so help me...

I swear, do NOT let me have access to thermonuclear weapons. right now, I'm fairly certain that not only is everyone else on this planet an idiot, but they're assholes as well.

not only did chevron fuck me over, but our directv satellite has crapped out as well.

oh, and my cell phone. it's telling me I need to insert the SIM card and will only let me make emergency calls. it won't even let me call CINGULAR. so I call them on my land line, and of course they're fucking closed.

meanwhile, I have no cell phone. you know, that piece of shit I paid $200 for, and pay over $100 a month for upkeep? yeah, the piece of shit doesn't work. miyuki's works just fine. mine, for no reason whatsoever, quits working. it worked earlier today. nothing has changed, it wasn't even turned OFF... hell, it won't even LET me turn it off.

I want to kill a whole lot of people right now.

fuck the man.

some friends of mine back int he bbs days used to have a "damn the man" month, wherein all of life's problems were blamed on "the man," who was damned by everyone for an entire month. much beer was also involved.

well, I'm thinking it's time to bring back that tradition. the man can eat my asshole.

miyuki and I got back from our weekend visiting my family, to a stack of mail and cat puke. I took the mail, being the swell guy I am. one of the pieces was our chevron bill. I open it up, get the chequebook out to pay it. I try to pay my bills as closely to payday as possible, and since I just got paid, so will the bill.

there's a problem. it's due in four days. and it's for $411.73. now, gas prices have gone up, but not THAT much. there's also a $15 late fee and no payments posted since august. you know, the last time I paid my bill. the last time I GOT my bill. the one where I filled in my new address on the little "change of address" box. the bill that was sent out on october 12 to my old address. the one that the post office finally got around to forwarding to me on october 29.

of course no one answers the phone there tonight. but tomorrow when I get off work, I'm going to yell at some poor phone monkey so much they're in tears. they're going to refund the $15 late fee. they're going to refund the $4.99 in finance charges (I always pay my bill to current, there AREN'T any finance charges). and if they don't comply, I'm going to cancel the account. I've already made the payment online tonight, since I couldn't mail it in time anyway. simple as that.

THEY fucked up. and now they're charging me for their fuckup. hell, they're going to lose my business anyway. I'll be buying gas maybe twice a month from now on, down from the five to eight times (depending on how many road trips). and I think maybe the shell stations conveniently located throughout ballard might appreciate my business a bit more.

and please, don't give me bullshit sob stories about shell being evil. they're ALL evil. that's why I found a job that lets me leave the car at home, remember?

new job poop.

so I went in this morning for my orientation type stuff. got a pile of paperwork and catalogues six inches thick to read through, and about twenty forms to sign and turn in on monday. also did my pee test, and am hoping the five pints of booze from the night before were out of my system. twelve hours should be adequate time to detox five pints, right?

I got introduced to most of the crew. for the most part, it's an older crowd. the girl I'm replacing looked about my age, and VERY pregnant. the purchasing guy looked about my age, and the new sales girl (I think they just hired her) looked to be in her early 20s. there were a few people I didn't meet. everyone else looked to be 40s or 50s.

the general feel I got from my introductions with everyone is that the position is the lynchpin for the entire company. seriously. all of the sales staff funnel their orders through me, I get with engineering to make sure it's possible, get with purchasing to get the parts in, and then coordinate with production to get shit built and shipped in a timely manner. it's a bit overwhelming to think there's gonna be 20+ people relying on me. I thought it was bad enoguht hat I'd have about eight production people answering directly to me. so I'm definitely movin' on up in the world, but I'm not sure if I'm george or wheezie...

the girl I'm replacing isn't due to pop for another two weeks. she joked that her mom predicted she'd go into labour this weekend. if that happens, I'm boned. I'm hoping to get at LEAST a week of training out of her, preferably two or even three. the more training I can get out of her firsthand, the beter off I'll be.

they've got some kickass benefits too. I guess I've just missed out on their open ended sick leave policy. before, you got as much sick leave as you needed. one guy missed eight weeks for open heart surgery, it was all paid. they're ending that december 31, but it's not totally bad. they're giving everyone an extra week of time off (that means I'll have three weeks of vacation to START with, four weeks after 7 years, five weeks after 15). unused time will roll over to a limited degree (six month grace period), and they do offer a disability insurance automatically, if you do end up out of work for a prolonged period. the 401k program is vastly better than my old one, it'll actually require me to do some research and make some decisions. the only downside is their dental plan sucks. I probably won't have dental insurance, and instead just pay for the work up front and hope I don't need more crowns. $800 a year in dental premiums kinda sucks of the ass, when you figure two checkups a year only costs $300.

