Friday, June 25, 2004
Banana: The Tragic Fall of a Once Majestic Fruit
It seems that bananas have hit on hard times and are whoring out their peels for product placement. My banana urges me to go see Garfield: The Movie.
Nahhh, pass. What movie does your banana suggest?
# posted by Amanda at 11:32 AM |
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Home Improvement Projects Suck, Part II: This Summer's "Don't Miss" Sequel!
For those of you who are not already painfully familiar with the drama of our laminate flooring, you can find the backstory here and more recently here. To summarize, last June we had a local flooring company install a top-of-the-line [read: top-of-the-DIME] laminate flooring product on most of our main floor. It is quite pretty and withstands muddy poodle feet and toddlers with a penchant for spilling things, but two of the transition strips (between the laminate and the carpeted areas) cracked due to improper installation.
That was slightly bothersome, since it meant calling the company and having them send someone here to fix it. Then again, just two transitions should be an easy fix, right? The company rep who came out to assess the requested repairs also said that they'd fix some gaps between flooring planks when they came to replace the transitions.
Yesterday, a team - using that term very loosely - of two guys showed up to do the repairs.
Problem 1: They only brought one transition piece.
Problem 2: They cracked it while installing it. Solid oak, it turns out, is prone to cracking when it's being jammed into a space that is about 1/4" inch too small.
Problem 3: They neglected to mention that before leaving.
So we're back at square one, with two cracked transitions that need to be fixed. When I called the flooring company this morning to discuss my concerns about this, the lady who schedules the repair work pointed out that the guys also forgot to fix the gaps yesterday. This really did not improve my opinion about their customer service.
Oh but wait, it gets much better...
"What day would be good for you to have the guys back out there to finish?", she asked.
"Today would be a GREAT day for them to come out and fix this mess," I answered.
"Ummmm...our trucks are broken down today..."
Really? ALL of the trucks are broken down...how interesting. Fortunately, I was able to suggest a solution: since these are fairly short pieces of trim, they would fit nicely into a car. I half expected her to tell me that all of the cars were broken down, too, and all of their employees biked to work today.
"Ummmm...the pieces still need to be stained..."
At this point I cut in with what probably sounded like borderline psychotic ramblings about how they had a written work order, how did they manage to "forget" more than half the job, how did they NOT KNOW that they cracked another piece of trim, and how could they be SO COMPLETELY INCOMPETENT YOU BETTER SEND SOMEONE DIFFERENT OUT HERE RIGHT! NOW! (Please note that I did not use the expression "unfuck it" at any time during my partial freakout, which I feel demonstrated considerable maturity and restraint on my part.)
"Ummmm...we're still waiting for the installers to show up today..."
*sigh*
And thus the saga continues. The next chapter of this story is scheduled for July 1st, which is the earliest that they can send out another crew of installers. (Seriously, how hard is it to round up someone - ANYONE - who can measure, cut and nail down a couple pieces of trim and putty some gaps?!) I'm less than confident that it will be the FINAL chapter, but we'll see. The excuses that they come up with are mildly entertaining, at least.
# posted by Amanda at 11:06 AM |
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Thursday, June 24, 2004
In case it's not apparent...
Every few weeks months, I try to update my masthead. Because change soothes the attention span deficient, but also because the masthead graphics are never particularly good enough to become permanent. They're my own little homegrown productions, somewhat "off" labors of love, kinda remniscent of that odd-colored, ill-fitting outfit that your batty Aunt Helen made for you when you were 9. Yeah, the one with the disco collar that all the other kids teased you about.
(You TOLD your mom that you didn't want to wear it school, but did she listen? Nooo, of course not. SHE wasn't the one dressed like a Saturday Night Fever movie extra in 1984.)
Since these days I generally prefer to avoid being teased for wearing things that don't *quite* look right, this afternoon I previewed my latest potential new masthead design amongst friends. Their reactions:
A. "oo and that would go really well with a nice dark blue tapestry background."
B. "eeeeh..... not feeling it!"
C. "Why are there nekkid boobs in your masthead?!"
So, survey says this one won't be gracing the top of this page. To be honest, I was a tad concerned that it wasn't original enough anyway. Thought y'all would like to see it all the same, just to get an idea of what didn't make the cut. In the meantime, back to the drawing board Gimp!
