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 |  Where am I going, and why am I in this handbasket? |
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Fair Warning: I've upped the rating on this blog. It is now set at GC. |
| Our MIS department at work is run by a micro-managing, intractable, short sighted she-devil. Needless to say, the little worker bees of the MIS department have been dropping like . . . well . . . flies. This is typically what happens when I have a computer problem that requires a call to MIS: "Hello, this is Matt." "Matt?" I ask in confusion as I check the extension number I just dialed. "I was trying to reach Phil." "Phil isn't here anymore." "Oh? . . . Oh! What happened to Phil?" "I don't know. I'm the new Phil." "Sheesh, he wasn't here very long." "Is there something I can help you with?" "Uhm sure . . . maybe, but it might take a little while. Do you plan on coming back tomorrow?" These MIS worker bees seem to do okay in the beginning, as long as they stay in the MIS office, in the shadow of the server, right there under the She-Devil's thumb. Once they leave that office though, she becomes intensely suspicious of their activities. She listens to their voice mail to make sure they aren't receiving any non-work related calls. She monitors their every move. If they are out of her line of sight, she calls their cell every 10 minutes to confirm where they are and what they are doing, and confirms the veracity of their statements by accessing the GPS chip in the phone. The problems seem to escalate when they start doing what might be considered field work. Once they start helping the line staff with stuff, and we learn to put a face to the name. This is when they disappear suddenly and without warning. We have a directory of all the phone extension in the office, but the constant turnover was creating a strain on the gal who keeps it current. Now their are no names. Just "MIS." Fritz is the latest guy. I asked for his help with our electronic scheduler. He tried to fix the problem remotely, but couldn't access my computer. "No problem," He told me, he would come over to fix it. I wanted to warn him. I wanted to shout "NOOOO!" It is the kiss of death, so I really hope Fritz didn't have a family to support. I'm not sure what really happens to these guys. I know one guy just called in sick one day and was never heard from again. Do they quit? Are they fired? I don't know. I'm starting to think that the She-Devil is a cunning murderess who slowly saps these men of their will to live before striking her death blow. I suspect that if someone were to check her freezer we would find the remains of the former MIS workers packed away in small rubbermaid disposable freezer containers. The new guy is doomed. He's been tainted by his contact with the outside world. Besides, he knows people on the outside now. People who he might be able to reach out to. I'm just waiting for him to pass me the scrawled note that reads "HELP ME!" Okay, that was dark, but I was mostly joking. Back to reality. I worked all day. Came home and spent an hour weeding the garden before coming in to make dinner for the kids. Tony didn't get home until 7:00, and made his own dinner while I wrote out a grocery list. I went to the grocery store. Filled my cart. Carried the groceries in to the house. Put them away with help from my daughter. Cleaned up the mess Tony left in the wake of preparing his dinner. Loaded the dishwasher, and took out the trash. At some point Tony wandered through the kitchen. I asked him "What do you want me to do with this meat? Freeze it, or put it in the Fridge?" "Whichever," he said, "I'm too tired to care. This day is really catching up with me." Too my credit, I didn't throw anything at him, except for maybe a dirty look. |
| "Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods." ~Albert Einstein Not too long ago, I slung about some of my thoughts on truth and Wren  suggested that I should write a blog entry of my own on the topic. I've been meaning to do just that, but the thing is, I never realized how murky the water was until I stopped to contemplate its depths.I'd made the rash assertion that truth does not exist, that it is merely an abstract, and we'd all be better off if we spent less time worrying about what is "real," and more time worrying about what matters (to each of us, individually). Here is my problem though, I think I got it all wrong. First, there DO appear to be certain truths out there, most notably in the fields of science and mathematics. For example, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. That is true. I guess when I left my comments I was thinking less about the laws of thermodynamics, and more about the truth of what really happened at 2AM on that dark and stormy night. Everything changes when human perception enters the picture. "Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit." ~Edward R. Murrow The human brain was never designed to capture and record truth because truth isn't what matters. What matters is meaning! Our brain is programmed to filter through zillions of pieces of information, filter out the stuff that doesn't matter, and form the rest into something that carries a meaning. The process is expedient, but it leaves much to be desired in terms of truth. In the rush to derive meaning our brain falls back on patterns, expectations, stereotypes, prejudices, and other dangerous thinking. We are also vulnerable to suggestions as to what the meaning should be. Hypnotist and illusionist have learned how to make the most of