The *REAL* start of the year! September mini-rants

The BBQ Pit
281

Let’s say you’re overseeing road construction and the genius moving the crane rips down a wire strung across the street to a house. Do you:

A. Notify the company responsible for maintaining the wire.

B. Notify the house owner that one of their services just got cut off and they should get a competent person to fix it.

C. Quietly pull the downed wire out of the street, hide the evidence and go about your day.

D. Trick question because you wouldn’t let someone operate a crane unless they understood how to not rip down wires.

If you answered anything but C, please, for the love of all that’s good, come take control of whatever the hell they’re working on over here.

282

While I totally agree that nobody should ever ask a random stranger about their reproductive statis, you might be able to take this as a compliment. There is a big difference in appearance between pregnant and overweight. IN MY OPINION, PLEASE DON"T START SHOWERING LIGHTNING BOLTS ON MY HEAD, PLEASE!!!

283

Wait, so its so hot that making soup for dinner is “a waste of chicken”, but you want thirds? I think I might just be too tired to make you dinner tomorrow, darn it!

284

I guess the concentration of fat in my midsection made her think I was in the early stages of pregnancy. I have relatively athletic arms and legs with less fat there than in my abdomen, so I guess she got confused by the “food baby”. I just got upset that she asked without being given any other indication that I might be pregnant, and my buying of coffee, dried beans and half-and-half didn’t indicate anything regarding the status of my uterus. ::shrugs:: Not all of us overweight folks look like we’re “huge” when we could lose some weight.

285

I would use the “genius” as an emergency power conduit. What do I win?

286

Was yours gallbladder-related too? I didn’t even think about that at first, I thought that my abdominal pain might be intestinal. I gave my doctor a long list of currently annoying and/or persistent symptoms that have been bothering me, and after reading it he said “probably gallstones”, poked me in the tummy and made a referral for an ultrasound. I looked it up after I got home, and it would explain not only the abdominal symptoms, but also a host of other things like pain in my back and shoulder and feeling generally like complete crap all. the. time.

I was glad that it didn’t take long from the time of his referral to getting the scan, now it’ll be a week or so yet before I can get in to discuss the results with him, and then I hope something can be done forthwith. It’s really hard to look for work or put myself out there to improve my resume and local references by volunteering when I feel like crap in general and am sidelined by bouts of pain. Even when the pain is not particularly strong, I’m just so uncomfortable all the time that it’s hard to gather up enough motivation to do anything at all, at all. I’m really hoping it’s the gallbladder, because that’s easily taken care of, and less dire than, say, bowel cancer or liver failure.

Additional mini-rant: I take my driving practical test for my UK license today, a test which typically has a 43% pass rate at the best of times, and today we’ve got a bunch of hurricane leftovers blowing around the place. So, gale-force winds and horizontal rain, just to make driving a stranger’s car while being judged by another stranger EXTRA fun and exciting. I hope it doesn’t make them cancel the test, though, because I want to get this over with. I DO hope that it makes the examiner more lenient, given the conditions. :wink: Extremities crossed for the duration, except that’d make it even harder to drive properly, heh…

287

Since I’m at work and won’t drive at all, extremities crossed for you, Jeneva!

288

Well, one positive thing might come of it: MAYBE SHE’LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN.

289

Ampersand? (This thing: &.) Izzat what you meant? :confused:

290

Oh, believe me, she won’t. I have a friend who asked a (known-to-be-preggers) co-worker when she was due. Reply: “I had the baby last week.”

Friend hasn’t remarked on ANY female’s appearance for six years since. Not even “Nice shoes”.

It’s mortifying for both parties, as can well be expected. It was kind of nashiitashii to rationalize the checker’s comment, but it was WAY out of line, unless the customer brought up her pregnancy first. There are a lot of people out there with bellies.

291

Ok, here’s the deal. Maybe it’s different here in San Antonio and people don’t give a shit about what they’re doing, but goddamn it, I was brought up differently:

WHEN WE INVITE YOUR CHILD TO OUR CHILD’S BIRTHDAY PARTY, WE EXPECT ONLY THE CHILD INVITED TO SHOW UP! DO NOT, WITHOUT WARNING, BRING ADDITIONAL CHILDREN EXPECTING THEM TO PARTICIPATE FULLY IN THE PARTY!

So we invited 7 kids to Sophia’s 10th birthday party, a swimming party held at our house. One of the parents decided to bring two other children as well, with no call asking if it was OK, both of the kids decked out in swimwear and towels. My wife, who doesn’t handle the unexpected well, was panicking - “We don’t have enough goody-bags* and the balloon people are expecting 8 children, not 10! What are we going to do?” (The “balloon people” were balloon artists who do funky balloons for kids birthday parties and shit - this guy, for Sophie’s birthday, made her a 3-foot tall TARDIS out of balloons - it’s pretty cool.)

I was like, “Oh, don’t worry about it.” Because, you know, I knew what to do and when all the kids had arrived, I did it.

I gathered them around, and after reading the pool rules, said the following in my best Take No Prisoners Dad Voice:

“OK, so we have a problem. We invited 7 kids and 9 showed up. While we’re glad that so many have arrived to celebrate Sophie’s birthday, that puts us in a bind, and here’s how we’re going to solve it. For starters, only invited guests get goody bags. If you are an uninvited guest, you do not get a goody bag. Also, while the ultimate decision is not up to me, the balloon people are only expecting to do balloons for 8 kids, not 10. So, if you don’t get a balloon and you weren’t invited, that’s life. But I’m telling you right now that I do not want any whining, complaining, or other bad emotions at MY house because you didn’t get a goody bag or a balloon creation. DOES EVERYBODY UNDERSTAND?” (Wait for all kids to say “Yeah” or whatever.)

