2003-01-30

 

A second political OUCH for the day: Here.

posted by bethanye 5:28:00 PM   

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Political OUCH of the day. Courtesy a co-worker:

"Lieberman's very conservative for a Democrat.
He'd be a Republican if they let Jews into the party".

Like I said... OUCH!

posted by bethanye 9:52:00 AM   

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2003-01-29

 

DAMN! It is cold at my desk! Getting ready to get out of here and head over to the Y. Hopefully it will be warmer there!

Got some dish from a former co-worker who is still at p-V. I am so glad I'm not there anymore! And to underscore this point, I should mention that I had yummy sushi and a few beers at lunch today, and that someone else picked up the bill. How much more heavenly can it get?

Well, off to defrost. Wait! I need to catch up on RickB's weblog before I go... Damned addictions...

posted by bethanye 5:20:00 PM   

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2003-01-28

 

Sigh. So my father did finally call last night...

<beat>

... to ask me when my birthday was!

He also asked about MoMo and Jake, which is when I told him that he had fucked up bad. Not yelling at him -- though I wanted to, I know that MoMo wouldn't have wanted that. Just that he asked when Jake's birthday is, and I said, "Oh, you just missed your only grandson's birthday. It was the 12th." I tried not to be too venomous, but it was just indefensible. And he didn't even apologize -- just made excuses. They're probably absolutely reasonable excuses, too. He's been working like crazy, for example. But I just want to smack him upside the head.

You don't have a relationship with someone -- anyone -- because you think you do. It doesn't just happen. It requires consideration and a little bit of effort. By saying, "Oh, well, I had to work." without even an apology suggests that such a slight is completely fine. It isn't. He's already missed most of our lives because he's a workaholic. Now he's missing Jacob's, too, and I just don't find that acceptable.

posted by bethanye 9:17:00 AM   

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2003-01-27

 

Well wishers everywhere! Emails from many Xinetians, yummy cake, more emails from dear friends, Bill and Dale's rendition of "Happy Birthday" on speakerphone, plus calls from Marianna and MoMo (and Jake). And all of that before 3:30. Tonight is the ritual watching of Teenagers from Outer Space and a homey meal. Then the glorious guilty pleasure of Joe Millionaire. Heh-heh.

posted by bethanye 3:59:00 PM   

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Renew! Renew! Bring out the death mask - I'm headed for the Carousel. Time to change the sidebar, while I'm at it.

posted by bethanye 9:28:00 AM   

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2003-01-24

 

Oh, and another thing: Apparently my impending birthday has hijacked Hitesh and Jenna's SuperBowl party on Sunday. We're going over there in the afternoon, but somehow the gathering is now being identified as "b's birthday extravaganza". The best kind of extravaganza - it's not at my house, I don't have to do a thing but show up, and we get to hang at Hitesh's posh crib. I swear, Hitesh and Mona totally have a Cribs house. At least the bathroom. Should be an interesting weekend...

posted by bethanye 12:22:00 PM   

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I went through a time when I just didn't do much at work. I wasn't sure how to proceed. Now I'm just going along at a bustling pace. I'm discovering some cool tricks in scripting languages, as well, and building stuff. It's a nice change from just sort of drifting.

posted by bethanye 12:19:00 PM   

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2003-01-22

 

Oh, hell! I'm almost thirty! I'll have to come up with something else to put in the sidebar after next week!

My doting (read:"sucks at relationships") father seems to have forgotten Jacob's birthday. Yup, that's right. His only grandchild. Well, MoMo called me earlier and in fact Jake got a card from him today. That's right, just today. TEN days late. He could have walked the damn thing over - it's just a few miles away. I want to find a way that this isn't a total screw up on his part, and I just can't. This is a major fuck-up.

On a related note, I did get a present from father+wife the other day. Some pretty glass pieces, can't complain about them. What I CAN complain about is the fact that my own father didn't even find the time to sign my damn card. Brenda did very well by me on the gift, but you'd think that he'd have a moment to sign the card!! I'm annoyed by this as well. He's too busy for his grandson - who lives just down the way. He's too busy to sign the card for me... What does this say to his kids? I'll tell you what is says to his kids! (ha-ha) It says, "You're still not particularly important to me compared to my work, and especially compared to my new life." I know he would object, and say "Oh, that's completely not true." But the way you show that you care for and enjoy being around someone (or something, like say a hobby) is by spending TIME with them. He didn't have any for us, then he had some for me for a few years, and now he doesn't have it again. He's going to have to get it together if he wants a relationship with Jake. MoMo's nothing like Anne -- she won't estrange them. But if he doesn't get with it and develop a bond with Jake, eventually it will be too late. There's no good reason for it to drag out like this. In the end, it will occur to my father one day that he has no real closeness to either his children or his grandchild(ren), and that maybe that's mostly his doing. No reason for it to come to that if he'll just spend some time with the people he purports to care so much about.

