Something Squirrelly this Way Comes

I played a small part in the Overwhelming of an online store this past Monday. See my folks had gotten me Evan and he came with a coupon. The coupon expired on Monday so I had to login & redeem it. It took me 20+ tries to finally get through & get everything squared away. I kept getting knocked out or error messages saying there was a problem on their end. blah blah blah. I was Mightily frustrated to say the least.

However, now, Evan and I are doing pretty well. We have our rough moments mainly because I don't know the lingo or correct operating procedures. I'm working on it though.

And yes, I often name inanimate objects. Have yall forgotten about Melvin already? He's such a handsome guy!

I'm back at work today. It's not so bad. Farily quiet. I had a pile of work awaiting my return - no surprise there. There's also a rumor that we'll get Tuesday off due to the funeral of former President Ford. Federal offices were closed for former President Reagan's funeral so odds are good the same will be repeated. So far it's just a rumor.

Hope everyone had a happy & healthy holiday. I'll try and think of something more exciting for tomorrow. Not just bland update-y stuff. Maybe how I helped overwhelm a large corporation's website on Monday....

Howdy all. Hope everyone has had a great holiday. The family and I took a mini-car trip to see the Picktown Lights. Excellent stuff! Fifteen houses all synchronized to the same music being broadcast over their own radio frequency. If you're in the area, go go go! (as JT says).

It's felt like Friday all week to me. Well, except for Sunday. Sunday felt like Sunday. Today is Finally my Friday of the week since I had the good sense to take the next two days off. Am I a smart cookie or what?

For those astronomically interested the new moon is today, the winter solstice is tomorrow (7.22 pm EST) and you can see the space shuttle and international space station just above the southern horizon around 5.50 tonight (eastern time). Enjoy!

There is also a pizza party, excuse me "Holiday Refreshments and an In-House Luncheon", today for one of the companies I work for (being a contractor is a confusing mess at times). The two main peeps organizing it were talking about having Kenny G as the music. Yes, that sound you hear is my inner screaming & possibly my eardrums imploding. Maybe I can stuff some crudite in my ears to block out the noise, noise, noise, noise, Noise, NOISE! (like my Grinch reference?)

Bright note! Canes won last night! Waahooo! Watched the Penguins game. The Blues skated All Over them! Man. I felt bad for B.

After searching all over the flipping grocery store (two stores in fact!) to find lemon juice to make my lemon bars and then have them come out tasting NOT lemony is mildly irritating. Okay, Hugely frustrating. I even added More lemon juice than was called for as I adore tart foods.

I baked the crust for a shorter time than indicated, added the filling, baked it again - as per instructions. I made the icing. I had to add a Lot of lemon juice to taste the lemons over the powdered sugar. I put in the fridge to set up.

Last night I took them out, attempted to cut them & had one. They're disgusting! You can't taste the lemon At All. The icing is still runny. The crust is Burnt. Gah! So I won't be giving yall the recipe as IT needs to be destroyed & banned from all existence. Taunting me with its lemony goodness only to have disgusting, super sweet, messy, sticky ickyness.

On the bright side, today is Tuesday and the BlueJackets beat the RedWings last night.

Okay so blogger must've been hungover this morning as I couldn't access it. The party fiend. I wonder if it was hanging out with Cupcake this weekend....

Anywho, today was our "holiday lunch". We went to Ted's Montana Grill. I had a steak (cow not bison) that was pretty darn tasty, if a little salty. Despite being at a steakhouse, I managed to be surrounded by people eating seafood. Oy. The headache, mild nausea, coughing & watery eyes didn't stop me from enjoying the free meal though. Sitting near one of the VP's wasn't ideal but at least I was next to Kelp. She's always good for entertainment :)

Over the weekend I spent a dizzying amount of time looking for lemon juice at the grocery store. I ended up calling my mom and asking her where else I should look. I needed a fair amount so those little plastic bottles in the produce section wasn't going to cut it, especially considering how pricey they are. I finally found it (after finding an English speaking person & being directed to the powdered drinks aisle).

I made some more of my Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies on Sunday. The same ones that I made last year. This time I didn't goof up the sugar tho I did grate my thumb again. And the cookies are itty bitty. They're still sweeter & chocolate-ier than I prefer. Maybe because I didn't have quite enough of the powdered ginger. I used all I had and I wasn't about to go back out to the grocery store for more. I'd had enough of grocery stores on Saturday. I even added more of the freshly grated. Ah well, live & learn.

