I ordered concert tickets earlier this evening. It costs less, for me, $2.75 vice $4.75, to have them snail mailed to me than to have them emailed… What is up with that? The seller has to pay for the ink, paper, and postage for snail mail and for next to nothing to email. Apparently most people pay no attention and just have the tickets emailed to themselves at nearly twice the price of having them sent via the postal service. Ticket sellers are…wait for it…winning!
Category: Zany (WTF?)
Background Investigation Shenanigans
In the process of getting a contract job and hopefully getting hired on to the company I am sub-contracted to I have had to go through four background investigations including one for a Public Trust clearance. The first investigation was to get the job offer from the contractor. The second was for the clearance. The clearance, even as low as it is, required 15+ pages of information to be filled out. You would think by the time I had done that, they would have had enough information and done enough investigating.
Yet when I applied for the full-time position, I had to fill out more paperwork for background investigation three. Then, after accepting the job offer, the company had to do another background investigation. Who is paying for all this BI BS? To cap it off, the fourth investigating agency today asked me to provide a W-2 for the staffing agency I am currently working for…wait for it…at the company that wants to hire me? Apparently they cannot verify that I actually work for for the staffing agency….
I Thought I Had Recycling Issues….
When I got home from work on Thursday, I noticed one of those huge tractor trailer sized dumpsters, one of those that they have on construction or demolition sites, in front of one of the adjacent apartment buildings. The dumpster was overflowing with crap. I noticed that both of the sliding glass doors were open in one of the second floor apartments. I wondered if there had been a fire in an apartment.
Walking from my car to my building I saw a guy come out on the balcony of the apartment in a low-grade HAZMAT suit. That freaked me out so I popped into the management office to see if the would tell me what was going on. Apparently, the apartment was trashed.
The apartment manager was freaked out. He said it was the nastiest thing he had ever seen. Apparently the renter was dink on his rent and the manager had been trying to get a hold of him for six weeks or so. Residents of neighboring apartments had been complaining of bad smells. The manager had to get a court order to enter the apartment.
Upon entry, they found a wasteland. There were cats in the apartment unattended. The renter had apparently left plenty of food but the cats had run out of water and were nearly hysterical when the maintenance crew got water for them. Of course the cats had to be taken away by Animal Services. The maintenance crew then proceeded to haul 80 bags of garbage/trash out of the apartment the first day.
On day two, they called in a cleaning crew experienced in HAZMAT cleanup. The cats had urinated and defecated all over the apartment. There were flies and maggots all over including in the walls and floors. They are having to tear everything out of the apartment including the walls, floors, cabinetry, appliances, etc. And to cap it off, the bedroom was filled from ceiling to floor with bags of empty beer cans! Recycling anyone?
69 In Centreville
What happened to winter? It is 69 in Centreville, VA. It is 75 in my apartment. I have windows and doors open in my apartment and my place is not cooling down. I am wearing a T-shirt and shorts. Is it really February?
Can’t Get Enough Air
Yesterday I woke in the wee hours just baking in bed. I threw my comforter off and managed to get back to sleep. It was still warm when I got up. Thermostat read 72.5 degrees. Now, please understand that I set my thermostat at 63 degrees most of the time during the winter months. I don’t mind the cold, save some money, and save the environment. It was going to be a warm day for February so I opened up the sliding glass doors in my bedroom and dining area. Nonetheless the temperature stayed at 72 degrees.
Since I have moved into my new smaller apartment, I have found that the doing laundry, particularly the drying aspect, raises the temperature in my apartment 3 to 4 degrees. So I do laundry on weekend mornings to warm up my apartment rather than turn the heat up to 68 degrees, which is my weekend norm if I plan to be in house most of the day. I had to do some laundry so the temperature crept up to about 75. I was schvitzing.
The temperature had started to go back down a bit, not lower than 72 degrees though, by the time I headed out with my brother to get some growlers and spring rolls as our contribution toward the Super Bowl (can I say that? Please don’t sue me) festivities. I closed the apartment up at that time, eight hours after I had opened up the doors.