anyway, looks like a sweet gig for me, I'm happy with it. my biggest concern right now is whether or not I should show up to work on my first day in costume. what do you do when you start a new job on hallowe'en? if I dress up, and no one else does, I'm some sort of immature freak that no one will take seriously... if I don't, and everyone else did, I'm some stick-up-the-arse lamer that no one will talk to. I figure I'll compromise and get some uber portable, half-ass costume, like alien antenna or something... or just show up dressed as "the new guy"...

oh, there ARE stupid questions...

I show up for my last day. since I don't plan to do much, and the habs play tonight (a game I probably won't get to watch due to probably drinking at bars), I wore my Koivu sweater to work.

creepy new guy: "do you like hockey?"

me: "no, I spent $300 on a hockey sweater because I can't stand the sport."

fucking idiot. it's not like he asked, "oh, hockey fan eh?" or something. he asked as if he had no prior indication that I'd be a hockey fan.

it's also become apparent he doesn't know his alphabet. everything here is located on a Battleship-esque grid, with letters going vertically and numbers horizontally. oncehe gets up to around F he has trouble finding the rest of the shelves.

so either be lied or bluffed his way through his interview really well, or the person who hired him has no clue as to how to discern whether someone is capable of a relatively simple job or not... at this point, I'm leaning towards the latter.

speaking of dicks...

a brief history of my employment... when I was 18, my dad hired me to work in his warehouse. he's a manager of a largish branch in my company, and has had 30 years of success in the industry, continually being one of the top branch managers year after year. I worked for a year or so for him, then went away to school. when I came back from school, the economy was shit, so I hired on with him again, with the understanding I'd be transferred elsewhere shortly. a year later, I was shipped to the corporate office. I spent an unpleasant year there before being exiled to redmond, where my sentence runs through tomorrow.

the main reason my corporate experience was so bad was because of one man's grudge against my dad. see, this guy is an idiot. he's a two faced, ass-sucking politician, and he's horrible at his job. yet because of his ability to play the political game, he's got a fair amount of influence. my dad has made it a hobby to point out whenever this guy fucks up. so when I got to corporate, he took it out on me. did I mention he's the manager of the purchasing department? and that I now work in purchasing at a branch level? he's not my boss or anything, but I do have to answer to him on a regular basis. he had me marked the monet I walked through the door there, and hasn't let up much in the three years since.

he calls me up today with a question, and then segues into a line of questioning about my future. I give him the party line about how I want to explore options where I can be sure I've earned my merits and not been awarded them simply for being my father's son. his response?

"yeah, we'll see about that."

what a fucking dick. he's the main reason I even WANT to pursue merit for its own sake. he's been my biggest critic the past few years, the harshest ass insisting I have no business here and only get by because of my last name. forget about the dozen or so times I've saved HIS ass on potential FUBARs.

14 more hours. then I'm done and never have to come back.

conundrum.

somehow I got volunteered to be a gopher today. not sure why. there's a management meeting upstairs for all the managers in the district, plus a couple big wigs. they decided they wanted sammiches for lunch, so copies of a local place's menu were distributed, and then handed to me with a company credit card.

problem is, only two of the ten people actually filled out their menus. everyone else left out some or most of the info I need. six inch or twelve? what kind of bread? cheese? which veggies? any condiments?

I'm not about to barge into their meeting to correct them on their inability to order. so I just faxed over what they gave me, with instructions to prepare everything as normal except for the few exceptions noted.

I expect they'll be pissed, but it's their own damn fault.

