And I could write a massive essay on why I think the Twilight books suck, but I think the internet has already covered all my arguments (Bella is a wimpy ineffectual horn-dog, Edward is a manipulative psycho, that werewolf kid is really the only redeeming character in the books, sort of, until he almost um, rapes Bella, or something, but that’s OK because she forgives him, or whatever).

SO it turns out that, before all this Twilight nonsense, there were these other books, called “The Vampire Diaries,” which have now been turned into a TV show on CWTV. They were first published in 1991, which is quite a bit before this whole “Twilight” nonsense. They aren’t exactly the same, but they do have one thing in common that, to be honest, absolutely boggles my mind:

In both of these series, century+ old vampires feel the urge, for some reason, to return to high school.

Let that sink in a little bit. You have no need to turn on your suspension of disbelief here, so consider this: you’re over a hundred years old, you’ve lived through just about every war in recent history, you’re probably pretty smart if you’ve managed to stay alive all this time (oh wait, I forgot, one of the other things that these two series have in common is the vampires can go out during the day and not be reduced to a pile of ash) and oh yes, you’ve probably eaten LOTS AND LOTS OF PEOPLE along the way, right? No, again, another thing these series have in common is our main Vampire McSteamy is a “vegetarian” who doesn’t eat people. But he has friends who are not so nice. And the ultimate thing that these have in common? Not only do these hundred-plus year old vegetarian UV-tolerant vampires return to high school, but they also are interested in dating high school girls.

Really? Because the only thing worse, in my opinion, than returning to high school, would be to date a high schooler. And they’re doing both.

Can someone please explain to me when and why vampires went from sexy-because-they’re-evil to sexy-because-they’re-magical-but-not-evil? And on what planet ANYONE could reasonably suspend their disbelief long enough to think for one MOMENT that anyone over the age of 25 would ever consider going back to high school, or dating a twatty teenager??

Just to recap what these books have in common:

• insanely sexy/attractive century+ old vampire returns to high school
• decides he wants to date a normal, teenage girl (young enough to be his great-great-great-granddaughter)
• can go outside when the sun is still out
• vampires can choose not eat people
• vampires have friends/relatives who eat people

Fuck that. I like my vampires evil. Think Spike or Angelus from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Or ya know…Dracula.

Today I am going to bitch about bumper stickers on cars at work.  “But Sidney,” you may want to say, “that is FREE SPEECH and we all know you support free speech!” Yeah, yeah, I do, but guess what? When you work for The Man & Big Brother, Inc. YOU DO NOT GET FREE SPEECH.  It is not covered in the employee handbook, so suck it up and remove your OFFENSIVE, MISOGYNISTIC, HATEFUL bumper stickers before I have to vandalize your car.  I refuse to even take/post photos of the offensive sticker, but know it involves a photo of SWEET BABY JEZUZ, red dripping bloody letters and the words “abortion” and “murder” in the same sentence. Yeahhh….

On to happier topics.  I have so far survived about six rounds of layoffs here at The Man & Big Brother, Inc. Which means I still have a job, though no guarantees past December. I was talking to EE last night about some of the drama (not publish-worthy, I assure you) that’s gone on in my life lately and – supportive friend/ex that she is – she says, “well, it seems like you have fewer and fewer reasons to stay in New England. Maybe it’s time to move?” Maybe, indeed. The prospect of job searching, job finding, and moving, all absolutely TERRIFY me.  I’m only 28 though, so I’m supposed to still be footloose and fancy-free, right? The problem is, if I leave CT people will “expect” me to go to one of three places – back to South Florida where I grew up and where my father’s family still lives, out to Las Vegas where my mother’s family lives now, or to San Fransisco where I have been saying I wanted to live since I was 16 years old and where I have many, MANY friends and alums from my college, and where I would probably have a much easier time meeting women than here in CT where my two friends and I always call each other and ask, “hey, have you ever been on a date with so-and-so?” before going out with a new lady, I do not exagerate the queer community is THAT small, between the three of us we’ve covered most of the lesbians between New Haven and Springfield, possibly even Northampton. CoCo and Kevin want me to go to Atlanta, KT wants me to go to Austin, B wants me to go to Oregon…these are all nice suggestions, but I have no idea where **I** would want to move.  Other than San Fransisco, but I hate the thought of living in a crappy share with multiple housemates, one who would probably have some big smelly dog that would chew up all my underwear…I’m just so spoiled sharing my condo with my two cats and one roomie and having my own little balcony where I tame squirrels  and my pilates studio (and you know how hard it is to find a good place to exersize) with my trainer who I love…I may hate CT, but there is something to be said for the quality of life I manage to have here, despite the high(ish) cost of living.

