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Monday, Mar. 25, 2002 / 6:21 p.m. ~My Penance is Tedious Rambling~ Driving home on the highway just now, a flatbed trailer carrying several pre-fab gazebos passed me. The final one, on the end of the bed, was finished in a nice oak-y stain, had little scalloped edging along the top, below the roofline. It was screened in, the sun was shining through it, the air a perfect balmy 75, I wanted to sit in it, not on the truck, but in that gazebo somewhere, feel the breeze, it was a moment. Just a moment of dreaminess. I'm awfully tired. It was a hard day at the office. If you include Sunshine, and you might not include her, but if you consider she worked with us up until Thursday of last week, you would include her, we were short four people today. Laverne was out, and she is out a lot lately, and I never hear her talk about why. Normally she is very loud and I hear everything she and Kukla talk about, but she never comes in on a Tuesday talking loudly about her day off. ? Penelope took the day off too, and she was off last Wednesday. Again, no talking about it loud enough so I can hear, and we're not too friendly beyond the "Good Morning, Bless You" hug she likes to give. Quincey too, was off, but why?, dunno. So we scrambled. Mondays the phones are busy, and everyone got the new program installed, so it was busy, yes, busy, and my hands suddenly, quite suddenly, are feeling the pounding of this keyboard, the constant backspacing to correct errors, and N and G would like my attention, so I don't know how much I'll write. Now. My cable box, my digital receiver, that was brand spanking new in July, was defective, and died. The cable guy came fairly early, but he was not early, just early within his alotted estimated time of arrival, or something, and he replaced it, no problem, and all was well. He said, when asked, that maybe 500 out of some 27,000 receivers they've placed in folks' homes, have died. Dead. Motorola. Hmmmm..... I went to Office Max to buy a digital camera I saw in one of their ads, a $25 digital camera, which I surmised might indeed be a piece of crap, but it's purple and a piece of crap digital camera is better than no digital camera, so I did buy it, and realized once again the reason I don't shop..... I buy stuff! I am a terrible impulse buyer, and I spend too much, and I have lousy customer service/cashier experiences, and I buy defective merchandise and stuff like that. Bad. Do not enjoy shopping. So, there's a caller ID unit, for only $15, and hey, wouldn't it be great to have a second one, in the bedroom, so I don't have to run into the living room to see who's calling if the phone ever rings, which it does not, while I'm home (while I'm at work it must ring like crazy, tons of calls while I'm not home!), and..... it's PURPLE. I'm a sucker for the purple electronics/appliances/anything really. And the cashier says, "Oh, you get a rebate on that caller ID unit", and gives me the rebate brochure and I come home and it's the PL model number not the one I bought, which was not discernible (that's not a word, I don't think) from the PL model, so I chose it instead because it was packaged in cardboard, recyclable corrugated box-y cardboard, instead of nasty plastic. That was Saturday. I came home, discovered I had to exchange the caller ID, so I could send in for the $10 rebate on the $15 purchase, and I played with the digital camera only to find that I cannot install the software necessary to view the digital photos because there is not room on my hard drive..... this, I should have known. I did know. And I bought it anyway. $25 for a digital camera I cannot use. Even if I delete my porn file (!), I still won't have the hard drive space. This is a dinosaur computer. I'm not kidding. There's room for Windows and not much else.... That was my Saturday and Sunday, shopping, going to Office Max, buying stuff that I can't use, going back to Office Max to exchange the caller ID for the exact same one that has the PL on the model number on the label so I can send in for the rebate, and I had to buy a 9 volt battery and when did they become $4.79?! The best purchase? The little LR44, or whatever, cell battery for my little LCD travel alarm clock I stole from work a few years ago. That thing woke me up for maybe 3 years without fail, maybe 4 years, but the battery was dying, so I replaced