Wondrous Apparitions, Provided by Magicians.

I need a new doctor.

I've been trying to get a prescription refilled for four days now. I am out of meds. This is not like my viagra prescription, kids. I do not take medication for the sheer joy of taking medication. I take medication because I am ill. The doctor's office staff does not seem to be able to get his signature on the refill sheet, or does not seem to be able to get the refills sheet to the pharmacy, or something. Four days. No meds. Two messages for the office staff. No meds. Three faxes from the pharmacy. No meds.

You may recall similar outrage on my part when they failed to get any lab reports from my emergency room visit, Not Very Long Ago. But now, now I am done. I will require a new primary care person. Does anybody locally have any recommendations?

I'm All Done with today already. All Done. So I'm taking a page from a local radio station's playbook, and offering this space as free and anonymous for statements of total pissoff. The IP-logger is off, if you're pissed off about something, feel free post it anonymously here. (You have to switch who you're posting as in order to do this, or log out.)

In keeping with the format of the day, all comments should begin with something along the lines of "I'd like to say a big FUCK YOU to ..."

For example (cause this is mine): "I'd like to say a big FUCK YOU to the fact that somehow I have become a middle-aged woman-looking person with a xanax prescription. I mean, really, could I be any less likely to be taken seriously? Oh, don't listen to me, I have a vagina and my life is stressful, I might say or do anything, you just can't trust me. Fuck a buncha that."

(I'm in a big piss-off. Later I'll post the other side of this game, for people who are unreasonably happy about their Monday. I'd like to get around to being one of them.)

My strategy for dealing with difficult people or irritating situations is to always have a cup of water on hand. The few seconds of sip time allows me to formulate what I'm going to say, as opposed to what I might *want* to say. Also, this gives me ample excuse to walk back and forth to the water cooler and/or the restroom during the day. Liquid in, liquid out. As a measure of what kind of day yesterday was, I went to the bathroom 6 times between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Today, though, could well be better. After all, it's payroll time, and none of the staff tried to take more vacation time than they were entitled to. This is the first time this has happened since I've worked here. Either people are becoming more attuned to the system, or all the really clever staff go on vacation at the same time.

Speaking of vacation, jackbabalon23 informs us today that there are only 16 days left until DragonCon. There are costumes to be finished, finances to be checked, grids to be examined (hell, has anybody even seen a grid? I don't know), assignations to be arranged, booze to be begged, traded, or bought, buttons to be made, and so on. By my estimation, there are approximately eleventy billion things left to do. Of course, if they don't all get done, that's okay too. Because, you know, this is Fun we're talking about.

Dear Creature:

As it happens, you may not continue to tweak the fuck out every time someone says something to you that they obviously mean to be complimentary and reassuring. This would include, but not be limited to:
"Oh, you're still young and cute. I'm sure you'll get married someday."
"Oh, don't say that about yourself, you're a lovely girl/very feminine/etc."
"One day you'll meet the right man, you're smart to wait."
"One day you'll find the man you want to have kids with."
Or anything else of that nature.

Do keep in mind that they do not know you, and it has not occurred to them that any of these things might not be what you want. The fact that you have explained this to them in the past should not be considered to mean that alternate possibilities have occurred to them. They are only trying to be helpful. If you cannot figure out a way for this sort of thing not to make you angry on your own, then you will require some sort of counselling or therapy.

In the interim, if you can't actually stop yourself from being angry, you might at least try practicing not looking angry.

Patiently,
You.

ALSO OF NOTE: I just got a termination notice for one of our warehouse managers. From that same warehouse manager. Having to write your own term notice is cruel and unusual, like forced hiri-kari, or however you spell that.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: For some reason, most of the comments to this are about elephant porn. Don't say I didn't warn you.

EDIT: The reason why it's all elephant porn from here on out is probably because you guys are all funnier and less maladjusted than I am. Let's all say that together, shall we? "Elephant porn is less maladjusted than featherynscale." Okay, good.

As much as I believe that reality is what you make it, and that the universe is a very, very subjective place, I also believe that there are some "facts" around which such a consensus has been built as to make them if not actually objectively true, at least living in a house on the same block as objectively true.

One of these facts is that I do not now have, and have not ever had, a pierced tongue.

And yet, for the second time in my life, I have been denied employment due to my alleged tongue ring.

So let me ask you all this, you who know me, and especially you who have had direct experience of my tongue: Does it seem to any of you that I might have a pierced tongue?

If people are going to be like that about it, I suppose I might as well go get the piercing done. I've wanted one for years, but I thought it might make me less employable. ::boggle::

I woke up this morning feeling vaguely like I'd been hit by a bus. I wandered around, took a shower, wondered if I were ill and should call in to work, and then I realized that I wasn't ill, I was just mad. And I don't think one can call in mad to work, which is sort of a shame. Might cut down on office shooting sprees. I wasn't that mad, of course, but you get the idea.

Anyway, this reminded me of redbelle27's icon about calling in queer. And that made me wonder. I've never successfully called in for anything other than illness, car trouble, or flights delayed/stuck out of town. I've faked it, but even then, I faked one of those things. Have any of you lot ever successfully called in for anything unusual? Called in crazy? Called in dead? "Too mellow to be bothered to go to work today"?

Also, how come there's a mood icon for "crappy", but not one for "interested" or "intrigued"?

