A PO needs a dollar amount.

It's been a while since I waxed nostalgic for co-workers who don't act like full and utter retards (and pardon my use of the vernacular, if you yourself are, in fact, a retarded individual - no offense intended, and none taken, I hope...). By "a while" obviously I mean, like, a week. People with MASTER's degrees (and beyond), who can't seem to grasp simple concepts. In the immortal words of Jerry "The Bee Man" Seinfeld: What is the deal? They can't keep track of their own employees. They can't seem to get that it is illegal to allow someone to work for us before they have been verified as eligible to work in this country. And some of them go and pick up supplies completely outside of our rigid, and well established, purchasing procedures. Sans PO is what that means, for those of you following along at home (M, this means you - you now want to watch the OkGo DVD). All of the managerial apologies in the world can't amend that fact that her staff is useless for anything other than wasting daylight and oxygen. And yes - she did apologize. Regardless, her staff still sucks monkeys.

::EDITS HAPPEN::

I'm almost done with HP book six now. Guess what. Snape killed Dumbledore. I am shocked. Shocked I say! Well. Not really. I've known this for a while. It was rather depressing to get to that point in the story, though. Not quite as sad as when Snuffles bit it (because I wasn't fully expecting that one), but still. There are way, way too many raging hormones in this book, too. I have to agree with M that book three is still the best so far. JK had better have stepped up her game with book seven. I'm also reading a Dean Koontz paperback, and a ficticious historical account of the city of London, which is terribly boring.

Calls for a round of gynnan tonnyx...

It's towel day. If you forgot your towel - DO PANIC! In honor of this geekiest of days, here is a small handful of my favorite HitchHikersGuideToTheGalaxy quotes:

8Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
8It gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level.
8We don't demand solid facts! What we demand is a total absence of solid facts!
8It is impossible to have more fun without eletrocuting your pleasure center...

In other news, apparently no longer content with turning up in driveways and garages to scare old people and tourists, and seemingly inspired by the release of Spider-Man 3, alligators in Florida are learning to climb walls:

In equally odd news, from MSN Entertainment News, dated May 24th (my birthday!):

Natalie Portman prefers to keep her private life under wraps, but that hasn't quelled speculation about her latest love interest. Seems the doe-eyed actress, who not too long ago was spied arm-in-arm with model-designer Nathan Bogle, is now rumored to be yukking it up with a frizzy haired funnyman. Us Weekly says Portman, 25, is spending quality time with "Saturday Night Live" star Andy Samberg, 28, whom you'll recall promised he'd always pay for her dry cleaning in the guffaw-filled gangsta rap video she shot for "SNL" in 2006. The mag says Natalie began dating the "Lazy Sunday"-spouting Samberg, who was linked last year to Kirsten Dunst, after recently calling it quits with her smoldering sometime squeeze, Gael Garcia Bernal. At least one Portman mole is happy to hear she may be dating a mensch, telling the mag, "A nice Jewish boy would be good for her!"

No! Andy Samberg is not a "funnyman". He isn't even a funny man. Nice Jewish boy?? Are these the only qualifications for dating Natalie Portman? Two words: Zach. Braff. ZachBraffZachBraffZachBraff!

Candy-gram...

All of my shows are now done for the season. Can't wait to see what comes next. Here's a breakdown of what we learned: BSG - Starbuck = Cylon?; Grey's Anantomy - I stopped watching with three episodes left this year - Private Practice (the Cali-fied Addison spinoff) looks like it has potential as long as it doesn't take the originating show's infuriating path; Lost - Chahleeee is dead, some of them get off the island, Matthew Fox looks horrible with a beard, even more questions unanswered than ever before; The Office - Jim + Pam = the writers better stop jerking me around with this story line!

So, my birthday wasn't too bad yesterday. We ended up taking our son with us to dinner (long story), so we went to Bonefish Grille by the mall, and after dinner I bought some DVDs from FYE. I was all jazzed by the big sign advertising the pending sale of Deathly Hallows (M - I need some help getting the hidden goodies from the JKR site...halp pleez, kthx!). After we went home I watched Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man's Chest (also known as POTC2: Keira Knightly's Chest) in preparation for seeing At World's End tonight with M. Which means, in order to leave early I had better get some work done.

Why is emo cake so good?

Because it cuts itself.

It's my birthday. My co-workers surprised me with a little cake, a balloon and a card. It's not the to-do we've had in the past, but it was a lot more than I expected. Dinner sans child tonight, so that should be nice. Then visiting my parents and M this weekend. Plus we get a three-day weekend. That rocks.