I also made some lemon squares (hence my need for lemon juice). I haven't tried those yet to see if they're tart enough. I figure I'll try them out tonight when I cut them up for transport into work tomorrow.

I'm back at work today. I don't mind work, not really. It's not as stressful this time of year as the one job I do is slow. The other job (and a half) I do fluctuates in amounts, currently it's slow as well. What I mostly mind is a couple of people I indirectly work with. Both of 'em ooze management slime everywhere they go. You can tell where they've been by the shiny, slimey trails on the carpet and the people you encounter who look like they need Bill Murray to give them tips on how to de-goo their hair.

So yeah, the head still hurts but the queasiness & fever are gone. Yippee. Tonight, to celebrate, I'll put everything back in my closets that I took out for the mice inspection & patching. Do I know how to spend my Friday nights or what?

I can't blame blogger for no entry this morning. I can't even claim I forgot as I didn't. I just didn't feel like getting up off the couch, turning on the puter and writing something. Maybe it's hockey withdrawals?

The maintenance man came in to patch any holes from MICE in my kitchen while I was at the store. I'm rather alarmed by this. Have my neighbors spotted mice? I haven't seen any evidence of mice but it sounded like he was scrunching up paper in his hand. Like he had unwrapped something.

I was on the couch again, having exhausted myself on the ginger ale, cranberry juice & stick butter run to the grocery store. He was wrapping things up when I got back as all appliances were back in their spots. It was a tad unnerving to come home and have a strange man standing in my kitchen.

Funny thing. Guy who was doing the mice hole patching was the same guy who didn't want to come out and stop my sink from backfilling last Thursday. He didn't sound the same though. Totally different accent but the name & handwriting on the maintenance forms are the same. I wonder if there are two guys named Mohammad on the maintenance staff. The one who does work, the one who pawns work off on others.

Currently Mohammad (with the work ethic) is moving appliances around above me. Guess he doesn't have to go to the gym tonight.

I get home from work about 5 yesterday evening to find a note stuck on the wall above the mailboxes for my building as well as a note stuck on my doorjamb. Basically, the note said:

Please clean off the floor of all your closets. Remove any items from on top of and around your refrigerator, stove and dishwasher. Maintenance will be coming in either Dec. 13 or 14 to check baseboards for holes.

What in hell is going on here? They give us less than 24 hrs notice to clean out closets AND parts of the kitchen?? What part of their brain makes them think it's okay to give such little notice? They could have told us Last Week that maintenance will be in sometime this week to check these areas. Then I could've begun cleaning out as needed gradually. And not spend my entire evening shoving stuff around. Closets are for storage and I use mine fully for that reason.

Also, the whole searching for holes aspect. What people get holes in their walls BEHIND their appliances??? My kitchen was remodeled just before I moved in (not even two years ago) don't you think that if there were any holes, they'd have been patched then?? If they're talking about holes because of critters, that's something they can Prevent. Is this their way of saying they don't take preventive measures to rid the buildings of any critters (furry or multi-legged)? I just don't get these people.

Thankfully I had some lovely French water as well as some Bermuda water to help me through the chores. I also watched some hockey and the Only version of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Jim Carey is a crappy "actor" and I refuse to watch him. I especially refuse to watch him slaughter a favorite show of mine. I still can't believe that the Dr. Seuss copyright holders okayed those two movies. Poor Ted is prolly still spinning in his grave.

I didn't forget about yall! Honest! I just couldn't get blogger to load. Or any .blogspot.com pages for that matter. Either the IT peeps were being jerks this morn, or blogger was having issues.

The Penguins won last night! Woo! Sadly I gave up on the game about 8.30 when it was 4-1 craptials. Then it goes to an overtime shoot out with a final score of 5-4. Man! I know b was happy at the end result, prolly irked by it having to go OT tho. Of course, maybe the Penguins won because I turned the game off & went to bed so early. If I hadn't done that, the crapitals may have won. So I totally helped the Pens by giving up on them. Yeah! Way to go me!

