Category: life

These are a few of my perturbing things

No raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens.

No, I’m all kinds of cranky today and need to, you know, just vent.

You know how it goes, you have other friends like me. You are having a perfectly nice day, then they come along and dump their misery. They feel great and you feel bad.

That’s me today.

Here we go.

I’m not cranky about anything in particular, just all the little things are wearing down my last nerve until it’s just a slick spot. I have, what The Good Man calls “bent whiskers.”

So here we go, a few of my most annoying things.

    


  • People who pour the top couple fingers of coffee out into the trash can at the local coffee place. Yes, I know they need room for cream, and there is nowhere else to deposit the excess java, but for some reason this seriously bugs me. I always think “that will melt the can liner and *can’t* be fun for the employee that has to come clean that out.” I dunno, maybe my former S’bucks friend (that’s you, Nat) can assure me this is not such a bad thing?
  • People who drive itty bitty cars and STILL can’t manage to make it between the white lines in the parking lot. Especially when they are using up a full sized space (versus a compact spot). I always want to door ding the %$#@ out of them, but refrain because…
  • …I also really hate people who door ding other cars. Are you NOT in command of your own car door?
  • Microsoft Excel. It’s totally user error, but like most folks, I choose to point the finger outward for my own personal inadequacies. : shrug :

    • 


  • That my manicure lasted less than a week. Grr. I want the heavy-duty shellac put on there! The kind they lay on thick like on a basketball court, with all the gleam. It should be super nuclear attached to my nails! One week!!?!?
  • That my frappin’ iPhone can’t seem to hold a battery charge for more than a day. Remember when mobile phones were only used for making calls? I could make a battery charge last a week on those things. Now with phone, text, email, twitter, web surfing, etc, etc, I wear out that stupid battery in the blink of an eye. Damn you Apple for bringing all of my life onto one tiny energy sucking device!!!!
  • That they only buy the cheapest possible pens at work, but will spring for $400 worth of food for a lunchtime meeting, leaving scads of leftovers. Money down the drain as I scribble with a crap pen. Whatever.
  • That I’m turning forty in a week.

Ok, that last one may be the main perturber…not sure. Either way, I’m massively cranky….

I’m a bit…nervous

There is a big change coming.

Huge.

It’s a good change.

But…it’s just…difficult for someone like me.

Okay, men, here’s the part where you can go ahead and tune out.

May I suggest a click here (how ’bout that NFL draft?) or here (how about that swine flu?)?

Okay ladies….now that it’s just us girls………

See, this weekend, I bought a new purse.

Sure, for you ladies who swap around purse-to-purse depending on mood or outfit, this isn’t a big deal.

For a steady, stubborn Taurus like me…I like to buy a *nice* all occasion purse. And then I Wear. It. The Heck. Out.

Seriously. I am carrying a Kenneth Cole black leather hobo bag right now (smoking sale at Macy’s) and have been for a while. That thing is scuffed to death!

It is time to let it rest.

But it’s *so* hard for me to switch purses. The pockets won’t be in the same spots. The cute little side zippy place for my keys will go away!

Will I know intuitively how to go in there to get my phone when it rings? No! Not for a while.

And my old wallet doesn’t match…so I need a new one. UGH! More change!

Then there is the inevitable clean out of the old purse as the switch is made. I have to let go of the used chewing gum crammed into the mangled business card from my doctor’s office with an old appointment on there.

I’ll have to trash the tired mints rattling around in the bottom.

And I’ll have to actually go through all the stuff I’m carrying around and determine if it is worthy of the new purse!

This is just so difficult for a girl like me!

I have anxiety!

Thanks for listening.

Conservationism is hogwash

I know, I know. Heresy to say such a thing the day after Earth Day, but I’m saying it.

Ok, let me be a bit more specific.

Water and electric conservation is poppycock.

I’m mad. Can you tell?

I’ll tell you why in two stories.

One from several years back. One from a couple days ago that got my ire all up again.

First story. Electricity.

You may recall in the early 2000’s, California was going through a power crisis during the hot summer months.

