Tell me what democracy looks like?

We’re supposed to get more “Wintery Mix” on Thursday., according to the weather service it should start about lunch time and run through the afternoon. The schools will be closed by noon on Wednesday.

I was talking to a guy at the dog park and he said he hoped that the sky falls on us. He said he was tired of pretend winter. He said if he is going to have winter he really wanted real winter. Lot’s of snow, ice the whole thing. I think if he wants “real” winter he should move to Wisconsin. Here we suffer hurricanes for the privilege of not having to scrape our windshields.

While I was spending most of Saturday on the bus, I learned something. When we are surrounded by people we don’t know,. We don’t care what they hear. I learned all about one of the woman’s adopted daughter. It seems she was nine when they adopted her and she had all ready been through the wringer, the garbage disposal and a whole season of Lifetime movies of the week. She was damaged. So damaged that she spent a year in an inpatient program. She came out and was fine for a while but started to run away by the time she was 12. By the time she was 16 she was gone more than she was there and the woman and her husband told her if she ran away again she needed to stay away permanently, the girl slammed the door hard when she left. A few months later she showed up again pregnant. They told her she could stay until she had the baby and then she had to get it together, if she got it together she and the baby could stay. She didn’t and she had to go. The baby stayed. Now, three babies later she wants her parents to take her 5 year old for the weekends, because she “can’t deal with her”. Her Mother told her if the child comes to live with them, she is staying with them. They adopted baby one and they play for keeps when it comes to the grandkids. The woman said they have a total of three calm months since she came into their lives.

Another woman told her seat mate and the rest of us about the affair her teenage son had with his twenty-something youth group leader. The girls boyfriend was not amused and the church ostracized them, that led to the family being given the cold shoulder by the whole town! Small town living must be like living on a train set.

Both of these women just went on and on and on in full voice in front of Gawd and everybody about things that I wouldn’t have felt comfortable whispering in private - I also learned that many women of a certain age feel comfortable sharing what euphemisms they use instead of saying “vagina” and why were we discussing vagina? I don’t know! There are things you just don’t want to know about people you just met. I don’t even know these women’s names and I know about their “hoo-has”. Gawd. But I guess if you say these things in front of strangers, people you are never going to see again, it’s almost like you never said them at all and yet you still got to say them out loud. It’s almost like confessing sill things to your dog but having the dog able to laugh with you about it. What does your dog call her vagina? You know? You’ll never know, but you can find out with some stranger that she calls hers a “woo-woo”.

What else did I learn? there are different kinds of peaceniks. Our bus was separate into the “Religious” and “Secular “ sections Religious in the front, secular in the rear - Moderate Babtists, you don’t count! . Quakers pray before meals and are anti-war. On the subway on the way back to the bus, I saw one protester of a certain age sidle up to another protester of a certain age and deliver the saddest pick up line ever : ”Are you against all war or do you believe in just war?” . Lord.

The white House is offended that the Democrat party is offended

"I'm not that good at pronouncing words anyway."

Women say “PULL OUT NOW

I’m getting to old for this shit.

I am sore. Sunday I was all right while I was bopping around doing chores. Up and down the stairs, hefting laundry. No problem.

And then I decided that it was time to go and get my pictures taken care of and so off to Wallgreens Dogger and I went. Super. No problem so far. I was good walking into the store, everything was cool. Then I stood in front of the little machine. Ow!

I was there for not even that long and out of nowhere, Ow! I was going to hang around in the store until the pictures were ready but not anymore. If I didn’t sit down right now I was going to start crying. By the time I got out to the car I was whimpering.

Part of my plan had been to fill the car too, but for at least part of the time I would have to be standing up and that wasn’t going to happen. After sitting in the car for a while I had somewhat recovered. As long as I was moving, I was okay. I did find while standing was out of the question, I could walk.

So I walked around a designer rip off place and found something to wear to Tiny E’s baptism. How rip offy was this place? I bought shoes too and the bill was under $40, the “designers” that were ripped off? You never heard of them From what I could tell by some of the other things I saw there, the last things many of those designers designed were ... Class joint, let me tell you.. I think as long as I’m really careful my ensemble should last through the day. If I avoid direct sunlight, I may be able to wear the dress again.

Back to Saturday. The organizers of the bus trip had kindly brought along music to get us into the right frame of mind. Have you heard what passes for protest music these days? It’s really sad. I’m not the only one who notices.

One of the songs that seemed to be just a run down of everything Bush has done over the last six years. Okay. Bush is a very bad liberal. He’s a bad guy. He totally has no respect for the platform of the Democratic Party and he hates poor people, the veterans, women, children, science, the environment, teachers,students,health care workers, old people, the mentally ill, the chronically ill, the working poor, home owners, and he stomps on baby ducks. He sucks, he’s Captain Evol. Okay, make it rhyme and put it to music we can clap along to.

But.

A litany of Bush’s sins isn’t exactly, uh, you know, catchy. It’s hard to get worked up over every treaty he either hasn’t signed or ignored. A run down of his misdeeds will be read at his war crimes trial or his impeachment hearing. He sucks. Fine. But it’s hard to clap along to something with no beat and 26 stanzas.

Over earnest singer song writer chicks probably do really well at Take Back The Night rallies or Womyns symposia but damn it, hire a drummer! I don’t want to get weepy, I want to get angry! Girlfriends, rock out with your cock out! Buy a strap-on and man up. I don’t want to hear about how sad it all makes you, I want to hear your outrage. I need yours to fuel mine.

Remember Ohio?

Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio
Gonna get down to it soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been down long ago
What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know.
Gonna get down to it soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been down long ago
What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know.

From Protest Songs

That is outrage set to music.

Q - What is the difference between Vietnam and Iraq?
A - Bush had a plan to get out of Vietnam.

I went. I saw. I protested - not so much I got arrested though. I have a friend who told me if I go to a protest and I don’t get arrested,it meant that I didn’t protest hard enough. I’m into a less strident form of protest. I walk around, I'll chant if its catchy... I'm not there to wind up in some RNC gulag. I have a schedule to keep, you know?

I did talk to a guy who served 16 months for protesting but he protested at the School of The Americas and a few months later he punched an ICBM in the face. The courts were nice enough to let him serve his time con-currently. I think the lesson is to never inflict corporal punishment on government property and never trespass against the CIA. They aren’t as faith based as the rest of the government.

I saw some girls trying to get arrested but I didn’t know that’s what they were doing. I thought they were trying to be in the way ”Hey! Hey! Sit down! Sit down here! Hey!, stop! Come Here! Sit Down!. It was at the tail end of the march and by that time I really could care less about further protest, much less helping Cindy Coed get her protest on.

Later, I learned that the cops came. Lot’s of cops. Cops on bikes, Cops in cars, Cops on horses. They hadn’t had much to do for most of the day aside from offering bad directions and glowering .

Okay, you know how most buildings in Washington look pretty much a like, nice, safe Federal style buildings. Not fancy but servicable.

Then, I saw this:


Gawd. If it doesn’t look like the ugliest building on the planet it is because it’s ugliness was too much for my camera. It might not look all that ugly if it was located with the other pueblos, but it just looks like ass in his actual setting.

Okay, here are the pictures. It’s a edited version of the 148 I actually took. I forgot about how the site posts the pictures and so the first pictures were taken at the end of the march, tne last pictures from the start of the march.

