Have you ever had a dream that you're in your house, or a house you used to live in, and you suddenly find a brand new door that you never saw before?
Well I've lived in this apartment for a few months now, and one problem is the lack of storage. Especially in the bathroom. I could really use a place to keep towels, sheets, or anything really. Well guess what Baldy suddenly found today?
He's never taken a dump in this apartment, but he did today. And from the new vantage point, he suddenly saw something strange. Something that looked suspiciously like a door to a closet! He opened it, to find a big empty closet.
"I opened the door, and I saw the empty closet, and I thought either you didn't know about this because you obviously need extra storage (indicating all the stuff everywhere I've somehow accumulated since moving out of the capsule), or for some reason you just chose not to put anything in it."
Then we laughed and laughed like idiots. I couldn't fucking believe it. I just never saw the closet! It's really hard to see and it just looks like part of the wall. It's big enough for someone to hide in. I can think of lots of tricks I can pull on people. Like Baldy can hide in it, I'll bring a friend over, say I have to go to the loo, then I'll hide in the closet, and he'll go out and pretend like nothing happened and freak my friend out.
I made a new discovery in a mundane place. Like a little bit of magic.
I've been absent for a week or so, thanks to my laptop wishing me a happy christmas by dying on its arse while my live-in computer fix-it man was in Inverness visiting his family, so apologies to anyone whose comments or posts I've not replied to/ written about. As I'm back at work now with quite literally bog all to do until the sites start generating some work for me I thought I'd have a look at some of my stats for the years 2000 - 2010.
Things Lost/ given away:
- 3 grandparents, 1 sort of surrogate grandmother brought in replace one of the actual ones who was a cow, 1 great aunt and 1 great uncle. Blimey, there's been a bit of a cull in the family this past decade!
- 2 boyfriends, one of whom was a nice guy but just not for me, one of whom was a complete twat that I can't believe I bothered with. Let me give you the benefit of my wisdom - never date anyone you met on a train, it didn't end well for me and it ended even less well for my cousin who married the nutjob she met on one. Now that's a long and bizarre story which also happened in my 'decade under review'!
- 1 family dog, Barney, a hairy creature that moulted more than I ever believed a creature could without ending up bald. His ability to start a random fight with dogs much bigger than himself, leaving the owners clinging onto their beasts for dear life while I tried to drag the grouchy bundle of hair and teeth up the road by the scruff of the neck was awe-inspiring. I will also never forget the time he chased a chav down the road and over a fence for no better reason than that he had a rabid dislike of anyone in a beanie hat. Plus his attacks on the hoover never stopped being funny. He was put down last year after the tumour on his back began to affect his mobility and I'm sure that wherever he is he's having a great time starting fights with dogs 4 times his size and scoffing his own bodyweight in dog biscuits.
- 1 job, when back in 2003 my dad fired me as an incentive for me to go out and find a proper job instead of flouncing about being the cook for the nursing home they own.
- 3 cars - my first car, Cyril I, a silver Nissan Micra that was 12 years old when my parents bought it off my grandparents (as a way to stop them driving) and that ran like a dream until my then boyfriend Ben had been driving it for a while. After that you had to get up early if it was set to rain because you'd have to disconnect all the plugs and wipe them out with WD40. The RAC man was out to it so often that I got a christmas card off him. Nice chap. I loved that car. Also a ginger Peugeot 106 that coordinated beautifully with my ginger best friend and a harlot scarlet Ford Fiesta that ended up with my brother in London after a rather complicated swap involving my parents, my brother, a Peugeot 307 and a bank loan.
- 1 friend/ flatmate who turned out to be a sociopathic slut who would offer my live in boyfriend sex while I was at work. He didn't take her up on it but it pissed me off none the less. Possibly it was not a good idea for me to attempt to have it out with her while fuelled up on cheap vodka but to be honest, she deserved every single one of the names I called her and I feel no guilt about aiming for her weak spots - popularity and looks.
- Umpteen thousands of pounds on pointless crap that I didn't need/ alcohol/ cigarettes/ clothes that I looked shocking in and shoes I couldn't walk in.
- 7 guinea pigs. Shit, that sounds really bad when you write it down doesn't it? I swear I'm not some sort of psycho small furry critter killer.
- 1 job. I've been here 7 years this march which is truly terrifying.
- My 30s, and I don't want to even think about it, let alone talk about it.