The mother who brought the extra kids was standing behind me so I didn’t get to gauge her reaction, but I really didn’t give a shit. I do note that they left early, saying she can’t drive in the darkness, which kind of makes sense, given that before this she was telling me that she drove to work at 4:30 every morning. :rolleyes:

But fuck 'em. I was raised better than to bring un-invited guests to a birthday party, and I was raised that if you had no choice, you’d better call first to let the hosts know.

*I’ve already ranted about goody-bags, but if you missed it, I don’t believe that you should get a present coming to my party. Fuck that!

292

JohnT, you are awesome, and I wish I’d had you when a clueless Mom dropped off her four-year-old at my seven-year-old’s birthday party. (In his defense, he was the sweetest and most well-behaved four-year-old I have ever encountered, and we didn’t have much going on that he couldn’t participate in, so it worked out OK.)

293

A year ago I had a cat bring her kittens to the neighborhood. She and the kittens were feral, but I watched them starving and finally gave in and fed them, which means I was then responsible for them. So me and my brother trapped them and took them to the Humane Society, got them fixed and shots and tested for feline lukemia and then let them go in the neighborhood. Now a year later, the mother cat has decided to be friendly to me, I can pet her. And one of the babies has decided to be really friendly and comes into the house every evening and sits with me on the couch as we watch tv. The friendly ones now are getting Advantage every month. Everyone I talked to said after about 5 months you can’t tame a feral cat, but here are 2 kitties who are challenging that notion. Plus there is another one that is really close to allowing me to pet her. If the one who coming into the house proves he can use the litter box, he can stay in all the time.

(I know this is the PIT but dang it I love that these kitties are changing)

294

Eh, by the time I went in I didn’t have much other than stones in there so it was more of a gallstonebladder.

I was certainly happy when I got the diagnosis since by the time the last attack was bad enough for me to go to the ER I was flipping back and forth between thinking ‘oh god, a heart attack at 30’ and ‘oh god, I’m wasting ER resources on indigestion’

And yeah with modern techniques getting your gallbladder yanked out is pretty safe and easy (so far as abdominal surgeries go). I was in for day-surgery, home that afternoon and off the pain pills in 2 days. I was ~95% recovered within 5 days and with part of my recovery over the weekend only missed 3 days of work.

So now I’m back to normal and also getting my resumé out there (that’s another rant entirely).

295

Hmm, what is this on my desk? An inter-office envelope full of receipts with the name “John” written on it. Well, there are many many people employed at this university, yea, even in this department. I would guess that approximately a buttload of them are named John (although I am not). I know some people named John, I could try giving it to one of them…or maybe I could just put the fucking thing in the trash because you, oh idiot sender, didn’t care enough to put any useful information at all on your little package. Maybe I’ll just pop it into a handy mailbox. “John”. :smack:

296

I’m having the exact opposite problem! I am 7 months pregnant and since I started out being heavy I don’t look pregnant, I just look amazingly fat. I think people might be secretly taking pictures of me because they didn’t know people could get this fat. This means that no one is yet willing to give up a seat for me on the bus or train, no one politely steps a few feet away to light up their cigarette, etc. It also means I get rude stares and the occasional rude comment when I take the elevator instead of the stairs or something like that. I wish I was obviously pregnant so that people would respond in the kindness that is generally shown to pregnant women instead of the rudeness that some people feel is okay to show to the obese.

297

Do you have harsh summers and/or winters? In wintertime, especially, once a cat figures out that you = warmth, all of a sudden they’re all purrs and sunshine and roses.

I live in a hot, drought-stricken state; the ferals we care for come running when they hear the hose start up, because they know it means fresh, cold agua.

298

Goddammit Sprint, your customer “service” blows syphilitic monkey dick. I called last week about the casual data usage on the phone. I was promised an email listing what websites were accessed. I never received that email. I instead received in the mail today something about my request for income-assistance being declined–that also said I lived in Michigan. I live in North Carolina. So I call customer “service” again.

After spending fifteen minutes on the phone with a very nice but obviously in-over-her-head girl (who, incidentally, misheard my request to block casual data on my boyfriend’s phone and nearly cut his phone off completely), I get transferred to some accounts manager bitch who argues with me over the internet usage on the phone–of which there was none. There were two pictures accessed, that’s it. The internet charges on that phone have been a steady problem ever since my boyfriend accidentally turned it on and then turned it off–we think. There’s no way to know. Accounts manager bitch claims she’s looking up the internet access on the phone, but when I challenge her on that, she can only give me the billing cycle it was charged on. Yes, I know that. What I want to know are specifics. She got an attitude with me, which I gladly returned in kind. She grudgingly gave me 50% off the charges and I hung up on her.

I’ve been with Sprint for a while now and I’ve never had this kind of shit treatment from them before. I’m sending an email which will be this rant cleaned up a little. I don’t appreciate somebody calling me a liar with nothing to back up their assertions.

299

Oh sister of mine, you’re generally a great housemate, and yes, I’m grateful to you for taking my dumped-pregnant self in, and not complaining as baby stuff gradually takes over your house.

However… next time you decide during an otherwise routine visit to the loo to randomly regrout some of the tiles, could you perhaps tell me, or barricade the affected area in some way? Those were my favourite socks :frowning:

300

It’s her potty and she’ll D-I-Y if she wants to…

(DIY if she wants to,
DIY if she wants to!)