So I went on over to findyourspot.com and took the quiz. I’m not sure it really listened to me. Hmm.  Here is a sampling of my suggestions:

Honolulu, Hawaii America’s Tropical Paradise
This state capital has long been an important port city; its name is Hawaiian for “protected bay”…
Population: 905,300  |  Average Home Price: $786,000  |  Precipitation: 23″  |  Snow: 0″

Baton Rouge, Louisiana The Cajun Capital
This town was named after the red stick its founder saw on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River…
Population: 603,000  |  Average Home Price: $159,000  |  Precipitation: 61″  |  Snow: 0″

Las Vegas, Nevada Entertainment Capital of the World
Ladies’ Home Journal called this one of its Best Cities for Women, citing skyrocketing job growth and shriveling crime rates…
Population: 1,722,000  |  Average Home Price: $250,000  |  Precipitation: 5″  |  Snow: 1″

Charleston, South Carolina Cosmopolitan Southern City
Fort Sumter, the scene of the first shots of the Civil War, overlooks this city’s harbor…
Population: 603,180  |  Average Home Price: $285,000  |  Precipitation: 52″  |  Snow: 0″

Jacksonville, Florida Florida’s First Coast
Here in Florida’s “youngest city” the median age is just 32…
Population: 773,800  |  Average Home Price: $291,000  |  Precipitation: 54″  |  Snow: 0″

Baltimore, Maryland The Sparkling Harbor City
This Atlantic seaboard city is home to the National Aquarium…
Population: 651,000  |  Average Home Price: $310,000  |  Precipitation: 40″  |  Snow: 18″

Santa Cruz, California Fun on the Central Coast
This city’s old lighthouse now features a surfing museum, overlooking the famous “Steamer Lane” surf spot…
Population: 54,200  |  Average Home Price: $784,000  |  Precipitation: 29″  |  Snow: 0″

San Bernardino, California The Inland Empire
You can satisfy your craving for heat at this city’s annual California State Championship Chili Cook-off…
Population: 195,000  |  Average Home Price: $396,000  |  Precipitation: 12″  |  Snow: 0″

Valencia, California A Blueprint For Paradise
This spot features over 21 miles of “paseos,” pedestrian walkways for leisurely travel throughout the community…
Population: 50,750  |  Average Home Price: $525,000  |  Precipitation: 21″  |  Snow: 0″

San Francisco, California The Golden Gate City
The towers of this city’s Golden Gate Bridge are purposely out of alignment in order to compensate for the curvature of the earth…
Population: 751,700  |  Average Home Price: $720,000  |  Precipitation: 21″  |  Snow: 0″

Santa Barbara, California The American Riviera
More than 1,200 movies were made in this city at the Flying A Studio before the movie industry centralized in Hollywood…
Population: 92,500  |  Average Home Price: $1,180,000  |  Precipitation: 17″  |  Snow: 0″

Washington, District of Columbia The World’s Greatest Capital
This most patriotic of American cities was laid out by a French architect…
Population: 572,000  |  Average Home Price: $572,000  |  Precipitation: 39″  |  Snow: 16″

West Palm Beach, Florida The Gold Coast
This famous Florida spot hosts “Sunfest,” the state’s largest music and art festival on the waterfront…
Population: 1,216,000  |  Average Home Price: $326,000  |  Precipitation: 60″  |  Snow: 0″

And yes, I find it highly amusing that my old stomping ground (I was born in WPB) is LAST. hehe.