So I've finally got triadruid's computer mostly operational. And mine's been having some random freeze-up-and-die moments, so I turn my attention there. It boots fine, all little diagnostic thingies show happiness, and yet, if it's on for any length of time, freeze-and-die. So I think, surely, this is a heat problem. And lo, I consult the oracle, and we are indeed, running veryvery hot. So I open the case and investigate, and lo, there is enough cat hair inside the case to make a whole new cat, and there practically is a kitten inside the heatsink. So I clean it all out, plug it back in, reboot, and suddenly, everything is great! I am very happy for the moment, and all is well with the world.

BUT THEN.

I put the side of the case back on. That's it. All is well with the world and I put the case back together.

AND SUDDENLY.

Blue screen of Death. Hardware malfunction, call your hardware vendor. What the hell? So I take the case back apart, turn it off, see if I've jostled anything. Everything seems to be in place and connected. I put it back together, plug it back in, turn it on. No POST. Turn it back off, wait five minutes, turn it back on. POSTy, but it's now reading all of my components completely wrong, and refuses to boot. Nothing I have done has made any difference to this situation.

So now, I inexplicably have no computer. What the fuck?

So then I am VERY VERY ANGRY. I have to leave the house. I go for a walk, wondering why all relevant skills have abandoned me this week. At some point, I encounter a house with extremely blinky and obnoxious christmas lights. I pause in my wandering to observe the horror of it all. AND THEN. The lights go out. All of them, at the same time. I'm just standing in the street, and I'm killing christmas lights.

So I think that maybe it's better if I don't touch anything with electrical components for a while. Every time I do, lately, it seems to go to some sort of baroque and unlikely shit.

On the other hand though, sannion posted a link to this entry about boys kissing, which is starting to improve my outlook on life a bit. Not that I'm feeling like any less of a cancerous mass, but it does distract one from one's utter and complete uselessness.

Add to the list of Irish Coffee Failures:

- At home, in my own fucking house, with my own fucking coffee machine. I failed to put the lid on the coffeepot, which for some reason I can't fully understand caused it to produce some aromatic brown water instead of the coffee I had hoped would result. Why the lid should be a functional part of the process I have not a fucking clue. Nevertheless, I wasted the last of the actual coffee in the house in this manner (we have some chicory coffee, but I can't imagine that would work) and got no Irish coffee. After triadruid was so kind as to buy me a bottle of Jameson's, too.

Much of last night was like that, where I was going "Wait. It doesn't work because What? That's not even related to the process that doesn't work! How is that possible?"

orcjohn came over and found the issue with triadruid's computer, which was that I hadn't cleared the CMOS, which was somewhat alarming, since in my brain, all of that should happen after the power comes on. Oh well. It then was kind enough to POST, which was good. Following that, his Windows 2000 installation discovered that it wasn't sitting on the same board it had been, and Freaked Right Out. Hence, I spent most of the evening attempting to repair Windows, failing, and deciding, well, fuck it, I'll just reinstall. And reinstall. And update. And return drivers. And so on and so forth. This means that tonight, I'll be reintroducing the OS to all the other programs still on the drive, which should also be exciting, by which I mean irritating and time-consuming.

Anyway, hell of a Yule gift, no? "Here, let me give you this, which will cause you to be offline for several days, and then probably lose all your stored email, and have to reinstall all kinds of things! Happy holidays!" *grumble* Much of the later part of the evening was spent acknowledging that I am about as useless as the cat, and that this was one of the specified conditions in my living will, that if I ever became useless like the cat, someone was to take me out back and put a bullet in my brain, to save everyone involved from future suffering. triadruid declined to accept this provision, for some reason. But hey.

Anyway, he should have email again today. If you have sent him anything in the last three days, he didn't get it, and you should send it again. If you have sent him anything really really important at any point in the past, it is probably gone now, and if you still have it, you should send it again. And thank you, for your support.

Yesterday, a Mysterious Package arrived in the post. "ThinkGeek" it said on the label, and I went, "eh?". For lo, I am a ThinkGeek shopper, but I was pretty sure everything I'd ordered had already come in. So, there was a rush to open the mysterious package, to find a Polarity game, from someone who I presume to be lexpendragon. Or, at least, I think so. The internet is really, really great (for porn!), but it sometimes leads to situations in which you only know people by their internet names. But thank you, Probably 'Lex, for a very excellent toy. I've not gotten to play with it yet, but J., our houseguest, was doing some quite impressive things with it last night.

Me, last night, I was running about getting the last pieces for triadruid's upgrade. At some point during the contemplation of this process, possibly when J. was mocking me about being excited about the fact that the case came with extra screws, I announced to the household, "I like things that go beep!", at which point kittenpants chimed in with "Beep! I go beep!", and there was much amusement.

The putting together of the new machine was met with the usual disasters. I bled on it, cursed at it, dropped a thumbscrew down the front of the case where it was a pain in the ass to retrieve, looked at some bits of it and went, "What even are you? I don't know what you are or where you go!", and so on and so forth. Finally got the thing together about midnight, then plugged it in, and *pfffft*, it won't turn on. Not like it won't POST, it just won't turn on. No power nowhere in the box itself. Don't know why. Got pissed off, went to bed. Probably, in my sleepy and addled state, I've forgotten to plug something in, or plugged it in backwards, or something. Or, triadruid might have been trying to tell me last night that he hadn't flipped the power switch on the back of the machine. Maybe. I knew he was saying something about the switch, but was too sleepy to tell if he was saying he had flipped it, or hadn't. *shrug* So, I'm going to look at it again tonight, and if I can't manage to make it work, I imagine I'll be crying for help. Can one of you technical creatures back me up here, if needed?