WTF?

Usually it's Sharron who is a stickler with Customer Service, but today, it's my turn to rant.

Pinnacle Security - DO NOT USE THEM

We changed from ADT to Pinnacle in June of 2007 after my frugal sensibility saw a lower monthly cost than what I was paying and blinded me to what amounted to nothing more than a fast, hard sales pitch of the company and their services. I can't say we've been happy with the system, but I guess we haven't been unhappy with it either, it's just...there. I'd like to say I'm confident that if some Hannibal Lechter type got the munchies in the middle of the night and decided to break in, some omnipotent voice would come over the security system announcing "Are you alright? Help is on the way" like in the corny commercial, but some part of me is afraid I'd become dinner before the police would actually show up (unless they happen to already be at the neighbors...which is entirely possible since they are there almost daily...but I digress).

My uncertainty was reinforced today when I called Pinnacle to get a replacement sensor that fell off the door and disappeared only to find out that THEY SOLD MY ACCOUNT TO ANOTHER COMPANY!!!! In January of 2008!!!! Without notifying me! I have no idea who this new company is but they now have all my personal information...name, SS#, credit card account, passwords....WTF?

I've written a particularly stern letter of complaint to Pinnacle telling them I want out of my three year contract without penalty because I consider this a severe breach of my privacy. They could've at the very least notified they were going to sell my account -- and subsequent personal information-- to someone else. I'm sure they will argue, stating it's in the contract in tiny, unreadable, complicated legal-eeeze that they have the right to sell an account at anytime and without any prior notice WHICH IS COMPLETE, UNETHICAL BULLSHIT! I intend to copy the BBB on it (and if I have to, the Attorney General). I'll keep you up to date on what I hear. I'm not hopeful....but I'm still extremely pissed off!

That looks like a.....

...penis. Yes, I have a penis on my arm. In blue surgical ink.

Now, you might ask how one goes about getting a temporary tattoo of a penis on her arm. Well, it's rather simple-- just get a bug bite, make sure it gets infected and turns to cellulitis. I guess it's by pure chance that the outline the dr at the urgent care clinic did resembles something so phallic on my arm, but of course the key is to have co-workers who notice it, have no qualms about pointing out what it looks like and jump at the opportunity to add a few more realistic touches to the drawing (which fortunately came off with a good scrubbing of alcohol...rubbing, not drinking)

It almost reminds me of the ending to that one Austin Powers movie where everyone watches the space ship fly off.... "That looks like a big..." "Johnson!".

You call that a prom dress?????

If this was your daughter, would you let her go to the prom in this dress?
Well, someone did and the girl ended up being handcuffed and sat down in the back of a police car. Not so much for what she was wearing but for having a flat out hissy fit tantrum because she was told by school officials that her dress was indecent and in order to attend the prom she needed to go home and change.

Now, first off, I can see exactly how this unfolded. I've worked at a school district long enough to know the attitude some kids have (and usually get from one or both of their parents). She was told "no" and immediately went with the "you can't tell me what to do" crap. Sorry, sweetheart, you broke the clearly stated dress code rules. Uh, yeah, they have every right to tell you "no". It's not like they told you NOT to come back to the prom. They just told you to go home and change. It was reasonable and logical and you had absolutely no right to throw a temper tantrum like some spoiled two year old. She deserved what she got for not following the rules and being belligerent to school officials. Unfortunately, dealing with flack for taking action in cases like this is a problem with schools today. Parents are too upset that someone is actually holding kids accountable for their misbehavior...hmm, maybe if the parents had done a little more of that in the earlier years, the school wouldn't have to be doing it now. How's that for a concept.

Secondly, where were the parents? The mother? I think I saw one comment that said that the mother didn't know anything because the girl left from her grandmother's house. Okay, that's even worse. The grandmother let her go out like this???? I can just hear it... "But grandma, everyone dresses like this for the prom". Uh, doesn't look like your friend there does, so why was grandma okay with this? I also heard reports mom is offering up several excuses...she'd seen a sketch of the dress that was supposed to be made but the girl changed with sketch without mom's knowledge. Excuse me, she had the dress MADE for prom? Hope you didn't pay very much because that wasn't a whole lot of material they used. And sorry, excuse doesn't fly. Why wasn't the mom with the girl when the sketch was presented. Worse yet, what dressmaker would make changes without consulting the parent first???? Mom said she agreed with the school's decision and didn't approve of the the dress either....nice backpedal there mom.

Face it, the girl screwed up and then was held accountable. This shouldn't be news. That it is news shows how we've become a society of excuses. Sad, sad, sad. Okay, I'm down off my soapbox now. Back to writing in my fictional world...

(Now, so that no one jumps all over my ass, this is all ALLEGEDLY REPORTED. Don't jump all over me because I'll openly admit I don't know all the facts...I doubt anyone does except the people involved and that's probably subjective as well. Oh and the picture is labeled "courtesy" on a Houston paper website. Now, get off my back about it.)

But I wanna turn on the Harley!!!

My mother was deathly afraid of motorcycles having known someone that was hit while riding one and subsequently paralyzed. She always told me she'd kill me before I'd get a chance to kill myself if I ever dated a guy that rode one. Although I knew my mother well enough to know that she would actually carry out that threat to a certain extent, it may have stopped me from getting my butt on a bike but not fantasizing about riding one some day. Born and raised in Milwaukee, home of Harley Davidson, that's always been a part of that dream.

I've talked about it for years, my husband not really reacting to it that I can remember. But after seeing the movie The Bucket List (along with some encouragement from his boss who rides a BMW bike) he decided he wanted to learn to ride a bike and asked me to take the safety course with him. He passed (the rat) I didn't (hey, I'd just came back from Mexico, okay?) As luck had it, our neighbor was selling his bike and we now are proud owners of a 2000 Harley Sportster. The plan was to share it. He buys everything from the boots to the gear so that it will work for both of us.

