I wrote like eight rants yesterday (which I've been doing a lot lately) and I realized on the way home that I had no idea what incarnation I ended up posting.

It's like reading my rant for the first time! Oh what a feeling!

Ever feel just pretty ignorant?

I'm a stupid white girl. And tonight reminded me of that.

Anyone else know that Native Americans occupied Alcatraz island for over a year and a half out of principle?

I sure didn't. And I have a BA in history. I thought I knew a bit about history. Totally wrong.

In other news: Can we be done with the current administration? No matter what party you affiliate yourself with, they need to go.

Today? Odds and Ends Sunday.

Yesterday was my high school reunion. As curious as I was to go and see who was doing what, I passed. At this point in my life, I just didn't want to. Which is totally selfish, I know.

You know, I was thinking about the "semi slamming into" story and I realized I was in another accident caused by bad weather. Coincidentally enough it took place on the way to my cabin (reference small child in snow suit below).

My dad and I were driving up there (it's on the shore of Lake Superior in Wisconsin) at night in bad weather. Dad missed the turn and found himself in the ditch (the road was such that if you missed the turn you were bound to end up there). Picture a Toyota Corolla hatchback on the side of the road in the falling snow with a cow only a few feet away chewing its cud.

If you can't picture that due to lack of "cud" knowledge, picture the cow eating grass.

Anyway, in the days of no cellphones and in the middle of nowhere, the situation was kinda dicey. Lucky for us, the very next vehicle by was a tow truck.

Totally serious.

And they were somehow related to us. Happens a lot up there.

He dropped us off at a local tavern where we could arrange for someone to take care of the car and someone else to pick us up to get to the cabin.

I was laying down in the backseat when the accident happened, so I smacked into the front seats and got serious... I suppose I can equate it to rug burn. Seat burn?

Anyway, the label of "Little Girl in Accident with Superficially Injured Face" earned me a free Hershey's milk chocolate bar (full size!) from the bartender. I'll never forget that. 'Sconie bartenders rule.

Winter has descended upon the city.

How do most people deal with it?

Winter sports! Sledding, skiing, bobsledding, snowboarding, snowshoeing, jumping into freezing waters for a quick swim...

But the real Winter sport? Driving. It's a bitch.

Actually, it can be fun. If you're on a road with no traffic and no parked cars, slipping and sliding along is a bit of a roller coaster ride.

But adding other cars into the equation is a bit dicey.

Especially SUV drivers. Who think because they're driving a tank, they're invincible. But since SUVs are top heavy and therefore not so good at quick turns on a slippery road. You see more SUVs in the ditch than sports cars.

Perhaps one of the reasons I freak out a bit about driving in snow is because at the tender age of 17, during a particulary snowy day, I slammed into the back wheels of a semi.

It kinda sucked.

I actually think it was perhaps worse than I'll ever know (we were inches away from going under the semi and becoming one of those cautionary movies you see in Driver's Ed). But injuries sustained were rather minimal.

Except for the car—totaled. And the semi—undrivable and had to be towed.

I'm actually a lot more relaxed about driving in snow now than I used to be. Now I hate cold more than anything.

Oh, and lest you mock the dorky girl with a sled and snowsuit? Screw you. That's me in front of my cabin.

Not many kids can claim that their family cabin was a bar during Prohibition. Which is a story I'll have to retell sometime.

It's actually a little after Thanksgiving, but I didn't get home until midnight. So this is my semi-post Thanksgiving post... or rant. On the way to help my mom prepare stuffing and green beans, the local NPR radio station was having a Thanksgiving theme. And they played Golden Smog's Pecan Pie. Awesome.

For the record, the stuffing kicked ass. It was the first time I made it, even though it's a family recipe. So very tasty. And I bought twice as many mashed potatoes as needed. I can never get that right.

I had a rant going, but I decided to condense it into what I'm thankful for:

• My family—actual family or not. I spent the evening with my former step-dads family. At the Kids Table. I love the Kids Table. We always tend to gravitate toward pop culture discussions. So lots of TV and movie talk. I'm now convinced that I need to watch Firefly. And I've hopefully convinced at least one or two cousins to check out Freaks and Geeks. Plus, I had a half-hour long conversation with a cousin about Reno 911. Finally, I find someone who loves the show as much as I do. TV brings family together.

