HAPPY SATURDAY !!!!!!!

Friday Guest Cat Blogging


my friend Kristins' very nice kitty

Best costumed dog picture of the day

Woof!

The New Place

Well. One whole week in the new building. We love it; we love our 21 century bathrooms and the fact that we now have separate bathrooms for the genders. I wasn’t bothered, but some of the older folks were put out by seeing a man coming out of a bathroom marked “ladies”. Well, they can be at ease, because unless something changes, the lone man on our floor will have his own private bathroom. We also love the mold-free carpeting and the new building smell. What we don’t like is the echo from the high ceilings and the constant sound. We were used to a false ceiling made of acoustic tile and its sound damping qualities. The new building has nine foot ceilings and we there is nothing on the concrete walls to mute the sound, with no doors it can be very loud. It’s kind of like Babble around her at times.

We need doors. I have noticed though that those who complain about the noise the most while they are on a call are the same ones that will stand around in the hall and make noise when they aren’t. It’s only a problem when it affects them.

Since I now I have my very own office I dove right into decorating it, all 80 square feet of it. I have lovely curtains that blend well with my yellow-y walls and mustard trim and a matching (very small) rug. The mustard trim is fine now, in its brand new shiny state, but I’m afraid it’s not going to age well. I’m also wishing I had seen in the future so I could have known I was going to be living in a burgundy and gold world when I picked out blue for my chair color, it’s going to clash. My current chair matches beautifully.

I also brought back all my personal stuff I cleared out of my old space weeks if not at least a couple of months ago. It’s been so long since I’ve seen most of it that it’s all new again. A new acquisition is a bea-ti-ful 16x20 port trait of Daisy that I have because I entered the Year Of The Dog contest, I still haven’t heard back from them about where to send my other stuff, but maybe they are just slow. I guess I could email the guy back but I’m afraid I would appear grasping and that’s not nice.

I went to Doggers Dogster page just to check up on it and apparently she gets more visitors than I thought, she had 318 virtual dog bones (but when I looked again, she was done to zero! I should have hit print screen so I could have proof!) And her page has been viewed 5031 times. She never has bones, she’s sad and unloved. Come in 10th in a contest and suddenly, everybody loves you. I need to change out the pictures there though, there are a couple of them that just suck, and they so do not represent Doggers' doggy beauty. I removed the offending images, what was I thinking?, I mean, ew. I should put the one that won, but it seems so, blah when I have others, but maybe I should. Okay, I did. I mean, it’s a nice picture and how long do I really need the St. Patrick’s Day one anyway? I didn’t like it anyway.

So, now there are three new shots on her page, the first major overhaul I’ve done in a long time. In the process, I found a new toy Picture Resizer , you load your enormous file and it asks you how much smaller you would like it, presto chango, it is shrunk down to a manageable size. I used to have a photo program that would do this for me, but that was two computers ago and I haven’t been able to find a similar product. I mean, you can’t say, this is an 11x14 file and I want it to be a 5x7 – it just says do you want this “75% smaller, 50% smaller, 25% smaller”. But, it makes huge images easier to upload.

IOIYAAR*

White House refuses to answer subpoenas

WASHINGTON - President Bush, moving toward a constitutional showdown with Congress, asserted executive privilege Thursday and rejected lawmakers' demands for documents that could shed light on the firings of federal prosecutors.

Bush's attorney told Congress the White House would not turn over subpoenaed documents for former presidential counsel Harriet Miers and former political director Sara Taylor in a fight that centers on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' stewardship of the Justice Department.

Full story here

(it's okay if you are a Republican)

We're so cute when we commit felonies...

I was listening to the radio again the other day and this song started and it had kind of good beat and you know whatever. I'll give it an 8, Dick you can dance to it and it's got a good beat, minus points because the singer was on Murrican Idiot and is a Right-wing Barbie. And once again, I made the mistake of listening to the lyrics. I know this is how Tipper got started back in 85.

Right now he's probably slow dancing with a bleach blond tramp,
and she's probably getting frisky...
right now, he's probably buying her some fruity little drink cause she can't shoot whiskey...

Oh, yeah. I hate that girl. She's a whore. I feel your pain, right-wing Barbie! You are a natural blond! The only one! Just You! And girlfriend, you shoot whiskey like a pro!

Right now, he's probably up behind her with a pool-stick, showing her how to shoot a combo...

What a bitch. She knows exactly what she's doing. Whore!

And he don't know...

That I dug my key into the side of his pretty little suped up 4 wheel drive,
carved my name into his leather seats...
I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights,
slashed a hole in all 4 tires...

Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats.

Wait. You're rid of him and now you're punishing his car? You lucked out and aren't spending another evening at a scuzzy pool hall with him and you vandalized his car? Gawd, send him flowers! For cheating on you! He did you a favor White Trash Barbie! Is it worth it? Is he? I doubt it. If you want his new girl to know about him, sneak in and wait for her in the ladies room... tell her he's a real sixty second man and all the wood she was really feeling was the pool cue and then leave. Maybe go and throw a drink in his face. In. Out. No laws broken.

Right now, she's probably up singing some
white-trash version of Shania karoke..
Right now, she's probably saying "I'm drunk"
and he's a thinking that he's gonna get lucky,
Right now, he's probably dabbing on 3 dollars worth of that bathroom polo...
And he don't know...

A couple of days ago it was you singing Shania up there, you are the last person who needs to be talking about karoke. And lets not throw around accusations of white trashiness shall we? Really. And you know the whole "I'm drunk!" thing because you did it first, you probably hold the patent. And you, honey, shouldn't talk about knock off Polo, the way you rock the Miss Stetsun.

That I dug my key into the side of his pretty little suped up 4 wheel drive,
carved my name into his leather seats,
I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights,
slashed a hole in all 4 tires...


...And now we all know why he's cheating on you! You're crazy and mean. No wonder he found someone a little less insane. More power to him.

And trashing a car like that? It's wrong, it's illegal, it's immoral and it's not cute. And thanks to this song a lot of little white trash girls listening to country radio are going to think that this vandalizing if cars is fun, and liberating and okay and just how you deal with a cheating boyfriend. It's not. If a man was singing gleefully about trashing his girl friends car, the song would never make it to the airwaves ,because violence against women is wrong. Stalking is wrong. Behaving in that manner is wrong.