I watched the first half of the game at my sister’s house and then came home to watch the second half. By then the temperature had gone back up a couple of degrees. I send off a scathing rant to maintenance and left another on the apartment manager’s voice mail After the game I was pretty tired so I hit the fartsac without paying too much attention to the temperature. However, I woke up once again schvitzing in my flannel sheets. When I got up, the temperature was at a steamy 76 degrees.
While I was working today, I thought that I must have sounded odd to the apartment maintenance staff and office personnel but when I got home, the temperature in my apartment was 80 degrees! I immediately headed off to the rental office. I figured, since I could actually feel the warmth in spots on my tile floors in the bathroom and kitchen, that the maintenance office, which is below me and is a story for another time, had the heat maxxed out and suggested that to the manager. They said they would check into but didn’t really seem to understand how screwed up the situation was.
Help me, I’m melting!
Why Can’t I Remember?
I had to put my cat to sleep less than 12 hours ago. I cannot even bring his face up in my mind now. Why is that? We were together for 19.5 years. How is it that I cannot see him now? Am I blinded by my tears?
WTF UPS?
As you may or may not know, I order green coffee beans online and roast them myself at home weekly. I have been ordering from the same company for months since I started home roasting. I have never had any issues with the deliveries from UPS until now. According to the UPS website, they tried to deliver the package to me three times unsuccessfully, then they decided to hold it for pickup, then the address was wrong and they corrected it, and then it was scanned for delivery at 4:03 this morning. It is now 8:30 in the evening, I have been in my apartment all day, and I am not seeing any packages, eh?
Here is what I have seen from those “InfoNotices” they put on your door. On 9/27, “Your written signature is required to leave package(s). I signed the back of the notice and left it on my door when I went out midday on 9/28. Unfortunately, I did not do so when I headed out about 5:15 PM later that day so I missed another deliver attempt. Another InfoNotice dated 9/28 was left on my door stating that the package had been left in the “office.” This is normal but when I went to pick it up yesterday, 9/29, the package was not there. I went out later on in the day, 9/29, and left the signed release form on my door but when I got home sometime around 6:30 PM I had another InfoNotice on the door, right next to the signed release form, stating that “The sender required a signature at the time of delivery.”
I confirmed with the sender that all they required was a signature, it did not have to be in person, and the package could be left in the management office, as has happened numerous times before. I have talked to UPS twice. They wanted to send the package back which was unacceptable. They wanted me to come pick up the package which was again unacceptable. Then they wanted to charge me to redeliver which was of course totally unacceptable. Get some customer service eh? And were are my effing coffee beans?
Slow Dreams
I also dreamed last night that I was walking up a hill on a city street somewhere. It was one of those dreams in which no matter how hard you try, you can just barely make any progress walking. Symbolic of my job hunt perhaps? At some point I step off the curb into an open gutter filled with dead fish. A guy walking by asks me if I am on of those “homeless people.” I am dressed in business casual so I wouldn’t appear to be one of those “homeless people.” I try to explain this to people standing around me without much success. Symbolic of my future perhaps?
Fire Dreams
I dreamed last night that I was camping with friends at a place that seemed like it was near a friend’s house in Vermont from where we could see across Lake Champlain to the New York side. The weather was very dry and windy. We were worried as we watched wildfires break out in the hills across the lake. On our side some idiot had set up a “controlled” burn that had multi-colored flames that spelled out a “Happy Birthday” greeting to some named Jennifer.
Then on the news this morning I heard of a devastating fire in the town adjacent to mine. Apparently, three homes were totally destroyed and five were damaged. Fire departments from three counties responded. I wonder if I heard sirens that sparked (pun intended) my dream.
Fleas’d Again?
Not really again but… My cat got fleas, I believe since we moved into the new apartment, which really chaps me. The place looked in great shape, freshly painted with new carpet. My vet, who charged me $66 to deflea my cat (I guess I was fleeced again…) said that all kinds of people from my apartment complex come in there with flea problems…on their pets that is.
So Hamlet got dipped and I sprayed the apartment. I should have bombed but am still in the process of putting things away and the bombing just sounded to onerous. Apparently I will know within 21 days, the gestation period for the eggs, whether or not the debugging process worked.