You're Hot And You're Cold...

Alright, Mother Nature.

You and I, we've been in the ring before. You always win, 'cause you're stronger than me. But I've been working out!

First there was the time that you dumped a Level 3 Snow Emergency on us and kept me from being able to drive to Columbus to see Bon Jovi. I want you to know that I subsequently lost those tickets and we couldn't go to the show they re-scheduled!

I mean that was bad, but then Katrina? And what about Ike? Somehow you managed to shuffle his ass all the way up here. Inland hurricane? What?!

This is just on top of all kinds of other uncontrollable behavior... like the time it snowed in June when I was in elementary school?

I don't know if it's hormones or what, lady (hot flashes?)... but you need to reign it in. It has dropped 10 degrees in the last 12 or so hours?! I can't keep this apartment at a reasonable temperature!

Help a sister out, Mother Nature. Please!

I think yoga is making me a better person.

You know how I know? Because I no longer want to choke the yoga instructor when she tells me to "harness my flow" when I breathe in and out. Harness my flow? Like... use a tampon? Um, I don't understand.

No seriously. I have no idea how- I guess this is what harnessing your flow is supposed to do- but it calms me way down.

No joke! I am actually trying to plug BACK into my anger to be able to write this blog entry. YOGA IS RUINING MY BLOG! DAMNIT! Ok, good, I'm pissed again. phew.

So, when I left you yesterday I was complaining about Michigan drivers and Applebee's and Hillary Duff. Well, gosh. If I thought all of that was bad... I clearly was smokin' some dope- because what the universe had in store for me... it was worse. OH IT WAS SO MUCH WORSE.

So I almost ran off the road. Which is why I stopped for dinner- where I wrote that blog entry. (AT APPLEBEE'S. Yeah, I'm a f*ckin nerd.) So I got back on the road and drove in the dark, in the driving rain to drop off my rental car at the airport. Cool. So I get out of the rental car, and it's still pouring... there's no awning or anything like that. So I return the car, and slog through the parking lot in water higher than my ankles to the bus that is supposed to return me to the airport terminal.

Okay. Sooo my shoes are soaked through, my pants have now absorbed water up to the knees, and I am hauling my crap up onto this bus. The lady driving says "Are you for Northwest?"

In my best "pretending to be cheerful, no seriously, I don't hate everyone in the world" voice, I chirp: "I aaaaam!"

She asks again, "Are you for Northwest?"

"YES! I AM!"

And she looks at me like I just shot a puppy. I felt really bad for a second when I realize she must've thought I said "Ma'am?" like I was asking her to repeat herself. Aww, crap. So I'm sitting there feeling all bad, in my soaking wet misery... and she's "Just a few more minutes and we'll head back to the terminal."

So we get to the terminal- and she says what I am hoping I understand to be "Take the elevator to the 6th floor for check-in."

I ask "The 6th floor?" And she goes, "What?"

I croak out (oh, must've forgotten to add that I was STILL sick and my voice was BARELY audible by the end of this day) "FLOOR 6. IS THAT CORRECT?"

"Oh. Yes."

"Thanks, sorry- I have a cold. My voice is shot."

She just stares at me. So I haul my shit off the bus and tell myself, no worries, you're on your way home.

Yeah. On my way home. So I see, as I arrive on the 6th floor, that Northwest has the little "self-service check-in" machines out in the hallway. Righteous. I run over to one and swipe my AMEX card. It pulls up my reservation, which takes a second, but whatever... I'm on my way home! Oh. Wait. What does that say?

"There are some changes to your itinerary..." and that's when my vision started to blur and I got all faint, and honestly I think I lost a few seconds because when I came to- I saw it.

"One of the flights on your itinerary has been cancelled."

NO. NO NO NO. NO NO NO NO.

We've re-booked you on the next flight to Cincinnati at 8:40am. If these changes are acceptable, click here- to search for new flights click there.

SO I click there, I wholeheartedly click THERE. Yeah. Little machine can't help me. YOU have to go to a ticketing agent, the little machine f*cker informs me. Swell.

So I go. I wait in the line. I look up at the screens in the terminal for departures on Northwest or Delta. OOH! 7:35 to Cincinnati! If I hustle through security, maybe I can make it! So I pull out my phone to check the time. 7:35 exactly.

Shit it's 7:35! I actually said that out loud. I know because the lady in front of me, and the adooorable young man in front of her turned around to look at me. "What time is your flight?" she asks me.

"Apparently never." I pout. The adorable young man looks like he's feeling sorry for me and suddenly I'm feeling better for a second.

That passes quickly.

So I wait, and eventually get to the head of the line. The woman who is managing the line asks if I'm checking a bag. I tell her no. She ushers me to a little self-check in kiosk. I said "No. He can't help me. He already told me. I need to speak to a ticketing agent. A real person. Yeah." She looks at me like I've lost my damn mind, because, well, I HAVE.

