I'm convinced I'm the only person who's ever watched Shear Genius on Bravo. The first two seasons were hosted by Jaclyn Smith, who was as dull as a butter knife.

I was surprised with last week's premiere when they showed Camila Alves as the new host. (Apparently she is a model, but most people would know her as Matthew McConaughey's babies mama.)

It's obvious English is not her first language, which is fine, but she talks so painstakingly slow I find myself finishing her sentences in my head before she can form the words. It also doesn't help she sounds like she's got Matthew's wetsuit stuffed in her mouth either.

Today I sent an e-mail with a form to someone for her signature. She sent me a message saying that the formatting of the page was weird, and printing out on three pages, and would it be okay to shrink the font. I replied that's fine, whatever's easiest.

She sent me an e-mail asking if I could reformat the thing and send back to her to print out because she was so slammed with work.

Really?

I am no IT guy, but I know that it takes less time to click Page Setup and Fit to One Page than it does to send someone else an e-mail asking him to do it.

But maybe I am missing something.  Sheesh.

I have a lot of things I should do tonight (dishes, more dishes, laundry, cleaning, shopping for dad's bday present, shopping for bf's Valentine's present, taxes, etc) but I won't do any of them.

Instead, I went to the gym, I ate a healthy dinner, and I will probably sit on my ass for the rest of the night playing Bejeweled.

I have a military ball to attend in about a month. It's formal, and all the women wear long dresses. I went out dress shopping today, and guess what, it's impossible to find a long dress that will fit me (I'm 5'2"). I know I can get it tailored, but I can't even find one I like.

I'm beyond frustrated. Why can't anyone make a dress that's between knee-length and floor length?

We're interviewing for the person who will be my new boss.  Whenever I ask about questions like management style or something else, my notboss* always seems to look at me and respond like I'm paranoid or being high maintenance.  This person will be my direct boss, damn right I want to know what kind of manager they are and since I was not involved in the last round of questions and I'll only get to be part of the team interview I'm going to ask what I find important to ME.

*notboss - Person higher on the food chain than me technically but NOT MY BOSS.

When I move, I'm making friends in my own age bracket.  Hanging out with 20somethings makes me feel older than I am.

Hey, no.

You may have a piece of paper. I don't expect it to be returned.

If you're the kind of person who regularly comes to meetings without paper and a writing implement, or electronic device of some kind, I do not want to work with you.

For 7 years now I have volunteered for the same event in about three different positions.  I also semi-regularly volunteer for other events this organization puts on.  This year, I went to sign up again and emailed about 2 - 3 weeks ago to request a specific task.  I get told the volunteer request hasn't gone out yet, but respond when it does.  I wait until the volunteer request comes out and discover the specific task I wanted isn't even listed.  So my friend, who is far more vocal than I, emails to find out why that task isn't listed.  She gets told that a large group who has done it the past several years got that task.  Nope, WE did it last year and there were only four of us there.  The politics of this volunteering endeavor are starting to annoy me to an infinite degree. 

I hate when I am walking on a sidewalk or at a shopping mall and the people in front of me come to a dead stop without any warning. Move to the side people, move to the side.

Dear Person At Work,

It is official.  I hate you.  Your habit of continually not inviting me to meetings where the subject is clearly my area has pushed me over the edge.  You don't know the laws.  You were hired for your "expertise" and yet every time we have a disagreement you want to bring the attorney and my boss in on the discussion.  Let's note how they have not backed you up on anything so far.  Take it as the sign that it obviously is and let's begin to work collaboratively and not confrontationally.  Otherwise I can stop doing you the courtesy of including you on what I'm doing that impacts your area and just do what I want.  In fact, I think that's where we're going anyway.  I'm done with you. 

Be aware, at this point I will do whatever I can to throw you under whatever bus comes by.  Just so you know.

Cheers!
UnknownPeever

I went out last night to watch the Buffalo Sabres lose to the Pittsburgh Penguins, and drank six or seven non-alcoholic beers.  I was in bed before midnight, and got a fairly decent night's rest.  So why do I feel like absolute shit today?  I feel just like I used to after a twelve hour "Sports Saturday" drinking fest.  THIS IS NOT RIGHT.

I was leaving a comment on Peeved Michelle's post about her smelly garbage can, and couldn't for the life of me remember what the word is for those things you use to hold clothes on a clothesline. I sat here for a good five minutes, too embarrassed to even ask my 10-year-old for fear of looking like a total idiot.

Clothespins. I hope I haven't had some sort of stroke. I'm chalking it up to learning a million new words in a Medical Language class I'm taking, thus rendering me incapable of remembering regular words.

A friend is working on her taxes.  She's mostly a poor college student so she didn't pay a lot in taxes and she didn't earn a lot in income.  It would make sense to me that she would get the entire amount she paid in taxes back this year.  How is it, then, that due to all sorts of credits she actually gets tax refund in an amount that is more than twice what she actually paid in taxes?  And through the power of google, we discover she is not the only one?  How does this make sense when the government is a bajillion dollars in the hole?

If it has been more than 20 years since you last worked for a former employer, be aware they won't have records of you or your employment*.  They will have no idea who you are and really probably will not be able to help you too much.  They will also be unable to help you with a retirement contribution issue from 1980, because again, that was more than 20 years ago and the records are gone.

*US Government record retention requirement is seven years after your employment ends. 

My son came home from school today with two friends in tow. Mind you, I'm sick and on the couch, feeling like total ass.

