Saturday, February 25, 2006

Anybody know what happened to Outside the Beltway?

Because of some weird glitch with the network at work, I can’t read Dr. Joyner’s blog while there. So that has reduced me to early morning and weekend perusal catch ups. But this morning OTB is not there.

Such a bummer; it’s a good blog that I miss reading.

*sigh*

Friday, February 24, 2006

Lawyer gripe ahead. You’ve been warned.

So I got a call yesterday about a civil legal matter that lawyers for a party in another state would like to have dealt with here in Virginia. No problem. Except that they wanted us to take care of it today.

*insert evil laugh here*

No chance, brutha. I explained our policy and procedures for this particular kind of civil process, I got a lot of “uh huh"s in response, and was informed that they would FEDEX the kit-n-kaboodle to me to be received today.

No FEDEXes arrived for me today. Not that we didn’t get any FEDEX packages, but none had my lovely name.

So I get a phone call from my nice USMS counterpart in the other state - the lawyers have a conference call scheduled and want to know the status of their legal matter. I informed her that I didn’t get the paperwork and we do nothing without paperwork.

Just got off the phone with one of the attorneys in the other state. They are displeased that FEDEX had a mechanical problem with the plane that was carrying their package (*insert evil laugh here*), can they courier the paperwork to our office?

ME: It wouldn’t do you any good, nothing will be done with it today.

I then explained that the operations folks are involved in a Big Trial (aka The Circus), we’re short-staffed, and there was no way anyone would start working on that near the close of business on a Friday. Monday is the earliest it could be worked on.

LAWYER: What’s the chance that we could move forward on Tuesday?

*insert evil laugh here*

ME: Not likely. *I wondered if he hadn’t heard what I said about being short-staffed and dealing with The Circus. Really.*  But I will put the bug in the supervisor’s ear so that when we receive the paperwork he’ll be aware of what’s going on. If your order doesn’t specify that it needs to be executed by our agency, then you may want to contact the locals - they might be better able to help you in your timeframe.

Lawyer sighed, thanked me, and hung up.

See, if you want your legal documents processed in a timely manner then you need to process your legal documents in a timely manner. Asking someone to do something with a day’s notice is a little rude.

UPDATE 4:10pm: I did give the ops supervisor the heads up as promised. He rolled his eyes and laughed in disbelief. So I wasn’t just being a pain in the tuckus to the demanding lawyer. Our guy said doing it next week at all was unlikely. I told him he was going to have to tell the lawyer that - I don’t think the lawyer will listen to me say NO WAY anymore. It’s going to have to come from one of the guys who carries a gun and has “deputy” in front of his name.

Precious.

[Via Dean]

Olympics: I have seen maybe a total of 2 hours of all of the coverage. Sad. I managed to watch some of the figure skating last night, but I hit the record button on the DVR when I needed to go to bed because I was not staying up until midnight to see if Sasha Cohen won gold. Instead, I got up at 5am (and that is a long story of Annie whining, Beau getting out of bed all grumpy and leaving the room and leaving Annie to continue whining) and went down to fast forward through most of the last 3 hours of the skating from last night. I had to stop as the Japanese chick was getting ready to skate. And I already know the results, but I’ll watch the rest tonight anyway.

LOST: I missed this in last week’s show, but the recapper at TWoP noted something from the end of the episode (SPOILERS)...

Flashback! We got a great big convoy, rolling through Iraq. Sayid’s in the back with a bunch of soldiers, including Kate’s dad, who’s looking at a photograph, which we can’t see yet. He asks Sayid if he’s got a wife or kids. Hey, no humanizing the enemy, soldier! Sayid’s off in his own world, and he barely manages to shake his head no. Now we see the photograph, which is of Kate by a lake, and she’s wearing a baseball hat, the time-honoured television technique for rolling back the years for flashback purposes. I actually didn’t realize it was Kate’s dad until this point, so I was glad they included that.

Interesting. When I read that I was bummed that I had deleted the episode from my DVR the night before. I would have liked to see that again.

Bonus TWoP recap: Serenity. Shiny! (Profanity alert.)

Survivor - Exile Island: The one who got booted should have been booted last week, imho. I like Terry - he reminds me of Survivor: Palau winner Tom. We’ll see how long he lasts.

American Idol 5: Yeah, I’m watching. I don’t know why I haven’t really posted on it yet. My favorite is Taylor Hicks, but I’m not sure how far he’ll make it on the show - he’s too different. I haven’t watched last night’s kick 4 to the curb show, but I know the results. I’m unhappy with one of the eliminated, but he didn’t get much airtime prior to Tuesday, so that made it tough for him to get votes. Me no likey Brenna, Sway, and Gideon.

That’s it for now.

The Amazing Race 9 starts on Tuesday. Woo!

Dr. Beau has a gig at a local high school - actually it’s one of the two “secondary” schools in the area - we have two schools that are 7-12 grades. However, this time Beau gets to teach the big kids because Physics is a class for seniors. At least it was when I was in high school here many, many years ago. The great thing for him is that it’s only about 10 minutes from home.

I keep telling him to break out the Dr. but he’s so humble that he insists that it won’t get him anything. What it will do is prevent the rabble from adding the “s” to the Mr. he writes on the board, like happened at the middle school.

Anyway, TGIF and all that. I know he’s had a stressfull week of substitute teaching.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

My Boss told me that he talked with ECD. He told her I was cranky today and she said that was surprising since I’m a blissful newlywed and all.

