oven

Our oven is on the fritz.

Belinda was home today while the landlord and a repairman came over to look at it, and I just got this lovely email from Belinda:

I tried to explain to the stove dude about how its been taking so long to heat up and I said how it took 2 hours for a quiche to set and he said "that means nothing to me".

Men.

NO! Not men! Some very manly men know all about quiche (savory tart? Now that sounds like, oh never mind...).

Maybe the guy who fixes stoves for a living doesn't give a flying fuck about cooking because it reminds them too much of work? Men? I think not! Could there possibly be lots of women who never go near a quiche unless it's being served to them by a snooty waiter in a fancy restaurant? Of course there are.

I prefer the non-sexist "domestically challenged" myself.

hot abercrombie slut

Amanda, you're a bitch, and I hate you.

Ok, so I admit it. I never did read her blog much. And, I admit, I was trying to sponge off some of her popularity. I was just hoping that having her on my blogroll would somehow send a reader or two my way. Or better yet, she would notice that I've linked to her and reciprocate on her blogroll, the Holy Grail. And I admit she sure is popular. She's consistently in the Top 3 of the Blogarama Most Cool blogs, whatever the fuck that means. Her site meter claims she's gotten 177,000 hits, which is about 465 times more hits than I have. Search her blog on Technorati and you get 439 links from 357 sources. Holy fucking shit!

But, popularity aside, you ain't running for homecoming queen, Amanda. I can't stand you or your blog anymore. Over the last few weeks, every posting you've done has not only been about the terrorist beheadings, but you link directly to the photos and videos of these gruesome acts themselves. Oh sure, you say:

I certainly don't intend to force gruesome images on anyone - I decided that a safe policy for providing such pictures would be to include thumbnails only for segments of videos that did not depict violence, while using text-only links clearly [indicating] the picture content for those depicting images of the beheadings.

But I really don't believe you. Nope, sorry.

Seriously now, what the fuck is wrong with you? Your profile, albeit grammatically challenged, says that you're a:

Philosophy major, college sophomore in Fall 2004.

Why the fuck is a 19, at most, 20 year old young lady such as yourself, so obsessed with blood and gore? This is not the movies, sweetie, this is fucking real life. Real people are dying in these horrible acts, families are being torn to pieces, the terrorists are fucking winning (!) and you're linking to these pictures and videos to get a few thousand extra hits?!

Maybe you should schedule an appointment with your school psychologist. Seriously.

starfucks

Over the years, I have gone from liking Starbucks, to loving Starbucks, to craving Starbucks four times a day; to fucking hating Starbucks with such vitriol that it makes me cross-eyed.

It starts with the way you're supposed to fucking order. Short is for extra small, tall is for small, grande (that's Italian for large) is for medium, and venti (Italian for twenty) is for large. What the fuck was wrong with small, medium, and large? Had these words suddenly lost their effectiveness? Did we all wake up one day and say, "Gee, small, medium and large just aren't working for us anymore, we need more words to describe the same fucking thing!" No, it's the fuckers in Seattle way of making customers feel like they're fucking fancy and snooty and fucking more righteous than the people who like to drink coffee that's been filtered through a paper cone.

Speaking of which, what the fuck is wrong with coffee that's been brewed through the drip method? Why must it be that every time I walk into Starbucks, Peet's, Tully's, or the corner Uppity Cafe, I am made to feel like a second class citizen for asking for my "drip" coffee?

It wasn't all that long ago (maybe I'm showing my age here) that I remember when we went to Dunkin Donuts or dare I say 7-11 for coffee that would make hair grow from your ears. AND WE LIKED IT! We even craved the shit. We even drove a mile out of our way to get it!

Then Starbucks came along and said here is this fancy fucking Italian coffee. And the fuckers from Seattle said, "Taste this! Aren't those lattes and cappuccinos yummy? Oh, yeah, that is going to cost you $5 instead of the $1.15 you were paying at Dunkin."

Let me rant on about another thing. Your fucking grande nonfat latte is made with exactly two 1-1/2 ounce shots of espresso. Each of those shots of espresso is made with exactly one tablespoon of fine ground coffee, which gives you a whopping grand total of TWO tablespoons of coffee used per $4.70 grande nonfat latte. The grande (that's medium to the sane) coffee is 16 ounces. Two 1-1/2 ounce espresso shots take up 3 ounces in your cup, which leaves 13 ounces. You're barista (in the 80's these were the same pimply kids who could only get jobs working the fry line at McD's) fills your cup with about 10 ounces of "steamed milk", the remaining 3 ounces is filled with "foam".

I'm not 100% sure what "foam" is or where it comes from, but I'm pretty sure there are a bunch of teenage boys with Barely Legal video's in the back... oh nevermind.

"Steamed milk" is a fancy fucking term for milk made hot using steam. Duh. I can buy a gallon of milk in the most expensive convenience store in the fanciest fucking neighborhood in this city for $4.00. That's 128 fucking ounces people! How much fucking money is Starbucks making us pay for them to boil fucking water??????

