Out with the Old and in with the New (or OwtOaiwtN for those who prefer acronyms)

As you may have noticed (or not, I don't know how observant some of you are), I've not been around much lately.  Here, Pajiba, and even Facebook, to a degree.  Lots of stuff going on - some good, some bad, but all for the better, I think.

Oh, but first, I owe you an update on the sabotager (I'm sorry, but "saboteur" just sounds so snooty).  After extensive observation from our IT department, we felt there was enough evidence to support the suspicion that she had been deliberately sabotaging her co-worker's reports and we fired her.  She denied, denied, DENIED it and then accused IT of setting her up.  Unemployment disagreed with us and despite PAGES of documentation, awarded her benefits because we didn't have definitive proof that she did it.  I guess you have to actually videotape them doing it and then you probably have to prove that the video is actually of THEM and not some look-alike that you hired and then you probably have to send them DNA evidence, too.  Whatever. 

Moving on.  Blogger has new templates and since I've made over my entire apartment in the last month, I decided to make over this here fancy blog, too.  Let me know what you think.  (Or, if you just want to make an assy comment, don't let me know what you think.  I don't really have a lot of patience for assyness right now.)  Back to the apartment!  Those of you on Facebook are probably sick to death of hearing about the redecoration EXTRAVAGANZA, so feel free to skip ahead.  To the rest - OMG, I TOTALLY got my apartment redid and it is SO exciting!  I've lived here for 12 or 13 years and while I've always liked my apartment, I never LOVED it.  I always liked its potential, but it never lived up to that potential because the landlord wouldn't put any money into it and I wouldn't either.  The paint was old and cracked and yellowed, the carpet was a hideous barf color and really qualified more as a mat than a carpet, and the windows were just... rattley glass in hard to open frames.  On my end, the furniture was all mismatched, over-sized crap I got from friends or bought a piece here or a piece there, and I had kind of given up on making it look nice, because no matter how much I cleaned (FINE, no matter how much the person I hired to clean cleaned) it still looked like a mishmash of clutter and dingy neglect.  NOW, THOUGH?  Sparkly and clean and pretty!  New carpet and fresh paint in cheery yellow and ice blue, brand-spankin' new double-hung windows, which holy cow, I've never had new windows before and I *might* have a slight obsession with cleaning them (Ilovethemsomuch!), and new blinds that are being installed by my landlord as I type this.  I bought a whole new living room and dining room set and a new bed, plus little extras like pictures, bookshelves, and a red microwave.  How does the red microwave have any relevance?  It DOESN'T.  I just WANTED it, is that OK with YOU?   Anyway, it's been a lot of work packing up and moving all of my crap & throwing out tons of junk, but it's all pretty and new now and I'm happy as can be!  It even has that new carpet smell instead of old, dusty, years-of-smoking smell.

Balls.  This is getting really long and I have a lot more to say, but I hate reading super long meandering blog posts, so I'm going to save it for PART 2: EXTRAVAGANZA SUPERSEXYNOVA OF SPARKLEBLAHBLAHBLAH.  Or something. 

Oh, ok, but real quick - I bought these fun trash bags because I had to cart like, I don't know, A MILLION bags of crap out before the carpet could be ripped out and replaced and I am nothing if not frivolous.  How cute are these!?  I KNOW, right?

My Heart Is Filled With Glee...

And my head is filled with snot!  (No, you would not be wrong in thinking that I am klass-ay.)

Ok, so I've been Sicky McGee for the last week and I'm about tired of it.  But, that's not what this is about.  It's about how awesome my friends are.  I didn't go to work on Thursday or Friday and I was stressing HARD, because Thursday was the Employee Appreciation luncheon and I felt *awful* for leaving Dana alone to handle it all.  She took it amazingly well.  Way better than I would have, I'm sure.  In addition to being super nice to me about ditching her, she sent a care package home to me.  My lovely friend Angel-ica called me around 3:00 and asked if she could stop by after work to drop off something.  I said sure, because I was half asleep when she called and honestly, I would have agreed to a sack of angry badgers almost anything just to go back to dreamland where my throat & lungs weren't on fire.

She showed up with a GIANT care package from Dana of cheesy potatoes, chicken, a caramel apple, 3 cookies and a card.  Ang also brought me veg-e-table soup & french fries from my favorite fast food place, AND she brought me a cd she made with the songs from Glee!  It's so awesome to listen to Finn & Rachel sing their little hearts out to "Don't Stop Believing" and "No Air" and Mr. Shu and the Acafellas singing "Poison" (Never trust a big butt and a smile...)  As crappy as I've felt, I can't help but smile when I listen to it.  Also, the kid who plays Finn is 27 and therefore not a kid kid, so it's totally acceptable for me to have dirty, nasty, whorish thoughts about him....I'm just sayin'.