I never thought I would be one to live with a roommate again; the last one I lived with ended terribly, with her calling the police on my guests when I had a dinner party!  I did have two friend roommates after college who I enjoyed living with, even though when I was in college, I found out that being best friends with people does not always mean you can live together in harmony when one summer Catherine and her girlfriend, and my girlfriend and I, shared a tiny, flea-infested flat in West Philadelphia.  It was a record-breaking summer for heat, and there were no jobs to be found so my girlfriend and I ended up working as telemarketers selling circus tickets for the Potsdam Police Department.  We had to beg for money for bus fare home one night when they raised the rate on us, so it was a stressful summer.  I even played my trumpet on the street for tips!  We made the most of it, but it was a hard summer, and my girlfriend and I ended up going home early after having so much trouble paying our own way.  Catherine’s mom was awesome though; she would bring us cases of Heineken and Mike’s Hard Lemonade (hey, we were poor college kids, we had no taste) and take us to dinner every weekend.

Moving on to work issues…I’m sure the current ecomonic crisis is being felt by all.  We had 200 people laid off at my company last week, and I am hanging onto my job by the skin of my teeth. Luckily I’m considered “low-cost outsourcing,” otherwise I would be collecting unemployment right now.

…what were we thinking?

Embarassing college decisions, in no particular order:

• I had a webcam. Observe:

• I had lots of piercings in my ears, as evidenced by this photo…

• We drank far too much…we had to do do things like this…

• I did terrible things to make myself unattractive. Like tiny braids. Lots of them.

• My girlfriend and I had no idea how to decorate our home…

• We had pets in school.  Illegal pets…

• I used to smoke…

When I called our board member/bookkeeper (after receiving notice I was being sued) she was VERY rude to me on the phone. I asked her, “well Lori, how much do I owe? I don’t even know. The suit papers don’t tell me. I never received a bill from you to alert me to the fact that I owe money!”

And you know what she said? “Well, we don’t SEND LETTERS! WE ASSUME PEOPLE PAY THEIR FEES EACH MONTH!”

……………let that sink in a little. They don’t send letters to inform you that you are not paying the correct amount of condo fee. A condo fee which was provided BY THEM – TO YOU – AT YOUR CLOSING – AND WAS THE WRONG AMOUNT.  Instead, they refer you to their SHADY LAWYERS for collection, who trump up THOUSANDS of dollars in various attorneys fees that – guess what? – according to my condo docs, I am stuck paying, or else they will continue to pursue foreclosure.  (more on those nasty condo docs later)

So now you know the back story on why I had a very VESTED interest in being at the board meeting.  The board is, as far as I am concerned, NOT acting in the best interest of its owners, not providing due notice of changes and fees, and NOT making sound and ethical business decisions.

Another reason why I was very vested in attending the meeting was on January 3rd (dated January 2nd) I received a letter from the board informing me that our boiler had not “passed inspection,” and had cost over $1,600 in repairs in the past three months, and as such the board had decided to buy a new system – for the low cost of $70,000.

SEVENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS.  After only $1,600 in repairs.

What that meant for owners is the following: depending on your percentage ownership (mine is just over 2.5%) you will pay an additional montly special assessment fee – mine being $231.  A month.  Extra.  For six months.  For work that won’t be done until June.

Now my condo fees when I purchased my condo were $195.  Those fees were one of the reasons I bought the condo where I did – if I had wanted to pay $250-$300/month I could have lived in a high-rise in downtown Hartford and had a pool and gym and garage and tennis court at my condo! But I decided to save money, and the trip across the river each morning, and bought my place in East Hartford with the much lower fee (and more importantly, NO GARAGE). Since I have moved in, my condo fee has gone from $195/month to $308/month.  Add on this $231 special assessment, and I’m now paying $539/month in condo fees.

