What *Not* To Get Me For Christmas

I keep hearing this commercial on the radio for a 7/11 gift card and how it is the greatest gift to give for Christmas. Seriously? A convenience store gift card? Can you think of a better way to say "I wish to put absolutely no thought into your gift"?

Nancy, don't read this post! You too Jeff!1

My niece is turning 3 this month. So, being the super aunt that I am, I actually decided to buy her present well in advance of the date, in order to be able to it to her in time for the big day².

So, I’m standing in a toy store and another shopper notices my deer-in-headlights look and says to me, "Are you looking for a birthday gift?" and when I say "Yes!!" her immediate question is, "For a boy or a girl?"

"A three year old… girl," I say, with a bit of hesitation. To me, the "three year old" is the more important part, but to her, not so much.

"Oh, I only have boys, so I know all about toys for boys, but not for girls."

"I never buy girly toys," I say. "I prefer "boy" toys³ myself."

She shows me this air hockey toy thing were you get to kick the disc thingy, which floats on air of its own accord, around your house. Its edges are padded so it's OK to play inside.⁴

"Too bad it's hockey," she says, "They used to have a soccer one." "I play hockey!" I say, "This is perfect!"

And it was like she didn’t even hear me. Almost as if “girl” and “hockey” in the same sentence did not compute within her brain. She just kept going on about the soccer one.

We chat for a little while longer and then, as she leaves, despite the fact that I am holding the air hockey toy and have loudly declared “I am *totally* buying her this!”, she says "It really is too bad they don't have the soccer one, it would have been perfect for her."

WTF? I mean, the soccer one is the EXACT SAME TOY, just painted differently!

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve actually decided to give my niece the hockey toy for Christmas because I’m going to Ontario for the holidays, so I won’t have to mail it (it’s kind of big for mailing). This is in no way because I want to be able to play with this toy too, which I can’t do if I mail it to her now, but I can if I bring it with me for Christmas. I can’t believe you would even suggest that!

For her birthday I’m giving her this:

I found this toy in the same store while talking to the woman who is unable to understand that girls can play hockey. My sister had this game when we were little. You fill it up with water and then you press the little white button on the front to send the little balls floating up and you try to get them into the little plastic bucket in front of the crab. Simple, but I swear to you, hours and hours of fun!! And if Madeline doesn’t like it, I know that Nancy will!

I also got her this:

It’s bubbles that don’t burst when you touch them, so you can like grab them and carry them around with you. God knows what chemical is in them that allows this to happen and I’m sure we’ll all get cancer and die from it, but damn, that sounds like hours and hours of fun!!

¹That title is there because I don't want my sister and her bf to read this blog posting because it will ruin the surprise for them of what I got Madeline for her birthday.

²Unlike the rest of all y'all, who routinely receive your birthday presents from me a month after your actual birthday. Apparently I am a super aunt, but somewhat of a mediocre friend.

³By which I mean toys that are marketed for male children. Not the other kind of "boy toy." Not that I object to those personally, just not for my niece!

⁴If the idea of people kicking stuff around in your house is a problem, Nancy, speak now or forever hold your peace. Oh righ, I told you not to read this posting… hee hee!

You Must Have At Least $2.50 To Attack This Skytrain Rider

My thoughts on this article: Free rides approach end of the line on SkyTrain

There may be no more free rides for fare-evaders on the Lower Mainland's SkyTrain system now that B.C.'s transportation minister is pushing to have gates or turnstiles installed at all stations.

There is still no official plan is place, but Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon said Thursday a system could be up and running sometime in 2008.

There's no official plan in place, but it will be up and running sometime in the next 13 months. Why do I find this hard to believe? Hmm.... perhaps because even when they do have an official plan, projects routinely take years longer to complete than they are supposed to. Translink and UBC were supposed to have an underground bus loop at UBC finished like two years ago and they've only just started it this fall. Or I think they've started it. They put up a fence around the area at least.

Turnstiles would make the system safer by keeping those who don't pay out, said Falcon.

"Young women in particular feel much safer when they're in what's called a controlled area, an area which has controlled access through gates or turnstiles," said Falcon.

Awesome. Now I can only be attacked by someone who has $2.50 to get passed the turnstile. Because you know if someone has $2.50, they are good people.