Friday Cat Blogging

On the Road again


So. Another year another trip to DC . Three trips in four years.

Marches don’t stop wars. The boomers can laude themselves for ending Vietnam but they didn’t. It became economically undesirable and it then ended. This current “They” doesn’t even belive in public opinion – so the belivers got together and voted “Them” out and damn it! The war goes on. And we are back in the streets.

See, I march because you will see us marching, you will see 300,000 thousand people out there marching and not feel alone. Maybe not you in the big towns, but it’s for the people in the little places who don’t know anyone else agrees with them. It lets the little guy know he’s not alone. It’s for all the people watching Jon Stewart on the little black and white TV in the back room with the sound turned down because the big TV is tuned to Fox News. I’m going because some other woman some other place knows better than to even think about going.

Wars are about economics. As long as the war is profitable the war goes on. The war may be costing the American public billions but it’s making billions for Buschco and they see no reason to stop making a profit. Their is money falling from the sky, along with assorted body parts but it doesn’t matter. “They” don’t stop sending troops into the meat grinder because the sights of a couple hounded thousand people with home made signs made them feel bad. “They” don’t feel anything and they never even see the signs. Do you think that Cheney and Bush feel bad about anything? Do you think Nixon felt bad? Of course not. But that woman does. She feels bad, she’s angry and she can’t go.

She can’t. So I’m going.

We do a lot of bitching about our rights and yet we so rarely exercise them. It’s no wonder they are being taken away from us, those rights might be self-evident but what you don’t lose you use. That woman doesn’t want her children to lose theirs. She doesn’t want her children to die in the desert.

The rest of you lose your rights because you allow them to atrophy. At one point you noticed a tightness, that something felt a little off but think you’re too busy or too old or too something. And then one day you hear an echo on your phone line and the day after that your mail arrives in a baggy and the day after that you can’t go anywhere without your ID card and there are cameras everywhere but you don’t mind because you don’t think you’re doing anything wrong. But hey! The trains are running on time! I notice and that woman notices and 300,000 other people notice.

Bad things happen because we’re too lazy to notice. It’s what “They” count on. We Notice. Me and that lady and the 300,000 others.

So. I’m going to trudge through the streets of DC, and yes, marching is made up of trudging and standing and getting sore feet and after a while it is very uncomfortable. And it’s going to be cold and loud and unpleasant. And I’m going to have to drive in the dark in the middle of the night to some strange place and try to be friendly with strangers and then leach on to the friendliest stranger because I’m there on my own and you don’t want to be alone with 300,000 others. Somewhere, that woman wishes she was there with me.

Must Love Dogs

Dogger and I had a good time at the park yesterday. We had a better time after the two absolutely gorgeous but mean spirited collies left. I don’t know much about the breed but I don’t think Lassie ever snapped at other dogs. But I also don’t remember there ever being any other dogs in the Lassie universe. Perhaps that is why Lassie was always hanging out with Timmy. Lassie wasn’t allowed at the dog park any more after she got teethy with Rin Tin Tins' stand in one too many times. I think Lassie may have been the one that pushed Timmy down the well all those times. Lassie was like one of those firemen who start fires so they can put them out. I could see a collie doing that - Aren’t I pretty! Isn't my nose elegant? Look how my coat gleams in the flashing lights! Don’t I look dashing? I alerted the rescue squad you know. I made them get here. Aren’t I heroic and pretty?

I felt really bad for the dog park collies’ doggy daddy. He forgot his coat and got cold after a while and wanted to go home. The dogs did not want to go home. The doggy daddy had to go to his car and pull out an old sheet to keep himself warm. So, there he is wandering around the park like an over grown four year old with his sheet/cape and his dogs will not leave! I was invested in their leaving because one of the dogs got toothy with Daisy and Super Doggy Dad separated them; then he wouldn’t then give her back to me, it was over and I wanted my dog back and he wouldn’t let go of her harness! I was like “Wow, I’m so sorry! this hardly ever happens” and “I can take her now” and “It sure is scary when they get in to it” and “I can take her now” and Doggy Daddy would not let her go. I think I had to ask three times before he let her go.

His dogs had jumped Dogger before while they were together at the park and I should have kept a hand on her this time as a precautionary measure, but I don’t bring my dog to the park so she can sit next to me for some unspecified time until some one else's aggressive dogs finally leave.

I was less than thrilled that Dogger got into it with another dog because this hardly ever happens because Dogger is the nicest dog ever in the whole world ever... She is also enormous and I do not need her to get in the habit of fighting. I need her mellow. The world at large needs her mellow. I don’t want the dog park people to think Dogger is aggressive. I don’t want to think that Dogger is aggressive – and she isn’t until she gets pushed too far.

Finally, the guy was ready to go. Not the dogs. The dogs wanted to run and play. And run and play and run and play and run from Doggy Daddy. He finally leaves and goes into the parking lot and the dogs don’t care! They aren’t going to the gate and whining like the other dogs do if their people have to step out to get water or put something in the car – Even if Dogger doesn’t want to go home, me leaving the park is a real motivator to get her to the fence. Not that it has gotten that far yet, but the couple of times I’ve had to go get water, Dogger has not been happy about it and went directly to the fence to make sure I wasn’t leaving her there.

But anyway. Super Doggy Daddy is still chasing his dogs around and they aren’t leaving. Finally one of them goes toward the gate and another dog park person corralled it – so Doggy Daddy had one of his dogs. Dog number 2 still wasn’t going home.

It was a total nightmare! I felt so bad for the guy – not so bad I helped or anything... Maybe if he had let go of my dog sooner.

The contractually obligated Oscar (tm) prediction entry 2007


Best Picture: "Babel," "The Departed," "Letters From Iwo Jima," "Little Miss Sunshine," "The Queen."

As much as I like Brad Pitt in Oceans 9, 10, 11, 12, 13... I don't think he adds much to the projects he picks. Babel no doubt made Ang happy, and put her in contact with all those priced for sale lovely third world children but it didn't do much for anyone else. I would bet the picture had more budgeted for the craft service than for then the combined budgets of Cate Blanchets last four films. So a big no for Babel . I really liked Little Miss Sunshine and I want to see The Queen and I will totally Netflix Letters - they weren't made by Scorsese and since he isn't going to get one himself, they will award his movie, despite the fact it is another cops and bad guys taking turns telling each other to fuck off before they shoot each other. Oscar goes to: The Departed

Best Actor:- Leonardo DiCaprio, "Blood Diamond"; Ryan Gosling, "Half Nelson"; Peter O'Toole, "Venus"; Will Smith, "The Pursuit of Happyness"; Forest Whitaker, "The Last King of Scotland."

How much do I hate it that I don't like Forest Whitaker! I used to!, now. meh. Will Smith, you know most fathers just go to the kids soccer games and help out with science projects. If Jada had made this movie, it would have been made for Lifetime. If he wins it will because he didn't for Ali . Peter O'Toole ? I kind of want Ryan Gosling to win because out of nowhere I totally don't like Reese Witherspoon, She showed up at the Golden Globes looking like Katherine Helmonds' character in Brazil and all of a sudden, I don't like her anymore. I'm reasonably sure that this is Leo's year, bad accent and all. I'm not really ready for The Best Actor going to anyone younger than I am but unless Peter O'Toole pulls it out... Oscar goes to Leonardo DiCaprio

Best Actress: - Penelope Cruz, "Volver"; Judi Dench, "Notes on a Scandal"; Helen Mirren, "The Queen"; Meryl Streep, "The Devil Wears Prada"; Kate Winslet, "Little Children."

