Over. It has to be over.

I am convinced that every single time my son changes the toilet paper roll he puts it on with the paper going under instead of over, not because he likes it that way, or because he doesn't know I like it the other way. I believe he does it for the simple amusement of knowing that every single time he puts it on the wrong way, the next time I am in there, I will turn it around.

A room without a view.

I have moved. From my beloved desk with the big windows, surrounded by the people I have worked with since forever, to a room upstairs in the back corner of the building that I will share with a co-worker who does the same thing I do. To put it bluntly - they needed my desk downstairs.

I could have been offended but it seems I am much more laid back about these things than I once was. I have seen so many changes at my workplace in the last 5 years that it barely fazes me anymore. Well, and I know I'm just upstairs from all those people who I would miss terribly if I had to move to a whole different facility.

The room I am sharing is actually a nice size for 2 people, and will be more conducive to the kind of work we do. There are 2 big workstations, cubes if you will, a bookcase, standing coat tree, and a fridge. Ahem. Fridge. Hey - my daughter only used it for 2 semesters at school, so now - I am using it. At some point we will acquire a microwave and that will be enough to keep us happy.

Plus being upstairs has already had me huffing and puffing a couple of times going up and down today, so if I continue to take the stairs and not the elevator - this move could even be very healthy for me.

If it doesn't kill me first!!! Sheesh! Huff! Puff! Talk to you later. Cough, cough, wheeeeeeeeze !!!

Maxine Monday

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Any guesses?

What do you think this means?

. . . or this?

And of course there is this . . .

I'm thinking you know, don't you?

No title? It must have been the chocolate!

This is the time of the year when the days get shorter, it gets dark earlier, and the time speeds by in a haze of chocolate smears and shiny candy wrappers.

And the kids get excited too!

I bought a bag of Halloween candy because I wanted some suckers. I like Tootsie Pops, okay? With the Tootsie Roll center. Well it was quickly gone through, the suckers went first of course. My son took a look at the bag as if I had done a poor job of acquiring the correct kind and volume of sweets for the upcoming holiday. "I hope you know I am going to be getting WAY more candy than that." He said disapprovingly.

Last night Andy came home with 2 grocery bags stuffed to bursting with what he had decided was the right candy. He poured some from each bag into a big orange plastic Halloween bowl until he had a mix of chocolate candy bars of every kind, fruit chews, peanut butter bits (did I mention chocolate?) and of course, suckers. Chocolate covered things and taffy and toffee, miniature boxes and bags and stuff on a stick. Yesterday was October 20th. 11 days before Halloween. The candy is already in a bowl and accessible to peruse whenever we ( I ) want to.

I think my son is trying to kill me.

. . . either that - or he's got dibs on the jeans I'll out-grow!!!







. . . and this has been picked over already. It's going to get ugly.

Maxine Monday

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Heard at work . . .

I had a survey to fill out about myself at work, one of those things that asks your favorite movie, your first job, tell something interesting about yourself .. . I'm not fond of those things and hadn't done it yet.

Emailing with a co-worker about how come I had not done it I wrote "I guess I just don't like talking about myself that much."

His reply? "Uh ... blog?"

Lol! Well, there IS that.

I can haz gud gramer.

I'm not sure I should type anything here, or say anything or talk about anything using the written word and or English language. Because apparently, I'm a moron!!

We have been tasked to take 2 training courses before the end of the year at work. We get to choose what we want to take out of a fairly broad curriculum. There really aren't many that actually relate to my job so I decided on some personal improvement courses.

The first one was on time management, and that was fine. Useful, even. But the second one? ARGH-H-H!!!

The second class was a basic grammar class. BASIC. I found as I was taking it, that not only did I not remember most of the rules, I was not learning them this time either! It just wasn't sinking in.

It started by asking about "Conjunction Junction" which should have been followed by "what's your major malfunction?" Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, those I'm good with. But for some reason when they got into pronouns my brain slammed shut. I don't remember nominative pronouns, or reflexive pronouns, or objective pronouns. Is it possible they were invented after I left school?

Oh, and I forgot possessive pronouns too. Although that one sounds vaguely familiar. How about idiomatic expressions, verb pairs, compound nouns, and "The basic rule for handling compound adjectives is to hyphenate the elements of the compound adjective when they occur before a noun. This is done because the words aren't in their normal order and therefore require hyphens to hold them together." Uh . . . if you say so.

I'm not confused about there, their, or they're, but yes, lay or lie, aggravate or irritate, imply or infer, there are a lot of things that trip me up. A lot.

I have "Grammar for Dummies" but I've never cracked it. I guess it's time. I may need to go back to grade school where we would spend a week on nouns, a week on verbs, etc. I may (may or might?) be able to speak (and write) properly by oh . . . 2012. Please stand by.

Thank you for your patience.

Why me?

Do they just email everybody they can kind of like throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks?

click to see bigger

Seriously?
Oh, and when did people start sending *certified* email?!?!??

Whine, whine, whine!

