I finally got a reasonable payment plan set up with Discover card recently, their collection agency leaves quite a bit to be desired. I mean, here I was willing to make payments and would have started over a month ago, and I had fools trying to get me to agree to outrageous down payments for a smaller monthly payment that was still out of my reach, or humongous large payments knowing full well I could never make them and would default ASAP. Then I was instructed to send in information that would qualify me for their “limited means” program so I would be allowed smaller payments. They conveniently never received the stuff no matter how many times it was faxed successfully from home, work, and Kinkos. This was all thanks to two different people handling my account. Meanwhile they kept telling me that I didn’t have to file a response to court after they had me served. Good thing I didn’t listen, because if I hadn’t, they would have had the right to garnish wages or other unpleasent things right off the bat.

Then one day, when both the a-holes were out I got to speak with one person who was like “this is ridiculous, we could have gotten this settled long ago” and got me set up on a payment plan that I can make.

I’m almost debt free!

Still though, even if I can make the payments, until I get the other credit card paid off (4 more payments to go there!) things will be tight. I’d really like to move up to a full time position at work, but the only FT spots that have opened up are at the T or C branch. Not to mention their for positions I sincerely doubt I’d get. Even looking in the classifieds for a FT spot, or at least another PT job that I swing with my hours has yielded little results. Lots of spots for things like construction workers, CDL drivers, live-in nurses, or Dental Jobs – things that require training or degrees that I don’t have. Bah! I guess I could always apply at Sitel….but after working at DialAmerica and putting up with their shit, I’m not really inclined to give a telemarketing job another shot.

This has not been a relaxing, let’s sit down and smoke some cigars and sip brandy (or what have you) kind of weekend for my mother. Her purse was stolen Saturday and it’s been a real headache to find out what was in her purse, contacting everyone that needs to be contacted and informed, and just generally worrying over it.

We were really hoping that, despite what she knew to be true, she had just gone off and left it at work. However, after signing into her accounts online, we discovered that whoever had stolen her purse had already made some purchases using her cards.

A police report has been filed, all of her debit and credit cards have been canceled, and any people that needed to be informed (such as the client who had just paid her and whose uncashed check was still in said purse) as well.

It’s not been fun, and on Monday, my mother’s birthday no less, she has to go to her individual banks and get things squared away. The bastards made a bunch of fraudulent purchases with her debit cards already before they got cancelled, and it looks like they tried to make some more afterwards too. Hopefully those shitheads get what’s coming to them.

Well, I do believe it’s safe to say that there will be no frivolous purchases for me in the near future. Not like I was planning anything so audacious as purchasing a rim tablet or something, but the simple truth is that my future finances are complete and utter mystery.

But how can this be, when I’ve been working so hard to get all my credit cards paid off and repairing my credit? I’ve paid off Bank of America and I’m one payment away from finishing Capital One, shouldn’t I be happy? Should my financial future be, if not secure yet, at least looking up?

Well, as fate would have it, the answer is no. Let me tell you how my week turned out and you’ll see what I mean.

So first off, Pyro is acting up again and is in serious need of repairs. And the truth of it is that I don’t even know what is wrong with the car anymore. There’s a short somewhere that causes the car to register a door(s) as ajar. Now, unfortunately, when a door is ajar the dome light in a Dodge Neon pops on and stays on for a long time before turning off, or until the door in question is closed properly. All of the doors can be closed properly, but Pyro still registers one of them as ajar. Why not just turn off the dome light, you ask? Because you can’t. I don’t know if the newer Neons are different, but the older ones (like mine) don’t have a switch on the dome light. You know the one where you can have the light turn on when a door opens, or set it to not turn on at all? Yeah, that’s not there at all. So if a door opens (or is ajar) the dome light will always come on.

I’ve had this problem before with Pyro, but it got fixed. Now it’s happening again. Turn the car off, get out, shut the door right, it’ll still read as “ajar” and the dome light will stay on a good ten-plus minutes before just turning off eventually. Real pain in the ass. It also pops on and off while I’m driving at random too. Not cool at night since you can get a ticket for driving with your dome light on. Not to mention the fact that the extra time it stays on has to wear on the battery. And eventually, as the problem progresses, it just may never turn off completely. That’s been going on for about a week now, and I had planned to get it fixed here soon. But, I covered the entirety of the Verizon bill that my Mom and I split because, because we have a plan together, since she’s been having a hard time getting clients to pay right now. There were overage fees (she went over the minutes, not me!) so the bill was more expensive. Completely blew my budget out of wack. Plus I had just gotten two tires replaced that badly needed it. So I’m broke right now and most of my next paycheck is going to go to the final Capital One payment.

