Don't Eat the Spinach!
So, our mothers were all wrong. Spinach is *bad* for you. Well, the fresh kind that doesn't come in a can or frozen is bad for you, at least right now. In the 3 hours since I left work, the number of states involved has doubled to 20 with over 200 cases of illness and three deaths. I'm not going to be at all surprised when my phone goes off this weekend with a health alert and I end up investigating an outbreak. In the meantime, I'm going to go throw out the new bag of spinach I opened on Monday (and ate a salad from on Tuesday...)
Other than that, today was repeatedly annoying.
Bad Motorcycle! No biscuit!
My motorcycle wouldn't start this morning. I had been planning to ride it since last Friday. Looking forward to it all week. I carefully checked the weather forecast to make sure it wouldn't be too hot, too chilly or too rainy. Weather was *perfect*. I get up a bit early and get organized to go. I am ready ahead of schedule for once. I go out to start the bike and warm her up. She turns over once and then hasn't got the energy to turn over again. The starter just clicks. Dead battery. And this particular bike does not have the "luxury" of a kickstarter. Do the standard frustrated/angry stomping around muttering through gritted teeth, then go back into the house and get the car keys. At least nobody else rode their bikes in to work this morning.
Miss Crabby Clerk
I have found where the crabby people in the state governmental offices are. It's not the driver's license bureau. It's the county clerk's office where you get license plates. Or at least the individual who I imposed upon to try and get license plates is crabby. We started off on the wrong foot. The station where she works is at the opposite end of the room from where the door marked enter is located. There were also two people between me (standing patiently at the place marked "wait here") and her station, obscuring my view somewhat. Also obscuring my view was her computer monitor. Once she noticed I was standing there she announced in a rather annoyed-sounding voice that she could help me. So I hustle myself down there and apologize that I hadn't seen her "hiding" behind the monitor. She replies (without any sense of humor at all) that she wasn't hiding, she was working. This implied to me that having to deal with the public and assist them in obtaining license plates at the license plate office where she is apparently employed is interrupting her work, which leads me to wonder just what work she does as an employee of the license plate office.
The next step in our interaction was for me to produce the necessary paperwork. In the state of Illinois, this means producing your registration paperwork, your own personal identification (a driver's license), and proof of vehicle insurance. According to the official state website regarding what is necessary to bring to get a NEW set of plates as a new resident in the state, you need the car's registration paperwork, proof of who you are (two forms of ID) and proof that you live in TN. It also says to bring the name/address info for any lienholders. Ok, so I collected all of that information. I brought it with me, along with my checkbook.
Miss Crabby Clerk snaps that I have to give her all the license plates on the vehicles in question. Ok, I say, I can give her the plates off the car, but I don't have the other vehicles handy so I'll have to come back for those two. This does not mollify her. She asks rather crabbily if I'm making payments on "all of these vehicles". I reply that I am making payments on the VW and the Honda. She says I have to provide the information about the lienholder. I tell her I have that written down right here and give her the sticky note with that information. She makes an unpleasant face (I guess I ruined her fun by having SOME of the necessary information). Then she says I have to have the titles in hand and that registration information isn't sufficient and pushes the paperwork back at me. I said OK, I didn't know that and that I brought what was on the website. I told her I'd come back on another day and take care of it all.
Here's going to be the "fun" part. In Illinois, if you have a lien on a vehicle, the lienholder gets the title. I am not in physical posession of the title to my car. I do have the actual titles to the bikes (apparently there's no lien on the Honda afterall). According to the Illinois Secretary of State's website, the REGISTRATION paperwork is considered proof of ownership for the state of Illinois. I have no idea in @#$!#^*& how I'm going to get this to work in this state if I have to have the title in hand. I could order a duplicate title, but Illinois will send it directly to the bank with no exception (says so right on the webpage) so that doesn't solve anything and does cost me an extra $65 for the title. Looks like I'll be making some phone calls early next week about this.
With any luck, on the day I return to the clerk's office, Miss Crabby Clerk will be off having dental work done or something. In any event, I'm going to make sure I end up being assisted by a COMPLETELY different person, even if it means waiting extra long. I can't stand people who do customer service FOR A LIVING and who clearly hate having to deal with the public in any capacity or who insist on demonstrating that they have all the power and can jerk you around however they like. I'm fairly certain that Miss Crabby Clerk fits both categories. Maybe she ate spinach this week.
Library Card!
