Cold Call Cold Shoulder

Salesmen, as every sane person knows, are the lowest known form of life.

Insurance Salesmen are the lowest known form of salesman - thereby making the single-cell paramecium look rather like a galaxy-sized complex organism by comparison.

Hey, salesman? Coming to the door at NOON FIFTEEN - is NOT the way to introduce yourself to a potential new client. You have just managed to do several things...

1) you have pissed off the backup receptionist who

a) Does not want to have to deal with people at the door
b) Has her own work to finish and has reluctantly agreed to put up with answering the phone so the receptionist can eat

2) You are NEVER, EVER, EVER, under ANY circumstances, going to get to see the "Traffic Manager" - because HE'S EATING LUNCH, YOU FUCKING MORON!!!

3) You've committed the lower-level of sexual harassment by mentioning how "cute" the receptionist's nails are. Shut the fuck up and slink off back to the tar pit you oozed out of this morning, buttwipe. She's young enough to be your daughter - PERVERT.


Guess what, assmunch? The receptionist came back to my office and asked how to deal with you. You're lucky she's a nicer person than I am. What I told her, and what she told you are very different things. Same result, but at least she didn't call you what I did, foreskin breath.

So now, you've pissed off the accountant too. Which means that if the traffic manager ever DOES make the collosal mistake of doing business with your company - I'll make sure it takes a looooonnnnnnnggggggggg time for you to get paid.

Die in a fire.

409 days

What I did on my Late-Autumn vacation - cont'd.

So, I met Brisco the dog, and got the royal treatment by S and Leandra - including all the Diet Pepsi I could stand. These 2 women are great cooks, btw. Thanksgiving feast was absolutely awesome, I even ate a second helping of orange potatoes (yams, sweet potatoes... whatever. They're orange.) I usually don't because folks make them too syrupy sweet. These were great.

I have no idea what order things went in from this point - but we drove into Seattle to visit a store I found there years ago when I was with Flappy - Gargoyles Statuary - in the university district. I love this store. It's got atmosphere and some really adorable merchandise. The prices aren't entirely outrageous either - although I have to limit myself to ONE piece each visit (I could easily load up on them!)

Leandra loved it too - she bought a cute little squatty round box with a dragon on the lid, done in a verdigris on black finish with celtic knots around the bottom part. I got a moon goddess in a dark walnut stain.

This is the same shop that sold me "Smokey" - my dragon. Nothing there was quite as impressive as Smokey this time - but everything is visually interesting and although the store is not huge, it does take quite a while to check the whole place out. I picked up one of their catalogs on the way out.

Then we went to do lunch. I kinda wanted seafood, so Lea asked her Garmin GPS (Lea is directionally-challenged) for a restaurant, and it led us to a mall. I am going to suppose that the seafood place was in the mall somewhere, but we didn't feel like braving mall traffic on the weekend after Tgiving, so we decided to go to the mexican restaurant around the corner. Food was good, but when we left, the GPS unit kept trying to get us to go back into the mall, instead of giving up on that and letting us go home.

Eventually we got home, however, and without having to stop for more coffee!!

We did a lot more running about and having a good time - just spending time with my friend and her daughter was great.

Flew home on Monday, a little more crowded than on the way out, but not too bad, except for having to get up at O-Dark-Thirty to get to the airport before dawn. (While Starbucks does not open that early - the espresso-hut did!! 24oz mocha with 2 extra shots...) Another semi-uneventful flight (kept getting knocked in the knee by the drinks cart as the flight-floozies rolled it back and forth repeatedly.)

Got back to O'Hare, bit of a wait on the luggage, took a cab back to the house - got in around 5:30 pm, and spent the rest of the evening being very POINTEDLY ignored by two miffed cats who felt they had been deprived of their Bastet-Given-Right to pets on demand.

After emptying my suitcase almost directly into the clothes washer, I cooked up a batch of "Tyson's Jumbo Wings O'Fire", had a nice large glass of wine and sacked out early - knowing I had to go to work the next day.

The rest of the week I spent catching up at work and agonizing over what to get for C&L for a baby gift. C works with me, and his wife L is expecting their first, and the shower was on this last Saturday. I ended up hitting K-Mart and picking up a few odds & ends in green and yellow (they've opted to wait for the birth to find out gender), and a copy of Dr. Spock and a set of childproofing locks & latches & socketplugs. Her mom and 2 other relatives (aunt? cousin? I'm terrible with this stuff) really threw a heck of a bash. Nice posh restaurant/banquet hall, good food and pretty decorations.

These ladies could start their own mini-business doing party consulting, with their attention to detail.

So, starting tonite, I'm going to have to get all those holiday cards finished and into the mail, and then I think I'll try to find some time to work in a pedicure and some "me" time.

But it's been fun - and I think I'm liking that again!

