I absolutely cannot make this stuff up.

Double-bookings are always terrible. It means, most likely, that someone in our office screwed up with the calendar. It certainly means that one client will have to wait for quite a while or come back another time, i.e. that s/he made the trip for nothing.

Yesterday started with a double-booking. The clients involved?

1) A widow whose husband recently died, along with her now fatherless daughter.

2) A widower whose wife was murdered last weekend.

I swear to you, the next time my day starts like that I’m going home and going back to bed!

Orwellian. OR-WELL-I-AN. Look it up.

I guess I missed when 1984 was no longer required reading in high school. (That’s a lie. It wasn’t required by the time I went through. I read it for fun.) I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that someone – lots of someones – thought this was a GOOD idea.

Kicking off the week after the world somberly marked Holocaust Remembrance Day, President Obama marked the 67th year since the liberation of Europe’s death camps with the announcement today of his new Atrocities Prevention Board.

‘”Never again” is a challenge to nations,” Obama said. “It’s a bitter truth — too often, the world has failed to prevent the killing of innocents on a massive scale. And we are haunted by the atrocities that we did not stop and the lives we did not save.”

And if THAT doesn’t work, the President will have his staff send them a very angry letter. And it will arrive with postage due.

“Never again” should go hand-in-hand with “Molon Labe.”

Insomnia = no posting

On Monday night I lay me down to sleep around the usual time – 10 PM to 10:30 – and drifted off to the land of dreams.

I was wakened at 2:45 by the sound of a crocodile snarfing down a wildebeast. Or perhaps a lion trying to deep-throat an entire gazelle. Maybe a complete wolfpack going to town on a caribou?

Oh. No, it’s just Rajah mowing through his breakfast.

We have the auto-feeder go off around 2:45 AM so that he can eat and fall back asleep with us. (The days before the feeder began around 4:30 with much pawing off our faces, purrs, headbumps and pleas for food. Our sleep improved immensely once we delegated his meal schedule to a machine.) Usually it works quite well . . . but early Tuesday morning, not so much, because I couldn’t fall back asleep.

I visualized clouds on a blue sky.

I tried to “feel” myself sinking deep into the bed.

I reached out for my iPhone and finished my current book (Lord of the Rings book three, Return of the King).

I lay there with my eyes closed.

Finally, finally, around 5:30 I fell back asleep . . . just in time for my alarm to go off at 5:50.

I hit snooze repeatedly. I forewent my usual morning mug and blogpost. I crawled out of bed at 7:05 just in time to take a shower and hie myself off to work.

Tuesday night I lay down thankfully, relived that my tiredness would make for a full night’s sleep . . .

No, Rajah didn’t wake me. This time I was awake at 2:30 so I could hear the feeder go off and the snarfling commence. The rest played out as before.

Is there anything quite so irritating as when your normally functioning body and its systems suddenly decide, for no possible good reason, to go rogue and disobey your commands?

Slogging through the day, it didn’t help that I’m currently on a Caffeine Cleanse; no chugging of java to keep me going. *sigh*

Last night . . . I turned off the light at 11 PM and I woke up at six. Hooray!!!

The day looks a helluva lot better with some sleep under my belt.

P.S. Parents, I know you’re laughing at me. I know you’ve learned to exist on two hours of sleep and perhaps the occasional nap. It’s all what you’re used to 🙂

Fun with contractors!

Whether or not you believe in God, it should be pretty obvious that He (or She, or the Great Pumpkin) has one hell of a sense of humor.

My job seems to be going out of its way to make me do the things I hate.  Whether it’s writing a resume for my boss (I HATE RESUME WRITING) or comparing Internet packages and moving quotes (those are Mike-jobs!), I’m being forced to do in my professional life what I try to avoid in my personal life.

Such as deal with contractors.

It’s ironic that the same week I left this quote at Breda’s —

Wow. Lesson to Lissa: Leave the house alone. Do not mess with the house. The house always wins.

— I find myself stuck with shoddy contractors at the office.

Technically I don’t KNOW that they’re shoddy, only that they do shoddy work.