We were subject to brownouts and rolling blackouts. Which is just a nice way of saying, “oooops, your power is out, we did it on purpose.”

Then-Governor Gray Davis challenged all of us to conserve power with the threat of increased power rates. It was a rallying cry. Stores turned off half or more of their lights. The Bay Bridge and Golden Gate went dark (turned off the accent lights, kept the roadway lights on), and I personally worked really hard to use less energy.

What happened?

The state of California conserved 11% energy. ELEVEN PERCENT!! That is a HUGE number.

We were then rewarded by the news that the power companies were corrupt, our overuse was never the issue, and rates went up, by a lot, to offset the crisis.

Conserving power meant nothing. Nothing. We paid more anyway.

Second story. Water.

It’s been noted in the news recently that California is having an especially dry year. Our reservoirs are a bit low. We didn’t get the snow pack that those that know would like to see.

So in Santa Clara County, they have enacted conservation…with the threat of raising rates.

And the people and businesses are doing it. They are conserving.

On the radio Tuesday, I heard a report that conservation has worked SO well that the water company hasn’t been bringing in enough billing revenue to sustain their beleaguered business model.

So they are going to raise rates, anyway.

Working so hard to conserve water meant NOTHING.

This concept of voluntary conservationism is useless and a bunch of bullhockey! Don’t threaten or coerce me. If you are just going to raise my rates then go ahead and raise my rates. That will get me to use less, I promise!

Any first year business student can draw for you the chart showing supply and demand. And price is a factor in demand. A BIG factor.

You raise rates, people will want to pay less, they will use less and conservation of resources happens.

This jimmy-jacking around, blaming the victim, telling me I’m a bad consumer and must use less or bad things will happen…so then I use less and bad things happen anyway?

By the by…I already use so little water and so little power as to be laughable. I turn off lights, I unplug appliances, I use Energy Star. My bills stay pretty low.

So no. I’m done. I’m done trying really hard to conserve even more, only to be rewarded by higher rates anyway.

Done!

/rant

Yanking. My. Chain.

(Written last night, posted today)

The universe is yanking my chain. Messing with my head. Freaking me out, man.

Because tonight, I might actually kinda sorta believe in the goodness of humanity.

That’s so not me. No, I think people are mean, and mean people suck. But tonight…I have a softer spot in my heart for the world.

I was on my way to the grocery store to pick up something for dinner. I waited in a left turn bay for the light to go my way. Out of the corner of my eye in the rearview mirror, I saw a small white pickup stomp to a halt at an odd diagonal to the left turn bay. Then the driver was out of the car and weaving around on foot in the opposite-side lane.

“Oh crap,” I thought, eyeing him in my rearview, “this guy’s messed up.” I immediately reached for my phone to call the police, and as I did I turned to look out my window to see what the guy was doing. Was he going to hurt himself?

Then I realized why he was making a weaving wavy line in the oncoming lane. Leading the parade was a Mama Duck and three little chicks tailing her every move, the guy madly following behind, making classic herding motions with his hands.

Obviously, the duck and young ‘uns had wandered into traffic and this guy was chasing them, trying to get them to safety, and waving off oncoming traffic at the same time.

Finally, Mama D got over to the curb and she hopped up. Three babies hopped and jumped in vain, unable to make the distance. The guy reached down, cupped his hands, and gently scooped up each baby and placed them on the sidewalk. When all were safe, he trotted to his truck and jumped back in.

This wasn’t a Teva wearing, hola granola, tree hugging guy, either. He was a tradesman, driving a worktruck and clearly had put in a hard day’s work on a freaking hot day.

And at the end of that day, he saved four lives.

I was stunned, and my heart felt warmth.

Then, while in the grocery, I went over to the bakery to pick up a few of my favorite cookies. They are baked on site and tantalize behind a glass case. A bakery employee has to help you get to the good stuff.

I stood by the glass and waited. The bakery employee was alone back there, on the phone, taking an intricate cake order. No worry, I got time. I can wait for delicious almond horns.

