Man, This Thing Sucks

Today I come to you red-faced with embarrassment. I did one of those things that while they are far from fatal, are so silly that I had to stop and wonder how I make it through each day.

Last night after getting home from a lackluster trivia outing (we finished third out of an abnormally small field) I decided that my basement needed to be cleaned up from Sunday’s Super Bowl party. The biggest casualty from the party was my authentic 1960’s/1970’s shag carpeting. (As an amusing aside, once when I was looking for shag carpeting on Sears’ website I typed ‘shag’ into their search engine and it kept returning screws and screwdrivers. Put it together — think what ‘shag’ meant in Austin Powers — there you go). Luckily the abuse was more along the lines of fumbling chips and peanuts rather than spilling red wine.

My vacuum cleaner is a twelve-year old Dirt Devil purchased on the recommendation of Paul Harvey. It sees little use these days since the majority of my house has hardwood floors (ananonymousgirl if you read this, that one’s for you). I have disliked this vacuum since I bought it, damn you Paul Harvey, and last night was no different. As I pushed and pulled I kept noticing that dust was coming out of it. My assumption was that the bag was nearly full and that I would replace it once I finished. This morning I took the cover plate off the vacuum only to discover that I apparently never put a new bag in the last time I finished using it. D’Oh Fucking D’Oh! To the vacuum’s credit there was some accumulation in the vacated cavity, but as you can well imagine, last night’s exercise was an exercise in futility. I effectively recycled the dust and dirt. Want to take a guess as to what task has reappeared on my To-Do list?

Happy Mardi Gras
Today is Fat Tuesday! To celebrate our company potluck I am stewing up a “jambalaya” in a crockpot. I make an awesome jambalaya (if I do say so myself), but today’s recipe is different from the one I normally use. I’ll have to see if I like this one.

Since today is Fat Tuesday, that must make tomorrow the start of the forty-day suffering called Lent. If I decide to give up anything this year it will be complaining about petty things. (note: I have never given up anything for Lent, so don’t get your hopes up)

But Just In Case…
IT’S CALLED A ‘ZERO’ NOT AN ‘O’ — THEY ARE VERY DIFFERENT! Don’t ask me why, but I cringe every time I hear someone give a phone number and say ‘o’ instead of ‘zero.’ Maybe it is because I am old enough to remember the days when people used letters (my childhood phone number was given out as IN3-8945) and since ‘o’ is on the key labelled ‘6’ I think we should be more careful. What if people took this literally and started dialing 464 instead of 404 for Atlanta’s largest area code? Huh, what if? Maybe I should start doing it and pissing off the people in Chicago’s suburbs.

THAT LITTLE LEVER ON THE LEFT SIDE OF YOUR STEERING WHEEL COLUMN GOES UP AND DOWN! WHICH WAY YOU MOVE IT CORRELATES TO THE DIRECTION YOU WILL BE TURNING! THIS SIMPLE ACTION LETS OTHERS KNOW WHERE THE FUCK YOU ARE GOING! USE IT! — I don’t care if you call it a turn signal, blinkers, directional signals, whatever, just use the damn thing. Some poor fuck, or group of poor fucks, spent a lot of time designing this elegant solution which allows others to know that you no longer intend to travel in the direction you are currently headed. They even figured out how to make it turn off automatically (most of the time) for you!

There, I feel better…

And now for some ideas stolen from LiveJournal…
Current Mood – exhausted, but recovering
Current Music – Sirius Satellite Radio, Channel 26 playing Clem Snide (no, I hadn’t heard of him before either)
Current Read – resume land

Cheers!
Paulie [eatl/ga]