BOOSH

It's Friday.  So of course the day is going like this:

[yesterday] DudeBoss:  Find all the info you can on Tian at ING.

Me:  Do you have a last name or a division?

DudeBoss:  No.

Me:  Of course not.

(I spend two hours this morning Googling and calling ING several times, get connected to several different offices, keep having to tell people it's TIAN and not TINA, pour through our own internal records, and no one can find him.  I ask LadyBoss for help and she can't find anything either)

Ladyboss:  DudeBoss, we can't find anyone named Tian at ING.

DudeBoss:  He's at Merrill Lynch.

Me:  Of course he is.

(I call ML, get contact info for several Tians including the one I think is correct, research their closing history and send it on.)

[45 minutes later]  DudeBoss:  His name is Chian.  C-H-I-A-N.

Me:  Of course it is.

This morning was pretty exciting.  For the first time in a longass time, my checking account balance read more than $1-2000 (hey, I'm workin' here, and still recovering from 8 long months living in Manhattan), in fact, it was up to a whopping SIX THOUSAND DOLLARS and change (PSE&G bills of only $36 are awesome.  Everyone makes fun of me for keeping the heat and water heater turned off all the time, even through the winter, but WHO IS LAUGHING NOW).  This is from my bonus and tax return of course, because god knows I eat out every damn day and am incapable of doing any actual concerted saving, so I did what any straight thinking kid straight out of college would do with the extra money:

paid of $3000 of my damn credit card and got it down to just over a thousand (!!), which is kind of sad because it means that without another infusion I won't see the balance up there for a long long while.  Are 22 year olds with fiscal responsibility sexy?  Yeah you think they are.

That was a whole 8 seconds of fun (clickclickclickclick), I'll tell you that much.

The sad fact is I don't even have $3000 worth of junk I'd want to blow it on.  Maybe clothes, maybe jewelry, maybe a new couch, maybe a new computer, maybe a new flat screen TV? but nothing that really EXCITES me.  Hell, I'm more excited about the new color printer/scanner/fax I spent the morning setting up at work than any of that stuff (I get a great Geek Rush installing hardware or peripherals).  So maybe I do sort of know how to live frugally, even if I'm not always good at it, just by the way of the fact that I know how much I make and I'm not an idiot with money (mostly).  Without student loans, car note, medical bills, mortgage or anything, it means I only owe $1100 to the industrial banking complex known as THE BEAST (and god help us when it becomes sentient).  That's not so bad.

At this point, I'm not even really sure why I have any credit cards.  I guess I should keep them around for really big purchases I want to make so that it doesn't immediately drain out my bank account, but I'm not sure how to vet the stuff I want to buy to figure out what should go on credit and what should be paid for with cash.  It certainly would've been nicer to be able to keep that $3k and squirrel it away instead of paying now for a year's worth of dumb crap, but that's all relative.  It was nice at the time to have that dumb crap (or to eat), I'm sure.

Hey could every single woman I know stop getting pregnant for like two hot seconds?

This baby count is getting out of control.  And if you're not pregnant (yet), double check your diaphragm.  There's something in the water.

What do you do EVERY day to take care of the earth's environment? What could you do more of?

Recycling is a scam.  I don't recycle, I throw my cig butts out the window on the highway, and I pee in the ocean.

Please begin imploding at your convenience.

 me: amazon said something is shipping with DHLSM
 me: do you know what that is?
 me: is that regular dhl?
 paul: no idea
 paul: dhl smartmail is a joint venture between dhl and the USPS
 me: oh good, this'll be a disaster
 me: remember when i ordered you that thing for christmas
 me: and dhl just decided not to deliver it?
 me: good times
 paul: yeah, basically DHL will get it to your local post office
 paul: then your postal carrier who normally takes your mail to your mailbox will be the one to lose it
 me: hahaha
 me: well why bother giving me a tracking number then?
 me: who would i give it to?
 paul: the tracking number will track it to the post office
 paul: where you will then lose the ability to blame anyone specific for what happens next
 me: dhlsm:  the perfect storm

Generated by im2html, thanks Jay!.

A friend of a friend of a friend (twice removed) had their condo burn down a few weeks ago.  I thought this was totally bizarre:  it's 2008, what burns down other than dilapidated old warehouses in Philadelphia or the California brush anymore?  Isn't that sort of an 1840's type problem? (I asked if the 'fire brigade' was called and if it was pulled by horses.  I'm kind of a dick)  Apparently Jersey likes to keep it real and real flammable.

