Brief Work Rant then GI Joe Review

This is another shout out to my cost-cutting place of employment. Thanks to their penny-pinching, I got coffee on my enrollment forms, my notepad, all over my desk, and I possibly left a trail of coffee droplets from the lunch room to my desk.

If knowledge is power, then know this: GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra is not a good movie. I didn't even think it was bad enough to be cheesetastic. To spice things up, I suggest smuggling in your alcoholic beverage of choice and taking a slug everytime they refer to their unit/people as "Joes". You'll be unconscious halfway through the movie.

The CGI during the accelerator suit scenes was Spiderman rubbery. The acting should have been so flexible. Dennis Quid was about as poseable as a GI Joe action figure. In Sienna Miller's defense, I could tell she was having a blast playing the bad guy, and she looked pretty hot in her skin-tight black outfit, but (nothing to do with anything) her calves are way too skinny. I did dig on her cool specs though. Channing Tatum isn't hot enough to get away with lousy acting and seeing Marlon Waynes shirtless wasn't anything I had been waiting breathlessly for. I thought Christopher Eccleston was fine, but I'm also enamored of his jug handle ears, so I'm willing to forgive a lot. Anyone psyched by the fact that Dr. Mindbender is in the movie? Yeah, it's a blink and you'll miss it scene. There's a part with the Baroness at the end that everyone I talked to thought was laaaame.

Some of the best scenes were with young Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes. Those kids whaled on each other. There is the obligatory training montage for Duke and Ripcord with Rip being cocky and Duke being stubborn. The Scarlett/Rip quasi-romantic subplot (barely deserves the word) wasn't squicky or anything, but you weren't really pulling for those crazy kids. If you want my opinion, and you obviously do since you're reading this, wait for the DVD. If you can't wait, see a matinee.

I'm Not Crazy, I'm Frustrated. OK, a Little Crazy.

You know how you get a song, or a snippet of a song, stuck in your head? The same few words and notes circling around and around and around? Until you feel like your ears are going to bleed as your brain runs in clumpy streams from your nose? That sucks, right? At least when that happens you can sometime rid yourself of the earworm by listening to the song in question or by replacing it with another.

Unfortunately, that is not my problem. My problem is as follows: It has been about 2 weeks since I got blown off by the boilermaker and I can't. Stop. Thinking. About. Him. I'm not kidding here, folks. In the morning before work, outside on my breaks, at home on the computer, in bed falling asleep. It's making me crazy.

Was I so excited by the possibility of a relationship that I grabbed way too hard onto nothing? Or was he really that kind of special and I'm feeling the loss in a way most irritating? I'm sure some of it has to do with the dissatisfying way things ended. There was no closure, no explanation. Something happened around the start of the Flyers game on Saturday that turned everything around.

There has been some temptation to contact him and ask him what the fuck happened. I know some of my friends are almost as interested in the answer to that as I am. I didn't at first because I wasn't prepared to hear him say all the bad stuff I was thinking. Stuff like: it was my fault for being crazy (which I wasn't but most people aren't super rational right after being binned). I don't remember, or refuse to impart here, the other things I thought.

Am I ready to hear why now? Do I risk the contact and the attendant anxiety while I wait for a reply? Because we all know that there's a very good chance that he won't bother. I mean, he wouldn't man up to say that he wasn't feeling it anymore - why would this be any different?

"You have such a pretty smile."

Please don't say it, please don't say it, please don't -

"You should smile more!"

AHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Why, people, why? Why should I smile more? I am not an especially physically expressive person. I don't feel the need to smile if I don't want to. It's not as though I'm walking around with a perma-frown.

And don't give me the "smiling makes you happy when you're not" line. I know, I've done it. But not smiling does not equal not-happy.

I usually say that smiling makes my face hurt. And that makes me happy.

The One Where I Whine About the Unfairness of it All

It has been brought to my attention that I am the most important person in my office. A VIP, if you will. I have skills that no one else possesses and these skills cannot be taught. My innate abilities, or rather the idea of no longer having access to them, make supervisors tremble. I am the Great and Powerful OZ!

