There is, imho, something inherently unfair with filling out your ballot while looking at a website that lays odds on the awards, a website that gets its information from polling Academy members, Hollywood journalists, etc, after they’ve sent their ballots in. Since Oscar ballots are due the previous Tuesday, it’s a bit different than picking, say, the Super Bowl winner: for the Oscars, by Sunday morning, the game has already been played.
And here I am, planning on doing what I usually do: filling out the thing 10 minutes before the show starts. And Laura knows this, as that is how I always pick the things.
If I wanted to compete against the experts, I would join the website and enter their contest (if they have one).
I’m working as a poll inspector tomorrow, which will be at a minimum be a 14 hour day (and perhaps longer given a specific way in which Michigan’s primary may get fucked up which I will not detail now, but Murphy’s law says it may in fact take a long time for precinct totals to get certified properly) and sure enough, my uterus is cramping up in that way that means the arrival of my period is imminent. Which means, without going into detail, tomorrow will be the worst possible day of the month to be sitting at a table for 14 hours straight.
And it’ll be 14 hours of dealing with annoyed voters who aren’t going to want to tell me if they’re voting Republican or Democrat. “What do you mean I have to say which one? What about secret ballots? I’ve never had to tell anyone before!” Well, no, that’s true, but for this primary the state legislature passed a law that said the two primaries will be printed on separate ballots. (And the reason they passed that law? So that the two parties can get a nice handy list of whom to send lots of crap in the mail after you vote, essentially. Take it up with your legislator.) I have to know which one you want before I can hand you one. No, you don’t have to be a registered Republican or Democrat to vote today. No, picking one or the other today does not register you for that party (all it will do is determine which pile of junk mail you will get between now and November.) Yes, you will be able to vote a different party in the August primaries.
So I’m going to be crampy, grumpy, needing to use the restroom every couple of hours so blood doesn’t start pooling over the edges of the chair* and very possibly have people yelling at me all frickin day; and I don’t dare let it all bother me, because the precinct chairperson, a fellow I just met last week, is someone who may work out to be a potential employer, if I play my cards right. He is in marketing and makes use of freelance graphic designers. I am an underemployed graphic designer. We already talked about a specific kind of packaging design that he’s considering and I have some experience in, so this is far stronger a lead than some “Hey, drop me an email sometime” kind of leads I’ve had before that led to exactly zip. I’m looking forward to discussing more with this guy but…why did it have to be tomorrow?
*fuck not going into detail. However, this is somewhat of an exaggeration.
Heh, we have similar rules here in Illinois (plus you can’t actually “register” as a member of either party in that sense). I live in such a Republican-dominated district that after one primary, most people* got a “thanks for your support!” postcard from the area’s Republican party. My house got a couple of “what have we done to drive you away?” postcards. Note the assumption that we must have been Republicans prior to that point.
Deep sympathy on the period thing; you’ve probably already looked into hormonal treatment options, but I’ll just say that continuous birth control pill usage (no placebo week) and now the Mirena IUD have been awesome for me in that respect. No more cramping, and periods went from manageable, to none with the IUD switch. I used to think that no periods would drive me crazy with paranoia, but really? I think it’s worth it.
My husband delivers mail in our town; he said that during mail sorting for his route, the “thanks!” postcards were easy to tell apart from the few “why did you leave us?” postcards. They didn’t repeat the stunt, so perhaps even the staunch Republicans were put off by the “we see what you did there” reminder.
I don’t care about being discreet. I just want to feel better. Maybe I should mix up some orange juice and vodka or tequila. You’re supposed to drink OJ when you’ve got a cold, right? And the alcohol is just an antiseptic, to keep me from spreading germs all over the place.
I’m so disappointed in my latest firing - this is what I was aiming for (a warm, translucent brown with shiny black in the lines and a bit of a sheen to it) and this is what I got. I think I got the wrong stain - I have to go back another day and talk to the stain technician to see what happened.
(By the way, wanna see something gross? I was emptying out pickle jars with a bit left in them today, and the results were icky enough to take a picture of! )
Getting further and further convinced that my 73 year old mother is losing her mental faculties.
A few weeks back when I got the new job, she asked me where it was and I told her. She ignored what I said, prattered on about some church friends I don’t know, then asked me again where the job was. A week or so later at a family dinner, she kept asking me where it was/the address over and over, while I kept telling her the exact address. Until I snapped at her about it.
Friday was my last day at my old job. Saturday I’m talking to her;
“Must be nice to have a vacation day”
“It’s not a vacation day. My last day was yesterday.”
“Oh, but it’s like a vacation day, right?”
“No, it’s a normal weekend.”
“You’re getting paid for it, right?”
“No, my last day was yesterday”
“But I thought you got paid for vacation days.”
MOM. IT IS NOT A VACATION DAY. MY LAST DAY WAS YESTERDAY, OK?