Such as building the kitchen wall ABOUT TEN INCHES TOO SHORT. The wall is currently level with the top of the cupboards.  That means not only that the counter will actually be TALLER than the wall, once it goes on, but there’s no room for a backsplash.  Charming!

Oh, but it gets better.  Whip out a tape measure, and it turns out they also built the wall FOUR INCHES TOO CLOSE to the existing wall.  Oopsy!  So . . . the fridge won’t fit.  So they have to CHOP OFF THE LAST CUPBOARD and replace it with a narrower cupboard and take off the granite countertop and CHOP FOUR INCHES OFF IT and polish and seal it and put it back.

Are you kidding me?  Are you freaking kidding me?  This is what you do for a living, and you can’t be bothered to check your work against the plans?!?!

Throw in the carpet that wasn’t delivered on time – because it wasn’t ordered until two weeks after it was supposed to be delivered – and, well, it’s been a helluva week.

P.S. At least all these mistakes aren’t wrecking *my* budget.  If I ever get work done on my house – any kind of re-modeling whatsoever – I’m tape-measuring every dimension of that sucker every single night.  BECAUSE APPARENTLY CONTRACTORS CAN’T BLOODY COUNT.

Protected: The Story: Part II

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WHERE ARE THE REST OF THEM?!?!?

There was a leg near the wall in my living room today.

A LEG.

A HAIRY, HINGED, HIDEOUS, HORRIFIC BUG LEG.

Which, of course, begs the question:

WHERE THE HELL IS THE REST OF IT???

Remind me not to kiss Rajah for the next few days …

In which I am very glad that I keep a first aid kit in my car

It’s a gorgeous summer day in Florida. The birds are singing. The sky is blue. I take my time strolling to the office mailbox, turning my face up to the sun. I close my eyes to savor the rays on my face, take a deep breath, and lower my head to keep walking.

Good thing, too. Because otherwise I wouldn’t have seen that lovely sun glinting off the Magnum wrapper in the parking lot.

(And no, I don’t mean the new ice cream treat with the horrible name. I mean the . . . Well, you all know damn well what I mean!!)

I think … I *believe* … that it was dropped and run over. That’s why there was a slit down the front and a bit of latex sticking out. My mind refuses to comprehend any other possibility.

BECAUSE THIS IS IN FRONT OF OUR OFFICE IN THE PARKING LOT. WHERE THE CLIENTS AND POTENTIAL CLIENTS WALK. AND IT CANNOT STAY THERE.

So, yeah. If you don’t keep a full kit in your car with band-aids, gauze, tape, triple antibiotic, PLASTIC BAGS AND PAPER TOWELS AND GLOVES GLOVES GLOVES etc … You may want to. You never know what icky thing you’ll stumble upon.

It is MOST DEFINITELY a Monday!!!!

So I had a really fabulous weekend, and maybe I’ll post on that tomorrow, but first I have to whine.

Top Five Reasons Lissa is Whining Right Now (in chronological order)

5. Mike left this morning at five a.m.

4. Traffic was bad this morning

3. The power flickered this morning at work

2. The air conditioner at the office was on the fritz so I melted off my makeup.

And the number one reason Lissa is whining is …. *drumroll*

1. Due to the no-AC, we had all the doors at the office open for breeze. And in TEN MINUTES DURING THE STAFF MEETING, THIS HAPPENED:

THAT’S ONLY ONE LEG.

I picked up a baker’s dozen of red, itchy, swollen welts and no one else suffered a single bite.

I hate mosquitos.

Book Review: The Land of Painted Caves is the Godfather III. Just longer.

The book: The Land of Painted Caves (Book Six of the Earth’s Children novels) by Jean Auel

Short review: Booooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Longer review: THIS? THIS IS WHAT I ANTICIPATED FOR NINE YEARS?!?!?

What a piece of shite.