I said that I am happy, but that I’m having a crappy day and therefore a little cranky. My irritability has nothing to do with my state of happiness with life in general. My crankiness is a temporary thing.

I have joy and peace that surpasses all understanding through the grace of God. My circumstances have no bearing on that general, permanent state of being.

There’s a lot to the following story, but I’ll try to pare it down to the basics…

There came a

wo

man to our office looking for assistance in clarifying his arrest in 1998. The form he held listed two arrests, within two days of each other. I knew immediately that it was probably a chain of custody issue, but the fine folks at Immigration might not understand the nuances of such a thing.

Before I continue, I have to say that our

wo

man was quite androgenous. Twice I was asked if I was helping the woman at the window. Poor fella. I can confirm that he is a man, based on his name and his slightly discernable five o’clock shadow. However, I understood everyone’s confusion because he looked just like that guy/gal from The Crying Game.

OK, so Immigration requires documentation explaining the arrests, but since there is but one arrest, I crafted a nice explanatory letter to which I attached our prisoner system record for the dude. Got my boss to sign the letter so that I could notarize it. People like things that have that bumpy seal and signature to make them official.

Call me jaded, but I think his disorderly conduct charge in a national park (hence, his federal charges) was slightly more than mere disorderly conduct. We get a lot of those arrests around here and let’s just say that most are not nearly that feminine. Am I being too oblique here?

Is there a secret camera watching my house?

This could have come from my fingers.

Awesome!

So yesterday I went to the website for Virginia where you can sign up to start a business and your tax thing and all that. I filled out all of the stuff and then clicked on the button to finalize it. The website kicked back to a prior page, so I fixed what they thought was broken and it looped back to the same spot. I repeated that three times before I gave up. Ridiculous. Oh and one of the links the site offered for downloading a tax form that I’ll need was broken. Actually a lot of the links were broken.

In the meantime, I checked out a bunch of books on wedding planning from the library. One of them is about consulting by a guy who runs a consulting ring (for lack of a better term - it’s actually an association and I’m just feeling snarky today) and offers training and entry into the

ring

association. So I checked out the

ring

association website this morning to find that the training for beginner wedding consulting is a hefty $1K. Is it worth it? Probably, but I don’t have that capital, thanks. According to that dude, I’m a wedding dabbler. I can live with that.

Which leads me to thinking that I really am going to have to consider a small business loan or try to hunt up a small business grant. I’m don’t really have the seed money to front a start-up business at this point.

It’s been a bad day from the moment I got in my car. Frustration after frustration have come my way and I’m really cranky at this point.

Is it Friday yet?

*sigh*

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

We got word on Sunday night that my 86 year old grandfather (my mother’s father) was put into the hospital down in Florida (where he and his wife are visiting her family) on Saturday and that it looked like he had had a minor heart attack. The docs were going to do some tests on Monday morning and then probably do a check to see if he needed bypass surgery. They opted not to proceed yesterday but to wait until today. I got an email update from my mother earlier and it’s easier to post that than try to paraphrase:

... the doctor found that Dad has an aneurysm that is quite large and has been there a while. Also, he has a totally blocked artery and another 95% blocked.  He won’t recommend surgery because of Dad’s age and they will treat with medication.  The doctor is also concerned about his kidney function and that is why they delayed the procedure because of the effect the dye would have on the kidneys.  He will also continue to treat that with medication.  So, for now, Dad is doing okay and will probably be released on Friday.  They will stay in Florida until he is well enough to make the flight home.

He has always been very healthy and has longevity on his side. His mother lived to 101. Please pray for healing for him and peace for his wife. She is a sweet lady who has taken us into her heart as if we were her own flesh and blood.

It all started when I picked up the blow dryer. I pushed the power button and nothing happened. So I pushed the TEST button on the plug and retried the power. No go. *sigh*

Fortunately, I have a travel dryer so I got that and still got no power.

OK, I’ll try Beau’s bathroom. No power there either.

Blown fuse maybe? So I trekked to the basement to check the circuit box and sure enough the one marked “Heat Pump” was red. I reset that, the heat immediately cycled on (I wonder when that tripped?), and I headed back upstairs to my bathroom.

Neither blow dryer works in either bathroom. *argh*

There’s an outlet next to his bathroom and we have huge mirrored closet doors, so I plugged the dryer into that plug. Yahoo, it worked.

Then I open the blinds to find that it’s snowing like crazy. :huh: This, of course, affected the commute, because despite temps above freezing people around here see the white stuff falling from the sky and panic.

At least I got here by 9am.

Anyone have a clue why those two bathroom outlets won’t work?

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Beau has a sub gig today and tomorrow. Same school as for the gym class last week. This time he’s teaching math.

He was slightly unimpressed with the lesson plan for one of the days.

Those poor kids.

New category alert: Beau Knows because he’s wicked smaht.

Beau still insists that Numb3rs is a better show than 24. I think he’s cra-zee.

Clicky linky for my 2 cents on last night’s ep…

Monday, February 20, 2006

Jaynee summed up the weekend pretty well here.

Mom & Dad and Beau and I went into The City before our matinee show. We had tea at Tea & Synpathy in Greenwich Village and then went back to Times Square, walked over to Radio City Music Hall, Rockerfeller Center, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It was bitterly cold so we got to the theater a little early and went right in for the show. (Jaynee’s review of Spamalot is here.) After the show we went back to The Cooties’ house for dinner and then I crashed and went to bed very early.

Our drive back home was the fastest ever - 4 hours even. Nice.

All in all a very fun weekend. My niece and nephew are way, way, way too cute.