Unrelatedly, I busted out my Trans-Siberian Orchestra CD & uploaded to the fi-pod. Just love this disk. I'm sure Rach is rolling her eyes at me but that's okay. I already know she's not as Nice as moi ;)

The Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off December 9 at 8:47:35 p.m. Read about the mission at Discovery Launch on NASA's website. There are some pretty spectacular pictures here that are in Macromedia format.

Space.Com also has an article about the launch, Night Lights: Shuttle Discovery Rockets Toward Space Station by Ker Than.

Unrelatedly one year ago I was excited beyond anything and running on very little sleep. I had taken my mom to the U2 show in Cleveland (Dec. 10) - her first U2 show ever and my fifth (fourth of the Vertigo tour). An amazing time. An unforgettable night. I blogged about it last year Feeling Vertiginous, Close Encounter of The Edge Kind. Pictures, emotions, sheer joy. Ahh good times. Here's a picture from song Vertigo.


The highlight being saying something that caused The Edge to laugh (okay, more like chuckle). Getting his autograph was dazzling, being within arms reach of him caused heart palpitations & mouth inoperability but making him laugh. That was priceless.

I spent this past Saturday night listening in to the final ZBA of the Vertigo tour :( U2 wrapped things up in Hawaii. Thanks guys!

Gah! Before I get into my real post I just wanna whine & moan about firefox crashing in the middle of my first draft to this entry. Grrrrr! Argh even.

If you're wondering why I'm posting an entry after midnight yet before 6.30 in the morning it's because I'm too paranoid & wound up to sleep just yet. See my kitchen sink has been backing up with dirty, nasty, vile, greasy, gritty, vomity-smelling water since about 8.30 Thursday night. I called the after hours emergency maintenance line. When I finally got the on-call maintenance guy to call me back he told me it sounded like a clog. Golly gee buddy and here I thought the pipes were flowing just fine. Geez.

Anyway he goes into this "explanation" of how it will be a long and involved process. That he'd have to snake the entire line and take things apart and it'd take awhile and he'd get to it first thing in the morning (which is, apparently, 8.30). I made sure that I would not be responsible for ANY damage that may come from nasty water overflowing from the sink. He said that no, he'd be responsible. I told him that I'd already bailed two potfulls of water down my toilet because the water level was getting high in my sink. Didn't phase him any.

After hanging up with him I called the main office number & left a detailed message there. Remembering my bathroom ceiling incident and how long it took before it was resolved. I decided to go ahead and email the apartment manager too. Both times (voicemail & email)I asked for someone to call me when the problem was fixed & to let me know if there was any damage as I didn't want to come home and be surprised.

In the email I documented both my conversation with the maintenance guy And the message I had left on the machine. See the maintenance guys get in the office before the administrative staff and could, theoretically, delete my message. Basically I was covering my bases so that I can say "Hey! I called and the guy didn't come. Not my fault there's water damage."

I've completely cleared my counter off around my sink as well as under the sink. Only things left on the counter are the three pots I've used to bail out water. At one point I had all three full and the water was 3/4 the way up my sink and still rising. I thought it was over then & there. I managed to dump one pot of water & get back into the kitchen to refill that pot without the vile water rising too much. Currently the sink is empty (*knock on wood*) except for ..particles & lysol residue. The particles are from the nasty water, lysol residue is from yours truly spraying the crap outta the sink & the pots trying to rid the air of the stench. I've currently got some incense burning, it smells much better in here now.

I have to get up in about four hours to get ready for work. I'm nearly ready to go to bed. I just Really don't want to wake up to a sink full of disgusting water or, worse yet, disgusting water on my counter tops, floor and down my cabinets. What are the odds that the maintenance peeps will clean up a mess like that? I mean Clean it, not just wipe it up. Actually busting out some cleaning products. I'm thinking slim to nil on the cleaning products.

Okay so I've rambled long enough that my incense has nearly finished burning. Think I'll put on the pajamas and head to bed. Hopefully I'll get some sleep.

The past three mornings have had some sort of something happen. And not a good kind of something. Tuesday my breakfast went from a harmless bowl of warm goo to Mount Cream of Wheat erupting in the microwave (at work). While cleaning up the pale & grainy lava, I managed to spill my raspberry ice (crystal light) all over my hands & the counter. My hands maintained a reddish tinge the rest of the day.