Want to know the best part? That fucking 16 ounce grande nonfat fucking latte has almost half the caffeine that drip coffee does. That's almost the same thing as your friendly neighborood cocaine dealer who cuts his product with sweet-n-low.

Fuck no, its worse.

rules

Not only do I work my 9-to-5 job, but to make a little extra money I do some freelance work in the evenings.

I usually can't even start this work until 8 or 9PM. By the time I get home and we figure out what to do for dinner, make the dog feel like she is loved, make a few phone calls, etc. I usually work until 1 AM, sometimes a little later. This all sucks, but if you keep focused and consider caffeine a food group, it's not half bad.

Belinda is asleep on the couch behind me.

I have asked her again and again to go to sleep in the bedroom. This is for two reasons. First, so she can sleep comfortably, and not wake up with neck pain, which she invariably does. Besides, one of us might as well be well rested. Also, it drives me fucking batty because it makes burning the midnight oil on a project that much more difficult. Hearing the quiet little snores behind my head as I try to work, makes me think about nothing but sleeping, and makes me want to punt my laptop and dive into bed.

I have tried to get her off the couch and go to bed. I have tried to trick her into going to bed. Nothing works.

But she insists on sleeping on the couch (or the cozy chair) in the living room. The funny thing is when she was in graduate school and she stayed up until all hours studying, she insisted I go to bed. For the exact same reasons!

It's funny how the rules are different.

breakfast

It's official; Belinda and I are going to the same breakfast place that she insists we go to every single Saturday. Again.

I really hate this fucking place. What the fuck is up with her? Not only do we go to the same place every Saturday, she orders the exact fucking same thing every time. Every time. She never tries anything different. Granted it has pretty fancy French food, but still!

When we first moved to this city, this was the first place we ate breakfast in. Her cousin (who knows everyone, and has been to every single restaurant in this city) took us there. We've been back, I'd say, 90% of the weekends since. The only time we've missed it is when we are traveling. When we do travel, even if it's someplace known to have a world-class culinary scene, Saturday will roll around, and invariably Belinda will turn to me and say, "Oh, I miss that place, I wish we could go there."

When we walk in, the staff doesn't even show us our table any more. They treat us as if we're houseguests who've long overstayed their welcome. "Oh, it's you guys again, hi, sit anywhere you want... Whatever." We have to get our own menus. Once, when Belinda took her Aunt there, the waiter said to the Aunt, "If you have any questions about anything on the menu, don't ask me, ask her," pointing to Belinda.

When I sit down in this place, I look at the menu, and I lose my appetite. I have literally ordered everything on the menu twice or more. Every weekend, when we're heading over to the place, I pray that there is a special I'll be interested in, so I don't have to eat the same breakfast slop, yet again. That's not fair, the food is good, just overly familiar. I WANT TO TRY SOMETHING NEW! No. I NEED TO TRY SOMETHING NEW ONCE IN A WHILE!

We live in a city of 3.5 million people. There are literally hundreds of places within 2 miles of our house that serve breakfast. There are easily 50 that are walking distance from us that we could try... but no.

Belinda says that having "routine" makes her feel comfortable and safe. I can understand that, but having a routine that's dragged on for this long makes me bored and want to throw furniture around the house.

arrgghh

I am having the worst day at work. I am pretty convinced that everyone here is out to get me. Yesterday I had this conversation with the Boss:

Boss: We need to be in NJ by Thursday! [he means next Thursday, not tomorrow -g]
Grumpy: Why?
Boss: Because I'm going to be in NYC Tuesday and Wednesday, and then I can go to the client on Thursday.
Grumpy: Oh. Well I continue to not have good results.

The stupidity of this is staggering. The client pays for our plane tickets, so it's not as if our small consultancy has to absorb extra costs. Now, I have to rush around like a fucking crazy person to try to get everything ready for Thursday. Sure, it would be convenient for his majesty, but I mean, really, is this really best? While I'm rushing around, I'm not solving the basic fundamental problems I am having on this project. No time for the small shit, right?!

To be ready to be in NJ by Thursday, I have to get amazing laundry list of items finished, 90% of which rely on other people to come through in time. And, all these items have to be completed by Tuesday to account for travel time. The likelihood of all of this happening I have calculated to be exactly zilch.

Today, he and I have this conversation:

Boss: Are you almost done? I could use any free time you have on this other project.
Grumpy: Free time? I thought you needed me to be ready by Thursday for the NJ thing.

What I really wanted to say was, "Are you fucking smoking crack?!"

Then I get this email from the fucking overeducated windbag freelancer:

Sorry I didn't make it in today but I've been cleaning my way out of a virus or something in my laptop. It should be clean now, but we'll see. Also, tomorrow I have appointments through lunch and will make it up right afterwards.

Remember that laundry list of items that I mentioned above? Right-O. There goes the first thing not getting done in time. That didn't take long, now did it?