this as have advertisements. Lastly, we don't do well with ambiguity, and our minds race to fill in missing details to smooth the edges of our derived meaning. Since our brains like to keep things as stream-lined as possible, we tend to disregard information that is inconsistent with our constructed meanings. This is easier to do if we hang out with like minded folks. In time we build upon our shared beliefs to create an entire belief system which we will defend viciously against outside influences. "How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four; calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg." ~Abraham Lincoln I don't know if we can ever hope to catch the truth, but I think we should try. By questioning what is real, and what is truth, we can work our way back through the tricks and shortcuts of the mind that favor expediency. In doing so, we can see our own prejudices, and better understand why we've taken our stand on this particular hill, on this particular day. So which do you think is the more important question? "What happened?" or "What does it mean?" |
| This weekend, I spent too much time at Radio Shack. In my world, any time at Radio Shack is too much time. Radio Shack reminds me of how little I really know. You see, I spend the better part of my life around people who are less computer savvy than myself, people like my husband, my boss, and my mother. I'm use to people asking me for computer advice. "Have you tried turning it off." This is my usual advice, and shockingly, that seems to fix most of the problems. Once we get past the power button stage though, truth is, I'm out of my depth. When I walk into Radio Shack I am suddenly confronted by all the technological marvels and mysteries of the world. It is unnerving. Still, there is that bit of arrogance about me that leads me to do crazy things. I mean, I've been known to dip my toe in this pool from time to time. Hadn't I misdiagnose my computer problem as a bad power source? I even order and install a new part. It didn't work, but I tried. (I have since outsourced the Dell to a friend's husband who is working on it in his spare time.) After much discussion, we decided to replace the Dell. If the Dell comes back to us in working order, all the better, but we needed something with lower mileage and better fuel economy. So, on Friday night we jumped in the car and headed over to Best Buy. The computer we decided on was an "open box" special, and we got the tower, the mouse, the keyboard, some cables, and a start-up guide. This meant we needed to purchase a monitor and speakers to complete the ensemble. I've never been particular about speakers, but my husband wanted to upgrade for something that involved a sub-woofer. I left him to his fun while I picked out a monitor. Then, we rounded it all out with a very serious looking surge protector with a battery back-up. We were set. So Saturday was spent running back and forth to Radio Shack to acquire the necessary cables that were not in the "open box," loading software, fighting with the screen resolution, and setting all the preferences. After several hours of work, my family took over the computer. Apparently I had used up my "turn." I didn't really get to take the computer out for a spin until late last night. The boy was in bed, and Tony and Katie were reading in the family room. I was surfing the net visiting and bookmarking all my favorite sites when suddenly I heard a man's voice over. I was so startled by the voice that I didn't catch the words. "What are you listening to?" my husband asked. "Nothing! I didn't do anything!" The voice had stopped, but my husband had come into the kitchen along with my daughter. I was turning around to tell my daughter that she really needed to get to bed when the voice called out again. "Zero-six-four, zero-six-four! This is Stinky-Dead-Possum. Over." This was new. Our old computer never did this. We stood crowded around the computer listening, and stifling our laughter so we could hear. Is it still voyeurism if you are only listening, or is that just eavesdropping? Eventually Tony and Katie got tired of listening to dead air, and wandered back to the family room. I went about my surfing with a vague uneasy feeling. How was it that I could hear Mr. Stinky-Dead-Possum? Could he hear me? What the heck was wrong with this new computer? A bit later there was more chatter and then a very clear "Uh-Oh!" I sat there waiting with rapt attention for someone to begin shouting "Abort! Abort!" but that never happened. At some point the Stinky-dead-possum Dude put music on, some country song that I did not recognize. I pushed the mute button, but that didn't do anything. I turned the volume all the way down on the speakers and it didn't make any difference. My speakers had been hijacked! "What the hell is wrong with these speakers you picked out?" I yelled to Tony, who wandered back in to see what was up. "How can we be picking this up," I asked "It isn't like we have a receiver." He stared at the little black thing between the two speakers. "What's that?" he asked? "It's the MP3 cradle, and also that's were the volume is. They called it the control center in the set-up instructions." Tony moved the control center closer to the speaker and the music got much louder. "It's the receiver he said." "What do I do? How do I make the music stop." "Try turning it off and then on again," he said. "Maybe it'll switch channels." Who's the smarty pants now? So, I pulled the plug on the speakers, and they've been behaving ever since. |