- 20 odd pairs of shoes / boots (conservative estimate). This decade I made the awesome discovery that is Duo, a company who makes boots in different calf widths, meaning finally I could have a pair of knee high boots that didn't look like wellies. A revelation, I'm sure you'll agree.
- 1 dog - Geoffrey, who has featured in the blog before. He's a barmpot and as camp as christmas but everyone loves him.
- 9 guinea pigs. 7 of which I have managed to dispatch to that great rabbit run in the sky, leaving me with 2 currently. Who, to the irritation of my other half are currently living in an indoor cage in the conservatory because it's minus 8 outside. "Of course they'll only be inside for a couple of days" I said 2 weeks ago. Smirk...
- 6 second cousins, 3 of which were born to the same family. No family should have more than 2 kids, at least not if they expect me to remember all of their birthdays and buy them decent gifts at christmas.
- 1 husband. We've been married for 4 years this year and that means that even if we were to divorce tomorrow we wouldn't have the worst marital record in my family, as two of my cousins only made it to the 2 year mark. Happy days.
- 1 degree and 1 diploma. I am now a very highly qualified time waster, an achievement indeed.
- Some wrinkles, the number of which I have not had the courage to count.
- About two stone in weight, 1 of which I think I put on this christmas. I put my work trousers on this morning and decided, as I desperately struggled with the stupid button that either the mischief gnome had been in the wardrobe over the holidays and altered the dimensions of all my clothing or I needed to step away from the Terry's Chocolate Orange and head towards the salad. Sigh...
- The ability to get from A to B without major injury. Only one this decade, a fractured kneecap, which was a vast improvement on the previous 2 decades when my inability to judge what was going on at the ends of my limbs led to me practically having my own dedicated seat in the A&E department. I think it might have been a family thing because my brother was also well known for his ability to fall over or into things as well.
- A number of friends I'd lost touch with but in particular the lovely BGS girls who I went to school with and a girl who I went to primary school with and lived down the road from. I can't imagine now why we didn't all keep in touch, it seems ridiculous when we have such a good time.
- A sister in law. Which is weird because that means my little brother is married. I realise that at 26, 6ft 4 or so he probably isn't that little but still....
- Lots of lovely friends on Vox and even a few from back in the days when I started out online, on Diaryland!
So there we have it, my review of the decade, some things good, some things bad but on the whole I think I came out of it relateively unscathed....
Oh right I almost forgot -- I finally watched Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen 
So a few days into the new year and now post from me, oopsie. Mainly because I'm feeling like hell. Tingly. Crampy. Headachey. Anything ending in y, you name it. Needless to say we didn't get around to seeing Avatar again, so we'll probably save it for next weekend, or during the week. We'll see. During the week may not work since Brian works.
Didn't sign new lease yet since we have til the end of February and we want to clear up how they're gonna charge us for water now that it's not included in rent for new tenants and for lease renewals. All the office could tell us was it SHOULD be between $20 and $40 a month and they'd base it on the fact that we have two people living here. Beyond that they didn't know how it worked. Erm, what? No guarantees what the bill would be. No telling us if it's based on OUR use or the the building then divided by number of tenants or the whole complex divided by number of tenants or if it could be triple that estimate some months, etc. They said we'd have to talk to the manager to find that out as they didn't know.
Lister needs Prozac. Okay, not really. But he's on a month long diet. Special f00d and no kitty treats. For one week also kitty ear meds. They're trying to figure out if he has f00d allergies -- they think it's possible that's what caused both his tummy and ear probs. Kitty f00d allergies wouldn't show up on the kitty allergy blood tests so it's easiest to test for them first by very strict f00d controls = only one kind of f00d and nothing else at all. He's moping. He doesn't like the f00d. He seems to think he's being punished. He doesn't even want to play with his toy mousey. He'd putting on sad kitty face and crying a lot. Kitty guilt trips are fun. I just tell him I'm sorry but humans get to go on diets too and he's still not getting kitty treats or different f00d no matter how much he sulks. I swear he even sighs.
Link stolen from Krizzzzz: The problem with a vote against all option = politicians are sneaky ;) As I said on Twitter, if we had that option ALL of our politicians would change their names and we'd never complete an election.
