Less Is Bore

I've been very busy wallowing lately for the following 2 reasons:

1. My back has been out and I've been writhing in pain and braying like a donkey every time I make too sudden a move. It scares the hell out of our cat and it's no fun for me either. MDH has been very sweet to me, fetching and carrying and tolerant of my disturbing uncontrollable pain noises.

2. I got a call from HR on Monday that I will not be considered for the position I have been campaigning for like a madwoman. Not even an interview - which, until late Wednesday afternoon caused the words "no chance, no chance, no chance" to spin thru my head like the worlds most depressing mantra.

I'm humiliated. The fact that many big-wig people with fancy titles and upper management type of clout were helping me (which is why I was referring to it as "the campaign", and came by to tell me I was robbed, is about the only thing that held me together all week. I would have been excellent at that job and their policy of always hiring internal candidates is their sucky loss. The person they hired is a jack ass.

At least a real live human being was nice enough to call me with the bad news, rather than the dreaded robo-email that I despise so much. Anyhoo... I'm done with these assholes. I can't take it anymore. They don't deserve me so I'm not going to apply for any more positions there, unless the one that I'm already in becomes available as a permanent post. It's just too heartbreaking.

So it's Saturday and I've recovered a bit from my pain and humiliation and decided to celebrate with a little retail therapy. Here are some photos from today's haul:

When recovering from this kind of slump one pair of cheap shoes just won't do. Back pain and job related humiliation definitely call for 2 pair.

Beauty and personal care products must be purchased in abundance to get oneself fully onto the road to recovery.

Opening the windows to fresh spring air is one of the better ways I can think of to dry my tears.

Here are some pictures of our cat Turtle enjoying the weather:

In the breakfast nook:

Waiting at the front door for his pal the mailman.

Quickly, quickly

Computer problems are so frustrating.

I've just recovered from the most annoying Trojan thingy that I accidentally downloaded about a month ago and now my power supply and fan seem to have gotten together behind my back and designed an elaborate plot to drive me completely insane.

Eventually I'm going to have to bust the machine open and replace them both, but until then the computer will run normally for an undetermined period of time, anywhere between half an hour and all the way up to 3 hours, and then as I live and breathe, mock my very character by suddenly making a shrill noise and then completely shutting down for no discernible reason.

It happened the other night when I was experimenting with new templates for my blog. Some of you may have seen the results of my experiment briefly. It was sort of cute. A black background with pink text and some flowery, swirly things. I was just playing around and then out of nowhere the fan on my computer started making this sound so loud, at once chugging and whining, I thought a helicopter might be trying to land in there. And then the power cut off. Snap.

Then it got very quiet.

The only sound was my blood boiling.

When I booted back up the pink flowery theme was still there and all my widgets were gone.

Anyhoo... I was so angry that I figured the best thing to do was just turn the fuckin' thing off and walk away. Just walk away, rather than yank it free from all of the cables and cords, drop kick it out to the driveway and run over it a couple of times with my car, as of course was my first impulse.

I'm back now. I put my old template back (as you may see) tonight. Perhaps it's a little bit boring, and maybe I'll change my template when I find the right one or figure out how to design my own. It's going to take me awhile to rebuild my widgits. I thought that I backed them up, but alas, no.

So I was thinking about my younger days, back in simpler times before indoor plumbing, electricity and cell phones. Back when the only video game was Pong, everyone thought high fructose corn syrup was delicious and good for you and Aids was a candy you could eat to lose weight (although it was spelled differently). I was thinking about a time when there were no computers and I had to type all of my term papers on a manual typewriter, and how excited I was to get an electric typewriter for graduation. Twenty-three skiddoo. Fancy me.

I've got to wrap this up quickly because my computer is starting to make that weird helicoper noise again so I know my time here on the blogs this evening is limited. Whatever. Are you still reading this? There's no real point to this post other than that my computer is taking a big shit and instead of ordering the parts, cracking it open and fixing it I'd apparently rather wax nostalgic about the typewriter I got for high school graduation instead of a car like all my friends.

My apologies for any typos and/or spelling errors.

Pants Noise

Today I wore a pair of shoes that are a winning combination of cute and comfortable. I hardly ever wear them and when I took them down from the top shelf of my closet and pulled them out of the box, I was thinking to myself - Oh, I love these shoes, why don't I ever wear them?

Because they make an irritating rubbery squishing noise with every step - that's why.

They make a noise like wet socks inside a pair of rubber boots, but of course I didn't remember this until I was well on my way and it was too late to turn back and get another pair.

In addition to this I wore one of my newer pairs of wide-leg khaki trousers. They make a soft, swishing sound that is also pretty annoying after awhile.

So between the shoes and the pants I sounded like a one man band.

I was self conscious about it all day to the point that I made a contest with myself to see how long I could go without getting up to do anything. Pretty long actually. I made it until around 12:30. When I finally couldn't take it any more and got up to go to the break room to heat up my lunch (there was no way I was going to eat cold soup from a can) enough time had gone by for my feet to stir up a little moisture and a new delightful farting noise was now added to the mix for accompaniment.

Great.

