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01:33 pm: basic phone etiquette
Our company, being small and extremely subject to this thing we are calling the recession, trades around the duty of answering the phones on a weekly basis. Being a relatively social person, you would think that I wouldn't really mind taking my turn on this. On that, you would be very wrong. There is only one thing that makes me sigh and mentally gird my loins when I see that it is my week to be on phones: people are mean.

Yeah, people are just plain mean. I get that people who call tend to be calling because they are having a problem and are, therefore, not in the best of moods. But really, my job at least for this week is to help the caller. The least said caller could do is not treat me like 1) I am purposely trying to not help them or 2) treat me like I'm three and possibly mentally challenged. Yesterday I was yelled at by a woman who then demanded to speak to my supervisor when I didn't give her the answer she wanted to hear (two notes here: I had given her an answer, she just didn't like it, and the problem she was calling about was something that was HER fault). I have a secret for you, lady: my supervisor is going to tell you the same thing and probably be a lot more mean about it than I am!

This isn't to say that all phone calls are bad. Most people have problems I can fix and are perfectly pleasant about it. It's those random mean people that make me want to beat the telephone receiver against my cube table, though. And there is no way of knowing who is one the other end of the line until you are already involved in a conversation. Until there is some kind of screening system for calls (my major suggestion is a colored light that can indicate the mood of the caller mounted on my phone), my blood will continue to run cold every time the phone rings. Crap, there is goes again.

Tags: work

12:32 pm: December
Did anyone really see November as it zoomed past me? I think I saw it flip me off when it passed me.

I'm not really in a position to complain about December. The larger purchases that I have to make for Christmas are already done, which is probably more than most people can say. Even the thought of December, though, twists my innards. Remember in college when December meant a couple of weeks of insane craziness exacerbated by lack of sleep, but then lots of free time? Who ever thought I would look back on that wistfully?

December in a client-based business, to not put too fine a point on it, blows. Almost all of our clients want everything done before the end of the year, preferably before Christmas, and we all have less time to do this extra work in because of all the extra stuff we have to do at home. I have been known to bake my Christmas cookies all in one day, working until midnight to get them all done. Granted, it was about a gross of cookies and the argument could be made that I could just make fewer cookies. That simply isn't how I roll. Well, wasn't how I rolled, since I did decide that this year there was no point in making all those cookies when last year they mostly went uneaten.

So I'll be here, at my work laptop, trying to get all my mountain of work done while I listen to Jingle Bells on Pandora. Woohoo. And maybe, just maybe, if I do 9-hour days and make myself do Christmas stuff every night and all weekends, I can get everything done by the 25th. Happy holly jolly days.

12:55 pm: New Moon and that I-feel-dirty feeling
I went to see New Moon this last weekend. I admit it. And I also fully realize that this makes me part of the problem, not part of the solution.

I feel that I should preface this by saying that
1. I did read all of the Twilight books (I never said I enjoyed them)
2. I saw the first Twilight movie on DVD and actually laughed so hard I had an asthma attack and had to stop for 30 minutes

My expectations were low. Like, really low. And, based on the fact that I have a bit of a history sort of being told I would have to leave "serious" movies if I could not stop laughing (in my defense, the Keira Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice was really bad and The Last Legion was, well, Colin Firth in a leather skirt), I decided that my friend and I would go to see this new cinematic offering away from our houses. We ended up being in Minneapolis the weekend of it's release, so it just worked out that we could see it in a theatre where no one would know us. It was packed (line-past-the-bathrooms, buy-your-ticket-hours-in-advance packed) and the demograph seemed to be split between 13-year-old girls, older couples, and single women in their late-20s. There was a random group of 16-year-old boys that sat near us that I can only assume thought seeing this movie, and therefore having references for it, would get them play with the ladies. By far the older male halves of the couples seemed least excited of everyone to be there.