So she points me to an agent who's still helping someone else, but looks like she'll free up soon. When the agent is done, I explain my situation to her.

"Well how do you know your flight is cancelled?" she asks.

"Wait, did I miss the part where I told you I tried to check in at one of the kiosks outside? Did I hallucinate telling you that? Cause I mean honestly, I might have. I really might have."

Well, I don't think she appreciated that. So she does a little digging around. Oh, cancelled cause of weather. Yeah, well everyone knows that means the airline gets a free pass on screwing you, they won't even get you a hotel. So I tell her "Look, I will fly somewhere CLOSE to Cincinnati and drive home if I have to."

"What's close to Cincinnati?" Oh sweeeeet LORD, we've got a geography major. Dayton? Indianapolis? Lexington? Louisville?

Oh! We've got a hit on Lexington. So before I tell her to book it, I call Scarlet to see if she's amenable to having a houseguest for the night in case it's too late/I can't get a car. She is. BOOK IT!

So, I'm flying to Lexington. Okay. So I go to get in the security line, and I ask the TSA agent if because I'm Gold Medallion on Delta, can I go through the elite screening line for Northwest. He tells me no. So I wait in the line with the commoners. WHATEVER. Once I get through I see on my ticket that it does indeed say "elite/gold." I could've gotten through.

During all the security wait, I get on the phone with our travel company to secure a car. My options are $96 to drive home tonight, or $65 to wait until tomorrow. I choose tomorrow (which is actually today now that I'm telling the story... are you confused too?) and proceed to try to find gate C30. I go through the tunnel, the weiiiird tunnel with strange flashing crazy lights.

I go up the wrong escalator. So I go up another one, there's a tram and I'm confused. I am so ready to huddle up on the ground in the fetal position at this point. Wait, did I mention that on one of the escalators, my suitcase actually slipped out of my hand and slid all the way down to the bottom? Thank GOD nobody was behind me!!!

Anyhow, I get to gate C30, and sit on the phone and talk for a while, when the screen at the gate flashes: "Gate change for Lexington... C7." That was at the bottom of the first escalator. So I haul it all the way back to C7 and at some point get on a plane and fly to Lexington.

Man, I feel calmer already. I think I just harnessed my flow.

Congratulations, Taylor Swift.

I finally discovered something I hate MORE than you.

MICHIGAN DRIVERS. What the? They're even worse than Ohio drivers, which I didn't even think was POSSIBLE.

Actually, everything about driving in Michigan is insufferable, not just the drivers. Let's start with the potholes. I mean, they had to do a news story on how they're running out of patch for the potholes. Some of them aren't even repairable. SO... I should be home sometime tonight- UNLESS THE F*CKING ROAD SWALLOWS MY RENTAL CAR before I even get to the airport.

Well, if it's not a pothole- it's these weird entrance ramps from the left. OKAY WHAT?! What genius engineer thought of this plan to f*ck up the traffic patterns? Seriously, s/he probably went to Miami. So people are on another highway or something- going fast, but since they're going around a curve, probably NOT as fast as the people in the FAST LANE... RIGHT?!

So I'm driving down I-96 or whatever this is... and I'm in the fast lane, behind a whole bunch of people who are NOT passing, they're just driving in the fast lane- and slamming on their brakes. (DON'T EVEN LET ME GET STARTED ON THAT.) So I'm trying to navigate the melee... when a HUGE BUDGET RENTAL TRUCK comes merrrrging in from the left.

Ol' boy was FLYING- too. I had to slam on my brakes (in the rain, might I add) in order to avoid having my bumper share the space that his back right tire is taking up. He sees me and slams on his brakes too, and starts to swaaaay around in his lane until finally slowing down and switching into the lane next to me.

HOLY CRAP I ALMOST DIED.

I was so agitated and so upset, that I had to stop and get myself some dinner. I chose Applebee's. Trying to be good, I order one of the Weight Watchers meals off the menu... thinking it's chicken, potatoes and veggies- how bad can it be?

I am fairly certain that I have just consumed my entire week's worth of sodium in this meal. It's saltier than McDonald's french fries. It's saltier than Rhianna when Chris Brown went upside her head. OH SNAP!

And I'm sitting next to a Hillary Duff poster. F*ck today.

Maybe NOT so Angry

So I guess it's been a while.

I sort of forgot that I had this little forum for my angry little rants.

I mean, I could've blogged about the Cowboys/Eagles game in which they got the snot beat out of them... instead of drinking my face off and challenging some dude to TWO car bombs... on a Sunday night when I had to work the next day. It was especially fun and embarassing since I gave the guy my number and then saw him again at the very same bar a couple weeks later. I pretended like I didn't remember. That very well could've been plausible. I drank a LOT that night. Crap.