# posted by Amanda at 8:34 PM |
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Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Some suggestions regarding The Right Time To Tell Me That I'll Be Interviewing Someone This Afternoon:
- Whenever the decision to hire another employee was made, so that I might have some advance knowledge about the contract for which the job candidate might be hired.
- Yesterday, so that today I might have worn something other than yoga pants* (which are, by the way, acceptable dress here, but still...) and checked my purse to make sure that I'm still carrying a toothbrush and toothpaste.
- Before lunch, so that I might have chosen a lunch that wouldn't produce breath fumes strong enough to wilt the job candidate's eyelashes from across the conference table. Ohhh, powerful little Altoids to the rescue!
*I've never done any kind of yoga. I happened to find the pants on sale at Target during one of my "I'm going to exercise more often" phases. Note that I don't really exercise, either. Basically, I wear the pants on days when a drawstring is about as complex an operation as I can handle.
# posted by Amanda at 11:25 AM |
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Monday, June 21, 2004
Dance, Travis, dance!
But wait! TWO TIMES the jiggling manboob action.
Y'all excuse me while I go wash my eyeballs now.
# posted by Amanda at 4:42 PM |
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Saturday, June 19, 2004
You know you're in the South - the very self-contained South - when you're in Southern Maryland. I'm developing a love-hate relationship with the area. Love the beaches, love the rolling land, but it's not exactly a hotbed of innovative thinking. The deeper you get into the county (really, any Southern Maryland county fits here), the more apparent that is.
Saturday was Errand Day for us. The main chore was picking up crushed oyster shell to line the paths in our garden. It's a fairly standard landscape material in New England, not so much here in the Mid-Atlantic. The only place we were able to find it was at a local feed supply store. Read: very local. As one of the employees loaded the bags of crushed oyster shell into the back of our car, he asked, "You got cheekuns?"
"Uh, no. No chickens. We're using it for, uh, landscaping."
Now, I'm a big fan of honesty. I really do believe that the truth is the best answer the vast majority of the time. However, that doesn't necessarily include the times when a burly redneck guy is handily tossing 450 pounds of crushed oyster shell into your car after telling another couple (who actually needed it for their chickens) that we bought out all but one 50-pound bag that was in stock. The guy gave us a look that, roughly translated and cleaned up a bit, meant "Damn yuppies."
Was it just my imagination, or did the bags of oyster shell start landing with a little more oomph after that?
# posted by Amanda at 10:10 PM |
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Friday, June 18, 2004
Lunchtime conversation between the new office manager (who is approximately 45 years old) and myself (who fully intends to claim to be "in my twenties" until the clock ticks over to the very last minute on my 30th birthday):
Her: So that was the company co-owner who was here this morning?
Me: Yup.
Her: He's so young!
Me: He's not THAT young. He's, like, 27.
Her: I'd say that's young!
Me: Well, I guess it's relative. I'm 29, so to me he doesn't seem that young.
Her: You ARE?
Me: ...
Her: Really, only 29?
Me: (in a pained voice)...I take it that I look older than 29.
Her: Yes! I would have put you somewhere in your thirties, and probably not younger than 32.
Me: :O
Me: Okay, that's fantastic, thank you.
Apparently there's no need for me to dread turning the big THREE-OH, as it appears that it already happened SEVERAL YEARS AGO.
# posted by Amanda at 11:56 AM |
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Wednesday, June 16, 2004
I've been feeling a little angsty about work recently. These days, I'm working for a contractor (I'll call it Company Y) that is nearing the hustling end of a contract with an agency that has yet to do anything towards convincing me that the Federal government employs anyone with a fully functioning brain. The pay is decent and the commute is relatively short, plus I can wear sweats and my bosses encourage me to bring Sophie to the office, all of which helps to mitigate the low points. Truthfully, these lows are merely annoyances compared to the occasional day-ruining dramas of previous jobs. And for the sake of REAL comparison, I read this and was reminded that I should just consider myself lucky that I work with data and not people.