Wednesday. Well I won't go into that because it's a tad embarassing. Let's just say I was running late & decided to drive to work. While scraping the ice off my car I realized I had forgotten to put on something rather important and I had to run back in and grab it.

Today I was repacking my messenger bag to bring into work and nearly broke my toe. I hit the rim of this thick glass vase that I'm mosaic'ing for my mom and my toe careened off of that into the sturdy plastic drawered container that I store my mosaic tiles in. Basically I stubbed my toe. Twice. Tears instantly formed in my eyes & I may have whimpered some. Okay, a lot. Even had a son of a petri dish pop out of my mouth.

I'm currently eating my pb&j and drinking my diet mt. dew. Comfort breakfast of champions, I tell ya. Plus I don't think I can face another CoW Volcano this morning.

I feel like I'm flashing back to my college protest days with this entry. First half is environmental, second half is social. Justice for all.

I'm not a fan of Oprah. What can I say? Most times when I see her she gets on my nerves. Don't get me wrong I admire all the good she's done. The awareness she has raised. The causes she has championed. There's just something about her on TV that comes across as perky snooty condescending. Like Katie Couric. Well no, I can't even say I like Katie, but I digress.

I was flipping channels yesterday afternoon and for some reason the thought I wonder who's on Oprah today? came to mind. After getting over my initial shock, I flipped over and low and behold she was doing a show on Global Warming with Al Gore called Global Warming 101. Guess my subconscious knew something that the rest of my brain had forgotten. I only saw the last 20 minutes of the show, 10-13 minutes of which was commercials (hmm why she bugs me is coming clearer and clearer). I sincerely hope the Legions of Oprahphites will take steps to Reduce their carbon footprint. Additionally All proceeds (book & DVD) from An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore are going to a non-partisan group

Some websites mentioned during the show were:
- Tree Hugger - check out their Green Gift Guide
- PAPoRGANICS a company devoted to sustainable stationary & gift wrap - check out their holiday collection
- Earth 911
- Al Gore - there's a nationwide initiative to have or attend a house party on December 16th to view An Inconvenient Truth to raise Global Warming awareness.

Also point your browser over to c's blog, Scatter O' Light. There's a great entry from yesterday afternoon about the group Arcade Fire donating a song for the (RED) Campaign. Admittedly I only first heard of AF because of U2. But every band I've come across because of U2 has not inspired me to go buy their album(s), Arcade Fire did. They're unique. I can't even tell you who they remind me of as nothing that I know comes even close. So Kudos to Arcade Fire for their good deeds! For a taste of their music, click here.

The band The Killers have also donated a song to (RED) called A Great Big Sled which you can buy via itunes.

For anyone who is into hockey, there are special deals going on at the NHL shop website. Check it out and remember, Let's Go Canes :)

Saw the last 12 minutes of the KU and USC basketball game last night. I hadn't watched basketball since March (The Big Dance). We won last night. All I can say is Rock Chalk Jayhawk KU! :)

Everyone I'm only buying gifts for my immediate family. Every single friend is getting stiffed. Some Might get a card but don't get your hopes up. My bank account is under severe strain so if you're immediate family, don't get Your hopes up either.

Right, back to work. Happy Tuesday everyone.

Apparently there's this 43 foot straw goat in Gavle, Sweden that the town puts up every holiday season. Tradition has been rather violent towards this innocent little err huge guy. He's been burned down 22 times (since 1966), had his legs cut off and other vandalizing. The goat is a yule symbol that predates Santa Claus as a gift bringer - who knew?

This year town officials doused the straw (covers a metal frame) goat with flame resistant chemicals typically used on airplanes. Still there's a camera set up that you can watch the goat, see if anybody tries to light another bonfire.

Swedish Goat Watching. Except it's not working at the moment. I'd tell you why but I don't speak or read Swedish. Feel free to randomly check the link & see if it works.

Today is World Aid's Day.I had a nifty blog entry for it too but Blogger seems to be having major issues and keeps deleting it. So I'm resorting to just adding links. Please go, read, learn & sign up to do what you can. This is a disease that we can beat, if we act as ONE.

The Independent
Join Red
ONE
Debt. Aids. Trade. Africa.

MySpace and Dazed & Confused Magazine have joined forces to support World AIDS Day and (RED) . They're encouraging people all over the world to submit photos, cartoons and/or illustrations themed on the color red.