Blown Fuse

Huh.

I drove my coworker to the airport yesterday morning (the airport is spitting distance away from my office) and on the way over he told me a very interesting little tidbit of office gossip.

After I left on Wednesday, someone began a debate on which staff member I hate most. I mean...damn. Okay, maybe I am a cold, expressionless bitch, but if I didn't like you I'd be much more obvious about it. I just wouldn't do anything for you.

I wonder who won.

Silly Beaureaucrats.

I zipped home during lunch today to unlock my car so that the windshield guy could get in and replace the glass in my Honda. Tuesday is trash day. Since we had all that furniture delivered (in boxes) last week, there was a lot of packing material and cardboard to dispose of.

Imagine my pisstivity when I find these two stickies on my recycling bin and trash can. Since these two are collected by different agencies, it must just be "Let's all shit on Tiffany at once" day.

Here's the one from the recycling people. Okay. My bad. Look, y'all. We had about 30 pounds of cardboard to dispose of. Two pieces were larger than 3' x 3'. Sue me. Of course they left those two pieces in the ditch to teach me a lesson.

All that syrofoam and plastic packing material was sufficient enough to stuff my solid waste bin to the brim - so much so that our real trash had to go outside the bin. Here's the sticker those fuck-heads left. I guess they just checked the first box by default - our trash had been out since last night. The one about only being able to have one additional bag on top of the can? Dude. What were we supposed to do with all that styrofoam? Put it down the garbage disposal? The part about "If you recycle the way you're supposed to, you wouldn't have this problem" really pissed me off. Did I not just recycle 30 pounds of carboard?

*sigh*

Just push.

It was time for me to reclaim my guest bedroom. The cat had been using it as her own personal master suite, lounging on the bed on her own set of sheets and taking massive dumps in the litterbox. We put the litterbox in there when we polyurethaned the floor in the living room, knowing that we would have to find a permanent location for it.

Well, I had the bright idea to install a pet door in the laundry room door. That way, she could go into a secluded area to do her business and not stink up the whole damned house.

Well, if you look at that picture from the right angle, the red circle is pointing out the cat. In the laundry room.

She hasn't quite figured out how the door works yet. She knows that she can go through the opening when we hold the flap open for her, but as soon as it gets put down she can't figure out that if she puts her weight against it she can get out.

She's gotten out 3 or 4 times "accidentally" - her scratching at the door to escape and actually leaning against the flap. She hasn't figured out that the door is two ways and that she can purposefully open it.

We might have to lock her in there every day before we leave until she figures it out.

Rules of the Road

I'd hate to beat a dead [and buried] horse, but occassionally some event occurs that makes me mad all over again and cause me

to puff smoke out my ears.

I profess: North Carolina drivers are the worst in the country. See the extended entry for my manifesto.

I wish to make the arguement that North Carolina drivers, specifically those in the piedmont, are the worst in the world (self excluded). My theory is that because we have three research universites within twenty miles of each other, we have the greatest concentration of PhDs. PhDs are hard to attract, so we have to poach them from other states and countries. This mishmosh of driving styles results in chaos on the road. I won't inject any stereotypes in the mix, but one particular one comes to mind. Some of the following items are available for your continual reference in your drivers'manual. Many others are common sense.

Concerning Speed Limits

1. Some states post minimum speeds in tandem with high speed limits. You will be ticketed if you're driving below that because it's dangerous - you're asking to be road kill. Some 18-wheeler could come screaming around a curve and since you're driving as if you're in a foot-powered Flintstonemobile, your ass gets rear-ended and squashed like a bug.

2. In situations where there is NO observable minimum speed, a good rule of thumb is to go no slower than seven miles below the speed limit. Why? Because (generally speaking), the judge will throw out anything within a seven mile-per-hour fuck-up if you get ticketed and go to court.

3. Under no circumstances will you drive below the speed limit in a lane other than the far-right lane if there is more than one lane in your direction present.

Concerning Passing

4. (See item #3) When there are only two lanes going in one direction, and for whatever fucked-in-the-head reason you're not observing rule 3, do NOT, I repeat, do NOT keep pace with the car in the lane next to you if that car is also driving below the prevailing traffic speed. You think that you're preventing yourself from getting a ticket, but in reality, you're blocking TWO lanes of cars from passing either of your slow asses. MOVE!

5. In rural environs where there are two lanes and a dotted line indicating passability, do NOT speed up as soon as the passing car overtakes your rear bumper. As much as you'd like to think "Hey, I want to see some fireworks! Let's see this bozo crash!" is a fun idea, if such a disaster really happened, you'd shit your seat.

6. Also concerning rural passing: move to the far right of your lane so that the passing car doesn't rip off your mirror.