I was told I could order myself a sammich too for my trouble, but seeing as I'm gonna be the goat on this one, I declined. not to mention the fact that they're not good sammiches anyway, and I have good leftover spaghetti from last night. miyuki made really tasty homemade stuff, which is much better than the crap from the jar I usually make...

blah. I also have to take full hour lunches this week because my timecard has already been turned in. I have nothing to do, so I brought in a book. joy.

four hours til I go home. 20 working hours until I'm done here forEVER. 52 hours total. at least a few of the nicer coworkers said they'd goout for a beer with me thursday after work. willlikely be the last I see of them, 'cos I doubt I'll be back for inventory.

bummer.

so, according to the interweb, I'm going to die at age 66. a coworker of mine, who is 45 and slightly heavier than me will allegedly live to 89. oh, and did I mention he recently quit smoking after nearly thirty years?

miyuki, on the other hand, will live to over 95.

so that's one more reason not to breed. who the hell would want MY genes? they're shit.

creepy new guy update.

this guy never ceases to amaze me... he was trying to put away fiberglass showers from off a truck this morning, they get stored out in the yard. rather than walk out the twenty food wide by ten foot tall bay door and walk around the building to back corner of the yard where the shower is stored, he decides to take a shortcut out the back door.

problem is, the back door is a man door. it's only 36" wide. he's moving a 42" wide shower.

being the swell guy I am, I watched him slowly make his way back to the door. stimp, drag. stomp, drag. waiting for it to dawn on him that the door he's heading for is too small. stomp, drag. stomp, drag. still moving, getting closer. stomp, drag. stomp, drag. now he's at the door, and he just sits there looking at the door. for a full twenty seconds. I am NOT making this up. standing there, shower between him and the door. at this point I wander off to find someone else to confirm what I'm seeing. by the time we get back there, he's nearly halfway through the door, trying to slide the shower through sideways. except it's stuck.

at this point I lose it. I was laughing so hard I was wheezing, tears streaming down my face. I had to go sit in the bathroom for a couple minutes to compose myself.

you can't PAY for this kind of entertainment. and what really frightens me is this guy was in the damn army. he's got less common sense than a head of cabbage.

I'm going to burn in hell. see you all there.

blah.

miyuki and I went to see waiting... last night. I felt so bad for laughing as hard as I did. for as mature as I like to think of myself, I just can't get over my love of dick and fart jokes. of course I'm going to buy the dvd when it comes out. luis guzman was hilarious. I can honestly say I've never seen that much nutsack humour crammed into a 90 minute span, and that's saying something.

after the movie, spent much of the night flipping between hockey and adult swim on cartoon network. and again, I was laughing so hard it hurt at "robot chicken"... stop motion animation of action figures in everyday situations. lots of flatulence humour. miyuki thinks I'm terrible.

probably because I am.

my zombie stalker.

so the creepy new guy at work is stalking me. and he has a very pronounced limp. every time I step foot in the warehouse, he tries to catch up with me... stomp, drag. stomp, drag. he never actually TALKS to me or asks questions, so I just avoid him. I see him coming, I turn quickly and speed up a bit. so long as there's only one of him and I don't let myself get ambushed, I should be able to keep him away from my sweet, sweet brainmeats. four more days and I'm home free.

I finally told the coworkers who hadn't heard yet. was told there was a "masterplan" and everything would be fine as of november 1. I boss is blowing smoke. considering when some of my coworkers asked about the "rumour" they heard, he hesitated to even tell them I was leaving...

and my ten year high school reunion was last night. it was only about half an hour away. I didn't go. it would have cost $90, and most of the people I'd actually want to see I either see anyway or were on the "where are they now?" list, meaning no one knew how to contact them about the reunion anyway.

I'm a horrible person. in so many ways.

drawn together.

so did anyone watch drawn together last night? I realise this is a dumb question as 95% of my audience is canadian...

but at the beginning of the episode, wooldoor hangs himself. and I can't for the life of me remember what movie it spoofed. he stood up on a chair, carved a suicide note in the bannister attached to the ceiling, tied a noose around it and kicked the chair out from under him...