If I weren't such a pussy, I'd quit. Then again, if I weren't such a lazy fuck, my resume would be ready.

squabbling

Belinda and I squabble a lot.

Sometimes I feel like we're a mid-50's married couple in that familiarity-breeds-contempt stage of their relationship. Of course, we've only been together about 3 years, so that's not what's really going on. What's really going on is that Belinda never backs down. Never.

What's interesting is that Belinda knows about this blog. Lots of other guy blogs out there like For Crying Out Loud, The Good Husband, and the sadly defunct I Hate My Wife keep their blog a secret from their significant others. Since Belinda reads this, I need to edit things a little bit. I mean we don't want her knowing everything that goes on in my feeble little brain. But I try not to pull any punches, and to tell it like it is regardless of who's reading or not.

Last night, we were in our squabbling mode as usual, I was getting more and more pissed at whatever it was that she was going on about, and in my frustration I actually said to her, "I can feel a blog post coming on..." I was actually threatening to write about her unless she either comes around to my point of view or just gives me five minutes of peace.

Interesting twist, in the 21st century relationship, huh?

scumbag

A couple of weeks ago, Belinda sent me a link to an item on Ebay she liked. She liked the price even more. It was a necklace from Tiffany's. She has a thing for jewelry, especially fancy stuff from Tiffany's.

The text of the auction included this, er, gem:

Don’t be fooled with fake auctions, and people who copy the Tiffany & Co picture from the Tiffany website, my pictures are taken by me, of the actual item you get, not stolen from the manufactures website to make it look better.

I think to myself, hmm, that'll make a nice gift for Belinda on our anniversary. She wants it. She likes it. I will buy it for her and I will be a hero! Everybody wins. So I bid and I win it. Whoo hoo!

Oh shit, I forgot to check one thing; does the seller take Paypal? Fuck, no. Well I won the auction, and we all know what Ebay says:

Your bid is a contract - Place a bid only if you're serious about buying the item. If you are the winning bidder, you will enter into a legally binding contract to purchase the item from the seller. You should contact the seller to resolve any questions before bidding.

And we all know that the punishment for not following through on an Ebay auction is: negative feedback. Oh no, not negative feedback! Anything but negative feedback! Whip me, flog me, burn me at the stake, but whatever you do, don't give me negative feedback!

So being the stupid schmuck that I am, I sent the seller a check for $107. I never felt quite right about it, but I did it anyway. Then, I didn't hear jack shit from him. I waited a week, justifying to myself, "Oh, you know how the USPS can be..." After a week, I sent him an email asking, "Hey, did you get the check yet?" And another, "Hey, did you ship the item yet?" Nothing. Nada. Niente. Nichts. Zip.

This morning I sent him this email:

I STILL have not heard from you about whether you have gotten the check or not. If I do not hear from you by lunchtime today, I have to assume you have scammed me and I AM GOING TO STOP PAYMENT ON THE CHECK.

Sorry it has come to this.
Grumpy

While I'm waiting for a harried response (and apology) from the seller, I go back on Ebay and check to see if he has any negative feedback. "this is a FAKE .the buyer didn't answer.i want to moneyback." I know the grammar is horrible, but hey, I didn't write it. And this "Tiffany store says FAKE!! Item from Taiwan! Seller said $ back - no refund given" Great. Oh, then I look at the top of my screen and next to the seller's name is this, "No longer a registered user" I am obviously dealing with a person who is both a criminal mastermind and a scumbag.

So after I got back from lunch, I stopped payment on the check. No harm done.

But the real winner in this whole deal is my bank; they get $25. Fuckers.

esoteric

I just don't get people without a sense of humor.

Sure, sometimes my particular wit can be a little on the so-subtle-I-have-to-think-about-whether-that-was-a-joke-at-all side. I like to think of my humor as "esoteric". Belinda likes to call it "not funny".

Regardless of which camp you side with, there are times when you're in a polite social setting and it's obvious that a joke is being made, even if you don't find it funny, you give a little polite laugh and move on. We all do this, if we didn't society would break down into total anarchy.

So, we're meeting with the freelancer to help us solve a very serious and vexing issue that cropped up recently with the device I've been working on:

Boss: Well, think about it tonight and let us know if you think of any solutions for this problem. Maybe you'll come up with something while you're in the shower or something...
Freelancer: OK (nods head pensively)
Grumpy: (har harring) Well, as long as it's about this, we don't want to know everything you think of in the shower!
Freelancer: (looks at me disdainfully) Riiight...
Boss: (laughing politely)

See, even my pole-up-his-ass boss knows what to do.

lazy

Belinda asked me, via email, why I didn't write a post today.

I gave her my standard wiseass answers. First, I was too fucking busy to write a fucking post. These posts don't just write themselves. I have to be creative and actually think of something worth writing about. Then I have to edit, rewrite, spell check, etc. I just didn't have time for that bullshit today. Second, nothing happened. That's right, not one fucking thing happened today to put me in a foul mood. Sometimes, very rarely, nothing occurs that pisses me off. Can you believe that?!?!