Plus, the group had a conversation about Goodnight, and Good Luck. And McCarthy. Living in the Midwest (with many members living in Wisconsin) it was a high-spirited conversation. Leaving one younger cousin to remark, "This family is pretty political."

Yeah, we are. Politics seem to come up a lot in that family.

• My work—both my business and my part time job. It's nice to be relatively excited to work. And it's nice to be proud of the work I'm doing.

• Onions. Not so much thankful, but it smells like onions in my apartment. Not like a nasty lingering odor, but fresh cut onions. Weird.

• This site. For those of you reading this who have contacted me over the years, I just want to let you know that I really do appreciate the emails. When I started this site I didn't expect much of anything. But hearing from some of you out of the blue just pretty much makes my week.

I told my boss about being freaked out by the running guys last night and she just looked at me like I was a complete wuss. Maybe I just over react about things like that.

I cut out early to go home and take a nap, since I still feel like complete crap. I got some work done as well, but still I felt guilty. I'm not used to having an hourly job where it's okay to leave early.

Have I mentioned that I hate the holidays? I never used to, really, but now it's just nothing but stress. And my responsibility is minimal. I buy gifts for maybe five people. I'm not exactly known to be a Christmas card sender, so I don't really have anything to live up to there. And as far as I know, I'm not venturing out anywhere.

But I'm stressed all the same. Although I have been contemplating sending out cards. Now that I have access to all the tools, I could whip something out in a few minutes.

I always wanted to send along one of those Christmas letters. You know the ones: "The kids are perfect, we're richer than you, we both got promotions, we travelled the world..."

They crack me up. If I don't already know all this about your life, then I clearly don't keep in touch with you enough to want to spend the time to read the entire letter, now do I?

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to do something like, "This year was a great and productive year in the Claire household. Both Claire, Ramona, the infestation of silverfish, and the small rodent living in the walls kept busy. In January, Claire dealt with a really nasty papercut that lasted a few days and required a bandaid. Around the same time Ramona suffered from a bout of diarrhea which made keeping the apartment clean and smelling fresh difficult."

And then just go on for like 5 pages.

If you expect me to read your insipid letter, you damn well better be reading mine.

I would love to call the rest of the week a wash and hide under my covers. I really would.

In other news: one of my clients is on the news tonight. The local NBC affiliate is doing a special segment on podcasting and contacted her a few weeks ago. For some absolutely unknown reason, there was no need for her web site designer/developer to become a part of the story as well.

Hm.

Crappy day, really.

I can't believe it's Thanksgiving this week. I am so not ready for the holidays. I have to make a Closed for Thanksgiving sign and all I can come up with is "Closed in Observance of the Attempted Genocide of the Native Americans" or "Closed for the Day-After-Thanksgiving Sales."

And although those ideas got my bosses to crack up, I think they're looking for something a little more traditional.

I've been given my Thanksgiving food task. Apparently my mashed potatoes and gravy was so incredibly popular last year that I've been asked to bring them again.

Now since there will be twice the number of people, I need to rethink the recipe.

And by rethink, I mean "increase." And by recipe, I mean "order from the local grocery store."

They really were good. And I got to employ the time-tested "took me hours" joke. That I stole from someone else.

Lest it be thought that I don't cook—I don't—I am also providing the stuffing and Cranberry-Orange bread. Made from scratch by me. So there.

And in unrelated news: I was out on the back stoop moments ago... um... well... er... Having a smoky treat, okay? And suddenly this guy appeared running like hell through yards and then proceeding at full tilt down the alley. Followed moments later by another guy running like hell. They both looked at me as they were running past.

You don't run like hell from unseen forces unless you've been up to no good or are being chased by unseen evil forces. Which led me to believe that they had just tried to do something illegal, got busted, and ran. The fact that there were police sirens everywhere helped bolster that thought process.

