happy birthday to me!
I don’t have any words of wisdom or anything special to post planned for today. I thought about it, but then I got distracted by Rob & Big last night.
So, what you get is this picture my brother posts on the ‘Space for me:
I don’t know who Philip is, but I want that cake for my next birthday!
my awesome vet (this got long)
When Riley and I moved into our last apartment, we had to switch vets. I was a little worried, mainly because I didn’t know anyone in Eagan that could recommend one and I knew I needed one close by, based solely on the fact that I was (and still am) a paranoid pet owner. Riley’s passion for eating things he’s not supposed to also was in the back of my mind, too. I ended up going to the Banfield clinic (yes, the one that’s inside PetSmart) and meeting the doctor that Riley will always always go to because she and her entire staff are so fantastic.
Riley’d been a Banfield boy from the day I got him. Another doctor had removed his manhood and everything went just fine, but the only person at this particular clinic Riley and I both enjoyed was the main doctor. At a vet’s office, you to work with more than just the main doctor, though. The bitchy receptionist and the vet techs that wouldn’t even get down on the floor and introduce themselves before shoving a thermometer up my dog’s unexpecting ass made it slightly intolerable. In other words, I didn’t really feel enough loyalty to them to drive across three suburbs once Riley and I moved in together.
Now, everyone there knows Riley, possibly because we’re there so much. Every time we’re there, though, I never feel like I’m being rushed in and rushed out so they can see as many animals as possible. Once we get into the waiting room, a vet tech usually comes in and looks him over, and we talk about why we’re there. The whole time we’re having this conversation any one of the techs will be down on the ground letting Riley climb all over them.
some paper and a pen
My new favorite thing since I’ve moved is keeping a notebook at my desk. Sometimes I have ideas I want to write down, or notes I want to take when on the phone with, oh, a potential employer and/or recruiter. In the old apartment, I wrote on the back of Band Aid wrappers and Taco Bell napkins, so you can see how much more effective my new note-taking system is.
My current notebook has the following:
Page 1
- Various bits of information I needed to jot down when talking to D-Link a couple of weeks ago about the idiotic behavior of my router and network adapter. (I should probably call them back, because my wireless network is shady enough that I have a network cable strung across my living room. Ironically, I get a more reliable connection when stealing someone else’s wireless signal.)
- The name of my wireless network (which is? AWESOME) and the password it generated for my secure network.
- A list of people going to the Twins Opener later this month
- The instructions Tivo gave me for setting up my new cable lineup when I moved
Page 2
- Two lists of things I keep thinking about, but never write down
- Two prospective companies that I talked about with my awesome recruiter on Friday afternoon
- Seven versions of the letter W
- My recruiter’s personal email address
- The DNS information for my new webhost
- a list of things my piece of shit cell phone has been doing the past two weeks and the name of the piece of shit customer service rep that I just talked to
the wnba doesn’t pay for spellcheck
Before I write any of this, I just want to preface the post with: I love the Minnesota Lynx. Despite the fact that they didn’t protect my favorite player for this summer’s expansion draft, I’m still a fan and I’m also a season ticket holder. In fact, I was about compose this long post about how excited I am about the season and how fantastic the organization actually is.
I was reading MNSpeak today, when I noticed the Lynx has purchased a banner ad. I wouldn’t really call MNSpeak the type of place where the typical Lynx season ticket holder would spend a lot of time, but hey – if you have extra marketing dollars, let’s use ‘em, right? I’m not sure how long they’ve purchased ad space, but you might be able to still catch it there.
If not, I can let you know that the image quality was super grainy, and it looked like someone had just gotten their very first copy of Banner Making 4 U.
And I didn’t even notice the best part of it, but Jenni did:
Whitehouse. Really? I like to think that maybe White House is trademarked and you can only use it in your stellar WNBA ads when you have permission by the actual President, but something tells me that isn’t the case.
last night at the douche tree*
Thanks to my stellar status as a Lynx season ticket holder, I wound up with free suite tickets to the Timberwolves game last night. Stephanie picked me up prior to game time and we decided to go have dinner. We wound up going to The Lone Tree Bar & Grill. Jenni, Matt, and I had been there a handful of times for pregame food, and we’d been relatively happy with it: not very busy, really good food, maybe a block from the Target Center, and 2-for-1 drinks. We often refer to it as The Douche Tree based on the clientèle we’ve run into from time to time. Usually, the douchebags haven’t quite made it from their fancy downtown office to the bars by the time we leave, but we always catch a slow trickle of them coming in the door.