The crime she is glorifying isn't less scary or wrong because it was committed by someone wearing cute shoes and a hair squishy. She's doing more than breaking her nails, she breaking the law. And the whole song is about how good it feels to break the law and we're not talking about egging his front door or leaving nasty messages on his machine.

Repainting a car - $800-$3500
Body work - $400-$2500
New leather seats - $175 a seat
New head lights - $75-$200

That's not chump change and it's not small claims court he would be taking her to.

Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats.
[Before He Cheats Lyrics on http://www.lyricsmania.com]

Maybe they deserve more than 27%?

The Senate Judiciary Committee today subpoenaed the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's office for documents relating to President Bush's warrant free eavesdropping program.

full story here

Oh my

'Bigfoot' expedition planned in Michigan

MANISTIQUE, Michigan (AP) -- Researchers will visit Michigan's Upper Peninsula next month to search for evidence of the legendary creature known as "Bigfoot" or "Sasquatch."

The expedition will focus on eastern Marquette County, said Matthew Moneymaker of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization.

"We'll be looking for evidence supporting a presence. ... We hope to meet local people who might have seen a Sasquatch or heard of someone else who had an encounter," Moneymaker told the Daily Press of Escanaba.

Full story here

Dumb, de dum dumbies


I work with idiots. Idiots with graduate degrees, but idiots non-the-less.

We moved away from our mail boxes - our beloved mail boxes, so big, so familiar, now so in a different part of the building now. We now have our own mail boxes. We're all grown up.

Our new mail box is just a baby still. it looks just like our old mail box unit, only much smaller , with much less wood and more cardboard. It looks better than it sounds. In it's past life it was used to store forms, lots and lots of forms, it is plenty big enough for our needs and there are many unused slots for future use. It fits in the bottom third of our existing book case and it was free. Bonus.

My first task after we moved was to labele the individual slots Fine. I have a label maker. It was easy and when I was finished it looked very nice. I checked that off my list and moved on to things that were less easy and not going to be as tidy. I thought I was finished with the mail slots. Nah. Of course not. We had three days to get used to the mail boxes. Three long days of having to remember that your name is under your mail slot. Not above, not on the side, not next to it... It is really exhausting having to try to remember that when you see your name you take your mail out from the open slot immediately above it. Above It, not below it, not beside it, above it. I'm so tired now.


"We" couldn't "get" this. I was instructed to "make the labeling more clear". Black letters on white labels. In bold face. I didn't know how much clearer I could make it. I was annoyed. I thought that perhaps braille might be a solution. No, I did a quick poll and we are dumb not blind. I made a note of that. "Not blind, just really, really dumb".

So. I labeled each slot along the side as well. Now, our little mail slots are labeled twice. If they can't find their names now or are confused about where to find their mail... I'll smile and find away to label them a third time, perhaps on the back wall of each slot. Maybe I'll just stand there and direct them to their box, maybe I can cut out the middle man and just walk from office to office and give them their mail personally and we can reject the whole mail slot thing all together.

Then, there was a second labeling issue. We have a number of desk trays that we use to to hold mail and other documents that are to be sent to our satellite offices. These are also labeled clearly. I thought.

Turns out that when I labeled them, clearly along the front of the boxes, I failed to know that if there was paper in the tray, it would block the label!!!! and render the purpose of the tray a mystery. Really, they claimed they couldn't figure out which tray was in use. We send things to four offices. If one of the boxes is rendered anonymous and the other boxes are empty? Which box is being used? I might also note that we aren't exactly sending reams and reams of paper off to the other offices. It can be picked up, actually flicked, you can flick the paper and see what tray it is.

I took a deep breath, cursed each and every one of my fellow employees, a couple more than the others and relabeled the trays, this time in the wall of the book case next to the opening of the tray! No more mysteries.

The next round of complaints is going to be that the mail box unit is too close to the floor and too hard to quickly check your slot. The only free part of the wall available for this would put the boxes beyond the book case - they would now have to go all the way into the "room", which also now is home to our fax machine and a whole bunch of boxes that do not belong to us. It is a small room. A walk in closet with a box case, fax machine and a bunch of large boxes. I bet you money.

Drug Addict

Dogger had another foreshortened visit to the park last night but it wasn't her fault and it wasn't about another dog either. It was The Kitty's fault.

Kitty's pred was running low again and I was making my monthly
call to the vet to grovel for one more month - before his good blood test I was practically having to plead with them to fill his script each month. I didn't love this.

I also didn't love the $17 a month I was getting soaked for either. The vet in Marquette was charging me $10 for a month. I wanted my $7. I always wanted to ask for a copy of the script, but I was afraid they would think I was either 1) accusing them over over charging me - because they were or 2) A bad, cheap Cat mommy. I mean, really. I like them, they are nice people, they love my pets , but they were significantly over charging me for pred.

My cat has to have his pred. No pred, no relief, no fooling around. So I call every month and hope that they aren't keeping too close an eye on how many months in a row it has been since his last blood work. I don't want to hear about it, I just want my cat's drugs.I called up and expected our usual dialogue.

Me - Hi, I need my drugs

Them - Hold Please

Me - Pleasepleasepleaseplease

waitingwaitingwaiting

Them - Okay, but Kitty is going to need blood work done before we can refill this...

Me - I can't afford it this month.

Them - Okay, but next month?

Me - Fine.

I can't afford it next month either and we'll have this conversation every month until the stress kills me and I end up voluntarily bringing him in before they can hold me at pred-point to force me to do it. This time it was different. "Do you want the pills or would you like a copy of the prescription?". I was like "Um, you mean I can have the prescription I can take it somewhere else cheaper!?" Score!

I picked up the script at lunch and it was good for three refills at the pharmacy of my choice. I would like to point out that the prescription that I take, the human being, costs me $4 a month. The cats' prescription costs almost four times as much each month and that sucks.

I would have taken the script to Sam's right after work, but I want Dogger to have as much time at the park as she can get and the earlier I can get her there the more drama-free time she has to run and play. I do kind of miss my park friends but I can exchange small talk other people whose names I don't know at five as just as well as at seven. I keep telling myself that, but damn it, I miss Max and Eno and little Lulu and the sweet little bulldog girl and my bassets and Karma and Camu and I miss their dog Moms and dog Dads too. It makes me sad and makes me even more pissed at Drama's people. But, Daisy deserves to have a good time - it is after all a dog park not a Coffee Klatch. But maybe I'll try it out later on after awhile. I think though, for the time being it's good for Dogger to be around the significantly less aggressive dogs that play at the park earlier. Dogger doesn't seem to have any special doggy friends there, but she also doesn't have anyone she needs to dominate and nobody is gunning for her at five either.

