The Inner Rantings of a Disillusioned Never-Been

Another Laundromat Rant

WARNING: This may be really offensive to some people, but I need to get it out of my system because I don't want to dwell on it. If you don't wanna read it, skip to the next bold heading.

I may complain about the Mexicans leering at me and sneeze from their wives' perfume, but at least they don't reek like B.O., ass and stale cigarettes.

Today at the laundromat, there was a woman who smelled like that. I demonstrated the self-restraint not to gag or retch when she came anywhere near me, although I could still smell her when she was 6' away. I also tried very hard to tell myself that maybe she's mentally ill and it's tough enough to take care of other things when your brain is wired that way because your illness takes over.

So I feel like I'm not being entirely fair, even though I almost got sick from the smell.

Fortunately for me and my big mouth, I was almost finished drying all of my laundry and I made it out of there before I got sick or said something mean and rude.

END RANT.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!. . . well, almost. . .

Matthew and I did some major costume-shopping this past weekend. . . and costume finishing touches last night and tonight. I still have one more big project to finish and I hope it turns out OK.

Hopefully my costume - which shall remain a secret to the world at large (although I've blabbed already to a few of my buddies) - will be as sexy as I wanted it to be once it's all put together. . . in the meantime, we shall see what we shall see.

Yet ANOTHER Ten-Hour Day. . .

Not that I particularly needed to put the extra couple hours in, but since they changed the trains around enough to throw me off-kilter, I decided to finish my secondary project after I'd finished the first.

Now I'm down to my last two regular projects and my last two 'special' projects. And I'm almost sorry to see the pressure end.

Note that I said "almost". In the meantime, I've got all the project work I can deal with this week.


p.s. - Thank you Matthew for correcting my quote.

Today's Open Question:

Why is it the case when I've got my headphones on that men (not women, you understand, but MEN) looking for a seat on the train will, without fail, either TAP ME ON THE SHOULDER or SHAKE MY SHOULDER TO GET MY ATTENTION before trying another tack, say, oh I don't know. . .TALKING?

What the fuck?!?!?!?

So Tired. . .

I'm exhausted from the activity-filled weekend we spent hanging out with friends, fanboys and fun-fun-fun. . .

For starters, Matt and I had our "mini-date" on Friday night. . . I got home from work, showered and even put on makeup so we could go get greasy Hooters burgers before heading to the Crankcase show at the Hard Rock. Crankcase was good, it was cool to get together with people like Randi, Dave, Gwen, Doogie, Gary, Michael and Petrina. . . plus we got to chat with our other buddies and get excited about Halloween.

After we bailed on the Hard Rock, we headed to the Village. Matt was intoxicated enough to listen to me on how to get there, which, honestly, is not a good idea, because I have very localized concepts of NYC. As in, I can find my way to one or two places, but the rest of it is kinda screwy.

We bought another piece of my Halloween costume, among other assorted sundry items, before heading back to the Jersey Shore and bed.

On Saturday, we got up early (for us) and headed to the diner where we had yummy food (he had pancakes, I had an omelette) and did some more Halloween scouting. . . we managed to find another piece and some hair dye to start finishing things up. I'm still missing about 3 or 4 items, but we're good to go otherwise.

Saturday night was fun, although we did go to Great Adventure for Fright Fest. . . the lines were waaaay too long to go on anything really good, but we did OK anyway because we hit my favorite ride, the Runaway Mine Train. OK, so it doesn't go upside down or anything, but it's a great warm-up ride. . . of course, due to the popularity of the event, we'd made up our minds that we wanted to go watch the Yankee game and eat Chinese food, so that meant leaving the park by 7pm. On the way home, I took a nap after I'd finished talking to my sister and made up my mind what I wanted from the Chinese food place.

They botched our order, but it was OK because we were too tired to bother figuring out what had happened and too hungry to care. We stopped watching the Yanks losing at about the 5th or so inning, and just snuggled up for a nice sleep. . . conveniently forgetting that it was the end of Daylight Savings time. . . until I woke up in the middle of the night and reset the alarm clock.

Sunday was our lazy day. We didn't mean for it to be, but we needed to rest after the activity-load we'd put ourselves through. Sunday was leftovers, football and pizza. All yummy fun things that we love.

We've got big plans for the weekend . . . it's the year anniversary of when we met, so we're trying to make it special. =)

Growl

Rant alert: Yes, I am bitchy and self-centered today, so if you want to read something fun, skip this part and go to the second bold heading.