Lake Superior State University has released its annual list of "banished words"; words they consider trite, overused, annoying, or a combination of all three. Following below is the list, with my comments in italics:
SHOVEL-READY
"Apparently, the generally accepted definition of this phrase is to imply that a project has been completely designed and all that is left to do is to implement it...however, when something dies, it, too, is shovel-ready for burial and so I get confused about the meaning. I would suggest that we just say the project is ready to implement.” – Jerry Redington, Keosauqua, Iowa.
"Stick a shovel in it. It's done." – Joe Grimm, Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
I'd like to take a shovel upside the head of the person who coined this obnoxious phrase.
TRANSPARENT/TRANSPARENCY
"In the lexicon of the political arena, this word is supposed to mean obvious or easily understood. In reality, political transparency is more invisible than obvious!" -- Deb Larson, Bellaire, Mich.
Someone throw a blanket over "transparent".
CZAR
Long used by the media as a metaphor for positions of high authority, including “baseball czar” Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, appointed by team owners as commissioner-for-life in 1919. U.S. president Woodrow Wilson had an “industry czar” during World War I. Lesser-known “czar” roles in government during the last 100 years include: censorship, housing and oil czars in 1941; rubber czar in 1942; patronage czar (1945); clean-up (1952); missile (1954); inflation (1971); e-commerce (1998); bioethics, faith-based and reading czars (2001); bird flu (2004); democracy (2005); abstinence and birth control czars (2006); and weatherization czar (2008).
I thought the Russians took care of "czars" in 1917.
TWEET
And all of its variations…tweetaholic, retweet, twitterhea, twitterature, twittersphere….
Jay Brazier of Williamston, Mich. says she supposes that tweeters might be "twits."
Personally, I'd go for "twats", myself.
APP
"Must we b sbjct to yt another abrv? Why does the English language have to fit on a two-inch screen? I hate the sound of it. I think I'll listen to a symph on the rad." -- Edward R. Bolt, Grand Rapids, Mich.
Put "cr" in front of "app" and you get crapp!
SEXTING
Sending sexually explicit pictures and text messages through the cell phone.
"Any dangerous new trend that also happens to have a clever mash-up of words, involves teens, and gets television talk show hosts interested must be banished." – Ishmael Daro, Saskatoon, Sask., Canada.
A "word" spoken by those who aren't getting the real thing.
FRIEND AS A VERB
Came into popularity through social networking websites. You add someone to your network by "friending" them, or remove them by "unfriending" them.
"'Befriend' is much more pleasant to the human ear and a perfectly useful word in the dictionary." – Kevin K., Morris, Okla.
I pretty much hate any noun that is made into a verb and vice versa.
TEACHABLE MOMENT
What might otherwise be known as 'a lesson.'
"It's a condescending substitute for 'opportunity to make a point,'" says Eric Rosenquist of College Station, Tex.
So, portions of time are now capable of being taught, hmm?
IN THESE ECONOMIC TIMES….
"Overused and redundant. Aren't ALL times 'these economic times'?" -- Barb Stutesman, Three Rivers, Mich.
I think this stuffy phrase has outlived its fifteen minutes of overuse.
STIMULUS
"Everything in the news is about the stimulus packages...it is no longer a grant, it's stimulus money, stimulus checks, etc. I think it is just being over-used." Teri Heikkila, Rudyard, Mich.
I've got your "stimulus package" right here!
TOXIC ASSETS
"Whatever happened to simply 'bad stocks,' 'debts,' or 'loans'?" -- Monty Heidenreich, Homewood, Ill.
This list wouldn't be complete without an oxymoron.
TOO BIG TO FAIL
"Just for the record, nothing's too big to fail unless the government lets it." Claire Shefchik, Brooklyn, NY.
Tell this to the owners of the Titanic!.
BROMANCE
"I am sick of combined words the media creates to make them sound catchier. Frenemies? Bromances? Blogorrhea? I'm going to scream!" – Kaylynn, Alberta, Canada.
I've been lucky to have never heard this one before.
CHILLAXIN'
"Heard everywhere from MTV to ESPN to CNN. A bothersome term that seeks to combine chillin' with relaxin' makes me want to be 'axin' this word." – Tammy, Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.
What? Does this mean to put an axe into the refrigerator?
OBAMA-prefix or roots?
The LSSU Word Banishment Committee held out hope that folks would want to
Obama-ban Obama-structions, but were surprised that no one
Obama-nominated any, such as these compiled by the Oxford Dictionary in
2009: Obamanomics, Obamanation, Obamafication, Obamacare, Obamalicious,
Obamaland….We say Obamanough already.