The story: For the last several months, I've been working 10:30 to 7 four days a week. Not ideal, right? There are some perks: I miss most of the traffic, I get to sleep in (except Thursdays), and, and, I guess that's about it. In any event, on Monday I was told that I was getting a welcome sked change; 9-5:30. Sure, the traffic is a bit heavier in the AM and I don't get to sleep as late, but I also get home a bit after 6 instead of at 7:30. It would be nice to be able to make plans on any given night of the week - plans that start before 8 pm.

I had two days of pseudo-normality. However, when I got in today, promptly at 9, my supervisor walked up to me and said, "You're not going to like what I have to say." Evidently, she got some flak for changing my schedule. She was told that I have certain duties in the evenings. So wow! Who knew doing voicemail retrievals was such a complex endeavor? I wasn't aware that all the other people in my office were complete morons and unable to master the basic functions of phone usage. I don't even fucking bill for the time I spend doing VM. I would love to tell my client about all the other duties I perform while on their dime.

Yes, it's nice knowing that people at work find me competent, but honestly, the work is NOT difficult. It's hard to feel indispensable when a chimp, with minimal training, could do a passable job of it. Here's hoping that the Inquirer's Mega Job section will have something for me. My dad is right (dammit!), I should add this to the list of incentives to find a new job.

New Year, Same Shit

It is a good thing I'm not the kind of person who believes in signs and portents. Because when I got home from work on Wednesday night, my hallway and bathroom had flooded. Not too awful bad, but there was definitely wet carpet. AND, it stunk. Bleagh. So, happy new year!

If that weren't annoying enough, I got home from my parents' house yesterday and the hallway and bathroom were reflooded! And this was a whole other level. I stepped into the hallway and water oozed up around my sneaks. Squishsquishsquish, I made my way into the bathroom. Floor soaked, bathmat soaked. Wall punched and profanity yelled. The towels I had used to sop up the previous night's flood were still damp. And stinky. And brown. I don't want to know where this water is coming from. My upstairs neighbor says I should call L&I.

I went to the laundry room to throw the damp towels in the dryer. As much as it pained me to part with the quarters, I couldn't NOT try to sop up the mess. The quagmire, if you will. The laundry room was a disaster. It smelled awful. The drain cover was pried up and there was this brown sludge splattered across the floor. Pieces of sheetrock decorated the hot water heater. Considering I live right next to the laundry room; I don't feel very safe. One day that fucking thing is gonna blow and I'm gonna be homeless and pet-less. If those cuntrags blow up my cats, I'm gonna go on a rampage. I mean, where the hell is my rent going?

Fucking Princess

Of all the presumptuous, high-handed piles of bullshit. You fucking bitch. I will rip out your crinkly, nasty, wannabe "I Dream of Genie" weave. Slowly. One strand at a time. And then I will feed it to you.

What The Fuck?

I'm confused and here is why. K was supposed to call me last night. He had sent me a text message during the day asking if he could call. I said sure, anytime after 8. He seemed pretty psyched about an actual non-text conversation. We did our usual (so far as something that's been going on for less than a week is usual) texting thing and met outside at 5:30 when he was done work. I specifically said "I'll talk to you later" as I went back inside.

Moving the story along; I get home, feed the cats, make a sandwich and prepare to watch Chuck. I'm figuring that I can expect a call anywhere from 8:15 on. That's what "after 8" means to me. Perhaps you can guess what comes next. Chuck ends and Heroes starts and no phone call. Yes, I could have called him, but he asked to call me.

I was flipping to the Phils game during commercials and notice that the Phils were winning 2-1. K was told by his boss not to watch the game because when he does, the Phils lose. Superstitious nonsense, but it gave me something to say. I sent him a text saying something along the lines of "You must not be watching the game because the Phils are winning." I get nothing.

Being the moderately crazy person I am, I start wondering if maybe there was some sort of family emergency he had to deal with, or if he had gotten into a car accident on the way home from work. I'd feel pretty shitty if I found out he didn't call because he was lying in Frankford-Torresdale, doped up on morphine. At that point, I decided to let it go and find out what was what the next day.

