Most exciting news ever.

People! Listen up. You are never going to believe what happened. Look.



It almost rained. See the drops? You can hardly call it rain.. but it was just enough that it kicked some of the pollen down.

What do you mean - so what? You can't imagine how rare it is to get rain in California in the summer. Plus..it hasn't rained in like 180 days. Okay.. maybe its rained like twice in 180 days.. but just enough to get the ground wet.

You can not believe how relaxing it was today - not having to look at the brown blue sky.

I'm going to take this week to feel sorry for myself.

I have a bunch of product reviews...but I just don't have it in me to write about them. If I don't comment on your blog it isn't because I don't find you funny. I do.

I'm just in a really crappy mood. And not a funny crappy mood.

You see...my insurance company rejected me. This is how my rejection letter went.

50% - your surgeons staff are tards and didn't supply us with any information.

Which really pisses me off, because all they have to do is ask my doctor specific questions. As far as I can tell they haven't even talked to anyone in my GP's office.

The only reason some medical information got sent over is because I met with my doc and had them sent. But apparently my rejection was already in the works.

So I'm also looking for a new surgeon. Which triple sucks. Did I mention I got this guy from a referral?

The surgeons office didn't even call me about the rejection. I got a letter in the mail. But said they knew about it. Their office has only called me once. That was 2 weeks after my first visit to tell me they needed to get my GP's records. Even thought I was positive I signed a release form the day I met with the surgeon.

25% - Your boobs don't look shitty enough. Yeah.. that's right. Not anything about the size/weight. But you aren't filled with pox sized rashes, and you don't have ginormous tire track divots cut into your shoulders. Which by the way I have always made a special effort to prevent. I've seen those women, and you don't get rid of those.

25% - legitimate medical reasons. Absence of mammogram. Those types of things.

So I'm pretty much just bummed.

Yes... I can be a pain in the ass too.

I must tell you about our trips to the electronics stores. Mainly because it is one of the few times I don't get annoyed shopping. I'm easily distracted, off in my own little world.. and generally excited. So I don't have as much time to focus on other peoples annoying ticks.

Well.. maybe I'm lying a little. I do get annoyed when I go to check-out and the bar code on my curiously strong magnet can't be read. Because duh...curiously strong magnets are circular and bar code readers can't read things that are circular.

Finally after the checker makes it clear I won't be able to buy the item because it won't scan. I frustratingly tell him the price is on the back of the bar code.

Forget being a checker... has this guy never bought anything before? Anyway... I'm getting way off track. Except for checking out - I rarely get annoyed.

Anyway - the trips to the electronic stores drive Mr. S insane. Electronic stores are the one place where I won't try to keep track of Mr S, and he can't keep track of me.

We will be walking down an isle together and he will turn around and I'm just gone. Like an episode of vanished. He will track me down. We will agree to go look at a particular item, and not 10 feet later - it happens again.

So finally we'll agree to meet up in a particular department so he can get his items without stopping every two minutes to find me. That should make things better right? Oh no. It only makes things worse.

For him.

I'm as happy as I can be. Anything with lights, or magnets, or things that glow are among the things that will get me off track. Anything that makes you say "holy shit".

It is a complete freakin nightmare for Mr. S. Because not only am I not in the place we agreed to meet.. but I could be in some random part of the store he would have never thought about looking for me in.

Thank goodness for cell phones. Otherwise Mr S would have gone crazy by now. As it is.. I make him skirt the line.

For my nerdy friends.

What a fun - fun, world we live in.

Okay - now you must listen to my old timey rant.

It used to be the only people who would even think about having a terabyte of disk space was companies like NASA. And it would cost a shit load of money. Easily 100,000 dollars.

Can you believe your average consumer can now walk into Fry's and buy 2 terabytes of disk space for around 1000 bucks. A bit pricey... but still!

Quit store booty.

1. Seam ripper.

See - I follow instructions.

2. Chalk.

3. Black thread.

4. Cutty thing.

Which I will immediately kill because I'll wind up using it on cardboard or pizza or something it shouldn't be used for.

5. Pins that have big heads.

So I can avoid stepping on them.

6. Safety pins.

Because I have a stupid fetish for colored ordinary objects. See?



I don't know why I love these things. But I was super excited when Home Depo had colored drill chucks. Lame.

FYI - I shall never return to the quilt store, because this stuff cost me over 50 bucks. It shouldn't cost that much right?

Are we done with the whole ribbon fad yet?

I thought all these ribbons were to show solidarity for something.

I have to admit, a search in Google for California Advanced Training Solutions leaves me more perplexed than ever.

The assimilation has begun.

Look where I wound up today!



I resisted most impulse buying. Like this item.



Because if there is anything I love - it's things that glow.

And what is this for? A yardstick compass.