Anyway. I cut the visit short so I could hit the pharmacy. Dogger was cool with leaving and actually left under her own steam, no pulling, tugging or cursing required - because I promised a trip to the "store". A trip to the store means she gets a second trip in the car and she loves riding in the car. I think she even enjoys hanging out in the parking lot - it's too hot for too much of that, so I had to run in and run out of the store pretty fast. We sat in the car with the A/C running and killed the ozone for fifteen minutes until Kitty's script was ready.

$4. A year of pred will run me $48 for a year, if I had kept having it filled at the vet it would and has run me $204 a year.

Sleeping on it

I didn’t know how much the reunion last weekend and the move this week had taken out of me until I roused myself Friday night. I started out with the idea that I would bring Dogger upstairs and treat her with some time spent on the bed with me. I would read my book while she looked on adoringly. Dogger normally is never allowed on the bed or upstairs for that matter. I thought that I would read my book and Dogger and I would enjoy some togetherness.

Kitty was pissed. As it turns out, Dogger also expressed a preference for the lower left quadrant of the bed, well, she’s so large that she also expressed a preference for the lower right and center quadrants as well. She was just happy to be there. Kitty sat on his tree and muttered to himself She can just try to come up here. Big stupid dog. She wouldn’t last a minute up here on Mount Kittymajaro . THE DOG I S IN MY PLACE! It’s not FAIR. I bet the bed is going to break now. How much is that bed supposed to take? I bet it’s going to wobble now. It’ll never be the same again. I hate the dog!

Dogger for her part was all I’m on the bed! I’m on the bed! I’m on the bed! Am I supposed to be on the bed? Is this all right? I’m on a bed but it’s not my bed . Mama’s on the bed. I’m on Mama’s bed! I’m on Mama’s bed! I’m on Mama’s bed!

And then she fell asleep.

And I fell asleep.

I woke up because the over head light was on and I was hot and my mouth tasted like old sock. I got up and turned on the A/C and turned off the light and went back on the still made bed. All this woke up the dog, but kind Dogger that she is, she panted me back to sleep. Her panting made the bed rock ever so slightly and it lulled me back to sleep.

I woke up again a while later because now I was cold and my mouth now tasted like a really old sock. I decided that Dogger needed to go to her own bed and I wanted to not sleep in my clothes. I was sure it must be really, really late - two, three ay-em at least, it was 11:30 PM.

Dogger seemed relieved to be in her own bed, but no more so than The Kitty. I turned on the alarm, finally brushed my teeth and went back to bed, again.

I slept until 10:30am . I didn’t do much on Saturday. Late in the day I finally went and put gas in the car and Dogger and I went on a hike with Broskey, Alphagal and Tiny E. I of course, brought my camera.



Earlier, on my way back from getting gas, I went by campus and took this picture of my new building.



I affectionately call the yard “Future Parking Lot” as by Tuesday there will be a 100 people duking it out over 36 available parking slots.

HAPPY BLOGGER SUCKS SUNDAY !!!!!!

HAPPY SATURDAY !!!!

Friday cat Blogging

If you can dream it, you can do it

I walked into the office today with one goal: When the call comes, I will be ready to move . My mantra since my alarm went off was “Today is moving day. We will move Today” . I walked into the office and single mindedly boxed my up my shite. And then I unpacked my shite because it was 7:45am and I needed that shite to do my job.

But then. Then my boss announced they were moving her and her computer to the other building. Eureka!

And then, nothing, Things were looking bleak and suspiciously like a normal day. The only sign it might be a slightly out of the ordinary - Someone ordered pizza - which was kind of jumping the gun as the majority of the office isn’t scheduled to blow the pop stand until Monday, but it did shore up my mantra after I slipped and started chanting “Today Is Thursday, We will move tomorrow”.

Time past. I packed my stuff again. I pretended to work. Sigh.

And the then the phone rang.

I was to box up my computer and be ready to go!!! Do you know how many cables and wires and assorted technologies were attached to my computer? A Lot. It looked like bad 80s sci-fi under my desk and two thirds of that mess belonged to my speakers Do you know how long it took me to unplug, disconnect and box up all my assorted peripherals? fifteen seconds. Of course it took two people a half hour to replug everything once I got over to the new building but they were doing it in THE NEW BUILDING!!

The desk that I picked out several months ago now, was accidentally given away to someone else. No big loss, one 40- year- old government issue desk is very much like another 40- year- old government issue desk. The one I have now is a place holder. To make up for the gaffe, they gave me a very fabulous chair because the chair I was using was crap. The chair I’m using now is gold and it’s not even my real chair! It does stuff the chait I had been useing, stopped doing thrity years ago.

Two of the programs I use to do my job stopped working but hey, WE MOVED!!!! We achieved something they have been talking about doing every few months for the last six years!! I have a window and an office! The air smells of fresh paint and new carpet! It’s got new office smell!!

I was so happy when I went home that I took Dogger to the park early. Drama Dog comes later on in the evening. Dogger was able to play and romp and have fun and there was no drama of any kind. The cooler people hang out later, but the cooler dogs are there at five. We will be there at five. Off Leash.

Head 'em out

Moving Day. Or not. It depends. We shall see what happens with the group that is scheduled to move first. If they have a good move, then I move today, if their move is not smooth, then I move Friday, but regardless of when I physically leave the building my stuff has to be packed now,. I have to be ready to bounce so me and all of my stuff must be ready to go, go, go! All of it. I wanted to be able to look around my space and see only dust and broken rubber bands by this point, moving day minus one, and I'm freaking a little bit.

I thought I had packed all ready. Boy, was I wrong. I have so much stuff and every time I fill a box, the box that seems like the last box - No, no it isn’t, I have more crap that needs to be boxed up. And boxes, they don’t grow on trees, I bet you didn’t know that. They don’t, so I have to go find a box and then there is the whole tape issue - and the movers will only move four boxes in addition to the furniture, which now is down to the mat under my chair and my chair and the computer. And five or six boxes of “office supplies”. So far I have two big boxes and two smaller boxes. I might move the smaller boxes myself, so I can keep adding to the four big boxes the movers have to take.

