So, I am now just two years away from the big 3-0. I feel old, like so much of my life has just vanished before my eyes, when I think about it that way. But at the same time, I don’t actually feel old. And although I’m not where I would have liked to be in my life, I’m not particularly upset over it. Oh sure, things could be better. They could also be worse too.

So my birthday has come and gone as has Valentine’s Day and am I ever so glad about that. Really, I am. I like nice floral arrangements about as much as any other gal out there. Well, maybe a little less, but getting showered with them every February (and chocolates too) gets old. Seriously, my birthday is February 12 and two days later is Valentine’s and all throughout my life folks have believed that getting me Valentine’s themed stuff for my birthday or combining the two holidays together is a good when it comes to gifts for my birthday.

I got a couple of boxes of assorted chocolates (both big and small), and five different bouquets for my birthday. Not including other V-day stuff like teddy bears, things decorated in hearts, and so on and so forth.

I personally liked the dark red Dahlia bouquet I got the best, the roses and carnation ones were…not original since I see stuff like that every year. The Dahlia one though was new and very pretty.

I’m still undecided about whether or not I made a good decision, but I have gone from a part-time position to a full-time one. I figured hey, as a PT-timer I was working every single day from early morning until afternoon anyway. Why not move up to fulltime, work a few extra hours in the week, get the weekend off, get paid holidays, sick time, vacation time, and benefits to boot?

Today was my first day as a full-timer and so far not so bad. It sucks that I don’t get home until after 6pm on account of the lengthy commute and the “rush-hour” traffic. But, otherwise it wasn’t so bad. I gotta tell you, I’m liking the fact that I got holiday pay for MLK day, otherwise, as a part-timer, I’d have been out some hours this week since it was a federal holiday and we were closed. Instead I get paid anyway. Not to mention I get more hours now. This paycheck (and future ones!) are looking to be much better now. Not that I’m gonna splurge and get me a bb playbook, iPad, iPhone, or anything like that. I’m thinking the extra money will wisely be put to use fixing up Pyro and paying off the last of my debts.

It’s time for another round of “Good News and Bad News” here. Yes, the blessings really are that mixed. First, some Good News: I don’t have to feel bad about giving my grandfather something so impersonal and “last minute” like calvin klein mens underwear or socks for Christmas! I’ve already got his gift and had it bought months ago!

Bad News: The same cannot be said about my Mother. What the hell am I supposed to get this woman that she’ll like and actually use? Not to mention, isn’t a completely impersonal gift to boot. Why must she always be so difficult?

Good News: I got extra hours this week at work due to opening one day, early morning meetings, and helping to cover at the El Paso branch.

Bad News: Since we had such a wonderful snow storm blow in and interstate and a lots highways were closed due to bad conditions, I got yesterday off. No point in me coming in to work if the one road that was still open got closed while I was at work, my boss said. So…I’m not gonna get extra hours this week after all, but I should break even.

Good News: I had my one year evaluation on Monday and I’m getting a raise! It’s only 2% mind you, so it’s probably not even noticeable, but hey, I got a raise!

Bad News: I’ve got repairs to make to Pyro now after that jerk ran me off the road so I need all the extra money I can get.

I haven’t been around online much this past week, and alas, it’s all because of my spectacular lack of grace. I pulled something in my lower back and right leg Thursday before last while I was cleaning out the storage shed. I tripped while carrying a box (good thing it was a box of holiday trinkets and not the rusted band saw blades I’d seen earlier) and twisted around trying to keep from falling and crushing them. I succeeded, but managed to pull something in the process.

For the first few days there was no comfortable position for me to sleep. I found a spot in my computer chair that was halfway decent and got maybe two hours sleep that night and three the next. Needless to say, I missed work on Saturday that week.

My back is feeling much better now, but my leg is still acting up. Though not swelling up like crazy like it was. It especially gives me trouble when I’m sitting for too long, hence why I’m not online much this past week, or standing for too long. Or when I’m getting in/out of my car which has never seemed that low to me until now. Long drives bug it too. Lots of laying down for me with my leg elevated. I’ve been popping ibuprofen like crazy too and smothering my leg in Icy Hot, so needless to say I haven’t donated plasma recently either.

So for those who have emailed me and tried to contact me online, and wondered where I am, I do apologize for not being around much here lately. I am feeling much better though, so I will attempt to start getting back to folks.