To recover from this unfortunate and very unpleasant experience and to save myself an extra trip later, I went to the library to get a library card. Librarians are almost inevitably kind and polite creatures. The librarians at the local library are no exception. I had a library card in 30 seconds and my request to not provide my Social Security number was completely acceptable. I even was allowed to check out 5 items today. I wasn't going to check anything out, but then I wandered over to the new book section and found a couple of interesting things, including the SQL Cookbook from O'Reilly. Out of the knitting section (which holds about 18 books), I selected Barbara Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Stitches.
Efficiency in Action
Now that I had two of my errands done, I found myself in heavier-than-usual traffic driving north. And my book browsing caused me to miss getting to the bank before they closed, so my paycheck is still sitting in my checkbook. Fortunately this is not a problem and I'll just go to the bank on Monday at lunch. Hopefully the computer system won't die again. If I had deposit tickets, I'd just go through the drive-up because it's open later, but I don't have any.
So on my way out of town, I diverted to Lowe's and Wal-Mart. I figured I'd get a battery for the Honda. I called Mitch to find out what kind of battery. He's got no idea. The King of Stockpiled Useless Information Stored in his Treo never entered in the battery data for his motorcycle! I was amazed by that! He's got the 3 letter codes for every airport in the US, but not the battery data. But he did tell me what I needed to do to get to the battery and find out, including that I needed to buy a 10mm or 12mm socket to get the seat off the bike. So I skip Wal-Mart and go straight to Lowe's.
At Lowe's I return the last of the unneeded stuff from the faucet job and purchase mouse poison, mole poison, blood meal (for the compost pile) and the sockets.
Homicidal Tendencies:
I get home, all excited to take apart my motorcycle and extract the bad battery. I get the side panels off with no trouble whatsoever. I try the 10mm socket and discover the seat bolts are 12mm. I try the 12mm socket. It doesn't fit. I try the other side of the bike. Socket still doesn't fit. I look at socket. Socket says 11mm. I did not indulge my desire to throw said socket against the wall with all my might. I did, however, indulge the impulse to stomp up and down the garage in frustration. And seriously regretted NOT buying the entire metric socket SET for 20 bucks, which would have solved this problem. See what happens when I try to save myself 15 bucks?
So my motorcycle sits in the garage half naked with a dead battery still trapped inside. I'll go BACK to Lowe's in the morning to get the correct socket (the adjustable cresecent wrench I bought last week won't fit in the necessary space and none of my other crescent wrenches are metric), then I'll come home to take out the battery and RETURN to town to get a new battery before returning home to replace the battery. So this will be a 28 mile set of round trips. For one stinking battery. Grrrrr.
Given my high frustration level after these incidents, I was feeling a teensy bit homicidal. With the song from Shel Silverstein about poisoning pigeons in the park going through my head, I commenced to bait the mole hills and tunnels in the back yard. Heavily. There are almost 20 mole hills back there now. This of course means that I have lots of worms and yummy grubs in my yard, which is a good thing, but it's wreaking havoc on the area I'd like to make into a garden. With any luck there won't be any new mole hills popping up after this week.
To top off my homicidal urges, I pitched 6 bait packs into the attic for the mice. Last night at midnight I was awakened to the sound of scratching and scrabbling in my bathroom. It sounded like the mice were rappelling down their side of the shower enclosure, which I'm sure would be very fun if you were a mouse. Heck, it might be part of a mouse scouts excursion. I put bait blocks in the laundry area just in case anybody wanted to come out the hole in the wall there. We'll see how much noise the little beady-eyed bastards make tonight. And some time next week I'll go up to the attic and haul out the corpses so they don't stink up the place.
That was nearly as satisfying as spending half an hour beating the crap out of the heavy bag or firing a hundred rounds at the range.
Other stress relief activities:
I hosed down the neighbor's cat when it decided it wanted to hang out in my yard. Yesterday it decided to take up residence in my garage while I was mowing. (This is *not* "Phoebe", but some gray tabby.) I didn't get a direct shot, but he got misted pretty good and has figured out that the sound of the hose is something to scamper away from.
I edged the front sidewalk, but haven't yet fixed the north side of the driveway. I also started removing the grass/sod from what will be the expanded front flower bed and flood control area. I made a rough outline of the bed on the south side of the front walk all the way down to the birdfeeder pole. I think the bed shape and design will change over time, but this is a start. I found the soil too hard to get the sod up, so I soaked it pretty well and then went inside.
