You've gotta be kidding

So my boss came into my office a few minutes ago and said, "Before the budget meeting, there's something I want to discuss with you." And I thought, well, whatever this question is going to be, it's going to be about money, and I won't be able to answer it.

Turns out, there wasn't a question -- she wanted to tell me that, since I've been working there six months and all, they wanted to give me a 10% raise. Yippee! This was totally out of the blue, though I guess a six-month raise isn't totally unexpected. Anyway, I should probably put the money toward my mountain of college loans, but maybe the first month I can like, I don't know . . . buy a really great dress or something.

be your own PET

So last night, I went to the Sonic Youth show at the 9:30 with my husband, who is actually cool , whereas I am a poser who gets all my music education by tagging along with my husband to shows at the 9:30. Anyway, I saw something there that knocked my socks off, and sorry for all you SY fans, it wasn't Sonic Youth; it was be your own PET.

be your own PET is a group of young kids -- 18 or so -- from Nashville, TN, who are performing basically screamy garage rock, and I should have hated it based on all my own musical tastes, but man, those kids are musical geniuses. Especially Jemina Pearl, their stunning lead singer; she kept saying, "We're going to do another song," but she did not sing. What she DID was scream her little pink lungs out, shake her bleach blonde hair up in her face, and convulse as if she was receiving electric shocks for the entirety of their short set. Between songs she would spit long ropes of spit onto the stage and look like she was going to vomit; but then, a few seconds would go by, and she'd be throwing her body around all over again.

The thing is, it was so beautiful and frightening to watch this little girl, who's up there proclaiming herself so freely to the world that she can just throw herself around the stage and spit and possibly puke and not care who sees. Or, alternatively, she's so trapped that she has to throw herself against the bars wherever she goes, really really hard in hopes of breaking out, and she doesn't care who sees. Either way, it was shocking and great. So thanks a lot for a great show.

If you want to at least hear them do their thing -- I couldn't find a video -- here's their official website, though I'm finding they're more "listenable" recorded, which may be a good sign for my future relationship with this band: http://www.beyourownpetmusic.com/

Another Weekend Excursion (Going to Grandma's)

Well, we're getting out of the city again this weekend, this time to my Grandma and Pap's house. Hooray! I'm excited about the drive and my favorite steak that grandma always makes for me and watching movies with Grams and RING BOLOGNA and, of course, getting out of the city. Does anybody else eat ring bologna, by the way? I think it's a regional thing. Anyway, I eat it by the pound when I go to Grandma's.

While I'm there, I'll water Gram's plants and do basically anything else they need us to do. It's very strange to get to an age where the people who used to take care of you now need to be taken care of, and of course you don't even know how to do it. I'm worried about my grandparents, most of all worried that they're lonely, and it seems like such a strange thing to have to worry about your grandparents. But they're too old now to get out of the house much, and definitely getting too old to travel without a lot of preparation.

How does it happen, that families get spread all over the globe this way? Ah well, at least we've got a car, and it's not far . . . we'll leave after work and be there before dark!

Wives of Henry VIII

Wow, lots of posting today. Well, I found this test on another blog, and I'm kind of a stickler for this kind of thing, so here we go:

Which of Henry VIII's wives are you?
this quiz was made by Lori Fury

Congratulations! You are Katherine Parr.
Katherine Parr spent nearly her whole life married to crotchety old men: Henry was the THIRD old fart she was forced to marry. Is it any wonder she turned to books and religion to occupy her time?
Katherine wasn't just smart, she was a tiny bit uppity, too: she almost got herself thrown in jail for arguing with His Royal Fatness about some theological issues. After Henry croaked, Katherine dropped the prim and proper act and married Thomas Seymour, a handsome, dashing pirate kind of guy who was also as dumb as a post.
Which goes to show you that even bookworms know how to get it on.

Nice, huh? But yeah, I'd say that's basically me. "His Royal Fatness" . . . . ha ha ha . . .

In honor of the World Cup

I am neither a soccer fan (though my brother plays, so I'm slightly more a soccer fan than a football fan) nor an avid shoeshopper, but I came across this on Manolo's Shoe Blog (http://shoeblogs.com/wordpress/2006/06/09/manolo-the-columnist-34/#comments). This comment was left by a writer named furlagirl, and I found it the absolutely clearest explanation of "offsides" I've EVER EVER heard. Plus, it has the word "queue" in it. No sir, it's not just for netflix anymore! Enjoy:

THE OFFSIDE RULE EXPLAINED (FOR GIRLS) You’re in a shoe shop, second in the queue for the till. Behind the shop assistant on the till is a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes which you have just seen and HAVE to have.The female shopper in front of you has seen them also and is eyeing them with desire.Dilemma: Both of you have forgotten your purses.It would be totally rude to push in front of the first woman if you had no money to pay for the shoes. The shop assistant remains at the till waiting. Your friend is trying on another pair of shoes at the back of the shop and sees your dilemma. She prepares to throw (pass) her purse to you.If she does so, you can catch the purse, then walk round the other shopper and buy the shoes. At a pinch she could throw the purse ahead of the other shopper and, *whilst it is in flight* you could nip around the other shopper, catch the purse and buy the shoes.However until the purse had *actually been thrown* you are not allowed to move in front of the other shopper - otherwise you would be ‘Offside’.

I did it! I did it!