"Generally, thugs, punks, whatever they may be, [who] don't pay to go cause trouble for other people," he said.

Damn thugs and punks. And don't even get me started on ne'er do wells.

Falcon said the new plan is to have a company install the barriers for a share of the revenue.

Great. So now the overburdened, underfunded public transit system will be giving up some of the money to a private company to put in turnstiles. And/or they will jack up the cost of using public transit to make up the difference of what they have to give to the private company.

Oh yes, and speaking of Skytrain, go to Mayor Sam Sullivan's website to vote on if you think the Skytrain should be extended to UBC campus!

Wicked cool pic taken from the Skytrain by this guy, from here. Hooray for Creative Commons licenses!

Xmas Party's?

Went to Nevermind, my favourite place to see Canucks games, to watch my beloved Canucks kick some Calgarian ass^1,2 tonight. While the portabella mushroom burger at Nevermind is delish , their grammar leaves something to be desired:

Nevermind, perhaps you should go back to putting up signs about Chuck Norris.

¹See you in hell, Calgary.
²The cardiac Canucks pulled one of their patented let-the-opponents-score-2-goals-in-like-5-seconds-to-make-it-a-one-goal-game-and-give-Beth-a-coronary moves in the third period. But they managed to hang on for the win, so I still love them and would have all of their babies upon their request.

Dear Every Other Driver on Highway 1 in the Pouring Rain Last Night,

That space between me and the car in front of me is there for a reason. And the reason is not that you can zoom into said space at a high rate of speed and then slam on your brakes because, lo and behold, there is a car in front, you asshat.

Sincerely,

Someone Who Actually Knows How Drive a Car

What's Pissing Me Off Today: Radio Commercials

I listen to the radio. A lot. As in while getting ready in the morning, all day at work, and often when I'm at home in the evenings and on weekends as well. And the radio station I usually listen to seems to like playing the same commercials over and over and over again. They seem not to realize that, even if it's a good commercial, hearing it ad nasueum will make me want to not buy their product. But when it's an annoying commercial, that's when I want to go postal.

Case in point - this one commercial which, although it mercifully appears to have been discontinued, was played so often, and was so friggin' annoying, that I think I'm permenantly scarred by the memory of it. It was part of a series of rather funny commercials for Haagen Daaz ice cream where "Haagen Daaz" was used as a sexual innuendo. Things like "My friends say they get Haagen Daaz everyday, but that can't be true, can it?" But this one commercial had a guy complaining that now that he was married, he didn't get "Haagen Daaz" as much as he used to. To paraphrase: "We are busy. Kids. A mortgage. Susan's career." But he says the words "Susan's career" with such contempt that I wanted to reach through the radio and throttle him. He's not complaining that his career takes up time. He's entitled to his career, but how dare Susan have a career. Gah!!

Also on my hit list: Carnation Breakfast. There are two commercials on the air right now - one featuring a man, one featuring a woman. In both of them, the voice of their "Busy Day" starts telling them about all the things they have to do that day and how Carnation Breakfast is sooo convenient to fit into said busy day. The man's day consists of getting to work, important meetings, getting promoted before lunch. And the woman's day? Getting the kids up, fed and ready for school. Now I have no doubt that in the majority of homes, women do more of the childrearing then men do. But it is by no means universal. And furthermore, it is not, in my humble opinion, a discrepancy that we should be supporting. News flash Carnation Breakfast - men can get their kids ready for school too!! Women have important meetings and get promotions too, you know!! Gah!!!

Ah well, at least I've gotten that off my chest. And, for the record, there is one radio commercial that I do like: the one for Mini Wheats. Everyone put your spoons together for new strawberry flavoured Mini Wheats. Sing it with me now: Mini Mini Mini Mini Wheats!

Hey! I just googled the song and found that, apparently, this commercial is also on that new fangled contraption, the television:

They Don't Make It Like They Used To: My Skin

I think I've lost my ability to regenerate skin. I believe this happens when you get old; you just don't heal like you used to.

The front of my right ankle is torn up from two high speed encounters of my leg + a rock on my camping/hiking trip two weekends ago. The lateral side of my right ankle bears a massive wound inflicted on me by my hockey shinpad rubbing against my ankle during my first game back after a hockey-less year.

