Dear City of Richmond

Posted on August 28, 2008 by Frog

I know times are tough all over, and you have people in the public school system using your franking system to send me books I purchased through half.com, but seriously, you are the capital of our state. Start acting and looking like it. In other words, get a haircut, tuck in your shirt and button your jacket. Buy a decent pair of shoes. Shoes say a lot about you. For instance, mine are now saying “She got really wet because there’s not a corner that drains correctly in the city” or maybe they are saying “What’s up with the brick sidewalk on Floyd near the VCU daycare center? Really? Is it necessary to have two-inch deep water on the sidewalk because you can’t maintain anything?”

Don’t get me started on what my pants are telling me right now.

Signed,

Glad it’s raining, but sick of the city’s inability to function

Posted in General Spleen Venting | Comments Off

For the love of God

Posted on August 27, 2008 by Frog

Since the students came back to school the IT system here has blown chunks. Today is the last straw as all access to email has gone tits up. The DNS servers are crashing and who knows if I’ll even be able to finish this rant before I lose all connectivity. How is it possible that for a university of this size that the basic infrastructure doesn’t work? Hie thy ass to Best Buy and buy the newest and biggest thing they have that will fix the problem–I don’t care about the purchasing policy make the shit work again.

It doesn’t help that I’m beyond frustrated with work already but to not be able to do my tiny little tasks really puts my shorts in a knot. At least the top of my desk has been cleaned off and all my extra sheets of paper have been thrown into the recycle bin.

When people ask me how I’m able to get so much work done for school while at work, I can point to days like this.

Posted in General Spleen Venting | Tagged | 2 Comments

The Weekend

Posted on August 25, 2008 by Frog

On Saturday we joined friends for the special chef lunch at the Barboursville winery. I had planned on writing a longish post about this experience and include the menu. By the time we got home from our lunch and then shopping for our Sunday activities, it was late and I was tired. Let’s just say the food was awesome and the wine was good too. My favorite was the Cabernet Franc. I think it was the 2006 vintage. I’ll seek that out again. We sat with an older couple who is also from the Richmond area. Let’s say they have lots of cash and lead the life of Riley. They were quite interesting and engaging.

Sunday we had old friends and their three boys over for an afternoon of swimming and cooking out. We hadn’t seen them in over a year so it was wonderful to catch up with them in person and to see how the boys have grown. They are some of the funniest kids I know and they will make good adults in the few short years it will take them to all of a sudden be in their 20s. The oldest starts high school next week. I remember life before he arrived. We recently came across a picture of me holding him right after he was born. He was the size of a loaf of bread and now he towers over me.

Still no word from the hiring manager I was to speak with on Friday. I called again this morning and left my final message–I was more than professional and left all my contact numbers. I asked a friend who works for the same company but in a different division to look up the hiring manager’s physical address so in case I have to break down and write a regular note, I’ll know where to send it. I can only assume there’s been a catastrophe. Otherwise I don’t know that I could work for this person.

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Ohio Is On My Mind

Posted on August 20, 2008 by Frog

I have been reluctant to talk about this but I have a phone interview with a hiring manager on Friday. I don’t want to jinx the call, but it sounds like a perfect job for me. I talked to the hiring manager briefly on Monday and like her already–we joked around a bit on the phone and set up the interview for Friday morning. The hiring manager is located in Ohio. The job is located here but I’ve been thinking a lot about Ohio lately. Specifically about the job, of course, but also how I’ve never been there. Pittsburgh is as close as I’ve come to Ohio. A shame, really, but that will change if I get this job.

In order to torture myself, I’ve been trying to think of songs about Ohio or by Ohio singers or both. Yes, I have a lot of space in my brain and I devote it to crap like this.

Anyway…one of my favorite lyrics of all time is “a, o, way to go, Ohio”. Seriously. Something about the delivery.