He asks if they can use his phone to call his parents. Um, yeah, and why are they are again? He comes in the house five minutes later, and says one of the kids' mom just came by, and said she'd be back at 6:30 to pick him up.

I've never met this woman in my life. How does she know I'm not on some drinking binge, or will sell her son into little boy slavery? Am I supposed to feed this kid supper? I was totally craving Hardee's, but no way in hell am I buying some kid I don't know fast food.

My son's totally in trouble once these kids leave.

Has anyone else noticed that on TV and in movies people always throw up in the sink?  Why is that?  Unless you're seriously sick,rarely in real life do people throw up in the sink.  We all know that if you do that... you have to clean it up.  You just vomited, like you want to clean the sink afterward?

I'm not sure what is more annoying to me - public toilets that you have to flush with your hand and possibly contract a flesh-eating virus, or self-flushing ones that either still flush while I'm hovering or make me dance around in front of the sensor, trying to get it to flush so the next person can't tell I drank a shitload of beer the night before and I'm still dehydrated.

I also disdain run-on sentences, but I had to get my point across.

Driving to the Philly airport confuses me so very much, and I'm confused enough on a regular basis.

I went to park my car in one of the handy garages and I read the sign that said "Park here for US Airways." So I drove into that garage. I missed the part of the sign that said, "International."  Which I didn't realize til I entered the completely vacant international terminal A and stood there, confused, because I was flying domestic.

I found an airport worker who was deeply involved in a fun social conversation with another worker and I said, "Excuse me..." explaining my predicament. She rolled her eyes and got all irritated. City of brotherly love my ass.

I checked in and went through security at Terminal C. Then I realized my gate was in Terminal F.  Nobody at security thought to mention that to me when they checked my boarding pass.

Then I had to go through security again after shlepping through the maze of renovations that guided me outside of the gate areas, on the way to Terminal F. What a freakin' pain in the ass!

Only then did I realize there was a shuttle between terminals I could have taken. And it also dawned on me that I could have gone back to my car and moved it for an easier getaway upon my return, but of course at that point I didn't have the time for that.

But I was all cheerful and optimistic when I got back last night and asked where the shuttle was that would take me from F to A.  The info desk guy said "You have to walk to A from here. The shuttle won't go the opposite direction it only goes from A to F. It doesn't go around the airport."  Really? How does that work, exactly? That doesn't even make sense. How I longed for the monorail at Newark airport.

And can I walk straight through the terminals from F to A, or are the parking decks connected? "No. Go to terminal E, cross the bridge, go down the escalator, walk outside in the rain, cross the street, go across the railroad tracks, go inside, cross that other bridge..."  I should have taken a taxi cab. 

The airport was the one thing I did not research for my little weekend trip, so I know I'm partially responsible for this clusterfuck.  I yelled at myself and into the security cameras as I shlepped through kind of scary dark parts of the terminals. I stand by my disdain for the Philadelphia airport!

A few weeks ago, the tenants in the lower half of our duplex were burglarized during the night.  The perps went right up on the front porch and opened the living room window, making off with a bike and a laptop.

My landlady's response?  Installing a padlock for the inside of the back gate, because it's apparently very important that nobody can get into the double-locked steel doors in the windowless back of the house.  The beauty part is that she only gave keys to the downstairs neighbors, who have never used the back gate to my knowledge.  Who uses the back gate?  That's right.  Yours truly, the one who does all the backyard maintenance. 

When we got the downstairs neighbors' key and attempted to have it copied by an actual locksmith, we found out that no blanks for this particular key exist anywhere.  Time to remove the lock entirely and replace it with a hellbeast who only eats burglars and landladies.

I really enjoy learning on Friday evening that the week end will be spent prepping the bathrooms for painting.

This is after I agreed to pay some one to paint them.  If you want to try to go the cheapo route and trim the costs, why don't we pay some guy to scrape and sand, and then I will do the painting.  That's the fun and easy part.  Sanding and scraping are for sucks.

My carpal tunnel kept me awake for HOURS last night.  I didn't get up to take any pain meds because:

I was just looking at a product called "MINI (yes, all uppercase) Bucket and Shovel" (kids toys) on a website and of the 42 product reviews, about half of them were complaints that the buckets are "tiny".

Last time I checked, "mini" means "really fucking small". If the mini part was misleading, the fact that the product description says that the shovels are  3.5 inches long should have been an indicator that this is not a regular size bucket and shovel set. And if that wasn't enough, the half dozen photos showing the little buckets and shovels as cute little table centerpieces with M&Ms in them should have tipped them off. They also might have considered reading the 20 reviews where the other asshats complained that they weren't expecting 3.5 inches to be so damn small.

I can understand wanting to leave a comment stating that they weren't thorough enough when researching their purchase and as such wanted to leave a message stating that the product wasn't what they expected so that other lazy people didn't make the same mistake but giving a product zero stars because the product is actually what was described in the first place is just plain not helpful to me.

In general I am nice to everyone at my job.  Even the people who ask me the dumbest questions.  However, when a person asks me for an address that is printed right at the top on the first page of the form they are using I kind of want to smack them.

It irritates me when restaurants charge more for the same lunch menu items at dinner time. I've had the exact same burger in the exact same restaurant at both lunch and dinner and they charge $6 more for it at dinner. The portion isn't any bigger, it's exactly the same. Annoying.

These are the directions on the Duncan Hines Chocolate Lover's Brownies box:

* Preheat oven to 350 degrees for metal pan, 325 degrees for dark or coated pan.

I have a glass pan. Where are the directions for that? And what if I had a dark metal pan?