So I waited. I didn’t even feel impatient. It allowed me the chance to oogle all the other tasty cookies on display.

Finally, she hung up the phone and turned to me. She said, “Thank you so much for waiting, I’m so sorry!”

“No problem,” I said and ordered the horns.

She put a couple in a box then added one more. “One extra for having to wait,” she said, smiled, and sealed up the box.

I was stunned. I got rewarded for patience? Me, the least patient person I know?

Then on the way home, I arrived at a four way stop at the same time as another car. I was the car on the right, and thus supposed to be the first to go. That never happens according to the law in California, so as usual, I paused. The other driver, a teenage girl, gave me the wave. I smiled and waved back and turned left through the intersection.

At the next intersection, I arrived the same time as a huge SUV. I was on the left this time. I paid it forward, gave him the wave, got a smile and wave in return.

With a goofy grin on my face, I then made my way the final few blocks to home.

Sure, it’s a Monday, hotter than the hinges of hell, The Good Man is violently sick (Norovirus is the main suspect), Mom-in-Law got roughed up at her doctor, and the cat is hot and lethargic. By all accounts, it’s a sad day where I live.

But right now I feel…dare I say…optimistic about my fellow man.

Questionable fashion choices

So. It’s expected to be about 90 degrees here today.

I know, I know. I hear my New Mexico peeps saying, “pish posh, 90 degrees is a walk in the park!” and you are right.

90 degrees in Albuquerque is a fine day for a walk/run/jog/picnic/bike ride/what have you.

90 degrees here is intolerable. Because of one thing…

Humidity.

See, the human body was made to be an evaporative cooling device. Just like a swamp cooler, really.

From the Wikipedia entry: “Evaporative cooling is a physical phenomenon in which evaporation of a liquid, typically into surrounding air, cools an object or a liquid in contact with it.”

Right. I sweat. The dry air evaporates it. I feel fresh as a daisy. A sweaty daisy, but a daisy, nonetheless.

In the Bay Area, due to this large body of water, the uh, you know, Bay, we have a bit of humidity. Not much, mind you. Not Georgia on a hot summer night or Singapore all year round. But enough.

Enough that my finely tuned machine, calibrated to the New Mexico climate, can’t properly obtain “fresh as a sweaty daisy” and I just obtain sweaty.

But that’s not the point of my discussion.

The point is…it’s due to be pretty hot today. “Pretty hot” is something of a rarity around here. We get maybe two weeks, when all totaled up each year, of “good lord it’s hot” days.

The rest of the time, the weather is temperate and mild.

Because of this, few homes and businesses have any sort of air conditioning. I know, right? I almost passed out when I first moved here. “You want to rent me an apartment WITHOUT air conditioning? Do you want me to *die*?!?!?”

So in order to stay cool, people go to their drawers and the back of their closets to withdraw their “warm weather” clothes.

Herein lies the problem. In New Mexico, it gets hot a lot. Everyone has at least ONE pair of serviceable shorts, usually two or more. Something that people wouldn’t be upset at being seen in public with you while you were wearing them.

Not so in the area where it doesn’t often get that hot.

Yes, the first “damn it’s hot” day of the year means seeing shorts that are a bit tight and frightfully short.

I don’t mean on a cute girl, I mean on the overweight middle aged dad-man whose legs haven’t seen the outside of pants legs in decades wearing the shorts he bought for Spring Break back in college, thirty years ago.

This morning I saw a woman walking down the street in a purple bathing suit with the elastic about shot, thus hardly supporting her ample upper parts. This was paired with some lycra bike shorts, scarcely concealing her ample lower parts. She also carried a pack of Kools and smoked profusely. But that’s a whole other blog post.

Unless you are actually ON a bike, I’d like not to see the bike shorts, please.

Look, not all of my stuff is great to look at, but I have the decency toward my fellow mankind to wear a pair of shorts that don’t crawl up my heiney as I walk. My skin is pale from too many days under office florescent lights, but I make an effort to keep cool and keep my dignity at the same time.

For the good of all mankind.

Stay cool out there, ya’ll.