Still ruining the planet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm stuck on this right now. I'll get over it eventually. But I find it funny and absurd when the trendy thing is being "green", and the phrase "carbon footprint" is said more often than "hello".

So - this is the great big bag I just got from the Verizon store. The only thing in it? A wireless card. Since the salesman didn't even ask if I wanted a bag or not -I took what he handed to me. Because you know I wanted to blog about it.

I can't be the only one they are handing these ginormous bags to. And come to think of it - I've bought a bunch of stuff at the Verizon store and I've never needed a bag this big.

My other attempts at ruining the earth here.

Today's burning question.

Why is it always so freaking hard to get out of a restaurant? Do I really have to sit there for 15 minutes trying desperately to get my servers attention just to get the check?

It used to be if you moved all the plates to the outside of the table, it was a sign you were ready to leave. Not anymore apparently.

You'd think they would want to turn my table over.

More Customer Support Horror Stories.

Jane Galt: Sony VAIO customer service sucks ass too.

She complains about the same things I did when I made this rant.

I have to do something nice.

My husband has this work friend who is an amazing photog. He is constantly giving us good advise, and really has saved us a lot of money by helping us buy camera lenses.

Yesterday my husband comes home and tells me his work friend is going to lend us one of his lenses. Which is really super nice. These things are crazy expensive. Its like saying " here, I'm going to let you borrow my expensive china - I trust you not to break it".

Work friend is always offering and I'm always resisting because I hate to borrow peoples stuff. As a matter of a fact, another work friend sent home a lens with my husband before I could resist, and I never even used it because I was afraid something might happen to it.

So -now I think I should do something nice to thank him for all his advice, and lending of camera equipment.

Well.. short of asking him and his wife out to dinner. Because lets face it, I don't want to admit what an inferior photographer I am. And he's one of those guys who is really into photography and might just wind up talking about it the whole night. I'm just trying to give the illusion I can take good photos.

So I'm trying to figure out something that would be really thoughtful to thank this guy.

Since he is a transplant from Canada I thought maybe something uniquely Canadian might be nice. Short of that.. just something nice will do. Since my readers always have the best ideas - I thought I'd ask what you guys would do.

Drought? What drought?

Click to enlarge.

When the end of the world nears, and you don't have any water - you can blame my neighbors. They all have to water in the middle of the day. It doesn't matter if we are having hurricane force winds, or it's 109 degrees. I just don't get it.



Normally I wouldn't care.. but I'm going to get thirsty tearing down all that packaging material I get from companies.

Meh!

Don't laugh at my crappy picture. Fireworks are really hard to photograph! Expecially when you have a street light in the middle of the frame.

Anyway.... the fascinating thing this year was we didn't hear people setting off fireworks in the days leading up to the 4th. No one setting off boat flares or anything!

When did everyone get all responsible and stuff?

What does that mean?

On one hand - look how fast stuff gets shipped from China! On the other hand - what is brokerage?

And if it's an import thing, why is it being held in Ontario California? I'm guessing its California, and not Canada since UPS said it was suppose to be delivered today.

I've only got my panties in a bunch because I'm about 80% sure my house is going to loose power with the upcoming heatwave, and we are going to be forced to take the bunnies to a hotel. Like last year. Which totally sucks ass.

So - I'd totally love to have our laptop.

How Chrysler sucks and Pontiac doesn't.

Honestly - tires should last more than 11,000 miles. Right?

Apparently the tires you get when you buy a new Chrysler 300 don't. I had to stick new tires on the car yesterday.

If that were the only thing that irritated me about the car I might just bitch about it and move on. But..so far these are the problems I've had with it.

1. Automatic transmission refused to shift gears.

2. ABS (Automatic Brake System) stopped working.

3. Hands free phone system never seems to work, and the techs can never figure out why.

4. The satellite navigation system is the biggest piece of shit on the planet.

5. Chrysler wants 600 bucks to give you an updated set of maps.

6. Tires.

7. This isn't a Chrysler problem, it still irritates me. Sirius radio constantly looses signal.

Contrast that to our Pontiac Solstice which also has roughly 10,000 miles.

1. Soft top had a problem that made the cabin have excessive wind noise.

Yep.. that's it.

Even though the problem was pretty obscure - the techs did a ton of research and figured out the problem. After only one visit to the shop.

And - I just have to point out the Solstice is a much cheaper car than the Chrysler. Yet Pontiac didn't put such shitty tires on the car I had to replace them after only 11,000 miles.

Mini Photo Montage.

I'm pretty bored with this stuff now. But - I haven't told you the best thing about going to the faire.

Did you guys know you can get preferred parking at these places now?

For 15 bucks - you can park right up along with the handicap parking. Oh hell yeah. I did just say that. I know! It pisses you off doesn't it?

It was so freakin' awesome! I totally don't even feel like a hypocrite even though I made a huge stink about valet parking at the mall - because we parked our own car.