So I'm thinking, Holy crap, these guys are criminals and are making their getaway, and Holy crap, they could be armed and ready to eliminate potential witnesses.

So I stood there and watched them run down the alley. I figured sudden movement was not a good plan. Nor was staring at them for any length of time. So I quickly ducked back inside and kind of pondered my options. Which I decided were pretty minimal. If they did commit a crime, I can't identify them. And if I called the cops, what do I say? Two youths just ran like hell past me, hope this helps?

What is it with me lately that criminal activity tends to invade my life?

This completely reminds me of the time when I was driving home from buying groceries and saw two teen males running like hell down the middle of the street looking scared out of their minds. Chased by a small and wildly yipping dog.

Has anyone else noticed the dirth of newstype people who are now blogging? I mean like within the last month it seems like every news station reporter and newspaper writer now have one. And they're all mentioning it constantly. Like, "For more on how XYZ felt after interviewing a woman with 100 pets in her one-room apartment, you can check out his blog at..."

I guess it's just a little surprising that people who are supposed to keep up with, you know, NEWS, are just suddenly discovering this. I will grudgingly acknowledge that it may have taken their web site overlords some time to incorporate it into the respective sites, but dear lord, how old is the term "blog"? I know when I started writing online it was already a pretty common term (which can be referenced to your right—thank you very much—as June 2002).

Oh well. I went out to go to work this morning and found my driver side door inexplicably glued shut. With ice, mind you. Since my door frame stops where my window starts (ie there's no metal frame around the upper half of the door) I'm guessing some rain got into the crevices and then proceeded to freeze to the glass.

Thankfully my passenger side door opened after some prying.

So it was about ten minutes of jumping back and forth from seat to seat in between scraping off the snow and ice. Halfway into work the dome light started flickering, which meant my door was ajar. Occasionally. So I drove for a few blocks with one hand on the wheel and the other trying to keep the door shut.

Gotta love Minnesota! It's getting down to 5 degrees tonight and will be in the 40s by the weekend.

Anyway, when I finally got into work I heard, "There she is! We were just talking about you!".

Which you really don't want to hear an employer say when you walk in 20 minutes late.

Turns out he was worried that a conversation we had yesterday had made me decide to just randomly come in when I felt like it (we discussed me being more comfortable leaving early when I needed to do my own work). Which made me laugh.

So I've decided even though— okay, I hate using people's names in here just because: privacy. I'm not sure I'd like to stumble across someone telling stories about me and using my name. But I hate having lengthy descriptive nicknames. So until I come up with something better, the bosses are Ms. B and Mr. B.

So I've decided that even though Ms. B and I look pretty much nothing alike, people confuse us. Like we blend into "Chick-Behind-the-Counter". Just today, a woman started telling me a story that she was in the middle of. Because she'd started the story with Ms. B.

And I can't believe what people share with us. Like personal shit that I really don't think I'd want some random stranger to know who could openly mock and ridicule me.

Ms. B laughed and just said something like, "You've just got one of those faces that says you're interested in their story. You might as well be pouring them a drink."

I love Ms. B. And Mr. B.

I completely cracked up today when Ms. B asked if I watched much TV. Um... just a tad. Anyway, I have no clue if she brought it up because she noticed I had one of The OC soundtracks hanging around (I was looking for compilations to listen to since I've been lazy about bringing in my iPod) but she mentioned that she watches the show. Rock on! So now I'm going to bug her every Friday to see what she thought.

It's not my favorite work person to discuss the show with (Heathrow will always hold that place in my heart) but it rules all the same.

Welcome to the first day of snow in Minneapolis.

I hate snow. In theory it's wonderful, but in practice it's a pain in the ass.

Snow in Minnesota is rather different than when I was a kid. We used to have snowfalls of maybe four feet. The kind of snow where I'd watch my parents shovel out the driveway only to have it completely covered a short few hours later. The kind of snow that warranted the building of a fort. That was snow, dammit.

Right now it's pellet snow. So you go outside and get teeny smacks in the side of your head. Like mini-hail.