And since we had a holiday (Labor Day) and I was out sick on one day, that’s two days of pay I lost to boot. Meaning my next paycheck is going to be a bit on the short side. Just gets better and better, right?

Then on Friday my car wouldn’t start in the morning, my Mom had to come and give Pyro a jump. I drove to work just fine, and surprise surprise, the short seemed to have sorted itself out as well. Then, after I got out of work on Friday I went to my car to discover it wouldn’t start again. I thought maybe the battery didn’t hold the charge after all and I needed a new one. Because of where my battery is placed under the hood, and where my Mom’s is, we had a hard time trying to hook Pyro up for a jump the second time. I was trying to put the car in neutral so that we could push it out of the parking space for better access, when I managed to hit ignition just right and Pyro roared to life.

Ended up driving home just fine, and on Saturday morning when I tried to start Pyro again to go to work he wouldn’t start. I messed around a bit trying to repeat what I did on Friday and he started just fine. I went to work, stopped off to buy a breakfast burrito, then went and donated plasma before coming home. And each time Pyro started just fine – so long as I repeated the little trick. Is it my starter, the ignition, safety switch, or something else that isn’t working now? I have no fucking clue. And let’s not forget the other stuff that is wrong with Pyro either.

Despite not having the money for it at all, I may just have to try and buy a new car. Even if it means taking out a loan. But wait, that might not be a good idea either because Saturday I received a summons – I’ve been served.

Discover apparently handed my account over to a collection agency and they served me. Now here’s the real kicker, the papers I was handed on Saturday don’t say when there is a hearing or when I need to make an appearance either. It does mention that there is a “form attached” that I need to respond to. But there is no form. And the paperwork is all dated back in August to boot. August 12th and the 24th to be exact. I was given this on the 17th of September. Very timely isn’t it? Oh, but it gets better. I just got a letter in the mail the other day (Wednesday I believe) from said collection agency offering a settlement deal and according to their letter I have until September 28th to respond. The letter states it was sent out on the 2nd of September too, by the way. That means that after they had already set the court proceedings in motion they were offered me this settlement. Now that, that right there is completely and utterly despicable.

So on Monday I’m going to the court house after I get out of work to try and get some answers and figure out what my next step should be. Do I even bother with this settlement offer if I’m already being taken to court?

My car seriously has the worst timing ever. It never fails, money is tight (or non-existent), that’s when Pyro (yes, my car is named Pyro) decides he needs something fixed, replaced, or what have you. And unfortunately this still holds true.

Now, I’ve rounded up all the jewelery I don’t care for or just don’t wear and I’ve been meaning to sell it. None of it is high-quality everlon stuff mind you, but a lot of it is fairly decent. There’s a lot of yellow gold in the box of jewelry to sell, which I can’t wear because I get those green marks right away. Now, even though I’ve been planning on selling the stuff, I’ve never really gotten around to it. I want to take it to one of the jewelry stores around town that is buying stuff rather than just any old “we buy gold” shop, as I figure I’d get a better deal that way. Now, with Pyro on the fritz, it looks like I’m gonna have to stop dallying around and just do it.

And I need to hurry up and sell my bassoon too, come to think of it.

So, what is wrong with Pyro you ask? Probably the transmission. Yeah, I know, in the long run it’ll probably be better to just finally get a new car rather then try and fix it, but I really don’t have the cash to buy a new car and I don’t want another car loan to pay, especially since I’m not really sure how stable my job is, given the people I work with. So I need get a least some minor repairs done on Pyro to keep him running for a bit longer.

It’s just, I’m only two payments away from being done paying off Capital One and these payments aren’t small – almost $400 a month. I’m on a plan too, so if I default on a payment now I’ll screw it all up. I cannot miss a payment. Naturally Pyrod decides to take a turn for the worse at this juncture.

For a while now Pyro’s been acting up, if I’m going under 40mph my car makes this sound that is a combination of a rev and someone trying to speed up without changing the necessary gears. And Pyro is an automatic. Over 40mphs you don’t hear that at all, under 40 we have the problem. Sometimes I downgrade just to get it to stop, especially when I’m in the city or in a place with a lot of traffic. It’s just easier on the car to downgrade to 2nd if I gotta go 35mph or under.

