2005-01-31 
 

att - cingularly useless

So, tonight I kvetch about the cellphone.

About a month ago, I called Cingular to ask why my phone keeps dropping calls. I'll be in the middle of a conversation and hear a quick BOOP BOOP BOOP. Shortly thereafter, the phone disconnects. It happens both whether I'm walking or sitting still. Worse yet, the phone still shows full bars, yet the call dies anyway. After a rather interesting sparring match with a Pleasant Prerecorded Voice (PPV), I finally reached the proper support person who told me this problem isn't uncommon in areas with large numbers of phones. They let me know that it's a sign that too many people are on the network...so I get bumped off.

Ten little bears laying in the bed and one of them says,
"Roll over, roll over."
So they all roll over and one falls out.
Nine little bears laying in the bed and one of them says,
"Roll over, roll over."

Though they claim it's not personal, my mind takes flights of fancy about the true randomness involved in bumping. Are they picking to drop me on purpose? Are my conversations perhaps just a bit too boring...or dare I dream, too risque for them?

The more rational side of my brain has other thoughts. It's probably my rate plan? I'm sure if I was paying more that I'd be less likely to be bumped.

More importantly, what happens when I immediately redial the party with whom I'd been speaking? Does some other random schmoe get bumped?

Roll over, roll over.

Only in this case the bear knocked off the end simply rolls under the bed and pops on top of the other side. Between the bumping and the round robin game they make us play with the PPV before talking to a live person, I'm left with one conclusion. ATT/Cingular's rather fond of viscous circles.

PS Today's entry was supposed to be about my current problem with ATT/Cingular. Not that the bumping isn't still in full swing on nights and weekends, but that's really old news. Today I had a rather annoying encounter with live customer service folks. I'm too tired of typing to go into it at any depth, but I will say this: The whole experience leads me to believe that the PPV is the brain of the company.

Labels: rant

* posted by me at 11:11 PM

(0) comments



2005-01-29 
 

enviropiles and other office oddities

We have a janitor with an environmental complex. People who've thrown papers or cans into their trash baskets will find them the next morning placed neatly on a corner of their desks.

Someone made the mistake of mentioning this to our battle axe of an admin...ok it was me, but I didn't intend any harm! During an unguarded moment I told her the story as an amusing anecdote. Mostly because I'm a bit of an envirohound myself and thought it was neat that the janitor cared too. Big Mistake. Shortly after my telling her, she sent off a scathing email to the director of building management which soundly slapped him for allowing his employees to be so "disrespectful". I know this because she cc'd the entire office on the mail.

We didn't have any more enviropiles left out after that, but every once in a while a random bottle or can will be placed on the edge of a cube. The poor guy just can't help himself! He wants to save the world one can at a time, and I can respect that.

In fact, while I'd heard many folks complain about the enviropiles before the nasty email went out, everyone seems to have had a change of heart. This morning, old Battleaxe came by and queried what an empty soda bottle was doing balanced on top of a cube wall. My coworker, who'd been one of the worst non-recyclers pre-email, claimed the can atop the cube as her own and marched it down the hall to the recycling bin. I know for a fact that the bottle belonged to someone else.

So in a twisted way, the nasty attitude of old Battleaxe ended up accomplishing what the janitor had hoped for all along: an office that recycles.

Labels: dose of mikey, sharketing

* posted by me at 1:12 AM

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2005-01-24 
 

things are looking up

G and I did some errands around the city on Saturday. He volunteered to drive, so I decided to have a little blue and took random pictures out of the car window. Some samples:



blue skies



i took MANY pictures looking up



we both shouted, "Dude!" when we saw this



and, of course, sometimes a random biker gets in the way

Labels: 1000 words, g, san francisco, shout out

* posted by me at 11:40 PM

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2005-01-22 
 

dreams of yesterday

Woke up this morning and was surprised to find myself back in San Francisco. An intense batch of dreams directly before waking all took place as if I had only just graduated college and was still living back in New England. During the short period between waking and actually opening my eyes, I found myself feeling happy that I wouldn't be working at the Rock Shop today and wondering if the old gang would be up for a brunch at Bickfords. Weird.