I saw The Devil Wears Prada and I liked it but I didn't see an Oscar caliber performance. The word "Volver"? I don't like it. Kate Winslet doesn't make bad movies but she also doesn't make movies anyone goes to, someday she will morph into Judi Dench - who is no doubt her awesome self in Notes on a Scandal, but I think I'm going with Helen Mirren. Oscar goes to Helen Mirren for The Queen.

Supporting Actor: Alan Arkin, "Little Miss Sunshine"; Jackie Earle Haley, "Little Children"; Djimon Hounsou, "Blood Diamond"; Eddie Murphy, "Dreamgirls"; Mark Wahlberg, "The Departed."

Shit. Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch together again. Jackie Earle Haley hasn't been on screen since The Bad News Bears go to Juvie Alan Arkin was fun, but like The Devil Wears Prada, it wasn't Oscar caliber and besides, if they wanted to laud LMSS, where is Greg Kinnear? And who is Dijmon Hounsou? Eddie Fricken' Murphy? When was the last time Eddie Murphy took a role where he wasn't hidden under six inches of latex? The man must have a hard time watching himself on screen - much like the rest of us. Which was why Drreamgrils was such a revelation. Eddie Murphy can act, do you think Dreamgirls could convince him he may be an actor? or throw him back into the arms of his prosthetic boobs? Would a win cause him to never make another "Eddie Murphy is the cast of Fat Mama Goes To The Zoo?" . Well, Norbert opens in a couple of weeks. So. Two guys the voters have never heard of, Eddie "Mother Fucker" Murphy, Markie Mark? Oscar goes to Alan Arkin for Little Miss Sunshine.

Supporting Actress: Adriana Barraza, "Babel"; Cate Blanchett, "Notes on a Scandal"; Abigail Breslin, "Little Miss Sunshine"; Jennifer Hudson, "Dreamgirls"; Rinko Kikuchi, "Babel."

Why can't they just establish a "Best New Talent" or "Best New Comer" catagorie? Clear out the kids and the first timers and leave the catagorie to the professionals? They don't nominate boy children for Best Supporting Actor.

Blanchette is too good this category and doesn't belong in with the others,Breslin was adorable but... , I didn't see Babel so I can't comment on Ms. Barraza or Ms. Kikuchi. I did see Dreamgirls and I think if they don't give it to Blanchette for being a good, solid, talented, life time Actress, they will give it to first time plucky singer-actress Hudson for playing a plucky singer. Oscar goes to Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls


Directing - Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, "Babel"; Martin Scorsese, "The Departed"; Clint Eastwood, "Letters From Iwo Jima"; Stephen Frears, "The Queen"; Paul Greengrass, "United 93." Oscar goes to Stephen Frears for The Queen.

Costume - "Curse of the Golden Flower," "The Devil Wears Prada," "Dreamgirls," "Marie Antoinette," "The Queen."

The one thing I didn't like about Dreamgirls was the costuming. Every one of them looked like they were wearing costumes. It wasn't subtle either. Oscar goes to The Devil Wears Prada

Documentary Feature - "Deliver Us From Evil," "An Inconvenient Truth," "Iraq in Fragments," "Jesus Camp," "My Country, My Country."

With no Holocaust films in the running, It's a toss up between Jesus Camp and An Inconvenient Truth . Oscar goes to An Inconvenient Truth.

Hey Kids! It's the Official 2007 State of The Union Drinking Game!

2007 Oscar Nominations


All Here

CNN) -- "Dreamgirls" received a leading eight nominations for the 79th annual Academy Awards, but was shut out of two of the biggest categories -- best picture and best director.

The nominees for best picture are: "The Departed," "Babel," "Letters From Iwo Jima," "Little Miss Sunshine" and "The Queen."

The nominees for best actor are: Forest Whitaker ("The Last King of Scotland"), Leonardo DiCaprio ("Blood Diamond"), Ryan Gosling ("Half Nelson"), Peter O'Toole ("Venus") and Will Smith ("The Pursuit of Happyness").

The nominees for best actress are: Helen Mirren ("The Queen"), Judi Dench ("Notes on a Scandal"), Penelope Cruz ("Volver"), Meryl Streep ("The Devil Wears Prada") and Kate Winslet ("Little Children").

The nominees for best supporting actor are: Eddie Murphy ("Dreamgirls"), Alan Arkin ("Little Miss Sunshine"), Jackie Earle Haley ("Little Children"), Djimon Hounsou ("Blood Diamond") and Mark Wahlberg ("The Departed").

The nominees for best supporting actress are: Jennifer Hudson ("Dreamgirls"), Adriana Barraza ("Babel"), Cate Blanchett ("Notes on a Scandal"), Abigail Breslin ("Little Miss Sunshine") and Rinko Kikuchi ("Babel").

The nominees for best director are: Martin Scorsese ("The Departed"), Clint Eastwood ("Letters From Iwo Jima"), Stephen Frears ("The Queen"), Paul Greengrass ("United 93") and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu ("Babel").

Full List of nominees

Buh-Bye

Parcells Retires From Cowboys, Coaching - Jerry Jones reportedly mifted he won't be able to say he fired every coach the cowboys ever had.

World Peace Puppy

Over the river and...

It was supposed to be doing some sort of “wintery mix” Sunday afternoon . Well. I went outside and I could hear it “wintery mixing” . So of course I took to the highways and byways to find Selma, NC .

I had directions. Those handy dandy online directions, so I had bad directions. On the first pass I followed the directions exactly. Imagine my surprise when the exit 306 I was supposed to be coming up on wasn’t to be found. It may have been the forest of exit 15, 16, 17's, but I felt reasonably secure that I was not supposed to be headed to Knightdale. Knightdale is not near Selma and I didn’t need to be headed towards it at 75 miles an hour. If You hold up your hand, Selma would be, um, Selma and Knightdale wouldn’t even be on the same hand! You would need two hands and then you would need a map to get you to Selma.. A better map than the one that got me headed to Knightdale, and I assume I would have ended up in Knightdale . Or not, the map was crap because at the very end of the directions was mentioned an exit 306. I wanted to trust this online map. I’ve never had one that was correct but I am always hopeful.

So. I did the whole thing again, you know, ever hopeful. I got myself turned back around went back to where I started and did the exact thing again - going with the idea that I had not followed the directions exactly, that I had some how subconsciously “done my own thing” and missed a turn or got into the wrong lane or something to cause me to have ended up in Knightdale. I didn’t want to blame the map for being faulty. I was going to take the fall.

So. The second verse was just like the first.

I decided to get myself home and give myself a break from this bad map business. I also had an idea. You know, fool me once...

Did you know Bravo ran a Studio 60 marathon yesterday? A min-marathon. Not all the episodes. Eight of them or something. Anyway. Should you want eight or so episodes of Studio 60, I have some. On tape. They could have shown all of the episodes but they needed the time to show a bunch of Law and Order -CI back to back to back but only like four or five of them because they can only show four or five of them. You can watch Law and Orderi reruns like forty hours a day or something, but it only comes out to the same four or five episodes repeated over and over again. Check local listings.