I SWEAR I've seen that exact scene from a movie. I just can't remember what it was or which character hung themself like that. it was a very stark image tho, I'm sure it was a spoof.

the captain must go down with the ship...

usually because the captain makes really dumb decisions and deserves to be punished.

new guy started at the old job yesterday. didn't really get much of a read off of him. that all changed today tho. old boss has managed to hire his third psycho in as many years. first thing this morning he was talking, ranting really, to another coworker for a good fifteen minutes. guy has more grudges than anyone I know. was describing the nasty letters he'd written to congressmen, how the army screwed him over, and how he has a dozen different lawsuits against former employers et al pending...

then later on, he was walking past my office, and stopped in my doorway for about five seconds. just stared at me in a somewhat menacing way. then walked off without saying a word.

guy's a fucking nutter. it's awesome.

seven more working days. woot.

everything's coming up milhouse!

err, christian!

went over to fred meyer so miyuki could pick up a prescription. I was stuck with nothing to do for ten minutes, and really, you can only test your blood pressure so many times before it gets boring (turns out I'm bordering on prehypertension, oh noes!), so I bought a scratch lottery ticket from the vending machine. slingo devil or something like that, cost me $3. I ended up completing four lines (oddly, I didn't get a single one down the centre line), with a devil face. four lines is $15, the devil face doubled my prize.

so I rolled over five bucks into lotto games... two for lotto, two for mega millions (up to 90 million, wooo!) and one for stupid quinto, the ugly stepsister of washington lottery games. I pocketed the other twenty-five bucks.

it's odd how I never win much when gambling. I think I won $14 playing the ponies in vancouver (my theory that the horse with the dirtiest double entendre name always wins appeared to be mostly true), and I'll occassionally win a bit on scratch tickets. but I've never won a hand of poker and never even managed to break even at slots. the few imes I've played roullette were a disaster too. there was one time I walked away from a blackjack table up twenty bucks, but that was an anomaly.

I'm impressed with my thirty dollar win. it seems to be continuing with my theory that life is improving. it'll be interesting to see if the horrible stormcloud that always seemed to follow me was related to my soon-to-be former employer...

weekend update.

the in-laws have gone, sent off with seven hours worth of shopping and three loaves of cracked wheat sourdough. we haven't heard from them, so we're assuming they found their way to the freeway. I fear we've spoiled miyuki's mom, we went out to eat for nearly every meal. she got indian, romio's pizza, breakfast at hattie's hat, whatever they had for lunch yesterday at the food court. the only meal that was homecooked was yesterday's breakfast, scrambled eggs and toast.

we heard an explosion outside earlier, and half the power went out in our apartment, including the fridge. we later learned it was caused by a transformer a'sploding. seems a seagull landed on it and managed to ground itself. seagull went boom and took the transformer with it.

we wandered over to the condos being built a block away and saw the demo floor. as I suspected, the condos won't be finished until spring of 2007, which is about the right timetable for us. problem is, they're doing a pre-sale in three weeks and require a 5% downpayment, or about $15k. we're not going to be buying anything anytime soon. even if I cashed out my entire 401k instead of rolling it's over, we wouldn't even have half that amount. it'll be a couple years before we can afford the downpayment. that's still in line with my goal of homeownership by age 30.

on our way back from the condos, we walked into the stairway and heard someone calling for help from the elevator. it was our apartment manager. we had to go into the laundry room and flip the breaker for the elevator to get her out. she said she'd only been in there a minute or two, but that must suck. if we hadn't passed through there, it could have been awhile before someone else did. I'm not planning on using that elevator for awhile. we rarely do anyway...

this is great tho, it feels like sunday. I get to watch hockey all night tonight and still have all day tomorrow to slob about.

la dee fricken da.

so today wasn't so bad. I dropped the girls off downtown about 11am, still haven't heard back. told miyuki she has to buy stuff while shopping too, 'cos so far she hasn't spent anything on herself. her dad gave us a belated wedding prezzie of cash tho, so it seems logical to make her spend at least some of it on stuff she wants. everything thus far has been on needs, things for the house and whatnot. she hasn't bought shoes or purses or clothes or anything. I'm worried she'll turn into a man if she keeps this up...

I went and had sushi for lunch. it was tasty. I got a library card, since the ballard library is right up the street. I wandered around about twenty blocks before I finally ended up at the post office, looking for a mail drop box. the two I knew about from my last stint in ballard were gone. I got a hawaiian punch slurpee, which was tasty.

I paced off my new work commute. it took me ten minutes to walk each way. what I'd call a brisk pace, but nothing more than my usual walk. I didn't lolly-gag, but I wasn't out of breath either. the extra exercise will be good, and it'll be great to shed all of that gas consumption I'd been stuck with.

on my way to work each morning I'll pass a cool coffee shop, I figure I'll get a cup of coffee each morning there and not drink any at the office (again, trying to be healthy by cutting back from the 4-6 cups I've been drinking). and on the way home, I walk right past the jolly roger and bit saloon, two ballard bars with lots of character. never actually been in either, but they, like most ballard bars, seem to have a lot of personality.

