Nah. Won’t work. We’ll just think you’re one of those Aussies, and then someone will ask you if your toilet flushes the other direction.
Not everyone chooses Albany. For some, Albany chooses them.
My time in the area (Saratoga Springs, actually) was at US Navy expense, and non-optional, a couple of decades ago. That was fun, with guys from all over the USA bitching in unison about the perpetual foot of snow on the ground and zero-degree temps.
I have a photograph somewhere (old-school film photo, not yet digitized) of the windowsill of my crap student apartment, my senior year of college in Chicago. There’s about six inches of snow sitting on the inside.
Yeah, that place was great.
Ahahahahahaha. Beauteous.
On the bright side, the oil burner is working fine now, and my older daughter is also fine except for some soft tissue injuries and she will have wonderfully colorful bruises to show off on Christmas.
“Cram it in your mouth. . .” (Dairy Queen ad). Really? This is what passes for commercial jingle wit these days? An ad like this for a product that really, really sucks ass prompts me to reply in turn: cram it up your asses.
Good Fucking Grief I HATE this time of year!
Dark outside.
Cold.
Every fucking moron on the roads is distracted.
Driving 10-15 miles per hour below the speed limit.
Often in the left lane.
Traffic everywhere.
People asleep at the lights.
Driving through parking lots without paying the slightest attention.
Pushing their motherfucking shopping carts in one direction while staring in another.
Blocking aisles all by themselves.
Standing in the middle of things staring off into space.
Walking in the door of the store and falling into a standing coma, which holds the door open and leaves the people behind them unable to enter.
Stopping dead, turning on a dime and running directly into other people because they suddenly remembered something in another area of the store.
Because they’re too fucking busy thinking about what they’re going to get little Timmy, or what days they have off, or when they have to be where.
And of course, they all have to be stark raving jackasses about it - no courtesy at all - if someone, anyone - has the gall to say “excuse me”, or walk or drive around them. It is all everyone elses fault and everyone else is being inconsiderate toward them by indicating in the slightest fashion that there are other people in their little universes.
I want a Taser. And the right to use it at will.
And a fucking Taser Cannon for my car.
But only between Thanksgiving and New Years, every year.
Sheer poetry!
Sorry, man – I grew up in Milwaukee (and I’m only 75 miles away at this moment), and the topic at tonight’s party was: “Shit, how’d it go right from Autumn to January?” This is way too cold way too fast – Oct/Nov was warm, but Dec PLUMMETED right into deep freeze, before anyone’s blood could thicken up.
My husband won’t let me borrow his Taser to take shopping with me. I personally think that even Walmart would be tolerable if I could tase the people who annoy me there. Maybe a cattle prod would work, if I can’t use the taser…
Funny you should mention that, Lacunae - we were in Wal-Mart today, and there was a woman standing so she could perfectly block the aisle - I said, “Excuse me” (twice), and she finally slowly looks over, and grunts something like, “Uh huh” and slowly moves out of the way. Seriously, woman, it’s Wal-Mart on the last Saturday before Christmas - anywhere you stand that isn’t pressed up against a wall is going to be in somebody’s way. Try a little situational awareness. (A taser would have been PERFECT here.)
Self absorbed obliviots. We hates them, we does.
Dear Macys: I know you want my money and everybody else’s money. I see your shiny ads in the paper at least twice a week. Since you seem to want it so badly, you might consider putting more than one cashier on each floor, especially when there are seven people in line. And by the way, you can restock that enameled cast iron dutch oven your own goddamned selves: I had a bus to catch.
Dear UPS, FedEx and USPS.
I know this is Hell Week for you. You’re delivering roughly as many packages to homes in the two weeks before Xmas as you do the rest of the year, so I understand that you want to be able to drop off packages and scoot off to the next delivery.
However, in the news, we have reports of evil people trailing delivery vans and swiping freshly-delivered packages from patios and porches.
Would it kill you to give the door a whack or press the doorbell button so if someone’s home, they’ll go to the door and get the box before the thieves?
In the past couple of days, the delivery ninjas have snuck up to the house in broad daylight, stealthily left boxes and sped off without making a sound. Fortunately, I was working from home and could see them pull up and moments later, drive away.
Boxes? :eek: You at least got *boxes. *I get “delivery notices”.:p:mad:
Turns out fate was on our side. My wife saw the sale tag on this thing and decided it was a good deal (Martha Stuart enamelware). I’m always suspicious of any product with some celebrity’s name on it, but she wanted it. This morning I looked up the product reviews and it’s a piece of shit, along with similar stuff from Rachael Ray.
I LONG for delivery notices. I get the UPS/FedEx guys giving the packages to my batty upstairs neighbor who I barely know at all. And when I go and pick up the packages from her, she tries to shake me down for money and Christmas cookies for “all the good she does around the building all year long.”
Hopefully in seasonally appropriate green and red.
Yeah, it was really absurd. I’d be depressingly excited about the fact that it’s supposed to break 30 tomorrow, except there’s also supposed to be freezing rain. 
Yeah, but then you’d have her unconscious body lying in the aisle. Even a thin person is shockingly hard to move around when they’re dead weight, and given that you were in Wal-Mart, there’s probably a decent chance the woman was overweight.
Wait, how does that exchange even work? I mean, how do you work “give me cash or yummies” into a reply to, “May I please have my package”?
Well, first me and my boyfriend have a long argument about who has to go upstairs to Crazy Caroline’s to get the package. There is a great deal of wheedling and whining and promises of sexual favors and dishes washings. Then the loser gets into a huff and proclaims very loudly about calling UPS/FedEx to complain about their delivery practices and how ridiculous this is.
Then he/she goes upstairs and knocks on Crazy Caroline’s door. And when she answers, just inside the door, he/she can see the package along with other packages intercepted from other people in the building. And before Crazy Caroline will hand the package over, she will start asking things like “Are you thankful for all your blessings this year?” and “Are you being generous with the Christmas spirit?” and saying things like “I do so much around the building” and “It’s hard for me at Christmastime, because I just don’t have much.”
And in my head, I’m thinking, “You’ve lived in a two-bedroom apartment in a rent-controlled building since the beginning of time so your monthly rent is like ONE DOLLAR. And really, your contribution to the building seems to be parking yourself in a lawn chair in the lobby and asking me pointed questions about my boyfriend’s ethnic makeup and whispering about the poor girl on the second floor with the colicky baby.”
But since I want my package and I usually bake about a million cookies over the holidays, I just hand some gingersnaps over and take my boxes and go home. And promise myself that I will remember to have everything delivered to my office next time.
What is supposed to be wrong with it? Cast iron + enamel, right? Does the enamel chip easily? Does the cast iron heat unevenly? That seems to be about all that could go wrong with it.