*sigh*

Got a book from the library the other day that I had really been looking forward to. I'd had it on hold pretty much from the day the library ordered it. I got two chapters in and couldn't read it anymore. The author has now decided to take her books and turn them into her soapbox where she passes along her ideologies. It would be fine if it were actually relative to the plot or did anything to move the book along, or even was a bit more subtly slipped in, but it's just right there, shoving the author's beliefs down the reader's throat. And frankly, some of the ideas are so unrealistic that I had to laugh while I cringed.

If you want to write a book about politics, then do so. Don't try to hide it under a cozy mystery book jacket. Sorry, but I won't be reading this series anymore. :(

Edited to add: I guess I need to start reading the reviews on Amazon a little sooner. Apparently I'm not the only person to feel that Rita Mae Brown has crossed the line in The Cat of the Century

And yes, I hesitated to name names yesterday, but really, what's the point of "reviewing" a book if you don't tell people what it is? If I save one person some cash or even just some time, by cluing them in to the fact that this book may not be their cup of tea then it's all good.

Randomness...

Where in the world is my Monkey sock?? I know it must be in the house somewhere, but I can't find it. And starting the other sock isn't an option, because of course my needles are in the missing sock. Grrrr. I'm being forced to knit the never-ending knitting bag.

And speaking of grrrrrs. Would someone please tell Disney that most of their acting talent really can't sing? They make me crazy.

Baby quests for rep in WoW suck, especially when the items have seriously low drop rates.

Working on a Sunday when you've become used to having weekends off sucks. I'm already dreading tomorrow.

And a completely personal question... Is anyone out there taking Seasonique or Seasonale? I recently read a medical report that having fewer periods is actually more healthy for a women and goodness knows, it's a lot more convenient as well. So if your are taking them or have taken them, I'd like to know your experience.

Sad but true...

I talked to my former boss last week. She stopped in at work just as I was about to go on break, so I pent the entire time chatting with her. Her youngest daughter and her husband are going through a tough time right now, financially. Before they got married they decided they were tired of renting and decided to buy a house. And why buy a pre-existing home when they could build one?? So they got approved and had the house built. Odd little things have been happening since they moved in. All the little things have added up and since then the husband, who made really good money, has lost his job.

So they decided to get their loan amended, because of course everyone knows that the powers that be want families to keep their homes now, right? They struggled through the process, which included sending in their paperwork 4 times, and finally got approved. Their amended payment? $70 less a month than it was. And when the daughter talked to a friend who works for the bank that handled everything, she was told to consider herself lucky that they'd even been approved and not to bother appealing, because they'd never get more off. Apparently it's a long drawn out process in which most are not approved, if they aren't so frustrated by the entire process that they give up!

With one in every 136 U.S. housing units receiving a foreclosure filing during the third quarter of 2009 (realtytrac.com), you'd think that banks would finally be willing to take something rather than getting stuck with another property they can't sell. After all, half a mortgage payment for a few years is better than none, right?? But banks don't see it that way.

I don't know about elsewhere, but here in my town, banks have to pay for upkeep on homes they own. Lawns must be maintained or the city will send a company to take care of it and bill the bank. And of course over the winter at least, banks have to pay for heat or pipes will burst and they'll never sell the property!

Seems like a lose, lose proposition for everyone if you ask me...

Lovely weekend

Saturday was quiet and lazy. But today we went for a nice little hike in the Bobcat Ridge Natural Area. It's a lovely area, and full of interesting things. You can still see the area that burned in 2000, leaving the mountain bare and charred. Yet closer to the trail they had a controlled burn just a week or so ago and it's already greening up. Strange contrast.

I was a bit sad though, it brought back just how much I miss horses and riding, since there's a horse trail that runs close to the hiking trail and the old familiar scent of dusty trail combined with horse took me back to my early years in Colorado. Sheesh, it's been 20 years since I was that young kid out working for a summer, leading horseback rides through Rocky Mountain National Park!

but all in all it was a nice day. After our walk the kiddo played with her friends and I finished a new book, A Single Thread. it's one of those books that I'd never heard of but it caught my eye as I walked past the Staff Picks table. I quite enjoyed it, though I found the plot very similar to Debbie Macomber's Blossom Street books, with a quilt shop instead of a knitting shop. Like I said though, I enjoyed it and will be putting the next in the series on hold.

Anyhoo. Off read for a little while longer then to sleep. Back to the work grind in the morning ;)

Almost complete

My knit backpack just needs a bead and a button to be done. I thought I had the perfect button, a lovely Mother of Pearl(!) button that a friend from work gave me. But sadly, the holes on the button are just too small to even get the yarn through to sew it on. Oh well duh, that's what thread is for!

So now I just need a bead. I'm wondering if I can make a faux MoP bead out of polymer clay. I shall have to pick D's brain tomorrow (he's Mr. Crafty and the donor of the buttons) and see what he thinks. Then again, JoAnn's is just about next door...
Yay!

Twitter...TMbI

That stands for Too Much BORING Information, lol. I don't like Twitter. I will not Tweet, I will not follow anyone on Twitter. Honestly, blog posts may not always )or ever, lol) be filled with amazing info, but at least they are fewer and farther between. So far all the Twitterers I've seen make me think, "Who the hell cares??"

Sample Tweet of the sort that makes me crazy: Made a ham sandwich for lunch.

Then, two hours later: Have heart burn from sandwich.

Another couple of hours later: Heartburn is gone. Need another sandwich.

So???

It's either boring mundane stuff or honestly too much info (Demi Moore comes to mind when she posted that she was off to join her boy toy hubby naked in bed one evening. I read that on some gossip page on Yahoo! the next day, lol).

Anyhoo. Now that I've bored you stupid with my little rant, I'm off to work. I will be sure not to Tweet every last little thing that happens to me today ;)

TGIF!!!

I am so glad it is Friday. I have been so stressed for the last week. It's not good when you go from loving your job to stomach cramps every time you even think about work. (I even ended up going home early one day because I was nauseated all day long, a total stress reaction, I'm sure). And all because of one obnoxious client. It's a couple that have absolutely no clue, and frankly no taste. They call and we all cringe because we know they are going to send us something with a crappy clip art background with hard to read text and then they are going to want it blown up in to a size that just isn't proportional. And we've explained the concept of proportion a million times, and either they don't get it or they just don't care (I think it's that they don't care). They don't listen to anything we have to say, like, "hey, this is kind of hard to read on that background, can we change it or lighten it?" (Hard to sell a product if no one can read what it is, but they like the pretty picture, lol).

So anyway, they placed a large order with us and it's been an absolute pain in my arse. Especially since I know when the product arrives that they aren't going to be happy with it, because that's how they are. They are so damned picky and they just don't grasp (or frankly give a damn) just how much work and time goes into fixing their design flaws. I've tried charging them a design fee (then my boss killed that by offering our services without fees on the big job, argh! The amount of hours I put into that! Frankly, the $30 in house design fee I wanted to charge was still a freakin' bargain, since the company actually prefers that we send out things that take longer than 5 minutes for us to create.)

So now I've decided that I have done my best, and done everything I possibly could for them, they are never happy and I knew that going in, as did my boss, so to heck with it. I just don't care any more. Now I am ready for the weekend to arrive so I can sit back, relax and put work out of my mind.