7. If at any point you fail to observe rules 3, and 4 and you see the person in the car behind you making hand gestures for you to either speed up or slow down to get into the slow lane, do so. Do not act as though your pride is hurt and speed up a couple of ticks. Just move. The follower will eventually overtake you and shoot past you with middle-finger extended and horn blaring. Thanks. Their kid just pissed all over themselves. Don't you feel nice about yourself?

Concerning Parking

8. If you feel as though you must park in two spaces to protect the paint job on your new vehicle, please do so at the back of the rear of the lot. However, it is NEVER acceptable to hog two PARALLEL parking spaces. If you do, you will be expected to pay the both meters.

9. If your vehicle is as large as or slightly larger than the confines of the lined space, that is a subtle hint that you should NOT try to squeeze your boat-sized monstrosity between two compact cars. For one thing, no one will be able to get their doors open without dinging metal. Also, those cars who have the misfortune of being beside you will NOT BE ABLE TO BACK OUT SAFELY because your stupid ass blocked their view. Park in the back of the lot.

Concerning Signalling

10. Apply your turn signal 1/2 block prior to making a turn, especially when you're in fast-moving traffic where cars are 2-3 seconds apart. Braking suddenly and then making the slowest possible turn on record is by no means safe for your passengers in the back seat.

11. If you have no intention of turning, please disengage your signal. Thanks.

12. Should you be on a bicycle and weaving through traffic like a maniac and preventing people from navigating safely around you, any hand signals you make will be disregarded. We all know you'll cut across me as soon as a light indicates I'll rest on my brake for half a second, and sometimes even before that.

Concerning Distractions

13. If your cell phone or other disturbance in your vehicle prohibit you from heeding rules 2, 7, and 10 you should either a) stop engaging in the distracting activity or b) get your wack self off the road.

14. It is never okay to not follow rules 2, 7, and 10 if the people stuck behind you CAN SEE YOU ON THE PHONE.

15. It is NEVER cool to play your car music so loud that when you pass my house I can't hear my t.v.

Concerning Inclement Weather

16. You do not necessarily need a four wheel drive vehicle to be on the road when there is ice and snow on the ground. You should, however, know what the limitations of your vehicle are and know when to stay off the road.

17. It is okay to go the speed limit when it is raining a trickle to moderately. I PROMISE. You know what water pockets look like, right? Good. Slow down to 35 THEN.

18. Contrary to popular belief, North Carolinians CAN drive when there is precipitation on the road, particuarly those of us originating from the sticks where they don't have snow plows. It is the people from OUT-of-state who get on the roads and fuck shit up. Oh yeah? You're from New York City where it snows every year like clockwork and you drive just fine? Well, where have you ever seen much snow or ice accumulated on a city road? Sidewalks don't count. You have more snow plows than subway trains. We have ONE snow plow for the entire state of North Carolina. I'm joking. A little.

Miscellany

19. If at any time you are driving a vehicle that looks like it will explode at any minute, you are expected to keep a 100-foot bubble around yourself to prevent contamination of flora, fauna, and my car air freshener pine tree.

20. Just because you drive a truck that looks as though it could eat the car in front of you doesn't make it okay to tail them to make them go faster. This is especially true when you have ABSOLUTELY NO INTENTION of passing the car, but simply want them to go faster. You assume that if they're in front they'll get the speeding ticket instead of you. Not only is this practice dangerous, but the person who follows is almost ALWAYS to blame when there's an accident.

21. Take the time to learn where your headlight controls are, especially how to turn your bright lights OFF as quickly as possible. You may be able to see just fine and may not be able to see the fault in the activity, but when I go careening into you head-on because you blinded me, that, my good friend, is your own moral bankruptcy.

Thanks. I feel better now.

First and 10

Twice in the past 24 hours or so I've considered taking my old notebook computer (a 6-year-old IBM ThinkPad) and dropping it in the nearest trash receptacle.

I don't use it. Not even to store large files or just in case I decide that I want to travel with it. The LCD display often goes off in its own little world and one has to restart it several times to get it back on.

Is there any real reason to hold onto a computer that age? It's slow as shit and because Windows XP was installed on it aftermarket, it has minimal drive space. As a result, it crashes a lot.

Anything I should consider before I punt it like a football?

Finito.

I've been working on this particular knit project for a couple of months. Now as it's time to start knitting Christmas gifts, I've finished.

It was one of those patterns where it looked okay on the model in the picture, but I, not being of model height, had a concern on how it would hang.