Not that I can ride it yet.

My husband has taken to it like a fish to water. Meanwhile, being a beginner, thinking about riding an 833 cc scares the CRAP out of me. But, I'm going to do this because I wanna be a biker chick. Practice will help. But the question is, will I actually GET to practice? It just makes me wonder if and when I'll ever get to ride it. Maybe I'll just have to beat him with the helmet to get him off the damn thing so I can ride it once in awhile. Naaaa, it would destroy the integrity of the helmet.

Hey, I know...my birthday's coming up, he can just buy me one of my own!

Ahhh, Mexico. What a wonderful vacation. Yes, I managed to get away from my family and the job from hell for a few days for a a week in Cancun with Sharron...just a girls week away. FABULOUS! The resort was great (and extremely huge), included all the booze we could drink (and we did our share), weather was a bit iffy, but hey, we were still on vacation. Some of the highlights:

Interesting places: Tulum, Xel Ha, Playa del Carmen
Interesting people:

• Some, no most women, should avoid cornrows at all costs....don't care if your on vacation or not, 'kay? And really, high heels with bikinis? What's the point?
• Peter, the 26 year old 5th grade teacher who just seemed to wander around the resort because his friends were constantly ditching him. So drunk, he would actually weave when he walked and had no idea where his hotel room was (and it didn't matter what time of day this was, he was always weaving and bobbing). One of those 'Iloveyouman' drunks, everyone knew him and knew his life story because he was happy to sit and tell you until someone he knew finally retrieved him leading him back to his room.
• The cab driver who taught us to swear in Mayan....and wow, was it a doozey! Too bad I can't remember how to say it.

Fun things we did:

• Sharron's trip to the infirmary when she managed to fall and knock her noggin....wet marble is NOT your friend.
• At at Senior Frog's, watching the other drunk patrons drink pina coladas out of tall plastic glasses that looked suspiciously like a very large penis with palm fronds (would that make it a penis colada instead) and do shots of Sex On The Beach which involved the waitress going through a series of things to each person while blowing a very annoying whistle which ended with her pinching their ta tas.

Yes, watching people on vacation is a blast. Making fun of them is even better. It's what Sharron and I do -- we love to rake people over the coals. Writing? Sure we did writing, but watching Peter the Wandering drunk weave his way around the resort was far more fun.

Flying the Unfriendly Skies

As if it's not bad enough I get treated like crap at work, I now go on vacation and have to be treated like crap on an airline. I can do without the in flight meals...they were yucky anyway, and I've managed to work around the rules of what can and can't be brought on board, however this whole bag thing really has me irked. Recently, the airlines (and in this particular vacation I'll be flying good ol' Continental Airlines) announced that you could only check one bag free and after that, you have to pay $25 per bag extra.... unless you are one of the "elite"...one of the "president's club"...one of those people who basically spend all their life on a plane and have more airline miles than God.

Gee, guys, nothing like making us little peon vacationers who don't fly very much feel like we're the ones to crap on.

So, just because I don't have millions of miles to use for upgrades or free trips (like that ever works anyway...anytime I've ever tried to use them I get screwed) you are now going to hit ME and ME ONLY (and by that I mean any poor sap stuck in economy) up for extra cash because I want to check two bags. And it's not like I have any choice otherwise...you pretty much have me by the short and curlies. You know what it seems like to me???

D I S C R I M I N A T I O N

Wouldn't it make more sense to charge those frequent fliers and get twice as much money than by only charging us once-in-a-blue-moon traveler? Wow...what a concept!!! Doesn't take someone with a MBA to figure that one out. So, maybe you should consider that, huh? Because you know what I'm considering right now? Sending everything I can't pack into one bag via Fed Ex or UPS...I'd rather give them the money then you morons.

Poo-pourri

We were having a discussion the other day at work about the show Seinfeld and it struck me that we have a very Seinfeldian (is that a word?) situation at work. Don't think it was one they touched on in the gazillion years the show ran, but since I don't remember each of show in their run, I could be wrong. Warning: the rest of this post will dissolve quickly into bathroom humor...literally.

In the place I work we have two bathrooms: A large, multi-stalled one with good ventilation and a smaller two-stalled one with not so great ventilation. There's an unwritten rule among the males that if you have to uh...'punch a grumpie' as a one put it, you use the bigger bathroom because the ventilation is better. Now, I don't know where men got the idea that women are dainty little things whose...uh...grumpies don't stink, but I'm here to say, this just ain't true. And the whole dainty thing could have argument too once you've been in two-stall room with.....

The Grunter.

Yes, the Grunter. Everyone knows her and avoids her as much as possible because it's just really hard to look a person in the face when you know what she sounds like working so hard on the other side of the stall wall. And boy, she can leave behind a residue to make your eyes water. Now, before you ask about the whole bathroom freshener thing, you have to understand we are in a 'fragrance free' office because there are some in the building allergic to everything known to man--this rule of course excludes our boss who walks around smelling like an Estee Lauder perfume factory to cover the smell of cigarettes she's not supposed to be smoking in her car on the property because it's against policy...but I digress...

The Grunter had been on the schedule of every day after lunch and we all had it timed out where if you didn't get in there before noon, you didn't go in until after one. If you were really desperate, you could go down to the bigger bathroom, but then it looked to everyone like you were doing something you really weren't so most people just waited. Well recently she's changed her schedule in an effort to throw us all off. Now, no one knows when it's safe to breathe the air in that little room. Of course no one wants to actually confront her about it, telling her that this "rule" is in place for everyone's breathing safety, so we all suffer in silence.

Where is that spaz Kramer when I need him?