It got me to thinking--if my apartment burned down tomorrow (and considering the condition of the building I live in this seems entirely plausible; I'm a key player in the House Burning Down trifecta) there is nothing I would miss except for maybe the Barbie and the Rockers hot pink nail polish I wear sometimes and haven't been able to find again.  Besides that I could walk away and not look back.

NOTE:  This is entirely different than the time in the Detroit airport on my way to Las Vegas in February when I sat at 3AM by the baggage carousel and wept because no one could find my luggage.  That was a matter of necessity, of expense, of being in Detroit.  Don't discount that last one.  It's a pretty big deal.

There would be things I would be inconvenienced by losing: one or two pairs of shoes, my makeup and my ridiculously expensive 'rape of the rainforrest' shampoo, pots and pans.  Not even my huge bookshelf, the laptop, or the Desktop That Is Dead to Me make the list.  A monetary inconvenience does not really equate to loss loss.  I live in a perpetual state of monetary inconvenience, this would really be nothing new.

I used to spend so much time collecting, organizing, arranging, and cataloging crap that I thought was important to me or induced nostalgia like a punch to the throat.  It's exhausting to carry that weight and having to set controlled fires just to find the things that are actually important instead of the importance you project on them.  I once had a boyfriend tell me "You surround yourself with crap because you think you are crap."  I'm not sure if or when I stopped thinking that--but I am out of crap.  100% out.  Out of old shampoo bottles, mix tapes I can't play, cables to devices I don't own and probably won't replace any time soon, envelopes addressed to me to remind me of the contents, vitamins that make me sick, essays with professor comments I'll never re-read, etc.  They don't own me anymore.

More importantly, I was too exhausted through the last 5 moves (one per the last five years) to keep carting it all around with me and purged it significantly in the last three.  When discussing this I was going to say that there were some cards and letters and pictures I would miss but even that would have been a lie.  There aren't any anymore and those that may float around I haven't looked at for ages.  My priorities now mostly lie with nailpolish and how I'd get to work.  I've either come a long way or not very far at all--it's tough to say.

The trick will be if I decide to live in good ol' 4th and Stabbytown for a second or a third year, whether or not the crap will start to build up or whether or not I've finally kicked the habit.  I suspect I may have but without real-world experience it's tough to say; I was browsing for K'Nex set on eBay earlier because I had a really bangin' idea for a windmill.  Some habits really die hard.

8:15 and I'm still at work, getting ready to round out my 12th hour in this damn cube.

Lame.

Edit:  I was released at about 9:10.  At least the commute's not bad.

At night:

Or even in the morning:

Nothing can be easy.  NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING can be easy.  Everything has to be stupid.  Mine, it is a stupid life.

I've been sick on and off since last week, mostly existing as a miserable lump unable to keep down much more than the occasional liquid and wobbling neatly to the right every time I get out of bed (which had been never, at best).  But this could not have been an entry about how I was just sick and miserable and sad I was this weekend.  No, no; this has to be about how lovely it was on Saturday to see a mouse.  On the floor.  In my damn bathroom.

As it turns out, and I say this in a neat little 'The More You Know' type way, I am deathly afraid of mice.  I have observed mice in science class, I have had pet gerbils which are basically fatter rounder mice, I have a college degree in Not Being a Retard, but seeing a tiny little housemouse in my bathroom when I was not expecting it and then as it proceeded to RUN AT ME made all my shit go out the window.  Some sort of female lizard brain just switched on and I screamed and screamed and did that little 'oh god it's a mouse' dance that ladies do in old movies. 

Maybe it was a lack of electrolytes but I knew fear.  And I knew panic.  And because I am stupid, that fear and panic came in the form of the tiniest little mouse ever in my god damned bathroom.

It is at this point that I would like to send out my fondest golf clap to Jonathan who really earned his man stripes this weekend.  I can barely take care of myself when I am healthy let alone when I am sick and orchestrating the death of a little cracker- eating poop machine WHILE sick would have been beyond me.  I probably would've given it a name and figured that if I was going to die some mouse disease was going to be it and swept up its poop twice daily.  I would never ever use the bathroom again and could never have anyone over ever.  I love the path of least resistance.