So for today, I have no crankiness to share. However, I will share with you, two things on craigslist that made me smile. First is this posting "I Almost Won A Darwin Award", which I found on kottke.org. Then there is this one from the rants & raves, section which Belinda sent me. If you ride the subway or public transportation to work, you'll definitely appreciate it.

You gotta love craigslist.

insomnia

Belinda and I both had insomnia last night.

Except for the fact that I'm so tired this morning that I can barely muster up the energy to sip my coffee, we had a nice time. It's been a long while since we just lay in bed together. We chatted, spooned, squabbled, cuddled, and shared concerns about our relationship.

Belinda gets all freaked out when I get stressed. When I am stressed I close up. I don't talk about my feelings or the detail of my day very much is it is. But when stressed, I talk about those things even less. I think this alarms her. You know how women are. When Belinda gets home from work she tells me all of the fine details about her day, down to the minutest of minute details. At dinner last night, I was doing my stressed/quiet routine. Belinda had been talking for about 30 minutes straight. Going on about the people at work, lunch, the fax machine, the joke she told her boss, etc. Anyway, at one point, she asked me if anything exciting happened at work today. I just responded, "No, nothing happened at work today at all." Which, of course, is total bullshit, I just didn't want to talk about it. It had only been about 2 hours since I left work, and I need lots of time to decompress. When I finally do get my head around the events of the day, I open up more.

That night, lying in bed, Belinda said she took my quietness as a sign that I'm unhappy in our relationship, and unhappy with her in general. That it must mean that I don't value her as a listener and I don't value her help and guidance to get me through the stress. This surprised me a bit since we've been together for three years, and I have been stressed out for about 2-1/2 of those three years. But, I assured her that everything is fine, and that I just deal with stress a little differently than she does.

After that we just laid in bed, quiet. I could hear her breathing slow, and finally, mercifully, sleep took hold of her. That was about 3 AM. I lay there, listening to her breathing, thinking... the storm in my brain finally allowed me to sleep at 4.

That 7 AM alarm was almost painful...

as if on cue

I got my gmail invite last night when I logged into blogger. Do you think the guys at Google are reading this blog?

So, naturally, I signed up. Wouldn't you?

So far, the one major disappointment is the lack of extra invites. It seems that early Gmail testers got extra invites to give to their friends. I have not gotten any of those. Which makes me feel bad, because I would like to have given one to Belinda.

I've used Gmail to send out a grand total of two emails. It has plenty of features you can go and read about at other, more qualified, websites and blogs.

The one thing I will say is that it's fast. Damned fast.

irre-fucking-gardless

Irregardless.

That fucking freelancer they hired here at work used the fucking word irregardless today. Anyone who knows me knows that my fucking blood boils some asshole uses that fucking word. Not much gets me more fucking pissed off than that. It chaps my hide even more that an overeducated windbag who thinks he's fucking god's gift to engineering from fucking Stanford (!) said it.

The next fucker who says that fucking word in my presence is going to get all 20 volumes of the OED dumped on their fucking head.

ms. hilton, ms. paris hilton

Belinda and I watched the Paris Hilton Sex Video last night.

I know, I know... we're so late to that party.

After watching The Fabulous Life of the Hilton Sisters on VH1 about 2 months ago, Belinda turns to me and says, "Can you find her video on the internet?" Baby, I can find anything on the internet. In no time, I found and downloaded the full 37-minute version for us to watch. Which promptly sat on my hard drive, unwatched, for the last two months, until last night.

What I can say is that it was really exceptionally and surprisingly dull and unerotic. After watching it, I felt that I wasted 37 minutes of my life. Going to bed 37 minutes earlier and getting a little extra sleep probably would have better served me.

Sure, it was explicit. Sure, Ms. Hilton is pretty. Sure, there was sex. But both Ms. Hilton and Mr. Solomon are really immature and really annoying. I don't think I can stress this enough, immature and annoying, very stupid of me to expect otherwise, I guess. Their banter was so fucking stupid, that I wish I could have dumped an oil tanker of KY jelly over their heads to shut them up. "Just shut up and fuck! You're ruining it!", I was tempted to bark into my laptop.

Oh, and don't even get me started on the sex. Mr. Solomon is terrible in bed, he takes forever to come, and he's clearly there for his own pleasure not Ms. Hilton's. Not surprisingly, Ms. Hilton's performance plays off Mr. Solomon's. She appears bored, and somewhat anxious for the act(s) to be over. In fact, she seems more excited by the camera and the fact that she is being filmed than anything that's going on around her or into her.

Or, maybe she's just a lousy lay.

Either way, I am most surprised by the fact that I expected oh-so-much more from the worst our mediocre-at-best entertainment industry has to offer. What the fuck was I thinking?

i love being right

As predicted in my earlier post, Yahoo has taken a shot across the Gmail bow. I got this message when I logged into my Yahoo email this morning:

Great news – Yahoo! Mail is new and improved!