I could've blogged about the AWESOME day where everyone was trying to blame me for things that weren't my fault. But I went to the gym instead. Apparently, I only worked out my right arm, as discovered by one of the many lovely gentlemen I met this weekend in NOLA. He asked me to make a muscle. Let's say it was a sad showing at best. I'm like WAIT! I DO HAVE A MUSCLE! TRY THIS ARM! Sad. Just sad. It very much leaves me to wonder how my right arm got so much stronger... this is curious.

At any rate- this gentleman- and his friend... we'll call them Gus and Shawn- are the reason I am back here blogging today. I'll start by saying we met them at a bar on Decatur Street in New Orleans while watching the Superbowl. That might be the best, most revealing set of details you'll get about this encounter in this blog... because this blog is about being angry. Right?

I can't really remember how it came up that I had blogs (yes, there are 3 of them- but apparently one of them is violating the terms of service. huh.) but as the discussion went on and they promised they were going to come read and comment, (liars) I started to think. You know, I haven't written much of ANYTHING- at any point recently.

HOW did that happen? Writing has always been a fundamental piece of who I thought I was... but with all the busy busy of this job- traveling, report writing... and all of the "extra curricular" activites (drinking and saving the world, that sort of thing) I have just cut writing out of my life altogether.

So the bottom line is- I'm angry at MYSELF- for falling away from the things that I love- letting the rest of my life crowd out what's important to me. Hell, I can't remember when the last time I saw my family was! Except for Sarah, since I got that new TV, she is missing shows just so she can watch them at my place. I know it. ;)

So that's it. No more Ms. Nice Girl (wow, I sound like a douche.)... I'm going to try to be angrier.

E-mail for Dummies

I know you guys totally love reading my rants about work, so here's another one.

How come people with college degrees cannot learn when it is and isn't appropriate to use the "Reply to All" button?

Dude, I know the only way to get in the door at this place is to start here as a temp or to have a college degree. (Seriously, I have a story about that too, it's a good one.) So how is it, that these seemingly educated people cannot figure out that it is NOT A GOOD IDEA to hit reply to all when someone has sent an e-mail to THE ENTIRE COMPANY, or the ENTIRE US division of the company?

5,000 people work for this company. Do you think that we ALL need to know which session you want to attend to learn about how to use expense reporting? No, no, we don't.

The people that REALLY crack me up, though... are the people who reply to all asking everyone not to reply to all. You can also prevent people from replying to all by BCCing everyone you send the message to. That way even if people DO hit reply to all, they're only going to be able to send it to you- and themselves.

The icing on the cake, however, in this most recent situation, was the response e-mail from the initial sender of the e-mail. I have to paste it in here, because it's really too amusing not to share.

Below is the actual text of the e-mail sent to the entire United States division of my company:

Not only am I sitting under an avalanche of RSVP's but now I am under attack with IM's and emails similar to this...
******************************************************************************************************************
T-
Could you please instruct these people to respond ONLY to you and not to the whole (company name here) world. I get enough emails without getting the people telling me that they want to take your concur class. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled that they are wanting to take the class, but I don't need to know about it!
Thanks much.
*** Name witheld ***
Help !!!! Show some LOVE !!!

Seriously.

Maybe someone should teach a class on how to use your e-mail.

Upgrade or Clusterf*ck? You decide.

So I know- I do an AWFUL lot of complaining about work for loving my job as much as I do. Seriously, I do ACTUALLY love my job.


There are just some little bitty things about it that infuriate me. Okay, this is beyond infuriating, though.


So- we have this proprietary software that we use to keep track of the work we're doing. Basically, I use it to write reports summing up what I find when I go out to do my job.


Okay, that's really the most important part of my job, because in my job- if it wasn't documented, it wasn't done. So you can imagine how it's important for me to take great notes and complete my reports as close to when I visit as possible.


So this software, while amazing for what it is... probably wasn't the greatest software ever to hit the earth since DOS. (Think Doogie Howser's journal. Haven't we come a long way?) So last weekend, while I was traveling, they upgraded it to version 3.0. OOOOH- 3.0.


So first of all, I'd have been completing these reports while I was on the plane if I could have... but the system was down and any info entered between Friday 11:59pm (March 28) and Monday morning (March 31) was NOT going to be saved.


Okay, you know, no big deal. I got to finish my book on the plane.


But I come in on Monday morning and start trying to write reports. I think maybe I am just slow because I didn't take the course explaining the upgrades to me. So I do that. I took a half day on Monday b/c it was opening day, so I really didn't have more than a couple hours to fight with the thing, so I didn't know how bad it really was.


