Stalker

I just checked the searches that directed people to this blog and here are a few of the new & noteworthy ones:

how to spell booger on a calculator

truckee pirate weight watchers

hokey pokey this week video

I don't know how to spell booger on a calculator, if there's a Weight Watchers in Truckee for pirates I don't know anything about it and I haven't done the hokey pokey in years.

Also, there's a disturbing trend of searches for my future sister-in-law, the details of the upcoming wedding, etc. As a result, I'm going mum on all of that.

You see Stalker, THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS.

Not ALL anonymous commenters are telling you that you're fat and stupid! Some are VALUABLE!

OH MY GOD whoever that anon commenter was the other day who pointed me to this link is my NEW BEST FRIEND:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/3210/drown-out-that-annoying-co-worker-without-hurting-your-ears/

Through that link I found Simply Noise and I SWEAR TO YOU, Internet, I'm a whole new woman. It's magical how it drowns out alllll the snorts and snot sucking and grunting and coughing and isn't distracting AT ALL.

The downside is that without my protective bubble of white noise (actually, I like the brown noise at 40%) my irritation level SKY ROCKETS. I was on a conference call with a mouth breather so I had that in one ear and the grunter in the other ear and I think I might have a little bit of a problem because I was craaazy cranky and I felt like a junkie twitching for her next hit.

I'm afraid to take my ear buds out and face the real world!

But WITH my protective bubble of white (brown) noise?

Oh my goodness.

I can't stop working because now all of a sudden I am focused and give a crap about the Quote to Cash process!

YAY!

Anyhooters, thanks a million Anon.

Things Not to Discuss on a Job Interview: Religion, Politics and Michael Jackson

Alrighty.

Here's where I say RIGHT AT THE TOP that I know pllllllllenty of people are passionate about the opinion opposite of mine and I'd like to say we can agree to disagree except I really just don't think there are any "Yeah buts" that can justify outpouring of grief and sympathy for Michael Jackson.

That said, my platonic life partner, the handsome and talented Mr. Daniel Pieracci, tweeted this article about Michael Jackson and I have to say, I CONCUR:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/michael-jackson-bad-and-very-dangerous-1731258.html

Some of the points the author makes are kinda harsh, but not unfounded. I'm specifically thinking about how we'd throtttttle anyone who could overlook Hitler's later-in-life activities because, in his youth, he united Germany. Molesting (allegedly) a handful (?) of children is not as bad as dehumanizing and murdering millions of people, but I understand the logic. (Though I'm finding it difficult to say that child molestation is better than something else, but few versus many and all...)

I was SO ANNOYED yesterday because of all the "I hope Michael Jackson knows what a profound, magical influence he was on the universe and that he is up in Heaven listening to all the beautiful things the world has to say about him" posts on Facebook and I had to close the www and focus on something else.

Like WORK or something. Crazy, I know.

I totally get that his music had a "profound, magical influence" on the world and it CERTAINLY is toe-tapping and even I remember where I was when Cousin Rachel brought over her mom's Thriller album, but all this over-the-top mourning of the beauty of his spirit and shit blows my mind.

Seriously, it BLOWS MY MIND.

My mind: Blown.

He was fucked up in a million ways but none of that excuses his actions. I wouldn't go discussing this around the water cooler or anything but I don't mind telling you, Internet, that I think the world is a better place without him.

Small Concession: I do feel bad for his kids. And not just because they somehow ended up as his children, but because I'm sure he loved them and, based on Paris's speech, they loved him back.

Still waiting to win the lottery or marry well...

Elizabeth - Thanks for this. Appreciate your follow-up here.

Do Pete and Bob have visibility to this? Want to be sure all is in alignment from a comms perspective.

Thanks much!

This is the kind of e-mail I get all day long that makes me want to reach through my computer and choke the sender.

Visibility
Alignment
Thanks much
Lack of the word "I"

If she had thrown in a "reach out" or "ping" or "engagement model" I for sure would have thrown my computer through the window.

Dilbert

Things That Bug Me:

1. "The net-net is this..."