It seems that whatever it is they pay me to do here, on Fridays, I'm really earning my keep.

Today, nothing is going right and the office is freezing. Although there are parts of the office which are boiling hot, so I don't know what's up with our heating/cooling system. . . well, other than the fact that it's something like 80 years old. And union-maintained. In Newark.

So I guess I just have to buy a pair of gloves to keep here so I can type.

End rant.


Another Reason Why Matt is the Bestest. . .

Matt is the bestest because he came over yesterday and not only rubbed my back but also made me dinner and cuddled me. I've been feeling under the weather, so it's easy to feel under-appreciated. Matt made me feel appreciated.

Home Sick. . .

When I was a little kid, being home sick was fun. I didn't have to face the bus or the kids who teased me and I got more attention than I ever would have gotten because I wasn't feeling well. Plus, I got to watch as much TV as I wanted. This was a great time for afternoon cartoons. . . the 1980's. We had Inspector Gadget, Thundercats, He-Man and She-Ra. All of which came on TV long before I got home from school, because I had to take the bus. . .this also puzzled me. I lived barely a mile away from my school, yet my bus route was always the last one to arrive. But that's another rant for another day.

Now, I try not to stay home sick if I can avoid it because there's only so much daytime TV I can stand. And I hate feeling icky.

Cleaning. . .

Today I scrubbed my kitchen floor.

Judging from the color it turned my rinse waters (several small buckets, emptied several times) and stained my yellow sponge, it was pretty darn icky. If I hadn't been using that "new" 'don't-mop-with-dirty-water-again-formula' Pine Sol (I like the orange scent; it doesn't upset my tummy), I'm sure I would have had to empty the wash bucket a few times, too.

I finally have my house cleaned in a "big-clean" way and I feel I'm doing an OK (not great, I understand) job of maintaining it so far. There are a couple of things I need to work on, like not leaving dirty dishes in the sink for days and days, but overall, I'm better than I used to be. Trust me.

I'm beginning to unlearn habits I picked up from my father. . . and I realized today that my allergies are much more manageable when my apartment is clean.

My next task is emptying the vacuum canister, something I can't do without a dust mask (or the rough equivalent of a handkerchief tied around my mouth and nose) and must be done in the backyard. Fortunately, the downstairs neighbors don't get home until after 7pm. . . allowing me the luxury of emptying my dust outside long before they can catch me doing it. I also have to remember to call DPW about disposing of my now-rotten tiki torches so that they're not blocking the basement and the gas guy can go in and read the meter. Something I asked for 3 months ago but they haven't done yet. Now, that kind of stuff makes me really angry because I'm being responsible and trying really hard to budget accurately for my energy costs and I feel like I've been thwarted. And they're going to charge me $500 for energy I've been using so far . . . in June during a heat wave. . . bastards.

I also got my cable bill and it's $10 cheaper than last month's and I can't figure why. . . I have a feeling that I'm being cheated and can't figure how, aside from the fact that they won't let me trade the Disney channel and ABC Family for Food Network and SciFi, but that's a different story for a different day.

Grocery Shopping

Yesterday, Matt let me borrow his SUV to go grocery shopping.

I am a decent driver, so I didn't get into any trouble, but I have decided that I don't like driving SUV's one bit. What I really don't like about them this week is that they make me feel really little.

Not small, you understand, but little, like when you're a 5-year-old kid and you're asking your parents for a 10-speed even though you can't reach the pedals.

Other than that, Sunday night grocery shopping can be the pits. Fortunately, it's not as bad as Sunday after-church grocery shopping, so I didn't feel terribly murderous towards anyone except for the overweight pantload who took eight years to figure out which paper towels she was going to buy and glared at me because I had my cart in her way.

And the Scrubbing Bubbles cleaner is on sale. I love the scrubby bubbles. When I was a little kid, the ads used to have these cool little cartoon bubble-dudes who would clean your whole bathroom. . . all you had to do was press the spray-button and SHAZAM! your bathroom was clean, and the bubbles would sing and scrub.

Now, I'm sure, a part of me knew that this really didn't happen and that you had to work, but even so, I was very disappointed that it didn't the first time I used the cleaner. Of course, this and Oxi-Clean are the best ways to clean a bathroom, and it's better for the tub-fitter tub I have in my bathroom than the abrasive Oxi-Clean. I had to remember that I'd already bought scrubby-bubbles so that I wouldn't put them on the shopping list. . . or put them in the cart when I was in the cleaner aisle to get paper towels.

