two dolla

Know what happens on February 14th?

Wrong. It’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Day. Finally, a reason to not slit my wrists every mid-February. Oh, but I only jest. I could take or leave Valentine’s Day, but it was only today that I found out halfway-nudie magazine day coincided with that very over-saturated-in-pink holiday.

Aside from pages upon pages of beautiful beach-front scenery, they also have cell phone wallpapers available for download at only $1.99/pop. Now, if it weren’t for my adorable puppy alway being on my wallpaper, I would head straight on over to the Heidi Klum collection and find somethin’ purdy. After all, I know I can’t ever get enough of her during Project Runway, and now you never have to say Auf Wiedersehen to her once the season is over. That’s just how much I love her inspiring opinions of potential clothing designers. Unfortunately, there are no pictures of Seal in a swimsuit for all those folks not interested in what Heidi has to offer.

Or, there’s always the former Mrs. Uncle Jesse, Rebecca Romijn, who kind of reminds me of what I’m sure to look like during my Caribbean vacation next month. Stop your laughing, you.

And really, despite the fact that this is is the 43rd annual Swimsuit edition, those are the only ones I could probably really recognize in a lineup. But I’m sure the other ones look great, too.

Note: No hand lotion is included with the purchase of this magazine.

I had my alarm set for 6 a.m. today, so I could head over to Sean’s and participate in the trivia contest I mentioned here. It’s hard damn trivia. I was overly excited that I knew two answers without having to look anything up. You’d understand how awesome that is if you knew the rest of questions were things like: Who do the Cheetah Girls thank for their success on their self-titled album? and What did TV’s Robbie Miller tell Reverend Burns was the name of the three wise men? I don’t think we got either of those.

I left a bit after noon to head to an eye appointment. I’ve been getting headaches daily for the last week or so, and I figured this would put a good place to start in an attempt to figure those headaches out. It didn’t take the optometrist long to figure it out. $130 later and I’ll be bespectacled in about a week.

I’m headed to nap for a while and return to trivia to pull the all-nighter. As much as I wanted to stay up for the whole thing, f four-legged crybaby named Riley but the kibosh on that.

And, finally, I talked to my regular mail person this afternoon. She went into the rental office in the other building to make sure my packages weren’t there. And guess what? They were fucking there. The stupid ass property manager, who didn’t think things were so funny last week when I informed her human shit on my bathroom floor that wasn’t mine was a health code violation, seemed to think it was pretty funny to tell me on Tuesday that I had no packages. Turns out she just didn’t open her stupid fucking eyes long enough to find them. Why all the rage? It’s the second time this particular front office person has overlooked(?) my packages. Grr. Lots of rage.

We finally booked our flight to at least get to Florida. It was cheaper to buy a damn one way ticket to Fort Lauderdale than it was to do any type of round trip flight we could find… and we were getting a little worried, since it’s just over six weeks away and flight times/prices weren’t actually going our way. And really, if we get stuck in Fort Lauderdale, is it really all that bad of a thing?

This isn’t the first time I’ve been to Florida. The first time was with my church youth choir (I’ll wait for you to stop laughing) and we went to Pensacola. It was my first trip to see a beach. I don’t remember much of it; I guess I remember only one major thing. We were set for our day on the beach, but our youth minister made all of the girls stay on the bus we’d taken down from Missouri, while the boys got to head on to the water. Our youth minister proceeded to scare the crap out of about 45 girls, ages 13-18, telling them that if any of us had our “special time”, we should be careful because sharks would know and they could attack. Nice.

The second time? A marching band trip my sophomore year of high school. Our pathetic excuse for a marching band was invited (or maybe begged to get invited) to the Gator Bowl, where we’d play along with 6540 other high school marching bands before the Alabama Crimson Tide played whoever it was they were playing in 1994. We stopped for a day a couple of hours at Daytona Beach, and spent the rest of the week band geeking it up.

The third time will come on March 25th, where we’ll land in Fort Lauderdale and run across the street to Port Everglades, where we’ll walk across a plank onto our ship. We’ll return on April 1st. I won’t really be spending a lot of time in Florida, I suppose.

Next time, I think I’ll be investigating some Florida vacation rentals. Staying in one city for more than one day while in Florida isn’t something I’d probably end up complaining about… especially if it were in the middle of February, when the temperature got up to a balmy 7 degrees today.

I am in sales. You may or may not know that. I’ve been involved in some type of customer service for probably 15 years now You may or may not know that. And what you may really be shocked at hearing is that I’m damn good at customer service, too. I’ve won awards, people! (Okay, one award, and it was the Charlie Hustle Award at Taco Bell when I was 17 and my prize was a Taco Bell denim jacket, but that’s not the point.) The point is I get upset when customer service-oriented people do a crappy job, because I know it’s not that hard. As a result, people that I encounter with excellent customer service get rewarded nicely either by a generous tip, if appropriate, or a wonderfully worded letter. I’m not shy about this type of thing!

On the drive home from work tonight, I got a call from a guy whose name I believe was Gary Sanders. He was calling on behalf of the Minnesota Twins. (And I kind of hope someone he knows finds this through Google.) He was trying to pitch me a season ticket plan with the Twins. We all know if I had a disposable income, that would be my third purchase, following a house with a large yard and a new car. However, now? Not so much in the budget.

Gary: Is this Wendy?

Wendy: Yes. (This part of the conversation was repeated four times.)

Gary: I’m calling from the Minnesota Twins. Think we’re headed to the World Series this year?