Tomorrow I'll water the fruit trees and fertilize them with fertilizer spikes. I'll also rake in the bloodmeal I dusted over the "tropical" flowerbed on the north side of the walk.
The Good Bits....
The day started with a co-worker offering me the opportunity to ride horses at her place or her relative's place any time I wanted. She gave me her home phone numbers and said to give her a call any time and that she really means it. I told her I'd take her up on that and that while I might not look the prettiest, I could stick to most horses fairly well. She laughed and said she could certainly find something for me to ride. I'm thinking next weekend I'll have to go riding.... I'll have to find my boots and helmet (which I think is still at Kim's barn, actually).
Another co-worker threatened me with serious bodily harm as she lost her willpower to resist the peanut butter cookies I brought earlier in the week. Turns out that they're her favorite. She ate five of them by the end of the day. I think I've had five or six now myself.
Had lunch with co-workers at a local sit-down restaurant serving standard American fare. One had a huge chicken strip salad, while two others had the soup/salad special. I had a burger with mashed potatoes. The potatoes were a bit gluey but good and had lumps of potato in them. The burger was cooked perfectly.
I got poked twice today at work. Once for the HepB titer and once to start the TB test. The TB lump is already gone. I ought to contact Provena's employee health office and have them fax a copy of the stuff they did to me when I was hired.
Finally, the weather today was GLORIOUS! The sun was shining, the birds were singing.... And I got to leave work early because I worked late on Wednesday with the mosquitoes. I didn't get as much accomplished today as I wanted to get done, but it seems like I got a few things done anyway.
This weekend's plan:
I really want to straighten up the living room and get all of the boxes out of there. There is a bunch of clutter and detritus collecting on the coffee table and that needs to stop. I need to make homes for things and start putting them in their homes. Or I'll be my own office's version of Miss Cranky Clerk.
I also need to decide about getting a puppy from a co-worker (or both of the older dogs). I'll whack the grass down in the dog run and get it cleaned up. It just looks a mess right now and it needs to be cleaned up anyway.
Landscaping ideas:
The little maple tree continues to sprout leaves after being a stick for so long. The little oak tree remains a stick (but with dead leaves still attached). The Rose of Sharon plants are doing wonderfully. I have no idea where I'm going to plant any of these things. Probably ought to be thinking about what I'm going to plant in the flower bed I started digging today too. I think I may try to fill in some of the holes in the backyard with the crap I dig out of the front yard. It's mostly clay though, so that might be a problem.
I think what I really need is half a load of good black dirt. I'm not entirely sure they have such a thing down here. I also don't want to think about having to haul the dirt around. So in the meantime, I'm shopping for trees on the US Arbor Day Foundation site.
Other than that, today was repeatedly annoying.
Bad Motorcycle! No biscuit!
My motorcycle wouldn't start this morning. I had been planning to ride it since last Friday. Looking forward to it all week. I carefully checked the weather forecast to make sure it wouldn't be too hot, too chilly or too rainy. Weather was *perfect*. I get up a bit early and get organized to go. I am ready ahead of schedule for once. I go out to start the bike and warm her up. She turns over once and then hasn't got the energy to turn over again. The starter just clicks. Miss Crabby Clerk
I have found where the crabby people in the state governmental offices are. It's not the driver's license bureau. It's the county clerk's office where you get license plates. Or at least the individual who I imposed upon to try and get license plates is crabby. We started off on the wrong foot. The station where she works is at the opposite end of the room from where the door marked enter is located. There were also two people between me (standing patiently at the place marked "wait here") and her station, obscuring my view somewhat. Also obscuring my view was her computer monitor. Once she noticed I was standing there she announced in a rather annoyed-sounding voice that she could help me. So I hustle myself down there and apologize that I hadn't seen her "hiding" behind the monitor. She replies (without any sense of humor at all) that she wasn't hiding, she was working. This implied to me that having to deal with the public and assist them in obtaining license plates at the license plate office where she is apparently employed is interrupting her work, which leads me to wonder just what work she does as an employee of the license plate office.
The next step in our interaction was for me to produce the necessary paperwork. In the state of Illinois, this means producing your registration paperwork, your own personal identification (a driver's license), and proof of vehicle insurance. According to the official state website regarding what is necessary to bring to get a NEW set of plates as a new resident in the state, you need the car's registration paperwork, proof of who you are (two forms of ID) and proof that you live in TN. It also says to bring the name/address info for any lienholders. Ok, so I collected all of that information. I brought it with me, along with my checkbook.