There’s also times, when I’m going slow and come to a stop at a stoplight/stop sign that the car will sputter and die. It’ll restart just fine, but still. Thankfully that doesn’t happen too often.

I’ve been hoping to get my mechanic to take a look at it for a while now, but things keep coming up and it keeps getting put off. Now, today, after I’d noticed that Pyro really is having a hard time decelerating (no, not accelerating, decelerating) the “check engine” light came on and is staying on for good.

That is so not a good sign.

Pyro, why do you do this to me? I hope, sincerely hope, Pyro can last a bit longer. Most of my pay from my next payday will go to making the second to last Capital One payment. Whatever is left has to be spread out for groceries, gas, cellphone, and hosting expenses. Yes, unfortunately my hosting plan has to be renewed right after I make the big-ass payment to Capital One. Joy.

I honestly don’t know how I’m gonna get Pyro fixed at all. Unless I sell stuff. (Anybody wanna buy a bassoon? How about some doujinshi?) Even then, more than likely my car will need to stay in the shop for a few days for them to diagnose just what the problem is and work out a solution I can afford. Considering I work six days a week, well I’m not sure how that’s gonna work out at all. =(

Well, I had been curious as to where can I find cheap laptop batteries here in town, as my mother’s laptop apparently needs one (or she was worried it needed one?) but that’s the least of her concerns right now.

I helped my Mom get her office packed up and moved out. I don’t really wanna go into all of the details, but needless to say the owners of the business where she had a small office space to work out for her bookkeeping business decided they wanted her out. It was all pretty bogus stuff, and the sorry thing of it was that for all the work they had her doing for them (she did their books and taxes in exchange for the office space) they treated her very shitty, pretty much because she wasn’t a Jehovah Witness like them. Her office was tiny, they had a very nasty habit of turning off the heat in the winter and the air conditioning in the summer, never mind that the heating and cooling didn’t really reach her office to begin, which always made it worse. They even started trying to force her to change her office hours to theirs, and wanted her to give them a list of her clients for their approval. Pretty much, it came down to the fact that they wanted to control her business and when she wasn’t having that, well, they tried to force the issue.

The excuse they gave when they told her to pack her stuff up and be out by the weekend? She was running up the electricity bill by always having the air conditioning on. Uh, huh. I’m so sure. I mean, I can totally see that….what with them always turning it off in triple-digit weather because they’re leaving/it’s cool in their offices/or whatever else excuse they used.

Frankly, I think she’s better off without them.

But now she’s stressing out over the lack of a place for her office. She’s got a temporary set up in another office, but in the same building, for now. Just so she can at lease get the necessities for her clients taken care of. But she’s gonna need her own office and pronto. We’re busy looking for a good office space for her now.

While I was helping her move out, one of said A-holes showed up and had to stay there watching everything while making snippy comments about how they were wasting their Sunday there. Pfft! Like we asked them to watch over us like we were a bunch of common criminals! Seriously, did they think she was going to steal something? Nah, that’s actually up their alley. Sadly.

Poor Mom, I’ve had to help her pack up her stuff a couple of times now. Never gets easier. First when she left her old job, then when she began working with the A-holes at their previous location, and again when they moved to this location.

When we find a new place for her, I hope it can be the last time to help her set up her stuff for a while. I’m not sure she can really take these setbacks much more. The economy has hurt her business enough as it is, the move actually cost her a lot of clients due to the new location being too out of their way too.

We’ve had a very, very dry year this year. The only reasons fireworks were not banned completely in the state of New Mexico is because the governor doesn’t have the authority to issue the ban. Parts of New Mexico were burning, Arizona was burning, Texas was burning – all leading up to the 4th. Certain fireworks were banned, did that stop idiot people? No, not at all.

The 4th of July is over, are they finished shooting off fireworks? No, they’re not.

Two nights in a row I’ve turned on the news firefighters out there with a hydraulic hose spraying down brush where some jerkoffs decided to set off fireworks.

Seriously, common sense folks! Why would you set off fireworks (or do anything that can cause a spark) surrounded by highly flammable brush and weeds in a desert during a severe drought? Let alone right next to houses! Unbelievable.

