I Hate You

I hate:

• Students who plagarize word for word from a website and think I am too stupid to catch it.
• Unreasonable demands by our Human Resources folks that make the search process more complicated than it needs to be.
• The UPS guy who thinks it is all right to leave packages on my porch in the wind and rain.

That is all.

Shopping Therapy, Part II

Waiting on my porch last night …
Sumo Laptop Sleeve
Now, if only my new Mini 10v would get here!

Commute.

A few weeks ago, the lovely state of Somewhat Midwestern decided that it would be a good idea to shut down my access to the on ramp for the local crosstown expressway. I understand why they did it — there’s a huge construction project at this particular exit — but the two alternative routes are not so good. Both of them require you to drive over railroad tracks and every morning I get stuck waiting for a freight train to pass. I’ve tried staggering my times — sometimes I go to work at 7:15 a.m., other times 8:15 a.m. — but every day I seem to get stuck waiting for the train to pass.

The commuting gods are against me.

To add insult to injury, there’s a new construction project on a building along my southern alternative route. Because of this project, one lane of traffic is closed from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Now, I have never, ever seen anyone working on site before 8 a.m. so it seems to me that our small town fathers could tell ye ol’ company that they cannot close the lanes during the heavy morning commute. Of course, it would also help if the people driving through the area wouldn’t pull into the middle of the damned intersection when traffic is backed up. This morning, for example, I had to wait through three red/green light cycles to make a right turn at that corner. Grrr.

The commuting gods are trying to drive me insane.

The northern alternative route is equally bad. Not only does it take me 5 miles out of the way, but the railroad tracks are continually under repair. And since the train people close down the entire street when they are working on the tracks, the drivers have to backtrack to the southern route. Since these shut downs are never announced (and seem to be completely random), I don’t even bother going that way.

I curse you, commuting gods!

To make it even worse, the University is undergoing numerous construction projects. I’ve already damaged the stone guard on my car getting in and out of a parking lot. {sigh} But now, the construction crews are going to close off one of the lanes coming onto the campus. Since the majority of students drive worse than I do, this will only make my commute even worse. I am not looking forward to that.

For the record, there have been a couple of times that my commute (which never took more than 15 minutes, 10 on a good day) has hit 45 minutes. On top of that, I’ve had to take into consideration the bad, bad parking problems on campus (admit 500+ more students while taking away 200+ parking spaces and see what you get). There have been a couple of times that I’ve nearly been late to a morning meeting, even with all of my anal retentive planning.

Now normally, the commute home isn’t bad because the off ramp is still open. Tonight, however, there was a massive wreck that shut down Second Street, so I had to go about 5 blocks out of the way (One way streets are evil!) to get home. That was just the icing on the cake, the straw that broke the camel’s back, the thing that almost drove me to drink.

I’ve thought about giving up and just taking the bus to work. However, I would have to transfer two times to go 10 miles and the bus ride is even longer than my construction impacted drive time.

Maybe I should just keep a flask in my car?

Komputing with Kats

Danger Kitty in the Home Office
No wonder I can’t get any work done at home.

Crazies

It’s the most (un)wonderful time of the year, the time of year where you have to haul your ass to the post office to mail packages — and you have to do it during business hours because, God(dess) forbid, you might be some kind of terrorist who is trying to ship explosives through the mail. Now, I’m not ready to ship Grandma’s present yet — and, quite frankly, I still need to look up TQE’s mailing address for the hysterical card I bought — but I did have to make a post office run on Saturday. You see, I’m selling off some of my old DVDs to help defray the cost of my new Dell Mini 10v and I managed to unload two seasons of Grey’s Anatomy thanks to that lovely online yard sale known as half.com.

Anyway, Saturday morning, I paid some bills, played with my puppy, took some funny pictures of the cats — and then I realized that if I didn’t get my butt in gear I wouldn’t make it to the post office before it closed at noon. Plus, I use the downtown post office (i.e., the one closest to my house) and it is always woefully understaffed. I don’t think I’ve ever been in the place when I didn’t have to stand in line for at least 20 minutes. Saturday was no exception. I packed up the DVDs and made my way downtown, dodging all of the evil construction that seems to be going on around Sorta’ Cosmopolitan (but that’s a story for another blog entry). Walked inside. One worker. Five people ahead of me in line.

Now, normally I use the post office during the week. And, during the week, the post office clientele is composed of business professionals from the city-county building or the various law offices in the area. Saturday, however, was a completely different story. You see, one of the women standing in line was shooting off at the mouth about how unions closed the brewery in town (decades ago, mind you). The two people she was yakking at looked pretty uncomfortable, especially when she started make some rather interesting cultural slurs. Me? I looked everywhere except at the crazy lady because I didn’t want her to start talking to me. After a while, the crazy lady got out of line, picked up two mailing boxes (not priority or overnight boxes, mind you, but the ones that you have to pay for) and tried to walk out the door.

That’s right. This woman tried shoplifting at the post office.

She didn’t get away with it, probably because the mail clerk had been watching her nutty interaction with the other people in line. After the clerk shouted at her, the crazy lady stopped, put the boxes back, made a few more inappropriate remarks and wandered out the door.