Tuesday had me feeling like a homicidal maniac. Ok, really I was about to go Office Space on my computer, possibly even throw it out the window from 8 floors up. But then I realized that if it hit someone, I'd be arrested. And I didn't have a baseball bat. So here we are. I've still got my computer, and I can just bitch about it to you guys.

It's really great when you figure that the REASON the d*mned thing didn't work was because of an upgraded spell-check feature. Yes, for years upon years upon years (or at least as long as I've worked here since Dec 2005) this software purported to have a spell-check feature that never once checked my spelling in any manner. BUT IN VERSION 3.0, ohhh in version 3.0, yes- the spell-check now works. WELL, SORT OF.

The spellchecker opens a window in word, and begins checking the spelling and grammar of what you have written- and if it finds anything... you're SCREWED. The beauty of this handy little gadget (and I'm laying on a thick layer of sarcasm, seriously, get out your chisel to pry this one off...) is that it opens the spell-check window BEHIND the window in which you are entering your report.

Well isn't that great? You can't MINIMIZE the window in which you are entering your report. This means, the spell-check window is demanding your attention, yet you literally cannot respond to it. So your report sits there and waits patiently to be corrected... alas, you cannot correct it. SO, what do you DO about this? You can even try to close it. But you can't do that either. You have to go into Windows Task Manager and end the program. Then Task Manager tells you "Windows cannot close this program because it is waiting for a response from you. If you end this program, you will lose unsaved data." So you hit "END NOW" anyway.
AND YOU LOSE HALF OF YOUR F*CKING REPORT AND HAVE TO START THE D*MNED THING OVER AGAIN! AAAAAUUUUGH!

Needless to say, I did this dance of anger for 10 hours before I finished even ONE of the FOUR reports I needed to write. I complained to the support team. They told me they were aware of the problem. I finished the report, I tried to resync my data, and something went wrong.

I couldn't resync. Then somehow I got locked out and it wouldn't change my password. Then the spell-check error was fixed... and I COULDN'T EVEN GET INTO THE SYSTEM! WHAT?!

It took me an ENTIRE WEEK plus two days to finish 4 reports. Normally, one report takes me 3 hours. hahahahahhahahahhahaha, ahahahahahhahaahhahaahahahah, hahahahhahahaha. Do I sound crazy? I feel crazy!

Just to demonstrate- I copied this post over into Word and ran spell-check on it up to this sentence. IT WENT OFF 24 TIMES. I WOULD HAVE LOST THIS POST 24 times.

And my mind... I would have lost my mind.

Things That Make Ya Go Hmm...

Last night I went to a gay bar with 2 of my close friends and some friends of theirs (who are becoming friends of mine).

I met several other people they knew from hanging out at this bar, and I discovered a truth that I was only partially aware of before.

Even gay men love boobs.

Now don't get me wrong- I'm not complaining or offended by any of this- I wouldn't put them out there if I didn't expect people to look...

But gay men are more aggressive about it than straight men, even. They feel free to openly stare, tell you how nice they are, or in some cases, even touch them... they think it's ok, because- Hey! They are gay!

Last night, I had three gay men I'd either never met, or only met briefly before, approach me about my breasts. Granted, they are quite glorious, and I can't say I'm disappointed that somebody noticed them. Three different conversations, that played out something like this:

GM#1: I am about to give you a compliment that will probably offend you-
Me: Oh, I know what you're going to say. *looks down at chest*
GM#1: Haha, you knew what I was going to say- well, your boobs are amazing- they're seriously beautiful. I mean, looking at them, I'm thinking you're like 22.
Me: Aw, I love you.

GM#2: I'm sorry if this offends you, but-
Me: *holding up one hand* I know. My boobs. They're great.
GM#2: They're so voluptuous! *sticks his finger down my cleavage*
Me: Oh my god- what-
GM#2: *leans over to whisper in my ear* If I were straight, I'd so f*** you.
GM#2 walks off at this point.
Me: The feeling is NOT mutual. What just happened here?

GM#3: Wow, you look totally different than when I interviewed you on Monday! You really did a great job- you were very talkative! I hate it when I interview people and they don't talk.
Me: Thanks, I have a degree in journalism. You want to give me a job? Haha, just kidding, I love my job.
GM#3: Okay, don't get mad when I say this but I had NO idea your boobs were this great!
Me: Yeah, I was wearing a crew neck t-shirt on Monday. They were covered up.
GM: Well you look great, they're really phenomenal!
Me: Hey, thanks.

I just... had no idea that even gay men were so enthralled with my chest. The first guy seriously kept talking to me about them all night, and the 3rd guy wagered a guess on the size, and he was pretty close. Then they started talking to each other about them. I was so confused. Never have I gotten so much attention and nobody tried to come home with me.

I think I've just discovered the perfect hangout.