And I Thank You

Title today is a shout out to my mother who has wisely seen the need for pie pan LARGER than 9 inches for our Pecan Pie. We have too many people coming and I want my leftovers. Cause everyone voted for Pumpkin and Blackbottom pie except mom and I, but I just KNOW they will hog the pecan. I just feel it in my pecan lovin' bones.

I am loopy. Worked both days this weekend, and 11.5 hour days yesterday and today. And a 10 on tap for tomorrow. Turkey Day will be relaxing. Working a long one on Friday and Saturday. Sunday I am also working but only 4 hours. Trying to get November work out on time and get a jump on December so I can relax around the holidays. Plus the weekend out of town with kidlet on the 7/8.

Sunday I think kidlet and I are going to go see a movie at Cinema 21 again. That's where we saw the Strummer movie. We saw the previews for What Would Jesus Buy? and it looked frickin hysterical. It takes on one of my major pet peeves. The commercialization of Christmas and Americans worship of the almighty dollar in general. With a slight tweak of evangelicalism as well. How can that NOT appeal to me? I loathe shopping AND organized religion, so count me in. I love the fact that they use the Disney font on their site too. Quite amusing.

Not sure if any of my readers are signed up ONE.ORG members, but I got an email yesterday saying that our letter/email campaign to the International Monetary Fund asking them to keep their promise to forgive Liberia's debt worked. They even acknowledge the vast numbers of writers who put the pressure on them to keep their word. Liberia has been decimated by civil wars and the likes of Charles Taylor -with some help from that evangelical pig Pat Robertson. If you have seen Blood Diamond or Lord of War you have an idea. They finally have a chance to put their money into their people, rather than paying off the debts that ass Taylor and other petty dictators have racked up. With a large handful of European and American complicity, I might add. It's like our current "credit crisis." How could they not see this would happen? Give a 400k mortage to a McD worker with your super low cost ARM and what do you think will happen when the rates go up? Just another example of corporate greed.

Now if only the special tribunal in Sierra Leone would fry Charles and his equally repellant little son Chuckie. THAT would be something to be thankful for!

Put On Your Red Shoes And Dance The Blues

Yawn.

At work. Again. July is officially here and this is just about my busiest month. February reigns supreme by a hand full of groups and the fact that it only has 28 days. Yes I know I get a whole extra day every leap year. Weeeee!

Anyhow, I think I have around 350 groups in July. Now times each of those by 35 minutes and you get my workload for the month. Approx 204 hours. Just heads down working them. No phone calls, no ups or extras, no emails, no questions, no nothing. There are 21 business days consisting (traditionally) of 8 hour days in July. 168 hour. Which leaves me a 36 hour deficit just to do these groups! Which is why I am here. Happy Dance.

I have errands to run today too. According to Mom I must stop and get A Dirty Job - By Christopher Moore because it is apparently funnah as hell and mom says he talks like me. Which must mean he has a potty mouth and a tendency to veer wildly from subject to subject. I also am dying to get the third book by John Burdett in his Bangkok series, Bangkok Haunts. The first two books have been so good I fully intend to buy them as well and have the entire series. He reminds me so very much of John Irving without being in the least bit derivative of Iriving. So Barnes and Noble is on the list for stop off at home. Although if I go and don't take Kidlet...oooo she is gonna be pissed! Ok maybe Barnes and Noble should be tomorrow night after I pick her up. I can do that.

I also need to stop off at Michael's Craft store or some such craft store and get wreath for my front door. Cause it looks bare and sucktastic and I have wreath envy over my neighbors. That is like Commandment 11 right? Thou Shall Not Covet Thy Neighbors Door Swag.

OH! I totally almost spaced it. Looking for song suggestions for a roadtrip mix. Got the Social D concert in Eugene and then the Drive to Ashland Oregon coming up for the Shakespeare Festival. Sticking with a Delta Blues/early decca jazz vibe with some current alt country and classics such as Cash and Charles tossed in. Leave me your suggestions. Yes Bond, I am lookin right hard at YOU.

Alright then, off to kill some trees, massage the English language into legalese and possibly have oatmeal. Dunno on the last.

So Welcome To The Machine

The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round. Then they fall off the friggin bus and it crashes. That would be the case of my computer program. In an exciting twist, the new issue does not merely affect me, but everyone using Program X.* What this means for me is that someone out there MIGHT TAKE IT SERIOUSLY!

Seriously, it is completely unusable. The program freezes whenever you attempt to save info. The program itself is a customer service software program with a special application built into it that allows me to produce contracts. I had the Lord High King IT Server Geek come out yesterday to "observe" my issues. One of them asked me if it "impacted" my work.

Um....hello? I thought these geeks were supposed to be smart! Although according to the Ex's (husband AND boyfriend varieties) the bottom of the barrel IT people go into medical IT. Granted our guys here are usually bright, and I love my data center geeks, but that just puzzled me yesterday. Now the programmers who came up with Program X* and the idiot(s) who came up with proprietory application I use, they are a different story.

I spent yesterday jumping from machine to machine to see if memory or disk free space made any difference. Of course it didn't. I personally think the security patches they have been jamming through since the beginning of Sept are the culprit. But hey, what do I know. After all, I have tits.

(That was sarcasm people. It has just been my experience that in the male dominated Revenge Of The Nerds tech world we live in, boobs = stoopid to them.)

So I pick up kiddo and stayed home with her the last two days after school. 6 hour days for me. Figured why bother to come back for 2 hours of frustration. And the boss agreed. Today I am out of here at 3:30 to get kiddo for parent teacher conference. Going to hit Mad Greek Deli before heading to school. Gyros.....YUM.

I put up my new wallpaper on my computer here in keeping with my favorite Halloween.

Off for coffee and greasy fried foods.


*All names changed to protect the innocent and give cover to the idiots as well since the litigious bastards would probably sue me.

Working For The Clampdown!

Had a question from Belle on my last post comments. I am feeling long winded and have decided WTF make a post out of my answers. Lazy, I know.

Belle - I work for an healthcare system in their insurance sales department. I am kind of a tiny island all to myself in that I am the only one who does what I do. Which is kill a lot of trees to create the legal contract document for our group coverage for all of our groups. Glorified paper pusher! Seriously I am poster child for not living up to my potential. And I like it that way.

The plus side of my job is that I have a ton of flexibilty with my hours and I can pretty much work as much overtime as I want. The down side is I have to work at least 15 hours per payperiod of OT just to meet my standards.

Vacationing with the parentals is always a risk but if you go into the experience expecting my dad to screw something up and my mom to freak out about it, well then you can just "Serenity Now!" your way through it. We have gone to Hawaii with my parents for kiddos birthday twice now. It went pretty darn good all in all.

Funny thing is, when we were waiting for the condo to be built, right after the ex boyfriend variety was shipped back home to his mama, Kiddo and I moved in with my parents for 9 months. The first month was living hell, but after that it was actually kinda fun! Hella nice to have someone else cook for you!

Thinker - Stung on the lip?! I think I would be in a padded room just from having the damn thing that close to my face. I am shuddering right now thinking about it. Eeek.

Now, I need fried greasy food and some coffee to put a smile on my face. Over and out till later.