My brother loves to say "The fact of the matter is..." but I like my brother so it doesn't bug me so much as distract me from what the fact of the matter actually is. The guy in the cube next to me likes to say "The net-net is this" 75,489 times per conversation.

2. "I'm out of pocket."

This doesn't bother me when it's used CORRECTLY, as in, "I had to pay for that myself," but OH MY GOD people around this company REGULARLY use it to mean "unavailable." Like, "Are you going to be out of pocket during your vacation?"

THIS IS WRONG.

Urban Dictionary agrees with me:

Paid from personal funds. Somehow over the past half year or so, "out of pocket" has become a new business catchphrase meaning "unreachable, out of communication", which is incorrect.

My dad flew around the bay and boy are his arms tired.

Before I get to the B-17 BONANZA, I want to just get this off my chest:

Ben & Sarah are on vacation right now and I feel all full of angst that they're not safe and sound at home. It occurred to me that *I'M* usually the one off on the adventure...I'm not used to being the one at home, worrying about the ones who are away.

So, sorry for flying here and there and not really ever considering anyone's concern for my well-being.

Also -- I was telling my mom that I checked their flight from NYC to Dublin to make sure it would arrive in time for them to make their connection to Madrid and seeing right there on my computer screen that Ben and Sarah were flying in the air RIGHT THAT MOMENT was unnerving. I mean, duh, I know that when people go places they fly in airplanes and that airplanes go up in the sky and...uh...FLY, but it's usually something people are going to do or have just finished doing. I'd rather not think about my loved ones hurtling through the air. Over an ocean.

But speaking of flying, this oldfangled airplane was in town for a couple of days and we heard that my dad really wanted to take a flight on it so we bought him a ride as an early Father's Day present. My mom and I spent our Saturday morning on the tarmac, taking 75,000 videos of us talking to each other. I'm having trouble embedding the videos, but really, they're not exciting...just me and my annoying voice that I'm sorry everyone I know has to listen to.

But here's the plane:

Speaking of how strange it is for the world wide internet to tell me that my brother is IN THE AIR RIGHT THIS MINUTE, here's a picture of a plane FLYING IN THE AIR with my father ON IT. In the air. Flying. Dangerously.

From his perspective:

A beautiful day for an airplane ride, no?

He lovvved it and I'm happy my mom and I could be there to watch.

Fun Fact:

Dave (the dog) licks his lips all night long and it jamaicas me crazy.

Solution:

Sleep with the ear plugs my dad gave me for the B-17 thing.

He's spending the night with my parents tonight and I am SO EXCITED to get an uninterrupted night's sleep because I love him, I reallllly do, but I don't know how anyone manages to share a bed with him.

This is probably another reason not to have children.

Easily Annoyed

I had two pairs of headphones but one pair has up and disappeared (I think they might have been stolen off my desk but who does that?? They'd been INSIDE my ears! Grohhhhsss!) so now I'm stuck with my iPhone ear buds, which not only hurt my delicate little princess ears, but only one side of them actually works.

I ordered new ones but while I wait for them to arrive, I'm finding myself faced with a problem that I swear to goodness gracious makes me want to throw a hissy fit.

The problem:

There are two sinus snot suckers in the vacinity of my cube (in addition to the multiple coughers). These types of things get on my LAST DAMN NERVE because HELLO ASSHOLES, DO YOU THINK WE CAN'T HEAR YOU SLURPING THAT SNOT BACK INTO YOUR HEAD??????

Because OMG we totally can.

And I have an irrational HATRED for the offenders.

Especially this one guy (because the sinus suckers are ALWAYS men...I'm not talking about people with stuffy noses, although those are PLENTY annoying...I'm talking about how men make that chunky, hollow noise when they're, I can only assume, clearing their sinuses) sits on the clear other side of the building but I can still hear him.

And it's not even an occassional snot suck...it's like every 12 seconds.

And when I say "every 12 seconds" I'm not exaggerating. L-I-T-E-R-A-L-L-Y every 12 seconds.

Which I know because I timed him.