My right knee has finally recovered, with only a slight scar remaining, from a failed attempt to tag out a runner who was trying to get back to first base after a pop fly was caught, which ended with us both in the gravel and him safe. That was at my last softball game, August 18.

I have two cuts - one on my left knee and one just below my left knee, out to the left side - which I have no idea where they came from, but they seem to be healing rather slowly as well. Below that, on my left shin, is a reminder of a battle I had with a razer blade - which the razer blade definitively won. Lateral side of my left ankle - same deal. And I've just now noticed two scrapes on my right calf that I have no recollection of being there before.

And scar tissue on the top of my right foot bears witness to the cut I got from wearing these shoes - an injury that occurred early in the summer and is only just now starting to fade.

Similarly, a bee (or possibly hornet or possibly wasp) sting on the medial side of my right thigh, which I scratched until it bled as it was itchy as all hell, is still visible, again well over a month later.

And now I have two fresh blisters, one on the back of each heel, from the shoes I keep insisting on wearing with the thought "Sure, they've given me blisters every time I've worn them, but I'm positive I've broken them in now. This time will be different."

Underpromise, then it looks like you are overperforming

So I get a call today that a Telus dude thinks he can fix my internets without me even being home. You know, like gets my hopes up and whatnot. Then he calls back and says he could not, in fact, fix it from the outside, so I'll still have to wait 'til Saturday. And then I'm like all sad and stuff.

Later in the afternoon, I get a call from another Telus dude who says he can be at my place in half an hour and can I get there?¹ Fortunately, this was around 3:45pm² and what I was working on could be done at home, so I grabbed my work and booted it home, arriving just as the Telus dude arrived. So I let him in, profusely apologizing for the messiness of my apartment³, making a surreptitious check around my bedroom to make sure I haven't left anything too incriminating lying around, as my modem lives in my bedroom due to the fact that it's the only place in my apartment with a jack.

And then, miracle of miracles - he fixed it! Just like that! He clicked some stuff and did some other random fiddling with cords and suchlike and bingo bango bongo, I have internets again! I can even feel the warm glowing warming glow of the wireless internet-y goodness making their way from my wireless modem/router to my laptop. No really, I can.

I believe that the business lingo for this tell-them-you'll-be-there-on-Saturday-and-then-when-you-show-up-on-Thursday-they-will-be-all- happy-about-it is called "Underpromise, then overperform." I have no idea where I heard that, and I've probably completely messed it up. But the idea is that you promise something that is much less than what you can really do and then you will supposedly look good when you get it done faster. But I'm not falling for it. I still know that I was without internets for over 5 full days and I won't forget it Telus!

And now, a list of things that I missed doing and am ever so happy I can do again, now that I am jacked back into the Matrix in my own home:

• blog
• play Scrabulous
• upload my photos to Flickr
• watch Stephen Colbert in my bed
• watch various other videos that are NSFW⁴
  
• catch up on all of your blogs
• do my banking
• check the bus schedule before I leave the house
• talk to people who live outside of Vancouver⁵
• and so forth

¹for the record, although this sounds like the start of a porn or something, it totally wasn't like that.
²I was going to work 'til 5 pm.
³Which is a whole other story, but involves me having chucked a whole bunch of boxes that Dani had neatly stacked in the corner all over my room in an attempt to see if the modem was plugged into the jack in said corner and not putting them back since I figured that the Telus dude would need to access the jack, which he did; a half assembled Ikea bookshelf, which was abandoned only half assembled when I discovered that I'd put the sides on facing the wrong way and I didn't have a hammer to remove all the nails that needed to be removed to fix the wrong-way-facing side problem, the nails having been nailed in using the heel of one of my sturdier pairs of high heel shoes; my not having been home a single night this week to do things like tidy up my place; all combined with my general level of messiness.
⁴I'm going to leave it up to your imagination exactly what I'm talking about there ;-)
⁵I only call long distance on Skype. Seems silly to pay long distance charges on my cell when I can talk for free via the series of tubes that makes up the intarweb. And then when my intarweb is down, it turns out that I'm just too cheap to pay for long distance now.