Thanks for being a loyal Yahoo! Mail user. To ensure that Yahoo! Mail continues to be the easiest, most enjoyable way for you to stay in touch, we've made several great improvements to your service! In addition to all the features you currently enjoy, we've made these upgrades:

Streamlined interface: Makes using your mail even easier

100MB of email storage: Keep more of the things that are important to you – without worrying about bumping up against your storage limit.

Message size up to 10MB: Send monster-sized files – photos, presentations, whatever!

So thanks again for choosing Yahoo! Mail to keep in touch, and we hope you enjoy the additional services now at your fingertips. For more information, please visit our Help page.

Sure it's 10 times less space than Gmail's 1GB. But it's the first step, and it's enough space to make you think twice before immediately switching. Oh, and no relevant text ads, which has the privacy watchdogs up in arms.

Yesterday, my Yahoo inbox was at 99% capacity, today it's 6%.

ATM illiterate

ATM's have been our main way of interacting with our banks and our money for quite some time now.

Banks encourage us to use them for as many of our banking needs as possible. Hell these machines can even sell you stamps. It's almost impossible to go through your banking life without using one from time to time. In fact, banks will often charge you $2 if you do some banking with a human that you could have done with an ATM instead.

So why is it that I still have to wait for a fucking eternity behind someone who seems to be ATM illiterate?

What reason can there be to be so fucking slow at the ATM? You don't have that many choices. You can take money out, put money in, transfer money between accounts... what is so fucking confusing?

Perhaps these people are tourists and aren't used to my city's sophisticated style of ATM user interface? Are ATM's in different parts of the country that different from mine? Perhaps tourists from Peoria or Mobile are stumped when they walk up to these complex ATMs?

Hell I've lived on both coasts of this country, and I can assure you, that ATMs are pretty much the same everywhere I've been. Sure the buttons may move around slightly, but it's basically the same choices.

Maybe, just maybe, these people are fucking stupid?!

clickity click

In the middle of last week, I landed some freelance work in addition to my normal 9-to-5 job. Needless to say, it's been a little nutty lately.

For the last five or six days, I would, basically, leave work at 6 or 6:30, head home, and start working again. Also, all weekend I was stuck inside clicking that stupid fucking mouse...

Don't get me wrong, freelance work is awesome, I get to make a little extra money and pay down some of those credit card bills. I get to work on some cool things that I wouldn't get to work on normally, and generally, I'm happiest when I'm going a million miles and hour and I'm so busy I can't see straight. I don't know why, I just am.

It's bad though because it means that Belinda and I didn't spend much time together screwing off and blowing off steam this weekend like we usually do. During the week, I am unable to give her as much pillow time as she is used to, since I'm sitting in front of the computer, usually swearing at it like a truck driver, until 12 or 1 AM. Chores around the house get ignored, etc...

The worst part is that I work in our dining nook, which overlooks the park across the street. So while I'm stuck inside clicking away, I can watch all the people in the park sunning themselves and generally lazing about in the perfect weather we have here. Maybe I need to move my computer...

With all that said, I'm in a pretty good mood today. I suppose because I have been too busy to think about how much I hate my job or my boss or this stupid fucking project I'm slaving away on. Which is good, considering the week I had last week. So, there is very little grumpiness to write about today.

However, now that I'm my desk this morning, and I haven't had any downtime in a while, that could change at any minute...

explosive diarrhea

Belinda and I came home to a little surprise this evening.

As we were ascending our stairs (we live in a three story walk-up) we noticed a rather foul smell, reminiscent of the smell of raw sewage.

It seems that Trixie, the most fantastic dog on the planet, had an accident in the bathroom rug. Umberto, our dog walker must have stumbled (not literally) on it, and cleaned up 99% of it. God I love Umberto, talk about going above and beyond.

Please understand how unusual this is for Trixie. Since she adopted me from the shelter four years ago, she has gone in the house exactly one other time. And it was only because she was sick. Back in the days when I was irresponsible and I would go out drinking after work, she has held it for 12, 14, even 18 hours, the poor thing. I bet she could go longer too. This dog defines mind over bladder. In hindsight, it seems that treating her to that little can of tuna last night was probably a bad idea.

So, Belinda and I took Trixie outside in case she had a little extra bubbling up (she did). Then we walked to the supermarket to buy some carpet cleaner to get out the 1% left by Umberto.

Belinda and Trixie wait outside while I go in to get the necessities. While I'm in there, I think, "hmm, maybe I should get some air freshener, since the house smells so bad." Mentally patting myself on the back for being so fucking smart. I know Belinda is allergic to like every single chemical known to man. So I choose the all natural citrus freshener. No chemicals, perfect.

Naturally, Belinda is less than impressed, "I told you twice (!) never to buy that shit, I hate how it smells."

gmail hysteria

I just spent a good hour trying to figure out how to get myself a Gmail account.

1GB of email storage would certainly come in handy in my email-centric life. Currently, my main email is through my cable company. Very convenient, very fast, kindof expensive. If I were the cable company, I'd be scared shitless of when Gmail goes live.