I’ve had the “Tin Soldiers and Nixon coming” lyric stuck in my head since vacation last week. The Isley Brothers are awesome. But, you already know about my love of soul music. Yes I know they didn’t write it but the screaming guitars and the bass line rule and Neil Young is like nails on the chalk board for me.

And, of course, there’s REM’s Cuyahoga. As someone who grew up in the late 80s, REM will always be on one of my lists.

Friday afternoon update: No interview today. I called and left three messages and sent an email and I have yet to hear back as to what the fuck happened. I can only assume catastrophic family/business crisis otherwise I have no use for this job–except I was really getting excited about it.

Posted in Listening | Tagged | 3 Comments

Getting the Word Out

Posted on August 20, 2008 by Frog

JohnMcCain is a creep. If you need more evidence above and beyond that sick feeling in your stomach, check out this article from Daily Kos.

Posted in General Spleen Venting | Comments Off

We’re Back and the Hostas were Scalped

Posted on August 18, 2008 by Frog

We returned home yesterday afternoon and before we took one item out of the car we ran into the house to see Simon. I think it’s fair to say we all missed each other. The poor guy was under the guest bed. He usually sleeps on top of it these days unless the nieces are here and he’s wigged. We could tell he spent no time on the hassock downstairs because the boy knows how to shed and there wasn’t a hair on it. That’s one of his favorite places to sleep.

He has spent all of the intervening time making sure he knows where we are or talking to us about where we are. Last night we finally had to open the bedroom doors so he could come in and be comforted. At some point early this morning, I had a face full of soft kitty fur. We’re really home, little guy.

The word has also gone out to all the deer in the neighborhood. The deer we’ve always been so friendly to–we keep part of our property as orchard grass so they can graze. Well, I’m considering cutting down the orchard grass and sitting on the front porch with a shotgun…mmm, tasty venison (ok, not really the hunting part):
Everything has been eaten

We haven’t seen the saxophone playing frog since winter:
Exposed

Posted in Gardening | 1 Comment

We Were Attacked

Posted on August 15, 2008 by Frog
Brutal Armies of Mosquitos

Brutal Armies of Mosquitos-They Really Are This Big

Posted in Generic Thoughts | 1 Comment

From the House on Tuesday Night

Posted on August 13, 2008 by Frog
Brilliant sunset

Brilliant sunset

Posted in Generic Thoughts | Tagged | 1 Comment

Again with the canning

Posted on August 9, 2008 by Frog

I canned two jars of tomatoes this morning because what else could I possibly have to do the day before we leave on vacation? I also roasted tomatoes and eggplant and froze that mix. While I was roasting those vegetables I roasted a butt-load of Anaheim peppers and packed those in an old artichoke jar with some olive oil.

I have some corn cooling after being blanched. Those kernels will be frozen. Enough!

When I picked this tomato, I thought it was actually two growing next to each other. Actually it looks to me like this franken-tomato was actually three tomatoes. Whatevs. Into the pot of sauce it went.

*Jeez, did I use the word actually enough in this post?

Posted in Eating, Gardening | Comments Off

The Last Day of Work for 6 days

Posted on August 8, 2008 by Frog

Hallelujah today is Friday and it’s my last day of work until August 19th. Thankfully I have planned to spend quite a bit of time today recreating reports that we pull out of a database. I really like making knock-offs of awkwardly formatted reports. Hopefully when I’m done it will be hard to tell the difference between the original and my knock-off. My copy of Microsoft Word will be doing some acrobatics today.

In the small victories category, yesterday I cut grass and managed not to bust any windows.

We’re headed to the beach on Sunday. When I was a small child we would go to the shore. Which is just Northern-speak for the beach. It’s funny I never refer to any place other than Surf City, NJ as the shore. So when I posted the Feist clip from Sesame Street, I assumed those chickens were just back from Surf City. I wonder if they went over to the bay to collect periwinkles?

Posted in Generic Thoughts | Tagged | 1 Comment