We made it.

I'm so glad we all made it through yesterday, which was, of course, Jan. 1st, 2011.

I'm sure all of you had heard or read several times throughout the day about how the date was 1-1-11 and if that didn't creep you out enough, people would go on to point out how 2011 is the sum of all prime numbers, etc.

They're are all valid points but.....DID YOU REALIZE that 1+1+1+1 = 4 and if you add the 2 in there, which you really should since it's 2011, not 11, the sum is 6 which is the first digit in 666 (it's also the second and third). Further, the product of 6x3 is 18 and 1+8 is 9, and if you turn a 9 upside down, YOU GET 6!!!!!!

If I would have realized this yesterday, I would have been convinced that we were all going to die and then would have been a bit upset about paying $138 to get my car out of impound the night before, but it's not like I could have used the money anyways.

So now that we're moving past the official holidays as they are marked by the days you may be granted off of work, we reach that period of time where you have to decide if the holidays are truly over and if they are, you then have to take the decorations down. In my youth, the tree would come down a few days after New Years. My mother has so many decorations that when all of these things were put away, we easily gained twenty square feet of living space back.

If you are a die-hard traditionalist, you may be choosing to wait until the 12th day of Christmas to take the decorations down. I'm labeling this as "die-hard" because trying to follow the Twelve Days of Christmas is a serious chore. You would first have to decide if you are an Eastern Christian or Western Christian. If I had to choose, I'd go with Western Christian since they get to eat, dance and party down instead of fast for a gazillion days because as you know, not eating in cold weather makes you really really cranky. Once the Eastern/Western problem is solved, you'd then have to grapple with the United States question; see, if you are going to commit to being an American, then you will have to forget all about 12 days and just throw the tree out and go shopping. I am committing to being a heathen and have chosen to leave my christmas lights up because they look really pretty in my living room and whenever it snows, I want to look at the falling snow through a window framed by little white lights.

I am off to read Twelfth Night.

So, where ya been for the last two years??

And another thing.....do you know how many signs there are in downtown Mpls?? I can't read them all!! Those little punk-ass valets may feel like they have gotten away with something but someday, after they get real jobs and with these real jobs acquire the need to suddenly alter their plans and drive to work where there are little to no free parking spots available and they'd gladly pay for a ramp or something if it wasn't for the fact that it's not payday yet and they can't withdraw any more money until tomorrow and they forgot to refill their empty checkbook after using the last check at the grocery store last night but they still try to be good citizens by searching out an appropriate, legal parking spot and when they think they find one, they park there not aware of the fact that they are only 29.5' from the traffic control device instead of the legal 30' and find that SOMEONE HAS TOWED THEIR CAR....then will they know my pain. That statement would carry more weight if that were the scenario in which I found my vehicle towed last night. Instead, I failed to read the sandwich board on the sidewalk next to the meter I parked at that said it was a valet-zone after 6pm.

Through the kindness of others, I have come to greatly appreciate the courtesy of a ride to the impound lot. I will, therefore, return this favor in the future whenever I am called upon. Oh sure, one could take a bus over there but nowadays, the probability of one having the correct amount of change (in coinage no less) to take the bus even one block is highly unlikely. I think it costs $10 to go 3 blocks. Walking may be an option depending on the time of day because crossing underneath that bridge on Glenwood Ave. always makes me feel like I need to look out for Gene Hackman driving his '71 LeMans through trying to chase down some drug dealers above on 94. If you can catch a ride with someone to the impound lot, that is always the prefered method.

I do have to commend the down right jolliness, dare I say mirth, of the impound staff on New Years Eve. The van driver was quite jovial on both trips; see, I had left my purse in the trunk as to not tempt any wanna-be car thieves on Nicollet Mall so I had to be chauffeured out to my car to fetch my payment method, brought back and then returned again. In case you're worried about the Impound staff being terribly bored on NYE, don't worry, they weren't. There were four people in front of me at 8:00pm. One man was on his third trip of the month due to the snow emergency demons foiling him once again. He proclaimed with gusto, after shoving a snow emergency flyer into the cuff of his snow cap, that they weren't going to get him again and Happy New Year.

The second group of young gentlemen held a brief conference to determine who had the funds to pay and what the collection process would be once they were freed.

The third person was a woman who had appeard to be enjoying the holiday festivities already and I'm still uncertain as to why they decided to release her car to her (unless it was going to be entrapment..ENTRAPMENT) but any entrapment plans were ruined after her car wouldn't start and she had to call her sister to come in, pass through the security system, and drive out to the lot to give her a jump. I must say, the sister looked less than amused about the entire situation.

When my number was up, I approached the staffer again and began to nonchalantly remove my checkbook from my purse as if this was an everyday occurrance, which for 2010 it almost was an everyday occurrance, when I was suddenly stricken with the horrific realization that I had used my last check at the grocery store the other day and had neglected to replenish. My credit cards consisted of a Discover, which had plenty of remaining balance to cover it and which the Impound lot DOES NOT accept, and a Visa for which I was certain had only maybe $50 left on the balance if I was lucky. I handed the card to her with much trepidation muttering something about oh how I hoped there was enough balance left and we both held our breath as the Zon machine did it's thing and finally spit out a receipt. The staffer looked as happy as I felt. She probably wasn't looking forward to a NYE freak-out from a middle-aged woman embarrased about the fact that she's there to begin with but is not about to admit it out loud but no worries....that wasn't in the cards.

I was in and out in about 20 minutes and proceeded to take 45 minutes to figure out how to get back on to 394.

Ahhhh, fun times.