I wish that it looked more like I had packed all the stuff I packed up. The desk drawers are all empty, all my personal stuff is long gone - and all that is good, but there is so much more stuff I need to get rid of and I’m feeling kind of overwhelmed. I’m mean, its not like we’re moving cross country, the new office is like a block away! I think if worse comes to worse I can still come by the old office on Friday and probably over the weekend to, but I would prefer to spend the weekend getting Office II put together and arranged so that on Monday I can hit the ground running. I also have to get our supply/mail-room/fax space in working order (not the same as my office, ThankyouGawd) and I think that is going to take priority over getting my chachkis where I want them and measuring for curtains and deciding what my color scheme is going to be. We can’t paint, but the walls are neutral. I am also going to need to get a screen for the door way. Screens are key when you don’t have doors. But the whole time? I will be thanking Gawd that I am not packing and unpacking the file room.

So, the next time you hear from me, it will be from a different office. I will be harvested from the cube farm and re-housed in my very own veal pen.

Oh, here is my class's Most Changed/Least Changed/Coolest Job/Furthest Away . You can assume that the guy second to the left did not win for "coolest job".

Old Times

I spent so much time living in the past last weekend that I did something I haven't done since college - I fell asleep in front of the television! I fell asleep on the carpet like an undergrad during finals week! I was so ashamed. I had to rouse myself so that I could fall asleep like a college graduate, in my chair with my hand wrapped around the remote. But before I crashed and burned, I went shopping - right after work when I was really hungry and suffering the after effects of a frankly, unfulfilling lunch so when given the opportunity, I headed straight to where the food lives, in search of fulfillment.

Yay, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of cake mix, I fear no frozen pizza.

Fortunately, it was also very hot and nothing does more to turn me off of cooking like the threat of turning on any oven, toaster, microwave anything that is going to bring more heat into my life. I was very strong. I knew what I wanted and where I had found it the last time I bought it. The store helped me out by resisting their weekly urge to shake the store lay out like a beach blanket because they noticed customers whipping through the store efficiently finding things and going on with their lives. It's better for them if we have to hunt for our food, if we knew from visit to visit where they keep the peanut butter we might never go down the pancake syrup aisle! If you don't go down the pancake syrup aisle, it won't occur to you that you haven't made pancakes in a while and you won't buy pancake syrup or pancake fixings and that boys and girls is what makes the Baby Jesus cry.

Anyway. I was in the store trying like hell to escape their evil syrupy clutches and I was still hungry. I had successfully found the tea I was in the store for in the first place and it occurred to me that I could not eat tea for dinner, so I went for my favorite dinner - and picked up five of them. I really don't mind eating the same thing every night. It's not a big deal, and in this case it's a very healthy meal. I'm on the Salmon and broccoli diet. I may not lose weight but I will be able to give blood, damn it.

Anyway. I was about to leave when I remembered that I like carrots, so I went to where the carrots live and I picked up a bag of "baby" carrots. I would just buy normal sized carrots but nobody gives people grief for buying the all-ready-potato-chipped potatoes, so I don't want to hear about buying unchopped up carrots.

And there I found the $2 a pint RASPBERRIES!!!! and the sky opened and the Angels trilled and it was a beautiful moment.

Today I had a change of pace, I had raspberries for dinner.

I'm Baaaacccckkkk!

You know its going to be a long week when you find yourself whining about what a long week it has been and it's 11:30 Monday morning.

I'll tell you all about the reunion as soon as I have processed it. The lesson I did learn was that if you want to know what someone is going to look at 38, don't spend a lot of time studying what they looked like at 18. The only thing the two will have in common is gender and name and I will tell you that hair color isn't going to help you either if 38 year old "Joe Blow" gained 75 pounds and lost all his hair. True story - there is a guy in my class, a year younger than I am, who looks like a walking elbow. He seems like a really nice guy and I'm sure he's a wonderful person, but the man is an elbow.

Changing the subject.

My office is moving. For real, this is not a test, they are not conducting a drill. We are bugging out. I will be moved Thursday. Last Wednesday we had a 45 minute meeting solely about how to pack our computer monitors. 45 minutes, to say "put it in the box on a tilted position". Someone took pictures of the whole process so it could be shared with out co-workers who despite years of education and decades of clinical experience, can not read.

A surveyor approached me, and being way too nice just to take it, asked my permission to "borrow" my packing tape. He said he only "needed it for a second and he would bring it right back". This was around 1pm. I agreed to this as he is a very nice man and if he said he would have it right back, he would have it right back.

At 4pm, I started to wonder where my tape was. I got a call from the new file manager asking for my tape, I told her that Nice Man had it and she should ask him.

She asked him. He didn't have it anymore. He had been pimping my tape all up and down his hallway. When I confronted him about it he said he thought it was with Surveyor X - whom he had expressly told to give the tape back to me when she was finished. She didn't.

I rescued what remained of my role of packing tape and took it to the new file manager. She said she only needed two pieces and that was all she got. I had to make it clear that I am not running a tape charity, that while we may be under the same roof but not under the same cost center! I wanted to remind her of the file room credo:Your failure to plan does not constitute an emergency on my part! . Read it, live it, learn it. Make it a part of your life.

I got my tape back. I not only got my tape back, I gained an accessory:

Leaving on a jet plane...

Onward and ...

They have once again announced that we are moving and that we need to be packing. I have packed. I packed and then unpacked and now I have to pack again, this time with snazzy pink labels for all my stuff.

Now, I have to decided if the item should get a label or if it is going in to a box and then the box should be labeled and not the item itself . If it is a computer thing, it has to be labeled and boxed because they are too tall for a lid so they go in a box sans lid but in that case they must be individually labeled.

Then there are the boxes themselves. I am limited to four boxes and four boxes only. I don’t have that much stuff until I have to box it up and suddenly it multiplies like that children’s book about the guy and his hats. He takes off a hat and he is wearing a hat, he takes off that hat and under it he as yet another hat and on and on. I box up a lot of stuff and there is a lot of stuff underneath it and when I box that up there is more underneath. I’ve been in the position only six months and I all ready have stuff under stuff.

This time I have been told that I will be moving next Thursday. I know that I don’t have to label my desk because my desk isn’t going with me, it is going it just isn’t going with me. I will not be in a formal cube in the new building. I am not really in a formal cube now, but it’s more cube-y then a real office. I have all the pieces of a cube but not the actual cube. It’s like cube separates. Grranimal Cube. Many months ago, prior to our last aborted move, my boss measured my desk and announced it isn’t going to fit. It seems like a small enough desk to me, but I’m bad at math.

