Hey guys. I haven’t had much to say this week. About the only thing going on is that I talked to a dealer about getting on the waiting list for a Prius. Yay!
TC Boyle wrote a similar short story (can’t remember the name right now) that ended with the line:
“After all, Lassie was a bitch”
Great story, Rue
Yay is right! Love that car…I’d buy one if I could.
Maybe we could all sign up and get a group discount? Someday, I’d like one too.
ems, if you find out how to get more hours into a day, please let all of us know…
swampy, clearly you have some miraculous influence on all of us. We all started breaking out in <snerks> (large, colored ones, even) and <snerk>-worthy comments just as soon as you returned. But don’t think we didn’t notice that you haven’t responded to all the additional whining about the missing mementos.
I, too, have a Look that lets people know I mean business. Of course, some people start to giggle when I use it, so it may not always have the desired effect…
Lissla, good luck with the wedding stuff! Oh, and…I like the Future Husband concept. I think that might be the only brand I can tolerate (or that could tolerate me…). I need to clean my fridge. Is Quasi Daughter touring Ohio anytime soon? Tomorrow evening would be good since Thursday is trash day.
Have I ever mentioned that there’s a cardinal that keeps landing on the window ledge about 3 feet from my right elbow? The window has miniblinds, so he can’t see me, but I keep being distracted by movement just beyond my reach. Last year, a couple of cardinals built a nest in the evergreen that’s just outside the window. I don’t see a new nest, but he often hops into the evergreen and then back onto the ledge.
merrily, I think your brother might be my first Future Husband.
Draelin, so what happened with the new receptionist? Was she indeed sick? Or will you be getting yet another new one?
This evening’s dinner is: apple pie. Mmmmmm…pie. We bought a couple of small pies at the farmer’s market on Saturday, but didn’t get them all eaten up before the family left. Tomorrow’s flavor: Cherry Crumb.
I think all that claustrophobia from the family invasion last week has made me extra chatty - I seem to be posting a lot overall and extra-long here. And I even have two threads I want to start this week (which pretty much never happens).
I’m sure there’s more, but I need to get some real-life stuff done…
GT
Ohhh, I forgot! The receptionist was actually sick. The temp agency we hired her through said this is the first time she’s called in sick in five years. So either she’s actually sick, or this job reeeeeeally sucks.
Personally, I think it’s a little from Column A, little from Column B. 
Not possible. After all, she gets to work with you! Right?
GT
Oh the admin knows better than to use ‘team building’ with us gardentraveler. See, a couple of years ago we hired a pack of consultants to come in and help us prove we were a good school. I was so proud when they told us that team building wasn’t our problem since we were the most united faculty and staff they’d ever seen. United in our toxicity, but united all the same. Nope, the balloons were to help us see that problems, symbolized by the one water-filled balloon, made even a whole bag of air-filled solution balloons hard to handle. In actuality, it taught us to cheat and lie.
Melli, do your claws make a snickity snick sound when you type?
Swampy, here’s some devil horns ^ ^ to put on the big red <snerk>.
Children are just plain nuts. It’s 115 degrees outside and there are three kids running around in the full sun. I nearly passed out just walking in from the parking lot and they’re running. No I didn’t do exactly the same thing when I was a kid. That was my evil twin who did the running-- that’s how we knew she was nuts and needed to ‘go away’ for a while. It also conviniently explains why we’re never seen together.
Didn’t know consultants came in packs. My brother is a consultant (has his own company, even); at least he’s not the touchy-feely brand that you were subjected to (the balloon exercise sounds even worse than I’d suspected). But now I can ask Bro about where he and his pack of consultants have a gig this week.
You can say that again. I spent all of last week cooped up with a couple of them. They are not much for high heat, but put them indoors and they bounce off the walls. Have I mentioned the lovely paint stain (grumble…grumble…it says “washable” on the bottle…grumble) that decorates my (soon to be removed, thank Og) carpet?
GT - definitely chatty (and overusing parentheses and elipses…)
Hey guys - someone else was gone for a while. 2 weeks - didja miss me?
I am so darn lazy - I actually got back from vacation on Saturday afternoon, but just didn’t feel like sharing until now.
Susan’s vacation highlights:
- Pure relaxation. Probably spent approximately a total of an hour thinking about work.
- Sunny, not too hot, perfect breeze off the beach. Only a slight sunburn that stopped hurting after half a day. For me, that’s good. I guess I also got a nice tan - more than one person has commented on it.