I loved The Clan of the Cave Bear.  I first read it when I was thirteen and I’ve re-read it more times than I can remember.  I liked the next three books, too, although they weren’t as good, and although they had more than one foot planted firmly in bodice-ripper land.  The fifth book was good and interesting, in that Our Two Heroes (well, really, The Heroine and her Sexy Sidekick Manlove) met characters from Manlove’s past and prepared to live there happily ever after.  We even got to meet a few delicious villains chugging on the Heroine Hateraid.  I was SO looking forward to this final, satisfying conclusion in which Heroine and Manlove would raise their daughter, make a few more miraculous discoveries (pretty much the entire history of human innovation is thanks to ideas from the Heroine), and suitably punish the villains — 1) Mean Whore, Manlove’s former bang-mate; , 2) Brute, the self-hating part-Neanderthal; 3) Drunky, the neglectful alchoholic father; and 4) Evil Priest, who isn’t that interesting.

Here’s what I got instead:

45% of the book: re-hashing events and characters from the previous five books.  Because apparently when a new book comes out it magically inflicts amnesia on anyone who read the former books.  Who knew you could insert a Neurolyzer into an electronic book?  Or maybe it was working correctly in the hardcover version and it’s only eBook readers who didn’t get wiped and thus suffered through the insane amount of rehashing the past.

45% of the book: Descriptions of painted caves in Europe, stone age practices and techniques, and the time-appropriate flora and fauna.  Especially the painted caves.

DUDE.  IF I WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THE CAVES OF EUROPE I WOULD BUY A NON-FICTION BOOK ON THE CAVES OF EUROPE. THIS IS NOT THE FRICKING DA VINCI CODE. THERE ARE NO PICTURES TO ACCOMPANY THE TEXT. I DO NOT CARE WHICH REINDEER IS FACING LEFT AND WHICH IS FACING RIGHT. I DO NOT CARE WHETHER THERE IS A MAMMOTH SUPERIMPOSED ONTO A HORSE.  YOU ARE BORING ME PAST TEARS AND INTO SHEER SOUL WITHERING. DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200, JUST KILL MY PSYCHE WITH BOREDOM.

8% of the book: “New” stuff about the characters.  Junk that’s supposed to be character development or plot continuation but is so poorly written that I found myself shrieking and jumping up and down in protest.  REALLY???

Allow me to give you an example:

Ayla found herself truly enjoying the company of Levela, Beladora, and Amelana when they weren’t visiting another Cave or Summer Meeting. They did things together with their children.

And then they collectively saw Spot run.  “They did things together with their children.”  That’s a sentence with all the poetry, majesty and interest of a cat turd on my carpet.  Although I’m pretty sure Rajah puts more effort into those than the author put into that craptastic sentence.

Or how about this one?

She untied the waist thong and squatted down, but when she stood up to pull her leggings back on, she was surprised to see four strange men staring at her. She was more offended than anything.

“She was more offended than anything.”  Somewhere in Cali a valley is missing its teenage girl.

1% of the book: Actual new information, occurrences or developments that involve our characters and are interesting.

And the final 1% of the book: Finishing off the Book 5 Villains.

(That’s overgenerous, by the way.  It was more like 0.03, but whatever, I’m rounding up.)

SPOILER ALERT!!!

Want to know how they end up?

 

 

 

 

Evil Priest . . . ummm . . . gets kicked out of the priesthood for lying that he was called into the priesthood.  Then he steals a bunch of stuff and leaves to go pretend to other tribes that he really is a priest.  *yawn*

Brute, the semi-neanderthal, goes crazy and runs off into the night.  I’M NOT KIDDING.  THAT’S LITERALLY HOW THE AUTHOR TOOK CARE OF HIM.

Mean Whore . . . gets back together with Manlove.  Despite the fact that the entire series is built around the great love between Our Heroine and Manlove, despite the fact that Auel told us FOR FOUR WHOLE BOOKS how AMAZING and INTENSE and UNIQUE and UNMATCHABLE Manlove’s feelings for Our Heroine are, he gets all frisky when the Heroine is busy becoming a priest and decides to bang Mean Whore, who’s been trying to get back in his pants for a long time.  When Our Heroine finds out, he deserts Mean Whore because he never cared about her, and so Mean Whore moves back to her former cave.