The internets hate me

Since Telus isn't sending someone to fix my non-functioning connection to the internets until SATURDAY, I'm writing this posting up really quickly on my lunch at work. So y'all will have to wait for a proper recounting of my camping trip. Here are some pretty pics¹ to tide you over until then.²

And since I apparently work in 1997 and don't have Javability on my work computer, my apologies to all my Scrabulous opponents - I can only partake of our Scrabble games on occasions where I manage to either (a) insinuate myself into other people's homes to use their Java-capable computers with functioning internet connections or (b) trek with my laptop to a coffeeshop with wireless access. And did I mention that the only coffeeshop where I can access wireless that is within walking distance of me closes at 6 pm?

¹The pics aren't properly organized in my Flickr, as I uploaded them on shaky coffeshop wireless, which kept wigging out on me in the middle of my upload. So I think I have several photos uploaded more than once and other ones not uploaded at all. Stupid shaky coffeeshop wireless.

²Granted, I could write it up at home and then just bring it to work on my memory stick to post from here, but I've been much too busy to do that. Last night I had dinner and played with a Wii for the first time (clarification: first time playing with a Wii, not first time having dinner); tonight Alicia and I are going to pretend that we are training for our respective half marathons by going for an 8K run along the beach, then dinner; tomorrow I have coffee that somehow got upgraded to drinks (or maybe even dinner, I'm not exactly sure!)... and all that makes me tired just thinking about it!!!

FRUSTRATION!!!!!

So I get home from a lovely camping trip and discover that my internet connection is out. I've been internet-less for over a day because Mother Nature apparently didn't pay her internet bill and there is no internet in the middle of the backcountry. I'm jonesing, jonesing to check my email. I can see that when my internet crapped out on me, I had 13 email messages, because I left my gmail logged in. I call Telus and they try to help over the phone. Some astute questions (i.e., is your modem cord plugged into the phone jack?) lead me to the discovery that the modem cord was knocked out of the wall when Dani was moving her boxes around (as she was here this weekend, picking up her stuff that she was storing here over the summer on her way to her internship). Unfortunately, re-plugging it in and turning the modem off and then on again does not fix the problem. How unplugging a modem can do this is beyond any reasonable comprehension. "We'll send a technician to check the line," says the man on the phone. "On September 15th." "What? The 15th? When is that?? What day is it today? That's like a whole week? I can't be without my internet for a week!" I cry. Having been stuck on the Sea to Sky¹ highway for an hour while traffic was stopped for an accident on our way home from our camping/hiking trip had already put me in a sour mood, so I just couldn't help myself from this outburst. Just the thought of not having the internet for a week makes my blood run cold! I think I feel a seizure coming on. Why don't you just release a gaggle of hissing wolf spiders and black widows into my place while you are at it??? So pissed off am I that I actually put a cotton swab right through my gums as I was trying to get a piece of cashew out of my lower left gum hole^2,3, causing profuse bleeding but, thank heavens, only minimal pain. And now I'm writing this blog posting in Notepad, with the idea that I will go to a free-wireless coffee shop tomorrow to post it. And, having gotten this off my chest, I can then write a proper posting about my first ever camping trip, which was AWESOME!!!

Written in Notepad at my internet-unabled home on Sat night while waiting for a cab to take me out for dinner. Posted from a coffeshop on Sunday afternoon. Flying Spaghetti Monster bless wireless internets.

¹Or "Sea to Die" highway, as it is also known.
²What do you call the spot where you used to have wisdom teeth, after the extraction?
³Is this too graphic?

Adventures in Packaging

A few packages have made me go "WTF?" lately and so I thought I'd share them with you, gentle blog reader. First up, Veggie Patch Spinach Nuggets:

I was in the grocery store the other day, looking for some delicious and proteinaceous foodstuffs and as I was checking out which of the Yves Veggie pretend-meat items were on sale, I noticed a package of spinach nuggets that looked tasty. I started reading the packaging, as is the habit of the nutritional scientist (how many calories? how many grams of protein? are there any trans fat? for the love of all that is good in the world, tell me if there are any trans fats!!!) and saw a picture of the new - and, in my humble opinion, infuriating¹ - American Food Pyramid. Being that I'm in Canada, I found this a little strange - shouldn't it have Canada's Food Guide on there? And then I read what was written next to it - it actually does talk about Canada's Food Guide there. But that's not a picture of Canada's Food Guide!!! Canada's Food Guide is a RAINBOW, people, a RAINBOW! What is up with that???