I did dishes tonight. For those casual readers that are thinking, "Wow. Congratulations on something people do every fucking day." there are also those non-casual readers thinking, "Well it has been six months. Are you going to let people into your apartment now?"

You know those people who say, "Oh, my apartment/house/condo/mobile home is such a disaster! I don't want anyone to see it!" and claim their dwelling is a mess so when you finally see the mess you're amazed at how clean it is and then they feel all happy?

Not me. My apartment is just complete chaos.

I'm working on it.

Sundays. I never could get the hang of Sundays.

Some are good and some are bad. This one's bad. Although I'm working today, so at least I can say I'm making money.

Wait a minute! I knew I was forgetting something. My very first ever rant reader has a birthday today. Today? Tomorrow? I know it's in the general vicinity.

I suck at remembering birthdays.

Anyway, in lieu of a gift I have dedicated my mental energies toward willing the Weaver family off of The Amazing Race.

Of course, that's really a gift to the world.

What day is Sunday? I keep forgetting what the hell I named it.

Odds and Ends Sunday. There we are.

This has definitely been an odd month and I can't wait for it to end.

Ha! See how I turned that around? Man I'm clever.

Seriously though, this month has not been the best.

One bright spot has been the triumphant return of a friend from Europe, who is a pilot and had a contract over the Summer. I didn't realize how much I missed him until I suddenly saw his name pop up as an incoming call. He's the big brother I never had.

The dark spot (or one of them anyway)? Cancer. Inoperable, by all accounts. I've never had a close family member with cancer before. And just in time for the holidays.

Ramona's ripped another chunk of fur out. At least she's eating. Right?

I need a nap.

It's days like this that I don't relish being back at a day job. It used to be so sweet to wake up whenever I wanted. I kept some wacky ass hours.

I was thinking about it and from the time I was 15 until age 27 I never had a significant block of time off. I worked all through high school and college and then went full-time (or was officially classified as full-time) once I graduated. This year was a nice break (even though I was working, it was from home).

So relatively quiet work day, really. Except I got into work and found out my bosses' last house (that they still owned) caught on fire. So when they got home last night, they found a letter from a neighbor telling them about it. They were not in a good mood all day.

And I have a sore throat and no idea why. I'm completely grumpy about that.

Oh yeah. One other thing.

Around 11 AM a couple came through to get into the business that we share a front entrance and foyer (of sorts) with, as well as a back bathroom/hallway area. Which is nothing weird. The space next door is empty and people are often traipsing through our place to get to it (it's for lease).

So they were back there for a bit and then came back up and disappeared out the front door, only to return moments later with a police officer. Which—again—not unheard of. They could have been inspecting the space for safety or something.

And I totally stuck to that theory. Until they left again and came back with two more officers. My boss finally got the idea to open the front door to the empty side so they could stop coming through our place.

Which turned out to be a really really smart thing. Because more cop cars started to pull in and more officers started congregating right outside the front of our building.

And then more cops. And more.

At one point there were maybe twelve cop cars right outside and 15 cops milling around and I'm thinking, "Okay, probably not a health code violation."

But they weren't moving in. One of our customers said she heard an officer say, "Alright, time to put your shit on." Which was most likely why a few minutes later they started donning bulletproof vests.

And I'm still thinking, "Eh, standard procedure. No big deal."

Until the camoflauge helmets came out.

And then the flak jackets. And the battering rams. And the assault rifles.

By the time I noticed that even the dogs were wearing body armor, I wondered if maybe I should be as well.

And all this time customers are coming in and out and in and out and I'm thinking there's going to be a running gun-battle waged shortly.

Eventually the police all went in to the business next door—presumably to arrest whoever they were looking for. Which turned out to be another tenant who owns a large nightclub in the attached building.

And they were clearly not searching for just a person. They were up into the ceilings and rifling through toiletries in the bathroom (including my bosses' hiding spot for tampons which mortified her to no end).

Rumor has it they found the guy, but not in our side of the building (they had all the exits covered). Totally disappointed about that.

After things settled down and the cops de-geared and drove off, things went back to normal. And then the story started to roll in from other tenants.