A couple of episodes later, I was ready to try to find Selma again. I knew I recognized Exit 306. Maybe I saw one of it’s movies or it was in Entertainment Weekly doing belly shots with Lindsey Lohan... I knew I knew exit 306! I didn’t see it going to Knightdale. I don’t go to Knightdale. I do go to New Bern and that was where I saw it. I didn’t need to go to Knightdale, I needed to go to New Bern.

Okay. I drove a half hour into the two hour trip to New Bern and lo and behold there was Selma.

Why did I need to go to Selma? Because I am going to Washington D.C next weekend and the bus is starting in Fayetteville and going to Selma. I can not go to D.C until I go to Selma

HAPPY SUNDAY !!!!!!!

HAPPY SATURDAY !!!!!!!!

Friday Cat Blogging

Dear Fellow Employees,

I understand how it can throw off the family schedule to have school canceled at the drop of a hat, or as the case may be, a drop of a snow flake. It’s really a pain. These last minute cancellations are really hard . Hard on all of us. Thank you for sharing your parenting struggles.

How do I know it was a pain? Because you shared the pain. You shared with everyone how big a wrench was thrown into your system. All of a sudden your kid had no where to be while you still had to go to work.

They gave us that bonus time for a reason - so that you did not have to turn our work place into a drop in daycare. You had the option to stay home with your kids and take the opportunely to make cookies or play board games or dress up you could go outside tie that hyperactive little twerp to a tree and make snow angles or other fun family togetherness activities. At your house.

How does your child sit at a desk all day at school if your s/he needs to spend the entire day pounding up and down the hallway? Is perhaps his/her schools’ curriculum entirely cross country running based? That is very progressive. I especially like the part where they get so tired they drop and take a nap in the middle of the hallway. I guess they would have been really in the way if that were to happen on the floor of your office.

I thought held againts my will spending time with your kids was a blast. I think you should try it sometimes, in a small space. Have you thought introducing your kids to four point hard restraints pilotes?

Instead of sugary soft drinks, how about chemical restraints chamomile tea as an afternoon refresher? I know after their seventeenth lap down the hallway, I certainly could have used some.

I’m sorry I couldn’t entertain your child for you, I would have had more time if I wasn’t all ready doing two other jobs in addition to my own My job, that other girls job and that other girl too. You know the two other people who work in that office that you didn’t seem to notice were not there despite the fact that I was doing their jobs? You know how I normally don’t usually send calls to you but then today I was on the phone with you all morning? Just me, not one of the other girls? The ones who didn’t come to work - unlike me and you and your kids. We all made it in. Did anyone call those other girls if they might try again to come in, you know, after about 9am when it had stopped pretend snowing and had settled into just being really damp? I mean, the roads were passable and clear for hours. Will anyone talk to them about that? Do they even have a supervisor?

I would have alerted you sooner about them not being there but with all the childcare I was providing added responsibility, time just got away from me.

Love,

Diana

They closed the schools for this

Dick Cheney is Evil

BBC.com

Tehran proposed ending support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups and helping to stabilise Iraq following the US-led invasion. Offers, including making its nuclear programme more transparent, were conditional on the US ending hostility.

But Vice-President Dick Cheney's office rejected the plan, the official said. Observers say the Iranian offer as outlined nearly four years ago corresponds pretty closely to what Washington is demanding from Tehran now.

...We're going to go to war with Iran because Bushco wants to .

RIP

Art Buchwald, who took humorous jabs at Washington politicians in decades of syndicated columns, has died at his Washington home, a friend said today. He was 81.

from CNN.com

Let it rain

Well, the streets are passable the Wake County schools and The State are open for business. It even looks like most of the people in my office are here.

You know the worst moment to get the wild idea you could go to the store? Try about five minutes after the weather Gawds announce to the masses that it’s going to snow.

On the way home from the Dog Park, I said to Dogger “Hey, I need some Alfredo sauce, lets go to the store!”. Dogger was like “Puny human, you couldn’t tell shift in atmospheric pressure if it rained on your head. “Lets go to the store!” , You have had better ideas.”

You also should go to the store when you’re hungry. To which I say : If you aren’t just a little hungry when you go to the store you won’t buy anything you can eat. You have to be in the mood to shop. When I have tried to shop on a full stomach is when I’ve ended up bringing home stuff like dog toys or measuring cups. Stuff I need, but not stuff I can eat.

Anyway.

I don’t think it’s really going to snow. I arrived at the grocery right as the early news was finishing up. The parking lot was full, but I think they may have all been crowed into the tax preparers office or the laundry because they weren’t in the store clearing the shelves of bread and milk the way they do when something is really on it's way. During hurricane season I don’t watch the skies or the weather channel, I keep my eye on the bread isle. If the bread isle starts looking sparse; Then I worry.

As I was driving home from the grocery, I also didn’t see anyone out covering their cars or making any effort to park at the bottom of the driveway. I pulled all the way up in my drive way with confidence.

I’m feeling so safe about tomorrow morning, I’ve been watching Without a Trace reruns and I’m about to fire up the DVD player - Yeah, that’s how I roll . I don't even know what channel the Weather Channel comes on.

See, the reason I don’t want it be in “inclement” in the morning is I fear the specter of “inclimate weather time”. As a state employee, an “act of God” is no reason for me to be at my desk. It doesn’t matter that there is 20 inches of snow on the ground, if it is a work day, I am supposed to be at my desk. We all are. Period. If I am not at my desk because that 20 inches is, say. blocking my driveway - I am accruing the dreaded “Inclimate weather time”. Time that I am expected to make up one way or another. If , say I don't want to work on Saturday's , it is time will be taken out of my vacation hours.

I hate that.

IW follows you around. It dogs your every step! It doesn’t matter that you missed work because the roads weren’t passable or the power went out , you ass is supposed to be in your chair at your desk M-F, buddy and don’t you forget it . And you can’t use sick time to “pay back” the time either. All that sick time you have piled up is invulnerable to attack. Nothing is going to take that away from you. Your sad, abused little vacation hours however can be violated at any time. It’s not fair.

So. Lets think Rain.

Too late.

Grrr

Freaking @#$%^ sexist Red Cross! If there was another band of traveling vampires I would so sign up with them. !$%^&* Poor mouthing “Puh-Leeeees donate! Weeeee neeeeeeed youuuuuuu!” Assholes.

Ass covering Ass holes. “Oh, if we let you give blood today and you got sick...”. Bull shit. “We do have to spin most of the women” . Do they ever wonder why? Could it possibly be that perhaps they should study lowering the cut off? That perhaps if they are having to “spin” most of the woman who come in to donate that it may a problem with the Red Cross’ policies regarding hemocrit levels in women?

I suggested that it was sexist for the Red Cross to set the levels as they did and that perhaps they should separate the genders and have X number for the male donators and Y number for the female donators. We are not all men. What is low for men can be with in normal limits for women. It’s not fair. I’m not anemic, I’m a woman. Do you think if I told my doctor I wanted to get on the pill so I could give blood more frequently, that she would laugh at me? Would you?

“Oh, take a supplement”, Why? I’m not anemic! I’m fine. The only thing holding me back is my gender.

Anyway. Happy Thoughts.

Between my heavy dog walking and rug hefting I went to see Dreamgirls.

Noon show, first show of the day. Big old matinee. I got there early and walked around the theatre. I saw all these movie posters and I didn’t want to see any of them. And what’s worse? I didn’t even recognize most of the movies they had playing.