Please let my new ear phone things HURRY THE HECK UP because otherwise I'm gonna march myself over to wherever that guy is and tell him that he's a nasty, inconsiderate jerk. And I swear to you, I do not care if he's sick or if this makes me more of an asshole than normal.

OMG OMG OMG!

I just thought of a more pressing issue:

I think this might be the last weekend of Girl Scout cookie season!!!!!!! OR WAS IT LAST WEEK!?!?!?

Crap sandwich. I just checked the WWW and cookie season IS over. It's for the best though...I certainly don't neeeeeeeeed more Samoas in my life.

Also pressing:

Nevermind...it's not that pressing and I just realized that it's late enough in the day that I can justify blowing this popsicle stand for the weekend. Next time I'll write about something that might lead to you believe that I'm at least SOMEWHAT likeable and pleasant to be around.

If I can think of something.

I need a new party rental place.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, Williams Party Rental...you're making my blood pressure rise.

Renting all the stuff for Sarah's bridal shower last year was so easy! I needed 35 water glasses, you brought me 35 water glasses. Like magic!

Now I'm trying to rent stuff for Andrew & Laurina's baby BBQ and you're making me want to throw my computer out the window! It appears that it's now impossible to order 35 water glasses because they have to be ordered in multiples of 25...but okay, ending up with 50 water glasses isn't the end of the world, even if it's a pretty obvious way of squeezing more money out of me.

The thing that REALLY gets my goat is the new coffee cup and saucer policy. I ordered 15 coffee cups and 15 saucers. Because THEY GO TOGETHER, duh. They "corrected" my order to reflect 16 coffee cups because you now have to rent coffee cups in multiples of 16, but they didn't update the number of saucers. I was like dude, I don't *want* to pay you for an extra saucer, but you might as well throw in another one so I can, like, actually USE that extra cup.

BUT YOU KNOW WHAT, INTERNET?

They only rent saucers in multiples of FIVE.

So really, if I want to have an equal number of cups and saucers, I need to rent them in multiples of EIGHTY. I'm sure there's someone out there whose OCD would FLIP THE HELL OUT at this imbalance but I will do my best to take a deep breath not let it bother me. I want to tell them to suck it, but it's a pointless battle over 45 cents and besides, it's allllllll for the baby.

Eye Boogers

I think I'm going to break up with my carpoolers. It's *not* a time saver and I knew that, but with gas at $4.75 a gallon, I was willing to deal with it. Now that gas is $1.75 a gallon, I'm far less motivated to carpool. The roads are congested because everyone else is thinking the same thing, but I don't care. I am one of the most irritable people on the planet and if I thought I'd magically find carpoolers who didn't bug the shit out of me, I was crazy.

And to be fair, it's really only #2 who bugs me. #1 has his moments too (they're both entirelly too hyper-focused on finding the absolute best possible route that might possssibly shave four minutes off our drive time), but he's fine. Unfortunately, he's also going on vacation for three weeks and I already told him that I'd KILL KILL KILL #2 if I had to be alone with him for three weeks, but #1 was oblivious to the high irritation factor that #2 introduces into the equation.

But yesterday, driving alone with #2, I reached my nitpicky limit. I noticed that he's always cleaning the sleep out of the corners of his eyes. Okay, not ALWAYS, but once or twice per drive. He'll take his glasses off, stick his finger in his eye, inspect what comes out, brush it off his finger and put his glasses back on. In my opinion, this is not something you do around people who are not your intimates, but I know, I know...I'm picky. I should say that it's not something *I* would do around people who are not my intimates and even then, I'd probably go warsh my hands just out of courtesy to others.

So it's gross and all but the thing that pushed me over the edge?

I made myself some tea for the drive home so I wouldn't be all grunty and annoying with my scratchy throat and it was in the cup holder between our two seats.

HE BRUSHED HIS EYE BOOGERS OFF HIS FINGERS RIGHT OVER MY TEA.

G-R-O-S-S.

So I couldn't have my tea and I was mad and grossed out and resolved to antibacterial wipe everything in my car that he might have touched and then never drive with his ass again.