Discovering that my desk was too big, my boss and I went to wander around a storage trailer and with the aid of a guy way too far up on my departmental flow chart for that kind of scutt work, picked out the least chewed up desk we could find that would fit. “Least chewed” not un-chewed. There are no unchewed up desks. You know how Tom Hanks said “There is no crying in baseball?”, there are no unchewed up desks for state employees. Even the really nice desks look as though they have been through the wars, as part of the rear echelon, but they were there. Oddly, they will fork over for a new chair, but as long as your desk still functions as a desk, you don’t get a new one. Also, no desk is broken, no matter how broken it is. Held up by bricks? not broken, taped together? not broken, drawers won’t open? not broken . If whatever is wrong with it can be corrected, it is not broken, so the desk lives on and on and on, spreading its brand of misery where ever it goes and to whomever has to call it theirs.

Now my problem is as I make out my labels, is what do I label? Anything? Everything? Am I going to look like a smart ass if I label my phone? Hand set only or phone body If so, which parts? And how about my label machine? And what of my tape dispenser? The stapler? How about my cat food containers? And if I do label everything in my sight and I do come off like a smart ass, do I care if the prisoners think I’m a smart ass?

Every time I pack all this stuff, I have to unpack it ten minutes later because I suddenly need whatever it was. There are binders that sit on my shelf for months and so in the spirit of doing as I am told, I pack them. I never use them, so I pack them up and then I need them. if it goes into a box, I'm going to need it 10 minutes later. Lather, wash, repeat.

Hey!

Congratulations !

This is Steven - I am one of the founders of Dogster and am happy to announce you are one of the 12 Best In Show runners up for the Paramount year of the Dog Photo Contest.

I will be contacting you again in the next week to collect your address so that I can send your special edition calendar and arrange for Paramount to mail you your movie memorabilia.

Well done again and best regards

12th Runner up!!!

She's so excited she's all verklempt!

The Fugitive

We had our raccoon trauma at the office. There were those among us that saw the raccoon as a harbinger of every kind of contagion known to man up to and including social diseases and malaria. I’m reasonably sure they understood that to get an STD from a raccoon that you first have to have sex with the raccoon, but I’m not sure. I was also not sure how malaria could be contracted from raccoon either.

There was also some mention on rabies, but Rocky wasn’t manifesting any symptoms. It wasn’t rabies that was drawing him to our door way, it was laziness and kibble. The cat food brigade became concerned when the panic merchants started making noise about “making calls” about Rocky. We don’t want Smokey to be the innocent victim of a raccoon pogrom. We needed to act first and fast.

One of Smokey’s Friends volunteers at a shelter and had access to live traps. We knew that any trapping was going to inevitably, trap cats and so we got in contact with the campus cat lady and she put us in contact with her feral cat contact and they told us we could take up to five cats to them this last weekend to be fixed – Yay, but we were trapping at the beginning of the week - Smokey’s Friends aren’t in the feral cat storage business. We couldn’t just tack them to a cork board, or stuff them into a drawer until Saturday and it’s not like we could set them loose with an appointment card and expect them to show up for a trip to the docs. Feral cats are notorious for not keeping appointments. We hoped we would catch Rocky first and not have to mess with the cats.

The first night we trapped a cat. A young, stupid cat who didn’t know better. The more experienced cats, possums, raccoons, voles, rats, and assorted whatnots knew better. They know there is no such thing as a free snack and they stayed away from the trap. Good thing too, we couldn’t have dealt with a mob scene. After an abstinence lecture and a film about self respect, we released the fertile little beast to the wild.

So. We set the trap again and hope for the beast. Nothing, I can’t say I wasn't relieved.

We were kind of going with the idea that the trap had served its purpose, and that the other little animals wouldn’t come around again, I mean look at what happened to the last guy who went into the box thing, I imagined that the little animals laughed and pointed at him and that others brought their children out to show them what happens to little animals who are too lazy to really work for their food – We didn’t even really want to set it again, but we did, with the caveat that if we didn’t catch anything this time we were going to declare Operation Enduring Vermin over.

I rolled in the next morning to find the trap full of dirt and a very cheesed off Rocky. I hadn’t planned on actually catching Rocky, and I didn’t know what to do with him next. After meeting him, my plan was to stay as far away from his surprising long, sharp teeth and claws as I could and wait for reinforcements. Raccoons are so cute when they aren’t caged and desperate,

We tried to Macgyver a way to get him water inside the trap. Everything we came up with were needlessly complicated and difficult to manufacture with the office supplies we had on hand and we didn’t take in to account how fast he would destroy what we did come up with – approximately 19 seconds after we gave it to him. We were more successful keeping him out of the sun if not the heat.

It turned out there was a plan for Rocky after all. At the end of the day he was loaded into a SUV and taken to his new home way, way, way out in the country… And not in the way Animal Control takes animals out to the “country” either. I pretty much expect him to be camped out in some barn eating horse chow by the midweek.

Shoes

Well. I think I have some of my list done. Except the “make a list” part, that is still not done. I’ll do it on the plane while I’m making a list of all the things I forgot to do. I expect it will be a sizable list.

A few I crossed off on my own, but Alphagal helped with the rest of my Saturday Evening outfit and thanks to her guidance, I’ll look smashing. I went unescorted to get shoes and that was hard. The dress code for the evening event is “Evening Casual”. Do you know what that translates as? How do you dress for that?! What is “Evening Casual”? Does it mean “Leave your prom gown at home” or “Shirts and shoes optional?”. I mean.”Evening casual” could mean sweat pants and oversized tee shirt. Are they asking for nice pajamas? Or did they really mean to say “Cocktail Attire” and thought we wouldn’t get it? I’m pretty sure they did not mean “Black Tie”, but that is all I understood.