Anyway.. it made the faire experience so much better. After we were tired, we didn't have to truck nine miles to the parking lot and search forever for our car.

Now I must force you to look at more photos.



Hey! I want to know who climbed to the top of the Ferris wheel and gave a shout out to the sign of the devil. I didn't even know it was there until I was reviewing the photos. It was a completely unintentional shot. But.. maybe a sign.



I don't know what these were - but I'm embarrassed to admit I was completely fascinated by them.

I know.. I'm one step away from having a Velvet Elvis painting in my house. But these things moved! I couldn't take my eyes off them.



I thought it said Flying Boobs, and if I was at all motivated - I would Photoshop it to say that. But I'm not.



Gratuitous cuteness.



This was in the quilt building.. but I don't think it was a quilt template.



When did almonds start costing 25 bucks a bag? Cripes!

Damn overachievers.

Okay - So I'm going to push out a couple more entries about the faire before I loose interest.

I took this picture especially for Mommy De Gallo. Because she is a kick ass quilter. And I secretly thought I could get her to do crazy projects.

I'm so totally not into quilting, but MDG caused me to actually drag my husband around the whole quilting building. Which is big deal because those people on those little rascal scooters drive me insane.

Can you believe this quilt only took third place in ... hell.. I don't know what the competition is called for quilting. I'm sure MDG will tell me because she rocks.




Click to enlarge.

At least no one lost a limb.

Photo Montage.

Mixed messages.

Four feet away was this:



Should read: I was an Easter Bunny that somebody loved until I became too difficult to take care of. My Family decided to set me free and now I live on the streets of the city. Everyday things that you see are dangerous and even deadly to me. Cars, cats, dogs, birds, and plants aren't things you would think of as lethal at first glance.



Can you imagine the cold icy stares as these two groups set up their booths?

Look at me!

Don't you just love these things? What are they called anyway?



I'm not sure if I should be concerned when they start climbing rock walls to get my attention though.

How I'm still ruining the earth.

I have to admit.. I don't really care that much about ruining the earth. A meteor is just going to come through and make everything right with the universe anyway.

So - when a company's packaging gets on my radar - you know it has to be excessive. You can see this stuff happens all the time. Here.



This is a simple roll of lead tape. It was the only thing that was in that box. WTF?

Does it really cost less to send a big box like this rather than a small envelope? I mean.. that's only explanation. Right? Lead tape isn't breakable.

Okay - I'm done messing around.

Leave some comments - or the lamb gets it!

I can dream can't I?

Is it wrong I feel jealous of Texas because its been raining there for weeks?

I've decided that if it were ever to rain here again - I'm going to buy a chaise lounge and just lay out in the rain for hours.

Untitled.

Okay.. I'm starting to think most people who read this blog don't really like bunnies because I don't get many comments. You don't hate bunnies... do you?

Maybe they aren't cute enough for you? Well.. maybe Paisley looks a little demonic this time...

Clever advertising - or inappropriate?

You be the judge.

A sales rant about Vonage.

Tonight I get a call from Vonage. At first I thought it was a routine sales/marketing call.

The sales guy however tells me Vonage is calling customers that have called them recently because they have a sales promotion going on.

All of a sudden I got all exited. Because honestly, I did just call them a few days ago after I had my last customer service rant. Here.

At first I was super impressed because I never gave Vonage my number. Their sales guy had effectively frustrated me enough that I wound up not switching my service to them.

So, the company stripping my number from the sales call impressed me. Okay.. it doesn't take that much these days. To be honest, the sales guy could have had me at "hello".. but this is how he screwed it up:

While giving me the hard sales pitch he says the following:

"Do you have a pen, I'd like to give you some information to write down". Then he says " I'd like you to write down our company name - this is Vonage".

Me - "Um.. yeah, I know." You said you were calling all the customers who had recently called you. I know who you are. Plus, you've said the name like 20 billion times in 3 minutes.

While my husband is trying to find a pen, I figure I'd ask the sales guy about something I read. So I ask "I heard that Vonage uses Comcast's lines, and that Comcast has been downgrading the Vonage signal because they don't want you to enter the sector.

This causes the sales guy to totally ignore my question and tell me about the Vonage services again trying to stay on script. So I say "that doesn't answer my question". I again ask about Comcast downgrading the Vonage signal.

He then tells me he'd never heard about that problem. Then starts backpedaling.

Well, he says - if that does happen you can increase the Vonage signal. But again, he's never heard about Comcast doing that so it shouldn't be a problem. And we can try the service risk free for 30 days without disconnecting from our current service. Then goes onto say, maybe he has heard of Comcast downgrading the signal, but they have a complaint registered with the FCC.