Yet Another Reason Why the Laundromat SUCKS. . .

Today I slaved over laundry.

Not that I particularly loathe doing laundry in principle, but in practice, it sucks hairy gorilla balls. And I loathe doing laundry in practice.

Today's outdoor temperature was a balmy 63 degrees; inside the laundromat, however, it was the bowels of Hell. Even with the back door open.

It was crawling with the Latino families and a few college kids, as is usual for a Sunday, but for whatever reason (non-stop dryers, owner turned on the heat, the heat was too high, the temp wasn't cold enough to warrant using said heat. . .), it was BOILING HOT in there. I started my laundry (1 quad-loader of sheets & towels, 2 single loads of hot-water and cold-water clothes respectively) and shot across the street for cash (I'm paranoid about having enough quarters to dry my clothes) and, while at the little convenience store, bought 2 cans of COLD Arizona iced tea so that I wouldn't end up passing out before I could finish the wash.

I still got sweaty and nauseated, but it's finally over.

Next time, I'm going to do laundry on a Thursday night. It's much less crowded and the temperature isn't half so high.

FRIDAY!!!!!!!!

My brain is officially switched off. Let the weekend begin!

It's really too bad that people have to be asses sometimes, so the former site of a friend of mine had to be taken down.

She's gone through a ton of crap lately, of the kind that's hardest to go through, so if you're reading this at any time, I'm sending you a big hug and a feel better soon, OK?

I'm Addicted to The Learning Channel

For reasons I may blame on my former roommate, I am completely addicted to TLC.

I look so forward to my Thursdays when I start with Paz and Magic Schoolbus cartoons and time my workouts against all of the "Story" shows (the only one I don't like is 'A Dating Story' because I find it dull and irritating), finishing up with my usual Trading Spaces and While You Were Out.

Now, TLC started a new show a few weeks back called Perfect Proposal. I must be becoming a sap in my old age because this show really makes me smile. I think it's one of the sweetest and most endearing reality TV shows out there today and you should all watch it. The first one I saw, this guy arranged it so that he'd propose to his sweetie during a show at clown camp. . . and he'd worked with the show to bring both sets of parents to be there as it happened. They were there, dressed as clowns, as he came out in a tux and did the whole one-knee bit and everything. . . and I got all choked up.

Now, I've never really imagined myself as the marrying type, but these are the kinds of voyeuristic experiences I can really get into. They show how creative and sweet guys can be, as opposed to manipulative and boring (like a few of my ex-boyfriends), and how much they care about their sweethearts. It's even better than Bridezillas.

I think I might be growing up into a girl. . .

The Phrase of the Day is. . .

Meatloaf ROCKS.

And I think he makes Newark seem less scary.

Meatloaf is an artist whose weight precedes and often eclipses his talent, which is straight-up, undiluted, 100% American rock-and-roll. Rarely does he ever get the credit he deserves and has become a pop-culture bad-hair-day with the ubiquitous anti-ballad Paradise By the Dashboard Light. A song that is now heard at each and every middle school dance I ever went to and *shudder* many DJ-ed weddings.

It's about what should have been a ONE-NIGHT-STAND, and they play it at weddings and middle school dances. Yeah, OK people. This just proves that nobody listens to lyrics anymore.

Tuesday is the Longest Day of the Week

For multiple reasons, Tuesday has become the longest day of my work-week.

I can start with my weekly Tuesday task of running a web-based report that pulls all my projects, based on my name, into a nice little list. . . that I then have to play with in Excel, and, since I'm so anal-retentive about work-related things, color-code it.

Since the year is almost over, this takes about 10 minutes, complete with color-coded text and filled-in rows. It's like tie-dye only not as smelly.

Then, the morning is broken up by the weekly team meeting. This is where we bitch about our editors and discuss how sick reality TV is getting. I'm anxiously anticipating next Monday's start of The Next Joe Millionaire on Fox. . .I rationalize it that Euro-trash women look much funnier being gold-diggers than American-trash women do. And using them as pawns in a reality TV-show doesn't make me feel as icky as it did when American women were used that way.

If I remember to eat lunch, which inevitably falls shortly after the team meeting, I have a brief respite in which to check the barrage of voicemails and e-mails that managed to accumulate while I was debating the finer points of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy with my teammates as we all pretended to sound important. . . then I have a status-check meeting with the team-lead for a project-team I've recently joined. This bugs me because we could just as easily catch up via e-mail, but this is the way her regular team does things, so she's not likely to change. On the plus side, it's only for another month or two and, without it, I wouldn't leave my cube.