I finally got a reasonable payment plan set up with Discover card recently, their collection agency leaves quite a bit to be desired. I mean, here I was willing to make payments and would have started over a month ago, and I had fools trying to get me to agree to outrageous down payments for a smaller monthly payment that was still out of my reach, or humongous large payments knowing full well I could never make them and would default ASAP. Then I was instructed to send in information that would qualify me for their “limited means” program so I would be allowed smaller payments. They conveniently never received the stuff no matter how many times it was faxed successfully from home, work, and Kinkos. This was all thanks to two different people handling my account. Meanwhile they kept telling me that I didn’t have to file a response to court after they had me served. Good thing I didn’t listen, because if I hadn’t, they would have had the right to garnish wages or other unpleasent things right off the bat.

Then one day, when both the a-holes were out I got to speak with one person who was like “this is ridiculous, we could have gotten this settled long ago” and got me set up on a payment plan that I can make.

I’m almost debt free!

Still though, even if I can make the payments, until I get the other credit card paid off (4 more payments to go there!) things will be tight. I’d really like to move up to a full time position at work, but the only FT spots that have opened up are at the T or C branch. Not to mention their for positions I sincerely doubt I’d get. Even looking in the classifieds for a FT spot, or at least another PT job that I swing with my hours has yielded little results. Lots of spots for things like construction workers, CDL drivers, live-in nurses, or Dental Jobs – things that require training or degrees that I don’t have. Bah! I guess I could always apply at Sitel….but after working at DialAmerica and putting up with their shit, I’m not really inclined to give a telemarketing job another shot.

Pyro is once again running smoothly, or at least as smoothly as my pocketbook can afford. This is good, but since I know there is still much to be fixed on him, I’m beginning to seriously consider the fact that it may just soon be time to trade Pyro in. Looking at the just the newer models of Dodge Neons is enough to give me car envy, never mind the fact that there are other cars with features that make me drool to boot. Mind you, most of the features I wouldn’t get because I couldn’t afford them since they add to the final tag price of a car, but… do you really need some of these features given some of the nice apps out there (like mobile gps ones for example)?

Sad thing is, right now, trying to finish digging myself out of debt as I am, and unable to move up to a full-time position (no positions available at work) there is no way I could afford to buy a new car. Especially since I’d need a load and I sure as hell don’t want another large monthly bill. Pyro, please last a little longer.

Argh! I swear, if it’s not one thing wrong with this damn car it’s another. This morning, on a day when we had an early morning meeting before work, my car would not start. Completely dead, wouldn’t even crank. And it would not take a jump either. I got a ride to and from work, so I was only a little late to work. Missed the 8:15am meeting though, but made it to work a little after 9am, so it wasn’t too bad.

But of all the days to be absent – I was named employee of the month! Now that, right there is sheer irony.

Came home, changed, then unhooked the battery of the car and took it up to AutoZone, hoping like hell that was the problem. They tested the battery, and sure enough, it was dead as a doornail. But, after putting in the new battery the car still wouldn’t start.

One of the mechanics that lives nearby and works on the farm equipment primarily, but also does auto repairs, is going to stop by and take a look at it tomorrow morning. My grandfather lent me his truck and he promised to wait there for the guy so I could get to work.

Here’s hoping that he can find out what’s wrong with it, he can fix it, and it won’t cost too much either.

All of this on top of the fact that I have the whole mess with Discover card to worry about and I just got Pyro new tires recently too. When it rains it pours.

This has not been a relaxing, let’s sit down and smoke some cigars and sip brandy (or what have you) kind of weekend for my mother. Her purse was stolen Saturday and it’s been a real headache to find out what was in her purse, contacting everyone that needs to be contacted and informed, and just generally worrying over it.

We were really hoping that, despite what she knew to be true, she had just gone off and left it at work. However, after signing into her accounts online, we discovered that whoever had stolen her purse had already made some purchases using her cards.

A police report has been filed, all of her debit and credit cards have been canceled, and any people that needed to be informed (such as the client who had just paid her and whose uncashed check was still in said purse) as well.

It’s not been fun, and on Monday, my mother’s birthday no less, she has to go to her individual banks and get things squared away. The bastards made a bunch of fraudulent purchases with her debit cards already before they got cancelled, and it looks like they tried to make some more afterwards too. Hopefully those shitheads get what’s coming to them.

There appears to be some very positive upsides to donating plasma regularly, and I’m not just talking about the monetary rewards either.

Attention Readers of the male persuasion: if you get squicked out hearing about, reading about, or being forced to talk about women and their health issues, you may want to move on to the next post in my blog.