The 4th of July is over people. Bad enough there were people insistent on popping fireworks in these conditions, doubly so the fools that were setting off the banned ones (which were banned for a reason), we don’t need to put up with this crap after the holiday has passed as well. There are enough hazards out there that can start a blaze that will spread out of control quickly as it, please stop adding to the risk with your stupidity!

It’s a proven fact, Mondays just plain suck. Certainly one can have decent or even good Mondays, but for the most part they just suck. Mondays herald the end of the weekend and the return to drudgery. I sometimes think I get an obscene amount of horrendous Mondays, but I could be biased.

Let me tell you how my Monday went and you can be the judge of how bad it was.

To start, since the elementary school near the interstate is a year round school, the school zone lights are still going in the mornings and afternoons. I don’t think the school is completely year-round though, as they only use two school buses now instead of the fleet and the faculty parking lot isn’t nearly as full. So maybe a summer school of sorts? Whatever the case, morning traffic is still slowed down. I was supposed to leave the house at 7am – plenty of time to get to town on time I thought. Well, I set my alarm earlier so that I could get up and get ready on time, but then ended up snoozing for a bit and had to rush around like crazy to get ready for work in under forty minutes. No breakfast, and somehow I forgot to put deodorant on as well. I didn’t realize about the deodorant until I was about ten minutes outside of ‘Cruces. Too late to do jack about it. Damn good thing the air conditioner is on so high at work I can wear sweaters and still be fine. Never the less, I was paranoid everyone could tell and sprayed some extra body spray on when I got to work.

On the way to work I went the interstate instead of the frontage road, which is my usual route. I did this because I thought it would cut more time off my commute. I was right, but damn did I get the crap scared out of me. There is a Las Cruces City police officer who lives out somewhere around Chamberino, NM and the outskirts of La Mesa, NM. These are villages (not towns due to lack of population) that are over twenty miles away from Las Cruces. In short, he is waaay out of his jurisdiction. Yet this officer, who drives his unit home every day (lets not even go into the tax payer dollars going into the upkeep and gas of his unit) thinks he’s god and likes to bully people on his way to and from work. I hate him and he’s just another prime example of why the LCPD deserves no respect what-so-ever.

On the way into ‘Cruces this bastard decides to start scaring people by riding on their bumpers and turning his sirens on and off, then switching lanes, brake-checking the people he just cut in front of, then doing it again. Of course no one dared to pass him, so you have about eight cars in three lanes going 65mph in a pack and eyeballing the loon that’s messing with them. This is, sadly, not unusual at all and I’ve seen him do stuff like this many a time. All of a sudden he swerved from the middle lane into the far-left lane in front of the car in front of me, no signal lights of course, and flips his lights and sirens on. He almost clipped the car in front of me and they came to such a hardstop that I almost rear-ended them! It was insane, and all that just to pull over the truck in front of us. Who, by the way, was going the speed limit and everything. No idea why he pulled them over, but he did.

I was hoping that would be the worst thing to happen to me today, but alas, wishful thinking. Since I was fairly certain that the guy in the pickup truck didn’t break the law and was just that Pig’s victim of the day, I happily put the pedal to the metal after I got out of radar range and put some much needed distance between me and the Pig. The guy pulled him over outside of Las Cruces city limits so he couldn’t issue a citation of any kind. Thus, I did not want to be anywhere nearby when the Pig got back on the road, lest I be victim number two.

Despite all this, I managed to get to work a little early. Instead of getting a “Good morning, how are you?” or even a “Thanks for coming in, I appreciate it” or something from my boss I got a “You’re too early, don’t clock in yet”. Well fuck you too. Guess that’s what I get for being nice and opening when it’s nothing but a hardship for me. Now, as I mentioned, they were installing the new printers and system on the drive thru computers today. Every time they hooked up a new printer last week, the two stations connected to it always experienced glitches. You’d think after doing this all of last week (and when they set ‘em up at the other branches too since we were the last) they’d have it down to an art by now. All possible glitches expected and the method for dealing with them known, right? Apparently not. One computer was set up, it had some sort of glitch and the girl I was opening with got locked out of the system – completely unable to do transactions now. Naturally it got busy at this point and I was handling the drive thru all by myself up until a little after the lobby itself opened. And since the tech guy was working on the one computer that experienced the glitch, he hadn’t finished setting up mine.