Let's bomb all the Obama coinages.
My personal contribution to this year's list would be:
FAIL used as a noun.
For example, a football team loses big in a game and it's dubbed "an epic fail". This one made me grind my teeth the first time I heard it. It may be an "epic failure", but it's NOT an "epic fail".
What's your New Year's resolution for 2010?
I don't make resolutions other than the one I make every year and have no trouble in fulfilling: to get laid as often as possible!
As much as I LOVE the news and politics -- woah. I skim around the net today and what do I find?
Do you feel safe? OMFG me and my friends and my family cannot celebrate new years because Obama is the president so the world is gonna end, he's ruined the world, there's nothing good to celebrate! TW and the liberals are threatening to pull Fox News! Censorship, I'm devastated they're pulling Glenn Beck from my tv!
I made a point to tell these people they need to read up on the facts -- TW isn't threatening anything, Fox is threatening it. It's not Fox News, it's every Fox network EXCEPT Fox News and Fox Business. TW and senators have asked Fox to go into mediation and keep their networks on the air while doing this and they said no. They want to charge cable customers extra for what others get for free and for what no other networks charge these fees for. Idiots.
Nothing to celebrate. Do these people not have homes? Food? Do they get arrested, tortured, killed for speaking out against their president? They would in some countries. Are they dying of a horrible disease? I actually ask them these questions in response.
I also tell them I live so close to LAX I hear the jets overhead. See them. All day and all night. And yes I feel safe. Living in fear is useless. Giving in to the people trying to make you afraid all of the time is stupid and that kind of stress will just give you heart problems and put you into an early grave. Life is unsafe. So what?
They don't listen. I tried. They're clearly not mentally all there. I've known people with just about every mental illness you can image and these people are beyond that.
For the rest of you -- If you already celebrated the New Year, I hope it was a safe and happy one. If it's yet to happen for you, I hope it will be.
Baldy's over his stomach thing.
We're getting on the train now!
Here goes nothing. Hope I don't injure myself...
Seeyas!
HAPPY 2010!!!!!!!!!
2009 hasn't been one of my better years. My finances have become increasingly tighter this year -- I'm nearly as broke now as I was in college -- and I remain underemployed in a state with a high unemployment rate. I've spent much of the year robbing Peter to pay Paul just to barely make minimum payments on my bills. My son also lost a good job this year, and he has yet to find permanent employment.
I ended an important relationship this year out of necessity, yet I still miss her to this day. Intellectually, I know it was for the best, but my body tells me differently.
I also lost one of my cats this year and I likewise mourn his loss.
On the plus side, I remain healthy, and no one has died in my family or among my friends this year. That's always something to celebrate.
I finally paid off my car loan, so that should help to ease my finances a bit in the new year.
Plus, my "social life" is still as active as ever which is, again, always a reason to celebrate.
But I can safely say I'll be glad to bid 2009 good riddance and I look forward to see what 2010 will have to offer. I offer no resolutions, as it's not in my nature to do so, except to say that I will be alert to whatever opportunities present themselves in the new year.
Grrrr! I just became "that person" to a customer service rep at an insurance company. I did however also apologize to her several times and explained I wasn't mad at her, but at the company and politely asked for her supervisor!
Our home owners insurance has our house insured for almost 3 times the amount is it worth. That also means they are charging us 3 times the amount of premium.
A little year ago I went on line after seeing the commercial telling me how much money they could save me I entered info for a free quote. I was amazed when the quote came back at almost half the cost of what I had been paying. So I switched insurance companies for both our car and our house.
After the quote became a policy I noticed something had been entered incorrect and the house was insured for 310,000.00! My husband and I laughed about that. We knew the value of the house was far from that and called the insurance company right away. I was told only an agent could change the info to get the policy corrected. About that same time some one called and set up an appointment for an inspector from the insurance company to look at our house and do an insurance inspection to confirm the accuracy of the quote.
I thought "Wow! They seem like a hands on insurance company. Great! I was afraid of going with a company that mainly deals over the internet and never having "real" person to deal with for big issues-but Ididn't want to have a pushy insurance agent keep trying to sell me other insurances.
A few changes were made to the policy and a new policy went into effect. Everything paid via the escrow account with our mortgage. I didn't get a bill or have to write a check, so I didn't give it a second thought.