I got the pattern out of the Fall 2005 Vogue Knitting magazine. It's the cropped cardigan. I figured it would be cute to wear to work over a turtleneck (yes, gasp! people still wear those!). No, I did not intentionally buy yarn to match my hair. That's just a weird coincidence in that light.

I'm pretty pleased. I was careless in a few places and had to go back and rip rows out, but I would have never forgiven myself if I had lived with the mistake knowing I could have fixed it. Incidentally for all you knitters, the pattern as printed is incorrect. The correction for the cabling is shown here. I figured out on my own that something was wrong with it and fixed it as I could.

I got the buttons from eBay seller mthrelean.

INTERNAL MEMO

To the coworker who came into the office over the weekend and clogged the toilet:

A POX ON YOU!

Use the Gee-Dee plunger, bitch!

Three down, Four to Go

I've been nagging Scott for some time to get the living room renovations done. He bitched and moaned (mostly, I think, because he would need to find some new place to store his "collection"). Well, yesterday we had an electrician (and his strange little apprentice) come and install recessed lighting in there. There was no overhead lighting in there before, merely a plug-in lamp that turned on by a wall switch.

Tell me this room doesn't look fucking awesome. Here's a before picture that shows some of the room: Click Here. It was an awesomely bad mess. Anyway.

I'm happy. Furniture is being delivered on Friday and now we can have people green with envy when they come in through the front door.

*does Snoopy dance*

*Does a little dance*

As promised, here are a few pictures of the new Jeep.

View from Left
View from Front
Posing with the spare tire

So, here's the story of how I came into possession of the Jeep:

I had narrowed my list of prospective purchases down to three vehicles: the Subaru Outback, the Honda Element, and the Jeep. I actually added the Jeep to my list at the last minute. I don't remember how I got it in my mind - I think perhaps I was thumbing through Consumer Reports and saw its rating. Anyhow, I had asked for a quote on a Liberty through a dealer's website and was quoted a number that was pretty hard to beat. I asked if I could come in and test-drive it. The problem was that the vehicle I was quoted on (a 6-speed base model) was 100 miles away and they wouldn't bring it in unless I would commit to purchasing it. Having never driven anything larger than a 1986 Lincoln Town Car, I worried that I wouldn't be able to handle a large vehicle so I asked to come in and drive something of the same size. I had no intention of actually making a purchase that day especially considering that the next day (today) I would visit another dealer that was going to let me take the vehicle home overnight to test.

Anyhow, when I got to the dealership I was put into a 2005 Liberty with a diesel engine and two-wheel drive. I wasn't particuarly enthralled with the performance, but I loved the feeling of being off the ground. Upon returning to the lot we looked at all the 2005 Liberties available. To keep cost down and still get the size vehicle I wanted, I really had my mind set on manual transmission, however there weren't any available on the lot [in my price range].

The salesman encouraged me to testdrive a PT Cruiser. I should comment here that I hate how "cute" those cars on, but seeing how the base model for those vehicles were running about $13,000 I figured it couldn't hurt to see how it drove. Well. I didn't really have anything bad to say about the perfromance of the car - I just couldn't get over the way they look. Also, I realized once I got into the Liberty that I definately wanted to be higher than a wagon would get me. I scratched the Outback off my mental list.

Eventually, I relented to considering a vehicle with automatic transmission and four-wheel drive (it's basically dumb as fuck to ddrive a utility vehicle during the winter if you don't have 4WD). There was a red one that was a good price because it had been sent back to the factory for a paint defect. They repainted it and sold it to the dealership at auction. Because of that I got it for the "used" price although it only had 28 miles on it.

I love it. It makes me giggle to think about how insanely giddy it makes me feel. It has a V6 engine so it has the umph that my Honda has and I get all the cargo room that I wanted. The Honda Element just ain't cute enough to beat that.

Now I've got to go back to Cary to drive my other car home.

It's a Girl!

Actually, it's a Jeep. Her name is Liberty. She weighs a ton and has bright red skin.

Superbored

So frickin' sleepy.

I came home today to find that slow-as-shit Netflix finally delivered one of those "unlimited" discs. Knowing that if I didn't get it in the mail tomorrow, I would have to wait another freakin' week to get them to send another one out. Anyway.

So, I'm on the sofa, watching Jesus Christ Superstar, and what do I do? Sleep through it. I won't be trying to watch that later, either. That movie bored me to tears. I literally pulled the blanket over my head and turned my back to it.

Y'all know I'm a big fan of musicals and rock operas, but this one blows goats. It was just...nuh uh. I have to confess that I was going to talk some serious smack about Godspell's whole trying-to-be Hair (although the movie version predates Hair by a few years) but even in that movie I had momentary urges to get up and shake the booty a bit. Not so much with JCSS.