Gmail is going to be the equivalent of cell phone number portability. Think about this for a second. I am not looking around for a new, better priced ISP because I don't want to go though the hassle of having to change my email. Does this sound like the same reason people we sticking with their much despised cell phone carriers? When I finally do get my Gmail account, I can go through the email switcheroo pain once more, then that's it. I have my single email account for life. I never have to send out that mass email to all my friends, family and acquaintances again explaining that I've moved, or I've switched ISPs and now my email has changed. Never...

So as I'm poking around the web trying to figure out how all these people are getting their invites. Obviously, not just Google employees are getting them. This guy got one because he is an "active" user of Blogger. This guy, works for Google and is giving them out to his friends and to the faithful readers of his blog (huh, a ploy to get more readers?).

Hmm... You can also find some on Ebay for a reasonable $5 or $6. There is even a whole web page called gmailswap dedicated to the cause. This person is offering a personalized sock monkey in return for an invite.

Then it occurred to me. Why am I wasting my time with this stupidity? I have gotten along for 30+ years without a Gmail account. I can probably go on longer without one. Then I realized that there is no way in hell Yahoo! and Hotmail are going to sit around while Google takes away all their free email customers. It's just a matter of economics. The price per GB of hard drive storage has fallen from $5.44 in 2000 to $0.78 in 2004, and continues to fall. At that price even mighty Microsoft will offer 1GB free email accounts. Why? Because they'll have to, if they want to stay competitive.

I'm going to sit and wait it out.

meanderthal

Once again, it's 9:30 and I just walked in the door here at work.

I'd very much like to get here at 9:00, or even earlier. I work in one of those offices where the time you plop your ass into your Aeron chair seems to make a difference in how people perceive you.

Belinda and I walk to work in the morning quite often. Which is awesome. We used to leave the house after I'd walk the dog, and she'd make us a nice breakfast. But that was taking way too long. So I asked if we could skip breakfast (can't really skip the dog walk) and leave earlier so I can get here at a reasonable time.

Granted, this morning, we did leave about 10 minutes earlier than we usually do. We skipped breakfast like I asked. But the kicker is, Belinda doesn't like to skip breakfast. Which from a health standpoint, I can understand. You've got to fuel the fire, so to speak. So we leave the house and stop for a breakfast smoothie to sip while we walk. At the end of our walk, we stop again for Starbucks. Lo and behold, it's 9:30 when I walk in the door. Go figure...

What made things even worse today was that as we were approaching her office (her office is on the way to mine) we bump into one of her coworkers, who's walking in the same direction as us. Of course, we have to be polite and say hello to her. I'm freaking out at this point because it's already 9:10, and I still have a ways to go. We're walking three abreast down the sidewalk now. While they're making polite small talk, steam is fucking shooting out of my ears.

The fucking coworker, who isn't exactly an old fart, is walking so fucking slowly, that if she went any slower she'd be going fucking backwards!

nine women

So, if you remember from yesterdays post:

He has even offered an unspecified financial bonus (verbal, not written) if we can pick up the pace and go above and beyond.

So, of course, everyone is up in arms, fire and brimstone are raining from the heavens. Everyone is running around like there is a tornado siren going off, and my fucking life is miserable.

It's the age-old adage, nine women can't make a baby in a month. They just don't get it.

Today, they brought in a freelancer to help me, and to help offload some of my work. This is great, except, I spent half the day yesterday trying to figure out what makes sense to cut loose and have this guy do. Today, and probably half the day tomorrow, I am teaching this freelancer how to use my device (he's still not getting it). In the meantime, I'm not getting any of my higher priority work done, until this polished, overpriced, and overeducated windbag gets up to speed.

The best part is that while we're meeting today, he's going off about how we need to rethink the inner workings of the device. HEY, YOU'RE A FUCKING FREELANCER, DO WHAT WE FUCKING TELL YOU!!! DID YOU HEAR ANYBODY SAY, HEY MR. FREELANCER, EVERYTHING IS FUCKED AND WE'RE INCOMPETENT. CAN WE THROW MONEY AT YOU SO YOU'LL SAVE OUR ASSES?! Nope, no one said that. What we did say is; here is a very defined set of parameters to work with. Here is everything you need to do your job. Get it fucking done, fucking now! You fucking cocksucker.

As you can see I highly regard this particular individual. My boss, who is well pedigreed and highly educated, seems to worship him.

fuck you, you fucking fuck

Well, my two weeks of being in a relatively good mood is over.

I'm back, bay-bee!!

Today was utter hell. First, from my earlier post, there was the spur-of-the-moment dog-and-pony show for Mr. President and his bimbo marketing twat. That demonstration went off horribly. First, the fucking thing didn't work right. Then, when I tried to do it a second time, I broke the damned thing. Fucking great.