My dress is black. I needed black shoes. When you say “I need black shoes”, do you have any idea how many shoes out there fit that description? And I wanted heels - if you say “I need black heels”, how many of that original group meet that specification? It’s mind blowing. And then there are so many different kinds of heels! I wandered around a cavernous shoe warehouse place - I was there for hours! I had thought I would just pop in and, somehow, I guess, find a pair of shoes pre-assigned to me? I don’t know. I certainly didn’t expect to walk around there like a zombie for as long a I did. I also didn’t know I had so many things about individual shoes that I would find distasteful. I rejected shoes outright because:

The heels were:
-... too tall
-... too thick
-...too low
-... too narrow
-... too wide (not the same as finding the heel “to thick”)
-... too pointy (not the same as “too tall”)
-... too platform
-...too dainty

I rejected shoes with otherwise acceptable heels because they were:

-Too Slutty
-Too Girly
-Too Granny
-Too Trany
-Too Disco
-Too Ballet
-Too Pointy-toed
-Too Boxy
-Too Strappy
-Too Fetishy
-Too Shinny
-Too Matte
-Too Sparkly
-Too Dressy
-Too Casual
-Too Grease
-Too Fame
-Too Trendy
-Too Last Season

Other things that got black shoes rejected

The presents of:

-Bows
-Insects
-Lucite
-Animal prints
-Cherries
-Buckles
-Labels and or Brands as decoration
- Faux fur

And then when I ran found a pair of shoes that looked promising, inevitably there were issues, I would discover that all that had left in stock were:

-Two left shoes
-Too small
-Too large
-Too wide
-Too narrow
-Too expensive

This was making me too sad.

But I persevered, and not only left the store with the right shoes in the right size in the right style!, but also two pairs of sandles that were not only on sale but the same as a pair I all ready have and love, now I have the sandles in black, white and tan! Yay!

HAPPY SUNDAY !!!!!!!

HAPPY SATURDAY !!!!!!!!

Friday Cat Blogging

Friday Cat Blogging

Will be right back!

Tick, Tock

I got some of my list taken care of - but not the one marked “make a list”. I haven’t done that yet.

I did? Get my Raleigh/North Carolina photo album taken care of, but I think it may still have some tweaking to do because while I left in the St.Patricks Day parade and the roller derby girls, I left out the Christmas parade and I think people at home will want to see the “Making Jesus Famous Since 1978" float. I may have to have a second album, one with just family and house and pets and stuff. I didn’t include many shots of The Kitty and he’s the most photographed cat on the planet. Dogger was very well represented and I have a total of about six pictures of her since she came to live with me.

The first of my two Ebay dresses finally arrived. I am so relived, I was thinking I was going to have to leave a second message for the seller asking where my dress was or go buy another dress, dress number three and that would have pissed me off. I paid for the dress, both dresses actually, on like May 26 and seller if dress number one didn’t mail it until June 4!I think that’s a little nervy dress number 2 is still not here and I starting to that that is a lot nervy.

But, dress number one has landed and it fits, it’s very cute and I like it a lot. But. I also want dress number two to arrive. I'd like to have a choice. Dress number one is a dressy dress, it could be dressed down easily, but it’s still on the high end of the “evening casual” scale. Dress number two might be more appropriate or I’ll look fat in it and in that case dress number one will suddenly be very “evening casual”. I need shoes!

That leaves cleaning my house from top to bottom before my parents arrive in town to house and pet sit. The house is a mess. I don’t know what happened, it just looks awful. I think I need to work on my time management skills and perhaps rethink the “sit in front of MASH for two hours after work everyday” part of my schedule. In my defense, during MASH I also water my outside plants and feed both animals, clean the cat box, pill the cat, go through the mail and get my clothes ready for the next day... Hmm. Maybe I'm not wasteing that time.

And then there’s the “spend a couple of hours at the dog park” part. What I really want is for Drama dog’s people to amended their schedule and not spend a couple of hours at the park, or as it is “Go to the dog park and stay there all damn evening” part of their schedule. They are total park hogs and they know that I am uncomfortable letting Dogger wander around when they are there with Drama. They could just say “Hmmm, we’ve been here since 2 and it’s not, oh, look 7:30! Lets go home shall we? Lets let that nice, non-aggressive dog go free. Let us take our aggressive dog home”. But no, that isn’t going to happen because they are a couple of asshole’s and so is their dog. No wonder they all get along so well. Three asshole’s, all being obnoxious together.

Deep cleansing breaths.

Today Dogger and I did something we haven’t done in years. Today we played catch in the yard, I threw the ball and Dogger ran after it and brought it back to me!! Three or four times in a row! It was amazing - and not in that creepy “amazing” that Katie Holmes uses to describe her “relationship” with Crazy Tom Cruise and Scientology - it was the good and pure amazing. I want her to find another word.

Short and not to the point

Short little blog because just look at the time! Wow. It’s late. The very most I should be doing know is trying to find the remote. But.

I wasted time like a champ. Well, at first I was good, I came home, changed clothes and took a confused Dogger for a walk. She was like “No, no, no. When the sun is like this, I’m in the yard, then you feed me, then we go to the park. We don’t walk now, lets go home.” I took her for an early walk in hopes of tiring her out for the park. I figured that with a walk and a full stomach she would be too pooped to get in much trouble.

I didn’t get a chance to try out my theory: Drama Dog was at the park. There is no amount of tried or full that will keep Dogger and Drama from getting into it. So we sat there and watched the other dogs play. It wasn’t so bad. Dogger really didn’t seem to be in to much of a hurry to go run around herself and except for when Drama entered her air space she just kind of was happy to be sitting there being pet. It was also a nice evening. On our way out we met up with one of our friends and chatted for a bit but we were on our way.

The other day I sat down with my computer and picked out pictures of Raleigh and the beach to take back to Dallas to show everyone where I live. I also went through my albums and found some that were taken pre-digital. I thought I was making a CD of the pixs from the computer so I could get them printed out - many of them all ready exist in printed form but I’m really trying to avoid having to cannibalize my albums more than I have to. This way I have everything I want all in one place. I do need more pictures of my house though. Anyway. I thought I had successfully made the CD. I went to Sam's at lunch for the express purpose of printing out the shots. It turned out I was not successful with the CD making. Curses.

So. Post park I sat down and did it again. The computer did a great job of hiding the original folder I created to store the shots I wanted. More curses. I found it finally and made another CD. This time I checked to make sure it worked before I took it to be printed out. I was good to go so I went.

My Ebay stuff hasn’t arrived yet and I’m getting antsy. I don’t know how long it usually takes because I’m not usually watching the clock like I am now. Normally I don’t have plans to take what I won on a trip. So, its taking a very long time and I’m stressing. I decided that as long as I was out driving around with the pictures that I would check out Ross and see if there was anything there I liked, in case Black Dress A or Black Dress B either never arrive or arrive too late.