Miss Crabby Clerk snaps that I have to give her all the license plates on the vehicles in question. Ok, I say, I can give her the plates off the car, but I don't have the other vehicles handy so I'll have to come back for those two. This does not mollify her. She asks rather crabbily if I'm making payments on "all of these vehicles". I reply that I am making payments on the VW and the Honda. She says I have to provide the information about the lienholder. I tell her I have that written down right here and give her the sticky note with that information. She makes an unpleasant face (I guess I ruined her fun by having SOME of the necessary information). Then she says I have to have the titles in hand and that registration information isn't sufficient and pushes the paperwork back at me. I said OK, I didn't know that and that I brought what was on the website. I told her I'd come back on another day and take care of it all.
Here's going to be the "fun" part. In Illinois, if you have a lien on a vehicle, the lienholder gets the title. I am not in physical posession of the title to my car. I do have the actual titles to the bikes (apparently there's no lien on the Honda afterall). According to the Illinois Secretary of State's website, the REGISTRATION paperwork is considered proof of ownership for the state of Illinois. I have no idea in @#$!#^*& how I'm going to get this to work in this state if I have to have the title in hand. I could order a duplicate title, but Illinois will send it directly to the bank with no exception (says so right on the webpage) so that doesn't solve anything and does cost me an extra $65 for the title. Looks like I'll be making some phone calls early next week about this.
With any luck, on the day I return to the clerk's office, Miss Crabby Clerk will be off having dental work done or something. In any event, I'm going to make sure I end up being assisted by a COMPLETELY different person, even if it means waiting extra long. I can't stand people who do customer service FOR A LIVING and who clearly hate having to deal with the public in any capacity or who insist on demonstrating that they have all the power and can jerk you around however they like. I'm fairly certain that Miss Crabby Clerk fits both categories. Maybe she ate spinach this week.
Library Card!
To recover from this unfortunate and very unpleasant experience and to save myself an extra trip later, I went to the library to get a library card. Librarians are almost inevitably kind and polite creatures. The librarians at the local library are no exception. I had a library card in 30 seconds and my request to not provide my Social Security number was completely acceptable. I even was allowed to check out 5 items today. I wasn't going to check anything out, but then I wandered over to the new book section and found a couple of interesting things, including the SQL Cookbook from O'Reilly. Out of the knitting section (which holds about 18 books), I selected Barbara Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Stitches.
Efficiency in Action
Now that I had two of my errands done, I found myself in heavier-than-usual traffic driving north. And my book browsing caused me to miss getting to the bank before they closed, so my paycheck is still sitting in my checkbook. Fortunately this is not a problem and I'll just go to the bank on Monday at lunch. Hopefully the computer system won't die again. If I had deposit tickets, I'd just go through the drive-up because it's open later, but I don't have any.
So on my way out of town, I diverted to Lowe's and Wal-Mart. I figured I'd get a battery for the Honda. I called Mitch to find out what kind of battery. He's got no idea. The King of Stockpiled Useless Information Stored in his Treo never entered in the battery data for his motorcycle! I was amazed by that! He's got the 3 letter codes for every airport in the US, but not the battery data.
At Lowe's I return the last of the unneeded stuff from the faucet job and purchase mouse poison, mole poison, blood meal (for the compost pile) and the sockets.
Homicidal Tendencies:
I get home, all excited to take apart my motorcycle and extract the bad battery. I get the side panels off with no trouble whatsoever. I try the 10mm socket and discover the seat bolts are 12mm. I try the 12mm socket. It doesn't fit. I try the other side of the bike. Socket still doesn't fit. I look at socket. Socket says 11mm. I did not indulge my desire to throw said socket against the wall with all my might. I did, however, indulge the impulse to stomp up and down the garage in frustration. And seriously regretted NOT buying the entire metric socket SET for 20 bucks, which would have solved this problem. See what happens when I try to save myself 15 bucks?
So my motorcycle sits in the garage half naked with a dead battery still trapped inside. I'll go BACK to Lowe's in the morning to get the correct socket (the adjustable cresecent wrench I bought last week won't fit in the necessary space and none of my other crescent wrenches are metric), then I'll come home to take out the battery and RETURN to town to get a new battery before returning home to replace the battery. So this will be a 28 mile set of round trips. For one stinking battery. Grrrrr.