Okay...Comcast is pissing me off so much I might not even care you guys are having a little flame war, but don't fucking lie to me about about it. Either you've never heard about it - or you have a complaint with the FCC. It can't be both.

It's all about my rack.

I'm still on this crusade to have some surgery. Hopefully sometime before the sun burns out. So - I figure I would just make an appointment with my GP, to see if I can get things moving along.

My doctor has treated me for various problems with my back over the years, but he hasn't really had a first hand look at the problem. Mostly because I sort of had a crush on him for a while. Thankfully over the years he had convinced me he was gay. But not convinced enough to show him my parts.

So - I go in and talk to him about the problems I was having with the surgeons office. I explain to him how I'm stalled because I can't get his office and the surgeons office to communicate, and I urge him to take a look at me. (He'd never seen them). Because at this stage I really need my doctor to fight the insurance company on my behalf. I could tell he really wanted to look, even though he didn't really want to ask. I'm sure he sees that stuff all the time.. but I got a vibe he was much happier I offered.

So - I take my shirt off..... and now I'm pretty convinced now my doctor is not gay.

Of course he was really professional...but straight men make a super hard attempt to not react, but they just can't help it.

Needless to say.... I'm hopeful the process will get easier for me. And I'm happy to report that I'm doing a bang-up job of minimizing these puppies. All the medical professionals I've shown them to say they would have never guessed I was as big as I am. They also seem much more willing to help get them whittled down.

If I would have known how hard it was to get through just getting okay'ed for surgery I would have started this process a year ago. At this rate, I'm guessing maybe by Christmas I might be all fixed up.

California Burning.

Last night - our local news led in with 7 fire stories. Most notably the South Lake Tahoe fire that destroyed around 200 homes. News link here. I'd been jittery about the fire season all spring. With really good reason.

Conditions are so favorable for fires right now you see smoke in the sky roughly once a week. I've started taking my camera more places because I just don't see how CAL FIRE is going to be able to manage enough resources to keep the season under control. You can see from the hillsides just how dangerous things are. This used to be a grove of oak tree's.



So anyway... I'm out running around this morning. I pop on the freeway to get to an appointment and off in the distance I see a huge smoke plume. But at this point I'm late. So I can't really go to investigate.

Since none of the firetrucks seemed in a big hurry, I figure it probably wasn't that big of a deal. Plus, I didn't see air support.



I figure the fire is going to be out by the time I get done with my appointment, but it wasn't. The winds had started kicking up. By the time I got up near the fire line - it was obvious it wasn't a big fire, rather lots of little hot spots. From the freeway the fire looked much larger.



Those are huge satellite dishes in the distance.



This weekend should be pretty interesting though. Thankfully I've heard very few pre-fireworks.. so hopefully people are taking the fire situation pretty seriously.

A little out of my element.

I find myself in a really weird position of needing to buy a sewing machine. I think.

Well... first lets start with the fact I don't sew. At all. So keep that in mind. I never dream of sewing. Not even when I have grandchildren. I totally respect those who have the patience to sew. That isn't me. As a matter of a fact, it seems like a really bad idea for me to sew anything. But I'm going to do it anyway.

My regulars know I'm completely ADD. I'm either going to wind up driving the needles I've dropped through my feet, or sewing my fingers to the machine. I can just see it now.

The problem is I need some curtains hemmed, and searching out a seamstress seems like a pain in the ass. I don't even know where I would find one. Besides the obvious - the phone book. The job is so small, it hardly worth any seamstresses time.

But - apparently, curtain manufacturers don't think customers need curtains thick enough to block out all visible light in the size I need. So I'm forced to hem.

Normally, I would just lop off the bottom of the curtains and call it a day. But I think I may want to wash these things. Which surely will result in them completely unraveling. Then I'll have to go through this whole process again. And I really.. really don't want to spend months shopping for simple non-hideous curtains again.

Women must think god awful designs are the greatest thing. Therefore torturing me, because I don't really need flowers on every piece of fabric in existence. I also don't need to feel like I'm having a grandmother flashback with the weird 1970's materials.

Now I'm digressing.

So to recap - I just want a simple sewing machine. I don't need 80 stitch patterns. That is just 80 patterns I'm going to sew into my hand.

The problem is.. most of the really simple ones are manufactured by Brother. Who I just blacklisted 2 months ago. I'm never buying anything from that company again.

I have a fax machine from them, which apparently will not work without the color ink cartridges. It won't even allow you to send a fax.

What pissed me off more is the machine stops working when the color cartridges still have a lot of ink left in them. To replace all my cartridges cost me 75 bucks. while buying a new low end Brother fax machine would have been 100 bucks.

So - long story long... Brother may have a sewing machine a little more my mentally challenged speed.. but I'm not going to give them my money.

So I'm asking for ideas from my readers. I know I have some readers who sew, and I'm positive they will give me some really good ideas. You guys always do.