- Got to spend time with my family. Was there to see my niece’s first crawl. She had been right on the edge of crawling at the beginning of the trip, and by the end was moving like a little demon. She is just the sweetest baby in the world, I swear.
- Simple pleasures. Entertainment was reading, trips to the movies (Stupid Guy Night!), card games, and board games.
- Food. Ah, food. Just - food.
Lowlights:
- 24 hour virus spread through some of the family. I was lucky to avoid it - although my sister only developed it yesterday, so I may not be totally spared. crosses fingers
- Got a bit crabby at the end. No car, sharing a room with 3 other people (5 others one night!) - it gets a little claustrophobic sometimes.
- 11 kids. I like kids - but 11 in one house, ages ~1 to 11, can get a little crazy.
- Food. And the weight that goes with it.
And for the amusing/scary story. My family went to a baseball game (go SeaDogs!). My sister was holding the baby, and a pop fly came right towards them! My sister moved to the side to save the baby, and managed to get hit on the hip with the ball. It bounced down to the next row, where my brother was sitting, and he got it. Sis was fine - except for a HUGE bruise the next few days. Baby happily sucked on the ball. The ironic thing is that my sister had been warned by her husband to protect the baby, because a ball had come up in our area before. He had gone for a walk with their other boy, and missed the whole thing!
Anyway, I’m back. Don’t want to be, of course, but I am.
Susan
The half-assery of this house knows no bounds!
But first…
Yesterday was busy. It was the Meet and Greet for both the new teachers. Luckily they weren’t at the same time since they are at different schools. Soupo starts school tomorrow and Katcha starts school Monday. This is Katcha’s very first day of Kindergarten and he rides the bus for the first time, so it’s going to be a Big Day. (You people are on your own for an MMP if you want it on Monday.)
Also, since this is Grocery Week, the fridge is pretty low on food-stuffs. Ditto the freezer out in the garage. So I figured it would be a dandy time to defrost the freezer. I was right. The whole job was a non-adventurous cake-walk. Which was a danged good thing since…
The half-assery of this house knows no bounds!
It was a lovely day yesterday. A “let’s open the house up and enjoy the breeze” day. So we (the Little Woman took off work yesterday to check out the boys new teachers) opened up the windows and let the breeze in. I even opened up the kitchen door and pulled the screen door shut. (It’s one of those screen doors on rollers that slides in the track.)
“You know,” I said. “This door shouldn’t be so hard to open and close.”
As it happens, I was right. I shouldn’t be so hard to open and close. We’ve only been living here for two and a half years, and me being so full of my recent home improvement success with the bathroom, so I thought I’d do Something About It.
This really wasn’t a good idea.
I figured: “Hey! It’s one of those slidy screen doors on the track. You just lift it up and pop the bottom wheels out and the whole thing just comes out. Then you can clean the gunk out of the wheels and the whole thing will smoothly roll along and be real easy to open and close.”
Uhhhh… no.
First, the door wouldn’t come off the track. This was not good. This should have clued me in right there just to walk away. But did I? Do you even know me? Of course I didn’t walk away! I was getting that door off its track one way or another! It turned out a concentrated application of judicious persuasion was called for. I yanked that bi… sucker out. (It made a bad noise when I did, but I didn’t care.)
Oh. This probably isn’t good. There were wheels on the top of the door that went in the upper track and rolled the door along. Only “wheels” are supposed to be, ideally, “round”. These were ground smooth on one side, so no rolling was happening. But that’s OK, right? It’s the bottom wheels that do the work. So let’s check them out.
Huh. All jammed up into the bottom of the door. Not even touching the track. This could be bad.
So I prized the wheels out of the bottom of the door and put them back into the little holes they were supposed to go into. After I pryed a bunch of GUNK out of the bottom of the door. It seems the “fix” the ex-owners of this house used was lots and lots of grease. Bacon grease maybe. Since the door wasn’t moving freely, just cake in more grease! It was an unholy mess. But I cleaned it up and got the wheels back in.
Now to re-install the screen door!
Uh… no.
There was no way to get the door back on the track. It used to be there, I know, I just took it out. But it’s not going back in. Maybe if I push it.
Remember how I said the door made a “bad noise” when I took it out? It made the same “bad noise” going back in. Only in reverse. And the wheels spanged right out of their sockets again. I wonder why.
The reason the door wasn’t going back into it’s place was… it was two inches taller than the hole it was supposed to go into! This is indeed a problem. But the good news was the whole door was screwed together, so I could just unscrew the whole thing, cut down the door and put it all back together, rescreening it to boot!
Ooooorrrrrrrr…
I could go to the hardware store and see what they had.