Next up, Reversaflex tabs.

In the cupboard where the stationery items live in in my office, there was a box of those clear plastic tabs you use to label hanging file folders... you know, like this kind of thing:

Photo courtesy of some random on Flickr.

In one of my "I'm going to be organized" moments, I decided to use them file away some of my papers in an orderly fashion². I just printed up labels and stuck them on the tabs, but check out how the instructions suggest you deal with them:

A *typewriter*? Are you serious?? Or a *tapewriter*?? Do you remember those things? My parents had one and I thought it was sooo cool. Like when I was 5 years old. Sure, I found these in a supply cupboard and do not know how long they've been there so, in theory, they could have been produced in 1981, but I should point out that my program has only been in existence for like 4 years. And the organization in which my program is based for like 10. So really, they can't be older than that³. And I'm pretty sure that typewriters and tapewriters were not prevalent in 1997.

And now, my favourite of the packages that made me go "WTF" this week. This one is from a lipgloss that my mom sent to me:

Hook up lip color? My *mom* sent me something called hook up lip color?? I can only conclude that she either did not read the packaging or she does not know what "hook up" means. Seeing as this is a woman who referred to S&M as M&M, I'm betting on the latter.

¹infuriating because pretty much the only thing that people understood about the US Food Pyramid was that it's big on the bottom and small on the top... so the groups on the bottom (Grains, Veggies & Fruits) are what you should have more of and the ones on the top (Meat, Milk, Oils) are what you should have less of. People couldn't get their heads around portion sizes or figure out the specific numbers of servings from each group they should be getting or pretty much anything else about the damn thing, but at least they knew that you should eat more Veggies & Fruits than Meat. But in this latest incarnation of the Food Pyramid (as seen on the package above), they changed it so that the food groups run vertically instead of horizontally, with the (barely discernable differences in the) width of the groups representing which (unlabeled) groups you should have more of and which you should have less of. And the fact that the groups are each wider at the bottom means that some (unspecified) types of, say, Meats & Alternatives are better than other (also unspecified on the Pyramid) groups. And somehow you are supposed to get that from the unlabeled, different coloured slices in the Pyramid. Like I said, infuriating!
/rant

²As opposed to my usual method of throwing papers haphazardly on any available table, counter top or deskspace.

³unless, I suppose, they were somehow inherited from another organization, but that's a pretty unlikely possibility

Oral Surgeon

Tee hee. I said oral.

OK, so I went and saw the oral surgeon (snicker) last week for a consultation on getting my wisdom teeth out. When I had originally booked the consultation, the receptionist was all "hey, let's just book the surgery for the next week, even though you haven't even had a consultation yet!" After checking that I wouldn't be charged¹ if it turned out I cancelled because I didn't need the surgery (I mean, theoretically, isn't it possible that the consultation would show I don't need them out after all?) , I said OK. So I go to the oral surgeon this week and discover some interesting things:

• the guy my dentist referred me to is an oral & maxillofacial surgeon. Which means he not only extracts wisdom teeth, but he does cosmetic facial surgery. All over his office, there are "before" and "after" photos of nose jobs, skin resurfacing and facial liposuction. Seriously, this guy does liposuction of the face. Buh-bye double chin!
  


• When they tell you that they have to take a new x-ray because the ones that the dentist took don't show the roots of your teeth but "don't worry, it's a different kind of x-ray so your insurance will cover it", they will neglect to tell you that there is a yearly maximum for all dental x-rays, which your dentist has already so surpassed, so yes, you will be paying that out of pocket. Buh-bye $60!


• Despite the fact that you will only see the oral surgeon for a grand total of 5 minutes, you will spentda considerable amount of time filling out forms, waiting in the waiting room, getting that x-ray that they promised is covered by insurance but really isn't, waiting in the waiting room again, waiting in the exam room, talking to two different receptionists about insurance for the surgery, waiting in the waiting room again and paying the bill that the insurance should be covering all $140 of, but it turns out they are only covered $40 of instead. Buh-bye 1.5 hours of your life.


