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The General has a blog. You can email me if you want it, and of course I get the approval to pass it along. Point is, the last webhost The General used? Kinda sucked. And by sucked, I mean it wouldn’t release a domain name that’d been hosted there forever. I don’t really know the legal ramifications of something like that, but you can be sure that particular hosting company can’t possibly be listed as one of the top web hosts around. And that website? Totally helping in determining which host is a giant pile of steaming dog doo or a company that’s, you know, responsive to customer concerns and doesn’t try to steal your domain name.

I still have to combine my two hosting accounts. I’ve been talking about that for two months and still haven’t gotten the motiviation (or that random burst of nerd energy) that I need to actually get it done. Which means another month of double hosting charges. Man, I’m awesome.

Dear Job Seekers,

I found a job for you all. Despite the lengthy job description, they forgot to mention things that I would like to include for you:

• Must be able to deal with a giant douchebag, who needs to be kicked repeatedly in the balls, as a manager.
• Will have to work with a team of people that are so complacent with their lives that they have no goals, other than sit around and mooch on someone else’s hard work and commission.
• Must be willing to work with upper management that tell more lies than the current administration and/or Pinocchio. Combined.
• Willing to give up any type of incentive vacation to some fancy pants island because all of a sudden the Vice President of Sales decides he has a different plan. And must be willing to accept that plan might quite possibly be getting fired for things completely beyond your control, despite the fact that you’ve achieved everything on your lovely performance improvement plan.

BUT I’M NOT BITTER. And enjoy your new job!

Love,
Wendy

(And P.S.? Getting fired from that shit hole place? Possibly the best thing that ever happened to me, especially considering I have the best job ever now. And I’m not just saying that because I think some smarmy co-workers enjoy telling everyone about my blog, like they did in the position that I just linked to above.)

The 27″ TV that I bought back in 2003 has been buying a very slow, painful death. The General’s been trying to start it in the mornings during the rest of summer break and it’s been taking forever to start up. It requires a lot of babysitting, and by babysitting, I mean repeatedly turning it on and off, and on and off. And on and off. And, well, on and off. Then multiply that process by 6150. I think today was the breaking point for both of us when the situation became so grave that we were scared to turn the TV off at night. BECAUSE OMG WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT A TV?

The General combed through Craigslist all day today and got a few pretty good leads, but as situations that involve Craigslist are wont to do, they continued to fall through. I got home around 6:30 and the idea of keeping the TV on all night gave me the shakes, so I did some hunting on my own. By the luck of the draw, someone just posted a TV for $50 and I was the first to respond. I emailed using The General’s account, without thinking too much about it, providing the seller with my phone number since she failed to include it on her nice little ad.

Within maybe 10 minutes, I got a call on my phone with a woman asking for The General. I was too wrapped up in Craigslist searching and pawn shop calling that I just handed the phone over like this was an every day occurence. Right about the time I realized what I’d done, The General was getting ready to smash my head open like a watermelon.

I talked the girl that was selling the TV. Turns out she’s moving to Chicago and her roommate’s moving out, too. The TV won’t fit in her car, so the roommate told her to sell it on Craigslist. DONE. The General got $50 out of the ATM while I visited with my favorite Super America cashier named Tee, and then we headed to Northeast where we easily found the place and met the girl selling it.

And then we realized there was no way in hell the three of us were going to be able to pack that damn thing into the Escape. Eventually the girl’s roommate came home and basically manhandled the thing into the back of my car and we were on our way… We took a detour to Home Depot after calling Jenny the Former Roommate and persuading her with a crisp new $10 to come help us. It was our mission to pick up some type of strap that would let us carry the TV a little easier. And that didn’t happen.

We muscled it up three flights of stairs with a furniture dolly, a comforter, and two rachet straps put together to make one. And now our living room has been transformed from this:

(granted this was taken in my last apartment)

And it now looks like this:

why, yes, I am in love with this new TV!

I get pretty dang tired of seeing commercial after commercial about getting out of debt and even those damn free credit report dot com commercials are wearing thin, despite The General’s attempt at singing them from memory just about every day.

We’ve been talking about moving sometime in the winter after my lease here expires, mainly to find something with some extra room considering we’ll have another dog and an 11 year old half the time. Just something to probably think about, ya know? I have no desire to buy for about five thousand reasons, but the most important is definitely me being too lazy to do any type of my own lawn/house maintenance.

And you know the other part is the whole Hey, My Credit Sucks! type of thing.

Granted, I have learned a lot about repairing it from different books I’ve read and websites like Freedom Debt Relief, and since I’ve been focusing on it a little better, I’ve been able to inch it on up the credit scale… but it’s still nowhere that I need it to be in order to buy a nice fancy new alarm system for my truck since everyone and their mother feels the need to break into the stupid ol’ thing.