Wendy (being a realist after a long day at work): I don’t know! Maybe!

Gary: That’s no attitude to have! (no pause whatsoever) With players like Monroe and Mauer, we can go all the way!

Wendy: Wait, who?

Gary: You know, the MVP Monroe and…

Wendy: Yeah, who?

Gary: Monroe?

Wendy: Morneau?

Gary: (very long and uncomfortable pause)

Wendy: (sighing)

Gary: Yes. That’s the one.

The rest of the conversation did not go well for him, because A) he didn’t know the first baseman’s name and B) he was reading a very horrible script. He hung up on me when I told him I’d just call back when I knew what games I wanted to go to. No commission for you, buster!

A lot of my fine readers have been around for years and I take advantage of that by not always spelling things out or including every raw detail of something that my relate to my past. I mean, why wouldn’t everyone on the face of this Earth have been reading twodolla.org since the late 90s? I know I would.

Thanks to the Wordpress Glossary Plugin, I may have found a solution for all of those you relatively new readers that may feel as if you’re standing outside in the dark of my fabulous world.

Per their request for an unbiased opinion, I downloaded the plugin (you can do right here) and installed it, which took me all of about 45 seconds and that even gave me time to throw my puppy’s stuffed frog down the hall twice. I entered the first of what I would imagine will be many, many terms that I use here on a regular basis, and bam - now everything in my life will soon be as clear as day for the random reader.

I’d actually been thinking about doing this for years (really), but I’m lazy and didn’t want to code it by myself. We all know it would have ended up being done in FrontPage with animated .gifs all over the place had that taken place anyway. If it’s automated, I’m all about it. I really couldn’t believe how easy this was.

I better get some thank yous for this, people. I’m so user-friendly it makes cry real tears.

I don’t have any kids. At least not any with less than four legs. Maybe that doesn’t qualify me for bitching about people that do have kids, but don’t worry - I’m fully prepared to take the wrath.

I stopped at the gas station this morning, because bottles of Mountain Dew are on sales between 5am and 9am. I don’t know why either, but you can be damn sure I’m taking advantage of the 2 bottle limit for my favorite co-worker guy and I.

This morning I pulled up and got out of my car just as a lady was getting her baby out of the backseat, and leaving her dog in the car. Keep in mind the minus 9 in the subject line here was the temperature outside. I thought maybe she needed some milk for the baby or some eggs to cook everyone breakfast. Those would be somewhat tolerable reasons to go to the gas station at 8am when it’s cold enough to freeze spit coming out of your mouth.

Instead, it was a pack of Marlboro Menthol cigarettes she needed. But when the gas station cashier asked her if her baby was warm enough, she let us all know that baby was used to running to the store to get cigarettes all the time. A little cold weather wasn’t going to hurt him!

Cigarettes. Mint ones. With an infant. In arctic temperatures. Makes complete sense to me!

There’s a phone in my apartment lobby that allows me to buzz people in the main door. It rings directly through to my cell phone. Last Thursday, I got a call from my mailman letting me know he had a couple of packages for me. I told him I wasn’t home (because I was at work) and asked that he leave them with my apartment complex’s office. He said sure.

Today, I went in to sign my new lease (complaints to come) and check for my packages, except they weren’t there. The property manager told me to call the post office. That’s what I just did.

Turns out, my packages aren’t at the post office either, but if I’d like to call back and talk to my postman tomorrow morning around 8ish, he might know where they’re at. Where in the hell else might they be? Maybe in the backseat of his station wagon? Or laying in the drive thru at Arby’s?

I don’t even know what the hell the packages were, but now I’m pissed because I don’t have them. Someone probably could have just mailed me a box of poop, but I’ll never get it because nobody knows where it is. And for that, I’m sorry if I haven’t properly thanked you for a box of poop you may have sent me.

In a little over six weeks, I’ll be going on an 8 day Eastern Caribbean cruise with Jenni and Stephanie. The cruise is paid for, but right now, we don’t have a way to get to our big boat!

We embark the ship (I’ve been studying my ship words) in Fort Lauderdale (FLL) on March 25th. In the midst of our multiple daily checks on airfare to FLL, we’ve come to realize that the flight times suck. And by suck, I mean, if we fly there, we’re going to miss our boat. My theory is that there are plenty of rowboats at the port and we can just paddle our way to the cruise ship and then shimmy up a rope that the ship surely has thrown over the side. That could be incorrect, though.

I can’t count the # of times Jenni and I have instant messaged each other with “airline update!”, because crap. It sucks.

We’ve decided to fly into Orlando, because we have a place where we can stay over night the day before the flight for free. Then the morning of the 25th, we’ll rent a car and drive from Orlando to Fort Lauderdale. When we get back to shore on April 1st, we’ll rent another car and drive back to Orlando to catch a flight. This is our best/cheapest option and it’s not pretty in the least.

Obviously, the time frame is putting us right in the middle of prime spring break time, so that’s not really in our favor at all. I’m glad we got such an incredible deal on the cruise (we paid considerably less than what the site’s currently showing), because airfare is gonna take a big bite out of my Drinking while in the Caribbean Fund!

It’s -6 right now. The low tonight is supposed to be -14. I’m going out, because it’s Cindi’s birthday, so why wouldn’t I?
The weather today and the next couple of days are the only times I question why I moved to Minnesota. But once I think about the alternative, I realize that I can handle subzero temperatures a few days out of the year and the awesomeness for the rest of the year completely makes up for it.