MOVING…WHAT ELSE CAN GO WRONG?
Moving sucks. Not that I mind packing or unpacking…I have a freakish affinity for both of those activities. What I hate is paying someone to take my stuff, and trying to figure out whether they’re responsible, reputable movers who won’t destroy all of my possessions, or whether they’re scamming sketchwads who are out to screw me out of every penny I own.
My movers seem to be militant Israeli hipsters, if it’s possible to be a militant hipster. I don’t really care about what brand of cigarettes they smoke, or whether they have faux-hawks, as long as my they show up on time and honor their estimate.
My mom and I had planned to rent a car and drive to CA, in order to see the country and take a mini-vacation, but apparently car rental places are grievously inconvenienced if you want to pick-up and drop-off at different locations. I don’t really understand why that should result in me paying them an extra $1200, but hey, I’m just a customer. What do I know.
On top of everything else, I got called for jury duty. Yes. After 10 years in New York, I’m supposed to report to jury duty three days after I leave. Oh, the irony. I’m going to try for an excuse, claiming that on that date, I’ll probably be in jail, having flipped out and strangled my movers and the car rental people.
SEASONAL ALLERGIES, MY ASS
Apparently, there are some people who only have allergy symptoms during the spring and fall. Other people don’t even have allergies, at all.
To all those people I say: Fuck you.
My allergies are year-round, and they are relentless. I wheeze, sneeze, seep and grumble during every season, whenever the wind blows. I can usually only breathe out of one nostril, and it feels like my nose is stuffed with a hunk of congealed silly string.
With the exception of dogs, I am allergic to everything - pollen, dust, mold, ragweed, and grass. I am allergic to things indoors and outdoors. I’m even allergic to metal - if it touches my skin, it makes me rashy. I can’t wear clothes with metal closures or wear cheap jewelry for too long. I have to paint the buckles of my sandals with nail polish to keep them from giving me rashes.
I don’t know how I got so sensative. I doubt it’s that my mom didn’t expose herself to environmental toxins while pregnant. I was born in 1980, before they knew about mercury, or mold spores, or that drinking while pregnant could make you downsy. I didn’t even have allergies as a kid; they all developed as an adult, along with my lactose intolerance.
So I guess this is just one of the pleasures of grownuphood, along with 401(k)s, graying hair, and saggy boobs. Maybe by the time I’m 80 I’ll have to live in a bubble. I may be unable to eat cheese, drink milk, smell flowers or wear earrings without discomfort, but I’ll still have beer.
YOU, THIEF. ME, HUNGRY AND MAD.
OK, so I didn’t bring a Hot Pocket, but somebody did steal my lunch today.
Yep, some cocksucker looked into the fridge at my cold 6-inch sub, which I had to get on sale, and said “Fuck you, sandwich owner, you’re probably fat anyways.”
So I’m a little pissy today. This has happened to me before, and I am amazed that as the person on my floor who makes the LEAST amount of money, somebody could choose to rip me off multiple times. What great luck I have.
What the sandwich-thief doesn’t know, though, is that I’m the most unstable bitch in this building, and I WILL post a passive-aggressive note calling them out in front of everybody. Other people may have an interest in being nice and keeping their job, but I’ve got nothing to lose, and I ain’t playin’.
photo courtesy www.passiveaggressivenotes.com
NEW RULE!!
No dumping useless crap on my desk!!!
I don’t know when it was, but at some point people started feeling that it was reasonable to come to my desk with some piece of equipment, useless binder, or other hunk of detritus, but it’s getting out of hand.
“I don’t have room for this in my office, can you keep it for me?”
Yeah, of course! I’ve got tons of room in my 5 x 5 cubicle with one shelf. Give me your tired, your broken, and your useless, I’ll store ‘em all!
Apparently it’s my job to safeguard everyone else’s useless shit. Fulfilling, huh?
If my sole function is to act as a storage closet, I have a secret for the management here:
I can do that from home! I don’t even have to come in to the office!
They can still pay me, though.
I’D DIE OF BOREDOM, BUT THAT’S TOO MUCH EFFORT
Is there anything worse than being bored?
I’m not talking about being generally listless, antsy, or discontent.
I’m talking about soul-crushing, mind-numbing, brain-melting boredom.
I’m talking about being so bored that when someone approaches you and asks you for a menial favor, you’re glad for the distraction.
“Hey, Allison! Someone barfed in the hallway! What should we do?”
If you’ve ever been greeted with a problem like that, and thought “Well, at least I’ll be busy for the next 10 minutes,” then you know what boredom I’m talking about.
When I arrive at my office in the morning, I generally check email, read the New York Times, make breakfast, check out Jezebel, Consumerist, Huffington Post, SF Gate, WWTDD, and Gawker. That takes me until about 9:30.
Then i spend a couple of hours writing (if I’m lucky and I have something to work on). During lunch, I read Go Fug Yourself, Fark, Mediabistro, Craigslist, and Journalism Jobs. In the afternoon, I generally try to write some more, or sometimes just stare blankly at my computer until about 4:30, when I go home. Sometimes I’ll do about 15 minutes of actual job-work during the day, but not often.