“Oh, I thought you were taking some vacation time”
I use a prescription facial cleanser. The last time I bought it, they gave me two big tubes, which lasted a long time. I finally ran out, and my prescription had expired. I called the doctor and asked for another prescription, which he readily called into the pharmacy.
When I went to the pharmacy, I was told there was a hold on the prescription. They hadn’t filled it because it was more than $200. For a single 6-oz. tube of cleanser. I asked the pharmacist if there was a generic version available, and he said I’d have to talk to the doctor. Doctor’s office said that was absolutely ridiculous; of course the pharmacist would know if there was a generic. I went back and asked a different pharmacist, who told me there is a generic: $86.58 for a 6-oz. tube. He said it used to be OTC, but they made it prescription because people were “using too much.” Or because they saw a way to make more money, I forget which.
Well, I’ll pay it if I have to, but I’ve found something online with about the same ingredients OTC that my doctor is OK with. And it’s fragrance-free, which this other isn’t. (Why would something for ultra-sensitive skin have fragrance in it anyway? That’s a whole other rant.) Thing is, of course I haven’t found anyplace that carries it, in my ever-widening circle of retail outlets I’m calling. I’ll probably have to buy it online and bite the bullet and pay shipping.
That’s not the rant part. The $200 and then $86 is the rant part. I am so, so fortunate to have health insurance to pay for my migraine medicine, and I have the utmost sympathy for those who don’t and get gouged for shit like this. I can do without this product, but there are others I need. This reeks.
Sorry, Chimera. It’s nearly inevitable, and your transcript made me go, “Yup. She’s losin’ it.” Sorry you have to stand by and witness her decline, but at least she’s got you around to care.
Aw fuckity fuck. I think I lost my cell phone coming back from lunch. I’m holding out a slim glimmer of hope that it’s either in my car (I looked… ransacked, really) or that it fell out of my purse somewhere in the office (I checked the stairwell I used) but GODDAMN IT ALL TO HELL. I hate losing things. We can’t afford for me to be losing things. FFFUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKKKK!
Fucking Bank of America, I have a mortgage through them, not by choice mind you. I got a letter saying that I would NOT be getting statements by mail any longer, instead I would only get them via email. Now I ONLY have a mortgage with them and I have not signed up with them so why they are stopping after a year I have no idea.
I sign up with BOA, I have no March statement online. I can find no way to get one two days before it is due. I’m also looking around online and in their help and it says that loans are NOT eligible to go paperless, it says this in at least two different places.
My only option is to call them, I tell them I didn’t sign up for this crap, I have no statement and I can not pay. They were at least nice enough to say I would start getting paper statements again.
So WTF BOA, why did you think you could email me my statement when you don’t have my email? Why when I sign up can I not find my statement? Do I have to wait until March 1 to actually get a statement in which case I’m late?
I haven’t received an email so I know it’s all fucked up. The fucked up part is that I didn’t want to go with this shit company, I refinanced only to get my ex off the house and BOA bought the damn loan. To top it off someone else fucked up and my ex was not on the new loan, but she’s still on the title so I have to refinance again.
Oh, sweet {diety of choice} it had slid in the narrow gap between the seat and the hard plastic. NiceSweetCoworker insisted on redialing me over and over while I checked, so I was able to juuuuuust barely hear it buzzing in its hiding spot (I keep the ringer silenced during the day) and wound up patting around for it and then blindly fishing it out raccoon-style.
I feel a teeny bit bad that I picked up the phone when she was redialing me with a spontaneous and joyful, “Oh, you sweet stubborn monkey, you!” and only then realized not everyone would consider that a term of endearment the way we do in our little household. I don’t know why I kept resisting her offers of help…
Ooo, Bank o’ America. I didn’t choose them either…the mortgage was originally with American Home Loans, but they sold it to Countrywide before I could make the first payment. Bank of America later scooped up Countrywide…so here I am. They merged the mortgage account (jointly held with my mother) with my mom’s credit card, so both show up when I sign into BoA. They also started sending my mom an extra credit card with my name on it. The mortgage statements were spontaneously switched over to paperless with no action on my part; they will occasionally send a paper statement if something gets payed out of escrow. Oh, I also managed to duplicate my monthly email alerts…BoA canceled all of my alerts last year due to some privacy thing, so I had to re-register. Now I’m inexplicably receiving double alerts for every payment due and payment made.
I’m preparing to look for an apartment near work. Which means primarily looking at ads on craigslist because the listings there seems to be less inexpensive than the various rental websites. Why do people list only the COUNTY for the location?! How the fuck is that helpful?
I was looking to rent my home and move closer to work and tried craigslist. I wish you luck with that. There are so many scammers. All is flux in my life now, but I will pay attention to your posts.
)
Sounds entirely plausible to me!