Thanks to all who called, e-mailed and stopped by to express birthday goodwill! Even though it's my birthday, I feel like doling out presents. So, for your viewing pleasure, courtesy of Fark.com, I present the new LOL hotness: lolpresidents!

I'll go extinct when I'm goddamn good and ready.

Poor endangered species...it's not their fault they're so delicious.
At least the lolcats are safe. You can have my lolcats when you pry them from my cold dead hands!

Pup 'tocks! The puppy says: "I's not kitteh, but I can has caption too, pleeze?" I love how the folks over at Cute Overload are just now catching on to the LOL-critter phenom. The good people over at Fark have ridden that wave and are looking for a new meme to beat into the ground...

Can I get a big handful of What!

Andy Samberg needs to invest in shares of Listerine! That was just gross! How is tongue-kissing a dog even funny?? Nastayyyy. Hey! Maya is wearing my bracelet! Seriously! She's wearing my big chunky lucite bracelet. I can't believe it...

M - please tell me you didn't miss out on seeing ZB make out with Fred Armisen in drag (the skit is called "Melissa")!

Ya know - that new Fergie song really irritates me so freaking much. It's on my list of hated songs right below the other Black Eyed Peas song where there is also spelled out words in the lyrics (why is this so popular in crappy pop music?) and Fergie samples herself and that Avril Lavigne mess where she's pretending to be a totally lame faux punk-ass teenager again.

G-L-A-M-ohhhh...N-A-U-S-E-O-U-S...The chorus should be "If you ain't got no talent, take your skank-ass home!"

Keep the nite-lite on

I decided to post the "Birdhouse in Your Soul" video by TMBG, because I need a little emotional lift. The song is a little band-aid for my abrased psyche. I got my review this week. I went into it expecting to be disappointed, but I wasn't prepared for what I got smacked with. My general work "exceeds expectations". My first reaction was "Well - duh. It's easy to exceed something that one does not have...". But apparently, my "people skills" and communication need work, and I'm not much of a team player. This really kind of pissed me off, to be honest. I can accept that I'm not necessarily what the boss was calling "approachable" at times, and I've been kind of stressed out lately, so maybe it's showing. But, WTF?! All I do all day, every day of the work week at my totally effing thankless job is make life easier for everyone else around me while they make it harder for me. I support the operation of the whole freaking unit! How is that not being a team player - just because I don't participate in the warm-fuzzy non-work related activities? Maybe I don't want to know these people as anything other than co-workers? Seriously. I'm practically invisible until someone has a problem (the majority of which these people should be able to resolve on their own), and then it's all "Oh, just go bother Maus. I know she's under deadline pressure and has multiple projects that we haven't even attempted to help with (not that we'd know what we're doing and would probably screw up anyway), but I'm sure she'd be more than happy to just drop what she's doing right now and tell you how to order business cards." Basically, to me, it all came down to personality, not capability. But, this boss leaves in a couple of weeks, so I'll take what was constructive and make adjustments where I can, and hope the new boss can see the value in the role that I play.



Now's the time for some random, unverifiable factoids, fresh from the internet, to add some much needed brevity (YOU KNOW YOU LOVE IT!):

If humans ceased to exist 97 percent of domesticated animals would become extinct within two years.

The average worker in the US with a windows-based PC on his or her desk will have 4.7 applications running at any given time.

32 percent of all web content is password protected.

If trends continue, by 2017, a single computer hard drive will be able to hold all the data contained on all of the hard drives currently in existence today.

The FBI has files on 1.27 million living Americans. The CIA has files on 1565 FBI agents.

Every Republican president since Eisenhower has pronounced "nuclear" as "noo-kyoo-ler".

(all factoids courtesy of Gullible.info)

And a lolcat or two would be a nice touch...

Annnnd...

(You can of course find more lolcats @ icanhascheezburger.com)

I finished HP book five, M! I shed a little tear for Snuffles. I have a theory about the prophecy - maybe I'll share it with you when I see you next week. Did you see the last episode of The Office? Foregone conclusion, that's what I'm saying. And what's up with Scrubs? I hate where that storyline is going (Zach Braff hosts SNL in...eight minutes). The last episode of Lost is on this week, too. And that'll be it for my shows for the summer. I guess it means I'll just have more time to go to the gym.

News of the word.