Lastly, at the time when I'm normally departing the angry city of Newark for home, there's yet another project-team status meeting. This time with everybody working on the project. EVERYBODY. Including the editorial team lead, the editors and my peers.

OK, then I get to go home, right? Wrong.

Since I'm still at the office, I check my e-mail for any urgent work. And there's always something to be done. Today, that "something" kept me in the office until 6pm.

I get in at 7:30am. I have been arriving at the office at 7:30am since my first week on the job. Two and a half years ago. You'd think someone would've noticed by now that my hours are early.

Now, my biggest questions are:

Why does everyone leave the urgent-it-has-to-be-done-tonight work until the last possible second? Or until after I've normally left the office? And then wonder why it's not done in my usual 15 minutes?

Oh well. I'll get over it as long as I have plenty of mullet-rock to tide me over.

Say what you will, BUT. . .

(For those of you who don't feel the need to read my short rant, I can't even distract you with pics of boobies. . .unless they're the blue-footed kind, seen here:

. . . because I'm at work. Sorry about that.)

** SOAPBOX ALERT!!!**

It's just plain WRONG to use a wrestling takedown on a 72-year-old man. Even if he is charging you like a mad rhinoceros. But, like the rhino, he probably doesn't have the best reaction time in the world, nor would he be able to easily shift his already off-balance bulk all that quickly, should you have moved aside at the last second. You are not a man for doing that, you are a bully.

*steps off soapbox*

Other than that, Matthew has come up with an idea for me for Halloween that gave me CHILLS! It's rather sexy, albeit safe-for-work sexy, and I LOVE the concept.

I'm not sure exactly how we're going to do it just yet, but if it comes to fruition, I'll post pics.

More Music. . .

Because the majority of my CD collection is currently either 'Weird Al' or showtunes, Matt decided it was way past time to begin my pop-cultural education.

So he's been bringing me CD's for train music, like the new Bowie, Queen and Dido albums, in addition to compilation CD's with quirky names like Mullet Rock or The Greatest Air Guitar Hits. I'm in heaven.

I get all the songs that I only know the choruses to, plus all the air guitar music I can handle. . . only I'm not silly enough to start dancing or headbanging to them. Yet. I caught myself in a mini-headbang today when the live version of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' was playing on the CD, but nobody on the train would have noticed at that point. Which is probably a good thing whether they noticed or not, simply because if they had noticed, I would have kept my seat to myself on suspicion of mental illness reasons. :)

Other than that, today is Friday and we're gonna get pizza. Yum.

I Don't Know HOW I Missed This One. . .

The Democratic Candidate Debate Drinking Game

It's too funny.

Thursday. . .

I got through more than half the week. . . YAY!

Matt and I went out last night to do a little Halloween costume inspiration shopping. Then we thought it would be cool to run up the Interstate and check out Bridgewater Commons Mall, and maybe get some pleather pants from Hot Topic.

Funny thing is, Bridgewater Commons is too high-profile for Hot Topic. The closest they've got is. . . SPENCER GIFTS.

It's back to a real mall for the pants, then.

Aside from that, despite the feeling that this might make me a real poser, I am in LOVE with my new, "double-length", Queen concert album. It's a great recording that makes you almost forget that Freddie Mercury died 11 years ago. Then you hear Who Wants to Live Forever, quite possibly one of the single greatest songs EVER written and maybe one of the reasons why I can "hear" the Vampire Lestat songs so clearly when I re-read Queen of the Damned. All-in-all, Queen is brilliant.

And Now for Something Completely Different . . .



This is what fashion looks like in Milan this year.

Uncanny . . .

OK, in addition to taking the Amtrak today (something I haven't been running late enough to do since September 11, 2001), when I got off the train today, the song from the Bruce concert that was blaring through my headphones was My City of Ruins.

Although he dedicated it the night of the concert to NJ Food Bank and Asbury Park, it could just as easily have gone out to Newark. Or any number of NJ cities hard hit by disaster, natural or otherwise.

The other uncanny thing about it is that it appears on his album, The Rising, which he wrote in response to . . . September 11th. *EDIT: Many of the album's songs were written as a response to Sept. 11th. My City of Ruins, however, was written about Asbury Park, prior to September 11th. Many, many thanks go to Matty for the info!*

I was absolutely bawling today, even during the upbeat and happy songs, for all the memories it brought back. It might be time to write out my "thank you" note to the Band to exorcise some of the tears.

