The Diary of A Simple Man

You want to know what torture is?

The Arisia panel software required me to put a number from 1-5 next to each panel that I was interested in, indicated how badly I wanted to be on it. There were 32 panels that I was interested in, but I can only be on a maximum of 10, total (I suggested more than ten of the panels they're running!). Not only that, but you can only have four panels ranked #1, 2, 3, or 4 each. Fives are unlimited.

After my initial run I had eight panels ranked number one alone. So I just spent quite a while reassigning numbers to the panels I want to be on. Torture!

I just wrote a long review, only to have it destroyed when I clicked the "Add Book" link. It's not recoverable. Trying to re-create a piece of writing that felt as if it was really going right may be the single most frustrating experience I know of. From now on, I compose in NotePad.

But I really wish that GoodReads had an auto "save draft" feature.

Hugely pissed off. The cellular network up here in the Boothbay region is UNUSABLE for data. Wrote a long email to a friend in Gmail, only to have the connection die. The email is lost forever. AT&T and Sprint, your network connection in Maine should be a capital offense!

Tried to call AT&T to complain, and they told me to call back from another phone! Grrrrr...

I badly need to reboot my day, because I cannot cope with another shitty day. Suggestions please?

Okay. I can sit up and worry, or I can go to bed at a semi-reasonable hour. I chose the latter.

I AM going to respond to a lot of recent comments and to posts on my flist - I really want to - but right now I'm just not really able to cope. Too worried.

Why is it that so many commercials lately feature female characters that I can only describe as total bitches? If I see the annoying character below one more time, I'm going to go berserk. One thing's for sure, I'll never buy T Mobile.

Why doesn't her boyfriend get off that counch and A) walk out the door, or B) beat the crap out of her?

There's another annoying commercial for a room-deodorizing spray that lasts for 60 days. At the end the spokeswoman's husband or boyfriend gives her some roses, and she snarks "I wonder if these will last 60 days?". I'd have been delighted if the boyfriend had taken the flowers back, dumped them on her head, and said "Enjoy living with your deodorizer, because I'm outta here!"

Yes, I'm a little cranky this morning. :D

So I went down to get coffee and a cinnamon swirl from the Fresh City in the lobby this morning. I answered the trivia question (it was an easy one) so my coffee was free. As always when I get coffee, I also grabbed some of the free cinnamon pita chips that they have out.

Now, the containers they put out for the pitas are tiny. They're little things no bigger than the palm of my hand. They used to be larger, but that changed about a year ago.

They're so small that it's almost impossible to get a reasonable amount of chips in there. I usually pile them up a little, and then try to throw the container into my pastry bag before the pile topples.

It occurred to me that this was a stupid thing to do. I don't use the containers; I just eat the chips out of the bag. So this time, instead of using the container, I just put some of the pitas directly into the bag with the tongs.

I did not take a lot - really! It was totally a reasonable amount - two tongfuls, which is less than I could have put in a container. But the cashier rushed over and told me, insofar as I could understand her English, that I had to use the containers that were provided - that otherwise, I should pay for one of the pre-packaged bags.

This made me feel as if I'd been stuffing the bag full of chips, which was absolutely not true. It made me feel like a thief. And it really pissed me off and hurt my feelings.

I've always been friendly with that cashier. I always tip her generously, too - whatever change is left from my purchase I dump into her tip jar, and that's more than 20%. That just ended. And I don't think I'll be going back to Fresh City again. The coffee's not that good, and they really made me feel like shit. I can really hold a grudge, so I'd say that Fresh City is going to take a loss on this morning's little exchange.

Argh, I was catching up on comments and *&@!ing LiveJournal went down. Could the new servers be unreliable? Wouldn't surprise me.

Widget, our new kitten, will be going to the vet on Thursday. He's going to be neutered and declawed. And I feel so guilty and bad for him; I can't tell you how guilty I feel.

All I can think of is that, well, he's going to lose his testicles, his chance to reproduce, and essentially the first joint off the end of his "fingers". It's horrifying. I don't want to think about it, but I can't help it. Poor little guy.

I missed the train this morning.

That happens more often than I would like. I keep saying "We're going to miss the train! Come on, we have to go!"...and then we don't. We get to the station just in time to see the train pull away.

That's really *&#$ing frustrating.

Since Sebastian has to be on the bus in the mornings, Teri and Sebastian have to leave me at the station even if I miss the train. I was really pissed off this morning, stuck at the station for 45 minutes, so I spent all that time walking up and down the full length of the Franklin/Dean platform. 318 steps, one way. I did it about 14 times.

And now I have a blister on the back of my right heel that's about two inches across. It hurts quite a bit.

Grrrr.