Let me put this in perspective:

• My mortgage payment is $516/month. I would be paying more towards monthly condo fees than my actual mortgage payments.
• My 3-year car loan on my 2007 Honda CR-V is only $510/month. I would be paying more towards condo fees than my car payments.
• The sum total of my car insurance, homeowners insurance, Blackberry voice/data service, cable bill, CITY OF EAST HARTFORD PROPERTY TAXES, and average monthly electricity bill is about $450/month.  I would be paying more in condo fees than all of my regular monthly bills combined!

Now I don’t even live on a “fixed income,” while most of the owners in my building do since they’re all much older than myself, and some even older than my grandparents.  So you can imagine what kind of impact this would have on THEM, who have NO opportunity to say to their boss “hey, times are tough, do you mind if I work some OT this month?”

Now before you think I’m totally overreacting and remind me that special assesmnets are a necessary evil in times of dire circumstance and emergency repairs, allow me to explain to you what I found out at my over three hour condo association meeting…(yes, OVER THREE HOURS)…

• They received three quotes, ranging from around $40,000 to the over $70,000 quote. They went with the over $70,000 quote because “it covered the most work.” My response to the board? “Why didn’t we receive three quotes for 90-95% of the same work so we could do an actual comparison of the costs associated with this work? Comparing three quotes for three different jobs is not making a good ‘business decision’ for the association.”
• One of our board members is demented. Everyone says “he ain’t right,” but after being around enough old people in nursing homes I recognize demented when I see demented. He was strong-armed by Lori to vote for the $70,000 after she told him “the boiler might explode.”
• The $70,000 bid was pushed through by our management company in under 72 hours, and the company whose contract they signed JUST HAPPENED to be company of the brother of the guy who ran for (and lost, I didn’t vote for him) the board with the support/approval of Lori.  Everyone mentioned kick-backs.  Even the old blind lady from C12.
• Our condo docs are woefully out of date, a subject I brought up and really made people realize how much they needed to be updated by saying “these condo docs have not been touched since BEFORE I WAS BORN. Isn’t it time we should update them to reflect a less powerful board and a more powerful association?” I’m now in charge of the committee to fire our management company and shady lawyer and hire a new, non-shady lawyer to re-write our docs with us.  Docs which will allow cats, and other indoor small non-offensive pets.  Docs which will NOT allow the board to authorize a foreclosure suit against an owner for under $1,000 in unpaid condo fees. Docs which will NOT charge the owner for unecessary attorney’s fees like $250 letters that get lost in the mail.  Two $250 letters. Letters which supposedly let me know I owed money.  $250. For a letter. One. Letter. That I never received. Which they never received the return receipt on. $250 for a fucking LETTER.  Twice. Times two. $500 in unreceived letters. In the course of two weeks. After which…they sued.  SHADY.
• The budget presented at our budget meeting was NOT the finalized budget. It was just ESTIMATES of what we had spent, with additional estimates for what we would spend this year. There were many multi-thousand dollar items that the management company could not explain.  My next door neighbor and I are also on a committee to  go through the budget line by line and cut all unnecessary expenses.  For example, we spend over $6,000/year on “misc. indoor maint.” but considering since I’ve lived there the light bulb on the left side of my storage room has been blown, I see no reason that money should be approved and padded into our monthly fee.  I could go on for paragraphs on the suspicious budget items we haggled over during this meeting, but lets just say, this management company is GO-GO-GOING.
• Lori, who has been the bookkeeper for many years and gave herself quite the pay raise last year, is also going.  Bye-bye, Lori! It’s been great! But we’ll be doing our own bookkeeping from now on!