Labels: dose of mikey, looking eastward, memory lane

* posted by me at 1:14 PM

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2005-01-21 
 

images of yesterweek

In my recent trip to visit M and E, most of the pictures ended up showcasing various foods...



a field trip to Pizza Hut to see how pizza's are made



proud pizza maker displaying her creation



me and e at Applebee's



ooooooh....so many choices



oh to see the world through a chocolate covered monocle!

Labels: 1000 words, looking eastward

* posted by me at 11:47 PM

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2005-01-18 
 

beautiful child

Hanging out with a five year old is delightful yet a little frightening at the same time.

E has an infectiously joyful way of looking at the universe around her that makes it so easy to see the magic all around us. At the same time, her ability to work within the times she's been born to awes me. Yesterday, I thought she was just playing with my cell, but she actually wrote her dad a message and sent it. I've never been a person to have blinking clocks on the vcr, but if the day comes when technology zooms past me I definitely want E by my side.

She's only in kindergarten, but she can already read, write, navigate a keyboard...and remembers phone numbers as easily as the names of muppets. Wild!

Labels: looking eastward

* posted by me at 11:58 AM

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2005-01-17 
 

never stop the dance

Went to church yesterday. First time I've been to church on a Sunday in years. G and I will sometimes go to a Taize service on a Wednesday evening to connect with the world in a broader way, but my usual worship preference? Well, Emily Dickinson said it first:

Poem 324
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church -
I keep it, staying at Home -
With a Bobolink for a Chorister -
And an Orchard, for a Dome -

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice -
I just wear my Wings -
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton - sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman -
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven at last -
I'm going, all along.

The church we visited yesterday may've been new, but the clapboard and stone melded with the surrounding colonial town as if it had stood there for centuries. They hold services in the World Room, so called because of a beautiful stained glass window with...yes, a picture of the world on it. We didn't hear a typical sermon though. Instead, they welcomed a special guest preacher, Reverend Dr. Donald Warner, who treated us to an hour of poetry. Several of the poems were accompanied by a young woman doing interpretive dance that really got me thinking.

Dancing as a way of expressing religious joy is underrated in this country amongst most of the dominant churches. People sing to the Lord, paint pictures to praise him, and many other acts of artistic expression, but dance is still tinged with the taint of sin. I'm not going to go all Footloose on you now, because it's really a whole entry of it's own. If it ever gets written, I'll try and remember to recount a certain night at Universe...

Where was I? Oh yes, church. So Dr. Warner is an African American man born in the 1930's and his life boasts some interesting episodes. From growing up as a member of an oppressed minority, to his time spent in the Korean war, to his meeting with MLK Junior, there seems to be little he hasn't seen or done. To hear of his experiences in his own voice and on this particular weekend was truly a treat and appropriate to the moment. While I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't get to see one of the normal Sunday services, I wouldn't trade it. Chances like that come along rarely, and I believe it is better to embrace them when they happen instead of wondering what might have been.

Besides, it's not like that's the only UU church service I'll ever be able to attend...

Labels: looking eastward, spirit

* posted by me at 4:42 PM

(0) comments


 

viva la differance!

Today M told me that children who are consistently exposed to pictures of Earth taken from space think more easily of our planet as a single entity within which we must all work together for the common good.

Tonight, G and I played a couple rounds of cards on the computer while chatting on the phone. The 3000 miles between us melted away briefly. If only we could solve the teleportation conundrum, this world would become yet even more connected and more able to think of ourselves as a cohesive unit. Then the dream of erasing the arbitrary lines we draw between different nations would be a huge step closer to becoming reality.

My inner cynic, never silent, whispers that Hitler had a similar dream of one world, but I'm not about erasing differences. I celebrate differences and work towards the day when unreasonable fears of them disappear.

Easy exposure to different ways of looking at life allows acceptance and cooperation to flourish. Continuing to abide by the imaginary borders we've drawn between ourselves as countries, races and creeds only serves to escalate the fear and distrust.

Since teleportation may be a bit in the future, you can look for a globular update of this site as soon as I can get back to FTPing images to the home page.

Labels: dose of mikey, g, looking eastward

* posted by me at 2:10 AM

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2005-01-15 
 

new friend

I'm in New Jersey visiting an old friend.