Maybe Meryl Streep was right, if you want to see the good movies, you need to demand to see the good movies - I don’t know where she goes to see movies but my gigaplex doesn’t work like Block Buster- you can’t just ask for a title and expect them to screen it for you . It comes down to a money thing. Teen Sex Bloodbath is going to put a lot more butts in the seats than Sherrie, Baby. The Departed has a very nice pedigree, but it won’t do Teen Sex Bloodbath business.

I saw Dreamgirls with 12 other people that brought in a grand total of $81 in ticket sales, plus whatever they got from concessions... Back in my day a small drink and a small popcorn was $3.13. Today it will run you $7.40.

I could go to the vaunted Art Houses to see the “smaller” moves, but I don’t want to pay them $9 a ticket either! and just because they sell organic, certified non-GM, free range popcorn and guaranteed cruelty free carob bars at their solar powered, union concession stand, doesn’t mean it’s worth $7 a bucket. I don’t care that Al Gore and Angelina “The White Mans Burden Really Goes With My Tats” Jolie approve of the packaging. The movie goer is going to get screwed no matter where they go to see their movies.

Netflix rawks more and more every day.

Oh, Dreamgirls is as good as they say it is, and yes, Jennifer Hudson sells the hell out of "And I tell you I’m Not Leaving” , that number alone, if that was all I saw of the movie, would have been worth my $6.75 . The audience was tiny and it still exploded at the end of the song. In a real crowd, a sell out audience - it would have been electric.

You paid attention during 80% of high school!

68-84% Pretty good, you know that there are libraries and newspapers, and you remember what you've read. You were a child that wasn't left behind!

Do you deserve your high school diploma?
Create a Quiz

stolen from: Blown Fuse

Long Weekend

Did I mention I wasn’t going to be here yesterday?

I found an exciting new work out. It’s called the “Buy a new area rug, carry (You can do it!) the new larger rug into your house, move the dinning room set, get the old smaller yet strangely very heavy for it’s size rug out of the way, heft (Feel the burn!) the new larger rug into place, unroll it, move with great expansion of energy (Work it!) the heavier than expected dinning room table back, then after you have Replaced the area rug under your suddenly much heavier than you remember it being dinning room table



Then deal with the heavy for its size old rug - first roll up then move old rug and move ( large area rugs are not bendy) into other room to (Just one more!) discover you didn’t do as good a job as you thought you did rolling it up and have it come undone then heft ( again, large area rugs are not bendy) the damn thing back to the dinning room, roll it properly and heft it back into the other room.” Work out.

I did this twice. It's all about getting your reps in.

This weekend was a big rug weekend for me. I shopped around and found a replacement area rug for my dinning room and then I took Dogger for a long walk around the historic district and ran across a moving sale and another rug. I mean, $10 for a 8x10 area rug, I mean really, you can’t say no! My car was even close by. For a an extra $5 I got a second 8x10 rug as a back up emergency rug - it’s living in the attic until I need to break the glass.

I did a lot of hefting and lugging this weekend.

The living room rug is only 5x7 and was nothing to heft around in comparison and it looks so nice in the livingroom. I should have dumped the old rug a long time ago. I did however need to wait a long time for K-Mart to have a huge sale. Have you ever priced area rugs? You’d be shocked. I had planned to buy one at Target because I have a lovely gift card that is burning a hole in my wallet - but then I started rug shopping and got a look at the prices on the larger sized rugs and scooted my wallet on to a cheaper pastures. I’ll spend that card yet, it just isn’t going to be on a rug.

They do have gorgeous plastic plates at Target though, maybe I need $25 worth of plastic plates?


Anyway.

As I was walking Dogger though the historic district, pre-rug buying, I kept running across odd things:









I guess if you can’t have its portrait made, move it or put a large bug in front of it you might as well leave your houses Christmas decorations up to annoy the neighbors.

Golden Globe results 2007

Best Supporting Actress Comedy/Musical Film - Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
Best Original Song, Movie - Prince Happy Feet
Best Supporting Actor, Film Drama - Jeremy Irons, Elizabeth I
Best Actress. TV Drama - Kera Sedgwick, The Closer
Best Actress Mini-Series/Made for TV Movie - Emily Blunt Gideons Daughter
Best Actor TV Drama - Hugh Laurie, House
Best Animated Feature - Cars
Best Actress Musical or Comedy - Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada
Best Mini-Series, Made for TV Drama - Elizabeth I
Best Actor in a Film Comedy/Musical- Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls
Best Actor Mini-Series or TV series - Bill Nigh, Gideons Daughter
Best Actress Mini-Series or TV series - Helen Mirren, Elizabeth I
Best Screen Play - The Queen
Best Actor TV Comedy - Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock
Best TV Series Comedy - Ugly Betty
Best Foreign Language Film - Clint Eastwood, Director Letters from Imo Jima
Best Original Score Motion Picture - The Painted Veil
Best Actress in a Television Comedy - America Ferrera Ugly Betty
Best Director, Motion Picture - Martin Scorsese - The Departed
Best Actor in a Comedy, Motion Picture -Sasha Baron -Cohen , Borat
Best Comedy or Musical Motion Picture - Dreamgirls
Best TV show Drama - Grey's Anatomy
Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama - Hellen Mirron, The Queen
Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama - Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland
Best Motion Picture Drama - Babel

ended @11:05pm eastern

Neither TPTB at Entertainment Weekly or my local paper saw fit to provide me with a score card for this event so I was not able to always get the correct name for each category, I am reasonably sure that there are too many winners in the Comedy/Musical catagories. Sorry

HAPPY DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. DAY!!!!!!

HAPPY SUNDAY !!!!!!!!

HAPPY SATURDAY !!!!!!!

Friday Cat Blogging

Mission Possible

How was your day?

I was having a ahrd time deciding what I was going to do for lunch, I knew I had to be at the rally after work and might want my camera but at the same time, I've been to these before so I ahve pictures of rallies. I didn't know I was going home to get the camera until I was half way there. The plan then was to grab the camera bag and light out for the Burger Yucky near campus and eat my lunch and read my book - albeit in a truncated manner. I thought I had a chance.

The entire world would have to work together as one for me to achieve that goal. Office buildings full of people would have to collectively decide to eat at their desks, the monkeys who design and control the red lights would have to write new code to suit me and then once I was on the road, entirely by myself I would then have to go into my house and remain on task.

The whole world could join hands and sing a hymn about Coke and I would mess it up by spending too much time checking my mail.

Anyway.

It became clear as I drove up to the house that things were not going to go as planned. There was a hat in my parking space. I wasn’t going to park on someone’s hat. That would be wrong. So I parked crooked in the street. One of the Good Neighbors in his yard.Foiled again! This was going to throw the whole grab-and-run idea all to hell.

I stopped and talked to him about the roofing crew and what a good job cleaning up they were doing and while we were talking about that I noticed a very tiny dog running through the yards. I mean, very tiny. Like the size of a half grown cat. I also noticed it was wearing a coat - a leetle, tiny bomber jacket. And a collar and numerous tags. This was not your average loose dog. This baby was loved and well taken care of and somebody was looking for him.