412 days

Testing - 1-2-3

Hello? hello? Is this thing on? *tap tap*

Where in the world has Sewmouse gone? I'm sure all of you have been frantically asking this... Several of you? Maybe one? Certainly one??? *sigh*

Anyhow - that little monster known as RL (Real Life®) caught up with me and I've been slightly incommunicado for a few weeks.

So, lets see - where to start.

Got back from Florida and got hauled back into the craziness that is end-of-year processing. Despite all the hustle and bustle at work, I really do like what I do, and I like the people I work for and with - so even though it is busy and a bit crazy, I go home feeling tired but good.

At home, the computer decided to start screwing up on me, turning off the keyboard and other delightful things, so I decided to get to work on my crafty projects instead of websurfing and blogging.

I'm working on putting together homemade "seasonal" cards. Christmas cards for my family and Christmas-celebrating friends, Yule cards for others, "winter" cards for others yet. So far I've had several turn out great, and a much larger number that have had to be discarded for lack of greatness. I'm picky about what I will send out.

This brings us up to the Tuesday before our US "Thanksgiving" holiday. In a fit of complete insanity, Leandra and her daughter "S" sent me a plane ticket to come to Seattle to spend Thanksgiving plus a long weekend with them and their dog.

(Leandra will now thwap me and remind me the dog only belongs to S, and that she is NOT Brisco's "doggy gramma".)

For some bizarre reason I found myself getting rather quietly paranoid of the whole TSA/DHS gauntlet at the airport. I kept seeing myself getting pulled out of the line and denied boarding for being a "terrah-ist" because I had my laptop charger/cord in my breifcase, or because of the "Backwards Bush" countdown timer on my keychain (I left that at home!!) or because of my blood-glucose meter that looks like some kind of weird James-Bond-ish bomb triggering device.

Hey! Just because I'm paranoid does not mean everyone is NOT out to get me!!

Anyhow, this became a great joke among SOME folks who shall go nameless but were called "Brat" and scowled at.

Other things that concerned me were what to do about my car, and packing. I wanted to bring some things to work on, since there would be a lot of "down time" during the football games and stuff, and I get antsy and anxious if I'm just sitting with nothing to "do". I brought along a couple skeins of this bright multi-colored yarn and some plastic crochet hooks. I also brought the fabrics for YET ANOTHER quilt top I'm working on - but didn't get to them, other than to show Leandra how well they "meshed" in the color scheme.

Clothes, sweaters, hygiene products, newly-purchased hairbrush since the one went AWOL in Florida... Leandra's birthday present, some books, my laptop, a couple DVD's (5-hour flight), and my fuzzy foamy slippers. Good thing on the foamy slippers, too - since they only have a wood-burning stove for heat and I'm a forced-air-natural-gas-furnace kind of gal.

Fortunately, through the goodness of a couple of my co-workers, I was able to leave my car at my house and take a cab home from the airport when I got back. At $22/day for parking at O'Hare, (in the "CHEAP" lots!!!) it would cost more than the damn airfare just to park there while I was gone. So one kind co-worker - "D" - drove me and my luggage from home to the office, then another co-worker - "T" - took me to the airport. "T" is a supervisor, and so it was even more impressive to me that he would take time from his schedule to haul me and my luggage around. I doubt either of them reads this, but... Thanks guys!!

Since I was leaving early on a non-major carrier the day before the "rush" travel day, I didn't have much trouble getting checked in, and no trouble at all with security. Found a nice place to sit down at the gate and about 10 min after I got there, they announced a 2-hour delay. *sigh*

10 minutes before we were supposed to start boarding, they announced another delay - another hour or more. I wandered off and got something to eat and some coffee to tide me over. After about 25 minutes, they announced boarding, so whatever was the holdup got resolved. The flight was uneventful, I watched one of my movies on the laptop, and got to Seattle about 10 pm. local. My luggage came down 3rd of the pieces from my flight, so that was all easy. Snagged a Starbucks mocha for the drive out to Everett and we got home about 11 or so.

Seattle and surrounds are great. A bit too hilly/lumpy for me because of the stick-shift thing, but damn if there isn't an espresso hut on every other streetcorner. Kind of pretty too. Reminds me a bit of Denver.

First thing when I walked in the door, I got to meet Brisco. Brisco is a 60 lb. German Shorthair Pointer - (I think that's right?) mostly brown with some white on his chest and muzzle. LONG muzzle, and a funny bulbous nose, dark brown eyes you could get lost in - long legs, stub tail and long silky ears. Wayyyy full of energy. A real DOG dog. I liked him right off.

I enjoyed him a lot - the only "down side" is that he's a food thief and you have to watch him every second if there's anything within reach that might even be MISTAKEN for edible. Dog has poisoned himself with chocolate, raisins and some other "people-foods" that dogs should never eat. Even had to watch him with the champagne. He didn't go after my diet pepsi, however.

Ok - this is becoming "wall of text" - I'll post more later.

413 days