So now I've had it - about something else. This ties together 2 of my recent posts about the - being meticulous and going nuts over the details - and being fed up too! My other blog, A Picture a Day, is all good except for one thing. See how on this blog I have my date above the post and the comments below? I cannot DO that on the other blog.

This is how far I have gone. I actually replaced the original template with a different one, then changed the background, changed the header, changed the color of the body so it would all look like the old template - but with the way the new template shows the posting information. TA DA!!! Right? Aren't I clever?


Except it didn't work. I have gone into settings, layout, checked everything I know how to check, changed code for goodness sake and I cannot make it work differently! It's like it's hard-coded somewhere but I cannot figure out where. Tonight I will put back my original template so it's not a template-changed-to-look-like-another-template, and then I will wait for the cavalry. Why?? Because it bugs me!

I don't expect a lot of comments on that blog but when people DO leave them I would like it to be clear WHERE to leave them. I also like it to have the date at the top of the post and then under is - posted by: me, and the time! Is that too much to ask? But it will not let me do it. No matter how many configurations and settings I mess with, I can't make it do what I want.

And.I.don't.like.that. So, are there any HTML or XML guru's out there who might want to look at my code for me? Hey Baby, wanna see my code? Sorry. Anyway. I would really like to change that one thing and I will be happy with that blog. For now. Until I decide something else needs to be changed.

Cause I'm like that.

But this one thing has really bothered me from the get-go and then bothered me even more because I couldn't figure out how to change it. Help?

Maxine Monday

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I've had it!

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate the telephone? I know I have and I do. I rarely answer it and I rarely check my messages. Some may think that's rude, but I have come to think of the phone as an intrusion. I don't get to choose when it rings and I want to be able to choose.

With that kind of animosity toward the phone, you can just imagine how I feel about solicitors at my door. I have argued with myself over the years about putting up that little black and white sign in my window "NO SOLICITING". I have never done it because putting it out there just seemed like something I should not have to do. It's MY house. If I don't know you, what the hell are you doing knocking on my door?

So today - I finally put a sign up. It is only temporary, but I am finding it necessary. This is ridiculous! Why do people feel they have the right to knock on people's doors to influence people's opinions, ask for money, or sell something? That's how I feel about soliciting in general. But for politics? Get the hell off my porch a**hole! Man it pisses me off!!!

So today - I taped a small sign on my mailbox. You can't see it unless you step onto my porch but you certainly can't ring my doorbell or knock on my door and claim you didn't see it. I just hope it works because next time I'm liable to clock someone!



Do you think it's too polite? Because it sure doesn't say what I would like to!

It's been confirmed.

Remember how I've said that I get all anal retentive about details? Remember how I said I like to work on things like my "back to the top" button until it's EXACTLY as I want it? Yeah. Well, the class I was taking at work today explained that I am a task-oriented person as opposed to being time oriented. So I can sit there and go over every little detail which leads to other details until I don't see the result I'm going for anymore. Uh, can't see the forrest for the trees anyone?

You are meticulous and interested in every
detail. You hate to leave tasks incomplete and
find it easy to go on refining and polishing,
almost indefinitely. You like to review each
aspect of a project and may make radical
changes, even at a late date.

Whew. It's all defined and there are other people out there who are just like me! I feel better now. Thanks for listening.

Irritable and crabby, my middle names.

Having a few days in a row filled with little annoyances. Like, the girl at work who makes all the mouth noises? Well, she's a worrier by nature. We don't tell her anything that might be the least bit scary or she'll have the sky falling in 10 minutes flat. Definitely nothing health related or she'll try to convince us we're dying. Listening to her walking around talking about how her 401K is worth so much less than it was a month ago, yada yada yada - gets really irritating. I go by the philosophy that as long as I'm not looking to sell it, I'm fine. It will go up again. But she has to walk around moaning and whining about something she has absolutely no control over, and something everybody else in the room is trying NOT to worry about. Gr-r-r-r!

That was this week. At the end of last week my brand new slick phone - died. Yeah. Push the button - nothing. I slid the phone into my purse the night before and Friday morning when I got in my car I turned - or tried to turn my phone on and yeah. Dead.

After work I called AT&T and did the little trouble shooting stuff they asked me to do because I'm a customer service reps dream. I'm a good patient too, but that's another story. We came to the conclusion that the phone was .. well .. dead. Like I said. Okay fine, send me a new one, I'll use my old one until the new one arrives. Because I'm laid back that way.

My new phone arrived last night and that was when I discovered that I had almost everything saved to the memory card so that was good. Wasn't sure what I had stored in the phone and what I had saved to the memory card so I was a bit apprehensive at first. But - all I was missing was (were?) my ringtones. I hate searching for ringtones because I get all anal retentive about it and want to find the perfect ringtone for each of several people, and the best general ringtone for whoever else might call. God forbid my phone rings at work or somewhere and my ringtone is really lame. Except of course my "cool" is bound to be somebodies lame so I really shouldn't worry about it. I'm sure there is some aspect of obsessive compulsiveness to it all.