I went to the hardware store.
They had a replacement door for thirty clams.
I bought that.
On my second try.
See, the hardware store I picked was Home Depot. Not a great place to shop. But I found the replacement door I needed. So I pulled it out of the overhead bin (a great place to keep replacement screen doors- overhead) and took it up the the register. (Of course the doors were aaaaallllllllllll the way across the store from the checkout. But really, a replacement screen door isn’t all that heavy.) When I got there it turned out the door I had was in the wrong bin. It was more than I wanted to pay. So I took the door back and looked for the right one. (Halfway back I tried to figure out just why I was taking this door across the store again. I couldn’t think of a compelling reason.)
Back at the doors I pulled out another door from the slot. Hey! It’s the same as my first door! These doors are in the wrong slot! So where was the door I wanted? It was two slots down. I finally found them. So I pulled a new door down. It was all beat up. So I pulled another door down. It looked good, but it didn’t have the little hardware packet for the latch packaged up with it. So another door pulled down. This one had the hardware packet, but the one corner was all twisted up. So I ripped the hardware packet out of the twisty door and stuffed it in with the good door and I bought Franken-Door. (And I left all thse other replacement screen doors leaning up against the display in the aisle. I almost felt bad about it.)
But I got the door I wanted for the right price.
But it didn’t fit in my car.
Of course.
But I jammed it in, which meant the top of the door was sitting along the ceiling of the car (inside top of the cabin, if you prefer). Which meant as I drove home with my new replacement screen door, I was all squunched up. (Not real safe. So kids, don’t try this at home!)
But when I got the whole thing home it went right into the hole of the door all “Bang! Zip!” Piece. Of. Cake.
And the new door sides so nice! Easy open. Easy close. Today I might put on the latch to keep it shut. If I feel like it.
Then I was taking the old door around the house to put it by our trash cans. Hey! This door is just like the new door! (Only the wheels were on springs on the new door. And the wheels were still round!) If the yahoo who live here last just took the top piece off the door (like you’re supposed to for the doorway we’re dealing with) everything would have been just fine! (I could have kept the old door, as it happens, and taken off the top piece and put it back. Only I didn’t want to. It didn’t roll anymore, so it wouldn’t have been “fixed”. It would have been better, but not fixed.)
Stupid person who lived here before! Can’t even put in a replacement screen door! And he used a Tupperware bowl to “fix” the leak in the wall. The person who lived here before us is STUPID!
But the door is fixed now.
And the freezer is defrosted.
And Soupo starts school tomorrow.
And Katcha starts Kindergarten (and rides the bus alone!) Monday.
-Rue. (Mr. Fixy)
Yay! I only gotta work for half the day cause I gotta go home at noon to be there when my ceramic cook top gets installed! Yay!!
susan, sounds like a great vacation to me. Yeah, towards the end you get a tad cranky, but that’s way better than all weepy cause it’s ending.
ashes, I don’t know about kids being nuts but I do know their little brain cells are a coupla fries short of a happy meal. They all probably went home and puked from heat exhaustion or sumpin.
gt, if you are getting new carpeting, be sure you get the stain guard. I’m just sayin’ is all.
Tupug
Rue, the sliding glass door to my balcony doesn’t work so well … you think you could stop by and take a look? The screen door is fine–well, with the exception that the screen isn’t actually attached to the door on the bottom because I have a big fat cat that likes the balcony air and figured out that if he threw himself against the screen hard enough, he could find a way out. But never mind that, now.
While you’re at it, could you fix my shower? See, since I moved in, it doesn’t drain. The water just starts to pool, and by the end of my shower, I’m standing calf-deep in my own dirty water. Which isn’t nice. I tried Drano. I tried calling the super. Then, last week, I called the super again, and was told he did go take care of it last time I called. No, he didn’t. I’m thinking that it’s entirely possible somebody came in sometime last week, because the tub’s filling up a little more slowly, but I still have to race through everything to keep from flooding the bathroom. And if I want to shave my legs, I have to take two separate showers, at least 45 minutes apart.
But hey–my water pressure is fantastic.
In other news, I am now a proud godmother. I got a call last night that my friend Brooke (who was scheduled for a C-section on Friday) went into labor yesterday afternoon, and is now resting comfortably with some big ol’ belly stitches and a brand new baby girl. (Unlike her older brother, this one managed not to grow a penis between the ultrasound and the birth.) Alexia Grace is her name, and I decided not to tell her mother that alexia is a neurological disorder, because her nickname will be Lex, and I will do my best as her godmother to make sure that someday she rules all of Metropolis. I’m told that Brooke went into labor because she and her boyfriend were (in the words of the messenger) “getting their groove on”–which I cannot imagine wanting to do when eight-and-three-quarter-months pregnant, but hey, at least somebody’s getting some. Apparently, that’s the best way to induce labor when you’re just sick of being pregnant. Better than scrubbing the kitchen floor, I would think. And certainly a lot more fun.