it and it's fantastic now! The LCD is BRIGHT, and the alarm works without it dying, which is nice. No more insanely loud ticking of the Paul Frank kitty clock.... This is so fucking boring. See, I have this overactive, constantly analyzing and worrying mind. It's all these little things that consume me. Then my first phone call came in this morning as I was getting out of the shower, and who the fuck is that?, I asked myself, but it was some sales call, some guy telling me he can't believe I haven't taken advantage of his offer to consolidate my credit card debt, but he doesn't realize I don't HAVE any credit card debt, but he is leaving this stupid long message on my answering machine until I cut it off, and the caller ID didn't pick it up! And I go to work obssessed, until I come home at lunch to see I've gotten several more telemarketing calls, and they have been properly caller IDed, so I'm okay. Besides shopping at Office Max, and braving the worst hell hole of mass consumerism that is the exurbs north of the city (!!!!!!!), and being stuck in the horrible traffic that is there on Saturdays, realizing THIS is why I normally don't leave my apartment on weekends, and shopping at Publix and thinking the same thing, and I could go into tremendous detail about the crap I had to deal with just to get a couple different kinds of sandwich meats sliced at the deli, but I won't.... besides that..... the Thrashers won two back to back games on the road! Friday and Saturday night, they won! We beat Ottawa, in OT!!! We never win in OT. It was great! So that was exciting. And I ate my Chili's leftovers, for two days, leftover steak, that Crispy Chicken Salad with the mandarin orange slices, the water chestnuts, the greens, the slivered almonds, the rice noodles, the chicken, it was good! And those Southwestern Egg Rolls. Yum. When can I stop this? I feel compelled to write everything that I've missed documenting. Insane. I watched a relatively new program on TLC, "Dating Story", I think that is the name of it. A half hour devoted to one blind date. Very cool, like "Blind Date", but much better. And "A Cook's Tour" was not the cobra heart episode, which I wanted it to be, I was all prepared to watch it again, but it was the first episode again, which they've already repeated recently, so I didn't understand the scheduling, but I watched it anyway, and it was still good. Ahhhhhh..... then Sunday, Academy Awards day. Had to get my laundry done early, watch three "GL"s on tape, to make room to tape "No Boundaries", yet another reality show, very derivative, but I've seen it from the start so I have to keep up, and then the Red Carpet show on E!, and doesn't Joan Rivers ask the STUPIDEST questions?! My god! I know she wears an earpiece and she's fed info as the celebs approach her, but she gets it wrong, or she's told wrong, then she just asks really stupid stuff, and I cannot remember a good example, but holy moly, I was only watching because it was Live, and I wanted to see who I could see. I'd swear I saw Ted Turner, I wonder if anyone else did.... yeah, they just showed him on "Entertainment Tonight", he was there. That Kodak Theatre is so glamorous! I loved it!!! So Hollywood, the lighting so flattering on the audience members, just so perfect for the Oscars. Whoopi was very funny, I thought, I liked her comment, something to the effect of "Just wipe up when you're through" when that woman screamed in enthusiasm from the balcony. Very funny. Cirque du Soleil was spectacular as always, performing those movie stunts as we saw the films play on the screen behind them. I loved watching those people jump off that faux building, bouncing off the trampoline, landing back on the precipice, too fucking cool! I did have to leave the room right at the climax of that whole sequence though because I thought Norma had that "I'm gonna throw up" look on her face and I was escorting her to the bathroom to throw up on linoleum, but she didn't have to throw up at all. Dammit. Why, oh why did "Amelie" not win? I knew it wouldn't, sadly, because "No Man's Land" is about the war in Bosnia, and we feel guilty for bombing them, or something, and well, war movies are so "in" right now, and that fucking sucks because "Amelie" is the best movie I've ever seen, period, and it should've won, something, especially Best Foreign Film. Sucks. What else? What else? Yes, very cool