Then I hear rumors that Mr. President had a side conversation with our sales dude, and is not pleased with our pace on this project. He has even offered an unspecified financial bonus (verbal, not written) if we can pick up the pace and go above and beyond. I have worked as a consultant a long, long time. My experience is that NO CLIENT is happy with the pace of a project EVER. Faster, faster, faster, they always want it sooner. It's because they're excited. It is the job of the project manager to say to the client, "Slow down, this is the absolutely fastest the project can go. Here are some reasons... We're moving ahead about 1000% faster than your internal team would have. Etc., etc., etc." My boss? You guessed it. Instead of pushing back on the client, he pushes on me to go faster. What the fuck? I've never seen anything like this...

Needless to say, I am in a very dark place today. I have had motivation problems on this job before, but today? Today, I have lots of motivation to fix up my resume and start circulating it.

FUCK!!

The president of my clients' company is coming for a surprise visit today. The fucking president!

"Just stopping in for a few minutes at lunch for a demonstration of the device," he says. He calls me directly (at 9:10AM) and kept asking if it was OK. "Is it OK?" "Are you sure?" Riiight, like I'm going to say, "Gee, I don't think so, I have a hair appointment then. Does tomorrow work for you?" He's apparently in town for a huge conference, and since he was so close...

I am so fucked at work it's not even funny. Maybe I'm spending too much time in front of Blogger? Nahhh, that can't be it...

total bitch

In my earlier post about my weekend in the mountains with Belinda and her family, Belinda felt that what I wrote made her sound like a total bitch. Well, that's not exactly what she said, she said it was, "a bit harsh."

Make no mistake, dear reader; Belinda is wonderful, even if, occasionally, she really pisses me off (thus providing me with 95% of the fodder for my grumpy diatribes). Belinda is everything to me: the love of my life, my one and true faithful reader, even my editor-in-chief when I feel like I might be writing total crap.

When I first started writing this blog, I made a conscious decision to not write about what happened between Belinda and I. I was certain that it would be, at best, a big test of our relationship. At worst, it would be a huge mistake that I may regret for eons to come. I mean think about it, putting your relationship's dirty laundry out on the internet for anyone to read, even the person that makes you grumpy!? It's a surefire formula for having your life blow up in your face.

Then sometime around this post I got brave and decided to write about Belinda. I knew she would read it, but I wasn't sure how she'd react. Read it she did. About 10 minutes after the post went up, I got an email saying, "Should I take this as a hint?" Yeowch! I knew I was in for it when I got home that night. Trying to cut my losses, the instant I walked in the door, I apologized (groveled) and offered to take the post down. Then Belinda did an awesome thing (she is always doing awesome things) and said, "No, don't delete it, I enjoyed it. It was funny!"

So, please keep in mind, this is the grumpy blog, not the taking-long-fucking-walks-on-the-beach-at-sunset blog for chrissake. Belinda rocks, I'm just not going to write about it...

glimmer

Well, I am back from my business trip of doom. There goes two days of my life that I will never get back. And the people I work for don't really care. Fuckers.

There was one ray of sunshine on my trip, however.

My boss stood me up for dinner so he could go "work out" at the hotel gym. Which was fine with me since I didn't want to have dinner with that boring fuck anyway. But, as usual, he made me feel like a fat piece of shit since I had no intention of taking advantage of the hotel gym and pool like he was. No, I was in my room, lounging in front of the TV in nothing but my Calvin Klein underwear, getting fatter by the minute. Nice imagery, huh?

Anyway, I was watching HBO. I don't normally watch HBO, since I'm too much of a tightwad to pay for it. I mean, jesus fucking christ, my cable bill is already 45 fucking dollars a month! And that's just for "basic" fucking cable! Am I the only person who thinks that seems like a lot of money to pay to sit on the couch and get stupid? Shouldn't they be paying us for the privilege to brainwash us with their makeover shows and commercials for purple ketchup? But I digress...

So, here I am, watching one of their comedy specials, and the latest comedian is Lewis Black. I've seen Lewis Black before and I always thought he was a funny guy. But this time I was practically shitting in my boxer-briefs laughing at the boob tube. The weird thing about this is that I NEVER laugh out loud at the TV. Especially not when I'm alone. I'm just not that demonstrative a person, and honestly, 99.9% of the drivel on TV just isn't that funny. But watching Mr. Black the other night, I couldn't contain myself.

Mr. Black really reminded me of myself. He is bitter. He is opinionated. He is angry. He is cranky. He is a crotchety fucker. He uses fuck, fucking or fucker every other word. Just like yours truly, except he is funny.

I think part of the reason he hit home with me that night was that it was the first time I've seen him since I started this blog. The whole time I kept thinking how his comedy is written in the same profanity, anger and sarcasm wrapped voice as my blog posts, and how I wish I could be as entertaining as he was. Damn! Well, at least something to work towards, huh?

I recently exclaimed that Jon Stewart was the funniest man alive, but after the other night, I think I may have to rethink that...

business trip

Another business trip this week. As you probably (?) read in my earlier post, I fucking hate business trips. Two days of non-stop fakery. To make it even worse, I'm going to rural New Jersey. I didn't even know New Jersey had a rural part! I thought New Jersey was filled with oil refineries, landfills, and towns like Hoboken. Who knew?