Old friend's are the best kind. No standing on ceremony, able to speak truth without silly societal rules about buffering it in layer upon layer of carefully crafted verbiage in order to obscure intent. Making new memories while revisiting cherished ones. But I digress...

My new friend is an airline: Jet Blue. Good prices, friendly service and a sense of humor. Slogan on DirectTV screen at my seat: Without you, we'd just be flying a bunch of TVs around.

G, as is often the case with things of this nature, has been trying to get us onto JBlue since they started having service to Oakland, but I kept a death grip on United because of my fear of losing miles.

It's good to let go. G, thanks for putting up with me. We are SO going to the Bahamas this year.

Labels: dose of mikey, g, looking eastward, random review

* posted by me at 11:25 AM

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2005-01-14 
 

tiny lights in the darkness

While waiting for the barbecue to heat up last night, I wandered out into the center of our rather small back yard. Looking up I could see the Pleiades framed between the leaves of the palm and the redwood.

I first met the sisters almost 15 years ago.

There's about 18 of us bundled up to help protect us from the biting cold that typifies a January night in Massachusetts. Someone passes around a flask of cheap whiskey, but I only take a small sip. Over the past week, I've become fascinated by the astronomy professor and have a deep desire to do well in his class. While whiskey is tempting, I want nothing to impair my ability to remember what he's teaching. We hike out into the middle of a large field. The frozen ground crunching beneath my feet sounds like adventure.

We gather around in a circle and Professor begins going over everything we've studied over the past week...except he's using the real sky instead of a representation in a textbook.

And so I met the Pleiades. Sure there's many other constellations that I like to look up at, but the Pleiades were met first and will always have a special place in my personal mythology.

I had a little smile inside me all last night, and again now as I type this.

Labels: dose of mikey, looking eastward, memory lane

* posted by me at 2:11 AM

(1) comments



2005-01-13 
 

big update in a little box

The sidebar is updated...and the internal architecture of the site has been revised. Might not look like much, but it took quite a few hours over the past two nights to get it into proper order. Pictures are next, but they may need to wait until I return from the East.

Labels: blogging

* posted by me at 1:55 AM

(0) comments



2005-01-11 
 

dirty swedish maids

Yes it's late, but I can't sleep. Checked my stats for the first time in a couple months and People, you might want to stay inside. It's getting a bit odd out there.

Or maybe you want to go out in it. Who am I to judge your kink? Lord knows I've got a few of my own. Warning: I feel this post taking a turn in a direction I would normally block and send over to the backroom, but I'm tired of trying to keep it PG all the time. Backrooms are for X, not PG-13 or R. I suggest that anyone feeling a bit of trepidation right now should scroll quickly past the rest of this Tuesday entry below and read Monday's entry instead. A nice and quiet entry about Australian candy. (Although, I've already been told it was oddly subversive. Go figure.)

Anyhoo, my stats engine lets me know what search strings bring folks to my little hole in cyberspace. Faves of the past 30 days:

dirty swedish maids
edwardian masters and maids
strange love facts
hen strange love
st barts marijuana
tests on if you and you boyfriend still love each other

Honey, if you gotta take a test to find out, I'm doubting that you did in the first place...and while I'm meowing, let me add that it's "YOUR boyfriend" not "you boyfriend."

Hey! Who let the queen out? (whoot, whoot...ah whatever)

My favorite string so far this month: animals that begin with b. So Sesame Street and kinda sweet, but also troubling for a moment or two.

I do worry about kids stumbling in here unaware. Little kids, not teenagers. Hold on a second while I get up on my soapbox and slalom the topic a bit. Steady...okay.

I honestly feel that people don't give teens the credit they deserve. I read Portnoy's Complaint and Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me at age 12. Both contained rather adult subject matter, but like most teens I dealt with what I understood and stored the rest away for future referencing. Now I'm not saying to hook your kids up with these books, especially not at age 12. However, should you find them lying by the kids bed it's time for a conversation and not a scolding...you might also want to prepare them for their future as an English Major...but I digress.

For me, those books, and several other items I found in my parent's collection, kept me from killing myself as a teen. Portnoy, and a mild addiction to the Playboy Advisor, convinced me there'd be no blindness or hair growing on my palms due to my shameful addiction...or from the images I conjured up while indulging in it. (In fact, after enough backlogging through old Advisor columns, I learned that my shameful addiction was actually quite normal. A wonderful spot of calm hope in my otherwise anxious existence.)