I asked the bosses who the couple was that came in first. Turns out the man was a sergeant or something who was organizing the raid. And the woman? Arrested Guy's wife.

They got into a big fight (a naked indiscretion may or not have been the subject) and her revenge was narcing him out, all the while claiming she knew nothing of his less-than-legal activities. According to neighbor buzz, anyway.

Anyway, later in the day, my boss said, "Well now you have something to tell Ramona." I laughed and said that I actually had something to write about and told her about my rant. So as I was leaving for the night she said, "When you write about this, don't forget to mention the short, fat guy with the gun."

How could I refuse?

Shortly after the SWAT team dispersed, this guy showed up—short, fat—and said he was the lawyer representing the building's owner. He was wandering around in the back and once in awhile would pop in and talk with us. And then he'd wander out the front door. So we'd figure he was gone. Ten minutes later he'd pop up again. And this happened like eight times. Just when you thought he was gone: bam. There he was again.

Once he had—finally—gone, I was talking with the boss and she was like, What sort of lawyer needs to carry a gun? Which I hadn't noticed. But really, what sort of lawyer does need to be packing heat?

Yeah I don't have a rant today. Fuck the world.

Oh, I'm not all that grumpy really. Just... ready to move on.

So my predecessor was in today.

I'm not sure how I feel about that. I mean, I didn't really talk to him. What am I supposed to say? "I'm Claire, the reason they finally fired you."?

In other news: I have now made enough money off of store sales to pay for... opening the store. But that only took a few months. Hopefully—hopefully—I can earn enough to pay for all the expenses incurred from this site.

It's not cheap, people.

Weird. It was Election Day today and my financial planner won public office.

So how focused is she on my money? I've got to give her respect for having a float every year in the Gay/Lesbian Pride parade however. I used to live downtown and would sit on my balcony and watch the parade and she was always there in a convertible waving away. I think that's kinda cool.

I was driving in to work and I saw this at a local meat/seafood wholesaler:

"20% OFF PORK AND SENIORS"

I'll just leave the jokes to you.

Ramona is decidedly sick. But like a trooper she keeps trying to eat. Unfortunately if I want to get her the good drugs, I have to take her in.

It takes me an upwards of ten minutes to get her grumpy ass in the cage.

I still haven't dropped off my rent check. I always forget. I really am about to do some actual work (I had family duties earlier today). But I thought I'd just chime in with today's update from the planet.

I finally got around to reading this week's Savage Love and found a disturbing fact about local corporate monstrosity Target:

STRAIGHT RIGHTS UPDATE: There were two disturbing developments in the battle over straight rights last week. First, we know thatTarget fills its ads with dancing, multi-culti hipsters giving off a tolerant, urbanist vibe, and runs hipster-heavy ad campaigns positioning Target as a slightly more expensive, more progressive alternative to Wal-Mart. Well, as John Aravosis revealed on americablog.org last week, Target's politics are as red as their bulls-eye logo. The chain allows its pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control and emergency contraception to female customers if the pharmacist objects on religious grounds. What's worse, the company claims that any of its employees have a right to discriminate against any of its customers provided the discrimination is motivated by an employee's religious beliefs. Read all about it at americablog.org and plannedparenthood.org.

You can read the rest of Dan's mention here. And there's this ink to write to Target and voice your concerns. I found a couple of blogs where people received emails back from Target explaining their position. And that's as far as I'm researching it. I'm just too lazy.

Hm. No matter what, the whole situation is fucked up.

But when you really think about it, the company is between a rock and a hard place. Because they can't ask what religion a potential employee is during the hiring process. And to ask an employee to go against their religious beliefs is not respecting that person's right to adhere to said beliefs. And since a company can't fire this person for refusing to dispense this drug on the basis of religious beliefs...

So, really, what do they do?

Frankly, I think there should be some sort of policy/legislation allowing non-... whatever, licensed pharmacists to dispense certain drugs when the pharmacist on duty refuses. For a company to respect someone's beliefs is one thing, it's quite another not to have any contigency plan in place to respect and help their customers.