I read a review of the movie afterward that described it as "emo emo emo torso emo torso torso emo" which seemed to be pretty accurate. The guy sitting next to me laughed through a fair portion of the movie, as did I but I was quieter about it. Someone across the aisle from my friend said "God this movie sucks" pretty loudly about 90 minutes in, which I thought was nice. The 13-year-old girls seemed to enjoy it, while the single 20-somethings did a number of cat-calls on the more torso-y parts. And not to spoil the end of the movie, but it stops pretty abruptly mid-scene and there was a "Damn!" called from somewhere that I found very amusing.

All in all, it was actually better than the book because it glossed over a few of the more depressing sections and highlighted the Jacob-Bella dynamic. The actors aren't going to win Oscars any time soon, but they did OK. I will say though, that I did not for a second buy Dakota Fanning as a mascochistic vampire that everyone fears. Even with all the paint and the scary red contacts, the girl still looks 12. And seeing Robert Pattinson's chest is not a reason to buy a movie ticket. If they meant to show it, they could have at least shaved him. If I wanted to see half-naked skinny Englishmen, I would just ride the Tube any weekend night after dark.

Tags: movies

10:29 am: Got a case of the Mondays
I'll be the first to admit that I am a morning person to an almost-freakish degree, so getting to work at 7AM for me doesn't involve copious amounts of coffee or driving half-awake. Somehow, though, Mondays always take me longer to focus in on actual work as opposed to, say, surfing the internet in an empty office. This morning I had a lot to do so I actually focused faster, but my brain didn't seem to quite get the memo.

After staring at the Word cursor mocking me for a while, I decided to check my work email again. We have a gmail app thing, so we get ads across the top. This morning the ad, as I read it, wanted me to get a Masters in Orc Leadership. Testament to the day that I didn't even think this was a strange ad, my thought was actually "wow, that would be a limited use." I actually ready it three times before I realized it wanted me to get a Master's in *Org* Leadership.

I still think Orcs would be more interesting.

Tags: technology, work

04:38 pm: Gleeeeeeeee!
Anyone out there as obsessed with Glee as I am? Probably not, because I work a boring desk job with un-monitored internet access, so I have plenty of time to obsess. It being Monday, I am already excited about the new episode of Glee. Yeah, it airs on Wednesdays.

I wonder sometimes why I do love this show so. I think it's the music, which is generally good, along with the characters. That combined with the fact that it is really one of the only shows on TV dealing with teenagers in believable situations. Kurt not wanting to admit to his dad that he would rather do Glee Club than football seemed like something a teenager would do. Finn being stupid enough about reproduction to think he got his girlfriend pregnant via hot-tub (especially in the era of abstinence-only). Rachel being so driven that she has no friends and alienates everyone. All these are things I could see happening in the high school I went to. Yes, OK, my high school didn't have people break into song. Not often, at least. But we did have three glee clubs! So maybe, even though you couldn't pay me to relive that portion of my life, I enjoy watching it on TV.

Tags: glee

01:00 pm: The angst of a computer world
Now, people who remember a world without computers and the internet (it dates us, I know), how used to computers not working are you? I consider myself pretty used to it. Oh, that site is down. OK, that happens. I'll check tomorrow. Something important, well then, I get a little more angry. I might throw pens or rant to coworkers. You know what I would most-assuredly NOT do, though? I would not call the company that made said product and make them feel like they are three-years-old. Vista not working? I think I'll call Bill Gates and give him a piece of my mind, then demean him because I saw a TV movie that implied he was a druggie who flunked out of college!

OK, so I don't really work at a company that has a complex system of phone filters like Microsoft does. Not at all, actually. To the point that I write courses, help create them, then get the calls when they don't work. Can you tell I got one of those calls this morning?

It's all fine now and I think the caller is (relatively) happy. But I am left wishing it were already Saturday or wishing that drinking at work were more socially acceptable. Come on clock, move faster! Though really all the fun that I have waiting for me at home is cleaning and making party mix. Woo hoo, wild times!