I'm still in shock about all of this. it all seems so great, I'm just dreading the other shoe dropping and something horrible happening. that's usually what happens to me when something good occurs. maybe I've finally outgrown that, we'll see.

two other somewhat unrelated items... got a congratulatory email from the woman who first interviewed me for the new job. before I only got her work email, which didn't list her last name. this was from her personal email account. she has the same last name as my new boss. a somewhat unusual last name. and while it may be a coincidence, I think there's some sort of relation there. she had mentioned that while she didn't work for the company, she was familiar with it and had helped with their hiring for years. I also put a call into the headhunter agency I had used, to let them know I was no longer looking for a new job. asked for my contact, was told he was no longer working there. asked for whoever was managing my account now, and was told, "he's no longer here, so no one is." gee, that's swell, considering they told me not to apply for anything because it might interfere with whatever they were working on. seeing as I had only received one crap lead in two months, I'm glad I went off on my own. that seems like a really shitty way to run a company tho. someone leaves, so you just abandon all of his clients without even contacting them?

not sure what to think of this...

turned in my notice yesterday. left the letter of resignation on my boss' desk, he got in around 8am. never said a word to me, but about 8:30 HIS boss (the district manager) came down to talk to me about it. said he wasn't happy to see me go and thought I had a bright future there, but when I told him about the $4500 raise and the walking commute, he said he could understand. he also said as far as he was concerned, I was leaving on good terms and would be welcomed back if I changed my mind. I spent much of the day waiting for my boss to say something to me, but he never did.

he did tell me to take today off, since I had "asked for a day"... actually, I made a joke about using a vacation day yesterday IF the computers weren't fixed. they were and I came in anyway. I had mentioned that miyuki's mom and sister were down here, but they had their own plans anyway. but hey, I'm told to take a day, I take it. if nothing else, I imagine he's just trying to keep his expenses in line. right now, he's on the hook for my salary through the 27th plus any unused vacation. more vacation he makes me use, the less I can double dip.

I did ask at the end of the day who I needed to talk to about rolling over my 401k, and he said it was the girl in personnel, "but she's not in today"... so he called over there too. seems weird that he'd never mention anything to me. he just acted like it was a normal day.

so I have the day off. the girls want to go shopping downtown. I'm going to drive them down, drop them off, and pick them up many, many hours later. they already had a couple hours at alderwood yesterday (I watched serenity again at the mall theatre) after a deeee-licious indian dinner. miyuki's mom was REALLY impressed. I plan to just slob about at home for awhile, watch some movies or play some video games...

and we never did get our new fridge yesterday, like we were promised. bastards.

nobody fucks with da jesus.

yeah, I have no idea why that quote is stuck in my head...

I got the job! yay! I start on hallowe'en. 8.5% raise right from the get go, plus another 5% on top of that after six months. great health care coverage (which will be a nice change of pace from what I've got), and a generous 401k program that matches 3% (as opposed to the 1% I currently have). it's a five minute walk to work, so that'll save me almost two hundred bucks a month in gas.

this is such awesome news. I get to turn in my two weeks notice tomorrow! granted, it'll be two weeks of pure hell for me, but it'll be worth it. I also called up my predecessor to see if he'd cover inventory, as he's currently unemployed. he said he'd probably do it. and hell, if my boss isn't a total dick to me, I'll even volunteer to head over there for the saturday wrap up for inventory. we'll see how he treats me.

it's a bit frightening going into this job, as it's completely different than anything i've ever done. but I'm sure many of the principles will be the same... it's a small operation too, which means I'll be wearing several hats. that keeps things interesting, and I'm good with that.