| The problem with not watching enough television is that you don't know what to expect when it comes time to get a colonoscopy. That's my theory anyway. My mother is scheduled for a colonoscopy in the morning, inspired in part by my mother-in-law's recent diagnosis of colon cancer, and in part by the fact that she's been paying COBRA for health insurance ever since my Dad died and her eligibility is up in just a few more months. She isn't sure what she's going to do after that. She has Tri-Care through Dad's military retirement, but she isn't sure how good the coverage will be, or if anyone local will accept it. So, she is in a frenzy to get all the diagnostics out of the way while she's covered. Mom's never had a colonoscopy before even though she is well past the recommended age. It is easier to defer the unpleasant. I imagine the doctor's office probably explained the prep to her, but Mom hears what she wants to hear. Apparently what she heard was "Just go ahead and drink this stuff at work. That won't be any problem at all." So she did.  She does private therapy, and she drank the vile stuff down just before her 6:00 session. She figured it would take awhile to have any effect. Who knew it would kick in so quickly. Mom had to answer nature's call, but still didn't quite understand the process. Instead she thought "Well that's done, I'm all cleared out and I guess I should drive home now." Yeah, she still had to drive the half hour home from her office. As I understand it she made the trip in just under 15. She called me tonight to ask if I would take her to the appointment. After I finished laughing at with her, I promised I would. What the hell. I haven't worked a full day in so damn long that I'm not sure my boss remembers I'm still a full-timer. Speaking of work, our county passed a ban on smoking on county property. That means no smoking on the agency grounds at all. Not even if you're sitting in your own car. Well, a couple years ago our administrator (who is militantly anti-smoking in a way that only ex-smokers can be) decided that it made an extremely poor impression to have workers loitering around the front doors smoking. Smoking was prohibited in front of the building and the workers began slinking around back to smoke. Now, they can't smoke out back, so they walk across the parking lot, and stand on the shoulder of the road, in front of the building to smoke. Yeah, if it was unseemly having them smoking in front of the building, imagine the sight of burnt out civil servants lining the road in tight groups of 3s and 4s puffing away. Our complex houses Children and Youth, Drug and Alcohol, Aging, Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities. The ban applies to the workers as well as clients and visitors. That's a whole lot of folks who are basically living for that next cigarette. I drove past five groups of smokers coming into the office this morning when I rolled in to work at 9:30. Hell, they'd already been working a whole hour. Sheesh!  One last thing for tonight . . . I have to share my son's joke with all of you. It went something like this . . . Zack: "I have a new joke. Do you want to hear it?" Me: "Sure honey I love your jokes." I'm lying of course, because it seems to be better for his self esteem. No one wants to hear a third grader tell jokes. I once chaperoned a school field trip to the Bronx Zoo, and one of the little girls in my group brought along a joke book. I still have nightmares about that. Zack: "Okay. A duck goes into a store to buy chapstick and he says to the guy in the store 'Can you break a $20?' but the guy says 'no' and then the duck says . . . " there was more, but I kind of stopped listening because I'm thinking "Put it on my bill" the punchline is going to be "Put it on my bill." Let's just get to the punchline Me: "And then what happened" Zack: "And the Duck didn't have the right money." Me: "So what happened next." Zack: "And . . . and . . . and . . . then the duck exploded." Okay, I'm easy, but that just cracked me up. My guess is he forgot the joke and decided to improvise, but it's really hard to top an exploding duck. |
| Perhaps I was too quick in disregarding the virtues of introspection. I'm not quite sure what Socrates considered an unexamined life. I'm not a student of philosophy. I'm pretty sure though that Socrates view of examining life differed from my experiences. It seems as though examining ones life is something most often done while clinging to the toilet bowl in hopes that it will keep you from falling off the wildly spinning floor, while the dog tries to lick vomit off your face, and you find yourself sobbing into his scruff because you're convinced he is the only one who ever really loved or understood you. uhm . . . metaphorically speaking, of course. Examining life usually means something awful has sucked the wind from your sails, and as you float adrift, you ask yourself these questions: 1. What the fuck just happened? 2. Why does this keep happening to me? 3. Where the hell are my shoes? This sort of rumination becomes a vicious beast that robs you of your sleep and inspires you to write really crappy poetry at 3 AM. It is insidious and it is corrosive, and sadly, it is a bit addictive. Once you crawl inside your own misery, it is really hard to crawl back out. Now where the hell did that come from? |