Tags: work

12:42 pm: Mothers and Daughters and Random Griping
I would be the first to point out that I don't have a bad relationship with my mom. She is a great person who worked really hard to give my brother and I a good family and make us good people. Dad might have helped with that too ;-)

But of late I have been thinking a lot about some of the less-pleasant things that she instilled in me. The almost-obsessive need to be in constant motion (part of that is just my personality, but my mom is the exact same way, so it's hard to say if that one is nature or nurture). The snarky sense of social commentary. My least favorite, by far, though is the complete obsession with weight. My mom agonizes about every single (and I do mean *every single* pound) that she gains or loses and I have spent all of my conscious life knowing that she obsessed about mine as well. Which, of course, means that I do too. To the point that I literally panicked at the very thought that my wedding dress wouldn't fit or that I would look fat in my pictures. Like, cold-sweat tight-chest panic. It was really awful.

In the past few years, probably the last two more than anything, I have pretty steadily gained weight. Not a ton, but enough to be really noticeable. I know that every time I talk to my mom she will mention it and every time I see her she will analyze everything I eat. Mostly I avoid eating around her. Husband always tells me that the weight issues my mother instilled in me end with me. Our children, should we have any, would not be raised with the issues he can still see my mother dangling over me.

I have accepted all this as just being a part of my life. It sucks, but that's the breaks. There are a lot of things she did well with us kids, this happened to not be one of them. I have to say, though, it is gravely disturbing to see one of my coworkers doing it to her own daughter. Coworker has a daughter who is 9 and I don't think a day of work goes by that coworker doesn't mention that she wishes her daughter were thinner. She agonizes over every single thing the daughter eats and every minute of activity the daughter completes. She even went so far as to take the day of daughter's Halloween party at school off because daughter's costume was tight and she wanted to make sure daughter looked OK. While I completely understand her wish to not have her child picked on at school, as fat kids so often are, I really find all of this very disturbing. Mostly I am watching what I am sure is my own life from my mother's perspective almost every day, completely powerless to stop it. I had really hoped that society had moved past all this, but maybe not.

Tags: work

02:45 pm: Dogs and daycare
Cassie, my English Springer Spaniel, goes to daycare periodically when we won't be around to take care of her for more than, say, 6 hours. Example: she went last Tuesday when Matt had to give a talk out-of-town and I couldn't get away from work during the day to let her out. She also goes there every Saturday because we can't reliably be home all day on Saturday and it makes her more manageable for Sundays, when we are home (Cassie is what we call "high-energy") Cassie would go there every SINGLE day if she could. Basically the place is a steel building with giant rooms and an outside area where they are just left to run and play all day while the employees there periodically play with them.

The dilemma comes with the illnesses that are passed between dogs in places like this. Even after being vaccinated for it, Cassie has gotten bordetella (Kennel Cough) twice in the last three months from her days at daycare. Considering the number of days she goes, that seems like an awful lot. So far the bordetella hasn't been anything real dramatic, they mostly give her an opiate to depress her coughing and let it run it's course, but it's still a vet visit and a lot of worry for me and Husband. I am debating whether it's really worth it to keep sending her to this daycare. The employees, in general, seem very very good but I wonder if there is more education that needs to be done there before Cassie goes back.

Tags: dogs

04:55 pm: Oh hello Tuesday...
Though I really should probably check the day of the week on that. By the end of today I will have worked 30 hours this week. Yes, by Tuesday.

Long story short, when the client has a deadline everyone has a deadline. The bonus of this would be that I now likely get to take most of Thursday and all of Friday off. So that's a yay. Still, I have to say that working 9 hours on a Sunday blows. And I was shockingly upset by the whole working-through-my-weekend thing. For someone who went through waitressing on weekends, working retail, and the motherload of work that was college and grad school eating my weekends to smitherins, I have become kind of mean about working on the weekends. On my ninth-straight day of work now, sort of pissy about having to be here. Le sigh.

Tags: work

05:54 pm: Jane Austen and...Monsters?
I was with them through Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Even though the cover was somewhat disturbing, I read it in about two days and enjoyed parts of it. Zombie-ism is a much more entertaining explanation for Charlotte marrying Mr. Collins than her being a sad character. But I am not finding the same joy in Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.