• The receptionist who originally told you to book the surgery for the following week neglected to mention that you'd have to pay out of pocket for the entire procedure and then just hope that the insurance company would pay you back. Because clearly you just have $1700 lying around that you can be out of pocket for several months. So you decide to re-book the surgery for the end of the summer as one receptionist tells you that it will take 2-4 weeks, and another tells you 4-6 weeks, to get pre-approval for the surgery so that they can bill the insurance company directly (and since this puts your surgery smack in the middle of the bachelorettes/showers/weddings that you are going to, you decide end of the summer is better). As it turns out, it took a grand total of 6 days for the pre-approaval and you could have had the surgery done as scheduled, had you not cancelled it because you were told pre-approval takes weeks.
  

Oh well, at least I contaminated their office with the plague.

¹Experience has taught me that you have to check, re-check and triple-check that these dental health professionals aren't going to charge you for something before you do it. 'Oh, didn't you know about our "you breathed air in our office" fee? That's too bad - now give us $1 million.'

Something New For Me To Be Pissed Off About

Friday night after my softball game, my team went to the pub for some hard earned post-game beers. A few of my teammates got some of those pull-tab lottery thingys, where if you pull a tab to discover three of a kind, you win cash. As they were discarding the non-winning tickets onto the table, I picked one up to have a look at it and look what I discovered:


Why the hell is the female symbol (♀) only worth $25, but the male (♂) symbol worth $100? What the f is up with that???

Finally... a Working Cell Phone!

So, after several phone calls with accompanying freakouts, I finally got the cell phone deal that I was promised. Rather ridiculous that one needs to do that, but hey, I finally got what I wanted by having temper tantrums. That's a good life lesson, isn't it?

Notably, no one has yet phoned me on my new phone and said the magic words. Guess no one wants to win those valuable, valuble BTNaNN points!

The 13th Step and My Still Unactivated Cell Phone

So, I had a big fit at the cell phone company today. I tried to activate my phone and they informed me that I can't have my good deal on the Treo I bought unless I get a dataplan along with the cell phone plan. Which is funny, because I bought the Treo for the sale price and was not sold a dataplan. And the guy on the phone was like "Well, you can just buy out the phone at the regular price." And I was like "no way in hell! I only got this because the sale price was so good!" And he was like "we have to recover the cost of how much you saved by making you have the dataplan." "So why did you guys sell me the Treo with only a cell phone plan if I'm not allowed to have it? And why should I pay for your mistake?" This conversation went around circles for a while and so I finally demanded to talk to a manager. Who will apparently call me back within 24 hours. Apparently this is a technique they use that is supposed to be a "cooling off" period so that I don't talk to a manager while I'm in the middle of a freak out. Little do they know that making me wait a whole day is only making me more and more pissed off! Hell hath no fury like a Beth who thought she had a cell phone and then didn't. Gah!

In happier news, we had a softball game today! It's fun to play a team sport where people are not too super competitive, where they are more interested in having fun and supporting each other than in winning. We cheer for each other even when we get thrown out at first, or drop a ball or whatever. It's just for fun. Another case in point - we walked off the field with only two outs, because we totally thought we had three. The other team let us get away with it, they just laughed it off. Granted, they were slaughtering us at the time, so it really didn't matter.

Also, a few quotations from today's game:

• "Being drunk is a kind of winning."

• "We lost 20-3." "Oh, we're improving!"

So I called the bank to sort out how, exactly, I'm supposed to pay for my student loans. It turns out that you need to know the secret passageway, secret handshake and secret 347-digit code to set up your online banking so you can pay your student loans. So I now have it set up that $850 will magically disappear from my account EVERY MONTH for the NEXT NINE YEARS!

Man, I need a sugar daddy. Hmm.... I hear Prince William is back on the market....

Things That Pissed Me Off Today

Now that I'm gainfully employed, not only do I have to get up before noon, but I also have to wear something other than jeans & a T-shirt or my PJs. And since I have this complex wherein I believe that no one will take me seriously because I'm so short, I dress up in business attire for work to try to appear more like a professional and less like a kid. Which means heels. And nylons. Today, I have a bone to pick with nylons.