The Good Neighbors’ wife was coming down the street after trying unsuccessfully to catch the dog. It did not want to be caught. It was free and it was not going to come quietly. I tried to catch him, the neighbors tried, the workers tried. It was very trying and the clock was ticking and I wanted to eat lunch. I decided if I was hungry that the Tiny Dog might be hungry too and the way to a dogs heart is through it’s stomach. I would get the dog a cookie and it would leap into my arms and stop all this running around nonsense.

It didn’t want the cookie.

Damn. Rotten beasty! Everyone loves Aunt Cookies’ cookies! I went back inside. While I was there one of the workers caught the little beast and had all ready called the number on Tiny Dog’s tags - Kleetices tags and come up with a bad number. Somebody involved with Tiny Dog had named him Kleetise or was named Kleetice. We didn’t know. I asked the neighbors if they knew anyone named Kleetise. No, no one knew a Kleetise

I really had to get back to work by now. I decided that while we had Tiny Dog in hand that we should do something with his tiny self. I went to the attic and pulled down the biggest crate I have. I took it to the yard and stocked it with a bowl of food, some water and a folded over towel, I then took a large piece of paper and wrote Kleetis’ name on it in hopes that if his Mother and Daddy were searching for him they would see the sign and rescue him. Mrs. Good Neighbor told me that it was a good thing I came home when I did. I told her I almost didn’t and she said that you never know what you mission for the day is going to be until it happens.

Time past.

I went to one of the rallies, Did you?



It was nice, about 75 people - don’t believe the press they came early and left fast, it might have been thirty for the 5 minutes they were there but it came to be 76 strong. We got a lot, (I mean many, many, many - Suck it Shrub!!) of very supportive honks, it was awesome. It was also cold and getting dark. It didn't matter to the old folks, the young folks, and even the little baby folks who came out to register their disgust with the Iraq War and the Bush Administration. If you didn’t go to this one or one near you, you should have.

Anyway. Back to the saga of Tiny Dog.

I left the rally at 5:30 to go take care of Dogger and The Kitty, I was sure Tiny Dog would be gone, gone, gone. I really hoped he would be gone, gone, gone.

Right. Tiny Dog was still there.

I had just brought Dogger out to pee when I saw a figure at the end of the street. She was calling for her dog! I hollered out if she was looking for Tiny Dog, she was! Another minute and I would have totally missed her. I had just brought Tiny Dog in and was wondering what I was going to do with his tiny self. If I stayed one more minute at the rally or futzed more with my mail, I wouldn’t have been outside and we would have missed each other.

Wow.

She was over joyed to get Tiny Dog back and I was over joyed to give Tiny Dog back.

I had a great day.

Talking the talk?

Walk the walk

Moveon and Act for Change and Code Pink are asking that you take your talk and do something with it. Follow the link above and then follow the crowd. These gatherings/protests/rallies are painless, fun and a chance to be more than another name on another petition. If you do not want even more of our troops to be killed in Iraq, march against Dubyas "surge".

Local Raleigh readers, there are three currently scheduled, one is in Chapel Hill the other in downtown Raleigh at Moore Square and one out by Crabtree Mall -

Moore Square : E. Hargett Street and S. Blount Street Raleigh, NC 27601 @4:30-6:00pm

Glenwood Ave., opposite entrance to parking deck of Crabtree Valley Mall. @ 5:00 PM

Chapel Hill Post Office, 179 E Franklin Street @ 6:00 PM Chapel Hill

Let the games begin...

House votes 253-174 to pass a bill allowing federal funding of embryonic stem cell research -- a measure President Bush has previously vetoed.

from CNN.com

Cut Off

I got a call from the roofer. I'm having my roof "done". I now have a roof "man". My roof and I are about the same age and it was time for one of us under go an extreme make over. Oddly, whathisname the TV carpenter from Tear Down my Tear Down was not interested in the job.

Well, it turns out that one of the roof mans' men exhaled near my satellite dish and now it's locked into "search" mode and I can not watch TV. It turns out if my baby satellite dish can't see it's Mommy... Well. Mama could care less but if baby can't see Mama I can't see my regularly scheduled TV.

This is a problem.

I thought all it would take was a quick unplug/plug thing. It has worked before.

No. It's not the same as when it is raining. Baby Dish was really unhappy and I had to do "something" about it. Something. Did you know the very fancy four color, 20 page pamphlet I had lovingly saved all these years because it looked important and I thought it was relevant? It was about the remote. And included no phone number.

Further digging reveled my original receipt. Again, no phone number. I have TV issues. This was not a good moment. Finally, finally, under three years of Christmas cards, was the magic ticket! Something, finally, with the number. You would think after three years of membership I would have raked up an impressive amount of mail from them.

So I called. I know it looks really cute for your advertisements to have your phone number be something like 1-800-Spell Out, and I know how cute cute is... But. If you have to call, to dial 1-800-Spell Out, it requires way too much thought. If I am calling about maintenance issues, I have issues! Damn it! and I don't want to have to spell things! It would have been easier to go to the bathroom, turn off the lights, face the mirror and repeat DISH TV three times until I summoned Tech support. I didn't want to think, I wanted help. Or tech support, whatever.

According to the techish person who answered the phone, I have never had a maintenance issue. She seemed shocked and a leetle hurt. Had I known I was hurting their little corporate feelings I would have had the house re-roofed years ago. I've never had any problems with my service that I felt required a visit, likely because a visit from one of their repairmen runs $70! Long story longer. The repair guy will be here Saturday. This is Wednesday going into Thursday and lets keep Friday in mind.

Hooking Up

After my success with screaming for help to get my DVD/VCR hooked up, I went with a great deal of confidence to replace my demented back up VCR with the newer and nicer and mentally healthy VCR that after the advent of the DVD/VCR was looking for a new job.

This time it only took me two tries to get everything operational. I didn’t need to ask for help, although a second pair of hands would have been nice – have you ever tried juggling a VCR, Satellite box and a 13 inch TV? While I was hooking the blessedly few cables and wires up I discovered that the reason that there was what appeared to be a nest of cables behind the TV in the office was because it was a nest of cables behind the TV.

Once upon a time I put an extension cord in for something, possibly a Christmas tree, who knows, but then time passed and I put in another extension cord and in the fullness of time they produced three baby extension cords. They weren’t even hooked to anything; I guess they are still immature. I was a little concerned though; they did seem to more twist up than they should have been. I might have gotten there just in time, if the off spring bred… I decided not to think about it. They were just piled up, creating there own little fire hazard.

Every time I turn around I need another extension cord so I trot off to the dollar store and pick up another extension cord and then when I’m through, from what I can tell, I put it behind the TV in the office where all the extension cords live in apparent happiness in some sort of extension cord commune.

There were at least five separate extension cords hanging around! There are three items that need to be plugged in. There are two available plugs, which means that one of the items gets its own plug and one of the plugs is home to (1) ONE extension cord. ONE. Three things three available places to plug them in. It should be very easy math.

You would think.

Four extension cords, three different colors only one actually in service. I don’t know what the others were doing there, dancing attendance to the working cord I would assume, but what does an extension cord need assistance doing? It doesn’t need to go down the hall, they don’t God willing, smoke and I would think like all living things, they have cell phones so it isn’t like they are having to leave the floor to check their messages. And who calls extension cords anyway? It’s not like they are looking for other gigs – they get plugged in and their done, they don’t need another job. Powering the TV or VCR or whatever isn’t really a temp job. It’s life time employment.

Whatever.