| Starting at the end . . . having just reached the bottom of this entry, and finding it rather lacking in organized thought, I'm going to chock this one up as one of those stream of conscious thought thingies and fore go any editorial efforts. It is what it is. "Hey! You got your Earth Day in my Election Day!" "No, You got your Election Day in my Earth Day!" It is sort of sad how so many things cause my mind to flash to a jingle or slogan. I've been aggressively marketed to since a very early age, and I think all those ads gel into a layer of the collective unconscious that defines generations, as well as regions. There are commercials that I remember from my childhood that were very regional, and when I find others who remember, for example, the "Nobody bakes a cake as tasty as a Tastycake," song, I feel an instant connection. Mmmmm . . . Tastycakes . . . Lest I digress, from what was already a tangent. My point is that I voted today, and now the political ads can stop. In PA you can only vote in your parties primary, so when you sign the book and show your ID, you get a slip of paper with either a D or an R. The Ds were printed on green squares and the Rs were on red. I wonder who picked the colors. Green and Red seem to be emotionally laden colors. They probably should have stayed away from colors that reflect Home Land Security Threat Levels. I took my green D and waited my turn at the booth. I was so glad to have a choice in this election. Then I saw the ballot. Two choices on the D side and THREE on the R! What the heck? Okay, I consoled myself, my choices are meaningful. The Republican race is in the bag. My vote is gonna count this time. Whatever. The thrill of democracy had pretty much worn off by the time I got my "I voted" sticker. Also related to the notion of advertising . . . has anyone else noticed that, like all holidays, Earth Day is gradually being spun into a consumer holiday. I hear there is a BIG sale of compact fluorescent light bulbs EVERYWHERE! Not that environmental awareness isn't a good thing. I just hate to see it turned into the latest marketing strategy. Today at work I got a call from my work buddy Bob. Bob is going to get me in trouble at work, and I'm not sure what to do about it. Bob works at the regional level, and I work at the county level. We share a similarly warped sense of humor. He tells me that I have an evil mind, and he intends it as a compliment. The thing is, Bob has moved up the food chain, and that has two big implications. First, we have less reason to interact, and second, my boss feels the need to control the communication that occurs on "that level." I wasn't happy about the way of things, and I do not like Bob's replacement especially well, but I've been playing by the rules, as I do so well, and trying to stay out of trouble. The problem is that this was a very two-sided relationship, and Bob still likes to call. The pretense for calling can get quite thin. I spend a lot of time telling people "I don't know why he called and asked me but . . . " The thing is, I do know why, and they probably know why too. My boss has pointed out a few times that Bob is "not our friend," that he has his own agenda. Today Bob called to ask me about something that was completely outside of my scope. Bob would have known it was outside of my scope, but he wanted to call. He wanted to BS about the elections and what-not. Turns out that the Boss-man had specifically told Bob that HE was the point of contact for these questions and they should not be addressed with anyone else in the office. This was because the Boss-man had some of his own questions for Bob. Needless to say, I was caught in the cross-fire. Much to my relief, my boss was only irritated at Bob, but I know I was just as guilty. The weather continues to be beautiful here, so after work, and after dinner, I went outside to play in dirt. It seemed an appropriate Earth Day activity. Mostly I was digging up the dandelions. It is a never ending battle for me. When I work in the garden, my mind travels along wildly curving roads. I was weeding and thinking that I am at a disadvantage in life. I group up in a pretty functional family situation. I didn't learn the rules of surviving dysfunction. When I encounter it is my day to day life, I'm at a loss to do anything but shake my head and say "Wow! that's fucked up!" Even as I was thinking this though, a little voice in the back of my head was screaming in pain. "No!" it screamed. "Take it back! Your family WAS dysfunctional. They had to be. If they weren't you'd be . . . BORING." Ack! Could it be true? Maybe I'm normal and boring and don't have any business writing because I'm just plain normal and boring." Scary stuff! Although the fact that I'm having a conversation with myself gives me a little ray of hope. Still, on the grand dysfunction-o-meter, my needle is pretty flat. I guess it doesn't matter, even if I managed some semblance of dysfunction, I'd still be inferior as dysfunction seems to be a competitive event. Which brings me to my last pondering. "The unexamined life is not worth living." I can't say I agree. I think some level of insight serves us well, but it's not good to curl up too tight inside your own head, ruminating over past wrongs and past mistakes. Who is living an examined life and still experiencing joy? Go ahead, raise your hand. I've been reading my way through Blogville for awhile now and I'm not seeing a strong correlation between happy and examined. |