For now, I’ll slowly work on improving things and once I’m the one parking the Range Rover in the closest parking spot to my building, I probably won’t have to worry about it anymore.

Wednesday morning, The General had taken Riley out while I finished getting dressed doing my hair and called me just as I was about to head downstairs to tell me someone had gotten a little ruckus sometime after we went to bed. As it turns out, someone needed TomTom more than I did and felt the need to bash in my driver’s side window to take it. Oddly enough, TomTom was face down, in the center console, and not really easily located by someone just passing by. Stupid a-holes.

The driver’s side window had just been demolished. I tried scraping the safety glass into an extra dog dish I had laying in the floor board and ended up scraping my knuckles and hands just gently enough to make me wince in pain for a good while. The General took the car in to have the window replaced after work and luckily I pay retarded insurance rates that include free glass breakage.

There was some minor damage done to the driver’s side door. It looks like whoever was directionally challenged enough to steal my GPS device wasn’t too slick when it comes to bashing in a window, because whatever they used to shatter it caused some scrapes on my interior. It’s not quite enough to fork over the $500 insurance deductible, so I’ll just wind up driving it around like that.

And next time, mother fuckers, just knock on my door. I’ll totally give you the GPS. I know it sucks getting lost, and I’m willing to help. I just hate writing down all my directions to go everywhere and not being able to randomly find the closest Target when I’m out and about.

So, basically, if anyone sees a slightly used TomTom One laying around Minneapolis, sadly discarded, it’s totally mine. I don’t see that happening, though, since GPS Stealer McGee was smart enough to take the power cord to it, too.

Suzi did an iTunes meme that I hadn’t done forever, so I figured it was high time to revisit my horrible music collection.

How many total songs?
9387. But here’s the thing. I think I only have half of that. For whatever reason, most of my songs are listed twice and I can’t figure out why, especially because only one copy of the listed song will work. So, I guess the reason answer? I DON’T KNOW.

Sort by song title - first and last:
ABC by the Jackson 5
99 Problems by Jay Z
(Um, hey iTunes, wouldn’t the numbers be listed before the letters?)

Sort by time - shortest and longest:
Audition M.D. by P.O.S.
Culture Club Megamix - it’s 18+ minutes long, baby.

Sort by Album - first and last
Absolute Christmas by The Beach Boys
8701 by Usher

Sort by Artist - first and last:
A*Teens
ZZ Top

Top five played songs:
Crazy Bitch by Buckcherry
Lips of an Angel by Hinder
Jesus Walks by Kanye West
Workout Plan by Kanye West
Push Me All Night Long by AC/DC & Salt-n-Pepa (I love mashups.)

Find the following words. How many songs show up?
Sex: 77, most of them involving Justin Timberlake in some aspect.
Death: 6
Love: 377
You: 800+
Home: 55
Boy: 202
Girl: 153 songs

First five songs that come up on Party Shuffle:
Can’t Stop Being My Girl - Jet/the Faders mashup
Love is a Losing Game - Amy Winehouse
Skater Boy - Avril Lavigne
All That I Got - Fergie
Georgia on My Mind - Ray Charles

I’m kind of a fan of visiting big cities and I’m always a fan of any kind of online travel guides. of visiting a new one from time to time. I’m also a pretty big fan of Trusted Tours & Attractions does a good job of honing my interests in on a particular locale from time to time. Last summer, Jenni, Matt, Bill, and I took a long weekend to hit up a few baseball games. And while we weren’t at all at a loss for things to do in Chicago, it’ll be nice to catch up on a few additional things next time we visit. The Bean, Wrigley, Lake Michigan, downtown, the Sears Tower, Navy Pier - I can cross all of those off my list of things I’ve done (and would do again in a heartbeat), so adding more things to the list will be an adventure as always.

The list of things to do in San Francisco? Sigh. One day. One day soon, I hope. And maybe a visit to Madame Tussauds should be in order some day, too. I might need a wax figure of myself at some point.

You can sign up for a newsletter to learn more about a whole boatload of cities’ attractions and in the meantime, you can win $150 iTunes Gift Card by signing up for the newsletter. Can’t really beat that!

July 30th marked three months for me at Awesome Staffing Agency. (Man, I wish that was the name of it.) I figure there are about 62 billion staffing agencies in the Twin Cities, so I’m not too concerned about any crazies out there figuring out which one it is.

