Home Sweet Home

Okay, NOW I'm home.

I just need to get rid of some of these boxes; the sound of felines climbing Mount Kittimus is quite troubling. They're reaching truly alarming heights. Sometimes I think these aren't cats, they're monkeys.

New Scene

AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaand....we're back.

(Okay, MOSTLY back. I'm at work right now. But tonight's task is to reconnect the computer, and the Internet is already in place (as is the cable, installed as the movers hauled things in...happy, happy me!) and once I'm reconnected fully, THEN I'll consider myself COMPLETELY back. But right now, that's a small thing.)

And NOW I'm excited. NOW I'm happy. NOW I am not so ambivalent anymore.

I have three lamps and two small boxes left at the old place. I'll pick them up on Saturday, after work. But otherwise, everything I own is either in my new place or snugly tucked away in Mom's basement.

The cats, having spent yesterday in carriers, have been giving me dirty looks since I let them out to explore. They also, however, decided to share the bed last night, in a rare show of feline solidarity; all three of them managed to spend half the night with no hiss, no spit, no growl nor yowl. Cassidy slept on my left arm, which I found adorable. (Poor kitty has been through a lot, and he's got a lot more to go through; apparently, apartments not being a possibility, Tim and Squeaky are going to live at Squeaky's dad's. Cassidy will join them once they're settled, in a couple of weeks; in the meantime, I'm kittysitting. I don't mind--he's a love, actually.)

When I finally let them out of their carriers, Cass ran around the house investigating everything; Bad ran under the bed and stayed there til dinnertime; and Snick was nowhere to be found. He finally emerged when I put out food, but he'd clearly had enough of this ordeal; I plucked him off a bookcase at one point, and for the first time in his life he HISSED at me. Snickers NEVER hisses at me. He's clearly stressed. (Not stressed enough to affect his appetite, though!)

I am very, very happy with my new place. I will be happier once things are unpacked...but it's DONE; it's OVER; I have moved. (Hallelujiah!)

Here Goes Nothing

Last step before moving: pack up the cats.
Second-to-last step before moving: pack up the computer.

Hopefully, by the time I have internet access again, the memory of the past 24 hours will have vanished from my mind; this will spare my readers the most profanity-laced post in TSOW history, because...

Let's just say I am so, so, so very done helping people, ever.

EVER ever. From this point on, I plan to nurture a carefully cultivated streak of total jerkitude and self-centeredness, so as to avoid ever, EVER going through ANYTHING like this again, EVER.

Last thought on this before I take the requisite deep breath:

When you live in someone's house rent-free for a year, should it not be customary to assist with projects without complaint? Or even better, without making yourself out to be some kind of tragic hero for successfully "balancing the wishes of two entirely different people"? Especially when one of these two disparate parties is doing NOTHING for the cause, is in fact DISTRACTING at every turn from the process at hand; and the other party is THE PERSON IN WHOSE HOUSE YOU AND THIS DISTRACTION HAVE LIVED RENT-FREE FOR AN EXTENDED PERIOD OF TIME??? Wouldn't you tell the distraction, "You know, babycakes sugarbooty bumpkin pie, after tomorrow, I can give you every moment of my undivided attention forever and ever--which is what you seem to require in order to continue operating as the barely-functioning individual you are, bless your cute widdle heart--but just for today, I feel like I owe this to a person who's helped both of us quite a bit"? Instead of "This is what amazing, wonderful, self-effacing people like me do for their friends. Look how heroic and wonderful and long-suffering I am"???

Firefly, I apologize, but I gotta use the V-word here: the whole thing makes me wanna vomit.

Every choice, every plan, and every decision I have made through the course of this move--everything from where to stack stuff, to whether to tape certain boxes shut, to what time I could go to bed (!!!), has been debated, argued, contradicted, and second-guessed. Last night, I just snapped--several times, in fact--and by the time I finished with the requisite tears of nervous exhaustion and total fury, and finally DID get to bed, I was so tense that it took me about an hour to fall asleep.

I have to stop ranting now and put the computer away. In a few hours, this move will be done. But since Tim and Squeaky have walked out the door to go to work/wherever--the worst is over.

See you all on the other side....

:::set fades to black:::

Six More Days

I'm moving Monday.

Seven days from now, I will be leaving work and heading home to an apartment with a trillion boxes, furniture in places it shouldn't be, two bewildered kitters, and...

...absolutely nothing else.

The court date went fine; they granted us an extension til November 5th, which was just fine with me. Frankly, even if Tim and Squeaky don't get their apartment, I'm not going to worry about it. I've had it; my "nice" button is now broken from overuse.

I am really, really very excited about this move. (Welll...Okay, I'm not excited about the move itself. I loathe and despise moving. But eventually it's over, and when that moment comes THIS time, it's going to come with SO many perks. I fully intend to spend my first night at my new place with a delivery pizza, my cats, and whatever crap is on television. I won't even care what it is, because for the first time in forever, I'll be able to watch it without Squeaky coming out of the other room to ask me "a favor", or Tim talking through whatever I was watching, or anything but the sound of Bad and Snick charging through the boxes.)