| Gas prices spiked to $3.50 / gallon overnight. I know, I know . . . this is still a bargain compared to what much of the world pays for gas, but it hurts nonetheless. We've been having beautiful weather here this week and everything is green and growing, especially the lawn. Tony needed to cut the grass, but he didn't want to buy gas for the lawn mower. He pulled out the reel mower instead, and got to work. If we'd had goats, I'm sure he'd have gone that way instead, but fortunately, we don't have any of those. Tony wasn't out there very long. He came in the back door and said "I had to quit. Couldn't mow anymore because I lost a nut out there." "Oh well," I said, "at least we know the blades are nice and sharp."  Sometimes he makes it too easy. |
| If I'm going to have a slutty blog, I figure I might as well have it look the part. Today was my son's IEP meeting. It went pretty well, and I learned that Zachary's teacher, Mr. S., has an intense hatred of glitter. Apparently his fellow educators like to occasionally leave a little container of glitter on his desk. I'm sad that only now learning this little factoid. It was like Lex Luther finding out about Superman's kryptonite issues. This is information I can use to . . . you know . . . mess with him and stuff. I could have plotted some sublimely passive aggressive revenge back when he was pissing me off. I could have bought the glitter glue pens to decorate the covers on book reports! This reminded me of a joke I'd heard on Comedy Central the night before. The comedian was Demetri Martin and the joke was this . . . "Once glitter gets on you, it never comes off. Glitter is the herpes of craft supplies." As it turns out, telling that joke at Zack's IEP was just the ice breaker we needed. Everybody loves a good herpes joke. Also, my "Invalid Item"  passed the 5,000 view mark yesterday. Woohoo! I checked on the scoreboard, and there are 1260 scores.  |
| I had to share this link to the 10 weirdest USB devices. http://gadgets.fosfor.se/the-top-10-weirdest-usb-devices-ever/ Yep, number 10 is a George Foreman grill. Now, imagine the scenario in which this gadget might be useful. Hey, the power is out. It's a good thing my laptop battery is charged because I've got a strange hankering for some shish-kabobs. Thank God for a USB cable. How did anyone ever manage to grill stuff back before computers? Oh, but wait. It gets better. The number one USB gadget is a VIBRATOR. Now, how handy is that. When things start to heat up in that chat room . . . yeah, well you can see where that's going. There have got to be a whole lot of folks seeking sexual gratification via the world wide web to have created a market for this. Did I really type that? Talk about stating the obvious! But what the hell. Just think of how much you could save on batteries with one of these babies. It practically pays for itself. I had to share because I certainly needed the levity today. I left work today fuming mad. I was literally seeing red. This is not a usual state for me, and it took me a long time, and a lot of yard work to burn off the adrenaline. I could have probably restored my naturally good natured equilibrium a lot quicker if I'd had access to a USB port though. Tomorrow I'll talk about my need for anger management, but for now I'm just reveling in the nonsense. Long live NONSENSE!!! |
| That title is a warning. I'm going to talk about girl stuff. Specifically, I'm going to talk about bras and the purchasing of said bras . . . Kay tries to think up some filler-type thing to insert into this entry so that her next thought will not be part of the blog preview. Unfortunately, Kay's got nothing Now, I am what you might tactfully refer to as "well endowed," or less tactfully refer to as "stacked." (Personally, I like the term "bodacious.") This makes bra shopping a lot of fun because most stores put the A and B cups up at eye level, but you have to crawl around on the floor looking for the larger cup sizes. This explains the oft discussed correlation between breast size and knee problems. Theres nothing quite like spending an half hour bending over in search of the ultimate gravity defying bra. Recently I got stuck shopping for bras with my mother. She wanted some help finding something that would fit her. I didn't take after my mother. She gets to shop the eye level bras while I'm down on the floor. Well it so happened that I needed a new bra. I always need a new bra, so, I started looking around. I found an outrageously expensive bra that I liked. It wasn't particularly comfortable, but it did great things for me. So, feeling extra perky, I decided to go for it. I later learned that this particular style and brand is Oprah's favorite. Had I known that, I might not have bought it. I can be very oppositional when it comes to Oprah. Bad enough having her tell me what books I should read, I don't want her telling me what bras to wear. Still, I'm glad I didn't know because the bra is great. I helped my mother with her selections, and we made our way to the register. I was patiently waiting to be rung up and couldn't help notice that my mother kept staring at my Oprah bra. "What?" I asked. "Nothing." She kept ogling my bra. It was making uneasy, so I asked again, "What!?" Mom reached over and picked up the Oprah bra. She folded it over tucking the left cup into the right and then placed it on top of her head.  It looked pretty ridiculous with the straps hanging down around her ears and the tags sticking up, but she just stood there grinning at me. "What the hell?" I laughed Mom pulled it off and lightly tossed the Oprah bra back onto the counter. "Just what I thought," she said. "It's too big to even fit me as a hat." (not only does she have a strange sense of humor, she has a really small head.) I think I need to start doing more of my shopping on-line. |
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