That said, donating plasma has had three very noticeable side-affects on me. Because, in order to successfully donate plasma without your blood clotting horribly, or passing out, you need to be well-hydrated and you should have eaten recently, I have amended my diet quite a bit. I drink a lot of water every day now, especially the day before, the day of, and the day after I donate plasma. I’m also drinking more gatorade too because it replenishes the vitamins I’ve lost better then plain water does. On top of that, I eat more regularly too. When I donate, if I haven’t eaten enough beforehand, afterwards I’m left feeling faint and woozy. So now, on days I donated I always make sure to eat breakfast before I get to work, I’ll take something with me or pick something up on the way and take little breaks at work and munch on some food. Then, after I get out, if I took a dish to eat I finish what’s left or I grab something else to eat that I might have in the car (fruit, chips, jerky) or even a sub from Subway. Then I go and donate. When I get home I eat an early (for me) dinner. In short, I am eating the minimum amount of meals you should eat, at least, on those days. The side affect? My body has gotten used to not skipping meals and now when I try to skip a meal, it rebels. I’ve taken to eating breakfast regularly once again.

All of this has led to three changes in my health that I can definitely get behind. First of all, I’ve got a lot more energy. I’m not feeling worn out and tired all them anymore, and it really shows in my complexion as well. Secondly, I’ve lost weight. Eating regularly has resulted in my metabolism speeding up and I’ve lost a good ten pounds as a result, without trying. The weight loss will probably stay where it is now, but still, it’s nice knowing my body is working at full-tilt again. And lastly, and probably most importantly to me, my menstrual cycle has become more regular. Up until recently it’s been a real pain to keep track of. It came infrequently, lasted for way longer than usual, went away briefly, returned way too soon, went away just as quick, then came back again. The flow also wasn’t consistent either. Sometimes heavy, sometimes barely there. And when it was heavy, boy was was it heavy. We’re talking wearing those overnight pads during the day so that I knew I wouldn’t overflow, because even a super-tampon and regular pad combined weren’t enough to ensure I’d make it more then an hour without an accident. And at work I cannot keep running to the bathroom every forty-five minuets. I seriously felt like I was wearing an adult diaper, hell they sounded like a good idea for a while there. It got that crazy. But now, with the diet changes, plus the normal exercise I get, my period is starting to work itself out. Already it’s getting set on a schedule, might be a few days off here and there now, but I can tell when I’m going to start again. The cycle also is lasting the normal time it should and is no longer exceedingly long or freakishly short.

Really, it’s kinda freaky how just eating regularly (no more skipped meals or tiny little snacks here and there) drinking things other than soda and coffee, can make such drastic changes in your body.

Yes, yes, I take horrible care of myself if I’m amazed by these changes.

Well, I do believe it’s safe to say that there will be no frivolous purchases for me in the near future. Not like I was planning anything so audacious as purchasing a rim tablet or something, but the simple truth is that my future finances are complete and utter mystery.

But how can this be, when I’ve been working so hard to get all my credit cards paid off and repairing my credit? I’ve paid off Bank of America and I’m one payment away from finishing Capital One, shouldn’t I be happy? Should my financial future be, if not secure yet, at least looking up?

Well, as fate would have it, the answer is no. Let me tell you how my week turned out and you’ll see what I mean.

So first off, Pyro is acting up again and is in serious need of repairs. And the truth of it is that I don’t even know what is wrong with the car anymore. There’s a short somewhere that causes the car to register a door(s) as ajar. Now, unfortunately, when a door is ajar the dome light in a Dodge Neon pops on and stays on for a long time before turning off, or until the door in question is closed properly. All of the doors can be closed properly, but Pyro still registers one of them as ajar. Why not just turn off the dome light, you ask? Because you can’t. I don’t know if the newer Neons are different, but the older ones (like mine) don’t have a switch on the dome light. You know the one where you can have the light turn on when a door opens, or set it to not turn on at all? Yeah, that’s not there at all. So if a door opens (or is ajar) the dome light will always come on.

I’ve had this problem before with Pyro, but it got fixed. Now it’s happening again. Turn the car off, get out, shut the door right, it’ll still read as “ajar” and the dome light will stay on a good ten-plus minutes before just turning off eventually. Real pain in the ass. It also pops on and off while I’m driving at random too. Not cool at night since you can get a ticket for driving with your dome light on. Not to mention the fact that the extra time it stays on has to wear on the battery. And eventually, as the problem progresses, it just may never turn off completely. That’s been going on for about a week now, and I had planned to get it fixed here soon. But, I covered the entirety of the Verizon bill that my Mom and I split because, because we have a plan together, since she’s been having a hard time getting clients to pay right now. There were overage fees (she went over the minutes, not me!) so the bill was more expensive. Completely blew my budget out of wack. Plus I had just gotten two tires replaced that badly needed it. So I’m broke right now and most of my next paycheck is going to go to the final Capital One payment.