Do you know what there is to do in rural New Jersey? You guessed it! Nothing! Not a fucking goddamned thing. The biggest thing in town is a truck stop. It's a 90-minute drive from the nearest airport for Christ's sake! To go out for dinner, you have to drive over the border to New York. Believe me, rural New York ain't much better, but at least there is something there.

I am amazed that someone would locate their giant-sized company in this godforsaken shithole of a town. What amazes me even more is that there are people, smart, educated people, who are practically falling over themselves to work for this company and to live in that podunk town. Idiots.

Throw in a 5-1/2 hour flight (each way), 1-1/2 hour drive (each way), inane conversation until my head explodes, and lots of time sitting in a hotel room in my underwear (the car is rented in the bosses name), and you've got yourself a kick-ass business trip! Yee ha!

pussywhipped

Well, I just stumbled in from the long weekend in the mountains with Belinda and her family.

Overall, there was less fighting than I anticipated. As predicted, however, there were way too many snippy remarks to remember and plenty polite underhandedness to go around.

The key to survival this weekend was to walk that fine line between Belinda and her family. I haven't been around Belinda's family long enough to feel like I'm one of them yet. So when there is an "event" I feel myself having to both make sure I do the right thing by Belinda, and at the same time, make sure I don't alienate the family.

A fine example of this happened one afternoon when Ms. Biddlebox (Belinda's mother) suggested we eat dinner outside that evening. Sounds nice to me. Being in the mountains is all about being outdoors, the weather is pleasant, so I agree. The sister, Beulah, agrees. Darrell, Beulah's husband (he's an awesome guy and the only saving grace of the weekend) couldn't give two shits where we ate. You gotta love Darrell. Belinda says, "I am not fucking eating outside, there are too many bugs!" I haven't been to the mountain house enough to really know the extent of dinner-time insect activity, but I am sure that with a little citronella everyone will be happy. Reluctantly, Belinda agrees to eat outside with all of us. She seems cranky for the rest of the afternoon.

At one point during the afternoon, she confides with me, "We never ate outside when we came here as kids. It's just stupid. My mother is so ridiculous!" What am I supposed to say to that? I head to the garage to look for as many mosquito repelling devices as I can find. This is my pathetic attempt to make everyone happy and help make the evening go off without a hitch. I know that this is futile, but I do it anyway.

Once dinner is ready, we all head outside. The food looks good, the wine looks good. Belinda, with that sour look on her face, comes outside and takes her seat next to me. As soon as she sits down, Belinda finds a six legged friend in her water. Beulah is swatting her arms. I keep feeling mosquitoes poking around on my neck. Darrell, always compliant and easy going, doesn't seem to notice anything. Ms. Biddlebox offers some Deet to Belinda, "NO! I don't use that shit!" A minute later Belinda watches a mosquito hover and land on her barbecue chicken and proceeds to test it with her proboscis to see if she can use it for tonights' feeding. This was the last straw for Belinda, "OK, that's it, this is disgusting, a fucking mosquito just landed on my food. I'm eating inside!" She proceeds to get up and head in. Admittedly, the bugs were pretty bad; the citronella candle and citronella tiki torches surrounding the deck, seemed to only be attracting the insects. Belinda was only outside for a total of about 3 minutes.

So now here I am. At the table alone, Belinda has just stormed off carrying her plate of food inside hurrumphing the whole way. Everyone at the table has this sort of, "uuuummm... oookkkaaayy" look on their faces, and they're all looking at me. I am panicking on the inside. "Holy shit, what the fuck do I do, what do I do. Oh shit." On the outside, ever the stoic, I coolly take a bite of my roasted root vegetables and look at my fork contemplatively.

So here is where that fine line I was talking about comes in. What do I do? Do I get up and yell, "Yeah, me too!" and storm off inside? This will alienate the family, but probably make Belinda happy as hell. Do I just stay there and pretend it never happened, making idle conversation with Ms. Biddlebox, and let Belinda eat alone indoors? This would probably alienate Belinda big time, and it would result in me not getting any sex for at least a month, maybe three.

So I sat there for what seemed and eternity (read 20 seconds) considering my options. I am certain that I would like to have sex sometime before my next birthday, and I know I am going inside. The question now is; how the fuck do I make my exit? The key here is that I have to make myself look good doing it, or at least not look like an utter fool. I need to make sure that it doesn't seem that I am running after her, otherwise I might seem henpecked. If I take too long to go inside, it will seem like I felt uncomfortable hanging with the family without her at my side. Also, if I take too long, Belinda will be pissed.

I take a couple of bites of salad, place my fork down, stand up, and declare, "Well, I going to go inside, so Belinda doesn't have to eat alone." I gather up my plate, silverware, and wine glass and I stride off.

Not a word is said, but I am 100% sure of what that they were all thinking: "Yup, pussywhipped."