Unintentially, Portnoy's, also glamorized therapy. When I eventually lay on the couch myself, the eventual acceptance of surviving abuse had the added bonus of leaving my innerGoth feeling like a true antihero.

Been Down So Long was mostly indeciphrable to me the first time I read through it, but I came away with the sense that everything would be alright if I could only make it to college. For anyone familiar with the book that may seem a strange takeaway, but it was mine and it kept me holding on to life through some tough years. Getting older meant I'd finally get to do things my way and be true to myself and, as an added bonus, college was a place that the mouthbreathers from school wouldn't make it into.

Aside: I actually met a dear friend in college with whom I still have a Pooh/Piglet connection. Radically different from the one in the book, although we did do acid together once...and oh the tea!

And we return you to your regularly scheduled blog: So I've decided that I'm going to trust the internet powers that be and responsible parenting to filter my site away from impressionable young eyes, because while I've been pretty good at keeping myself PG, I have occasionally faltered into the PG-13, or even (GASP) the rare R. Apologies to the more sensitive of you but self censorship of that sort makes me itch, and I'm stopping it right now.

Never fear, X will remain firmly in the backroom with the other consenting adults, but I'm not escorting R out of the room anymore should she make an appearance.

All that being said, let me leave you with a favorite string of curse that I stole outright from another college chum long ago and which I still sing quietly to myself when some unsavory character gets too close to me on public transit.

Shit damn fucking damn fucking damn shit.

Please note that normally this is said alltogether as one word, sort of like supercalifragiletcetera. Shitdamnfuckingdamnfuckingdamnshit. I've just added in the spaces above to help those content advisors filter me out.

Refreshing!

Labels: blogging, dose of mikey, memory lane, reading

* posted by me at 3:24 AM

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2005-01-10 
 

strange candy

Coworker returned from her trip to Australia bearing traditional Australian sweets. Well traditional, colonial Australian sweets. Which means they're mostly British type things with names like Violet Crumble and Cherry Ripe. I did find a Caramello Koala though. The small print on the back tells me that it originated in Tasmania. That's enough to tempt me into trying it right now...but I'm being good. I already filled myself up on G's latest ice cream concoction: Chocolate Chip with REAL chocolate chips instead of the little shards that come in the store bought kind.

Koala's would be overkill.

Labels: dose of mikey, sharketing

* posted by me at 11:44 PM

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2005-01-09 
 

giving thanks

After all my worries about meeting new people yesterday, it ended up being a very nice time.

Snapshot: We're all getting in line to grab food and the truck driver tells us that we'll say grace first. So we're all in a tight circle holding hands in an appropriately suburban kitchen and I'm expecting...I don't know what. G's family isn't very religious, but this is a friend of the family. I guess I'm hoping that the guy doesn't say anything that's going to cause hurt and make me have to speak up on behalf of the little people.

Where's my trust in the universe gone? He proceeded to say one of the nicest graces I've ever heard. Spoken from the heart by a man who believes in the same Jesus I've known since childhood. The Jesus who loves the little children and tells us that love surpasses all other things. The Jesus who accepts all people regardless of background or life situation because it isn't about what makes us different, but instead what makes us the same.

Insert the word God or Goddess in there if the name Jesus makes you too uncomfortable. He doesn't mind.

It was nice to spend some time with him again.

Truck Driver and the Beary Nice Lady are Unitarians. I'm thinking of having M take me to a service next week when I'm visiting her and little E. I'm intrigued.

Labels: dose of mikey, g, local getaway, spirit

* posted by me at 1:24 PM

(1) comments



2005-01-08 
 

family fun

Three family type things to report today.

Spoke with cousin J last night for almost an hour and a half. About the first time in over a year that we've connected. Trip-o-matic! It was really good to catch up and hear what was going on with her and the other cousin types. We've promised to plan a cousin night next time G and I make it back east. Dude and Dudette will have to come along as well.

I admit that all the crap that happened between our parents can still make for an awkward moment now and again, but if we agree to let the embers of those arguments burn out with our parents instead of adding fuel to the fire, we should all be ok.