And since we had a holiday (Labor Day) and I was out sick on one day, that’s two days of pay I lost to boot. Meaning my next paycheck is going to be a bit on the short side. Just gets better and better, right?

Then on Friday my car wouldn’t start in the morning, my Mom had to come and give Pyro a jump. I drove to work just fine, and surprise surprise, the short seemed to have sorted itself out as well. Then, after I got out of work on Friday I went to my car to discover it wouldn’t start again. I thought maybe the battery didn’t hold the charge after all and I needed a new one. Because of where my battery is placed under the hood, and where my Mom’s is, we had a hard time trying to hook Pyro up for a jump the second time. I was trying to put the car in neutral so that we could push it out of the parking space for better access, when I managed to hit ignition just right and Pyro roared to life.

Ended up driving home just fine, and on Saturday morning when I tried to start Pyro again to go to work he wouldn’t start. I messed around a bit trying to repeat what I did on Friday and he started just fine. I went to work, stopped off to buy a breakfast burrito, then went and donated plasma before coming home. And each time Pyro started just fine – so long as I repeated the little trick. Is it my starter, the ignition, safety switch, or something else that isn’t working now? I have no fucking clue. And let’s not forget the other stuff that is wrong with Pyro either.

Despite not having the money for it at all, I may just have to try and buy a new car. Even if it means taking out a loan. But wait, that might not be a good idea either because Saturday I received a summons – I’ve been served.

Discover apparently handed my account over to a collection agency and they served me. Now here’s the real kicker, the papers I was handed on Saturday don’t say when there is a hearing or when I need to make an appearance either. It does mention that there is a “form attached” that I need to respond to. But there is no form. And the paperwork is all dated back in August to boot. August 12th and the 24th to be exact. I was given this on the 17th of September. Very timely isn’t it? Oh, but it gets better. I just got a letter in the mail the other day (Wednesday I believe) from said collection agency offering a settlement deal and according to their letter I have until September 28th to respond. The letter states it was sent out on the 2nd of September too, by the way. That means that after they had already set the court proceedings in motion they were offered me this settlement. Now that, that right there is completely and utterly despicable.

So on Monday I’m going to the court house after I get out of work to try and get some answers and figure out what my next step should be. Do I even bother with this settlement offer if I’m already being taken to court?

Honestly, I don’t even know why I bother picking up the American Classifieds anymore. The only job listings I see (locally) in there anymore are construction/skilled labor related or highly specialized jobs that require multiple degrees and X-amount of years experiance. Case in point: listings for respiratory therapy technician jobs. And yet, every Thursday, without fail, I stop and pick up a copy and tear through it hoping to find something better paying, something I’d enjoy, something that would let me put my degree to use.

All to no avail.

It’s very depressing.

You know what else is depressing? Having to type on a keyboard with a key that isn’t working right. The “P” key on my laptop’s keyboard is wonky now and not working right. So as I type and I get to a word that needs that letter my flow totally slows down and I have really smash the key down to make sure it registers it. Can you get keys on a laptop fixed? Gosh I hope so! Alas, that is something that will have to wait until…..er….payday after next?

Here lately I’ve been having a hard time getting up and moving in the mornings. Part of me just doesn’t want to go in to work here lately, so I really drag my feet in the mornings when I’m getting ready. I take a shower in the morning because I like starting the day off clean and fresh, but also because it’s a good way to wake me up. Usually. Lately though I’ve been lingering in the shower and it’s been taking longer to wake up that way as well.

Well today my kitties decided to change that for me. I’m not really sure who the culprit was, but I’m leaning towards Ichigo since he was hanging out by the bathroom this morning and came scurrying in as soon as I opened the door and started investigating the room.

Picture this: it’s early in the morning, you’re still half-asleep and wondering if you really have to go into work that day, but damn does the shower feel good. You reach for the shampoo when suddenly something dark and about the size of your palm starts jumping around in the shower with you, collides into your legs and keeps hopping all over the place.

Nothing like having a live desert toad in your shower jumping around to really wake you up!

I am sad to say I let out a shriek at first, not knowing what was going on, but eventually I realized what had gotten into my shower with me.

It wasn’t funny then, admittedly, but now it most definitely is.

I am, once again, donating plasma regularly at the Biologicals facility in town. Which is a damn good thing because I could use all the money I can get. Got some big payments coming up all within days of each other, not to mention some unexpected expenses to boot. Don’t you hate it when that happens?