1. I seriously love it a lot.
2. It makes me happy to go into work and rarely am I late; if I am late, it’s by 10 minutes MAX and I think that’s only happened once.
3. I’ve won ridiculous Twins tickets and third row orchestra tickets just for being there.
4. We get birthday cake once a month.
5. We have staffing meetings every two weeks, but we get free lunch and the staff meetings are incredibly productive, so I don’t mind them at all.
6. My co-workers? 98% fabulous. You should follow my Twitter for those tidbits of information.
7. My direct supervisor? Always full of positive feedback and open for coaching opportunities. (Such a change from my previous Douchebag Asshole Manager.)
8. The President of the Company? I’m totally in love with her in like a Utmost Respect from a Business Standpoint way. She’s kind of everything I want to be when I grow up and just a little bit more. She’s tough as nails, but it’s just easy to work for her. In my three months, I feel like I’ve learned so much about the actual business world, work attitudes, team communication, and anything else you can think of.

So, yeah. I love it. I have five billion awesome work stories to tell, but, well, I love it so much I have no desire to get fired just for talking about it. Kinda not worth it!

Just about the only thing I miss about school, aside from having zero responsiblities and it being socially okay for me to wear my Dennis Rodman jersey on a regular basis, is getting all the awesome new school supplies right before school starts. I miss getting the new notebooks and new folders that I’d eventually decorate with about 3108 different stylings of my first name, a bunch of stars, and the occasional sketch of a basketball hoop.

This year, I get to live vicariously through The Kid (who belongs to The General) when we go school supply shopping. I printed out his school supply list the other day at work and holy crap - it’s not that much different then mine. They still need glue sticks, pencils, a box of tissues, and a notebook for every subject. I figured there’d be some new contraption that 5th graders these days would absolutely have to have or they’d never be able to move on to 6th grade. But that apparently is not the case.

I suppose we could always buy doubles of everything he needs and use something like the DYMO Labelmaker to differientiate between my stuff and his. I would hate to grab his Composition notebook that talks about World History and have him wind up taking mine to school only to reveal a bunch of scribblings about the people I run into or the 670 different intros I’ve written to my autobiography. If that wouldn’t send his grades plummeting and throw his butt in detention, I don’t know what would.

So maybe that Labelmaker’s a good idea after all…

Friday:
Lunch with Jenni and Stephanie and Pizza Luce, which was nice because I missed Awesome Pizza a whole lot more than I thought I did.

Vikings pre-season game with free super close tickets thanks to Cindi. The General™? Not so much a sports fan and despite enjoying time at the Lynx and Twins games, the Vikings probably won’t be a regular occurance. Which is fine. I’m more of a football on TV fan anyway, just so I can take naps during the game.

After the game, I’m pretty sure my ovaries were sword fighting and kept accidentally kicking my uterus at the same time, so I had to call it a night shortly after our trip to Walgreen’s to load up on ridiculous feminine products.

Saturday:
HAIRCUT DAY. I was getting shaggy. We were going to be in St. Paul anyway, and somehow we ended up in Maplewood, where I found a middle-aged Asian lady that cut my hair exactly like I wanted. So, it looks like a trip to Maplewood is going to happen every time my mane needs trimmed. And then it was time for our bi-monthly trip to the thrift store where we got an adorable vintage, stainless steel breadbox for $2.48, along with some work appropriate clothing that we both needed.

We met up with Jenni and Matt at Irish Fest. The General wanted to see Flogging Molly and I figured me going with might make up for all the sporting events we’ve been going to. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, so laying in the grass on Harriet Island was a pretty good way to start the evening. After the show, we hiked back to our car and headed back into Minneapolis.

The four of us met up for drinks and fantastic cream cheese wontons. I always forget how fantastic the atmosphere at King & I ends up being, so it’s like a surprise when I sit down, have awesome music playing in the background, and get to drink on some ultra girly fruity drinks for a couple of hours. And then we went home where someone (not me) passed out snoring like a gigantic freight train.

Sunday:
We slept and we slept late. We’re usually up by 9 at the absolute latest on the weekend, so not putting on clothes or even leaving the apartment until just about 2 p.m.? Kind of awesome. We headed over to the U of M to catch the final show of Tipping the Bucket before the Fringe Festival ended today. I think next year, we’ll have to look at the schedule a little more in depth, because the two shows we did see? Really great and I’m sure there were a ton of great ones we missed. If I can form some coherent sentences, I may just do some real reviews of the shows… you know, because that’s the nice thing to do.

We went to Target, got some lunch food and a book/magazine holder for the bathroom (we’re classy!), and then came back home to a dinner of Hamburger Helper. Again with the classy.

The General has Orientation tomorrow for a new gig teaching preschool for Autistic kids. (How awesome of a gig is that?) This just means we have 55 minutes until we go to bed, and I have to clean the bathroom before that happens.