Given my high frustration level after these incidents, I was feeling a teensy bit homicidal. With the song from Shel Silverstein about poisoning pigeons in the park going through my head, I commenced to bait the mole hills and tunnels in the back yard. Heavily. There are almost 20 mole hills back there now. This of course means that I have lots of worms and yummy grubs in my yard, which is a good thing, but it's wreaking havoc on the area I'd like to make into a garden. With any luck there won't be any new mole hills popping up after this week.
To top off my homicidal urges, I pitched 6 bait packs into the attic for the mice. Last night at midnight I was awakened to the sound of scratching and scrabbling in my bathroom. It sounded like the mice were rappelling down their side of the shower enclosure, which I'm sure would be very fun if you were a mouse. Heck, it might be part of a mouse scouts excursion. I put bait blocks in the laundry area just in case anybody wanted to come out the hole in the wall there. We'll see how much noise the little beady-eyed bastards make tonight. And some time next week I'll go up to the attic and haul out the corpses so they don't stink up the place.
That was nearly as satisfying as spending half an hour beating the crap out of the heavy bag or firing a hundred rounds at the range.
Other stress relief activities:
I hosed down the neighbor's cat when it decided it wanted to hang out in my yard. Yesterday it decided to take up residence in my garage while I was mowing. (This is *not* "Phoebe", but some gray tabby.) I didn't get a direct shot, but he got misted pretty good and has figured out that the sound of the hose is something to scamper away from.
I edged the front sidewalk, but haven't yet fixed the north side of the driveway. I also started removing the grass/sod from what will be the expanded front flower bed and flood control area. I made a rough outline of the bed on the south side of the front walk all the way down to the birdfeeder pole. I think the bed shape and design will change over time, but this is a start. I found the soil too hard to get the sod up, so I soaked it pretty well and then went inside.
Tomorrow I'll water the fruit trees and fertilize them with fertilizer spikes. I'll also rake in the bloodmeal I dusted over the "tropical" flowerbed on the north side of the walk.
The Good Bits....
The day started with a co-worker offering me the opportunity to ride horses at her place or her relative's place any time I wanted. She gave me her home phone numbers and said to give her a call any time and that she really means it. I told her I'd take her up on that and that while I might not look the prettiest, I could stick to most horses fairly well. She laughed and said she could certainly find something for me to ride. I'm thinking next weekend I'll have to go riding.... I'll have to find my boots and helmet (which I think is still at Kim's barn, actually).
Another co-worker threatened me with serious bodily harm as she lost her willpower to resist the peanut butter cookies I brought earlier in the week. Turns out that they're her favorite. She ate five of them by the end of the day. I think I've had five or six now myself.
Had lunch with co-workers at a local sit-down restaurant serving standard American fare. One had a huge chicken strip salad, while two others had the soup/salad special. I had a burger with mashed potatoes. The potatoes were a bit gluey but good and had lumps of potato in them. The burger was cooked perfectly.
I got poked twice today at work. Once for the HepB titer and once to start the TB test. The TB lump is already gone. I ought to contact Provena's employee health office and have them fax a copy of the stuff they did to me when I was hired.
Finally, the weather today was GLORIOUS! The sun was shining, the birds were singing.... And I got to leave work early because I worked late on Wednesday with the mosquitoes. I didn't get as much accomplished today as I wanted to get done, but it seems like I got a few things done anyway.
This weekend's plan:
I really want to straighten up the living room and get all of the boxes out of there. There is a bunch of clutter and detritus collecting on the coffee table and that needs to stop. I need to make homes for things and start putting them in their homes. Or I'll be my own office's version of Miss Cranky Clerk.
I also need to decide about getting a puppy from a co-worker (or both of the older dogs). I'll whack the grass down in the dog run and get it cleaned up. It just looks a mess right now and it needs to be cleaned up anyway.
Landscaping ideas:
The little maple tree continues to sprout leaves after being a stick for so long. The little oak tree remains a stick (but with dead leaves still attached). The Rose of Sharon plants are doing wonderfully. I have no idea where I'm going to plant any of these things. Probably ought to be thinking about what I'm going to plant in the flower bed I started digging today too. I think I may try to fill in some of the holes in the backyard with the crap I dig out of the front yard. It's mostly clay though, so that might be a problem.
I think what I really need is half a load of good black dirt. I'm not entirely sure they have such a thing down here. I also don't want to think about having to haul the dirt around. So in the meantime, I'm shopping for trees on the US Arbor Day Foundation site.
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