I get to work and I don't see his car. This lends credence to my accident theory, right? And in my defense, the weather was pretty crappy last night. In the interest of honesty, I thought it more likely that he was just at home sick. Apparently not, as he texted me mid-morning about the crazy wet, snowy weather we were having. I noticed later that his car was simply parked in a different spot. One point for my powers of observation. Again, in my defense, it wasn't just one or two spots away. It was a different row entirely. Yeah, OK, I'm a loser.
K seemed much less eager today. There were definitely fewer text messages. Also, when I was getting ready to come in from my evening break, I saw him walking to his car and he didn't even look at me. In his defense, I was facing away from the building and my hood was up. I don't know what to think. Part of me is wondering why any of this bothers me at all. I barely know the guy, I haven't had a conversation with him longer than about 10 minutes, aaaaand I just realized that I'm skipping over a whole bunch of shit.

*Abridged version: K asked for my number, we started text messaging. He asked me to dinner - that's supposed to happen Thursday. He straight-up said (texted) that he was interested in me. Positive signs, no? Back to the current rant.*

I was just starting to think that I could be interested in this dude. He seems sufficiently nerdy, we are GC, approximately the same age (less important), and, superficially at least, had some stuff in common. I don't know what to do. The sensible thing would be to ask him straight-out if there was some reason he seemed stand-offish. Everyone has bad days and I shouldn't think so highly of myself to assume that I had anything to do with it, if that were the case. Then I get to thinking; if I ask him if he's going off of me that may give him the idea that I'm more invested in this than I am. Though, looking back on the ranting, it would appear that I'm at least a little invested. The trouble is that I don't know if I'm interested in him or if I'm just pleased that someone is interested in me.

Stupid Work

You know when you're sitting somewhere and something happens? OK, I'll be more specific. I was sitting at my desk and received an email for an internal job posting. The kicker is that the job is in Ireland. So I know that in 3...2...1, everyone was going to be gabbing about it.

Sigh. It's quite a burden being so consistently right. Now the one supervisor is talking to one of my annoying coworkers about whether or not Ireland is the place to be. They are discussing beer, the Irish economy, and going on foxhunts.

I am forced to ask myself why this annoys me. It was the same thing yesterday when a bank of the overhead fluorescent briefly flickered out. I figured that someone had leaned against the master switch up in reception. Apparently my coworkers had never experienced a power failure. I'm sure that people were hoping for something catastrophic so we would be sent home, but since my monitor didn't even flicker, I wasn't so optimistic.

I still don't know why the chatter bugs me. Maybe it's because if I don't think it's a big deal, no one should. After all, aren't I the best judge of what is newsworthy or not? Stop laughing.

On a completely unrelated note, my penultimate boss had one of the lamest conversations I have ever heard with my immediate supervisor. Bear in mind that he's probably in his early 40s. He used the word "dude" more in the space of 5 minutes than I do in a week...and I say "dude" quite often. Honestly, he sounded like a wasted surfer dude. See, I just said "dude". I find it hard to muster any respect for a man who wastes half the morning talking about his day at the beach. Especially when he'll let any random person pile shit-work on his call center staff just so he doesn't have to see them sit idle for more than 2 minutes. This becomes an issue because just when someone, usually the Princess, has piled up the work, call volume increases. Oy, the frantic stomping around alone is almost worth the price of admission.

This Is Me: Bored at Work

You ever been on Craigslist? Sure you have; everyone does it. I was perusing the "best of" the other night and I noticed something - Craiglist is filled with articulate, funny people. No, no, I'm not making a joke. Yes, I realize that the "best of" posts are the best of thousands and thousands of crappy ones. Still, I read some pretty good posts.

It got me wondering about whether or not anyone has had a successful response to a Craigslist post. Like the dude who was looking for some hardcore rockers, or the guy giving away sod. I read the posts from chicks who are looking for a lame-ass guy to take advantage of them, or the sad-sack men who very carefully point out their faults in order to drum up sympathy. Guys, we all know that you're doing that reverse psychology thing. We know that when you tell us that you are anti-social, socially-awkward, gangly, bipolar, an unrepentant gamer, too nice, afraid of love, scarred by the callous bitch who took your heart and your dachshund, it's really a cry of "Love me, love me! I am a good person if only someone would look hard enough." And you know what? I get it.

I get it because I'm the same way. I put the worst of myself out there from the beginning. I generally refuse to sugar-coat myself and my, let's call them quirks. It's taken me many years to be something approaching comfortable in my skin and I'm not going to hide what's taken so long to achieve. I don't want to tart myself up when I go out because I'm the lowest maintenance person. I don't wear make-up, I don't fuss with my hair. I wear sneakers and flip-flops. I smoke and curse and say wildly inappropriate things.