Enough of that rant. I will admit that I'm glad to be so far away from it.

Another joyous birthday announcement - not mine - has be good and riled up, too, but I'll have to go into that another time.

posted by bethanye 5:33:00 PM   

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2003-01-15

 

As promised, the $500 story. Remember that we went to go see The Two Towers soon after it came out? Well, originally, the ticket-drone gave Stevie the wrong day, so he had to exchange the tickets. When he went to do that, instead of crediting our card for the old tickets and issuing new tickets, they charged us for the returned tickets, then charged us again. Because we bought for a group of us (10 people total), we were over charged $200.

But wait! you say. How does that add up to a $500 loss?

Because the theatre accountants are morons, and re-ran every credit card purchase that occurred that day twice. So our $100 ticket buy turned into a $600 ticket buy.

We got $300 back so far, but the other (original) $200 haven't come through yet. <sigh>

At least I got paid today. And I'm enormously happy that we have an emergency fund. It more than covered this little adventure, thankfully.

On the work front, things are going quite well. I'm working on things I can't talk about, of course, but that's just how it goes. It comes in fits and starts.

We had gremlins at the office last week. Roof leaks, two of the A/C units went out (including one in the server room), the icemaker died. We pissed off some god of cooling and water or something. Eventually, suspicion came around to the adorable new plush Cthulhu that I have on my desk. Perhaps our new elder god was displeased someow? So we set him up with a little altar in the corner - candles, plastic spiders, and a shot of tequia - all the evil stuff we could find around the place. The A/C didn't come back, but the icemaker now works and the roof leak went away. Seems like there must be some sort of connection there!

posted by bethanye 10:09:00 AM   

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2003-01-09

 

Dear Diary,
Today basically sucked ass. I overslept, forgot my computer at home (and had to go back to get it), came into work late (because of aforementioned issues), wrestled with the damn icemaker for awhile, froze because of air conditioning re-routing at work, got a cancellation-imminent bill from the car insurance people (not knowing that the initial bill came in months ago, and was promptly mislaid in the house)... Well, that's about it. Except for the fact that we still are trying to get our $500 back from the movie theater. More on that later.
~~b

posted by bethanye 5:43:00 PM   

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2003-01-08

 

HA!

Aragorn's my fancy!
What's your fancy? Click here and tell the world!

posted by bethanye 7:58:00 AM   

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2003-01-05

 

Oh, and I should have mentioned this earlier. Today was a beautiful day. Just fabulously beautiful. And it felt good. I'm less resentful of the interminably gorgeous weather here, now that I know that it will eventually rain. I'm often happy when it rains.

posted by bethanye 5:08:00 PM   

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Better late than never. I'm thinking about my "resolutions" for the year. Usually, I don't do these until my birthday, and this year is no exception. I'm formulating them, but I probably won't put any effort into them for a few weeks yet. That said, here goes:

-- Get money stuff taken care of.
We've pretty well slacked off in the Quicken department since we got here. Gotta get that back in shape and get things back in order. Among priorities in this department: reduce ALL debt by at least 30% (including the car), increase savings at least 300%, take at least one Motley Fool money seminar, read at least one book in the personal finance department.
-- Get health stuff taken care of.
This includes: exercise at least three times weekly; consume more fruits and veggies, preferably minimally (if at all) processed; take a swim class at the Y to improve my swimming (which is pretty pathetic now).
-- Enjoy what I have, and stop concentrating so much on what I don't have.
Listen to music more frequently; cook new recipes a couple times weekly; use all of those fabulous bath products that I have and am "saving"; pedicures!; concentrate on work the way I used to - it's just a different kind of challenging (I've had a hard time becoming self-motivated as opposed to "it's-on-fire"-motivated.); take more pictures; update this lame-ass blog frequently, just to have some indulgent narcissism; attend at least one film a month.
-- Learn some new things.
Take a math class; take a Spanish class; learn C (maybe even objective C); get my motorcycle license; try rock climbing at the climbing gym near work.
-- Spend more time (even if only phone and email) with the people (and beasts) that I love.
Call my sisters (MoMo and Molly) at least once a week each; email or call my distant friends and family -- Kimmy, Marianna, Doreen and Pat, my grandparents -- more often; be a better "mommy" to the turtles and cats - brushing the cats and giving vitamins to the turtles regularly.

WHEW! If I hit half of these, I think I'm doing great.

posted by bethanye 5:02:00 PM   

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