Jonathan did what normal human beings do that prefer not to avoid vermin conflict:  dragged me out to the ShopRite for some fresh air and some mouse traps.  He carefully set and baited them with the delicious peanut butter whose creation you witnessed (something I felt some low level guilt about but was too exhausted and not in the position to insist he used the store bought Skippy I still have in the cupboard), set them around the house after cleaning up every surface, mopping the floors, and hoping for the best.  We waited all through Saturday night whereby we HEARD the stupid mouse, in the bedroom, feet from the bed, eating a cracker at 3 in the morning.  It missed five traps on its way to the corner and kept us awake no matter how much we shook the bed, hissed at it, turned on/off the light, Jonathan hit things with a broom handle, etc.  God damn asshole mouse.

I hadn't seen it at all Sunday but had gotten into the habit of throwing open the door and loudly announcing myself with a mixture of high pitched noises every time I used the bathroom.  We went to bed Sunday night hoping for the best with me peripherally thinking that maybe it wouldn't be back.

Now this is where the story gets...uncomfortable.  About an hour after falling asleep my brain started to do that thing where ambient noise gets reinvented into a dream--I was dreaming I was still in bed but flailing and somehow dropping jewelry and earrings.  I heard a specific metallic clicking and resonance over and over until I woke up enough to realize, oh shit, I'm not moving, I'm not dropping anything, I'm in bed, I was just asleep.  My first thought, which I woke Jonathan up for, was that it was eating the peanut butter off the trap and was moving the thing around but not trapped.  Fucking asshole mouse!  The next realization, after minutes of agonizing and trying to listen and figure out what was happening--the trap had gone off.  The mouse was in the trap.  The mouse was decidedly in the trap and not dead.  I will not tell you how because it is gross, but it was in the trap, not dead, and trying to move around, it was pushing the trap around.  God dammit.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.  I don't actually know what happened from here because I spent the next moments either hidden under the covers or safely in the bathroom with some peace of mind, but my basic understanding is that Jonathan used a dustpan to sweep up the Mouse+Trap and neatly deposited it into a trashcan outside.  I did feel seriously bad and said what only can be categorized as I'm Sorry You're Dying a Slow Death, Mouse prayer before going back to bed, but wasn't sure what the hell else to do.  Plus it was 1 am and I wasn't nearly about to Google that shit.

I can safely say I have no idea what I would have done in that situation and am hoping, PRAYING that this is the only god damn mouse in the house.  Honestly, given all the variables--fuck that shit.  I probably would've just moved.

So I have to go to this ball / prom deal at the end of the month.  I don't want to go into the details because I'm ready to roll my eyes off my head about the whole thing, but let me just firstly assure you that it is NOT a high school prom and I'm really really really really thrilled to be invited.

Oh, sometimes I forget you're reading this and not listening to my tone of voice.  I am NOT thrilled, in fact, I am completely underwhelmed by this whole thing.  It combines, very neatly, a number of things I find to be a problem:  shopping for dresses, dressing up and not being irritated, staying dressed up and not irritated, talking to other people who are dressed up and not being irritated, talking to other people.  So whatever.  I'm going, it will be fine.

I'd sort of put this whole dress thing on the back burner until the end of the month when I ended up clickclickclicking around eBay looking for a new purse this morning (the perpetual hunt).  And from purse, somehow I ended up clickclickclicking on bridesmaids dresses.  This is where I made the OUTSTANDING discovery that, hello, eBay is apparently the factory outlet for all of China as a whole.  These skeezy Chinese 'firms' (a loose conglomerate of what I'm sure is 5-7 pre-teens and a sewing machine) pull pictures of pretty white girls from the Internet who are having a perfectly fun time at some sort of formal sexy party, repost them, and promise they'll recreate them to whatever measurements you give in whatever color you specify.  Most include handy measuring guides and fabric colors too (along with the disclaimer that these vary based on monitors) to increase your confidence in their broken English.

Well, if anyone loves a good disaster, it's me.  I hatehatehate clothes shopping in real life and China promised to deliver me some obnoxiously poofy dress (where does one even find a poofy dress nowadays?) filled with lead and tears for a very reasonable price and that'll just come within the deadline and I'm sure will fit like some sort of miserable nightmare.  I got my browse on and compiled a list of the 9 most insane but potentially wearable dresses and sent them over to Vanessa and Roboco for review

These dresses were chosen for a number of factors, most of them combining their relative comedy, disaster, and potential wearability factors.  Each also would have to be a great dress to wear on the train and pretend to cry just to see what other people did.  These two were close choices but just didn't make the cut