There were many things there I wanted.

But they wern't clothes. I bought a very gorgeous plastic plate and four more cheap, yet nice photo albums. I can continue that project as well. They don’t match the excising new and improved albums but they don’t need to. There needs to be fewer albums, they don’t need to match. I don’t mind having three or four different kinds of album sets. I’m just really tired of having 24 mix and match 100 page albums cluttering up my space.

Okay. Done. I may even get an Entourage episode or two in.

Or not, Grrrrr!!! @#$% Blogger! once again reminding us that things that are free may end up costing us more time than money.

The Sky will someday fall, but not today

When U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf described the alleged terror plot to blow up Kennedy Airport as "one of the most chilling plots imaginable," which might have caused "unthinkable" devastation, one law enforcement official said he cringed.

The plot, he knew, was never operational. The public had never been at risk. And the notion of blowing up the airport, let alone the borough of Queens, by exploding a fuel tank was in all likelihood a technical impossibility.

And now, with a portrait emerging of alleged mastermind Russell Defreitas as hapless and episodically homeless, and of co-conspirator Abdel Nur as a drug addict, Mauskopf's initial characterizations seem more questionable -- some go so far as to say hyped.

"I think her comments were over the top," said Michael Greenberger, director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland. "It was a totally overstated characterization that doesn't comport with the facts."

Will we still care?

Deep Breathes


Well, that was a wasted evening. I should have known just to give it up when my evening started out with being turned away from the Red Cross - That alone should have told me that I should just go home, take a long shower, and go to bed early.

Of course I didn’t take the hint. Instead I went home and gathered up Dogger and took her to the park. I should have known to turn back when I saw the crowd hanging around the gate and my friend Eno on the ground being soothed .I should have taken the hint. I should have kept her on her leash. Dogger has the smoothest landing at the park when there aren’t a lot of other dogs gathered around the gate, I think it gets her over stimulated. It’s best for the both of us when she is able to make a quite entrance, if she can pee, sniff around a little and then go greet her fans - preferably at a hundred miles an hour ( all the better to burn off energy) When Dogger has to enter into a mass of dogs it never ends well. I should have known better but I stopped paying attention when I saw that Drama Dog wasn’t there. Next time I’ll know better.

We walked into a post-fight park. The dogs were all hyped up and the people were stressed and Dogger just dove right in or as it was humped right in. I pulled her off one dog only to have another dog start humping her. When Dogger turned to tell the other dog to hump off - it decided it didn’t like her tone of voice and one thing led to another. Other Dog is fine. I have scraped up knees and elbows where I hit the ground dragging Dogger off Other Dog. Other Dog squealed first so Dogger was the official aggressor, it didn’t matter who started it.

I don’t think it would have escalated like it did except for the previous fight. As I was bent over Other Dog, another woman also tending to the dogs hurt feelings mentioned it was the second “fight” since she had gotten there and she blamed it on the heat and the phase of the moon - until another dog person noted the moon was full Saturday.

Sigh. I guess I should be thankful that the only thing that Dogger hurt was Other Dogs feelings. Dogger doesn’t bite dogs she get’s into it with, she bulks them into submission. I was really surprised because lately Dogger has been really cowering away when other dogs tell her to step off, Other Dog has even scared her off in the past weeks as well. I think there was just a bad vibe in the air and she got carried away with it. I don’t think Other Dog would have reacted the same way either had there not just been a confrontation (Other Dogs people were thankfully very cool about it) I have noticed in the past that once there has been a dust up between dogs, that there mostly likely will be another. There’s just a lot of extra anxiety in the air and everyones on edge and the dogs pick up on it, and one thing leads to another... But damn, we were there for 10 minutes!, Dogger was just so excited to be there, we hadn’t been since Friday. Maybe I should start taking her over the weekends too?

After Dogger and I did the walk of shame out of the park ( we didn't have to go, I was just too embarressed to stay) my first thought was to take Dogger home and lock her in her crate while I went to Ross to undergo a little below-retail-therapy but then I thought better of it. Instead I took Dogger for our regular walk and then kept her outside with me while I did the watering. She did go right to bed though, no TV for her.

News

Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been sentenced to 30 months in prison and fined $250,000 in the CIA leak case.

Full story here

Dog Talk

Me - Did you have a bath? Did the girl dog have a bath? Are you all clean now? Are you the cleanest girl dog eveh? Look at you being so clean!

Dogger - Feed me?

Not only did I have that “conversation” with Dogger but I did that out loud in public in my front yard in front of Gawd and everyone and I didn’t even feel weird about it.

I know I am not the only one who does this. I read somewhere that if other people knew how you really related to your pet, that they would wonder about you. But really, what pet owners out there haven’t had conversations with their pets? And how many of you translate your pet for other people?

Pet - Meeeooowwww
You - He says “stop it”
Outsider - He said “stop it”? He likes it.
You - That was his “stop it” sound. He wants you to stop it.
Outsider - Whatever. Ow! @#$% It bit me!
You - He said to stop it.
Cat - Mew, Mew, Mew
Outsider - What is it saying now?
You - Yum, Yum, Yum.

Pet - Wuff!wuff!wuff!
You - Go fill his water dish.
Outsider - I think he wants to go out.
You - No, he wants water. His “Take Me Out” bark is more like woooooof woooof and he’ll do his take me out dance.
Dog - Wuff
You - Do you want some water? Is your water dish empty? Water, water, water!?
Dog - Wuff!
Outsider - You need to get out more.

I do get out more. I get out to the dog park. The other day I over heard one of the women sing a little song to an unrelated Schnauzer - She was embarrassed that I over heard her but I barely noticed. I mean, who hasn’t seen a cute little dog and not wanted to sing a little song to it?

You’re so cute
Such a cute little dog
Little bitty dog
Look at your little fur
And you tiny little nose
And tiny tail!
Woofwoofwoof

You spend enough time at the dog park and you have all kinds of opportunities to sing little songs to your dog, your friends dogs, dogs you don’t know , and you will because they are everywhere and they come up to you and wag their furry little bodies at you and some of them, beagles and yellow labs, practically carry little doggy drum machines to provide back up. Standard poodles bring their own guitars and there are German Shepards with their own pianos.