Stephanie and I were not so lucky last night. We walked in the door and it took a while to even find a table that was open. Once we did, a server never came over, so I headed over to the bar to pick up a couple of menus. By the time I’d returned to our table with menus, the place had gotten even busier. It was so busy there was a line at the Big Buck Hunter Plus machine in the corner, and that’s serious business at The Douche Tree – almost as serious as Golden Tee, neither of which I understand.
Our server finally came to take our drink orders. Stephanie ordered water, which seemed easy enough. I decided to take advantage of our 2-for-1 situation and partake in a libation or two. I couldn’t remember exactly what fell into the 2-for-1 special realm, so I asked. "Everything on rail and everything we have on tap".
I like taps. So, I asked the next logical question, "What do you have on tap?"
"Just say something and I’ll tell you."
Um. That’s normally not how it works, but okay. And, then, things could have gotten better if she’d, you know, been a good server-type person. But she was pretty horrible, and for all I know, probably didn’t even work there.
She capped it off by combining our tab (which is fine, because we’re good at math!), but when she came back to get our two forms of payment (we’d each thrown down our debit cards), she says, "Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were together." (It’s only funny if you know the back story, but trust me, it’s hilarious.)
And then we signed our separate tabs:
*It was actually Tuesday night, but I’m a slow writer as of late.
old versus new
I’m sure in a couple of years, I’ll be bitching about my current apartment’s management company. Things look kinda good, though, because there are two different apartments here that have had the same tenants for 30+ years.
I’ve lived here for just over two weeks, and today, the maintenance fellas came in to make sure my smoke detector works. And the adorable boy that came in here warned Riley that it was going to be loud. He also said he was very sorry my oven wasn’t working and he would come fix it as soon as the part came in. Oddly enough, he also had cute maintenance guy butt crack when he had his entire torso shoved in my oven trying to figure out what was going on.
In my old apartment? One night, the power was out, which happened regularly there. And for whatever reason, when the power was out, it mate the smoke detector in my apartment go off non-stop. At approximately 2 a.m. in the morning, I called the emergency maintenance line because it was a damn emergency that I couldn’t go to sleep and my dog was running around in circles trying to make the noise stop.
The emergency maintenance personnel came into my apartment, looked up at the smoke detector, looked up at me and said, "Well, I can just take it off. That’d make it stop."
So, that’s what he did. Then he looked at me and said, "I’ll come back and put it back on tomorrow when the power’s back on."
Approximately 18 months later, the smoke detector was laying in the floor when I moved my last load of crap out of that apartment. I’m sure I could have called and had it slapped back on, but I wasn’t entirely worried about it.
always jump at the end
Someone jumped off our favorite cruise ship!
According to a news release from the Coast Guard, the woman had been traveling with her boyfriend on the Costa Mediterranea when "she had become angry and agitated and then unexpectedly jumped overboard."
Knowing what I know about the Costa Mediterranea and being obsessed with each and everyone one of it’s cruising schedules, I’m 99% sure the lady was going on the same cruise we went on in January. And I also happen to know that if it was reported at 1:18 a.m on Sunday morning, that means they’d just left Ft. Lauderdale six hours ago!
Lady. You paid for that cruise, you idiot. Or maybe your boyfriend did, but still. Jump at the end, dumbass. Not at the beginning. You totally missed a day in Key West yesterday, and trust me, you would have loved it a lot.
And really, I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think anyone on that boat is concerned that you’re not there. Including your boyfriend. Unless he pushed you, because I don’t see any guy looking longingly off the back of the boat, waiting for you to swim by.
my exciting friday
I got a letter today from my new apartment’s management company saying I owed them 80 cents. I found it a big peculiar, but decided not to get mad about it until I’d actually talked to them about it. I left a voicemail maybe around 2 pm today. I just got a phone call back from them about two minutes ago, and the lady apologized about four times.
Dear old apartment complex,
This is how you do things.
LoveHate,Wendy
Someone in this apartment (not me) gets to go to the doctor tomorrow because his right ear smells like someone shoveled in about eight pounds of rancid yeast. I was going to try a home cure that I’ve heard about from reliable sources, but I just want to make 100% sure that it is actually a yeast infection instead of a bacterial infection. And if it does happen to be a yeast infection, I’m going to be the tiniest bit furious at the groomer, because that’s the only place humanly possible that he could get his ears in water. Unless he’s bathing himself in the tub while I’m out interviewing and drinking heavily… and I guess that’s probably likely.
It just means I’ll start bathing himself (this does not sound fun), and brushing his teeth, and somehow figuring out how to cut these beautiful nails of his, which may be a challenge since his nails are about as strong as the wall.
flickr photo stream