So I went to this meeting with the intention of getting people to admit we need to rewrite the condo docs, getting Lori fired, getting the shady lawyers fired, and generally shaking things up…and I believe I managed to do all of that.  ::pats self on back::  Oh, we also got them to put a stop payment on the $26,000 “down payment” they put on this work to be completed in six months, and they are no longer holding us to the special assessment fee as a result.

“Yeah, she’s a GIRL!  A GIRL is the new BOSS!” – my coworkers amazement that one of the new model managers is actually a WOMAN.  My response was “oh, is she younger than I am? When you refer to a professional working woman as I girl, I picture some little tween sitting in a cube wearing her mother’s clothes.”

“God, someone needs to give him a blow job or something, he’s wound so tight.  Any volunteers?” – said at the lunch table by a very high-level manager.  I was, of course, the only woman at the table, and everyone looked at me and giggled.

“You’re not allowed to complain about a colonoscopy in front of me.  I’ve had to have my vagina cranked open and examined every year since I was 18! You don’t have anything to complain about!” – ok, I said this one at the lunch table, and am still a little shocked that I said such a thing.  Really though, I’m so tired of all the guys who are turning 50 whining and moaning about this procedure, especially in front of my boss who had cancer down there and gets really upset when they talk about skipping their check-ups.  Anyway, we have a saying, “What goes on at the lunch table, stays at the lunch table.”

How hard is it to spell my name correctly?  When you send an email, you see the following:

Why is it then I get emails with my name spelled “Sydney,” “Syndy,” “Syndney,” and – horror of horrors – “Cyndy/ie?!?”  Learn to read, people!

OMGWTFBBQ MICROSOFT YOU SUCK. Why did you decide that when copying and pasting data into cells in Excel they should attempt to retain their original formatting!? Because I have to say – NO ONE wants them to retain their original formatting.  We just want to alt+tab ctrl+p alt+tab ctrl+c alt+tab etc., but we can’t do that because we have to click on the stupid fucking input bar so whatever is in our paste buffer is pasted as plain fucking text.  You seriously screwed the pooch on this one, AMONG OTHERS…don’t even get me started on your automatic text formatting that tries to turn my parameter names into exponents, ARGH.

DO NOT forward me non-work related emails, ESPECIALLY if you’re my boss! It is just completely inappropriate to forward anything with a prayer, “advice” on how to save gas/money/baby seals, or any stupid/incorrect histrionic warning that ends up on snopes the next day debunked as a total farce.

Seriously learn to listen.  If I tell you “we cannot have x, y, or z until the IT department releases a, b, and c to us” do not then go to your boss and say, “hey, paperhurts is holding up our ability to have x, y, or z!”  I do not work in the IT department, and I’m pretty sure the Lotus Notes group has an office in Hells annex.  It would explain why they never answer their phone and only randomly respond to email.

Learn to read (part deux!)!!!!  If the title of one powerpoint slide says:

Requesting a Lotus Notes Domino Web ID

And the title of another powerpoint slide says:

Requesting access to [Proprietary System of The Man and Big Brother, Inc.]

Do NOT do the former, and then get pissed when it doesn’t achieve the latter!  You sent a request for access to a system that I OWN to the Lotus Notes group – we’re not even sure if they exist, or it’s just one drunk monkey tapping on keys who occasionally gets a request correct – so don’t be surprised/pissed off/complain to your boss that “access to [Proprietary System of The Man and Big Brother, Inc. is taking too long!” while pointing your non-literate finger at myself.  I just might accidentally add you to every standard distribution list, and see you complain later when you’re receiving 400+ emails/day on every single entry in that database!

The most asinine argument I have never had with someone recently was about the following: “America is a consumer culture to the point of ridiculousness.”  Now initially I would agree with this statement, but the person making the argument went on to lambast the following “over-consumers:”

1. Anyone who buys a book instead of using the library.  Specific example cited from that twatty book “Twilight” where the main character researches something on Google and then goes to the bookstore to buy a book instead of going to the library. GASP!  How dare she! Doesn’t she know she could easily and for free do all this research at the library?! This is the railroader’s primary example of our over-consuming culture.