Technically, I’m not a regular donor yet. But I plan to be! I FINALLY got in to donate on Wednesday, and it was a success too. No passing out or feeling woozy because I wasn’t hydrated enough, and the guy who hooked me up to the machine has been there for years – he even remembered me – and is one of the few that can find my veins easily, so there were no crazy bruises all up and down my arms this time either.

I’m glad I finally got to donate Wednesday; I was just about to give up and write it off as a lost cause. Because it had been such a long time since my last donation I had to get a physical done before I was cleared to donate. Thing is, the physicians there only want to do physicals up until a certain time and even though I was told multiple times that I could come in at a certain time and they’d still do physicals, I kept getting turned away because:

• They had a new donor physical to do and those take so long that the physicians didn’t want another one lined up afterwards and wanted that as their last one for the day.
• Or, the physicians have decided that even though it’s before 3pm, they’re done doing physicals. So what if I’d already been waiting half an hour?
• Despite being open until 3pm on Saturdays, they don’t do physicals after 12pm so I was SOL there too.

Yeah, I’d been trying for weeks, got turned away twice after being told explicitly that they were still doing physicals before they decide they’re just not taking anymore. I backed off, waited a week, then tried again on Tuesday, waited half an hour before being told they’re not doing physicals anymore even though I got there in time. One girl coaxed me to try again on Wednesday and gave me a number, direct to the physician’s lines, so that I could call ahead. I was told if I got get there in 15 minutes I’d definitely get my physical that day. I went from one side of town to the other, during the time that schools are getting out, and made it there in just under ten minutes. And I got the physical done too. Took forever, but I was good to go and donated that day.

Sure I’ve got a job, decent hours, and decent pay, but right now I could use all the extra I can get because things will be very tight and the little extra I get from DCI Biologicals will help a lot.

They’ve made some rather drastic changes since last I was there. Now we’re allowed to have our cellphones (or small laptops, iPads) out on the donor floor, something that was never allowed before. The payouts are more as well too. And, probably the most shocking turn of events – they no longer pay cash. Despite what their ad in the classifieds suggests, they’ve switched to paying donors on Visa debit cards. You can use them anywhere, just like a credit card/check card, and you can monitor your balance online easily too. One swipe with their handy-dandy cordless barcode scanner on the paperwork, activate the card, and voila – good to go. After that they just apply the payments after each successful donation on their system and you don’t have to give them your card again. You’ve got the funds before you’re off the donor floor and they don’t have to worry about a ton of cash on the premises tempting lowlifes.

Might be a little more troublesome when I need to deposit the cash into my bank account, but otherwise, a sensible solution that I do like.

My car seriously has the worst timing ever. It never fails, money is tight (or non-existent), that’s when Pyro (yes, my car is named Pyro) decides he needs something fixed, replaced, or what have you. And unfortunately this still holds true.

Now, I’ve rounded up all the jewelery I don’t care for or just don’t wear and I’ve been meaning to sell it. None of it is high-quality everlon stuff mind you, but a lot of it is fairly decent. There’s a lot of yellow gold in the box of jewelry to sell, which I can’t wear because I get those green marks right away. Now, even though I’ve been planning on selling the stuff, I’ve never really gotten around to it. I want to take it to one of the jewelry stores around town that is buying stuff rather than just any old “we buy gold” shop, as I figure I’d get a better deal that way. Now, with Pyro on the fritz, it looks like I’m gonna have to stop dallying around and just do it.

And I need to hurry up and sell my bassoon too, come to think of it.

So, what is wrong with Pyro you ask? Probably the transmission. Yeah, I know, in the long run it’ll probably be better to just finally get a new car rather then try and fix it, but I really don’t have the cash to buy a new car and I don’t want another car loan to pay, especially since I’m not really sure how stable my job is, given the people I work with. So I need get a least some minor repairs done on Pyro to keep him running for a bit longer.

It’s just, I’m only two payments away from being done paying off Capital One and these payments aren’t small – almost $400 a month. I’m on a plan too, so if I default on a payment now I’ll screw it all up. I cannot miss a payment. Naturally Pyrod decides to take a turn for the worse at this juncture.

For a while now Pyro’s been acting up, if I’m going under 40mph my car makes this sound that is a combination of a rev and someone trying to speed up without changing the necessary gears. And Pyro is an automatic. Over 40mphs you don’t hear that at all, under 40 we have the problem. Sometimes I downgrade just to get it to stop, especially when I’m in the city or in a place with a lot of traffic. It’s just easier on the car to downgrade to 2nd if I gotta go 35mph or under.