I haven't had a lot of jobs, let alone crappy jobs, but the two where I worked the front lines (a.k.a. Customer Service) provided fresh glimpses into hell each and every day. For a few months after graduating from college, I worked for a nationwide paging company whose nastiest clients weren't drug dealers as you might expect (although every month around billing cycle cut-off time we did get a few calls that began "Bish, don' turn mah jonk OFF...") but REALTORS. There's just no reasoning with a person who is convinced that 2 minutes of system downtime cost her the commission on a $450,000 house.
My personal favorite obnoxious customer story? A litigious one, natch. Back when I was still in college, I worked in the HR office of a large department store and occasionally filled in at the customer service office. There was frequently a backlog of customers in the waiting area so the store had set up posts and velvet ropes to funnel customers into neat little lines. One day, a woman and her approximately 7 year old son came into customer service - can't recall why, maybe to pay a charge card bill - and the kid preceded to run amok while the mother took care of her business. When the boy started yanking on the ropes, one of the customer service employees informed the mother that the posts weren't bolted down and could end up falling on the kid. Naturally, that resulted in a nasty response from Mom of the Year, who was pretty pissed off that someone would have the AUDACITY to suggest that her son should discontinue what he was doing but didn't seem at all concerned about the potential that the kid could injure himself.
Not surprisingly, within seconds the kid pulled a post over onto himself and launched into a hysterical crying fit. The mother immediately started screaming about lawsuits and was quickly escorted into the Executive Offices to talk with the General Manager and Security. Fortunately, our Customer Service area was equipped with security cameras that captured audio as well as video. They showed the tape to the mom, pointed out that the tape clearly showed her disregarding the service associate's warning about the unstability of the posts, and basically laughed in her face about her lawsuit threat.
As far as I know, that was the end of the story. The incident became somewhat of a legend among store employees, mainly because that particular retail conglomerate is notorious for their "the customer is always right" policies.
What's your most nightmarish customer story?
# posted by Amanda at 10:11 PM |
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If you're looking for something to make a bad day a little better, try Potbelly's Big Jack's PB&J. I know, I know, why spend $3.79 for a peanut butter and jelly sammich that would cost about 12 cents to make at home? Folks, the answer is HOT MELTY PEANUTTY GOODNESS served on your choice of thick crusty bread. Even if it can't cure what ails ya, it will seriously go a long way towards making you forget it for a while.
Also? At my local Potbelly's, the college-aged male counter jockeys are total flirts. In a really cute, harmless, non-skeeving sort of way. For those of us ladies who are (*guh*) a few years beyond college and dancing perilously close to the minivan-driving soccer mommy transformation ("Abandon hope, all ye who breed here"), THAT is exactly the brand of service with a smile that buys our customer loyalty.
# posted by Amanda at 10:59 AM |
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Monday, June 14, 2004
Three guarantees about visiting my Northern Virginia friends at their stomping grounds:
- There will be much big dog love devoted to the two sweetest Bernese Mountain Dogs in the world.
- At some point, Sweetwater Tavern will be patronized and a Roast Chicken Salad will be consumed. *snarf*
- No matter what other lofty discussions pop up, eventually the conversation will degenerate to more, um, basic topics and we'll all agree that we are soooo 12 years old.
Below, spotted Sunday afternoon in a nice community in No. VA that really should invest in better locks for their kiosks. (Mouseover for a picture of the original message.) Leon, I don't know who you are, but I hope you had as much fun yesterday as I did!
# posted by Amanda at 7:50 AM |
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Wednesday, June 09, 2004
One of our area grocery chains gives their storebrand sodas (pops, for you Midwesterners) cute little retro-sounding names. I picked up some of the lemon-lime flavor, which is called "Quist", and I must say that this would have been an excellent name for a beer. Perhaps one of those "affordable" beers that are the by-the-case beverage of choice at parties hosted by teenage guys (a.k.a. The Last Of The Big-Time Spenders). Think of the marketing slogan possibilies: "Get pissed on Quist" has a lovely ring to it! Picture that on a vintage advertising poster.
# posted by Amanda at 11:54 AM |
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Monday, June 07, 2004
Yesterday, for the very first time since Sophie's birth, I got a personal taste of public discrimination against small children/parents of small children.