Of course, this busy schedule of reading blogs and writing about entertainment is wholly dependent on there being actual news. On a slow-news-day, I fear that I’ll melt into a puddle.
The sad part is that I have to put on actual pants for this job. You’d think they’d let me work from home in my pajamas, since my bosses seem to be okay with paying me to do nothing. At least at home, I have a better internet connection and access to iChat. Think of everything I could accomplish there!
OVERHEARD AT BRUNCH…
Please enjoy this snippet of conversation, overheard at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 8th, at Spitzer’s Corner on the Lower East Side.
Asian girl #1: “Why is this called a Tuscon omelet?”
Asian girl #2: “What?”
AG#1: “Right here, a Tuscon omelet, like Tuscon, Arizona.”
AG#2: “Umm, that says Tuscan, like in Italy.”
AG#1: “Oh, I always get confused.”
AG#2: “Uh, okay.”
Me: “Please don’t breed!”
ELECTION SPAM
It happens every autumn…
As the leaves change and the chill hits the air, as jackets and down comforters are aired out, the minor politicians assail us with unrelenting, useless spam.
I guess the proper term is “junk mail,” but whatever. Every candidate for borough president or vermin control supervisor mails out pounds of crap per week. They claim to be Green! Pro-Environment! Anti-wasteful-spending! But the piles and piles of garbage on my kitchen table would say otherwise.
In our house, we have two registered voters, so we get double of everything. Yesterday we got ELEVEN brochures, fliers, and postcards for political candidates we hadn’t even heard of. Up until now, I had no intention of voting in the race for undersecretary for community relations, but now it’s on. I’ll vote for the person who sends me the least amount of garbage.
UPDATE!!!! I have found that person! Boykin Curry, currently running opposite Sheldon Silver for whatever title he holds, had the courtesy to send ONE piece of mail addressed to BOTH my roommate and I! Thereby saving us the trouble of immediately throwing away two pieces of trash! Thank you, Boykin Curry for not being a total douchebag. You have my vote.
POOR PALIN, POOR POLITICS
So I watched Sarah Palin’s speech last night - and I really wish I could like her.
She’s an engaging and lively speaker, and in her address to the convention, she made some really salient points about the flaws in Obama’s energy plan and tax proposals.
I wish that I could get behind her; she’s a dishy gal who looks pretty fun, and I bet she’s the kind of person who could really get things done.
Of course, she is almost the exact ideological opposite of everything I stand for, but that’s not why I’m bothered by her.
Palin has said that she wants to keep her children and family matters out of the spotlight…but only as it relates to the teen pregnancy of her oldest daughter. She’s happy to tout the virtues of her son heading to Iraq, her nephew that currently serves in the armed forces, and even her infant son, whose face she took great care to display to the crowd after her speech, assuring us that yes, indeed, he is handicapped.
Palin can’t have it both ways - cheering her accomplishments as a mother and displaying the well-behaved children, while crying foul when the media criticize her wayward daughter.
Her motherhood is front and central to this campaign, and it’s doubtful she would be on the Republican ticket if she weren’t a red-blooded, gun-toting, Bible-beating mother of five. Because the narrative of her family is so important to her image, the topic of her children should be fair game, including the topic of a 17-year-old girl who is old enough to have made her own decisions.
BACK FROM VACATION…AND NEEDING ANOTHER ONE
After a long weekend in Ohio, I am back in New York, albeit not relaxed, not rested, and just as pissy as I was when I left.
When I’m staying with my parents - sleeping in a cushy bed, watching as much cable as I want, and relishing in the absolute quiet - it’s easy to forget that eventually, I have to go back.
So now I’m back at work, and after taking all of 15 minutes to catch up on the things that piled up after my 5 days away, I’m back to sitting around, reading blogs and doing some freelance projects.
Coming back from any vacation is a bummer, but it’s hard to come back to a sweltering city, a job you hate, a job search that’s not going as quickly as you’d like, and general apathy towards everyone and everything.
At least there was some excitement in my building this morning…my downstairs neighbor found a giant mutant roach, and I loaned her my roach-killing spray. And here I am, complaining about the banality of my life.
Happy Thursday.
COCKBLOCKED BY THE FIREWALL
Considering that I have nothing else to do, you’d think that with my computer in front of me, I’d have all the entertainment possibilities I could need.
You’d be wrong.
Thanks to a near-Draconian firewall and a slow-as-shit network, it’s like pulling teeth to get any work done. Of course, by “work,” I don’t mean things C. would want me to do. I mean things that I want to do - freelance articles, keeping up with what’s on the interwebs, and general online dabblings. I can’t reach Gmail, I can’t read certain websites, and the computer is so damn pokey, it even takes a full 30 seconds to load a page just so I can post to this site. And YouTube - forget about it. A single video takes all day.
The sites that are blocked by the firewall seem pretty random. Kotaku is out, but Gizmodo is OK. I can’t view any Sugar sites, but I’m free to browse Radar and Gawker, even though they’re full of ”non-business related content.”
Of course, I’m not trying to search for kiddie porn or bomb-making tips. I just want to keep abreast about important Britney news, and work on trying to get the hell out of here. Luckily, the Craigslist job board is unblocked.
