Je-bus has a birthday

X-mass came and went with the normal fun and expected headaches. The wife and I spent the 24th with mom and b-buck and we all had dinner at the Portland City Grill. We still managed to rack up an $87 dollar tab even though we ordered from the happy hour menu. While we were eating I overheard some guy in a group sitting near us that it was his birthday. I thought, that must suck balls to have your birthday on x-mass eve. So I sent over a drink to be nice. When he came over to say thanks we both recognized each other from a few years back. Portland is a small f#cking town. After dinner the four of us went back to our place and I proceeded to rob everyone of all their money playing texas hold ‘em. Nothing says Noel like someone else's money in your pocket.

As far as gifts go, I scored some cool stuff like a leaf blower that also doubles as a leaf mulching vacuum. It sucks and it blows all at the same time! I think I’m going to be spending a lot of time alone in the garage…. The unit will definitely come in handy with cleaning up the leaves in our yard (for like, its intended use). It will cut down on my raking time quite a bit. Thankfully most of the leaves fall in the neighbors yard, which is ok because they are his huge oak trees anyways. I also got a Home Depot how to guide so now I can get further into home repair projects before I screw them up.

Wet Dog

Last week our dog woke the wife up at 3am. She was whining and pacing around the room. Normally when she is upstairs she won’t even get out of bed unless she has to go to the bathroom. The wife wakes up and asks her what’s wrong. They have a brief conversation about the proposed local tax laws and as she is petting the dog she notices that the dogs entire back end is soaked. After figuring out it wasn’t pee she discovered that the skylight had been leaking on the dog for about 3 hours. She must be a pretty tough dog to put up with 3 hours of Chinese water torture. After many calls to roofers and many times estimates of 2 weeks, Edwin called a friend who gave me a number of a guy that was “not very reliable but worth a shot”. The guy called back in an hour and came the next day and fixed the problem so all is well.

SAW, please fall on your sword

Now Carp (referred to as carp because he went to Wilson and apparently they were using that slang 14 years before Turd attended) and VPassist are coming to me on a regular basis to vent about SAW. I guess Carp went to HR to complain and discovered that others had already done so. I didn’t because I don’t want to be on the radar as a whiner (at work). I hope that since she is a temp it will be much easier to end her contract with no explanation as soon as she finished her project. I feel sorry for the next poor soul that hires her. I was talking to Carp today about a leak in my basement and she attacked him with some water drainage story on his way back to his desk. As she was talking to him he emailed me “Kill ME NOW!!”

I am not alone

I had a brief talk with the new addition to the office (Carp) about SAW (super annoying woman) last week. I told Carp of my sorrows many months ago when SAW was first around. The second I revealed I didn’t like her he said “OH my GOD! Thank you! It’ not just me!” She is pulling the same crap on Carp as their cubicle doors are directly across from each other. Every time someone comes up and makes even the briefest attempt at small talk with him she scoots her chair across the aisle and horns in with her monotonous tales of nothing. I told Carp about my prior efforts in trying to make oneself less vulnerable to her leech like tactics, like keeping earphones on at all times. This makes it easer to ignore her when she says something. Once she finally gets your attention act annoyed and keep your answers short as to not encourage more mind numbing anecdotes.

The short answer approach helped me today. Twice today as I was getting off the phone SAW sprung into action through the cubicle wall:

After trying to find an item:

SAW “what cha looking for?”
LOAD “something I can’t find”

The best was a wrong number:

Phone Rings
LOAD “Generic Company, this is Load.”
Fax tone and I hang up.
SAW “I guess nobody loves you”
5-10 seconds later
LOAD “You know? That’s pretty harsh”
Wonderful silence…


I also discovered another ally last week when SAW was on the phone making plans for x-mass dinner or the Klingon new year and was talking so everyone around was unable to ignore it. She was badgering some other female member of her family about the menu and was suggesting alternatives because she “is picky”. (I will address pickiness at another time) I was over talking about something or other to the VP’s assistant while SAW was on the phone. VPassist is an extremely positive person but I noticed VPassist roll her eyes after SAW made an extra loud snort. I said “you know what I love? Hearing people make holiday plans while I am working.” VPassist. Replied “yeah, especially when they are doing it all day long”.

It is sort of a relief to know that I am not alone. That way if the possibility of her being put on full time comes up there might be a rebellion that I could join. But for now I will continue my vigil and hope for a better tomorrow.

Don't mess with the Wife, she will f@ck your s#it up!

The wife was taking the car in to get the exhaust pipe repaired this afternoon. After annoying her with a detailed description of what exactly needed to be fixed before she left for work she sends me this response. And its one of the many reasons I love her.

Okay you always lecture me as you did this morning, whenever I take the car in for anything, like I'm going to get suckered by the auto mechanic guy and have them do $1800 worth of repairs. Believe it or not, I do know what I'm doing.

So I took the car into the Meineke in Lake Oswego and told the guy that I thought I had a hole in the exhaust pipe. After he checked it out, he came back out with a quote for $907.58.

Look at pic of exhaust system, I was right about the name of the part by the way. http://www.meineke.com/services/exhaust.asp

First thing he pointed out to me was that I needed new shocks. After I said that was impossible, because the shocks had been replaced a year 1/2 ago, he then admitted that he didn't actually look at the shocks, but was making his assessment based on the mileage of the car. Okay??

Second he said that my battery is looking corroded and could use a cleaning and would then probably need a new battery. Wanted to charge $59.00 just for the cleaning. I said, "no, I can clean it myself, plus it is a les Schwab battery and is therefore guaranteed and not that old to begin with. (Plus les Schwab would probably replace the cables for less than what they wanted to charge for cleaning.)