Every few weeks, my friend K and I gather up our girlbabies and spend a day shopping and dining out. Usually we eat someplace "kid friendly", which means a noisy chain restaurant with a changing station in the restroom. (To those of us with kids, having a convenient place to do a diaper change is a pretty important factor in what determines a "good" restaurant.) Last night we decided to try something new, a quaint tavern/restaurant that received great reviews in a major area newspaper. Parents appreciate good food, too, even if we have approximately 5 seconds to enjoy it!
The restaurant turned out to be a smallish, slightly upscale place. We were steered into a secluded back room with only four tables. Seeing that we were the only guests in the room, we jokingly made a comment about it being the "baby room". About 10 minutes later, the hostess seated two middle-aged women in the room. K and I were in the middle of our conversation and our girls were busy gnawing on bread, so we didn't take much notice of the women until one of them received a call on her cell phone.
Which had one of those annoying song ringtones.
Which she let ring all the way through several verses before answering.
Which turned into several minutes of loud conversation right there at her table while her companion waited and we tried not to overhear.
K and I rolled our eyes about it but kept chatting and handing the babies bits of bread. The babies were perfectly content just sitting there chewing their bread like cows chew cud. Finally, the woman ended her phone call and threw a look over her shoulder at us. That must have been the first time she noticed us, because she said, "Oh, there are kids in here!" And with that, she called the waitress to their table and insisted on being moved to another spot in the restaurant.
My jaw dropped open in total shock. Neither of the babies was acting disruptive---they were both too busy eating to make any noise. In fact, I'd say they were both damn near perfect dinner companions last night. We've all had restaurant experiences that were made unpleasant by someone else's out-of-control child, but GEEZ, don't judge a kid (or the kid's parent) to be a problem if that doesn't appear to be the case!
Thinking back to the years before Sophie, when I had considerably less experience with and tolerance for children's public outbursts, I hope I was never a total jerk to a parent who didn't deserve it.
# posted by Amanda at 8:38 PM |
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Lia posts her list of the top three suicide-inducing songs and calls for more nominees. It was a tough decision! My vote for the three most hateful songs known to mankind goes to:
- "Smells Like Teen Spirit", Nirvana: "An albino, a mosquito..."? Oh, c'mon, the lyrics of this song are positively retarded! Yeah, go ahead and string me up for spitting on the creative genius of "the spokesperson for our generation".
- "Hero", Enrique Inglesias: Apologies to those of you who had this song at your wedding, but this is the most mindnumbingly boring excuse for a love song ever recorded. It goes great with a buffet menu, though.
- "Electric Slide": Congratulations to this song, it was the main reason why I decided not to have any music at my wedding reception. Somehow, the very same people who can't remember to switch off their car's turn signals manage to never miss a step of this song. Mindboggling, I tell you!
Honorable Mention: any song by Phil Collins, Lionel Ritchie and/or Barry Manilow. TO THIS DAY, these artists are on heavy rotation at my dentist's office, and in my mind will forever be associated with the sound of drilling and scraping. Makes me cringe and break out in a cold sweat just thinking about it.
# posted by Amanda at 11:24 AM |
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Friday, June 04, 2004
So we did the dinner cruise thing with Sean's new coworkers and associates. It's a fairly common entertainment option in port towns: big enclosed boat, dinner seating for a couple hundred people, buffet line featuring nondescript foods, small dance floor and DJ Snoop Drippy Droop spinning standard "party" tunes. Like the "YMCA", so you can see how many people become completely incapable of spelling Y-M-C-A after a few watery drinks. If that doesn't sound like the setup for a rockin' good time, consider that everybody with a cruise ticket is all mixed in together, including large groups and parties.
If you've ever had to ponder the question "With whom would you LEAST like to be stuck in a room?", I guarantee you that HANDS DOWN the correct answer is five dozen 14-year-olds with DUCKBILL SHAPED KAZOOS.