that "LOTR" won so many awards, and "Moulin Rouge" won all the artsy awards, but "Black Hawk Down" won too many, and "Beautiful Mind"? Huh? Okay, I haven't seen it, and I have no desire to, but come on! At least Russell Crowe lost, er, didn't win. He comes across as such an arrogant asshole in interviews, I just really dislike him. (An Aries, by the way). But did Denzel deserve to win? Or did the voters just want to make history? I haven't seen "Training Day" either. I need to see some movies. Usually I don't see the "mainstream" movies, just the independents and foreign films. Halle Berry freaking out was the highlight. I cried right along with her. How could I not? Several people in the crowd were crying too, but her husband held it in, like he was raised, I guess. Some men think they can't cry, it makes them look weak, but I think it would've been nice if we'd seen a tear or two out of him, in support, you know. Happy, happy, joy, joy, it was a good night, pretty dresses, pretty people (except Gwyneth Paltrow, Jesus, what was she thinking? Mraow! I know, but don't slouch if you're gonna wear a shirred skintight bodice with no bra. Braless?? Cameron Diaz, yeah! She looked great, her breasts are perky and nice, but Gwynie, I'm sorry, it was SO wrong), fun clips, fucking WOODY ALLEN!!, man, that was great!, Iggy Pop!, Lou Reed! I loved it. And Sidney Poitier, one of my favorite actors of all time, and Robert Redford, Ali McGraw and Ryan O'Neal, together again?! Even the Paul McCartney perfromance, and what a great song is "Vanilla Sky". Randy Newman winning after 16 nominations over the years, a la Susan Lucci! It was great. Yes, yes, it was four hours, and some minutes, but I liked it. The only thing I hated, really, was when that woman who won the costume award with Baz Luhrman's wife, what's her name, for "Moulin Rouge", didn't get a chance to speak. They went to commercial. Oh, and the crap with Glenn Close and Donald Sutherland, I could've done without that. But I saw that Wolfgang Puck Hollywood special on Food Network, and I kept thinking, the whole broadcast, "I wanna go to an After Party and eat fancy food!!!!". Just once, okay? Can I? So, I stayed up late, to watch all that, watching my new digital cable reciever's reception on my bedroom TV, and it was fine, and I worked all day, worked hard, and it was tedious and I ate garlic bologna and provolone on whole wheat at lunch and I got stuffed, and now I'm here, typing and the keyboard is on my thighs, as always, and it's uncomfortable and I feel like I can't hit the right keys, so I'm constantly backspacing, but see, there's the need to write it all, even disjointed, even in slang, or vernacular, even in snippets, in long run-on sentences, because I skipped two days out of the last four, and I am a daily diarist. Forgive me, for I have sinned, I have skipped two days of writing in my online diary and now I am reduced to tedious rambling as penance. And, the Big Game jackpot keeps growing and growing, it's some obscene amount now and I buy tickets twice a week and never match a number, but it's my dream, as it is the dream of many, to win. And I have a digital camera I can't use. And I looked at computers at Best Buy, just to dream, and I can't afford anything. So, there you have it, and there's more, like Joe sending me an email, and the email from Hermione saying only "I WANNA GO HOME!!!!!!", with many more exclamation marks, sent out to her entire email list, and I wanted to say, "You are home", "This is what you want, this is what you get", a la Public Image Limited, or "Why in hell did you decide to pick up and move out there?", but I just wrote that she surprised me, I didn't expect that, and this, too, shall pass. That was me trying to be wise, and supportive, sort of. More, more, more, I know there's more, and I cleaned my desk in my bedroom on Saturday, pre-Cable Guy, and it is SO wonderful! It's all polished and dust free and I can sit there and write in my engagement calendar, my real daily diary, and look at my baubles, my gemstones, or minerals, my "egg" collection, amethyst, malachite, tiger eye, rutilated quartz, my treasures, all shiny and beautiful........ if only I could use my digital camera I'd take a picture and put it here. I'm going to try not to miss any more days, too much builds up. Cost of the War in Iraq
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