This is the size chart for a typical pair of nylons:



Do you notice anything funny about the sizing? Why the f is there no size "A" in nylons?? There's B, C and D... but no "A"! I fall within what would be the "A" category if there was one. Basically, this means that, unless I gain 20+ lbs*, it is impossible for me to get nylons that will actually fit me. And if they had called the smallest available size "A" instead of calling it "B," I might have said, "OK, I'm just an abnormally short person." But they didn't. They called the smallest available size "B" - it's pretty much like they are saying "we know that there are people smaller than those for whom we are willing to make nylons - this is implied in the "A" category that we haven't included - but we just don't want to make nylons for you "A" people. Suck it, shorty!"

Why am I so pissed off about nylons you ask? Because I inevitably rip every pair of nylons I ever own, because they are always too big for me and I'm constantly having to pull them up, whereupon they rip. And so I spend a stupid amount of money buying friggin' nylons. And I don't have a lot of money because, despite being gainfully employed, most of my money is going to be going to pay off my student loans!

Speaking of which, that's the other thing that pissed me off today. As you may recall, I had gone into the bank on the weekend to try to get info on paying back my loans, but they couldn't get through on the phone to their own student loan centre, so they arranged to call me back once they had talked to the student loan centre. Here's a list of the things that pissed me off in this transaction, in chronological order:

• I get to my office after a meeting and there is a message from the bank to call them back. I call back and am asked, "Are you aware that we have a special account manager for health care professionals?" I'm pretty sure they asked me this because when they left a message on my voice mail, they heard that I'm "Dr. Beth." I explained that I'm a Ph.D., not an M.D., but then I asked why health care professional get their own special account manager - do they get some special perks? "Health care professionals are very busy and can't always come in during bank hours, so they have an account manager who can provide service for them." Now, this strikes me as elitist. I have nothing against health care professionals, but other people are busy too!
  
• I am then informed that the bank's student loan centre didn't have my updated addres, so I have to call them to tell them my new address. "Wait," I say, "You have my correct address, but you don't give it to your student loan centre? I'm supposed to tell them separately?" How was I supposed to know that? It's the same bank, just a different office! And she was talking to them on the phone, why couldn't she just tell them my new address??
• I am also informed that she can give me an estimate of how much I will have to pay per month for Ontario student loans and how much for Canada student loans, but she can't tell me how much I need to pay on each of the individual accounts (you may recall that I have 14 separate loans with the bank, because that's how they handed out the student loan money - 2 or 3 separate loans per term). "Wait," I say, "I'm expected to make 14 separate transactions every single month? Why can't they all be put together?" "I don't know," she tells me, "You'll have to call the student loan centre to find out what they can do."
  
• So I call the bank's student loan centre. Somehow they have my updated phone number, but not my updated address. How is it possible that they got the new phone number, but not the new address? I mean, I got the new phone number on the exact same day as the new address! I know that I have never called the bank's student loan centre ever before, so they had to have gotten my new phone number from the regular part of the bank... why didn't they get my address too?
  
• The person I talked to at the student loan centre seemed completely unaware of how student loans work, how they are to be paid off or what the loan forgiveness program is. She was unable to tell me if I have to make 14 individual payments every single month or not, and the totals she gave me for my Ontario and Canada student loans do not match what it says in my account on the OSAP website, nor do they match the numbers listed in my online banking. And from the length of time it took her to calculate these numbers, I'm pretty sure quantum mechanics were involved, which may explain why nothing in this whole situation makes sense.
  

*for the record, I am NOT going to gain 20 lbs for the sole purpose of being able to have nylons that fit me.

What the F is Up with You, Blogger?

Why does the stupid word verification thingy in Blogger no longer work in Firefox? It used to work just fine, but now the image no longer shows up and the workaround for people with disabilities doesn't do anything at all. If I want to comment, I have to go to the post I want to comment on in IE! Boo!

And while I'm bitching, Jorge, why do your Footnotz not work in Firefox? You only get to see part of the footnote, followed by "..." and there is no where to click to get the full footnote. I am hereby boycotting Footnotz until you make them work in Firefox. So there!