Sadly, this woman wasn’t the only crazy person in the joint. Some guy behind me started asking me and another woman about the cost of a first class stamp — and wanted to argue that they were 42 cents, not 44 cents. After we convinced him that he was wrong (I mean, there were stamps in the display case!), the guy walked out. WTF? Do you mean to tell me that he didn’t have two extra cents?

Then another woman, after finally getting served at the counter, stopped at the door, turned around, and faced the growing crowd. She wished us a Merry Christmas, which was nice until she started spouting off about how Jesus is the reason for the season. Well, at least her heart was in the right place.

I think I’ll go to the suburban post office next time.

Laundry Day

 

 

The Evil Kitten, Hiding in the Dirty Laundry
I guess I should cart this downstairs, eh?

For Future Reference

To people who are way above my pay grade:

It is probably not the best idea to send out an email telling your faculty and staff to expect financial woes the hour before you host the Christmas reception. Expect a run on the bar, some angry drunks, and a negative attitude to be shared by all.

Oh, and happy f*cking holidays to you as well,
Dr. Disenchanted

Shopping Therapy

Felt Cut-Out Tote Bag
Ten Thousand Villages
To haul around my new Mini 10v.

A Tale of Two Ovens

Monday night, I came home to make dinner. On the menu? Sloppy joes, homegrown corn (from the freezer), and french fries. I pulled out my Pyrex dish, sprayed it down with Pam, and dumped the fries onto it. Went to turn on the oven. Then I heard it:

BEEP!”

The digital display lit up, but the oven didn’t turn on. I turned the oven off, then back on. Again, I heard:

BEEP!”

The display lit up, but nothing else happened. I decided to leave it alone for a while, hoping that the oven was being temperamental from all of the abuse it received over the Thanksgiving holiday. I mean, we had that thing running for hours on end, making apple pies, roasting potatoes and figs, making stuffing and beets. The Coach even ran the self-cleaning feature because the pies made a mess in the bottom of the stove.

So, I chopped the onions for the sloppy joes and started browning them. I started the corn. I crossed my fingers and called The Coach into the kitchen. After listening to him whimper about the onion smell (while I was still wiping the tears from my eyes), I asked him to turn on the oven. Again, the display light up. And again:

BEEP!”

I broke down and fried the potatoes so we could eat. Completely unhealthy, I know. While we ate, we fired up the computer and when searching for a solution. Surely, we thought, the oven can’t be dead. I mean, we had no problems with the oven up to this point aside from a woeful lack of insulation on the front door. After consulting the Maytag troubleshooting page (long live the Internet!), we decided to turn off the circuit breaker to the oven. Our hope was that the oven would reset itself. Of course, it took a while to figure out which breaker actually went to the oven.

We waited.

Eventually, The Coach decided to turn the circuit back on — after the Saints had a convincing lead over those sucky ass Patriots. We tried the oven and the same thing happened. Sigh. At this point, we were fairly convinced that the oven was broken, so we poked around on the ‘net some more, developing a few theories of what went wrong. It wasn’t until the next morning that the display actually went nuts and — out of the blue — gave us a F1 error code.

I did another round of Googling and learned that the problem would cost us at least $200 in parts. Considering the fact that the oven has to be around 15-16 years old, we decided that it wasn’t worth getting it fixed. As you know, we recently invested in a new fancy black refrigerator, and thought it might be nice to have some matching appliances.

So, now we are searching. We had thought about buying a stove with a double oven, but after seeing it in person decided that wasn’t a good idea. The bigger bottom oven opened up at floor level and I could just see the Tenure Puppy burning her paws. Instead, we are thinking about buying an entry-level convention oven. While I really, really want a gas stove, we don’t have patience to mess with finding a contractor to run a gas line to the kitchen. Plus, there’s really no point in getting a gas stove unless I can get the stove I really, really want: An antique Chambers.

Unlike the refrigerator catastrophe of this summer, we don’t have to rush into buying a new stove. The Coach is a hardy soul and can grill outside in snow up to his butt cheeks. Plus, I went out and bought a nifty toaster oven which actually made better pizza than our deceased oven ever did. Heck I even used the toaster oven tonight to make a tuna melt and an indoor version of S’mores.

For the record, I’ve already picked out my new dishwasher. I suspect that’s the next thing to go. Blah.

To The Coach: My Christmas List

Cheap Items:

• New Betta for my office. (Poor Huey P.)
• Lip balm, any variety
• Starbucks gift card (for sloggy days on campus)
• iTunes gift card (because I always need new tunes)
• A vintage fallout shelter sign (as seen on eBay)

Sorta’ Free Stuff:

• Fix my bicycle.
• Take my car for a wash/wax and clean the icky latte out of the passenger’s seat.

Cooking Gear:

• Really cool Pyrex Box Grater

Videos of All Varieties:

• Walt Disney’s Treasures: On the Front Lines
• Walt Disney’s Treasures: Tommorrow Land
• Gone with the Wind (on DVD)
• The Wizard of Oz (on DVD)

Books:

• Margaret Atwood. The Year of the Flood.
• Julie Powell. Cleaving.
• Sarah Palin. Going Rogue. (Morbid curiousity on my part)
• Alton Brown’s new book about “Good Eats”

Other stuff:

• Emily the Strange Collectable Print (Too cool!)
• Emily the Strange Red Riding Kitty

So, where is your list? I’m waiting to shop!