And God help the junkie at my gas station who always offers to squeegee my windows and who I always refuse, because when I stopped to get gas I was preoccupied with entering my PIN and I turned around and he was pushing dirty water all over my otherwise perfectly clean windshield. If I wasn't so pissy about eye boogers in my tea I might have been nicer about it but my instant reaction was to shout NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO to him.

But seriously, that's annoying. He didn't ask, he just did. Not asseptable.

And yes, if you're keeping track, I am nitpicky, irritable and bitchy to people who are possibly homeless.

If anyone at work talked to me, I might whisper about this stuff with him/her, but since I'm a leper, I am resorting to telling the internet.

1. The women in this joint are serious farters. In the bathroom, I mean. I haven't detected anything outside of the bathroom, but EVERY DAMN TIME I'm in there with someone else there's some FORCEFUL farting going on. And they don't even wait for me to leave before they exit the stall.

I don't get:

A. Why the hell they have such gassy asses in the first place.

B. Why they're so proud of it. If I let a loud one slip I'd totallllly hide out until I my co-pee'rs were gone. (And yes, gentlemen...I know that it's a bathroom and that farting is normal bathroom activity, but just as there is special bathroom etiquette for men that I don't understand, you don't understand the special bathroom etiquette that ladies tend to follow.)

2. The HR lady is a piece of work with her wigs and her accessories and oh mah gah I can't even BEGIN to do her justice, but if you recall, she's also the one who overuses and mispronounces the word "actually." It's in every damn sentence that comes out of her mouth, axtsilly. Anyhooters, when she sends e-mails that start out "Dear Employee's" it makes me nuts and axtsilly, I can't be bothered to fill out the form she's asking me to fill out.

3. I was outside on the balcony and I noticed a pile of fingernail clippings. YOU KNOW how I feel about clipping your fingernails at work (THAT IS A HOME ACTIVITY!), but LEAVING THAT SHIT ON THE BALCONY LIKE THE FINGERNAIL FAIRY IS GOING TO COME CLEAN IT UP!!??!

No.

Unless maybe birds use them for their nests like they use hair. Except that I noticed the fingernails earlier this week and they're still there so the bird excuse, if true, does not hold water.

USS Hornet Cocktail Party

Anyone who knows my family knows that my dad is ALL ABOUT the USS Hornet. It's his baby, his pride and joy. He was on the Hornet in the Marine Detatchment back in the late 60's (which means that he was one of like 50 Marines on board a ship of 2000-ish Sailors) and was there for the Apollo 11 recovery and has all kinds of good stories and stuff. My dad was one of the guys who helped clean it up after it was saved from being sent to the scrap yard and ten years ago, they made it into a museum and last weekend was the big 10th anniversary open house.

Now, if you're a Holt, or really, even if you just KNOW a Holt, you've probably spent plenty of quality time on the Hornet. We've been to events and BBQs and on tours and really, we're kind of over it, but we all love my dad and want to be supportive of his stuff so we make appearances every now and again. Unless you're my mom, in which case you avoid the Hornet like the plague, but she doesn't like getting caught in conversations with retired military guys or the wives of retired military guys, so she's excused.

It had been a while since I'd clocked any time on the Hornet so when my dad said that they were holding an open house and that he had invited a bajillion people I knew I figured WHAT THE HECK...so I put on my walking shoes and joined him on the Hornet last Saturday.



When I got to the Mar Det area (look at me and all my fancy Marine slang!) I found my dad holding court with a gaggle of lesbionic ladies who wanted to see his video of the Apollo 11 recovery. And OH HAI, my dad figured that since it was an open house, there should be refreshments so he brought beer and wine and chips and dip for people who came to hear his stories. So the lesbians and I had some wine and we watched the video.

When the ladies left, my dad left me in charge while he went to the bathroom. Nobody wanted to talk to me, but that's fine because really, if I had walked by and saw a non-official-looking chick sitting in the Mar Det lounge drinking wine out of a red party cup and saying hello to the passersby, I would have kept on walking too.



So I entertained myself:



My dad had the top bunk, which was VIP because nobody could lean over and barf on you:

The MarDet cocktail lounge:

So anyway, while he was gone I did have one conversation and it was awesome:

Me: Hi.