The End

So I'm going to try to write something in a form that can be sent off to someone else who may be able to publish it. Why not dream big? Also, this blogging thing makes me too lazy. Instead of using good sentence structure, I revert to typing as I would speak. Another reason to stop blogging is that there are just too many issues that make me angry lately. I can't compartmentalize them properly. All of my anger is mushing up into one big dark cloud over my head.

When I first started, this helped me to get things out in a form of venting. It made me feel better to type them out. I need to move on now and find another form. There's a very good chance that I'll never finish or that I'll fail miserably but there's also a chance that I won't.

At any rate, see ya later.

Penny for the song, Gov'na?

I've wanted so much to sit down and type a very large amount of words out in an orderly fashion but haven't had the time. Alas, time is flying by and it's almost my birthday. Here's my annual birthday wish list:

1. Money
2. Money
3. Money
4. Free tickets to a Ka-BAAM show
5. Money
6. Money
7. A Home Depot card
8. Money

Thank you and good night.

Oxygen tank anyone?

You know how I said earlier that I could walk to work in any weather? Well, that's kind of true. I can be perfectly warm in cold temperatures but I can't breath very well. One must bundle up so much that movement becomes increasingly restricted to the point where lungs cannot expand appropriately. This causes me to pant. Panting is embarrassing. Now that I'm here, I'm exhausted and would really like to go back to bed for 10 hours.

I'm going a little stir crazy. My house is small but I think even in a house three times the size I would still be going crazy. Once this day is over and the temps go back up, I will be spending as much time outside as possible. In fact, this weekend, don't bother stopping by the house, I won't be in it. I'll sleep there but that'll be about it. I must have an area with no walls for a long duration.

Before that can happen though, I have to get through the checklist of items need for next week's budget discussions. How enchanting.

Crank Up The Air Conditioning!

Although I mentioned a post on the concept of a paperless society (which will never happen), I'm afraid I can't deliver because I'm just too damn lazy...and cold. I know, that last one is a shocker, isn't it? All I have for today is that I made it to work this morning so now I can never wake up in the morning and think it's too cold to walk so I'll sleep in and drive. I don't get that option anymore because I know it can be done.

I think TCF Bank should have thrown in some fireplace installation in staff offices in return for forever having the name of a bank associated with an academic institution.

No, That's Not What I Said

A communication gap; a grammatical dispute; whatever you choose to call it, I had it yesterday with the IT representative. I was told on Wednesday that 15 minutes of my computer time would need to be allotted to said IT rep to encrypt my computer. She hopped on and realized that I didn’t have Vista, so she couldn’t encrypt anything. This brought up another issue of finding time to install Vista, then encrypt. This process was to take approximately four hours, or half of a theoretical work day. I was also informed that it would need to be done before the start of spring semester, which is Monday.

There was going to be no ideal time for this type of hourly realignment, so I just decided to get it over with as soon as possible and signed up Thursday morning to be the crimp in my workweek. After agreements were made to the start date and time, I asked if I needed to do anything with my computer beforehand and was told “No, everything on your computer will stay as it is”. I somewhat happily hand over my computer at the end of Wednesday and tried to figure out how I’d accomplish what needed to be accomplished with very limited computer use the next day (see future post on paperless society).

I returned to my office on Thursday after scrounging for food at Coffman (if you need anything during winter break, you better not plan on finding it on campus) and joyously greeted my computer as if it just presented me with a document forgiving my college loans. My usual routine (ritual, some may say) after logging on is to immediately go to iTunes and find the classical station. I can’t stand to be in an office with no music. Ninety percent of the time it has to be instrumental otherwise I get too distracted. After finding the iTunes “button” and realizing that there would be a learning curve as I discovered where all of my icons were now hidden, I was frozen in space as I stared at a blank iTunes page with the pretty multicolor lines resembling the old green-bar paper where my music titles used to be. No titles. No printing of any kind. Nothing. Screaming commenced. Okay, screaming on the inside.

After resolving to remain calm, I searched around for my dearly loved files finding nothing. NOTHING. I then politely emailed the IT rep lamenting that I may be missing a few music files and would she know where they might be? She replied with revealing that if they were on my c: drive they are now wiped out. I quickly reviewed the previous day’s conversation: “Do I need to do anything specific before you install this?” “No, everything on your computer will stay as it is” “No, everything on your computer will stay as it is” “No, everything on your computer will stay as it is”. LIARS!!!!! FUCKING LIARS!!!!

This scenario points out a common scene that plays out every day in every work place and every gas station around the world. There are concepts that people within certain groups assume everyone else outside of their group will now come to realize as a given because it’s been long enough now that this concept has been known. When I asked if I needed to do anything specific before they violated my computer, they assumed I already knew to back up my hard drive. To me, my hard drive is the computer. If I stick a CD in to save something, then it’s not on the hard drive. If there’s no CD or other magnetized form of media emblazzened with my choice of information, then it’s on the hard drive, aka the computer. I now understand that my computer is made up of a network which will always be okay but which everyone has access to, and the hard drive which is mine alone but also mine alone to back up. Fuck.

Why did I mention gas stations earlier? Because now when it is stated that one can use a credit card to pay for gas, it is implied that the credit card will be inserted into the gas pump and not brought into the store to be held by another human. I watched as a woman older than me was trying to grasp this concept while the store clerk was trying to lead her back out to the pump to show her. She couldn’t understand why someone just couldn’t take her credit card right there and just pay for the stuff. They’re right there, why can’t they do it? Good question. Because the new store financial system doesn’t allow it. You know the one, the system that is supposed to make our lives easier (also expanded on in the future post referring to paperless societies). Does anyone know where I can get a cheap flashdrive?