Overheard in My Dining Room

Me: That crystals-&-tarot-cards place down the road has weekly yoga classes. I should get a schedule from them.

Chris: [Does not even bother to reply, knowing damn well that there's no way I am going to motivate myself enough to find out when classes are held, much less actually haul myself to them, but also being smart enough not to point this out.]

Me: The thing is, I don't want to go to some New Age-y kind of yoga class. I want to go to, you know, a girls-like-me kind of yoga class.

Chris: What, you mean where you sit around & drink lattes & talk about doing yoga?

Me: EXACTLY!

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

Thank God for Melissa, the only reason this is a (semi-) active blog. I truly have the best of intentions when it comes to updating. I've written whole posts in my head & even have scribbled a few on actual paper. But I want to avoid writing about anything work-related, mostly because I don't want to worry about getting dooced. Also because it is virtually impossible to describe my work environment without it sounding like a poorly-written sitcom. Unfortunately, since I spend roughly 75% of my waking hours in work-related endeavors, that's really all I have to talk about. Unless you want to discuss my Sephora addiction, my quest for The Perfect Haircut or the fact that I finally, finally! found a local Target with a Starbucks in-house. No? None of those? Are you sure? Because, trust me, I am fully able & willing to discuss any of those topics for hours at a time. Ah, well, if you change your mind . . . in the meantime . . .

One Word Sarcomical Sunday #12

• Hoping For: motivation
• Just Finished: newspaper
• Jonesing For: torte
• Most Annoying Brady Bunch Kid: one?
• Word to Describe Your Personal Sense of Style: classic
• Last Snack: cheese
• Have Never, Ever Tried: skydiving
• Last Clumsy Injury: recent
• Your Environment: messy
• Daily Object You'd Like to Throw Into Oncoming Traffic: alarm
• Favorite Kind of Soup: bisque
• Holiday You Don't Typically Celebrate: Halloween
• Happy To Have: health
• Want To Start: routine
• Need To Start: exercising
• Last Thing You Purchased: perfume
• Color of Your Car Interior: blue
• Color of the Wall in the Room You're In: white
• Days Since Your Last Night Out: four
• Number of Rings On Your Fingers: three
• How Many Minutes It Takes To Do Your Hair: infinite
• Favorite Outdoor Smell: ocean
• Number of Clocks in Your Home (not on appliances): eight
• Where You Put Spare Change: bottle

See you next Sunday!

It's Still Sunday on the West Coast

And keeping with this week's meme theme . . .

One Word Sarcomical Sunday #11

• Your Body Feels: tired
• Your Mind Feels: fuzzy
• The Last Thing You Ate: cherry
• Something On Your Desk/Workspace: mess
• On Your Chest: silk
• On Your Legs: nothing
• On Your Feet: pink
• Favorite Instrument to Hear: guitar
• Your Last Kiss Happened Here: kitchen
• Something You Wish You'd Invented: plastic
• Something You Wish Had Never Been Invented: golf
• Favorite Place For a Quiet Afternoon: library
• Right Now You Should Be: sleeping
• You Hate When People: preach
• You Love When People: understand
• When In Doubt, Order the: pasta
• Band You're Currently Into: Mars
• How Many Movies You've Gone to See So Far This Month: none
• Your Favorite Big Brother 8 Houseguest: what???
• Your Least Favorite Big Brother 8 Houseguest: none
• Your Maternal Grandmother's Name: Mena
• Your First Childhood Pet's Name: Madison
• The Number of People in Your Family With Red Hair: two
• What You're Thinking about Doing After This: laundry
• What You Really WISH You Were Doing After This: sleep
  

The Interview - Part Three

Hi! How are you? How has your summer been? Doing lots of fun stuff, are you? Me? Oh, well, lots of excitement 'round here. What with the, um, work, and, you know, more work, and also spending another 3 hours dealing with the asshats at Verizon* over the past month. Since I am going to assume that you have heard enough about

Verizon to last a lifetime, & I will further assume that no one wants to hear me whine about my job, I begged the lovely & tremendously amusing Melissa to interview me. (Yes, I know I jumped on this bandwagon before. My life is bereft of blog fodder just now, or at the very least I am too frazzled to form coherent sentences into actual paragraphs, so it's this or nothing, people!)