THAT’S ALL.  SHE REALIZES THAT MANLOVE DIDN’T CARE ABOUT HER ANY MORE THAN SHE CARED ABOUT HIM SO SHE MOVES.  Sweet sappy sassafras, I came up with better punishment plots when Malibu Barbie tried to steal Ken from Island Barbie.

Drunky the neglectful alcoholic father . . . is invited to get busy by our hurt and devastated Heroine.  He promptly gets beat to hell by Manlove for screwing Our Heroine right in front of him.  Drunky will, as long as he lives, be the martyred victim and a reminder that Manlove screwed Mean Whore and went Mike Tyson on Drunky.

The End.

It makes me want to cry.

There was this beautiful world, and wonderful characters, and a really interesting past, and all these amazing potential plots, and the author decided instead to lovingly vivisect every bit of it over 757 pages of dreck.

What a frickin’ WASTE.

We killed a snake and I’m sorry.

THE SCENE:
Lissa is doing garden-y stuff in the front yard and walks around to the back yard to check her tomatoes.  Her eye is caught by a long, black, thrashing, sinuous shape in the corner of the screened patio.  She gasps.

“Mike!  Need help please, there’s a snake in the patio!!”

THE BACKGROUND:
Lissa has always liked snakes.  They’re cool!  And they eat pests.  And they’re pretty.  And when you pick them up, they contract and wrap around your arm (but never around your neck, kids!) and they’re just weird and they feel all smooth and cool and she wants a corn snake someday.

Mike . . . does not share this fascination.  In fact, he’s rather un-fond of snakes.  He has been known to growl, Indiana-Jones-style, “Why did it have to be SNAKES?”

HOW I IMAGINED THE SCENE WOULD PLAY OUT:
Lissa takes the brand-new garden rake and slowly approaches the snake from the right side.  She gently nudges him with the rake.  The snake, wanting only to escape and realizing that Lissa is much, MUCH bigger than he is, oozes to the left.  She delicately chivvies him around the corner and to the door.  He slithers quickly into the overgrowth behind the house as she watches with a peaceful smile on her face, content, and confident that he will keep her garden area rat-free.

HOW IT ACTUALLY WENT DOWN:
Well, the part about the garden rake was true.  And I did indeed approach slowly and gently nudge him with the rake.  Unfortunately, he did NOT turn tail and run.  He just thrashed harder.

I gingerly poked him some more.  He thrashed some more.  And then he started shaking his tail at us.

MIKE: “Lissa, are you SURE it’s just a black rat snake?  Why is he shaking his tail?”

LISSA:  “Well, there aren’t any rattles on it, so it’s probably okay . . . ”

Then he started trying to crawl up the rake.  I quickly scurried backward.

LISSA:  “Um, Mike, you want to try?”

Brave man that he is, he stepped up.  He didn’t have any more luck than I did with the rake — the snake continued to shake its tail and strike at nearby objects, NOT retreating at all — but he had more success with the big rubber pool hook.  Repeatedly picking up the main body of the snake (it kept oozing away), he carried it out of the patio and set it down in the grass.

Phew! I followed them out, still looking forward to the peaceful and contented smile.

Only the bugger wouldn’t leave.

Instead, he stayed coiled up, hissing, and striking at anything nearby.

LISSA:  “Mike . . . I think we might have to kill it.”

MIKE: “You want to kill it?”

LISSA:  “I think so.  If it’s not going to crawl away, and it’s going to stay here and be aggressive, I think I’d feel better with it dead.  The neighbors have kids, y’know.”

So I held its neck in place with the pool hook and Mike got the shovel and chopped his head off.

*sniffle*

I didn’t WANNA kill it!  I wanted him to crawl away!  I did!!!

Oh, well.  I told our neighbors — who had warned me they’d seen a snake the day before — that we had killed it, and that I felt bad about it.  He didn’t QUITE laugh at me as he nicely informed me that his sons are five and seven and he kills snakes on sight.

*sigh*

So far our Florida Death Toll consists of one spider (that apparently only eats six-legged creatures) and one snake that eats rodents.  We’ll probably move on to killing butterflies and kicking puppies, next.

(a decapitated snake picture is beneath the fold)