There’s also times, when I’m going slow and come to a stop at a stoplight/stop sign that the car will sputter and die. It’ll restart just fine, but still. Thankfully that doesn’t happen too often.

I’ve been hoping to get my mechanic to take a look at it for a while now, but things keep coming up and it keeps getting put off. Now, today, after I’d noticed that Pyro really is having a hard time decelerating (no, not accelerating, decelerating) the “check engine” light came on and is staying on for good.

That is so not a good sign.

Pyro, why do you do this to me? I hope, sincerely hope, Pyro can last a bit longer. Most of my pay from my next payday will go to making the second to last Capital One payment. Whatever is left has to be spread out for groceries, gas, cellphone, and hosting expenses. Yes, unfortunately my hosting plan has to be renewed right after I make the big-ass payment to Capital One. Joy.

I honestly don’t know how I’m gonna get Pyro fixed at all. Unless I sell stuff. (Anybody wanna buy a bassoon? How about some doujinshi?) Even then, more than likely my car will need to stay in the shop for a few days for them to diagnose just what the problem is and work out a solution I can afford. Considering I work six days a week, well I’m not sure how that’s gonna work out at all. =(

Haha, talk about a weird and random blog title, right? It actually makes total sense since I’ve got a little moose with a jolly Christmas bell tied around his neck staring at me right now.

Say what?

Here I am at the 24hr lab/laundry on campus at NMSU and I’ve met another eccentric person here. I’m thinking this is the place to meet all the weirdos. Or at least the people that remind me of the folks I used to hang out with in high school at any rate.

I wish I brought my camera tonight so that I could take a picture of this little moose. Perhaps I should explain how I came to be babysitting a moose in the first place? That’s probably a good place to start.

So there is this guy here, who heard me watching Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail while browsing the net. Somehow this was a cue to him to come up and start talking to me like we’ve been friends all our lives. Guy even tried to help me fold my laundry when I took it out of the dryer! He left after a while and I breathed a sigh of relief. It was short lived. He returned with this little stuffed animal, a moose, which he gave a long rambling spiel about. In short, he found the moose abandoned in a coffee shop years ago, was going through abandonment issues after a bad breakup and felt sorry for it, so he kept it. Now, because the moose stays with him and only him, he was hoping he could leave it with me for a little while so I could keep it company and the moose could spend time with someone other then him.

I kid you not.

I meet the strangest people.

Well, I had been curious as to where can I find cheap laptop batteries here in town, as my mother’s laptop apparently needs one (or she was worried it needed one?) but that’s the least of her concerns right now.

I helped my Mom get her office packed up and moved out. I don’t really wanna go into all of the details, but needless to say the owners of the business where she had a small office space to work out for her bookkeeping business decided they wanted her out. It was all pretty bogus stuff, and the sorry thing of it was that for all the work they had her doing for them (she did their books and taxes in exchange for the office space) they treated her very shitty, pretty much because she wasn’t a Jehovah Witness like them. Her office was tiny, they had a very nasty habit of turning off the heat in the winter and the air conditioning in the summer, never mind that the heating and cooling didn’t really reach her office to begin, which always made it worse. They even started trying to force her to change her office hours to theirs, and wanted her to give them a list of her clients for their approval. Pretty much, it came down to the fact that they wanted to control her business and when she wasn’t having that, well, they tried to force the issue.

The excuse they gave when they told her to pack her stuff up and be out by the weekend? She was running up the electricity bill by always having the air conditioning on. Uh, huh. I’m so sure. I mean, I can totally see that….what with them always turning it off in triple-digit weather because they’re leaving/it’s cool in their offices/or whatever else excuse they used.

Frankly, I think she’s better off without them.

But now she’s stressing out over the lack of a place for her office. She’s got a temporary set up in another office, but in the same building, for now. Just so she can at lease get the necessities for her clients taken care of. But she’s gonna need her own office and pronto. We’re busy looking for a good office space for her now.

While I was helping her move out, one of said A-holes showed up and had to stay there watching everything while making snippy comments about how they were wasting their Sunday there. Pfft! Like we asked them to watch over us like we were a bunch of common criminals! Seriously, did they think she was going to steal something? Nah, that’s actually up their alley. Sadly.

Poor Mom, I’ve had to help her pack up her stuff a couple of times now. Never gets easier. First when she left her old job, then when she began working with the A-holes at their previous location, and again when they moved to this location.

When we find a new place for her, I hope it can be the last time to help her set up her stuff for a while. I’m not sure she can really take these setbacks much more. The economy has hurt her business enough as it is, the move actually cost her a lot of clients due to the new location being too out of their way too.