All for

Look who has a furry butt!
Do you have a furry butt?
Furry Butt! Furry Butt
Fur Fur Butt!

They love it. They do little dances, it makes them happy that you are talking to them, looking at them, paying attention to them. They don’t know what you’re saying, they really don’t care - as long as you’re looking at them and smiling, it’s all good. You could be singing

You’re so dumb!
You don’t know any tricks!
You eat wood chips and like them!!
You smell like dead lizards!
You’re so dumb

And as long as you doing it in a high pitched voice, it’s all the same to them....but it’s really bad for your karma to sing mean things to your dog though- do it too often something will bite you in the ass and it might not be your dog.

Weekend

I told myself if I ever got a good rainy weekend I would do this and of course that and most certainly I would do something about those .

I scored a good rainy weekend and I didn’t do anything on my list. Sure, I did a little of this, that and the other thing but those thing weren’t on my list. Instead I went to the mall. In my defense, I did go there initially because I had a doctors appointment. I couldn’t bring myself to trust my sight to Wal-Mart. I had this vision of sitting in front of some guy in a red vest while he shines a flashlight in my eyes in between mopping up spills and helping some guy load an entertainment center into his truck. I was also a little worried about the frames they were selling. I’m not sure that I would trust $45 frames. I have to wear them everyday. I also thought the quality was a little suspect. Frames should not all ready be repaired with duct tape when they are still in the store. I cancelled my appointment.

But the mall wasn’t a total waste of time, I mean, I got my eyes checked, just a negligible change! Yay! So I was happy and kind of in a celebratory place and what better place to celebrate than at the mall? and if I wasn’t at the mall how would I have scored a Macy’s card? They don’t hand those out in Happy Meals ya know. You have to go to Macy’s to get a Macy’s card. Lowes sent me a Visa card I didn’t even ask for. I mean, how common... It was how they thanked me for not using their card for two years, honestly, when I got the letter I thought they were kidding. Macy’s would never send you an unrequested Visa.

Macy’s was a having a sale. I good sale. I mean, it would have been wasteful to not take advantage of it. So I did, and while I was standing with an armload of sale items at the register, the woman behind the counter was kind enough to share with me that if I got a card right now I could save an additional 15% on top of the pre-existing 30% sale they all ready had going she mentioned that elsewhere in the store there were even bigger sales clearance sales... this was not the time to be headstrong. There was money to be saved and you can’t save money until you spend money.

I saved a lot of money.

The good news is that I know what I’m going to wear to my reunion. This was stressing me out. So now I am less stressed and this is a good thing. I will be even less stressed when my Ebay purchasers get here. Somewhere out there in the ether is a little black dress and I will be happier when it is here and not out there all sad and alone. I want it here with me where I can keep it company - actually, I have two little black dresses out there, but only one is going with me. Sometimes you lose all your auctions and sometimes you don’t. Oops.

HAPPY SUNDAY !!!!!!!

HAPPY SATURDAY !!!!!!!!

Friday Cat Blogging

Take Good Notes

A while ago I got a post card from my eye doctor reminding me “It’s that time again” . I nodded in agreement and forgot about it.

About a week later my eyes were bothering me and I said to myself “I need to remember that they are bugging me so I can tell the optometrist when I go in. It’s that time again I think”. Then my eyes stopped being weird - in that I stopped noticing them. I think we should not notice our body parts. I mean, the day you say “Hmm. I can feel my pancreas”, it is not going to be a good day. Slam your thumb in the car door and tell me you liked it better when you didn’t have to spend so much time thinking about that thumb.

I decided to take advantage of my insurance and made an appointment with my friendly neighborhood Eye Doc In A Box . I called them up, talked day and time and came to something we could both live with.

Time passes.

I ask off work and trot to my Eye Doc In A Box. I get there and there are about eight girls wandering around behind the counter. They all appear to be doing “something” and they could have been doing the same thing. It was hard to tell, they all looked very busy. I was the only patient .

I gave the girl standing closest to the counter my name. Nothing. I offered that I had an appointment. Like now. Still nothing. She was looking at her screen. She asked me to spell my name, first and last. Still nothing. She asked who I made my appointment with. I told her I didn’t know. I was thinking, Why on earth would I remember who answered the phone? Who remembers that kind of thing? And besides, there are 126 girls working behind the counter right now, How should I be able to remember which Kristi I spoke with? Why would it matter, everyone here is named “Kristi”. While I was thinking this they asked each other if they had spoke with me. The Kristi’s couldn’t remember. They asked me again with whom I spoke with, I again told them I didn’t remember.

Then I said “Some one from this office called and confirmed with me yesterday”

BOOM

Now they were made at each other.

Did you do it?
Did you call?
Did You write it down?
You are supposed to write it down!
Who Called?

The one with the springy-ist pony tail bounced over and asked me who called me.

I told her it was a message on my phone and I didn’t speak with anyone.

One of the Kristi’s started pawing through a binder, I guess on the off chance that whoever called me wrote it down. This set off another round of accusations among the Kristi’s.

We’re supposed to write it down!
I always put it down !
I never forget to enter appointments!
I log all my confirmations!

And I’m thinking, well, obviously.

Finally, an older and less springy woman entered the discussion and her hair squishy was definitely in a wad about this. I had to again repeat my testimony that I didn’t have a transcript of the conversation and sadly, I also couldn’t recall exactly what day I made my appointment. Stupid me. I had a made the assumption that one of us was writing all this down. Perhaps the one of us with an appointment book in front of her.

She reminded the Kristi’s that they needed to remember to write things down. She all but reminded me that making assumptions makes an ass of “u” and “me”. I all but reminded her that one of us was being an ass and it wasn’t “me”.

She told me that if the 4:30 didn’t show up, I could have the appointment. I thought “Gee, you mean I could have the appointment I made and you confirmed? Gosh.” But instead I read a three month old Newsweek and watched the 4:30 arrive.

I went to the counter and the Kristi told me the 4:30 had arrived. I told her I saw that. She apologized, and asked when I would like to reschedule. I told her I would take an appointment on Saturday. She checked the appointment book and said they didn’t have anything available this Saturday and offered next Saturday. I told her I wasn’t available next Saturday and I walked out.

I drove off in a huff and went to Wallyworld and made an appointment with their in-store optometrist for this Saturday. I’m going to see if Lens-Crafters has anything for this weekend. I really don’t want to have to go through life with Wal-Mart among my healthcare providers.