Rebo your tree has been invaded by bears.
Ok, I just got this phone call from somebody rattling on about a magazine called “Administrative Professional”. Fool asked me what I’d say is the biggest problem I face professionally every day. I answered “jackasses callin’ me up trying to sell me useless magazines,” and hung up. That felt good! 
Cuz, I LOVE that song. It’s a “turn it up all the way” song when it comes on.
I thought you’d like that! 
Mornin’ everyone!
Drae, your story reminded me of living in Hawaii. I gave up on having cats and a Christmas tree in the same living space after I ended up with a tree with ornaments on about the top 10 inches of it. Those little buggers even carried the ornaments upstairs! I was still finding ornaments in unlikely places when we moved out of quarters two years later. Since the cats are now safely confined to the cat suite, I can have a Christmas tree again. Altho it was cute seeing little kitty faces peering out of the tree.
It is supposed to get really cold later in the week. Well, really cold for Georgia. DB, we all laughed at our Coach (who is of course Canadian) when he walked into the Coach’s Show on Monday complaining of the cold. Of course, he’s been here for 11 years and played two years in Alabama before that, so I guess he’s a bit acclimated. Seeing Connor’s bare toes made mine curl up in sympathy!
I really need to get to the post office and mail a book for PaperbackSwap - but I don’t want to go outside. It’s cold out there. SCL doesn’t do cold very well.
Yup. I went to the Wilco concert here in Chicago over Thanksgiving weekend and they sang this song - it was awesome.
Good afternoon! I’m up and having afternoon coffee. I think I’ll manclean the apartment today.
bbs2k, nope, but the cat tries to know on electrical cords, Christmas vacation style
Drae, Lucretia D. Hellcat is only four pounds, so she crawls in the tree without knocking it over. Maggie Wonderbeagle used to try to eat the ornaments when she was a pup.
Sean, if it’s a cat, those aren’t eggs its laying on your head. :eek:
Y’all remember the Crimmus Ornimints? Well, the reorder came in yesterday. All stinkin’ one-thousand of ‘em. As of this posting, we have 70 that have not sold. I have been in the front building taking my shift stickin’ the little “History of The Arctic Bear” papers inside each box. People who pre-ordered the dang things are comin’ in in droves. I may end up taking a shift selling 'em tomorrow. It’s kind of a madhouse in our little bitty lobby area.
Oh well, beats mopheads and mop handles.
For those who don’t know about the ornimint, this is it. Can y’all believe people would pitch such a fit over gen-yoo-wine 24k gold plated brass?
And now, from the folks who brought you “manclean” and “mantidy,” heeeeereee’s
MANTREE!!
<snerking my ass off!>
Um, very festive, canineslave!
It’s taken me 1/2 the day to catch up with you guys! Sheesh.
My parents used to tie our xmas trees up with fish line because the cat would tip it over otherwise. Fish line’s great because you really can’t see it unless you know it’s there and look really close. Fortunately, our cats don’t seem all that interested in the trees. Or at least they’re not now that we moved all the ones that were tied up with string out of Lily range. She looooooves string and was trying to eat the string that was holding up some of the ornaments. Ugh.
Speaking of ill-behaved cats, one of ours peed in the closet. Again. Grrrrrr. I’ve been saying that we need to keep the closet door closed, but we’re really really going to have to work on doing that. (This is where “we” can be translated as “not me.”) 
My coworkers surprised me with a Congratulations to-do this a.m. Someone (my boss, I think) had picked up bagels and coffee, and they all chipped in and bought me the coffeemaker that was on our registry. They’re such cool coworkers!
Now I’m madly trying to get everything done at work that needs to be done before I go so that I can leave in good conscience and not think about work for the next week and a half.
And I’m getting really nervous about this whole wedding thing. Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh!
Hee! I’ve got a lot of things like that.
Does anyone else think that bear looks not so much like a bear as it does like an Abominable Snowman or Sasquatch?
taxi, being married is quite lovely. Calm down. (Replays of last Christmas’s constant refrain of “Do I look fat? I look fat. I’m ugly. I don’t like the dress. It makes me look fat. Is marriage good? Do you like it? What if I don’t like it? Do you like it? He won’t love me if I’m fat.”) playing in my head.