So I had to set up my drawer and handle transactions at one of the computers in the teller-line for the lobby. Back and forth I go from drive thru to my station handling the transactions all by myself. My supervisor, or one of the assistant supervisors, could have gotten on a station as well and helped out since I was literally by myself with my co-worker locked out completely. Did they? No. Instead I got snide comments about how I needed to pick up the pace. When everyone else started arriving and getting set up, did anyone offer to help? No. They saw me there with four drive-thru canisters lined up and instead they talked about their weekend, upcoming events, their morning, but no one helped. And if the drive thru gets busy and the teller line isn’t, those on the teller line are supposed to help. Considering they had opened their drawers, but the doors weren’t scheduled to open for another ten minutes, they could have helped. But no.

Then of course, after the first computer gets fixed and the tech guy sets up mine, it has the same problem as the first one and they gotta fix it. Except, I didn’t get locked out of the system so I was still handling drive thru transactions from another station. Where’s my break from this mess?

And to top off my craptacular day, I got written up.

Yup, I got a written reprimand for something I supposedly did over a month ago.

The real shits of it is that it’s not really my fault. Member’s accounts will have memos or flags on them that let the workers know if there is something going on with the account. For example, the member filed chapter 7 bankruptcy, their account is in collections, their wages are garnished, they have a password they want verified before any transactions are handled, or some other department wants to be notified prior to a transaction. You get the picture. Well, in those cases we need someone’s approval to process the transaction and the Member Service Reps. are notorious for sending the member to the teller line and telling the member to inform us that “So-and-so said it was okay/go head”. I’ve never really liked that they do that because a member can lie, and if we leave to go and double-check they get offended and half the time the MSR’s get onto us for doing that. I’ve always thought it was trouble waiting to happen.

Sometimes, I hate it when I’m right.

I actually remember the member, since his name is an odd one that stands out, and I remember the transaction in question. He had come from one of the MSR’s offices, and I saw him with them. He gave me everything that needed to be done and said he had So-And-So’s approval, so I did the transaction. Now, over a month later, I get written up for it. The hell?

Sure, I probably should have double-checked, but since we get talked down to for doing that, especially if the member gets upset or we’re busy and if I recall, we were busy, I was in a no-win situation there. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.

So I got lectured about always reading the memos, getting the proper authorization, and so on. And, on my write up, it says that my next offense could lead to termination. GAH! Seriously?!

So, that was my Monday. How was yours?

Now, before I forget, I need to schedule Denali’s appointment at the vet’s and I need to check out the prices for samsung phone batteries since my phone’s battery doesn’t seem to hard its charge for long at all anymore. Hopefully I can get a new battery with my next paycheck, but I’m not holding my breath. Denali’s veterinary care has to take priority this time. She needs her rabies and feline leukemia vaccinations and I’ve put them off for too long as it is.

So, you may have noticed that Nanashi-Inc and Kitty-Kitty.net have been done for a few weeks now?

Yeah, I am so sorry to have just seemingly up and left without any word about it. Initially I took the blogs down to fix a database error that was occurring in both of them. This was around the holidays and since I had family staying with me, I really didn’t get much of a chance to work on the blogs. I would have much preferred to loose myself online for hours than face my relatives (seriously, no need for appetite suppressants with them around! Mean? Yes. True? Definitely.) but I found it hard to work with brats underfoot and nosy relatives looking over my shoulder. Plus I was still “training” so I was working all day then coming home to unwanted guests who stayed until after New Years.

Needless to say, I never got to fix the blogs.

Then, to compound it, the telephone company here (Qwest) began experiencing problems left and right. And, as you may recall, I have dial-up. There was one week where I was pretty much without phone service, and even a few days here and there where pretty much whole counties in NM lost phone service due to other unrelated problems. They’ve been doing a lot of road work around here, so I think the reason this area was experiencing spotty service on and off for about a week was lines being accidentally cut, maybe even turned off, because of the crews.

But the end result was the same. Family was here, no time to blog or fix the blogs. Family gone, shitty service, still no chance to get anything done. Then, finally, I got the time and no spotty service was interfering. I just severely underestimated how time consuming uploading backups would be on a slow connection.

As to the problem that resulted in the blogs coming down? Honestly I don’t understand it. Everything seemed to be fine, but then I noticed that even though I was writing posts just fine, when I “published” them the page was blank or had a lot of funny characters and symbols in place of the actual body. BUT! If I signed in to the backend and edited a post the content was all there. Granted there would be some funny symbols in there too, but it was intact. This was happening on the databases for Kitty-Kitty and N-I. I tried repairing the database, but nothing seemed to work. Thankfully I had backups of the db so I copied down the posts that were messing up and took the blogs down so that I could upload the backup copies of the database.

Yeah, I hit a snag though. N-I is old and thus has a big db. Do you know how long it took to upload on a dial-up connection? Especially one that was sometimes up and fine then suddenly gone because the phone lines were down…again.

Then of course comes the fact that I work in the days so by the time I got home I didn’t really feel like fooling around with aggravating things. So I ended up waiting until my training was over (no longer working full time five days a week then…just part time six days a week Doh!), family was gone, and the phone lines were reliable once again.

But the blogs are back up now thankfully! Over the next week all of the posts that got screwed up will be brought back online as I re-type them. Also, posts that I (and Denali!) made during the down time and saved in a word document will be posted as well.

Heh, so expect some jumping and jiving to be going on on your feeds!

To be upset about being pretty much forced to “donate” $5 to some charity that I don’t even know of? It’s pretty safe to say that my money will not be put to buying Suunto watches for someone’s Christmas gift, but it still pisses me off that I had to contribute $5 for some charity.

Clearly it’s not a donation anymore if it’s mandatory.

I suppose an explanation is in order though, right? Well, at the bank that I work at, we’re supposedly very “community oriented” and for Christmas the bank in partnership with someone else was putting together food baskets so that needy families would be able to have a Christmas dinner.

Sounds kinda nice right? Well I agree, it is. All except for the fact that us tellers were told on WEDNESDAY that we had to contribute a MANDATORY $5 each and our five dollars was due by today. I complied and gave my $5, but it still upsets me. I mean hey, until recently I was unemployed and barely getting by (and technically not even succeeding at that) and the paycheck we get isn’t that great. It’s the freakin’ holiday season, folks are buying gifts and giving to whatever charities they normally contribute. Our payday was last week as well. Most of the tellers have confessed to having nothing left of their paycheck due to bills and gifts and you tell us that we have to contribute money or else?!

When I give money to charities I like to give it to causes I believe in and to organizations and groups that will put it to good use and not pad the pockets of board members. Who chooses these so-called “needy” families that these food baskets are for? What criterion determines their need? Are they really in need or just a little stripped for cash? I don’t know. My money just got taken to be given to faceless entities.

Sure, it’s only $5 dollars, and in theory, it’s for a good cause. It just burns me up that we told we had to “donate a mandatory $5 by Thursday” with an implied or else. Donating and gifts come from the heart, and let’s be honest, ya’all aren’t paying your tellers that much that we can just throw away our money on a whim. I was so very tempted to ask “And what if we don’t want to contribute $5?” but I kept my peace. I did just start the job after all, it would suck to get fired in less then a month on it.

And the real kicker, we’re having some sort of potluck tomorrow and we all had to sign up to bring something. I don’t have much food in the fridge right now, sans what’s for Christmas and there is nothing I could take to for a party. So I’m stopping at the grocery store tomorrow to pick up some sort of platter from the deli. Ooh look, more spending.

Fuck but these people like to eat my paycheck! Next payday can’t come fast enough. It’s just a damn good thing my Christmas shopping was pretty much done by the beginning of November. Otherwise I’d have been screwed.

I’m up here at the 24-hr laundromat-slash-computer lab trying to get some stuff accomplished online while my laundry is washing. My eyebrow has begun to develop a bit of tic however after listening to these to moronic bimbos yak and yak for two hours straight.

And get this, they’re taking an online exam for one of their classes and it is, to quote them, “like, omfg so long and none of this is my notes! Ugh, I hate this class – hey did I tell you what that ***** of a roommate did today?”. Seriously.

Hmm, maybe if, I dunno, they actually shut their pie-holes and stopped gossiping about the poor unfortunate girl saddled with one of them as a roommate and did their exam they’d be finished. Statistics was an annoying class, yes, but there is no way a thirty question UNTIMED ONLINE EXAM should take over two hours to finish when there are two people working on it together with their notes and books before them. Unless of course they’re the sort of folks who jibber jabber about everything under the sun instead of paying attention in class and doing the reading, then I suppose it would be hard to complete the exam.

It was sort of amusing to hear them reading passages from their text aloud to each other that pretty much told them the answer and they would then proclaim something else entirely as the answer and were shocked it showed up as wrong.

And imagine, their conversation was so loud I could hear it perfectly over two televisions broadcasting two different games, washing machines, and dryers while sitting on the other side of the laundromat. One of the girls was apparantly on a diet and was fretting over the carbs in a muffin she ate earlier. I had to listen to them compare diet pills, gossip and pretty slander one girl’s roommate, and listen to them start screaming when they saw a cockroach. They then had a single worksheet (one page) to work through before they could go to Village Inn to “finish studying”. It took them another two hours practically to do one worksheet worth of problems. And the whole time I found out more information about the both of them then I ever wanted to know. STDs, dating problems, your boyfriend’s performance issues, bra size, bodily functions – none of that should be discussed in a public forum at a volume loud enough that people can hear you over their own earphones, two tv’s, washers and dryers, and the general ruckus that families make. A couple of guys in the laundromat even bolted after a while with looks of abject horror on their faces.

Do people have no shame?

The polls opened at 7am today and close at 7pm – plenty of time for everybody to get down to their polling place and cast their vote!

Did you vote today? I did!

See? Been there, done that, got the…..sticker!

Haha, I’ve actually moved the sticker from my hoodie to my hat since I doubt I’ll be wearing the hoodie later when I go up to ‘Cruces and the hat, for sure, I’ll be wearing.

Getting ready to head out to a small Halloween party to benefit the local animal shelter in a few minutes. I finally got my outfit (I’m a pirate, argh!) to look how I wanted it. The hair though, that was a royal pain in the butt. I’d never tried wearing a properly-styled topknot before, and oh my gosh, getting it to sit on the top of my head just so is a hell of a lot harder then the movies and television make it appear to be.

It’s good idea I nixed the idea of wearing my medieval sorceress’ robes with my gold and black mask like I had first intended to. Not only was the mask covered in dust (and a chore to clean thoroughly because of the glitter) but Denali took a shine to it as well.

By the time Denali stopped trying to wear it (and attack it) it had lost a fair amount of its glitter.

It will be weird taking Denali with me to the party this year. I’ve attended the shindig before in the years past, but Isis was the one who always accompanied me to those parties. Isis loved being dressed in elaborate outfits, being fussed over, and she didn’t mind walking on a leash. In short, the little event was something Isis enjoyed greatly. I was half-tempted to go by myself or not at all this year…but somehow that seemed like an insult-slash-snub to Denali. Whose to say she won’t enjoying going for once, right?

I won’t be there long today, maybe a couple of hours max, before I return home as I was invited to a Halloween Block Party of sorts, and even though some of my neighbors I’d really rather not interact with, well, I can’t just snub everyone else. KWIM? I guess today will be a bit of a trial-run for Denali. I’ll see how she handles the crowds of strangers and other animals before committing to attending the Harvest Howl in November for the Action Programs for Animals. We’ll have to see how today goes before Denali can start accepting any Christmas party invitations.

So, I’m off for some socializing, and since the elections are next week, I suspect I will be forced to suffer a great many conversations on the parties and their candidates who are running as well. Because, sadly, it’s all people want to talk about. Joy. Normally I don’t mind sharing my opinion, but with the way some of the campaigns have gotten downright dirty and slanderous…well, I’m not looking forward to talking politics with anyone around here.

Hope everyone has a wonderful (and safe!) Halloween this year. May yours be more interesting and exciting then mine.

Today was the first time I had to report for jury duty today. Reported to the courtroom at 8:15am like I was supposed to and had to wait through two hours of questions and (strangely enough) a great deal of posturing by the defense attorney. And while it was windy outside, there was no excuse for that woman’s hair. She did some funny thing to her hair that teased up a ball of it on the back of her head going in one direction while the rest went in another. I really just wanted to take a brush to her hair and fix it. And I’m not even a fashion-conscious sort of person, that should tell you just how odd it was.

Yes, I was that bored. Anyway, two hours later I’m sent on my way as one of many not selected. Thanks for the wasted morning and gas.

In an attempt to make sure that the trip, no matter the result, wouldn’t be a complete waste, I had brought a check that needed to be deposited and a jar of pennies that I wanted to cash in at the coin machine at my bank. So after I got out of the court house I headed over to my bank. Everything seemed to be just fine with the bank, I went in and used the coin machine and got my slip showing how much was deposited then waited in line at a teller to get that coin slip and my check deposited.

Only to be told that their computer system was down so deposits would be posted when the system came back up (and no they had no idea when that would be) and that I’d be given a hand receipt for my transaction.

Now this pissed me off. Why? Because when I walked into the back there was do damn sign posted on the door stating this, as there should have been. Because had I known I would have just continued on my way home. Now I’ve deposited my coins into the coin machine and the damn slip of paper can only be redeemed at that specific bank location and must be redeemed that day. Had I known their system was down I wouldn’t have touched anything and would have just waited another day. So I went ahead and deposited the stuff and I’m now checking online every ten minutes to see when it posts. So far nothing.

Some good news though. I came home to find a letter from the Third Judicial District Court waiting for me. First response? “Oh no, what now”. I thought I had called in on the days I needed to and not missed an assignment, so surely this can’t be a warning, right? Well it wasn’t, it was a small check. Shocked me silly. I’m guessing it’s to pay me for showing up for the juror orientation that I had to report for back in the beginning of September. Certainly took them long enough to get that mailed out!

Turned on the television so that I could watch the news a moment ago, but instead I was bombarded with commercials for local lawyers (I swear DUI lawyers have to be the lowest of the low, especially when they’re promising to get you off scott-free) and even a medical assistant school. Somehow this reminded me to go and check my calendar for jury duty and I realized I needed to call in to the number provided to see if I serve tomorrow.

So I dial in and it says that juror members 3 through 65 need to report at 8:30 in the morning. I sigh in relief for a moment only to choke up as the recorded message goes on to say that juror members 66 through 123 need to report at 8:15 in the morning. Well damn, that would be me. This bites because I live out in the boonies here and have to do a nice long commute during morning traffic to be there bright and early. This is actually the first time I’ll be reporting since my term started in October. All the other times I’ve called in my number wasn’t in the range of those selected or there were no jury assignments period.

Since, you know, I have to do a nice 30+ mile commute to the courthouse I’m hoping I get picked to actually make it worth my time. It would suck if I go there, wait around for the selection process and then not get picked. Because, as you may have guessed, if you don’t get picked you don’t get paid.

So, first day of jury duty tomorrow….maybe.

Just got off the phone with a potential employer! I’ve got an interview all lined up for Tuesday of this coming week, so here’s hoping to a steady job.

I know that the official “word” is that the recession has ended, but you couldn’t prove it by looking at the local classifieds around here! There seem to be a lot of ads looking for people in construction, trucking, and some highly specialized management jobs (we’re talking 8+ years experience already in the profession, degrees in specific backgrounds, letters of recommendation, and the kitchen sink). It’s kinda crazy.

As for easy retail jobs? Seems employers prefer hiring the high school and college kids for that. I’m not sure why, considering the turnover rate is probably high, but whatever.

*sigh* I really wish I was more fluent in Spanish. I got turned down for two different openings in my chosen field because they really wanted someone bilingual in Spanish and my Spanish is mediocre at best. Slang? Oh I speak that just fine. But speaking, writing, and reading in Spanish (especially when it’s filled with technical and legal jargon) I so cannot do.

I suck.

Ugh, really wish I could go crawl away and hide under a rock for a while and forget about all upcoming obligations and bills.

October has become the month I love to hate now; which is sad because I have always loved October. What with all the candy, horror movies, changing weather, and Halloween – what’s not to love? But alas with the onset of October comes a great deal of hassles that just all pile up at once. Bleh. What kind of hassles am I talking about? Well, let’s see:

1. domain renewal for kitty-kitty.net
2. domain renewal for nanashi-inc.net
3. car insurance is due ($260)
4. just paid the hosting for my site
5. tags for the car

All of this is on top of the regular expenses I have to take care on a limited income. And let’s not even get started on all the home-improvement projects I got lined up.

And did I mention that I just started jury duty? Yeah, it might not be so bad if I didn’t have to travel all the way to Las Cruces, wait around for a few hours, then be sent home because I wasn’t picked. Wasted gas, wasted time, and money lost to boot. Ugh.

If it’s my day to report at least pick me damnit!

Honestly, it’s enough to make me wanna run away somewhere for a vacation and just hide. (Those Branson vacation packages I’ve been seeing look very good right now!) Except, of course, for the fact that they cost money, money I don’t have.