I kind of entertained the thought that maybe it was Dogger collecting the cords but I don’t know what she would really need to plug in and if she wanted to use them to help her escape, there really isn’t much of a drop from the window to the ground and even if she wanted to do that, she’s too big to fit through the window. No length of cord is going to change that. So I don’t know.

I do know that I will never have to buy extension cords again and if I do have some sort of need for cords, I now know under what circumstances successful breeding programs can be undertaking, like the giant panda, they will breed in captivity.

Behind the scenes

After Alphagal reached out and hooked up my DVD, I watched. Oh, a lot of Greg the Bunny. A lot. All of GTB.

I just don’t understand why a sitcom on FAUX about puerile, drunken puppets and the humans who co-star with them (Seth Green, Eugene Levy, that obnoxious girl who I used to think was funny but then she got way over-exposed – Sarah “I Date Well” Silverman) - ended up running only 13 episodes? The real question would be how did this get 13 episodes on a network at all much less green lighted to begin with? I mean, really. It made Action look relevant.

GTB was really fun though. Seth Green and Eugene Levy must have spent their lunch hours thinking up ways to kill their respective agents. I mean, it must have been fun, in a “Wow, I had no idea Sesame Street was so hard to produce, no wonder they have 237 Emmy’s” way, but I can’t imagine how GTB was pitched to anybody involved but I’m thinking it involved blackmail. I’m glad they capitulated though; you can’t go wrong with angry, drunken, sexually promiscuous puppets. After watching hours of GTB, I think I can say it was better when Greg still had button eyes.

Netflix finally noticed that Amazon released Grosse Point into the wild. I had been shopping for it because I thought Netflix wasn’t going to admit Amazons product was out there. Grosse Point didn’t last long , I think the average WB viewer wasn’t up to it as there were very few crotch shots or boobs and it wasn’t about vampires or space aliens or the travails of dating vampires or space aliens. it failed because it's audience wasn't old enough to remember Beverly Hills 9012457, much less care about what it was like behind the scenes.

If you are keeping score, I am the audience that they make all the wildly unsuccessful behind the scenes series that they insist on making. Me, I am the one who watches them - Action, Greg the Bunny, Grosse Point. Studio 60, it is all about me. I also watch 30 Rock but that seems mildly successful and therefore out of the running.

With all the Christmas stuff down, the house is so bare and dark. I really liked being able to see my house on Google Space, it was fun. Kitty is even bored. There are no fragile, precariously placed Santa’s for him to play Russian (Blue) roulette with. It was his hobby that along with playing “Which leap to the window frame will knock over the tree?”. ´I could see his little mind working: How can I best learn to tell the breakable ornaments from the non-breakable ornaments?. He would spend his time sitting on the ottoman planning things, sure he looked really cute, but that was part of his cunning plan. In reality he was sitting there thinking ”What if I try just to leap just a leetle to the right? Is that going to do anything or will I end up eating window? Can I get to the top of the TV? Will that change my trajectory? If a fake tree falls in the living room and there are no bipeds to hear it, does it make a sound?”

He’s feeling really bereft since I took everything down. Poor kitty. I mean, he has like no life now, no purpose, nothing to prevent him from sleeping 22 hours a day…

"Kiss a lovely moose"


On a Russian moose farm

Ordinary Time

Christmas is over ya’ll! I know some of ya’ll took the tree to the curb on your way to the day after Christmas door busters sales - but for the rest of us, sigh. Christmas is over. I know it was technically “over” when the first Valentines Day crap went up, but that happened December 23.. But then retailers had their trees up before Halloween. People talk about how times flies but it isn’t time that is going faster it’s the displays are going up sooner. It makes time fly unnaturally. If the war of Christmas crazies want to get into it, why don’t they pick on the retailers that have tree’s up on Labor Day? Huh? Thats the real war on Christmas, if you ask me.

Anyway. I spent Saturday returning the house to ordinary time. It took all damn day.First, I had to take the lights down, I should note that it rained like hell the night before:


Saturday was gorgegous, I tried to get Dogger interested in lending a paw, but she claimed she was "supervising".



After the lights were taken down, it was time to start on the interior decorations:



With the little stuff taken care of it was time to tackle the tree. Sigh.

I undecorated the tree, box up the ornaments and corral the denuded tree, which despite it’s status as a artificial tree, still managed to drop about a cubic yard of needles on my carpet.



...and then shifted the whole lot upstairs. Box by box.



Whew.

That was a lot of work. To reward myself I decided to hook up my new Christmas DVD/VCR. Do you have any idea how many cables and wire thingies and coaxali go into hooking up your DVD and VCRs? A lot. Do you know how much coaxali and cables and wire things go into hooking up a DVD/VCR? Do you know how many cables and wire thingies and coaxal wind up circling you when you get a head of yourself and unhook your exsisting stand alone DVD player and VCR? and then add another DVD/VCR into the mix? A whole damn lot! And did you know all cables and wires and whatnot all look exactly the same? And if you aren’t careful you wind up with too many of each and then you may end up blowing something up? And not close by either, with all those wires and cables and coaxal scattered around and plugged in all willy nilly, something has got to give and whatever you blow up is probably going to be in like in India or somewhere and wind up killing like 736 people just because you suck hooking up small electronics?

And did you know how crazy this can make you if you spent all day boxing up things and running up and down the stairs like 174 times?

Did you know that Alphagal can correctly tell the difference between three separate combinations of wires, cable thingies and coaxali - and then hook all those things up correctly, sight unseen, over the phone? On the first try? While sitting at a restaurant?

Alphagal is magic.

HAPPY SUNDAY !!!!!!

HAPPY SATURDAY !!!!!!!!

Friday Cat Blogging

TGIF

Along about the same time my desk drawer-slidey keyboard thingy was giving up the ghost on Wednesday, our copy machine also was having problems. My favorite use of my degree is unjamming copy machines. I think that is why I went to college. I should have gotten my RN. RNs do not unjam copy machines nor or they able to tell anyone else that a jam had occurred. I learned this at the nursing home. I never met a nurse who could copy as much as a receipt with out leaving the copy machine jammed. Love them, angels of mercy one and all - but they all slept through the lecture of office machine maintenance during their management classes. A fax machine with an empty paper drawer can make a grown nurse weep. I’ve seen it happen. I worked with a DON (the biggest RNs of them all) who was not capable of putting paper into a copy machine. She would email another department head to let them know that the nurse management copy machine needed paper and could the other department head “do something” about it.

The other department head earned her place in heaven resisting her urge to stuff the DONs ‘do into the machine.

The repair guy we ordered came today, not the repair guy we ordered for my desk - I would have fallen over from the shock… I wonder if workers comp would pay for timely repair related injuries. What would I write on the form “They came to fix my desk right after I asked them too and the shock propelled me over and I hit my head on the corner of a three drawer file cabinet” … I’m sure they’ve seen it before. I know they’ve seen worse. When I was a temp at a workers comp insurance office I saw a report of an animal control person who filed for workers comp after she got bit by a snapping turtle while wading through a pond to rescue a drowning dog. In the rain.

I just noticed that my desk chair is too low. It’s an older model so it doesn’t have one of those air spring things like the new ones do. I think that once upon a time, perhaps during the Truman administration, that to raise and lower the height of the seat, you turned it. I don’t think it does that anymore. In my research as to how to make the chair more height appropriate, I did find out my chair was produced by the Boling Co. , in Siler City, now of Mount Olive. They no longer make my office chair. For good damn reason.