We’ve had a very, very dry year this year. The only reasons fireworks were not banned completely in the state of New Mexico is because the governor doesn’t have the authority to issue the ban. Parts of New Mexico were burning, Arizona was burning, Texas was burning – all leading up to the 4th. Certain fireworks were banned, did that stop idiot people? No, not at all.

The 4th of July is over, are they finished shooting off fireworks? No, they’re not.

Two nights in a row I’ve turned on the news firefighters out there with a hydraulic hose spraying down brush where some jerkoffs decided to set off fireworks.

Seriously, common sense folks! Why would you set off fireworks (or do anything that can cause a spark) surrounded by highly flammable brush and weeds in a desert during a severe drought? Let alone right next to houses! Unbelievable.

The 4th of July is over people. Bad enough there were people insistent on popping fireworks in these conditions, doubly so the fools that were setting off the banned ones (which were banned for a reason), we don’t need to put up with this crap after the holiday has passed as well. There are enough hazards out there that can start a blaze that will spread out of control quickly as it, please stop adding to the risk with your stupidity!

My kitty seems to have had a fire lit under her after seeing how many mice have been caught in my traps. She’s stepped up her hunting game….a lot. And she’s not limiting herself to just mice either. Every time I let her outside she returns with at least one catch, and literally lays it at my feet. I think she’s trying to make me acknowledge that she is indeed a talented huntress. Bets my mousetraps have offended her?

I’ve been seriously considering putting her on a diet, because she has gained some weight lately. But with all the exercise she’s getting hunting, well really, what kitty needs the feline equivalent of South Beach or apidexin to burn fat when they’re running all over the place hunting down mice, lizards, gophers, squirrels, and birds?

Speaking of birds, take a gander at what Denali caught this evening:

Mind you, this was after she caught (and tortured) two lizards. Wildlife beware, my kitty is on the prowl!

I had to hand it to the little bird though, it was very determined to live. And even after Denali crippled its wings, it was able to evade her for a bit.

Yup, the bird tried to fly away on broken wings, gave it up, then hitched a ride on Denali when Denali turned her back on the bird briefly. When Denali turned back around she just could not fathom where her prey had gone for the longest time. Eventually she did glace back and notice her passenger though! The befuddled look on her little face was priceless!

It’s a proven fact, Mondays just plain suck. Certainly one can have decent or even good Mondays, but for the most part they just suck. Mondays herald the end of the weekend and the return to drudgery. I sometimes think I get an obscene amount of horrendous Mondays, but I could be biased.

Let me tell you how my Monday went and you can be the judge of how bad it was.

To start, since the elementary school near the interstate is a year round school, the school zone lights are still going in the mornings and afternoons. I don’t think the school is completely year-round though, as they only use two school buses now instead of the fleet and the faculty parking lot isn’t nearly as full. So maybe a summer school of sorts? Whatever the case, morning traffic is still slowed down. I was supposed to leave the house at 7am – plenty of time to get to town on time I thought. Well, I set my alarm earlier so that I could get up and get ready on time, but then ended up snoozing for a bit and had to rush around like crazy to get ready for work in under forty minutes. No breakfast, and somehow I forgot to put deodorant on as well. I didn’t realize about the deodorant until I was about ten minutes outside of ‘Cruces. Too late to do jack about it. Damn good thing the air conditioner is on so high at work I can wear sweaters and still be fine. Never the less, I was paranoid everyone could tell and sprayed some extra body spray on when I got to work.

On the way to work I went the interstate instead of the frontage road, which is my usual route. I did this because I thought it would cut more time off my commute. I was right, but damn did I get the crap scared out of me. There is a Las Cruces City police officer who lives out somewhere around Chamberino, NM and the outskirts of La Mesa, NM. These are villages (not towns due to lack of population) that are over twenty miles away from Las Cruces. In short, he is waaay out of his jurisdiction. Yet this officer, who drives his unit home every day (lets not even go into the tax payer dollars going into the upkeep and gas of his unit) thinks he’s god and likes to bully people on his way to and from work. I hate him and he’s just another prime example of why the LCPD deserves no respect what-so-ever.

On the way into ‘Cruces this bastard decides to start scaring people by riding on their bumpers and turning his sirens on and off, then switching lanes, brake-checking the people he just cut in front of, then doing it again. Of course no one dared to pass him, so you have about eight cars in three lanes going 65mph in a pack and eyeballing the loon that’s messing with them. This is, sadly, not unusual at all and I’ve seen him do stuff like this many a time. All of a sudden he swerved from the middle lane into the far-left lane in front of the car in front of me, no signal lights of course, and flips his lights and sirens on. He almost clipped the car in front of me and they came to such a hardstop that I almost rear-ended them! It was insane, and all that just to pull over the truck in front of us. Who, by the way, was going the speed limit and everything. No idea why he pulled them over, but he did.