Friday, my neighbor Heather sent me a text asking if I was ok.  A few hours later she sent me another text telling me to check my door.  She hung a bag on my doorknob with Puffs w/ Lotion, Nyquil, Dayquil and Hall's cherry cough drops.  Aww, how sweet!  Then, about an hour after that my doorbell rang.  My boss sent me flowers to thank me for working on Employee Appreciation Week.  Nice, right?  Oh and so, remember how I said that only 11 employees would appreciate our efforts?  Well, I was wrong.  I got FOURTEEN emails saying thanks!  Ha.  Suck it...um, self!  And I would have been sad and sick if it weren't for my lovely (and weird) Pajiba/Facebook friends who kept me company while I was home and made me laugh.  Thanks, kids!

And this is completely not related to anything above, but it makes me enormously happy - my Denver Broncos are 6 and 0!! 

Ok, sorry, back to other non-sports stuff.  What do you kids have going on?  Fun stuff?  Happy stuff?  Are you planning any Halloweeny stuff?  I hope you're all well and have a happy No Whining Wednesday!

The World's Second Smallest Violin...

The world's smallest violin actually belongs to a co-worker.  She has a "bad" day, every day.  Seriously, how do you have a bad day every day?  If every day is bad, you're doing it wrong. 


All that aside, I'm about to bow the strings of my runner-up, wee violin.  Tomorrow is No Whining Wednesday and yet, all I can do is whine.  All I want to do is whine  Whining just sounds SO good right now.

I feel that I may be coming down with bronchitis.  I'm actually certain of it.  When I smoked, I used to get it every year and it suh-hucked!  Since I quit, almost 3 years ago, I haven't gotten sick, but I recognize that burn in my chest;   that scratchy burn in my throat that spreads down to my lungs.  Ugh.  So, yeah, not that there's ever really a good time to get sick, but now is the opposite of a good time. 

 - Job Fair with Stupid Thirteen (I've expanded her name) all day on Wednesday.  I have to talk to people and smile and be friendly.  I have to coax people to talk and I have to talk loudly over the din of the crowded room.  Army Douche better not be there, that's all I'm gonna' say about that.

 - After the job fair, I'm meeting with the HR ladies I befriended.  We've already postponed our get-together twice now, so I'd feel really sucky if I had to reschedule it again, but the idea of talking to job seekers and Stupid Thirteen all day and then going out to talk about work for another couple of hours just fills me with dread.

- Thursday we're bringing in lunch and serving it to our staff as part of Employee Appreciation Week.  I just don't think my hacking and throat clearing is going to be appetizing for 300+ employees trying to eat their food.

 - The Vice President offered my services to one of the Vice Presidents in the Denver office (because he doesn't have an assistant  - I don't know why, I only know that he should have one) to help him edit his budget presentation.  I helped our VP with his and I'm certain it's karma's way of teaching me a lesson because, you guys, I totally gloated about red-lining his presentation on Facebook.  Now, I'm paying for it.  In addition to being out of the office for a full day and then doing employee relations shit all week and OH YEAH, heading that damned committee that he assigned me to a couple of weeks ago, what I really need is to get loaned out to another executive.   

 - Angel-ica and I are supposed to get together this weekend to play with the Wii Sports Resort and maybe watch Drag Me to Hell, but unless I can do this while laying in bed, doped up on antibiotics and cough syrup with codeine, this doesn't sound the least bit appealing to me.

- And FINALLY, my sexyfuntime friend is back in town next week and DAMMIT, I was looking forward to making the sessy with him and generally not coughing up phlegm globs while he's ripping my clothes o.... ahem...I mean, while we're playing a rousing game of Yahtzee!  Naked!  We've been sending dirty, sessy texts and emails for the past week in anticipation of seeing each other & now instead, the only thing I want in my mouth is a lozenge.  Yeah, I just said that, 'cause I'm a filthy hoo-er.

So, now I need you guys.  At the risk of sounding even more obnoxiously dorky than I normally sound, I need your positive energy today to be my "medicine" (or I'll take codeine cough syrup if you have that instead).  What good things are going on with you?  How's your life?

Time to Put on My Big Girl Panties

No, this isn't about how I'm gaining weight (although, if I keep buying caramel apples and banana cake & pretending they count as a fruit, then my ballooning weight might be the next entry), it's about me needing to "man up" and get through tomorrow morning and the next few weeks.