I feel awesome, oh so very awesome, uhh!

least. productive. day. EVER.

our computer network went down at 7:30am. something about the hard drive in the mainframe a'sploding. we have no access to anything in the system whatsoever. no order entry. no receiving. no bidding. no stock checks.

pretty much my ENTIRE job requires use of the computer. so I've done two things today, jack and shit. I've played a lot of solitaire, dicked around online, and told a lot of customers, "sorry, can't help you, we don't have computers." and what's really odd is how few customers have come in or called in to begin with. I don't know if they just all know we're down, or what. we've been told we won't get the system back at all today. I'm skeptical it'll even come back tomorrow. we finally got a login prompt an hour ago, but immediately got booted back out. "last login: June 23 2003." that ain't good. the backup we have is 28 months old.

in other news, my asparagus in black bean sauce came with a fortune cookie. my fortune read: 'You have had a long-term stimulation relative to business.' I hope that means a new job. still no news, but I did get a response from my thank you email that they're still evaluating applicants. I'll give them one thing, they're damn thorough when it comes to hiring....

what kind of day am I having?

first, saku pukes under the bed at 4am. it was disgusting sounding, and he wouldn't come out from under. he's a little asshole when he's sick, because he hides and makes a huge mess.

and yeah, my happy-go-lucky attitude because I might get a new job is gone. the reality of my crap current job sunk back in, and I was in a pissy mood all day.

but I was so excited to come home after work to watch my habs game, only to find it isn't even on. every OTHER game is on. but noooo, we couldn't show the home opener for the most storied franchise in NHL history in a great rivalry between unbeaten teams...

fuckers.

somebody call the waaaaaaaaah-mbulance...

"I've said it before on record, I don't like it. No other sport does it except for soccer. I don't know why we do it."

- Maple Leafs head coach Pat Quinn following a second straight shootout loss to the Ottawa Senators.

***

actually Pat, this isn't some gimmick, there's a long history of shootouts in hockey. the IIHF has been using shootouts to determine winners for about forever. the NHL realised it needed to do something to capture the attention of the 'merkin audience, and we don't like no stinkin' ties down here. the shootouts make for good teevee, they're exciting. quit whining like the little bitch you are just because your team can't win under the new regime.

man I love to watch the maple leaves lose... I'm just waiting for stupid eric lindros' head to explode. only thing better than that would be darcy tucker and tie dummy being caught on film in some twisted bondage tryst and forced to retire...

damn you, tom petty!

I've got "the waiting" stuck in my head all day. it's been a theme.

I think I did fairly well at my interview saturday. I wouldn't go so far as to say I nailed it, because I didn't. lack of interview experience kept me from really getting it perfect. oddly enough, the second part of the interview, that was one of the questions... "how many interviews have you done?" sadly, two. first was in canada a year ago, and it did result in a job offer, albeit one that I couldn't take.

I'm torn tho. my attitude today has been wonderfully chirpy, I suspect because of the possibility of not having to be here. most everyone has been in a pissy mood all day too. it's unusual for me to be more cheerful than everyone around me. so on the one hand, I don't want to ever find out, because I have this sense of euphoria that will be shattered if I don't get the job. but I'm also horribly impatient and just want to know, and now! it's probably too soon to expect a response anyway. I was told a decision would be made by friday, but that was contigent on my second interview happening monday or tuesday. it happened saturday. that seems to accelerate the whole timetable, does it not? it would be so nice if I could get that job. it's a brisk walk from home, I wouldn't have to wake up at 5:30am anymore, and I wouldn't have to worry about the nightmare of inventory...

it's true tho, the waiting really is the hardest part.

interviewy update.

went for my job interview today. in all, it lasted two and a half hours, which seems promising.

was told there were twenty initial applicants given an email interview, seven of which made the cut. was told my email response was very good, and I thought the follow up interview went well, talking to her for almost ninety minutes. then I had the second interview immediately after, instead of waiting until monday or tuesday as I was originally told. spoke for another hour plus with the potential boss and second in command of the company. didn't do nearly as well with him, but hopefully I did well enough. I expect to hear back sometime next week, as they said they wanted to have a decision made quickly. I'm also hoping that if the initial field was narrowed from twenty to seven, not all seven interviewees were sent upstairs for the second interview (first was with the headhunter/recruiter, second with the actual employer). if that logic holds true, I should have a one in four chance of getting the job.

it's ironic, too. my boss approached me yesterday and said they had started looking for my replacement. nearly three months after I requested the transfer. at least that tells me if I don't get this job, the wheels are in motion for me to move on at my current job. I'd prefer the new job, however. less attachments and hassles. and it's eight blocks away from home. I could walk to work each day.

also broke down and got my credit report online. had been avoiding it, because I knew it'd be bad because of all the crap with the ex. and it was. my credit score is 562. on a scale of 450 to 850, 562 puts me in the 10th percentile, or "very poor" credit... it's gonna be years before I'm able to buy a house. fucking bitch.

now it's time to watch hockey. stupid maple leaves.

does this seem relevant to anyone else?