This year the renwal comes up and the bill is sent to the escrow acount and the amount is almost twice the amount it was last year. So I start reading the policy and notice all the mistakes that were made. Mistakes from the information the inspector turned in.
He had the age of the roof wrong by almost 12 years. That was a difference of $100. There were little charges for things like $12.00 because when he saw there was a computer he automaticaly had seperate coverage on it. Coverage that wasn't needed. The type of wood stove we had was listed wrong and was over charged by $200. Not to mention they had the square footage of our house listed at 2500sq ft. If you saw my tiny house you would see how absurp that was. Reality is it is 900 sq ft. That is almost a difference of another $500.00.
Again I called and told them about the errors on the policy. First person I spoke to was very freindly. Easily removed the items that didn't need to be insured and corrected the small errors. He was able to deduct almost $300.00 of the cost of the policy. I should get a check in a couple of weeks, but only an agent can do anything about the size of the house. I was transferred to an agent. Who tells me there is nothing that can be done to change the policy. After several minutes of arguing with him that there has to be somthing that can get the size of the house correct and explaining to him that some one will have a lot of explaining to do if the house burns down and they find only enough ash for a 900sq ft.
I was finaly told to call my county assesers office and get a "tax card" to send the insurance company, confirming the house is only 900sq ft.
I call the county. They tell me they don't have anything that shows the sqaure footage of your house. They can send proof of what they say the house/land is valued at.
I call the insurance company back and tell them this. Then I am told I can send a copy of the appraisal we had done two years ago when we refinanced.
So I make a copy I mail it in and I wait to see if they get it right.
I get a check for $250.00. I call to ask why it is $50 short of the amount I was told it was going to be by the first person who changed the policy. I was given some crap about a processing fee and being prorated to the date the error was corrected.
A little more then a week later I get a check in the mail from the insurance company. I think they finaly got it straightened out and they are paying me back. Except the check is for $937!
Another phone call.
I'm told it is a refund check because my mortgage company over paid the insurance company. When I question the mortgage company as to why they paid a bill that didn't need to be paid I was told some one mistoke the policy change notifaction as a bill and I should just cash the check, then send the mortgage comapny extra money when I make my house payment and indicate that it is an esrow repayment.
At this point I'm just a bit pissed! Not only does this start to sound like some Nigerian internet scam (minus the Nigerian). But how much more can this insurance company screw up?
I'm probably starting to ramble a bit on this, but so far I have made several phone calls to the insurance comapany and even had to have the mortgage company put a hold on our escrow account so no more "mistaken" payments can get sent, since every time the insurance company makes the slightes change to our policy it generates the "policy change notifacation" to get sent to the mortgage company. That gets mistaken as a bill. That generates a payment from our escrow acount. That gets turned into a check from the insurance company and sent back to us. That then needs to get sent back to the mortgage company to re-pay the escrow!
It's so f*cked up it starting to look like I launder money for them!
The latest episode in this insurance nightmare is getting TWO policies in the mail on the same day. Both say they are effective Dec 12, 2009. One for a house valued at $300,000.00 with a premium of $937. The other for a house value of $145,000.00 with a premium of $550.00.
Finaly. They got the size of the house right, but what policy is the correct one that is the final one?
Another phone call.
I'm told it's all corrected now. As of Dec 12, 2009. Almost a year and a half after the first call to get this corrected. They have the right size of our house.
I'm told the check for $279 was sent dec 28th.
WTF?????
I'm may not be the brightest bulb in the light fixture at times but even I know 937 - 550 = 387!
$387.00 and should be the check I should be getting sent!
Now I get put on hold for an eternity. I finaly get a supervisor who looks over the account and varifies everything I had been telling them!.......But she put all the info into her computer and it confirms the refund check is for $279 and cheerfully tells me I should get it next week!
That's when I became "that" customer.
I asked her if she new simple math. The kind you use a pen and paer to figure it out. Write down 937 subtract 550.....what do you get? After a pause...387?
So explain how the check is only $279.
Now I'm told an IT tech has to look at the account to see why "the system" is doing the math wrong!
I'm starting to think my insurance company found it's own bail out system.
Conviently over charge then take an eternity to fix it. All the time you have a merry go round of checks, keeping the consumer thinking refunds and problems are being fixed.
Except each time the insurance company has figured out a way to keep just a bit of that refund money.
I wonder how many other people they are screwing over that don't even realize it.!