Somehow it just feels...wrong. I can't tell if it's because it's not as well-written (and it really isn't; the transitions between Ms. Austen and whomever in P&P&Z were nearly flawless and here, really not) or because they changed so much that now it is just ridiculous. Colonel Brandon as a sea monster/man? Pirates? Seriously?

12:19 pm: Work
I work in a small office, both small in size and in people. Four people are out today and that is 40% of my office. The thing that really concerns me, though, is that the two people I share a room with are both out with the flu today (pretty sure it is just the normal run-of-the-mill influenza). Totally feel like I have a germ target on my back.

We are not an office that in general believes real highly in things like Clorox wipes. We have a few real earth-mother types that really don't go into that kind of thing--and I totally understand the argument there--so I was surprised when someone handed me a bottle of cleaner this morning after both people called in. Really? It's Monday morning and neither of them have been here since Friday. I had already been at my desk for an hour at this point. Pretty sure if I were going to be exposed, I would have been. Plus, I have an immune system. It makes me wonder, though, if office culture here really has progressed to the living-in-a-bubble point.

Don't get me wrong, I could keep a cleaner house. I am not generally concerned with dog hair on my floor or a fine layer of dust. I realize some are. Funnily enough, the two people out sick are the two in the office who obsessively clean their workspaces (I saw one use a Swiffer Wet on her laptop screen last week) and their houses as well as obsessively using hand sanitizer while here. Maybe there is something to be said for just generally trusting that I am clean and healthy enough to survive the normal germs of life.

Tags: work

12:15 pm: Full-contact cooking
I would really like to get through a weekend of intensive cooking without some kind of doctor visit. Making raspberry jam/jelly probably 2 months ago now, I managed to have beyond-boiling water splash over my right hand and burn the backs of all four fingers. Those blisters were really awesome to get rid of.

So Sunday noon we went to Husband's parent's house for a cook-out. Somehow I had forgotten that their acreage included apple trees, which are currently covered with apples. Hey, free produce! I never ever turn down free produce! So I was then the proud owner of three 5-gallon buckets of apples. That's a lot of apples. Basically I considered it my own fault since Sunday morning I had talked with Husband about how I didn't have anything to do over my long weekend. Next time, keep mouth shut.

Sunday I designated as apple sauce. After three batches, each producing about a half-gallon of sauce, I called it good. I was working with Kristy, who had also been there for the epic hand-burning of July, and she made some joke about how I couldn't complain since at least this time I hadn't burned myself. Yeah, more-or-less as she said that sauce popped at me and burned my arm. Awesome.

Monday I made apple butter with the other half of the apples. At this point, I wasn't even surprised when the butter popped at me again and added another burn to my already-impressive set. Yay blisters.

The weird thing is, they don't even hurt that much. Could be because the impressively-swollen bee sting on the back of my leg (from picking the apples) hurts so much. Awesome. I have a doctor's appointment in about 90 minutes. This is going to be fun!

12:12 pm: Vacation
I wonder sometimes if vacations are really supposed to be relaxing. To those of us that are very into schedules and climate-consistency, temporarily moving to a completely different location is not relaxing. It's stressful. Add into that the fact that Husband and I went on vacation with my parents and hello stress, how are you? Luckily it's relatively easy for people in their 20s and 30s to walk faster than people in their 60s on a hiking trail and relatively hard to carry on a conversation while gasping for breath.

Don't get me wrong, vacation was good. But I think I am more tired now than I was when I left.

Tags: family

01:15 pm: Basic Religious Morality
A few months ago, I was located by one person from high school. The week after that was more or less my inbox being flooded by friends requests from people I have extremely varied feelings for, even after almost 10 years. Sad, I know.

Long story short, there was one guy I was actually happy to hear from because I had sort of wondered how he turned out. Apparently he turned into a religious zealot. Regardless of how this happened--because I really don't know--I ended up having to hide him from my list because he made me mad with more-or-less every comment.

Basically every post was how modern women lost God, are awful, and need to accept that men should rule them with an iron fist. It was the comment that the feminist movement was the worst thing to happen to society that finally did it for me. He's even the kind of person who will post news stories about towns being destroyed and say that, and this really is a quote here, "God must have dropped a smart bomb." I should say, as way of background, that he does have a number of people that seemed to find this comment not only founded, but hysterical.