OK, as I wrote that last paragraph I realized that I'm not being completely honest. I will tart myself up a bit because I know that someone can't look at me and see the awesomeness inside. The only way these hypothetical people have to judge me is on my appearance and I hate it. I resent every stroke of the mascara wand and every inch I hike up my boobs. I hate that I'll spout all this crap about not misrepresenting myself and then play the fucking game. Yes, I would like that someone, someday, finds me attractive (someone available, B), but I feel like people can smell the resentment and it is off-putting.

I don't know where I wanted to go with this. I could spend all day bitching about appearances, but this was supposed to be about Craigslist and I've been completely derailed. Wasn't I wondering if people ever had success with a Craigslist ad - specifically m4w, w4m, etc? I responded to an ad once. It was entitled "This is why you won't like me" and I liked it. My friend, jr, stumbled it to me and suggested that I respond. Unfortunately, the poster wasn't taking replies. I tried a post of my own, but got a rather lackluster response. Oh well. I'll continue on with my fantasy of meeting that special someone in the Fantasy and Science Fiction section of Barnes and Noble. Look for me: I'll be the chick with the messy ponytail and black Adidas shell-tops.

Monday Rant

It has not been a great morning.

It's gray and rainy here in the NE. I don't mind rain and while I don't own an umbrella, I'm a big fan of hats, so I manage pretty well. I was having a fairly efficient morning despite having gone to bed significantly later than I usually do on a Sunday night. I was going to stop at Wawa on my way to pick up a co-worker, get my caffeine infusion and hopefully be somewhat functional at work.

It was still raining fairly steadily as I walked to my car. I beeped my car open and as I opened the door, I noticed a drop of rain fall on the seat. Not a big deal, I can hear you thinking. Except that this drop of rain fell too far in. Normally, when you open your car door in the rain, the door frame and possibly the edge of the seat will get spattered, but not much else. Well, unless it's raining sideways. This drop of water fell more towards the middle of the seat. A random occurrence, right? I slid into my car and promptly felt wetness seeping into my underpants. My. car. was. soaked.

Since I found out my left foot is fractured, I've been driving my mom's car. The podiatrist looked so horrified when I told him that I drove stick - apparently the pressure is terrible. Luckily, my excellent parents were willing to work a trade until my foot heals. It's a nice car, but it has a few quirks. For example, the sunroof will open all the way when you flick the switch. Nice one touch feature, right? Yeah, well, it does not work the same in reverse. When you go to close the sunroof, it closes most of the way and then stops with the roof still open about 6 inches. You have to tap the switch again to get the roof to close all the way. Guess what Carrie G. forgot to do last night?

Oh, the profanity. I dug out my house keys and stomped back to my apartment. I changed my pants, grabbed a pile of towels and a roll of garbage bags. I stomped back to the car and wrestled a garbage bag over the back of the seat. Mind you, my semi-dry ass is hanging out in the rain, becoming progressively less dry. I finished my seat-covering and clambered into the car.

By this point, I've completely blown my margin. I make the decision to bypass Wawa and go straight to my co-worker's house. I get to her house and shoot her a text. She texted back "2 min." I did not want to hear that. I'm already running behind schedule and you're going to make me wait? My ass is still wet, I'm dangerously undercaffeinated, it's fucking Monday and it's pissing down rain. Oh, and I forgot my lunch and everything I had in the pockets of the pants I was wearing? Yeah, still in the pockets of the pants that are not on my body. Grrr.

The thing is; I don't want to be in a bad mood. I don't want to have to pay extra attention to what I say so I don't inadvertently offend someone. I don't want every little thing that may go wrong today to drive me into fits of rage. So, I'm going to lay back for a bit. I'm not going to initiate conversations unless I have to. I have some coffee in me, so that's a step in the right direction. Also, they finally fixed the A/C here at work. You are my witness - I will never complain about it being too cold in the office. I'd much rather have to wear a hoodie to keep warm than be too warm and only want to take a nap. Um, the nap thing may happen regardless of the temperature. I am at work.