My keyboard was tippy but I fixed it.

What else can I complain about? While the guy was here to fix our copy machine he found, in about three seconds, the missing scrap of paper that we searched for fruitlessly. He laughed. He might have been laughing but he was the only one on his knees in front of a copy machine.

One guy, one copy machine and he managed to spread out all over the office. He also spent most of his no doubt charged by the hour time pacing around outside the building talking on his cell. He managed to make a two second unjamming take three hours and he took the entire machine apart. He left little piles copy toner over every flat surface and he was looking longingly at our desks. We wondered what he would have done in a small space.

The machine is all clean though, I know because every time I tried to get on the phone he started up his vacuum. It made for such a pleasant working environment, it was lucky that I was only trying to listen to messages from our crazier brother and sisters on the office answering machine. I would hang up the phone and he would stop vacuuming and I would pick up the phone and he would start his vacuuming again. It’s a small machine; there is only so much space that is available for vacuuming. He did though. Every damn inch. There isn’t a corner of that machine that wasn’t free of paper dust.

For about two minutes and then of course the machine stopped working again.

Suck it Neocons

1. Congress convened today with Democrats in control of both the House and Senate for the first time in a dozen years.

2. California Democrat Nancy Pelosi has become the first woman to be elected speaker of the United States House of Representatives.

Learning is fun…

My desk broke again. More precisely, the whatchamacallits that allow the drawer thingy that my keyboard rides on to slide out from under the top of the desk, broke, the little metal whatsists that hold it up lost their screws. I fixed it the last time but then the whatsists were still attached to the desk itself but now they are not. I am holding the whole thing up with my knee and it is not comfortable. I think OSHA should be concerned.

If I should get up from my desk I have to leave my chair pushed up close to the desk so it can somewhat provide support for the listing drawer thingy so that the side of the drawer thingy that is still attached is not adversely effected and bent permanently out of shape by being forced out of shape by the unattached side. I see it bending under the strain and I don’t see that as being a positive outcome for the drawer thingy.

See, there are these things, flanges maybe? And they hold the gizmo that slides back and forth on the little thingy so that the drawer can go under my desk – which for me is not the most convenient place for it because it makes me sit further back from the screen than I am used to and it seems to be negatively affecting my all ready not good posture. It’s an ergonomics issue and state employees don’t have ergonomics. We have workers comp and medical leave.

While I am sitting here being not comfortable, I am waiting for someone to come and teach me how to order office supplies. I don’t see how we are going to do this as the program that you need to have loaded on your computer in order to order office supplies – is not loaded on my computer. I received a flurry of emails this morning concerning this deeply important tutorial and one of the emails had the phone number to the magic office where the elves live that service the magic supply wizard are stored so they can pass out the passwords to the service. The pass words are so magic that they can not be emailed, they must call the wizard in person to get the magic word. I did this and went to the magic wizards supply site…

My magic word had all ready expired.

So. I have no magic word, the magic program is not installed on my computer and the elf that is supposed to show me how to use the magic program hasn’t shown up yet. I fear that when I told the elf that I leave the office promptly at 4:30 that she heard this as “Show up at my office at promptly 4:30”.

My knee hurts.

Well.

I completed my office supply ordering tutorial. That was fun. Find the thing you want to order, decide how many of the thing you want to order, and then you order your order. Very high tech. Very online. I feel so 2003.

I was feeling so high-tech and progressive that I offered to solve the copy machine issue that had popped up while I was learning to push buttons and scroll down. Copy machines suck! I was really getting into a post-millennial place and I got pulled back to 1987. I hate that. I went from scrolling and highlighting to digging around behind the paper drawer with a ruler. A ruler that only managed to get part of the offending piece of paper out of the maw of the machine - ineffectual and left nasty green ink on my hands – so twentieth century! Gawd!

World Peace Puppy



from The Daily Puppy

Bitterness

Damn federal employees. You know they planned Fords funeral so they could score a four day weekend. As one of my fellow state employees’ said “We should have all had the day off, he was our president too”. Yeah, all those federal people are either standing out in the cold dancing attendance at the funeral (s) or dutifully spending their day off sitting at home in front of the TV. What really sucks is the not really technically federal employees’ our good friends the postal service also scored the day off as well.

It’s their backs Wednesday when they have two extra days of mail to carry around. I finally have both my Netflix movies ready to go on the same day and now I’m going to have to wait to get my new ones. A body shouldn’t be asked to wait for their Greg the Bunny DVDs. It’s not right.

But, it’s okay. TV is slowly coming back from their Christmas hiatus just in time for the US Postal Services to screw up my Netflix. It’s all right; I can watch real TV instead. I could also use the time to start putting away my Christmas decorations, but I think I’ll be a good girl and wait until Epiphany to start that. I all ready jumped the liturgical gun by boxing up my snow globe and bringing in but not tearing down my penguin. I’m not ready to see him like that. The lights will stay up until the bitter end and I may keep the tree up for a while too. It’s pretty.

I mean, you look at your room with the tree all twinkly and pretty and think “How did I live without this? And why would I want to? It’s so pretty”, and so much better than what you usually see out that window, but then a few weeks later and it’s kind of a bit of a dust catcher and a while after that it’s kind of a reminder of times gone by and it’s starting to be a little “last year” and you finally have to take it down. It’s a lot more fun to put it up than to take it down because when you put up the tree everything is in it’s little box and you aren’t playing hide and seek with packing materials and whatnot. I put the tree up and decorate the house in a day; it can take me a week to completely take everything down. It just isn’t very festive. I mean, what is there to look forward to? January white sales? Woo-Hoo.

I didn’t even see any first run movies over the holidays. I kind of forgot that Dreamgirls was opening so soon or I would have made some sort of effort to see it. It’s supposed to be really good and it’s all ready on a lot of best of lists. I would like to enter awards season with some horses in the running – the Golden Globes dissed Studio 60 and that pretty much left me with out any reason to watch the awards show – I mean, if you aren’t going to award my show, why should I watch your silly who-cares-what’s-hot-in-Foreignlandestan-I-don’t-care-which-flavor-of-the-month-flash-in-the-pan-you-got-to-speak-with-you-they-still-don’t-deserve-an-award-for-deigning –to -be-interviewed-give-the-blue-eyed-blond-with-the-big-rack-the-trophy-popularity-contest- I- remember- Pia –Zadora-buddy-bogus-awards-ceremony anyway I’ll watch it any but now I’ll watch and be bitter about it, in protest, I won’t dress the cat up or anything. No, my cat won’t be wearing his award show bow tie for the Golden Globes. Suck it Hollywood Foreign Press.

Resolutions

I decided that I needed to get more exercise this year and that I would achieve that by walking the dog more frequently. Dogger really likes the park and I can see that it has helped her grow as a dog, but I can also see that her time at the park has seen me grow as a person and not in a good way.

So today Dogger and I walked.

In the months that we have beeing going to the park every day I have yet to have a conversation like this:

Guy - (at a respectable distance) That is a good looking dog.

Me - Thanks.

Guy - I just got out of jail today...

Me - SorrymanIain'tgotnomoney.

Tomorrow, we go to the park.

Happy New Year!!!

and

Happy new pictures!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!! 2007



HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!!!! 2007



HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!!!! 2007