Citing an example from “Twilight,” now really.  I roll my eyes at ANYONE who cites “Twilight” as an indication of current societal trends, unless they are lamenting the apparent lack of literary culture required for such a piece of tripe to make it to bestseller status.  Is there anyone who read that book who would argue with me that it’s nothing more than teeny-bopper masturbation manual with no redeeming qualities AT ALL??

2. Anyone who BUYS A DVD.  Why do you need to buy a DVD?  “Unless it’s your favorite and you’re going to watch it over and over,” she quickly goes on to exempt, seeing as I’ve seen her DVD collection and she owns the complete series of “Lost,” among others. Well, I manage to get a little explanation in here while she takes a breath, sometimes it is just better to buy.  Both my parents and myself are horrible about remembering to return movies, and always end up with late fees more expensive than had we just bought the movie to begin with. So we usually buy a movie if we have a pretty good idea that we are going to enjoy it, and then we can lend it around to folks.  If we don’t end up liking the movie, we can just donate it to Goodwill. Her response?   “Well that’s just stupid, how hard is it to return a movie, that’s just a basic life skill, and you can get them free at the library, anyway.“
   

I apparently lack basic life skills, because I can never remember to return movies on time. As such, I am contributing to our bloated consumer culture, putting independent bookstores out of business, or maybe it is libraries I am offending, I’m not quite sure.

Example #2: “Americans are entitled.” Well now there is one argument I would NEVER want to argue with, right?  WRONG. Her examples for “entitlement” include the following:

1. People who expect their health insurance to pay for any “non-emergent care.”  She supports this by citing her elective surgery that was eligible for partial coverage by insurance, but paid for out of pocket (really because she didn’t want that surgery on her “health insurance history file,” and not out of any sense of duty to not “abuse the system” in my humble opinion).  She goes on to complain about how “the few” (meaning herself) pay for “the many” (meaning me) and it’s not fair.  SHE doesn’t have any chronic illness, yet HER premiums go to pay for MY care.

I would like to point out that from what I understand the point of insurance is the following:

“…the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for a premium, and can be thought of as a guaranteed small loss to prevent a large, possibly devastating loss…”

So she is guaranteed small loss, in order to later prevent a larger loss.  She interprets this in a very narrow way, claiming that insurance should only cover emergency situations (”catastrophes”), and that we should just pay out of pocket for routine medical care.  In her mind, this would “significantly lower premiums and the cost of health care in general.”  Fuck the huge percent of our population who cannot even afford premiums, let alone out of pocket medical expenses, because they’re just another example of “entitled Americans who abuse the system.”¹

2. People who expect their health insurance to pay for any PREVENTATIVE MEDICINE.  I made the mistake of saying “I hear that some insurance companies will pay for gym memberships since it’s preventative care, so I’m going to submit my Pilates lessons and see if I can get any of that money back,” which started a rant very similar to the previous one, but directed venomously at me in particular and at “insurance scammers” in general.

I’m sorry, but I think that PREVENTATIVE MEDICINE is something that is very much undervalued in our culture, because people would rather put a band on a cut then spend the time training someone to avoid getting the cut.  Honestly I think Pilates and AIS should be covered by insurance because it has significantly lowered the frequency of my visits to the doctor and chiropractor for miscellaneous back issues, and essentially works as physical therapy.  I in no way support insurance fraud, but no matter how I tried to explain that, by the fact that I would DARE to submit a “NON-MEDICAL” claim to my health insurance company means I’m “abusing the system and ruining it for the rest” of the world.

Anyway, </therapeutic rant>.

¹ I should note that I think there are tons of people who – as a result of not having a job that provides them with health insurance – completely abuse Medicair/etc. I’m not talking about them right now.  If I think about them, I will get sad that we do not have an economically conservative – yet – socially liberal political party in this country.