Now, I wasn't raised in a particularly-religious household. My parents are very good, generous, charitable people who just happened to not subscribe to church doctrines. I don't live in a particularly-religious household (Matt's Catholicism is really mostly restricted to nun and priest commentary). That said, I don't generally have problems with religious people. I have read lots of religious texts, though, and taken a few classes and it still amazes me that supposedly-religious people can say these things. How does the actual suffering of people get reduced to jokes? How does something basically good like religions get twisted into something like that? Makes me disappointed in humanity.

12:25 pm: Hey
Hey guys. What's happening? I decided it was lame and uncool to only have one social networking site and that Facebook was, in general, disappointing so thought I would try posting here again. I hope that everything is well for people. Mostly things are chugging along for me, working day-in, day-out. Entered into that dull age of adulthood where bills and getting paid are really the only thing that distinguishes one day from another. Well, except what primetime TV shows are on. ;-)

So drop me a line if you happen to catch this and let me know what's up with you!

11:41 am: Antiques? Shopping
On Saturday I went to Des Moines and we ended up at the Brass Armadillo. For those of you not acquainted, it is a football-field-sized antique store in Des Moines.

Other than lots of stuff that I don't want/ could never afford, guess what they had...Buffy stuff. Yeah. They had containers of trading cards that looked pretty promising, but they were in a glass case so I couldn't see them really. I definately stood there with my nose pressed against the glass--like a three-year-old at a toy store--staring at the set called "The Complete Spike" but it wasn't priced.

More the question was, why was this at an antique store. At most, these are from five years ago. Not antiques, people.

01:39 pm: HP
So I finally finished reading DH this morning. I know, I know...so woefully behind the times, but I HAD to read HBP again first and that was not a real fast read for me. Frankly, I take it personally to see Snape and Draco being bad because I have been a Slyterian from reading the first book. Whatever, that's just me.

Though I enjoyed the book and there are few things that I would completely change about it, I have kind of decided that it was not intended to be read by someone with an almost-M.A. in Literature. Ummm, inconsistancies much? Or not so much inconsistancies as weird things that happened that were either unexplained or seemingly not well planned.

*Why would Harry be Ted's godfather? Bill was sitting right there and was older and married. Seems like a weird thing to do to a seventeen-year-old fighting for his life; saddle him with a newborn.

*Why did both Lupin and Tonks have to die? I get Lupin--all of Harry's fathers had to be killed off--but Tonks just seemed excessive.

*If basilisk venom destroys Horcruxes, why wasn't the one in Harry destroyed when he was stabbed by the fang in the Chamber of Secrets? Surely all of that good magic in Fawkes's tears wouldn't have fixed Voldemort's soul too.

*The Lily/Snape thing, in general, seemed overdone. It seemed to be quite clear from previous books that Snape had a thing for Lily, did it really need a whole chapter?

*Why would Harry bury Mad-Eye's eye? And why could that eye see through Harry's oh-so-special cloak?

*What are the odds, really, that Dumbledore never knew about James's cloak until days before his death? James lived a Hogwarts with Dumbledore as a teacher or headmaster for seven years and then fought beside Dumbledore in the original Order. He never once saw the cloak with James?

*And what are the odds, really, that Dumbledore never knew about the Room of Requirements? He mentions it as a room full of chamberpots but doesn't seem to know anything about it otherwise, which seems unlikely. Great pains were taken in the first two books to stress that Dumbledore knew everything that Harry did in Hogwarts; Dumbledore seemed omniscient. Though I realize it is a fictional trope of the series to make Dumbledore seem all-powerful when Harry is young and innocent and then make him more flawed as Harry meets Dumbledore-the-man rather than Dumbledore-the-demi-god, I have a hard time believing a room Dolores Umbridge literally caught people in would have remained hidden for so long.