My office crush resigned.  Yesterday, you'll remember, was No Whining Wednesday, so even though this happened at 10:00, I kept my mouth shut (except for a couple of strongly worded emails to Sarina) about it.  It would be sad if he was just my crush, but he's more.  In the last year, he's become my friend.  He's one of the VERY few people I can talk to and in whom I can confide at work.  I can be myself around him and not some robotic HR version of myself.  And, I think, he can be himself around me.  We camp out in each others offices when shit's going down and we've had it with the staff.  On Friday afternoons, we eat chocolate and surf the internet shopping for Movado watches, (which, OMG, do I want one SOOOOO badly [wait, for real, is it 'badly' or 'bad'?  Why can I never remember the rules for adverbs?] but yeah, I can't drop $800 on a watch, but ohhh, so shiny!) and bitch about the retarded decisions the senior executives are making.  I can call him anytime and say, "Got a minute?" and if he's not in a meeting or on a conference call, he says, "Sure, come on up.  Bring chocolate."  Or he'll get finished with a particularly aggravating meeting and he'll come to my office, quietly close the door, sit down in the visitor chair and exclaim (in a loud whisper), "FUCKING IDIOT COCKSUCKERS" and then stand up, nod at me, smile and leave the room.  We get each other.  That's not easy in my position or in his because we always have to be on our best behavior and you never really know who you can trust & a lot of people in upper management are arrogant jerks.  I've trusted him since the "Peanu(t)s" incident, I guess, and he's trusted me since the first time he lost his temper about an employee and dropped the F-Bomb and instead of looking shocked or admonishing him, I laughed. 

So anyway, I've known about it since yesterday, but wasn't allowed to discuss it with anyone until today and that blew!  So when the supervisor called me this morning at 9:03, crying , I started crying and it was just a big ol' crying thing, off and on, for most of the day.  Because, in addition to being all kinds of adorable, he's good at his job and replacing him is going to SUH-HUCK and his supervisor is going to have to pick up the slack until a new director is hired and is up to speed. It's a lot of work. 

The staff will be told tomorrow morning and I have to go sit there, stoicly, and be the "HR Presence" when it's announced and I can't cry or even register any emotion.  My stupid, little, asshole heart is being ripped out right now because I will miss him so much.  With him and Jackie both gone, I have no one at work that I can really talk to.  No one I can be my obnoxious, snarky, sarcastic self with.  I can't talk to anyone when my boss declares that she can't decide who she loves more: Nickelback or Creed...I mean COME ON, I need to be able to laugh with someone about that shit, right? 

This was pretty long and rambling and it really boils down to me being a big, whiny, baby, but I needed to get it out.  It's been eating at my insides and I thought maybe if I got it out, it would be easier to sit impassively at the meeting tomorrow.  If you've read this far and haven't made the "L" for loser sign with your thumb and forefinger, you're a peach.  Thanks for that!

So, in conclusion, do any of you know a cute guy with a Master's Degree in Finance who's looking for a job? 

God, Grant Me the Serenity...

To not punch my dad in the head!

Yes, yes, I said all kinds of hippy dippy positive shit in my last entry and I totally meant it and plan to do it on Wednesday. This is Monday. I don't have to be positive and happy yet.


Backstory -
My dad believes that everyone you know and have ever met in your life, but especially family, can get you a deal on anything.

So far, the guy he knows who can do my brakes - fucked them up so badly that Honda had to special order a part to fix it.

The furniture that he was going to buy from the store where my cousin works - cousin was authorized to give him a whopping 3% discount. Regular furniture store gave him a 12% discount.

The friend who fixed the AC in his car - the car had to go back 3 times and finally on the third time, the guy admitted that they'd cracked something the 1st time they had it, so it was going to take a few extra days to get that sorted out.

The friend of his who was going to clean my apartment for WAY less than the woman who I usually have do it. She swept the floor, wiped out the sinks and took out the trash. Wow, all that for $45?

The friend he knows who can get me a deal on insurance - charges $22 a month more than my current insurance provider.

The uncle who can get me my glasses for way less money - it took me almost 2 months to get my glasses.

The uncle who could get me a discount on the really good Goodyear tires - I had to take a half of a day off of work to accompany him to the Goodyear store, so I could get my 20% off. I also had a coupon for 20% off. Yeah, I couldn't use the coupon AND the employee discount, so either way, I was getting no more than 20% and I could have saved 4 hours of my vacation time & not had to talk to my annoying uncle.

Is a pattern emerging?

Now, he knows a guy who works for Time Warner who can get me Road Runner, phone, cable, Showtime, HBO, Cinemax & Starz for $80 a month. I pay about $120 now. I told my dad "No, thanks, it's cool." It took me over a year to figure out what the hell was wrong with my cable to begin with (I wasn't able to use the OnDemand channels. I researched it, I fixed it. Yes, I'm a bad-ass.) and now that everything's working hunky dory, I'd rather not fuck with it. Now my dad's all mad at me and acting like a big 'ol jackass because "It must be nice to piss away an extra $40 a month..." and he's going to look bad in front of his friend (Why will he look bad? I don't know.)