Draelin, about that shower…
First, you should change your old, water-wasting showerhead to a modern low-flow jobbie. It’s easy. If you can change a lightbulb, you can change a shower head. You just unscrew the old head (righty-tighty, lefty-loosey) and screw on the new one. Cinchy.
Then go down to Target and get a jug of their store brand drain cleaner. I don’t know why, but for some reason it works better then even Dran-O. A regular drain-cleaning dose is 1/4 bottle. Just use the regular dose. But repeat it three times. If that doesn’t open up you tub drain, you’ll have to “snake” it. It’s pretty gross using a snake, so I don’t do it. You never know what you’ll pull out of the drain.
And don’t let the super know you’re taking the plumbling “into your own hands”. It’s against the lease, so you could get in trouble.
(Did you notice how I didn’t say you should take a shower for me so I can see what the problem is? It’s because I respect you as a person.)
To fix your balcony door, you should just smear the tracks with bacon grease. That’ll work.
Okay, “modern low-flow jobbie” sounds really dirty to me … maybe while I’m at it, I should get me one of those shower massagers …
I’m sorry, what was I talking about? Oh, yeah. I’ll hit Target at lunchtime today, 'cause I have nothing better to do. Rue, you’re my hero.
I regret to say that, while I do do these things fairly often (especially the dishes - our rule is whoever doesn’t cook dinner does the dishes, and I usually only cook on the weekends), the past weekend’s burst of activity was abnormal, due to a combination of boredom (no car, no spouse, no places to go and things to do) and a feeling that I should do something useful with all this spare time besides play Civ on the computer (which was being defragged, anyway). Vacuuming I do only when the carpet starts to match the cats, due to a tendency to want to move all the furniture in the process so I can clean “properly”. On the plus side, both Mrs B and the cats agree that I do a mean neck rub.
Houston … we have a problem.
Today I am wearing an outfit I “made” myself. I took a dress that I liked but made me look a little pear-shaped, cut the top off, made it into a shirt, and used the rest of the dress and a pair of jeans to make a cute little skirt (past knee-length, 'cause I don’t wear short skirts, of course). I look adorable, if I do say so myself, and I’ve gotten a few good wears out of this outfit.
But I’ve just realized that there is a growing hole in the back of the skirt, where the dress material meets the denim, right smack in the middle of my butt. I don’t think there are a lot of people who look at my butt on a regular basis, especially at work, but the skirt is faded denim/blue flowered cotton, and my underwear today are bright red.
I made a trip to the ladies’ room with my stapler to try and rectify the situation. Then when I came back to my desk and sat down … the staples popped. I’m going to have to go on a mad safety-pin hunt now. The hole really isn’t that big, and very likely nobody’s going to notice unless I point it out. But I know it’s there. And I know what color underwear I have on.
Of course, I’m really thanking every deity I can think of that I wore underwear today at all. sigh
Wow! You move furniture so you can vacuum properly? Are you sure you’re a man? Frankly, I’d be happy if my hubby at least cleaned his hole (the den) properly and all by himself. This means dusting too.
I have too much to do today and not nearly enough time. Plus, I’m losing about three hours of the workday because I need to attend a class; then, I get to come back here for an hour and a half. What a pain.
That’s very cool (except for the hole–no duct tape, huh?). I have an old dress that I’m going to chop up and make into a skirt. It’s really cute fabric, but the cut is a little strange, so I think it’ll look better as a skirt. I’ll have to watch out for holes, though.
Ohh, I didn’t even think of duct tape! What is wrong with me??
I did, however, find somebody with safety pins. Only they were the really really tiny ones, and even three of them just popped right open when I sat down. Unfortunately, my ass is large enough that it only gets bigger when I put my full weight on it.
But then, the Sewing Kit of the Gods was dropped on my desk, just as I was thinking that instead of just standing outside and smoking a cigarette on my morning break, I’d run to the mall and buy a pair of jeans.
So, after a trip to the bathroom and only a little effort, the hole is closed. I’m hoping it lasts the day. I reinforced it as much as I could with a little hotel-room sewing kit. I’ll keep you all posted. I know you can’t wait.
I find it amazing that things like this never seem to stop happening to me. le sigh