It Struck Me Today . . .

I believe in the love that you gave me,
I believe in the faith that can save me,
I believe in the hope that can raise me above these
Badlands, you gotta live it every day,
Let the broken hearts stand
As the price you've gotta pay
We'll keep pushin' 'til it's understood
and these Badlands start treatin' us good

As I got off the train in Newark today, this song was playing on my walkman and I realized, as I walked through the once proud streets, that it could just as easily be Newark's theme song if it ever starts to turn around in years that don't have an election in November.

I find the most depressing and draining thing about Newark to be the fact that, like other New Jersey cities - Asbury Park, New Brunswick, Paterson, etc. - it was once a great place. But then the times changed. Housing was replaced by factories. . . which were replaced by office jobs and apartment housing. Middle- and upper-class people moved out of the cities to the suburbs, leaving the working-class folks to deal with rising poverty and crime rates, amidst political machines and corruption scandals. Many of the larger cities were hit hard by the "race-riots" of the 1960's. It's 2003 and you can still see the scars!

But maybe, just maybe, things will keep getting better and there will be a future.

I have trouble believing it for Newark, but less trouble believing it for New Brunswick, even if change only happens during an election year.

Changing It Up . . .

So the commute this morning was the usual . . . I'm sleepy and don't care much what happens. Just remind me that listening to The Rising makes me cry, no matter how upbeat the song is. . . and crying on the train with no tissues makes me feel icky.

My day passed as it normally would, excepting of course, the tool we use to generate book pages was DOWN for the 4th day in a row.

So it means I really have to think about how I'm doing my job until they fix the automatic tool. This is not a bad thing.

My afternoon commute was much better because of my new portable CD player and the recording of the Bruce concert I went to this summer, all courtesy of Matthew. Thank you. The CD alone kept me from wanting to kill the 6 little kids who seemed to feel it was not only their right but also their duty to scream and yell and carry on while horsing around on the train ride home from NYC.

I have been promised more music, and a way to make a master-mix CD of my happy-tunes, in the future. It would have happened sooner, but I haven't got any blank CD's.

So, I've gotten through Monday. HOORAY! 4 more days to go. . .

Today's Quote. . .

"Although it may seem that the masses have a vote in architecture and in music or rhetoric or painting, the fact is that this happens only when time and informed opinion have revealed the truth. And if once in a while popular taste is right, it is usually by accident and is not worth taking into account." - El Greco

Keep in mind that this quote surfaces in an article riffing on the Met's exhibition, entitled 'El Greco', starting on Tuesday. I happen to really, really, really want to see this exhibition, even though it means standing in line for a while (Mom and I stood on the Leonardo line for what felt like 3 hours!) and following security protocols to the letter. Hopefully, I will be able to make time to go see it. . . and finally see the full-size versions of those paintings reproduced as tiny inset pictures.

Cold-Snap. . .

I love cold weather.

Yes, I bitch about it, but, to tell the truth, the colder the day, the better I feel. Besides, if you're cold, you can always put another layer on. . . if you're too hot, well, there's only so much you can take off.

I don't like snow and ice, but I love the cold. It makes all the outdoor allergens go bye-bye and the college kids have to stay inside to party. And it means I can break out my sweaters and start wearing mittens.

Today was a hat-mittens-coat-scarf day. =)

In Late, Stay Late. . .

So because I stayed out late last night, and it was a planned thing, I'd asked my boss's permission to come into work late today. I discovered that although I function much better on more sleep, I decidedly do NOT like being at work after 5pm. I worked 10-6 today, rather than my 7:30-3:30. . . so, today, it was dark outside when I got home.

Add this to the fact that today was rather chilly and autumnal today, and I was not in the best mood to go do laundry.

But, laundry is a necessary evil and there aren't any laundry facilities at my apartment. . . so I betook myself to the laundromat. Which, despite its being crowded when I got there, had cleared out by the time I wanted to dry my clothes. This had the end result of my getting BOTH 10-minute dryers (yay!) instead of having to suffer through the 8-minute ones.

Tomorrow is my telecommute day, so I got to watch The West Wing as my TV treat. . . of course, sleep is a ways off, since my downstairs neighbors have no sense of courtesy, or of the volume of their telephone voices, and they are currently on the phone. Like they were last night. And the night before. And, I'm sure, the night before that, although I didn't really pay too much attention.

I'm starting to loathe them, you know.