Now that M is working elsewhere and I can't regail her with the mundane news of my every day like I used to, I'll be posting even more rambling pointlessness on my blog. Because I know how much all (three) of you love it. For starters, I had a decent weekend. I'm almost completely over my cold, since the remnants seem to have passed on to my poor unfortunate husband. My son is getting better, although he still has a bad cough at night. We spent Mother's Day morning waiting fourty-five minutes for breakfast (only for the waitress to initially give us the wrong order and forget my son's whipped cream for his pancakes), and then spent the afternoon with my husband's family. His younger brother - who I have mentioned before is kind of...well, for lack of a better word, an idiot - has apparently started to sell meat door to door from a truck to supplement his income. Meat. From a truck.


Because of the weather change happening right now (it's hot enough outside to be a little unpleasant for long periods of time, but not hot enough to make the water in my pool warm enough to swim in), every day my dog sheds enough fur to make a small version of herself. I brushed her out last night and managed to groom half a 13 gallon garbage cans worth of fur off of her in about fifteen minutes. And she was still shedding. I stopped brushing because I got a hand cramp.

We're supposed to get some rain (finally), but the wildfire smoke is supposed to follow a cold front south by the end of the week. I'm almost finished with HP book number five - about a quarter left to go. I don't know what I'm going to do when I finish the series.

(This is SO ME!)

It's all about Me (meaning you).

This post is dedicated to M, as this is her last day with us. In homage to her, here are some of my fondest memories (taking it old-school, yearbook style - cause that's how we do...): zombie squirrels; twinkie corpses; Attack of the hibiscus; girl-dates; MySpace; birthday hats; "Profane!"; "There's a ___ in me ___..."; Almost dieing in a tragic golf-cart accident; Ok Go (squared); Planning trips that never happen; Jazz hands!!; "Quaiiiiddd"(that's all me); "I am your daughter..."; Thairific Sushified lunches; Snakes. On a mother-effing plane; "Vat wazz zat noize?"; The joys (and sorrows) of blogging; IoA and Snow Patrol; Finally having 'Arry Potterrr in common.


The image above was taken this morning from the Business building across the harbor - that's not fog. On a clear day you'd be able to see my building. The new co-worker is insisting on wearing a particle filter mask. In the office. With the interior door closed. She looks like a blonde Michael Jackon with that thing covering her face. There was soot all over my car this afternoon when I went to get M's cake...I'm strangely in the mood for some Smokey's Real Pit Bar-B-Que.

Where there's fire...

...There's smoke. According to the news, there are over 200 separate wildfires burning over 20,000 acres of land here in the Too-Much-Sunshine State. Add to that wildfires that Georgia has been battling for weeks. A lovely smokey pall is currently enveloping the county and every time I walk outside it feels like I'm inhaling barbeque fumes.


I took yesterday off, even though I have more work than I even want to think about right now and I really couldn't afford to lose the eight hours. My son woke up with a fever of 101 degrees, so he had to stay home from school. Of course, half way through the day he wanted to jump around and tell me he was "much better". Today he has a slight cough and the sniffles, but is otherwise fine. I spent most of yesterday reading HP book four. I only have a couple chapters to go - then it's on to book number five.

Spent a nice relaxing weekend across the bridge with my parents and my sister. She had a dance recital on Saturday, so I went to watch that and then we all went out to dinner at the Sand Bar and watched the sun set. I went to the Red Barn with my mom on Sunday and bought some new decor for my office. My new theme is touristy "tacky-chic" - a beachy feel with lots of loud, gaudy colors. Maybe it'll liven up my mood a little.

Something I learned over the weekend:
"Porthos" is not only the name of the dog in my sisters SIMS game (as well as the name of a dog in the Scott Bakula pre-Star Trek original series show "Enterprise", and the name of playwright James M. Barrie's dog, upon whom the Nana of Peter Pan was based), it was originally the name of one of the Musketeers in the stories by Dumas (the other two Musketeers were Aramis and Athos).

May Day

May is here.
My birthday fast approaches.
There will be much rejoicing.
And cake.
And maybe drinking and dancing.



Yesterday when I got home from work I got to hear a rather unsettling story. Apparently while my husband was sitting in the office of my son's preschool talking to one of the administrators, one of the other parents decided to pick up my son while they were picking up their child from the same class and drop him off at the office. Now, I know that this person had good intentions. And really, that's the only thing that kept my husband calm during this incident. The school could have faced possibly losing their license - if we were the kind of people to make it an issue. Because the teachers minding his class weren't paying enough attention to see my son leaving with someone other than his parents. SOS!