It’ll be swell taxi. Cool on the coffee maker and good co-workers too.
I’ve been working on how I can make man tree sound dirty. I am intrigued.
I’m still awaiting the arrival of my new toy. I can’t wait to get my hands on it and do stuff with it! WHEE!!! New toy!
What’s your new toy? I forget. (Probably not mop handles, huh?)
I should be getting my new toy from UPS today. A shiny, handy dandy new-fangled ELECTRIC knife sharpener! Yes indeedy! I bought myself one for Christmas.
Thanks. I’m not quite that bad. I know the dress looks good and that, although I’ve gained a few pounds since summer ('cause I’m only working out in the a.m. instead of working out in the a.m. plus rollerblading or swimming in the p.m. like I did all summer), I also know I’m no where near fat.
But yeah, there are the “What if I don’t like being married?” questions running around in my head. And the “But I *liked * being single and living alone.”
Why don’t we have a scared/cold feet smilie?
Taxi, being married is actually quite nice. Mr. SCL and I will be celebrating 18 years next month, and I wouldn’t trade him for anything in the world. If you see my wedding pictures (such as they are - we eloped) you will notice I am clutching my bouquet so hard my knuckles are white. I was terrified, with a chorus of “what in the hell are you doing get the hell out of here girl RUN” running through my head. It’s a big step - but a nice one. Congratulations and best wishes - and we can’t wait to hear all about it!
I am just about finished packing my “Secret Santa” package. I was kinda hoping to get a MMPer, but that’s ok. I do hope my person likes what I’ve chosen. And yes, I did include some of my jewelry. I just went back over her wish list and I think she’ll like it. I hope. ::crosses fingers::
Bad Daxcat has been chewing paper again, damnit. My office looks like a snowstorm hit. I know better than to leave the office open when I’m not in here!
Off to sweep…
Chaos. Sheer and utter madness and chaos. I don’t know why, but damn near every single client and even an unusual number of end-users decided to wait until this afternoon, on this very day, to call in. An hour and a half I was glued to my headset because the call queue was in a perpetual state of pick the damn phone up. And half the calls lasted longer than usual because I had to go look things up or personally pick and inspect a part or correct a typo in a catalog that we hadn’t caught yet or such. Ordinarily there’s at least some reprieve even on the busiest of days but just this one concentration of calls between 2 and 4 created this critical mass of customer service. The call metrics program thingy says we lost 22 calls to people fed up with being on hold – about double the number of calls we lose on average with the same call volume.
And it started out as such a nice calm day, too. At least it stopped snowing. Of course, that just means it started raining. Feh!
heh - that’s how we refer to our EZ Pass, since we can use it at many toll plazas. I love movie references in real life!
When I got my EZ-Pass, I wandered around the house with it saying “Leeloo Dallas EZ-Pass.” My roommate got pretty sick of it.
I’m so bored.
I came home to 2 packages on the porch. One contained the mock turtlenecks and the shirt from Land’s End (his turtles, my shirt). The other contains a Lavoris concentrate kit.
See, **FCD ** love Lavoris, but none of the stores around us sell it. And buying on line, by the time you pay shipping, comes close to $6 for a quart bottle - a bit much. By ordering this kit, he’ll get SIX GALLONS for $60. That’s $10 per gallon, or $2.50 per quart, and all he has to do is add water. The kit even includes a gallon jug with a pumper to mix and dispense it. So yay!
Work was mostly worthless today. I’m trying to make a bunch of semi-related numbers come together to give me good annual estimates of certain commodities. What I have is a snapshot report of an end-of-month inventory, a 6-day listing of commodities in one of the 4 facilities I’m tracking, a one month of commodities received, and what turned out to be a pretty worthless 2-years old incomplete summary of commodities received over an 8-month period. What I need to do with these is try to estimate how much of each commodity will be available at each of 4 facilities on average. To add to the fun, the best info I’ve got has a higher security classification than my final report, so somehow I have to sanitize that data or I can’t use it. Have I mentioned how much I love my job?
**FCD ** is home - we’re going to Arizona Pizza for dinner. yum.