I know I'm not doing a very good job of being patient--I'm sure I'm just as annoying to them, in my own ways, as they are to me. The difference is: I'm being annoyed WHILE I'm supporting them; they're being annoyed while being supported. That shouldn't matter, but it does; I can't wait to see how my financial status changes, as well, when I'm not stopping at the store every day for their little whims (and occasionally for a couple of mine, as well).

It's just time, is all, for this whole scenario to come to an end.

That Update I Promised

So....lessee. What's been happening in my life?

I got the apartment, for one thing. Moving day could be as soon as the 29th or as late as...well, as late as whatever the judge will allow it to be.

I was pissed-off enough by what happened with Countrywide "We'd Be More Accurate Without The O" Mortgage, that I took the advice I got from the nice lady on the other end of the Cook County Sheriff's phone, and filed a Motion for Stay of Possession. This required a substantial chunk of a morning, $163, and approximately eleventeen elevator trips from one floor to another in Daley Center, all of which resulted in a court date, scheduled for Monday, which will decide whether we get the house for another thirty days.

And by "we", I mean "Tim and Squeaky"; I plan to move sooner rather than later. The only thing that's holding me back even a LITTLE is this insane desire to be NICE, not to take away the stove and fridge and all the furniture and basically everything they would need in order to continue staying here after I leave.

My insane desire to be "nice", however, is rapidly dying, under the assault of Too Much Relationship Info, Courtesy of Squeaky.

Squeaky is madly in love with Tim. She got some money from an aunt, and promptly spent all of it on Sweetest Day gifts for Tim. I mean, she went OVERBOARD: candy, balloon, books, videotapes, a big whompin chocolate-covered apple...If he gets her anything, I'll be amazed. Because he, you see, is substantially LESS in love. And she knows it, but it doesn't stop her from bashing her head against the wall, doing every single thing he asks--and things he HASN'T asked, but which he might concievably ask for some day in the FUTURE. He totally takes advantage of it, treats her like crap, and generally makes me extremely glad that I don't find him the least bit attractive. I would feel sorry for her, if all the schmoopy-woopy-boopy-poop didn't make me want to scream til my lungs bleed. See, she has no way of getting around to do most of the pathetically-clingy stuff she wants to do for him--so guess who she asks?? "Would you do me a favor and get him some cigarettes/Aleve/cookies/etc? I'll pay you back..." (She hasn't.)


The most trivial thing, which is also possibly the most annoying thing of all: Tim's real name is one of those names which can be tweaked in spelling, to suit the preferences of its owner. (You know--like Britney/Brittany/Brytynie/ad nauseam.) Tim has, in recent months, adopted one of these exceedingly stupid-looking spellings for his real name. (I'm going to use "Christopher" as the base example, even though that's not Tim's real name and honestly, how he's screwed with his REAL name is even worse than the illustration.) I have scrupulously avoided going along with this silliness, because I'm weird about names--I can't even BEGIN to tell you how I felt about the name he saddled his DAUGHTER with--and so I've mostly began notes with either "C" or "Hey dude". But Squeaky...oh, she's more than happy to go along with this ridiculous spelling, along with every other whim of his. So every IM she sends me--and oh, sweet merciful Heaven, does she send me IMs?? YOU guess--aggravates me even more than it ought to, simply by assaulting my brain-cells with things like "Chrystofer is mad at me, I think..." It makes me want to gouge my eyes out.

I try to be charitable. I remember how I was at 19--Firefly, I'm sure, can second that; how I was obsessed with the wishes of my boyfriend at the time, and would pretty much move heaven and earth if he said he wanted something. I remember being goofy (Firefly--remember pissing off our next-door roomies by singing that BoDeans song every night for a week? hehehe...) and childish and silly. But...here's the thing: I only inflicted that goofiness on OTHER 19-year-olds. I didn't move into the house of an unrelated 37-year-old and expect her to be just as entranced with all my silliness as I was. (I may be an immature 37, but an immature 37 is still a hell of a lot more mature than an immature 19.) And frankly, her goofiness is WAY goofier than OUR goofiness was. Is that a self-serving, revisionist statement? Probably, yeah. But I'm standing by it--again, I never inflicted it one an unrelated 37-year-old.

And I know that my friends, over the years, have dealt with a lot from me in the realm of relationships. They've listened to me bemoaning the men that didn't love me, the ones who mistreated me, the ones who I kept around for absolutely NO REASON other than the fact that I didn't know how to get rid of them without feeling like an unconscionable bitch. So maybe this is karma; I don't know. But even karma has its limits...doesn't it?

So there's that, and then there's the fact that Tim is rapidly becoming King of the Asshole Frontier.

I discovered last night that they PROBABLY have an apartment. I found this out by asking Squeaky; she was in the kitchen getting another piece of pizza while I was making the latest batch of catfood, and when I asked her, "So have you guys got any prospects on an apartment?" she immediately dropped her voice to a whisper. "Tim doesn't want me to talk to you about it," she said, and promptly spilled all the beans. Apparently it's a studio, and her aunt is going to cosign, and her grandma is going to help with security deposits and the like, and...blah blah blah...