I just successfully managed to change the code in my template so that my blog can list links to other blogs!!! I DID IT, I DID IT!!!! So anybody who's anybody, click through to my mom's blog listed there on the lefthand side of the screen.

I'm getting so savvy, it's not even funny.

I will never sign up with Verizon

The final blow has been cast to the Blackberry/Laptop/PC Card fiasco. Yesterday I finally had the delightful privelege of returning that blasted PC card and receiving in cash a full refund right into my hand. I felt a little weird carrying around basically a wad of my boss's money.

The bad news, of course, is that after 20 minutes of futile, confused, and confusing debate with various salespeople and managers about whether or not I could cancel my boss's calling plan, whether or not I could return my boss's hardware, and whether or not I was within the 15-day "worry-free guarantee" period -- after all that, I then stood for 30 minutes waiting for . . . nothing. For the woman at the Customer Service desk to figure out how to ring up a refund, whether she should give me the refund in cash or check, and then how to get the cash out of the safe in the back. As I could answer none of these questions, I assured her not to worry -- that I was on company time so I didn't mind standing there -- and proceeded to space out, listening to the drone of a woman shouting, "No, I want to CANCEL my service, CANCEL! Don't you dare upgrade me, I want to CANCEL!"

Finally, I was released with a wad of cash. After the first impulse to spend it, in a revenge spree against the injustice of the Blackberry, subsided, I was able to very happily hand it over to my boss.

By the way, a 15-day "worry-free" guarantee is like nothing. That's barely long enough to get your hardware home and take it out of the box -- and by then you're supposed to have tried it out, discovered what's wrong with it, gotten back to the store, waited in line for like two hours behind this girl who can't seem to get her refund, and returned it? It doesn't sound very worry-free to me.

Ah well. On to bigger and better projects. Hooray!

eBay

I'm getting sort of addicted to this whole eBay thing. I know I'm way behind the trend, but in the last week and a half I've bought a pair of shoes and a CD. Well, I'll have bought a CD in about 4 minutes. I'm actually writing this to distract myself while I wait to win my auction. One Ben Folds Five CD, one dollar. That seems fair.

Last week's purchase was a pair of imitation Steve Madden wedges in strappy red patent leather. Mmmmm. We'll see whether they cut into my foot like a sawblade. But they really do look just like the ones in the store.

Down to 32 seconds, and I'm still the high bidder. 14 . . . 6 . . . . wish me luck!!

Getting out of the City (part one of 1000)

This weekend, Jeff and I got so fed up with the city that we just decided to get out. We headed up to Shenandoah National Park, which is surprisingly close and so beautiful that you wouldn't know that a big, swallowing city even existed on the entire planet, let alone less than two hours away.

We spent the night in Front Royal, VA, which creates the exact opposite impression. Dropped at at the juncture of Rt. 66 and Skyline Drive, Front Royal serves as a wholly inappropriate gateway to the Shenandoah Valley. A small town, it is nevertheless neither picturesque nor kitchy, and we almost couldn't find a motel that wasn't stunningly ugly and dilapidated. In the end, we spent probably twice as much money to get clean carpets and painted walls in a cute, whitewashed place. I'm torn between feeling proud to be adult enough to lay down 70 bucks for a hotel room, and feeling snobby for not feeling comfortable anymore in a $30 shack. In any case, it was a restful, bug-free, relaxed night away from the apartment, and there were doughnuts in the morning.

We got a late start, but we hit the road by 11:30 and were already hiking by 12:30. If you haven't ever driven and hiked along Skyline drive, you'd better get to it. It was beautiful and quiet and uncrowded and just really great. We saw a deer on the trail, and stood within a few yards of it as it nosed into the brush.

So it turns out, my husband has a life ambition to hike the Appalachian trail. I'm pretty freaked out by this, since neither of us are hikers -- we've hiked together maybe three times since we met. I used to be the one in my family who would whine my way through camping trips. In fact, I darn near lost the whole benefit of a gorgeous 3-week camping trip in Maine when I was 17, because I was hung up on some boy and couldn't keep my mind out of Knoxville. But if he's going I'm going I guess -- I'm way too protective a wife to let him out in the woods by himself. It could happen as early as next spring. What the crap.

If this plan actually progresses, more posts on the subject are inevitable. Will AnneGG hike the appalachian trail? Will her husband be scolded for climbing high and dangerous rocks? Will both of them come back as granola-crunching Adonises? Tune in next week for the continuation of Appalachian Panic Attack!!!

"Why does my PC5740 BroadbandAccess PC Card not fit in my LatitutdeX1 Wireless Card Port?"

This is just the kind of question that I never never wanted to need to know the answer to. And I never thought I would need to know the answer to.

Unfortunately, I do.

Similar questions I don't want to know the answer to include:

"When I delete the email in my PC inbox, why isn't that email deleted on my Blackberry device?"

Or, the related question, "How do you use the IntelliSync feature included with the Blackberry Desktop Manager to synchronize the contents of your Blackberry with the Contents of your PC?"

On the upside, after this week at work I know lots of things that might prove useful in my future life. For example, if I were going on a vacation to Sacramento, I would know where to stay, the name of a four-star restaurant where I could have dinner, how to get to "Old Sacramento", and the approximate distance between my hotel and downtown.

Turns out, I learn lotsa stuff at my job.