I was hoping that would be the worst thing to happen to me today, but alas, wishful thinking. Since I was fairly certain that the guy in the pickup truck didn’t break the law and was just that Pig’s victim of the day, I happily put the pedal to the metal after I got out of radar range and put some much needed distance between me and the Pig. The guy pulled him over outside of Las Cruces city limits so he couldn’t issue a citation of any kind. Thus, I did not want to be anywhere nearby when the Pig got back on the road, lest I be victim number two.

Despite all this, I managed to get to work a little early. Instead of getting a “Good morning, how are you?” or even a “Thanks for coming in, I appreciate it” or something from my boss I got a “You’re too early, don’t clock in yet”. Well fuck you too. Guess that’s what I get for being nice and opening when it’s nothing but a hardship for me. Now, as I mentioned, they were installing the new printers and system on the drive thru computers today. Every time they hooked up a new printer last week, the two stations connected to it always experienced glitches. You’d think after doing this all of last week (and when they set ‘em up at the other branches too since we were the last) they’d have it down to an art by now. All possible glitches expected and the method for dealing with them known, right? Apparently not. One computer was set up, it had some sort of glitch and the girl I was opening with got locked out of the system – completely unable to do transactions now. Naturally it got busy at this point and I was handling the drive thru all by myself up until a little after the lobby itself opened. And since the tech guy was working on the one computer that experienced the glitch, he hadn’t finished setting up mine.

So I had to set up my drawer and handle transactions at one of the computers in the teller-line for the lobby. Back and forth I go from drive thru to my station handling the transactions all by myself. My supervisor, or one of the assistant supervisors, could have gotten on a station as well and helped out since I was literally by myself with my co-worker locked out completely. Did they? No. Instead I got snide comments about how I needed to pick up the pace. When everyone else started arriving and getting set up, did anyone offer to help? No. They saw me there with four drive-thru canisters lined up and instead they talked about their weekend, upcoming events, their morning, but no one helped. And if the drive thru gets busy and the teller line isn’t, those on the teller line are supposed to help. Considering they had opened their drawers, but the doors weren’t scheduled to open for another ten minutes, they could have helped. But no.

Then of course, after the first computer gets fixed and the tech guy sets up mine, it has the same problem as the first one and they gotta fix it. Except, I didn’t get locked out of the system so I was still handling drive thru transactions from another station. Where’s my break from this mess?

And to top off my craptacular day, I got written up.

Yup, I got a written reprimand for something I supposedly did over a month ago.

The real shits of it is that it’s not really my fault. Member’s accounts will have memos or flags on them that let the workers know if there is something going on with the account. For example, the member filed chapter 7 bankruptcy, their account is in collections, their wages are garnished, they have a password they want verified before any transactions are handled, or some other department wants to be notified prior to a transaction. You get the picture. Well, in those cases we need someone’s approval to process the transaction and the Member Service Reps. are notorious for sending the member to the teller line and telling the member to inform us that “So-and-so said it was okay/go head”. I’ve never really liked that they do that because a member can lie, and if we leave to go and double-check they get offended and half the time the MSR’s get onto us for doing that. I’ve always thought it was trouble waiting to happen.

Sometimes, I hate it when I’m right.

I actually remember the member, since his name is an odd one that stands out, and I remember the transaction in question. He had come from one of the MSR’s offices, and I saw him with them. He gave me everything that needed to be done and said he had So-And-So’s approval, so I did the transaction. Now, over a month later, I get written up for it. The hell?

Sure, I probably should have double-checked, but since we get talked down to for doing that, especially if the member gets upset or we’re busy and if I recall, we were busy, I was in a no-win situation there. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.

So I got lectured about always reading the memos, getting the proper authorization, and so on. And, on my write up, it says that my next offense could lead to termination. GAH! Seriously?!

So, that was my Monday. How was yours?

Now, before I forget, I need to schedule Denali’s appointment at the vet’s and I need to check out the prices for samsung phone batteries since my phone’s battery doesn’t seem to hard its charge for long at all anymore. Hopefully I can get a new battery with my next paycheck, but I’m not holding my breath. Denali’s veterinary care has to take priority this time. She needs her rabies and feline leukemia vaccinations and I’ve put them off for too long as it is.