OK so mostly this is about two of my critters, Jazz and Kris. And I’m just ranting to get all this out of my system so I can go about my day feeling like I’ve gotten pointless stuff off of my chest.
Well, that’s a common thing for me. But anyway. Out of sheer boredom, and desperation to stay awake, here is a text message conversation between myself and my oldest brother, The Policeman:
Bro: Pics were too big.
[referring to ultrasound pics I emailed]
Me: K. Will resize.
Bro: Thanks. I just got Tazed. Fun stuff.
Me: Don’t taze me bro.
[nerd alert]
Bro: Haha. That is funny.
Me: So how did it feel?
[Does anyone else think a slight tazing would be interesting? Just for informational purposes? I do.]
Bro: The most painful 5 seconds of my life.
Me: Ouch.
[Maybe I don't want to get tazed after all.. must think about this.]
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice, and everything nice,
That’s what little girls are made of.
This afternoon I have my ‘big’ ultrasound. I’m hoping it just confirms that Bean is a girl, so .. here’s to hoping!
Of course if Bean is a boy, I’ll deal.
But, you know, I’d like to see hamburger buns and not a hot dog on that screen.
I got this laptop a few months ago. It has Vista on it. I should have known better.
Ok… so I did know better. Silly me.
It came with MS Office (which I can’t get the product key to work for so it’s about to NOT let me use it anymore), and MS Works. The oxymoron of “Microsoft Works” crossed my mind as I fired up MS Word processor. Went to paste some addresses from an email and…
Down it went.
Three times. It will not let me paste at all.
P.O.S.
I’m going to do a little more research into the ruling and basic Constitution history/facts, and I’m sure this will mean consulting my lawyer friend (Hi Sandy!), but…
The United States Constitution, if I recall correctly from the multitude of History and Poli Sci classes I’ve taken, was written to protect citizens of the United States. I was fairly sure this applied to the Writ of Habeas Corpus as well. Now, since I’ve never studied the Constitution itself I cannot sit here and say with complete certainty what protection it offers, if any, to non-citizens being held by the state (and by ’state’ I mean the sovereign state of the United States). Which really.. that’s why I’m holding off on just blowing my top over this.
On the surface, I want to say that this is wrong. Beyond wrong. Now, I know that it’s possible - and I think historically accurate - to say that not every Gitmo detainee (uh.. let’s call them what they are: prisoners) should have been there. For those who should be there - these people are dangerous. They’re of the same mold as those 19 hijackers. The same mold as the people who strap bombs on themselves and others to do as much damage both physically and psychologically as possible all in the name of religion. Detaining non-citizens and saying they have little to no rights is one of those areas where there’s a fine line, to be sure. It could set a dangerous precedent in many areas, I’d say. But in my opinion lines do need to be drawn somewhere, and I think they’ve drawn the wrong one when it comes to saying that the terrorists can come to the US and expect the same rights and protections as a US citizen.
But those are just my first thoughts and I’m going to look into this stuff more. I’m feeling somewhat scatterbrained as usual, so I probably should have collected my thoughts a little more. That’s what first thoughts are about, though.
I’ve done quite a bit of laundry here today, and various things around the house but looking around? Yeah. Looks like nothing happened. There goes my feeling of accomplishment!
The boys are REALLY feeling that whole “no school” thing right now. Of course, if they’re feeling it then so am I, and today was not a day where I was fully prepared to deal with all they had to dish out. Putting it bluntly, I was in Bitch Mode from the minute I got up and stumbled my way into the living room to let Barky McBigMouth out of his kennel. It doesn’t help that I was awake in the middle of the night for several hours, but hearing that dog yapping his damn head off just so he could go outside and ….
…
..yap his damn head off! Well that just irks me. I’m not a fan of dogs that never shut up, yet here I have one.
Upgraded WP, changed the layout. I had another one up but there were a few issues and I didn’t feel like working out the kinks at present so this one will have to work.
I called someone last week about having the tree in our backyard topped off. The guy came on Wednesday to give an estimate and blah blah, then said some of his guys could be out there that evening to start so they’d finish Thursday. Well, they wound up not making it due to a more emergency situation they’d been working on. We had had storms rolling through, and some not-so-fortunate people had both of their vehicles crushed by the two trees in their yard. So these tree people didn’t show up Wednesday but the guy (owner) called to apologize and all that. Said the guys would be there Thursday.
They showed up around 2 or 2:30 Thursday. I keep thinking it was 3 or after but the boys were in school when they started the job. The Tree Guys worked until 6:30, then said they’d be back the next day to finish. I was encouraged to keep an eye out for the city because if they came around to pick up the branches (holy crap were there a lot and the tree wasn’t even finished! My sidewalk was blocked even), I’d get slapped with about a $500 bill. Ouch. So. Friday rolls in. No one showed up in the morning, and Mom and I were out and about that day for whatever reason (oh.. Mom came in Wednesday for a visit too). That afternoon, we get back…. nuttin’. No Tree Guys.
Monday rolls around and I wound up calling in the afternoon to ask if they planned on finishing up or if I should just enjoy my new tree branch fence and half-topped tree. The owner answered the phone and, once he figured out who I was, informed me that the weekend just went and sneaked up on them and they just plumb forgot about me! Golly gee whiz. FORGOT ABOUT A JOB. And then he promised they’d be out between 8am & 10am Tuesday.
Yeah. They got here at 3:30. And? Didn’t finish.
Wednesday? As promised? No.
Today? Showed around 2-ish. And finished, finally.
A WEEK after the job started. ONE DAMN TREE. Not a forest. Not even a grove or thicket. ONE TREE. And it’s not even half the size of the big Ash I have in my front yard that the owner was trying to convince me needed topped. Dude, seriously. It would take a month for you guys to finish that one!
I had paid half of this up front, but I really considered just not paying them the other half. The problem is that I’m not feeling very confrontational right now and I wouldn’t exactly get much backing if I told them to kiss my butt over their poor-ass excuse of a job and business. The owner didn’t even come to collect the check from me (though he was more than happy to demand the down payment, of course, in person). He had one of his guys get it, asking if I’d put it in that guy’s name for whatever reason.
Will I refer these people or use them again? Not a chance in hell. Business was HORRIBLE.