Okay, whatever. But "Tim doesn't want me to talk to you about it" ?? WTF? And yet...this isn't the first time I've witnessed it. He gets this way, all secretive and awful, when there are stressful things going on; I remember it from our final days with CR, but Tim always blamed the stress during that time on the way -WE- treated -HIM-. And I went along with it--there were things I did during that time which were not very characteristic of a good friend--but now, I'm seeing things he's doing now--things he also did back then--which are ALSO not very friend-like. And this secret-keeping, creeping around, playing one person against the other--oh yeah, I remember those too.

I can't wait to move.

I can't wait for peace, quiet, order. I can't wait to see how I'll do financially, with only my own worries to worry about, and no $8-a-pack cigarettes, $7 bottles of Aleve, cold medicine for Squeaky, Sweetest Day cookies, 12-packs of Old Style, and all the rest.

I'm moving on the 29th, I think. Better sooner than later; and once the move is done, I can relax and get on with my life. I may be losing my house, true....but a fresh start won't be the worst thing in the world, either.

Now That I'm Done Bitching...

...I'll have an update on the personal stuff shortly.

Things That Can Bite Me

Things That Can Bite Me, Tech-Support Edition:

1-347,325: Microsoft.

Microsoft can bite me because:

1. Office 2007. "Hey, Bob, here's a great idea! Let's take the normal, intuitive menu structure, the neat layout, and the uncluttered feel of Office 2003…AND CHUCK IT OUT THE WINDOW! We can make a…..a….I know! A BIG UGLY BUTTON where everyone has to click to do everything! And then? Get this…we can make cluttery, redundant TABS! EVERYONE loves tabs, RIGHT? And we can hide ALL the useful features."
   

   "Gee, Mr. Gates…do you think that's what the users want?"
   

   "USERS? Screw the USERS. They want what we TELL them to want!"
   

1. So I get this ticket at work, see. We just upgraded our people to Office 2007. Most of our users also have some form of Adobe—generally Adobe Professional 7 or 8. About a week ago, one of the users said she could no longer create or combine PDFs with Adobe 7. She would rather not update to 8, but she would if she had to.
   

   I spent hours on this ticket. I spent hours at her desk, I spent hours at MY desk, I spent hours on Google and on Adobe's website, trying to find out what the problem was. At one point I printed out a list of about 15 pages of steps to take, in order, to solve the problem.
   

   Today, as I was discussing it with my cube-mate, who claimed that updating to Adobe 8.1 would definitely solve the problem, I got an e-mail from the guy in the next cube, who'd heard us talking. It was a forward of an e-mail one of the OTHER techs had sent out a couple of months back, in which she explained a solution. I read it, and thought "That is SO not gonna help. Something that simple, that ridiculously unrelated to the problem—nah. It's not gonna help. But I'll try it…maybe it will help something else."
   

   I had another call for the same issue, by this time. I went to this user's office and tried all my usual steps, the ones which hadn't worked for the first user; they didn't work here either. I told her I'd be back tomorrow when I had a chance to do some more research.
   

   As I walked away, I thought of the e-mail. "Let me try this one more thing," I said. "I doubt it will work, but…"
   

   I clicked on the big stupid Office button—the source of all menus—and clicked Word Options. There was an item on the list that said "Popular", which I clicked. There, at the bottom of that screen, it said "Personalize your Copy of Microsoft Office", followed by a space for the user's name and a space for the user's initials. I filled them in—Jane Doe, initials JD--clicked OK, and clicked the Acrobat tab to create a PDF file.
   

   
   

   And damn it all –it WORKED. The lack of a stupid NAME and stupid INITIALS was causing a whole myriad of "unexpected error"s across two entirely unrelated applications. If that is not the STUPIDEST, most outstandingly DUMBASSED thing I've ever encountered in my ENTIRE LIFE as a tech-support person…
   

   
   

   I think I need to calm down.
   

   
   

   (But I mean, SERIOUSLY!)
   

   
   

2. "Um, Mr. Gates, sir??"
   

   (sigh) "What is it now, Bob?"
   

   "Got a question. I'm setting up the updater for the new version of Office for the Macin…"
   

   (Turns on him, eyes narrowed)"What did I tell you about saying that name in my almighty presence!"
   

   "Sorry…sorry, Mr. Gates. Anyway, I'm working on Office for…well….you know, that other company's computer….and I've noticed that after they install it, there are like ELEVEN individual updaters they have to run, one at a time. They've got to click on each, then enter their name and password…I was just thinking, couldn't we create a cumulative update? I mean, it would save them time…"
   

   "They don't NEED time. What they NEED…what they NEED is a good LESSON. Eleven individual updates? It's a small, small penalty for their betrayal. Let them suffer."
   

   "Yes sir, Mr. Gates."
   

   
   

I love my job—truly I do—but oh, how I hate Microsoft.