Third - he said that the cooling system needs to be flushed, because all it has in it is water. This could be true, we need to check on this, but based on his assessment of the shocks etc. I think we should get a second opinion, plus, that is something you could do.

Finally - the exhaust, as we thought he said there is a hole in the exhaust pipe. His quote: $108.79.

Hmmm, "That is interesting," I said, "because my husband got a quote from the Meineke on Powell for $65."

He said, "Well I might be able to work with you a little, how about $95?"
"I still don't seem to understand why the Meineke on Powell is able to charge so much less."

" Well different areas charge different prices."

"But it is still the same parts, same labor, same job, same company, you have to be increasing the price on something that the other Meineke is not."

"Well it is like McDonald's……You can go to one McDonald's in the city and their cheese burger is $.99, then the same day go to a different McDonalds in another part of town and their cheese burger would cost you $1.09, it all depends on delivery, cost of the meat…………………"

At this point I interrupted him and this is not an exaggeration, this is verbatim what I said, "Please don't tell me a bull$hit analogy, when all you are really saying is that because you are located in Lake Oswego whose per capita income is much higher than those in SE Portland, that you are then able to raise your prices without the luxury car owner's of Lake O even raising an eyebrow. I however do not live in Lake Oswego, I only work here, I think the fact that I drove a 1988 Honda Accord in here should attest to that."

"It's not a bull$hit story, but basically yes………………..I can do it for $75?"

"Fine."

So I figure I paid a $10 convenience tax. Still much better than $108.79 and after calling his McDonalds analogy bull$hit, I felt I would be really pushing it to get him to go much lower.

Load takes one for the team and attends Wife’s company party.

The Wife’s holiday party was this last Friday and I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it. She works for a small division of a company that does crazy experiments on plants. She never tells me what they really do except that they do not use black magic in the manipulation of plant DNA which I don’t believe. Needless to say her coworkers are super smart (double PHD’s, Doctorates, Beauticians, etc.) and on a totally different wave length than Load. See, I can handle lawyers because though they are highly educated they still are just higher paid criminals but this crowd is all about the science. Some of you would say “just have a drink and loosen up”. No deal there. The Wife has sort of an authoritative position there and I had to be on my super-duper-best-behavior. Not only do I need to be there early, I had to stay till the bitter end when she wrote the final check. Don’t get me wrong, they are all nice people but I only see them twice a year and I don’t have much in common with them. I spent four and a half hours smiling and trying to search for small talk that wouldn’t get me in trouble. I discovered I don’t like schmoozing if there isn’t money involved.

I know, more boring holiday crap

My Gift to all of you.

I wanted to continue with the holiday theme.

Lets all meet in The City of Dis!

This is mildly amusing. Take the Dante's Inferno Test.

My cube is located on Dante's 7th level of hell

So Super annoying woman (SAW) trapped another in her web of nerdy grunts.

Computer guy walking by.
SAW: “hey so what time do you guys go to lunch now?”
CG: “uhhhhhh, wellllll, with all of these projects…”
SAW: grunt, nasal inhaling “yeah everyone’s busy”
SAW: “Look what I got at the employee store! I figured you guys would get tired of seeing me in the same stuff.”

SAW proceeds to show him every thing she bought today. I now know that she has a grand niece that likes blue and has strawberry blond hair and is a scrawny thing. (slamming head on desk) Like this guy really cares! He was on his way to the bathroom or to get some coffee for Christ sakes! What really sucks is being privy to a boring conversation. I like the ones where people are talking smack about other people and I can barely contain myself.

This crap goes on for 15 minutes and then:

SAW: “So shall we eat?”
CG: “Ahhhhhh, ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, yeeeeaaaaaah, I guess, everyone should be out of that meeting by now.”

They exit to the lunchroom.

Shut UP!

AAAAHHHHHH! The most annoying woman has gotten her job back!!!! I have not written about her in the past because she was a temp and her contract ended. Today while swilling my 3rd cup of coffee I hear a familiar voice. I dismiss it thinking my mind is playing tricks on me. 4 minutes later a smiling face pops up over the cube wall “Hello!” I think I actually shook in fear remembering the never ending conversations.

Dealing with her is like hearing a cooler story about every f#@ing subject that anyone brings up. (A cooler story is a story that goes no where and was never heading there originally. Much like my blog ) I am “protected” by 2 inches of fabric covered cubicle wall but the sound is not blocked out.

When she was here last time my life was a living hell. Every time anyone around would get into a conversation she would always have to tell her vaguely related story. When not telling cooler stories and trapping co-workers in slow deaths she would occasionally have an original subject. Sadly they were her new house and scrap booking. I would rather watch a video of a failed colonoscopy surgery or an episode of “the war at home” than listen to someone tell me about their recent scrapbook supply shopping spree. I know other scrap bookers and they are ok but they have other things to do. I think this lady scrap booked pages about scrap booking other scrapbook pages. When she was here last I got a pair of headphones so I could act like I couldn’t hear her. Hell I even left the office for the last two hours of her last day so I could avoid talking to her.

Today I heard her trap a new addition to the office in a 45 minute conversation. Subjects went in the following order: weather, house, kids in the street, old jobs she has had, Microsoft office programs, single knot vs. double knotting her shoe laces, lighting in her cubicle, stories about other people dealing with overhead light glare, her cat eating her husbands socks, cats sleeping spots in her house (over 20 listed), body pillows, king sized beds.


Today I died a little inside