Round about this time (12:50, to be exact) a reminder popped up on my calendar for a meeting I needed to attend - on the other side of the fucking compound. Seriously it's a very big place - the meeting was half a mile away. No joke.

It took me 11 laboriously noisy hours to walk there. Farting, swishing and squishing all the way. Of course I got there late and had to walk all the way to the back of the room to find a seat.

Marvelous.

Anyhoo... the first thing I did when I arrived home this evening was rip these shoes from my feet and ceremoniously slam them into the trash. I said, "Take that you noisy motherfuckers".

Then I unceremoniously pulled them out of the trash, put them back into their box, placed a post it note on top of the box that says simply, "Farts", and placed the box back on the top closet shelf. At least next time I'll know why I never wear them.

The title of the post is a little inside joke because when I was in middle school I had a friend named Dana whose mother was into some weird rattle-snake frenching religion and thought that everything having to do with the human body was dirty and any mention of a body part or body function was a dirty word. She was kinda like Carrie's mom.

Dana's mother once washed her mouth out with soap for saying the word "pimple". Her mother created an alternate language for such things:

Zit/Pimple = Place on your face

Fart = Pants noise

Vagina = Special place

Butt/Ass = Seat

Crazy Bitch = Mother

That's all I can remember, but "Pants Noise" always gave me a giggle and when Amy's daughter LBL was a baby, that was one of my favorite nicknames for her.

Not a Fan

I cannot tell you how fucking sick and tired I am of the NBA play offs. I'm sorry to drop an f-bomb on you in the first sentence of my post, but I'm pretty sure that the Boston Celtics have been playing the Detroit Pistons every weeknight for about 6 months straight and I. Have. Had. Enough. Of. This.

Unfortunately for us both, the love of my life is a crazed Boston sports fan, whilst I on the other hand, couldn't possibly give less of a shit about sports. He doesn't paint himself up or dress in a Leprechaun outfit or anything (although that would be pretty amusing given that he is a giant swarthy, Portuguese guy), but you can bet he does everything in his power to make sure he never misses a game. There are serious problems under this roof when there is overlapping like the kind we are experiencing these days when basketball season runs into baseball season and the Celtics are playing at the same time as the Red Sox.

For me the Celtics being in the playoffs this year is kind of like that movie Groundhog Day. The one where Bill Murray wakes up every morning and relives the same day over and over and over again. This is very similar to my experience lately of coming home every single night of the goddamn week and seeing the Celtics and the Pistons on my television.

We couldn't even escape them on our vacation. We flew out of Detroit to save about $400 on our airfare and drove up and stayed at a hotel near the airport the night before our flight to Orlando. I left the room for like a second to go to the bathroom and when I came out the fucking Celtics were playing the fucking Pistons. They haunt me.

You can imagine I'm sure my reaction then when last week MDH was able to score two tickets to tonight's installment of the never ending Celtics V Pistons game in Detroit. The man actually expected that I might go with him to the game. What a silly!

It was all I could do to restrain myself and decline politely. I begged sweetly off with the excuse that I needed to do our post vacation laundry and didn't want to drive to Detroit after a long work week, rather than scream at him that I as far as I was concerned the Pistons and the Celtics could all die in a fire.

Of course that's a bit harsh. I really don't wish that on anyone. I merely want them to lose interest, as I and any other reasonable person have done, and stop playing. Take a fucking break guys.

I have really been looking forward to having this time to myself. Funnily enough since MDH was going to watch the game in person I had planned to spend a completely basketball free evening and behold what my typing fingers have produced.

Anyhoo... since I'm obviously in the mood I will share with you some other things that I am also not a fan of:

1. The woman at the post office drive up mail box who sat in her car obliviously putting stamps on all of her envelopes while a long line of cars piled up behind her.

2. She is probably married to the guy at the drive up bank teller who waits until he is at the thingy to sign his check. I hate him too.

3. My neighbors whose cat I always used to see roaming around the neighborhood and twice caught shitting in my window box who have now been passing out fliers to help them find their missing cat. Oh boo-hoo. If you were really that worried about the welfare of your cat you wouldn't let him run around outside in the first place. I'm sure he probably shat in the wrong window box. (I realize there are those who would argue that it is more natural for cats to roam around free outside, but the risk you take is that there is a 100% chance that some shit will happen to them; hit by car, virus, animal attacks, fleas, ticks, you name it. Inside cats have more than triple the life expectancy of outdoor cats. That's a fact Jack.)

4. Returning from our vacation and realizing that before we left, in an effort to save energy, my darling had unplugged all of the power strips in the house, including the one that our cable box is plugged into. Hence none of the shows I had set to record on the DVR did so. Shows that included the season finale to Grey's Anatomy. Mother fuck.

In other more cuddly and happy cat news - I found this baby picture the other day of our cat Turtle. It's his picture from our vets adoption website. He weighs almost 17 lbs now and looks like a freaking mountain lion.

UPDATE: 1:09AM - I wrestled with the imagery of the words "die in a fire" and decided to go with it because for some reason it seemed funny to me. Upon further reflection I realized that there was no way possible that someone as timid and sweet natured as me could have come up with that all by myself and then remembered a post from several months ago that I am going to blame for this violent inspiration. The Guv'ner makes everything seem funny.