Lady: Hi. What is this area?

Me: It's the Marine Detatchment area.

Lady: Oh.(Looks confused)

Me: There were a small number of Marines on board with the Sailors.

Lady: Oh.

(And I should point out here that she looked totally normal, educated, non-retarded, etc.)

Me: (smiles and takes a sip of wine)

Lady: What's a Marine?

Me: Um. A Marine. Like, someone in the Marine Corps.

Lady: (Shakes her head, looks at me like I'm speaking Chinese)

Me: The Marines. Like, as opposed to the Navy or the Army or the Air Force.

Lady: (Still doesn't get it.)

Me: It's a branch of the military.

Lady: (Stillllllllllllllllllllll doesn't get it.)

Me: (Trying to figure out how in the hell someone could A) be alive in the world and not understand what I'm telling her and B) be on an AIRCRAFT CARRIER and not understand what I'm telling her! It's not like she was in the Marine Detatchment area of the CONSERVATORY OF FLOWERS or anything!!!!)

Me: Ummmmm...they ran the brig.

Lady: OH! THE BRIG!

Me: Yeah. They were like the police on the ship.

Lady: OH! THE POLICE!

Me: Yeahhhhhhhhh. NOW GO AWAY STUPID LADY!

Except I didn't tell her to go away, I just turned to rummage through my purse for nothing in particular and waited for her to leave.

Other Hornet-related items:

1. There were a ton of Boy Scouts on board. There always are. I don't know why. Maybe there's a patch for visiting an aircraft carrier. But never before have I noticed how RUDE Boy Scouts are. I mean, I guess I expect kids in general to be little shits but I expect Boy Scouts to be polite. THEY WERE NOT. They were cutting in front of me, not allowing right-of-way up and down ladders and were just generally barreling through. The worst part though was that their parents were just standing around watching them be rude so finally I lost my temper and yelled LADIES FIRST!!!!!!!!!!! at a few of them and I heard the mom laugh! I wanted to tell her that her kid needed to be taught some manners, but then someone farted so I kept my opinions on their crappy parenting to myself and moved on.

2. The Hornet wasn't built with any ladies' rooms and most of the bathrooms it does have are prettttty much just communal toilet rooms. Like rows of toilets with walls between them, but no doors. And really, the walls only extend to the end of the toilet seat so if you were sitting there you'd be able to see the knees of all the people in your row and you'd be looking across and facing all the guys pooping in the other row. (And my dad has a story about how they somehow got a bucket of pistachio ice cream and how they ate it with their hands, while sitting on the crappers.)

So how did they modify this bathroom to meet the needs of the ladies? They hung up shower curtains. Frosted clear ones. And they hung them in line with the short walls so if you want to use this particular rest room (there are modern ones upstairs), it's kind of a maneuver and the people next to you can see your knees and the people across from you can see you sitting there.

It's a life experience, folks.

Stupid hippies and their stupid patchouli.

My next door neighbor has his apartment up for sale. This is good news because A) I like new blood and B) he's a smoker and it stinks up the hallway like nobody's business. Of course, a new neighbor could be worse and really, he isn't a bad neighbor, but I like to roll the dice every now and again.

HOWEVER.

He's having an open house today and the scent they chose to de-cigarette his apartment?

Patchouli.

MY LEAST FAVORITE SCENT EVER and now it's funking up my hallway.

Okay maybe not my LEAST, because cumin, garbage, poo, and morning breath still exist in the world, but I'd be willing to say that patchouli is in the top three on my list of scents that people seem to enjoy, even though they stink.

The other two?

Paperwhites and old lady scented dog shampoo/drugstore perfume. Paperwhites smell like cat pee and when I went Googling for a picture of them for you Internet, I kept finding descriptions of them as "sweet smelling." Gross.

And the old lady scented dog shampoo/drugstore perfume? I don't know what the hell it's called, but it should be outlawed. Alls I know is that when my sweet baby Dave comes back from getting his butt hair trimmed, he stinks like old lady.

AND, I'm thinking that this blog is getting much more tl;dr than the old one so here's a picture of the most handsome dog in the world: