Dumbest Conversation

I had the following conversation over the phone today:
Ring, Ring, Ring

"Hello." (Other chic)
"Hello, may I speak with Rita please."
(me)
"This is Sara."
(okay maybe Rita and Sara sound alike, they both end in "a")
"Can I speak with Rita?"
"This is Sara."
"Will Rita be in today?"
"No, this is Sara."
"I'll call back tomorrow, bye."

Duh, do you think the girl's name is Sara? I still can't believe this conversation ever even happened. I could make this shit up if I tried.

It's not easy being green

My husband has this strange obsession with grass...and I don't mean the kind you can smoke. He is out in our yard everyday trying to make that thing greener, and healthier. It borders on the ridiculous. By the end of the summer we are going to have the best looking lawn in all of Ottawa County!...or at least Waukazoo Woods.

But his obsession is a bit annoying. Instead of doing things with me, he's out in the yard. Damn yard. Watering, mowing, fertilizing....the funny part is, we hardly spend any time other then working on it, in the actual yard.

There for I'll say it again...DAMN YARD!!

Parrots--Gone to the Birds

Holland, Michigan isn't an area that caters to the young and fabulous. It is an extremely conservative, right-wing, religious community that circles around what's best for the family. They have had some pretty stringent rules in Holland such as stores and restaurants not being open on Sundays...even McDonald's. Those rules have relaxed a bit and you are free to eat all the fast food you want now on Sunday. But they still have some stringent rules regarding alcohol...like you can't buy it at all in Ottawa County on Sunday. Sunday's are for church. You also can't just open up a bar. You can't get a liquor license without having so many food to alcohol sales. Therefore most of the bars are restaurants.

There is one "bar" downtown--Parrots. It's been there for a long time. I'm not sure how it managed to get around all the rules and such but it did. Parrots serves mainly the Hope College crowd. Young, conservative, religious college goers that sneak out for a drink against the colleges rules of no alcohol.

Anyways, one night my husband, our friend Ben and I ventured to Parrots for a night out on the town...actually the weather was too nasty for us to drive elsewhere. It was my first time in Parrots and it will be my last time as well. The bar itself was nothing special. Dingy, smokey, with some pool tables and some local rock station; it felt like a drinkin' bar except that there were 4 other people in the bar and one of them was the bar-keep.

We took a seat at the bar on some stools. Ben took the stool closest the wall, my husband the next, which left me on the end with a bunch of stools open to my left.

Halfway through my cheap beer a young man sat down next to me. He proceeded to strick up a conversation (people do this to me frequently, I think because I look approachable). No biggy, I can handle a nice light-hearted conversation. But it went downhill from there. Before long this "boy" launched into something about supporting G.W.Bush in Iraq and recently enlisting because of it. Oh boy. This is not bar conversation! He then went on to tell me that "all Muslims were bad and we should bomb the hell out of them." Can you believe someone said that outloud? This quote has stuck in my head since that day.

I tried to reason with saying that there were "bad people" everywhere, all different colors, ethnicities and religions. That Christian extremists that bomb abortion clinics are bad too. That most Muslims are peaceful people, not war-mongering banshees like he was describing.

This kid didn't see it my way nor did he stop. He used every racial slur in the book. My husband and friend just looked on in amazement as I got more and more pissed off at the kid. They couldn't believe their ears either.

I flew the coop before I even finished my beer.

I still don't understand how someone can have so much hatred for people I'm sure he's had limited contact with. It's not like Holland, Michigan is a hot bed for middle-easterners. But this kid really hated these people.

Hatred seems to run deep with some people. It's like they never learned to love anyone who wasn't the same as them...and there fore everyone not like them is bad. I don't get it and wish it would stop.

Parrots is for the birds. I won't go back there. That experience has tainted how I look at that place forever. It will be forever be associated with the conversation that went wrong.

Back In Harmony

My nice little world is back in harmony since the return of my Shadow. For those of you who don't know, Shadow is one of my two precious kitties. Shadow has kept me company for the past 6 years. I love my kitties. They keep me company and give me cuddles and love when I need it. Yes, I'm a cat person.

Last Friday night Shadow escaped from the house like Houdini. I looked for hours and hours and hours for days upon days. I visited the local vets, the humane society, ran an ad in the local paper, hung signs and talked to more of my neighbors then I had since we moved in a year ago. All in the desperate hopes that they might have seen my cat.

Thursday evening while I'm driving home from work my husband called to tell me Shadow came home. I actually had to ask him if he was joking with me because it had been almost a week with no signs of him. But he wasn't. I rushed home and there he was. He looked a little worn out, hungry and ragged, but he was home. I think he was glad to be home. He hasn't shown any signs of wanting to go back out there.

I'm glad my cuddle-puss is back home and I can go back to my little harmonious life with both my cats under one roof.

Gone

My cat ran away. I'm very sad.

Piss-Off!

Piss-Off!

I'm really pissed off still. Yesterday evening when I was going through some old junk mail, I opened a piece addressed to me from an old credit card I use to use. Apparently I forgot to close the account when the balance was paid off and someone had used the account. This I couldn't figure out. How could someone use this account. I hadn't used it since before I was married...way before I was married and I had cut up the card into tiny little pieces.
Well, there was a charge of $1,300 and a late fee on the statement I received. Of course I was like "What the hell?!!!" With trembling hands I dialed the 1800 number on the statement. After about 8 different menus I finally got some drone who apparently did nothing and had to transfer me to the fraud department. Do they do this so that you get even more upset while you hold for another 10 mintues???!!!! So when I finally got Jessica** on the other line, I was very upset. There was probably steam coming from my ears. Jessica pulled up the account and the CHECKS there were written...yep, checks. Someone had gotten there hands on some of those stupid checks (that I usually shred upon receiveing) and decided to pay their own bills with them on my tab. What kind of person does this?!!! Anyways, Jessica didn't believe me when I said I didn't write them. One was written to another credit card company whom I don't even have an account with and the other was written to some chic Mrs. Steiner. That's probably who stole the money. Probably wrote the check out to herself. Freakin' scam artists. After stating about a bazillion times that I don't have an account and didn't know this person, they finally believed me and were going to close the account and reopen another...and clear the charges off of my account. I told them not to bother giving me a new account. I don't want a freakin' account with their company. My balance was zero, close the damn thing out for me.
To whomever did this too me (and I have a feeling it's whomever is living in apartment 22G now--Mrs. Steiner) "PISS-OFF YOU FREAKIN' DISHONEST, CREDIT CARD STEALIN', LOW LIFE SCUM!"

**Don't remember actual names

A home is a home is a home…not.

Inspired by something MissJackie recently posted about being “home-less” I wanted to share a bit about my home. I love my home. I really do. I haven’t loved or felt at home in any of my prior living establishments (with the exception of my parents home). I was just the tenant. I paid my rent just like all the other people in my complex.

Over the course of ten years I have lived in many different places starting with the dorms back in 1994 at WMU. The dorms where an adventure. I think all college students should experience the dorms. It's truly a test of how you can survive with lots of different people in a extremely confined spaces. From the dorms, I moved into an apartment with some fellow students. I won’t call them friends because I don’t think these two girls wanted any other friends other than themselves. From there, I moved back into the dorms after a summer spent at my parents house. Good ole Zimmerman. This is where I met my good friend Lisa. It is also where I learned how much fun college could be…whether that is a good thing or bad thing, it was fun. I then moved into an apartment with my dorm roommate and a fellow education major for the summer. That was fun. When school resumed in the fall I moved into a house with 4 other girls…big mistake. 5 girls, 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms. Not enough room for all the cattiness. Then it was back home to the parents while I did my student teaching...no money to live by myself then. It was from there that I moved across country with my then boyfriend (now husband) to sunny Cali to live in the smallest most expensive apartment I had ever lived in. Who would have thought that for $1000/month that you could find anything smaller? I could not believe this. From there, we upgraded to renting a house. That was much nicer, but still didn’t feel like home. Then we were forced to move, so we found the biggest apartment that the three of us could reasonably afford. We stayed there for 3 years….me, my now husband, and James (some of you have met James). That was all over about 9 years!!! How many places was that??? I lost count.

Anyways, now my husband and I own a home in Holland, MI. We love our home. It isn’t anything particularly special. It’s a brick ranch. Not much to look at from the outside. Inside we have 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, a dinning room, living room, family room and kitchen spread out over about 1900 sq ft plus an unfinished basement. Not too shabby. But that is not what is so special about this house. It’s the patio. We have a screened in patio that is an additional 333 sq ft. We are currently getting ready to do some work to the patio. Tile specifically. We just bought all the product we should need. Some nice terra cotta colored tile that will compliment the chocolate brown color of the house. We are excited to do our first project. I can't wait until its done...to sit on the patio on a nice Michigan evening, have a glass of my fav wine and read a good book with no bugs landing on you! Ahhhh! What more can I ask for?

A home is more than just the walls where you live and sleep. A home is also the feeling you get when you walk inside. You just know you are home. The structure itself is almost comforting.

I love my home. After a long day, it is comforting to walk in those doors and know that I’m home. I can relax. I can be myself.

Go Pistons!!!

I'm getting ready to watch the Pistons tonight. I'm way excited. Go Pistons!!! We want a repeat!!!

$1,000,000

If I had a $1,000,000 we wouldn't have to walk to the store
If I had a $1,000,000 we'd take a limosine 'cause it costs more
If I had a $1,000,000 we wouldn't have to eat kraft dinner
~~BARENAKED LADIES~~

I was listening to one of my favorite cd's today at work (you probably can figure it out from the above quote) and that song got me thinking: What would I do with a million dollars?

There are always things that I want but many things that I really need right now. I really liked that Coach purse I saw at Marshal Fields, but I definately don't need it. A new car would be nice, but not necessary. The Saturn is to be kickin' just fine. Paying off my student loans seem like it would a good idea.

Would a million dollars be enough to see me through my old age? For some reason, I'm not so sure. With life expectancy increasing, and basically no hope of collecting any of that social security that I've been paying into, would that be enough? (Thanks George W. for spending that surplus in social security that we had when you initially arrived in Washington...but that's another story) What if I'm sickly in my old age? what if housing and gase and all the other expenses keep going up at the pace they have been. Will this be enough?

Being the practical person that I am, I would have to pay off bad debt (the kind you can't write off on your taxes) and invest the rest in something very, very safe. Guess I'll have keep eating my Kraft dinner too.

80 Degrees

It was finally 80 today!!! Yeah!!!! Warm weather. Click on the link of the title to see the weather in my area.

You're Fired

This has been a weird last few days. Yesterday two employees were let go. One by his own choice--he had let on that he was considering other employment; the other one was completely surprised by the whole thing. I know he was unhappy working there, but it never feels good to be let go; you always want to leave on your own terms.

Anyways, I'm completely sympathetic to his situation. I too was "laid-off" at one point in my life. I wasn't happy either. I had watched most of my colleagues leave or get laid-off over about 3 months. We went from a company with 60 employees down to 18 when the "last wave" hit. Looking back on it, it was probably a good thing because I wasn't happy there. At the same time I was more-or-less forced to take the first job that came a long instead of being choosy like I would have liked to have been.

The work at "the job" wasn't bad. It was somewhat enjoyable. My official job title was "knowledge developer"...which is a hybrid way of saying technical writer/instructional designer. I wrote all sorts of courses that were delivered over the web. I didn't mind the actual work. My educational experience made this sort of work almost natural for me. You see I have an elementary education degree and an English minor. So basically, I understood learning principals and could write in complete sentences...or something like that. Anyways, the actual design and implementation of my courses was almost fun. I even liked QA'ing (proofreading) other people's work...it was like polishing a rough stone to make it shiny.

Some of my colleagues from this place, are still good friends of mine. But working with management, or should I say management working us over, was another story.

We were often asked to work on many courses at the same time never giving any ONE course its proper due. I was actually told that they would "push me to the breaking point" to see how much work I could handle. Pay...well, that wasn't so good either.

Needless to say that when I was let go, it was a blessing and a curse. I still haven't found work that I enjoy. I'm currently "trapped" in a profession that I really can't stand. I'm an administrative assistant at a CPA firm. A CPA firm that is also SUPER conservative.

So what should I do with my life. Some have suggested going back to school. But to be honest, I don't know that I want to. Some have suggested finding something I can do from home with my current skills. Some have even suggested having kids. What to do, what to do....

I do hope that my fellow employee finds something better. I know that scared feeling of having to pay the bills and having very little income(Unemployment in Cali wasn't enough to live off of). With that good luck LS.