Speaking of get togethers. Friends of G's family are having a belated holiday afternoon over in Fremont today. I'm trying to choose to be in a good mood about it, but I have enough social anxiety disorder type thoughts to still get knots in my stomach when it comes to meeting new folks. Especially when they're on the husband's side of the family.

In other, less stressful news, Michael Upstairs has his own blog now. I've permalinked to Try Not To Panic over in my various sites column and will be officially changing his LAOD name to Mr. Panic. Partially because it sounds like a superhero with issues, but mostly because I like his blog title.

Aside: He does look like a twisted version of Marylin Manson when in drag. Doesn't he?

Labels: blogging, dose of mikey, looking eastward

* posted by me at 4:26 PM

(1) comments



2005-01-07 
 

bleh

The wind blusters outside and the sky throws down water at inconvenient moments. Part of me rejoices in the glory of nature, but then another part just feels weak and tired.

Maybe I stayed up too late last night reading, maybe it's post holiday ennui, or maybe it's just the way the day goes sometimes.

Labels: dose of mikey, reading

* posted by me at 7:12 PM

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2005-01-03 
 

memories of a day mare

I took my lunch break at my desk today in order to read through recaps of some of my fave shows on Television Without Pity.

I've avoided TWP for quite some time now because I knew that it would become like heroin to me, yet another maze to lose myself in on the internet. See, what I love about the internet is the words. Pictures, moving images, and sound all add to the experience, but I'm almost happier with a text-centric page since I've always had the ability to bring text to life inside my head. It's not as intense when reading non-fiction, but exists in a watered down form. The more descriptive the passage, the better the trip.

I don't read fiction as often as I'd like because this ability to shut out everything but the vision of what I'm reading can sometimes distract from important happenings in the physical world around me. This made itself clear again today when a link from a page on TWP describing an episode of LOST took me for a ride into memory town.

The author made a reference to a series of books I'd been quite obsessed with as a teenager. He also kindly linked to a web page recapping each chapter. Only a few lines to describe each chapter, but the characters and places depicted jumped back to life for me as if I'd only left them yesterday. Entire story lines were pulled from somewhere in my subconscious and began playing again.

Sitting at your desk and having a vision of a story you once knew is not the best thing to be doing at work. My parents used to tell me that they could've cracked an egg over my head while I was reading and I would only have noticed should the yolk come between myself and the pages.

The VP who stopped by didn't have an egg and it took him tapping me on the shoulder to break me out of it.

Now a tap on the shoulder may not seem a worthy alert based on my earlier mention of a cracked egg on the head so I need to confess to the following: It wasn't the tap that actually alerted me, but the fact that someone had "invaded" my cube. Funny how easy it is to feel territorial about a small square of space that the company truly owns.

Fortunately it was just after lunch, and the VP's a nice guy, but I don't think he would've been quite as amused if it had been a bit earlier or later in the day.

All that being said, I wouldn't trade my ability to fade into the written word for anything in the world. In fact, I plan to indulge in it a bit more often -at appropriate times of course- in hopes of avoiding a future workplace incident.

Labels: dose of mikey, linkage, memory lane, random review, reading, sharketing, writing

* posted by me at 11:03 PM

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2005-01-02 
 

present tense

I'd forgotten how much I used to love Utah Saints' Something Good until today. It's a catchy dance remix of Kate Bush's Cloudbusting and, like Kate's original, always filled me with a sense of hope back in the day.

Chanced upon the song again this afternoon while sifting through the internet and grooved along for a bit. Happy realization: I've gone from knowing something good is going to happen to knowing something good is happening. (Not that I ever give up hoping for more, but that's just human.)

Labels: dose of mikey

* posted by me at 10:10 PM

(3) comments



2005-01-01 
 

testing 1-2-3

Happy 2005 everyone. Ours started off with the sound of rushing water. First from the torrential rains. (well, torrential for SF) Then it stopped raining, but the water kept rushing. Our neighbor had broken the valve on his tub and it overflowed for quite some time until they finally turned off the water to the whole building. It's back on now, but I had a good excuse to delay my shower and just futz with the computer for a while.

Trying some new things here at LAOD. Site is due for it's annual update over the next few months, but I'll be testing some things earlier than that. Get excited!

Labels: blogging, dose of mikey

* posted by me at 4:16 PM

(6) comments