As if barely-teens in mass quantity isn't annoying enough, some dimwit had to go and give the field-trippers NOISEMAKERS. Apparently Baltimore's Inner Harbor now has duck tours, whee! You too can go on a duck tour and receive your very own souvenir bright yellow kazoo! More good news: there is absolutely no intellectual or social competency level requirement for owning and operating a kazoo. They're great fun to use in SMALL ENCLOSED AREAS! You and all of your friends can HARMONIZE TOGETHER with your kazoos, or, for a TOTALLY CHAOTIC NOISE EXPERIENCE, you can all just blow on them randomly! Ha ha! Hey Beavis, let's watch the other dinner cruise patrons' eardrums explode!
All I have to say is THANK GOD FOR ADHD. Lack of an ability to focus on anything for extended periods of time probably saved some kids' lives that night. After a few minutes of the Kazoo Symphony, the kids moved onto new activities. Mainly, running up and down the steps to the top deck and finding out what happens when you spit into the wind. I got the distinct impression that many of the boys had outgrown their brains.
Take note: this is the future of America. And it has a kazoo.
# posted by Amanda at 4:06 PM |
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Thursday, June 03, 2004
Some of you may have noticed that the site was down earlier this morning. In an attempt to bring you the fresh new cicada-themed masthead (ha ha, "brooding"! well, it sounded funny last night around midnight), I accidentally blew away my blog template. And promptly realized that I didn't have a current copy of the code saved anywhere. And panicked and had another cup of coffee, as if more caffeine would stoke the fires of genius clearly burning within.
Anywho, everything has been more or less restored. For those of you who noted that previous graphics have appeared a bit jagged, that l'il problem should be fixed now. Incidentally, the new masthead was created with The Gimp, which is a free downloadable graphics authoring/editing program. No cicadas were physically harmed in the making of the masthead, although a few were verbally abused.
We're about halfway through the cicada invasion 'round these parts. They're fairly loud in the woods surrounding my office and sound like a cross between "Mars Attacks" and a squadron of beavers who chased a line of coke with 2 liters of Mountain Dew. We went to a party in Columbia, Maryland this past Monday and the cicada situation there resembled a scene from "Dawn of the Dead".
Oddly enough, we have not seen a single cicada at home in Southern Maryland. Not a one. We have all manner of bizarre wildlife in our area and I find it inconceivable that we don't have cicadas. This leads me to the logical conclusion that our cicadas - like the residents of our fine county - are a bit "slow". No doubt they will emerge from our woods in confused and frenzied swarms long after the rest of Maryland has shoveled up their cicada shells and carcasses and resumed normal outdoor activities.
# posted by Amanda at 10:45 AM |
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Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Feed the Beast
As part of our ongoing effort to actually make use of the nearly four acres that surround our house, we (meaning Sean and his dad) recently created a raised garden bed area in a 12'x36' corner of the fenced portion of the backyard. Over the weekend, we (meaning Sean and me) put PLANTS in it, with enough space remaining to add more as the greenthumb whim strikes. In fact, it's completely possible that all live flowers and vegetables purchased over the course of the summer will actually make it out of their nursery pots and into the garden this year instead of slowly baking to a crisp on the driveway. Shocking, I know!
As proof of the stunningly beautiful flora that now festoons the grounds of Cheezleton Manor, I offer you these mediocre photos:
# posted by Amanda at 10:46 AM |
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If you've been wondering where I've been for the past week, the partial answer is: Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. In retrospect, it seems a bit odd that we chose to drive 120 miles (which took over FOUR FREAKIN' HOURS because we were traveling with an angry toddler and we like to make wrong turns) to vacation at a beach when we live less than three miles from a beach. The difference is that, unlike our beach, Rehoboth has tons of restaurants and outlet malls and considerably fewer rednecks.
Rehoboth's vacation population is probably 75% hetero and 25% gay, which means that you either get used to seeing same sex couples within five seconds of entering the town or you choose another beach. Interestingly, when Sean and I first started going there about five years ago, there seemed to be many more male couples than female couples. Last week, it was like a scene outta The L Word. Ordinarily that might sound pretty hot, except that the ongoing nationwide baby boom extends to the lesbian population and pretty much every woman - straight, not or unknown - of childbearing age or adopting means was pushing a baby stroller on Rehoboth's boardwalk last week. Bumper to bumper babies, folks. And nary a Key West-style party in sight!
# posted by Amanda at 6:42 AM |
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