If money were no object, what would be your dream job and why?
In answering this question, I briefly considered many options. None of them were quite right. Which is when I realized that what I would truly love to do every day is lie on a warm beach (extra points if I can tan with no risk of cancer or skin damage), hang out with my family & friends, shop, sleep as late as I'd like & have someone else do my hair. What job is that? Heiress, perhaps? Hm. If that didn't work out, I think I might quite like to be a photographer. I love capturing a moment forever.

Where would you like to see yourself in five years life-wise?
I hope my marriage will be even stronger & happier than it is now. I would like to have children by then, biological or adopted or both. I also hope to be financially secure & have found my niche professionally with a company that I respect & enjoy working for.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time, and why?
Spare time, you say? As in, extra time to do with as you wish? This is something that actually exists? Imagine that. I love reading & will read virtually anything. I just finished Happy Birthday or Whatever & The Last Boleyn Girl, which took me over a month to read in 15-minute increments on the subway. I am hoping for a birthday subscription to People, which could conceivably be read cover-to-cover on one trip. Baking. Watching old movies, which are infinitely better than the vast majority of new movies. Discovering new places (cities, shops, restaurants). Going to the zoo, any zoo, or really almost anywhere at all, I just like going somewhere. Am I exciting or what?

Similarly, what are a few things you'd rather get a root canal than do?
Ride a roller coaster. Go swimming. Go camping. Watch golf / basketball / bowling / professional wrestling on television. Paint. (Two rooms in the house haven't been repainted yet & I am dreading it.)

What would you say your most valuable life lesson has been?
To listen to myself. The biggest mistakes I have made in life have been because I ignored my inner voice. Also to forgive myself when I do make a mistake, although this is a lesson I still struggle with.

If you want to jump (back) on the bandwagon with me, let me know in the comments. It may take me a few days (weeks) (months?) to get back to you (see: exciting, rock-star-like lifestyle), but I'm sure the fascinating questions that I come up with will more than make up for the wait. Of course, that's assuming that anyone is still reading. Hello? Anyone?

* For those of you who know me IRL, I have finally dumped Verizon & have a shiny new boyfriend. (I love you, Comcast! Smooches!) Check your email for my new phone number. Not that I will ever be home to answer the phone, but you know. I'll probably call you back some day.

GRRRRRR

I Hate Verizon. Hate. Hate with the heat of a thousand white hot burning suns. Haaaaaaaaaate.

I have now logged over four hours of calls to their "customer service" line since April, simply in order to get all of my services on one bill & at the appropriate rate. This does not include the two additional hours I spent on the phone with Amanda at the "help desk" trying to figure out why my home phone service was mysteriously disconnected. (They assigned me a number that was already in use by someone else. Oops.) It also does not include the 30 minutes I spent with Michael at "tech support", attempting to get the FiOs back up & running. (They disabled my modem due to nonpayment . . . and weren't very apologetic when I pointed out that I hadn't paid because I never received a bill, something which I had brought to their attention weeks earlier.) In addition to Amanda & Michael, I have now spoken to Orville, Jim, Brittany, Ashley, Melissa, Cathy & Jen. And, amazingly, somehow a supervisor is NEVER available, although I have been told twice that I will receive a call back. Anyone care to guess how many return calls I have received? Yes! That would be absolutely NONE! Good guess!

In case you were wondering, even after 4+ hours of irritation and frustration, my bill is still completely screwed up, none of the "for your inconvenience" credits have actually been credited, and the only thing they have managed to change on my bill was to switch it into my husband's name, for no reason that I or anyone else can figure out. And they even spelled his name wrong. Oh, and after today's 40-minute call? Jen informed me that I would now be charged $40 more monthly because the price that was quoted to me initially (in March! how could this be so fouled up when I just started service IN MARCH, for God's sake??) was wrong. *sigh* I am starting to think I am some sort of test case to see exactly how far a customer can be pushed before she goes over the edge and threatens to bludgeon someone to death with a cell phone. Am guessing it's somewhere around the 5th hour. Stay tuned.