I used to work downtown at company headquarters for about six months (internship in college) and I thought it was a good company to work for. It hadn't quite taken over the world yet, but it was poised to (I saw the roll out of where the stores were going to be going in over the next five years and was shocked).

So until I find that Target is doing nothing to help rectify this, I'll reserve judgment. But if someone doesn't come up with ome solution and fast, then we've got a problem.

In the meantime, I will build up my anger toward pharmacists who ostensibly take the time to become certified to help people by dispensing medicine and then refuse that help when the patient doesn't fit into their narrow-minded world view. THEY, quite clearly, SUCK.

Listen, I had to work for a company whose main clients were hypocritical fundamentalist Christians for way too many years, and I would have LOVED to have refused to work with their clients on the grounds that they didn't conform to my moral belief system, but I didn't.

Instead I sucked it up, shook it off, and then finally quit my crappy job to start my own company so I can tell hypocritical people exactly where to go.

Hm. There's the pissed off Claire I know and love. I was going through my old rants to find stories to add to the Storybook Nook. I forgot some of them.

Anyway: I found a rant I wrote a year ago after the presidential election. And everything I posited would happen, pretty much
happened.

Funny how predictable this administration is. In other news: Today is Gram Parsons birthday. Or would be, anyway. I pulled out my Return of the Grievous Angel Tribute Album.
I like that album.

I still haven't dropped off my rent check. I always forget. I really am about to do some actual work (I had family duties earlier today). But I thought I'd just chime in with today's update from the planet.

I finally got around to reading this week's Savage Love and found a disturbing fact about local corporate monstrosity Target:

STRAIGHT RIGHTS UPDATE: There were two disturbing developments in the battle over straight rights last week. First, we know thatTarget fills its ads with dancing, multi-culti hipsters giving off a tolerant, urbanist vibe, and runs hipster-heavy ad campaigns positioning Target as a slightly more expensive, more progressive alternative to Wal-Mart. Well, as John Aravosis revealed on americablog.org last week, Target's politics are as red as their bulls-eye logo. The chain allows its pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control and emergency contraception to female customers if the pharmacist objects on religious grounds. What's worse, the company claims that any of its employees have a right to discriminate against any of its customers provided the discrimination is motivated by an employee's religious beliefs. Read all about it at americablog.org and plannedparenthood.org.

You can read the rest of Dan's mention here. And there's this link to write to Target and voice your concerns. I found a couple of blogs where people received emails back from Target explaining their position. And that's as far as I'm researching it. I'm just too lazy.

Hm. No matter what, the whole situation is fucked up.

But when you really think about it, the company is between a rock and a hard place.

Because they can't ask what religion a potential employee is during the hiring process. And to ask an employee to go against their religious beliefs is not respecting that person's right to adhere to said beliefs. And since a company can't fire this person for refusing to dispense this drug on the basis of religious beliefs...

So, really, what do they do?

Frankly, I think there should be some sort of policy/legislation allowing non-... whatever, licensed pharmacists to dispense certain drugs when the pharmacist on duty refuses. For a company to respect someone's beliefs is one thing, it's quite another not to have any contigency plan in place to respect and help their customers.

I used to work downtown at company headquarters for about six months (internship in college) and I thought it was a good company to work for. It hadn't quite taken over the world yet, but it was poised to (I saw the roll out of where the stores were going to be going in over the next five years and was shocked).

So until I find that Target is doing nothing to help recitfy this, I'll reserve judgment. But if someone doesn't come up with ome solution and fast, then we've got a problem.

In the meantime, I will build up my anger toward pharmacists who ostensibly take the time to become certified to help people by dispensing medicine and then refuse that help when the patient doesn't fit into their narrow-minded world view. THEY, quite clearly, SUCK.

Listen, I had to work for a company whose main clients were hypocritical fundamentalist Christians for way too many years, and I would have LOVED to have refused to work with their clients on the grounds that they didn't conform to my moral belief system, but I didn't.

Instead I sucked it up, shook it off, and then finally quit my crappy job to start my own company so I can tell hypocritical people exactly where to go.

Hm. There's the pissed off Claire I know and love. I was going through my old rants to find stories to add to the Storybook Nook. I forgot some of them.

