. And a BA. Two, actually.
I should have gone to grad school.
Snood
My cordless mouse no longer works properly. It's one of those laser things. Anyway, I think that playing Snood has ruined my mouse. I have no proof that Snood is to blame, but my last mouse died a similar death. Optical! I just remembered that that's what you call my mouse. My last mouse was not optical, but it died anyway.
Tiredness + Stream of consciousness = The previous paragraph.
My friends and I walk into a pharmacy today, and were completely amazed by the store's wide selection of alcohol. There was quite an impressive variety of beers, wines, and hard liquor. They even had Yuengling Black and Tan...
Why didn't we know about this place sooner?
Damn
My mom had surgery yesterday, so I am going to visit her at the hospital. I was going to take the 11 am bus, but at 10:46 I was still in my pjs, sending out my resume. I hauled it and packed all that I needed to take to her, bathed, dressed, and did my hair. I walked briskly to the bus stop, and wondered if I'd missed it. A few minutes later, the bus came...Yay! But...no. Because it was the right number, but they alternate destinations, and the bus that I want won't come for another hour. I busted it for nothing. I feel robbed.
Template
I really want to have a new template for my blog, but I never remember to look for one except for times like now, when I have absolutely no time.
I'll have to work on that.
I just got stuck in an elevator on my way up to my company's floor. It was only for about 15 seconds, but it freaked me out. When the power went back on, the car returned to the floor we'd just left. I got out and walked the four flights of stairs to my job.
Play it again, Sam
I become obsessed with a new song once or twice a week. The first song of the week was
Gavin DeGraw's "Follow Through," which is such a pretty song. Then I got his cd in the mail yesterday (from Barnes & Noble, not from some shady connection...although I wish), along with that of
Josh Kelley, which I'd bought because it was cheap. Anyway, after listening to "Follow Through" several times, I finished that cd and moved onto Josh Kelley. I was making a goody box for a friend and also watching baseball, so I wasn't paying too much attention to the music. Then, last night, on my second or third listen, I heard this beautiful song called "Home to Me." I am a sucker for a good love song, and this one is just so sweet. I need a boyfriend.
Anyway, I guess it's a good thing that I don't have a roommate, or else he or should would probably already microwaved each of these cds, which would be understandable. I had a roommate in college who would always play the same two mp3s: "Strawberry Wine" and "Eternal Flame." After realizing that hearing the music of other artists wasn't likely to make her start listening to anything but these two songs, I spent countless hours just plotting "accidents" for her stupid computer.
...and a dollar short
I was standing in my kitchen when I heard a sort of gurgling noise coming from outside. I looked out the window and saw that my next door neighbors have cleaned out their swimming pool and are currently in the process of filling it with water.
That's right, folks. Less than two weeks before the official end of summer, and only one day before Hurricane Isabel is supposed to touch down on the Eastern seaboard, and these fools are filling up their pool.
These are the same neighbors who let their pool stand empty all summer, covered by a tarp and presumably dirty. They haven't used their pool all year, which is amazing, considering the heat and humidity that make up a Jersey summer. What possible reason could they have for opening it up now?
That's just bizarre.
Career Opportunity?
I often hate my job. When I applied for it, the woman who interviewed me asked me point blank, "Why do you want this job? You are wildly overqualified for this position." I have no idea how I answered that, but it must have sounded good, because she hired me.
The thing is, I really am overqualified for my job. In fact, I think that anyone with a basic command of the English language and a modicum of common sense would be overqualified for this position. I sit down and arrange car reservations for snotty people, most of whom have academic degrees similar to my own. I am especially galled by the way that they treat me as though I am completely deficient, since I know that I could do their job. Still, my goal is to travel, and there's no reason for me to get a desk job, only to walk away from it within a year, even if I would earn more money and (hopefully) be treated with more respect.
It continues to chap my ass that I am supervised by people who consistently employ double negatives and use the word "ain't" as though it's going out of style and who, furthermore, do this while conversing with clients. As a former proofreader, I am also dismayed by the company memos (marked "Interoffice," as though we're anything but a collection of semi-cubicles) where punctuation and sentence structure is definitely optional, and second grade-level vocabulary words, such as "their," are spelled incorrectly.
But. The woman who hired me was recently fired. While I did like her as a person, she was blocking me from changing my hours, which currently suck. It should be unlawful to make 22-year-old women work 12 hours straight on Saturday and Sunday each.
When I go into work later today, I'm going to approach the replacement supervisor, who seems slightly anxious to curry our favor, and ask her if my hours couldn't possibly be changed. The company is hiring anyway, so why not see if they can stick someone else with my crappy hours?
Wish me luck.
Business in the front...
I don't get the mullet. Honestly. I just don't understand how anyone could do that to their hair, look at him or herself in the mirror and go, "Damn, I look good." Or even, "I don't look so bad." Seriously. It's not as though one just didn't have the time to get one's hair cut, because if one has hair of such wildly uneven lengths, one must have had a haircut at some point.
I went to a baseball game on Wednesday, and I was seated a few rows over from some mid-80s rejects. The woman (I think) had frizzy mess of a salt-and-pepper mullet that perfectly accented her baggy, man's suit jacket and gray, shapeless pants. The guy with her had half of his mullet pulled back from his face, so that only the front fringe was free, all the better to see him in his throwback baseball jersey and Top Gun-era sunglasses.
I don't expect to see mullets in the metropolitan Manhattan area, unless they're completely ironic mullets, worn by people who understand the fashion of irony (the irony of fashion?). When I lived in Virginia, where NASCAR ruled and people proclaimed Moses to be their president, I understood the mullet. It was just further proof that Southerners are inscrutable creatures, not meant to be understood by those of us who didn't grow up making up long names (and excuses) for old wars.
I don't understand the rationale behind mullets, or why anyone would voluntarily wear them, and yet...I am completely fascinated by this hair style.
Move over, MacGyver
Last night, I went out with my ex-boyfriend/friend/possible stalker/who knows? and one of our mutual friends. It was a tense evening, and I've had better times waiting on the endless lines at the DMV.
When I got home, I was annoyed and upset, and all I wanted to do was get ready for bed, go to sleep, and stay asleep for a very long time. To that end, I brushed my teeth, took a swig of ACT, and started putting my acne cream on my face (oooooooh...sexy). As I was finishing up with the cream, I picked up the top to put it back on the tube, at which point it fell into the basin, circled around a couple of times, and then deposited itself directly down the drain.
Great. At this point I had a mouthful of mint ACT that needed to be spit out and a cap that was blocking the drain of my sink.
I tried to stick my fingers down the drain (dirty!) to get it, but no dice; the cap was too far down. Then I used a toothbrush to try to reach it and pull it up. I was able to turn the cap on its side, but it wouldn't come up. Next up was the dental floss; I tore a long-ish strip of it and then tried to tie it into a rope. Did you know that dental floss is too light to be of much use for pretty much anything other than flossing your teeth? You heard it here first, folks. I then tried wire hangers (which I detest, but which the dry cleaner insists on giving me). The first hanger broke when I was reshaping it, and the second was too thick to fit between the cap and the side of the drain. Next I tried to use a nut cracker to clench the cap and pull it up, but that didn't work either. In between all of these tries, I looked under the sink to see if there was anything that I could use. The only thing that I succeeded in doing was to break the latch on one of the cabinet doors.
Better.
Finally, in sheer desperation, I opened the door to the medicine cabinet and my eyes fell on the Bandaids. I pulled one out of the box, pulled the protective strips off of the adhesive sides, and attached one end to one of the legs (?) of the nutcracker. The other end was for the cap, but I didn't have any hope that it would work. I stuck the nutcracker back down the drain, and when I pulled it up, I had the cap!
I was feeling pretty special and smart, and that feeling almost kept me from being completely upset when I awakened this morning. Almost.
Carelessness
I am the best person in the world to tell your secrets to. Why? Because I'll never breathe a word of it. Even if what you tell me is stupid/boring/annoying/horrible/amazingly funny, I simply will not share it unless you give me permission to do so.
I love this about myself, because it makes me feel loyal, but there's one person to whom this does not extend: myself. There are very few things about my life that I can keep to myself. I have a core group of friends who I believe that I can tell anything about myself, and I put my faith on this belief on a regular basis.
I'm a big believer in talking through one's thoughts, which is why I always make myself available to anyone who wants to talk. Still, I feel that my habit of telling pretty much everything about my life is not a good thing. I don't feel like I'm Inappropriate Disclosure Girl, but I know that I could be more circumspect.
My first foray into online journalling was a TMI look into my life, and it left me amazingly unsatisfied. I realized that for me, sharing is only meaningful when its with people to whom I have a connection. This might seem obvious, but I think that it's an accomplishment.
That being said, do you want to hear about my weekend?
Kidding...