**In that same vein, why would Riddle/Voldemort hide it in the Room rather than the Chamber? It would have been MUCH safer in the Chamber, would it not? It was a sign, I thought, of the weakness of this plotline that when Harry mentioned Ravenclaw's crown on the statue that I immediately thought "She wouldn't seriously be so obvious as to make it that broken tiara in the Room, would she?" I suppose it could have been argued that Voldemort was rushed in the hiding, since he had a job interview with Dumbledore, but I would have thought that even then the Chamber would have been faster and safer. I also suppose that it was to be seen as a sign of Voldemort's arrogance.

I dunno, these are probably things that you all have discussed at length already but I only read the last 20 entries on my Friend's page and--because of this book--I totally only slept two hours last night so these questions are not necessarily the best thought-out.

04:01 pm: Job Searching
Unemployment is for the birds. Though it seemed like a cool adventure six months ago when I started looking for a full-time job, now it is just one giant worry. Obviously there is something that I need to be doing differently...I just wish I knew what.

Nothing much else going on here, really. I've now painted four rooms in the new house--including the kitchen, much to my relief--and am currently frantically trying to finish my mom's b-day gift before tomorrow. The days seem a little overwhelming in their unstructuredness, reminding me of the book "About A Boy" when the main adult character would talk about how he had to take the day in half-hour chunks because it was too much otherwise.

I have never been a person that existed well in the gray areas, I would much rather get things over with. I wanted to start college the day after receiving my high school diploma, just so I wouldn't have to spend months thinking of starting college. If I had had my way, I would have started a new job the week after finals ended, just to stop dreading the starting. I must say, though, dreading the endless unemployment is MUCH worse than dreading the starting.

I suppose I worry too much.

09:48 am: Update
Livejournal informs me that it has been 15 weeks since I updated. Yeah, sorry about that.

Obviously the spring semester has ended here. Actually, the summer one has too for me. You know what that means? No more classes. Possibly ever. For a person who has literally been in classes for 20 years now, that is a pretty weird phrase.

The Fates guaranteed that my last class would be a really odd one, an undergraduate course that I took as an independent study. The teacher was my major professor. Anyway, the teacher hit a family crisis about three weeks into the course and had to leave, so I actually taught the course for a full week. In the summer, that was about 1/5 of the course. I even got to teach the day on sex--it was a women's lit class--which was...interesting. We read the Anais Nin graphic descriptions of female orgasms. Needless to say, I don't think I will ever be able to make a room full of 20-year-olds that uncomfortable that quickly ever again. Grinnellians they were not, but we did our best.

In other news, Matt and I bought a house. We have moved in by now, since we had our offer accepted in March, but we didn't take possession until the middle of May. The house is really cool, nearly 100 years old and quite large. The previous owner was an electrician, so we are still figuring out what all of the light switches control. It's nice, though, that the electrics are so new since that is usually a concern with older houses. I am now filling my time with sewing curtains and painting rooms. So far I only have one room painted, but it was the second-most annoying color in the house so I am glad to have it gone. It was an unfortunate citron in the downstairs bathroom. The weird deep aquamarine in the upstairs bathroom (the most annoying color in the house) still has to go, but that is complicated by the fact that our only shower is in the room.

I'm still looking for a job. Nothing yet, but I will hopefully find something soon. The prospect of mortgage payments for the next 30 years is really motivating the search now. There are like five more that I am going to apply for now and three that I am still being considered for. It's frustrating and depressing to get all of the rejections, but some of the new prospects look good.

08:55 am: TV!!!
Matt came home for lunch yesterday to find a VERY excited me. You see, I had just gotten the mail and we got a package from the Nielsen people. As in, TV ratings. We totally get to be a Nielsen family for a week at the end of April.

I'm so excited. Ever since I learned what Nielsen ratings were, I have wanted to be a Nielsen family. Let's face it, I love television. This gives me a chance to influence TV at least a little.

My first thought was that actually I might be able, in some little way, to add ratings to two of my favorite shows that are in serious danger of being cancelled: 'Veronica Mars' and 'Supernatural.' Both awesome, both underrated, both apparently with a 60/40 chance--just barely in their favor--of being cancelled after this season. It's just wrong.

So, at least right now, I'm living the dream.