I'm not even going to bother picking it apart and discussing the thematic blah blahisms. I feel like I wasted a Netflix week (those slow fuckers).

Every season change I get this huge wave of delirium-laced sleepiness. I can't wait for fall to settle in good so I can keep my eyes open longer than 8 pm.

Well Pip Pip, and Cheerio.

The Cosmopolitan Great Britain salutes you for scoring a staggering 72%

You have a good appreciation for what counts as real English and what does not - but you still slip up from time to time. You may not be word perfect when it comes to spelling and grammar, but at least you don't go weak-kneed at the very thought of using an "S" instead of a "Z". Your grasp of the Queen's English is certainly sufficient for you to get by in England, but don't aim for a job at Buckingham Palace just yet.

I felt like there were a lot of trick questions in there. I couldn't tell if it was really asking me for the correct answers, or for what an Englishperson would say. Eh.

Via Diana.

Piano Plaque

Been busy busy busy. I don't remember much of Saturday, but certainly I spent it productively.

I spent about 6 hours in the garage yesterday working on that damned piano.

I've gone from stinky, eye-watering paint stripper, to a heat gun, to goopy peach-colored paint stripper that smells like oranges.

How close to completion am I? Well, the paint is almost gone. If I can get out there one evening this week I can get that cleaned up once and for all. Then the sanding begins. I'm sort of dreading that because there are so many nooks and crannies to get your hands cramped up in. That's one of the reasons the actual paint removal is taking so long, but anyway.

I did a test stain on the bench with the black I bought. Looks good. I like it. Now I just have to decide if I want a glossy overcoat or something satin.

And in case you're keeping track on that bet, no the floors haven't cured yet.

Zoom zoom zoom

My office has been in a new-car frenzy for the past few weeks. It all started when one of the female account execs had some weird shit going down with her Jeep. The fact that she's been having to make cconstant repairs to the vehicle was for her a gentle nudge in the direction of purchasing a new one. She's been test-driving a few vehicles and has been driving them to work.

Of course the fact that most domestic automobile manufacturers have been running that employee discount deal has pushed the "on" button for a few people. Bossman went out and bought a convertible Thunderbird. He now owns six cars.

When my car was acting like it had forgotten it's manners last week a little piece of me was hoping that it would be some costly repair where paying for it would be more painful than just trading in the lump for a new car.

Well...okay. So, my car works now... I have a couple of payments left on it and I'm ready for it to go. It has been a noble beast these past four years, but I'm ready for a new new car.

I'm going to test drive some wagons and maybe some small SUVs this weekend. I'm pretty sure I want an Outback, but what else is out there that I should be looking into? I'll look into some Hondas, but I'm pretty sure that brand new would be way out of my range.

Gotta get Crack-a-lackin'

When I started this journal back in...shit, January '04?...anyway. One of my earliest complaints was of the white giantess known as the upright piano that now sits in my garage.

We drove to the homeplace (I love that word. It souds so country-as-hell) to extricate it from my grandmother's living room before she began renting the place out. We drove it back to Durham on the back of a Dodge pick-up truck along with several other artifacts of my rural childhood.

The piano sat out in the wind and the rian for about a week until Scott could bring home a few strapping lads to get the thing off without flattening them in the process - the thing weighs as much as a small car, you know.

Since then, it's been sitting out in the garage covered in cobwebs. My plan was to strip it, stain it, varnish it and get it into the house before the cold or humidity could do any further damage to it. Well, a gallon of paint stripper later it's still out there.

I sort of underestimated how large the task would be. Who knew that three coats of white paint could be so stubborn?

Well, Friday I put my foot down and said to myself, "Self, it's been 18 months since that piano has been put in the garage. Seeing as how you can't afford the $3,000 the refinisher wants to do it, I suggest you get your lard ass out there to get 'er done."

Well, I went to Home Depot and bought a heat gun. In two days I've accomplished more than I had in the past year and a half. I'm still going to have to do some chemical stripping to get the residual specks up, but this process is really speeding along.

Scott made a bet with me that if the piano was ready by the time the polyurethane on the living room floor cured (a week from today) he would gift to me a sum equal to my salary for the rest of the year.

*cracks knuckles*

See ya. Pictures later.

*Gush*

Anybody else see Adam Levine on SNL performing with Kanye West last night?

You know, the man who I've gushed who has a voice that drips sex?

I was in bed knitting. I was wearing my glasses for the first time in a couple of weeks and as I really can't see shit when wearing them, I had to physically remove myself from my ditch in the mattress to get up and stare at the screen up close.

I I hadn't planned on buy West's CD, but shit...I have the same sort of affection for this man's voice as I do Sting's...and I love me some Sting.