I downloaded about 7 different ringtones about 5 times. I would download them and then find they didn't exist. Made me nuts and irritable, especially since I was trying to IM and read blogs and watch TV at the same time. But - I was finally able to complete the task to my satisfaction. Mostly. Not sure any of that stuff will ever really please me.

Anyway.

It's been rainy and cool here for the last couple of days and driving to work in the morning is frustrating when the pavement has a drop of water on it to say the least. That's when people turn into the worst drivers ever. Except me, of course. This morning was especially annoying since it was only drizzling but the guy in the left lane in front of me insisted on driving 35 mph when the limit is 45 and I usually drive at least 50 along that stretch of road. Needless to say (but of course I will anyway) the guy would not move out of the left lane and I was forced - forced I tell ya - to pass on the right. Walked into work complaining about all the putzes out there on the road.

I need to color my hair and change my diet and exercise more (read - at all) and not sleep so much and on and on. Plus I'm taking a time management course for work which has me seriously thinking about logging what I do with all my time at home. I'm good at work. But home? I get nothing done and never seem to have time for anything. I can see the log for a regular weeknight now:

6:00) Home from work, feed cats, change clothes, sort mail, odds and ends.
6:30) Sit down in front of the TV with my laptop - eat there too.
9:30) Get my lunch ready for the next day, my tea for morning, my meds, etc.
9:45) Back to the computer again - take my makeup off there as well.
11:00) Bed. (okay sometimes it's 12:00 or maybe 1:00am)

Exciting, isn't it? But that's what I do. Somehow recently I did fill 13 bags with clothes, shoes, purses, etc to give away. I straightened my closet and now it looks nice but more importantly, I can find things! I got my daughter's room straightened and vacuumed but I STILL have not finished my bead room.

Maybe I can work on that .. fit it in between say .. 6:00 and 6:30 when I do my other odds and ends? Cause that seems to be the only time I'm willing to be away from my computer unless I'm SLEEPING! That just can't be healthy.

Maxine Monday

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Do you have pretty feet?

Every once in a while I will hear about something being sold on eBay that is nothing less than bizarre. I never run into the weird stuff when I am searching for things there, but I did run into something recently that I had seen once before but hadn't paid attention to. Socks. "Well worn" socks.

I was in the market for some socks so I went onto eBay to see if I could find some deals. And that is when I saw the dirty socks again. This time I was curious and decided to look further. What the hell? One lady is selling her used pairs of socks, slippers, and knee high nylons for anywhere from $25.00 to $65.00 a pair!

Each pair of socks would have at least 3 pictures included in the description, which would show pretty feet with red toe nails and rings on the toes modeling the socks, taking them off, or showing her toes through them in the case of the nylons.

I was starting to get the picture and I was amazed at the ingenuity of some people. In the description there was mention of private sales, names kept private, and one of the tags you could search with was "fetish". Creepy, kinky, call it what you will - but some girl out there is modeling socks, wearing them for a day and then selling them to strangers for good money!
I read some of her feedback which said things like "Wonderful items, love this seller!" Or one that said "Sexiest feet on the net!"

In these times of an uncertain economy and people in financial difficulty I thought - YOU GO GIRL! Ha! If there's some guy sitting in his room going ga-ga over those socks he bought on eBay - who cares? I don't profess to "get it" but that doesn't really matter. It's weird but harmless and there's some girl out there who isn't resorting to worse to make some money. And hell, why didn't I think of that???

Well it LOOKS done.

Working from home feels a bit weird. I mean, I'm in my house, in my bead room actually, where I have a computer desk. That's where I set up the router I plug into and my monitor and what not. So I get the space heater and point it at my legs, turn on the TV, and do what I normally do at work. But at home. Not something I'm used to.

I stayed home today because my landlord finally found someone who would come in and work on fixing up my daughter's moldy, nasty closet. Which basically means she searched high and low, hither and yon, until she could find someone who understood that she wanted the absolute minimum done for the least amount of money possible.

The handy-guy who showed up was nice enough, he went into the closet, knocked on the walls and said "no problem, walls are sound. Got any bleach?"

Sigh.

When we found the leak and the mold in the closet I went all over the internet to find the best solution for this particular problem. Cleaning hard surfaces with bleach is a good solution. But wallboard is porous. Washing the walls with bleach kills the mold on the surface. Sealing the wall with a good primer like Kilz is great. But I am just not convinced that next summer when it gets nice and hot and humid, that the mold won't start to bloom again like the dandelions in my front yard.

He was here for oh - an hour and a half. He washed down the walls, painted one coat of primer, waited 15 minutes and rolled on another coat. I'm sure he's a wonderful handy-guy, I'm just incredibly skeptical about this as a solution. The work on the closet was done before 10:00 am. I could have just packed up and gone to work but I was already all set up, dressed but not showered and luxuriating in the ability to work with my feet all toasty warm and to get up and go make a cup of tea in my kitchen whenever I wanted to. Besides, how often at work am I going to see this? Kinda added something to my day.

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