"The President is to nominate, and, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States whose appointments are not otherwise provided for in the Constitution. But the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers as they think proper, in the President alone, or in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.

...

"To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration."

Federalist Papers #76, Alexander Hamilton, 1 April 1788


dubya nominating his personal lawyer, who has no prior experience as a judge, and has in fact proven herself to be wholly corruptable, anti-union, and frighteningly pro-life... doesn't that seem to go against the very grain of what the federalist papers outline? for those of you unaware, the federalist papers were the supporting documents, the 18th century FAQs, sent out to the states to gain support for ratification of the constitution. they explicitly outline what, say, congress should be doing when a crackpot president decides to stack the supreme court with his cronies.

so not only has dubya fucked over the economy for a decade (minimum), foreign relations for two (minimum), but now he's fucking over fifty years for women who want to abort their parasites. 'cos that's about how long I suspect the impact of miers and roberts will last...

so miyuki, you ready to go back to canada yet? it's about to get REAL ugly down here...

and I didn't even need to procure an A-K.

so I'm gonna chalk up yesterday as a good day.

hockey was back. habs scored the game winning goal with 11 seconds left to beat the bruins. canucks got two pretty goals from naslund to win 3-2 over gretzky's coyotes. oilers beat the avs in an exciting game. hell, even luongo had a shutout (he's my #1 goalie on my fantasy team). I had six hours of non-stop hockey, flipping channels every time a commercial of intermission came on. all of my fave teams won. hell, even the hated maple leaves lost.

and to truly separate the day from the rest, I have a job interview on saturday. I had done an email interview answering a few questions, and have a face-to-face interview saturday because of it. if I make that cut, I have a final interview early next week and could be starting at the new job shortly. I'm not exactly sure what the job or company is, as it's going through a headhunter, but the description sounded similar to what I already do, so I'm qualified. and it's in ballard, which could mean I might even be able to walk to work. yay, no more driving!

and as I'm typing this, I'm listening to bizarre love thursday on c89. awesome remixes of great 80s tracks. pet shop boys. flock of seagulls. big country. duran duran. billy idol. peter gabriel. and that's just the last six tracks...

nads crossed.

just sent off a resume for a purchasing opening posted on craigslist from last friday. I'm hoping they haven't filled it in two days, so I at least have an opportunity to blow the interview. it's for some sort of packaging company, so it sounds about as exciting as plumbing. and it's located a block from my current company's corporate office, which means I could go out to lunch with the few people I'm friendly with over there too. mostly I like it because it's a mile from home, and it has nothing to do with what I'm currently doing. so let's hope I get a call this week for an interview. oh, and if I can get hired on somewhere else in the next couple months, it means I won't have to deal with the inventory from hell. if I'm still here in december, I'm going to be awfully pissy trying to deal with all the compounded fuckups of the warehouse, and accounting for all of it.

leavenworth was okay, but terribly expensive. the food was wonderful, the hotel was nice (but at $140 a night it damn well better be), and I didn't drink too terribly much. saw lots of pretty landscape on the trip, took some pics (I'm sure miyuki will have them posted soon). it's not something I plan to do every year, like my parents do. it probably cost close to $500, and I didn't have $500 worth of fun. it was a nice one time trip tho. I suspect I'd actually like the town more when it's not so busy.

work has taken another downturn, as we've lost two warehouse monkeys. it's sad that one of them is almost addition by subtraction, and the other was never there to begin with, but it does add up. two nearly worthless bodies still accomplish a bit. I offered to work an extra couple hours a day (I figure two of my hours are worth at least six of theirs), but I was told to focus on my own work. in other words, no overtime and the boss is going to be extra cranky as he tries to pick up all the slack. it also means none of HIS stuff is getting done, as he's in the warehouse all day. joy.

hockey season starts tomorrow... I'm so looking forward to that. I'm going to spend all evening tomorrow drinking beer and watching hockey. I'll be switching back and forth between the habs and penguins at 4, and then watch the canucks at 7. yay!