And forgot how the stories fall short of the actual events. I just couldn't do justice to the Weekend With Male Strippers story when I originally wrote it and I still can't.

Anyway: I found a rant I wrote a year ago after the presidential election. And everything I posited would happen, pretty much
happened.

Funny how predictable this administration is.

Yay, Friday! I checked out of work early today (I love that I can do that) to get home and just relax. Yay, Relax!

This week was a long one. Yesterday especially.

You know your day is going to be interesting when you get a collect call from a Hennepin County jail inmate.

It was, to be clear, a wrong number and I hung up instead of accepting the charges. For a split second I thought about accepting just to let this person know they were calling the wrong number, but then I decided the last thing I needed was to befriend a convict who appreciated my kindness and had nothing but time on his hands. Despite what Oz teaches you, the average convicts usually aren't that hot.

Dammit.

Anyway, when I got into work nothing was working right. And I had to deal with this "graphic designer" who wanted some color postcards printed—4-up, 2-sided. And wanted them in an hour. Because Kinko's does it in an hour.

Yeah, honey? Kinko's doesn't have two presses running full-time in the back and a dozen or so big buck jobs sitting on their desk that need to be finished and have plates made. Your 500 ugly-ass bitmapped image postcards? Not a priority for me.

So I was already pissed at her. Then she came to pick up the postcards and said they looked good and now I'd know how to do it next time. What?! What?!?!

Okay, sure. I'll know that you save your PDFs completely stupid and I have to fix them. But I think I got the hang of the whole "postcard" thing about four dozen postcard jobs ago. Idiot.

Then to add insult to her idiocy, as she was leaving she mentioned that now we could get back to doing nothing since her precious job was done.

So I asked my bosses if I could go home since I apparently had nothing more to do for the day. They laughed. And told me to get back to work.

So after I finished stewing over stupid customers, I ended up staying a little late to get something done for a woman who needed it for an event that night. Which netted me a $20 tip. Gotta love it.

Then when I got home (to prepare, such as it is, for The OC) I found someone had said some very nice things about my stories. I like compliments. Compliments feed my insatiable need for constant validation.

Anyway, I got the quotes up last night and am happy about that. Once I procrastinate for like a day, it takes me weeks to get back to watching an episode.

So now we're back to Friday. Or as it's sometimes called "Storybook and/or Music Friday and/or Saturday". And since I did open up the lovely Storybook Nook, I've decided to comb through old rants and find the more coherent and/or cohesive rant entries that are more like short stories. Wish me luck. With four years of rants to go through, it might take a bit.

I can't remember if it's Tuesday or Wednesday today. And it wasn't like one time, it was all day I kept getting confused. The only way I seem to be remembering it is that The OC is back tomorrow. It will also be the debut of The OC Update mailing list. I like to at least look organized.

Well, online anyway. My apartment is another story.

I finally have a breather tonight. I got all my website updates done and now I can relax. Which means I get itchy. I'm not used to not working.

There's this cat that's been wandering the alley over the past week. Increasingly skinny, skittish, and no tags. Last night I heard a brawl between two cats and moments later she went running through the alley. I tried calling to her to no avail.

I feel like helping her and it eats me up. But even if I could coax her over, what then? I already have a cat and incorporating some random feline even for a short period would severely fuck with my already manic pet (who still has a big patch that's furrless due to whatever ailment is currently stressing her out).

So instead I just stress out about this little cat roaming the streets.

In other news, I keep having these dreams relating to both my new work and old work. I'm not a fan of analyzing dreams. Because I don't have the heart to delve into my psyche. But it's got to mean something.

Another dream I don't care to analyze: I dreamt the other night that I was pregnant with a demon child. Except the weight was measured in gigabytes, not pounds. I was avoiding the demon who showed up to help deliver it, but he finally caught me. He was nice, and reminded me that the last time the other demon midwife stayed with me for a week to help me heal since the birth was so painful.

On top of that, there were these little demons wandering around with plates of cigarettes for sale.

And it took place on my University campus.

Riddle me that.