So, here's my question - do I just shut the fuck up & let his friend do whatever Time Warner magic he claims he can do (ooh, which by the way, the ex used to work for TW. He was never able to lower my cable bill and I was blowing him. Why *this* guy can, I don't know.) and just cross my fingers that this doesn't end poorly. OR do I stand my ground and just say, "yeah, no, I'm filthy rich & I don't mind spending the extra $40 a month".

What say you?

Next I'll Be Writing About Ben Gay...

So, today I'm all sore. Sore and bruised.

And NO, it's not 'cause I'm a big ol' slutty hoo-er. I AM a big ol' slutty hoo-er, but I'm sore and bruised because I am a spaz.

Last night, in an effort to be lazier than lazy, I tried to reach something in the back of my refrigerator. Instead of simply removing the items in the front and then getting what I wanted from the back, I tried to finagle and maneuver around the shit in the front and in the process knocked a giant jar of apricot jam off the shelf and onto the top of my foot. And now the top of my tiny foot and the base of my big toe (which, by the way, is a misnomer; my big toe is actually wee) have this lovely dark purple bruise and it really rather hurts. Not bad enough to go have it x-rayed (x-ray'd? x-rayd? x-rayed {no, Microsoft Word, not x-rated, but thanks for the help!}), but enough for me to whine about it like a giant baby.

Oh and I am sore and bruised from being a Trampy Von Trollopstein. Helpful tip for all you ladies out there (and Jeremy). Stubble burn hurts. Whether it's on your face or elsewhere. You know what helps? Preparation H. Swear to God. Makes the burn and swelling go away like instantly. So, if your gentleman caller friend has a bit of stubble and your delicate bits are irritated, you can just fix it in a jiffy. (Helps with your own special valley razor burn, too.) You'll smell like an old lady with hemorrhoids, BUT, you'll feel better.

You're welcome.

Ma Ingalls Would Have Whupped My Ass…

“Old Yeller” was on TCM and I watched it. Why? Because I am very stupid and because I apparently enjoy crying like a little bitch. WTF is wrong with me? I can’t watch “Meerkat Manor” because too many of those little creatures die – offscreen! I can’t watch the commercials for the ASPCA with the Sarah McLachlan song, because I will be upset for hours. So, what do I do? Yeah, I watch the King of Animal-Pull-Your-Heart-Out-Through-Your-Tear Ducts movies. I am the dumb.

I became aware, while watching, that I never would have made it had I been unlucky enough to be born on the Frontier in the mid-1800’s. I mean really, I moan around the office if I have a hangnail. I stay in bed all day if I have a headache. Good Lord, I eat Vicodin like they’re M&M’s if I have cramps. There’s no freakin’ way I could survive as one of those prairie wives. They farmed and cooked and cleaned and milked cows and raised annoying children and slaughtered their own meat. I have a cleaning lady for my one-bedroom apartment and I can’t even touch raw poultry without gagging. They stitched wounds with horsetail hairs and no anesthesia, people! I get dizzy and weak if I look at a bleeding papercut. It seems like they birthed a baby and then got up an hour later and made supper for their husbands. Crimeny! Sometimes I come home from my temperature-controlled, desk job and I’m too tired to cook anything other than microwave popcorn.

I’ll admit it, I’m a wuss. I’m a huge, giant, wussy baby. However, I don’t know too many women in my circle of acquaintances, co-workers or friends who would be able to survive in that kind of environment. I realize that we’ve grown up with modern amenities and we would have adapted (some of us better than others) had we been born and raised during that time-period. I understand that it’s all relative and that 150 years from now, people will look back at our generation and think, “Thank Godopus that I didn’t grow up then! I read on the Googlenets that they had to prepare food instead of just swallowing a pill and they had to WALK to get around rather than just tell their hovercraft to move to the left.” I’m sure our ways will seem rough to them. Although honestly, I can’t imagine how lazy future generations would have to be to think loading a dishwasher is taxing or that pressing “start” (*ahem*) on a crockpot is a lot of work. So, yeah, as much as I sometimes whine that life is tough, it’s good to be able to look at things in perspective and realize just how good I have it.

So, to sum up –

1) Prairie life was hard, ya’ll.
2)“Old Yeller” is an emotional nightmare for me.
3) I TOTALLY wished that Arliss (the maddening 6 year old in the movie) had been bitten by Old Yeller and then Travis would have had to shoot his irritating ass.

Admit it, you would have traded Arliss’ life for Yeller’s, too…