Caterwauling

First I was in love. Then I wasn’t. Now, I’m OK with being “just friends” with my new newER apartment.

Yes, I got ANOTHER apartment since yesterday.

But first, tunage. Because I Can’t. Get. This. Song. Out. Of. My. HEAD.

OK, back to the story. Last installment of this saga, I had no car. The sad part? I heard it being towed around 2 a.m. I woke up and thought, “Wow — that sounds close, like where I parked my car. Oh, well. SUCKERS!” and yelled from my bed, “SHUT UUPPPP!” to the noisy-ass towing company. Whereupon I promptly flopped back over and snoozed away happily.

Hahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Read the rest of this entry »

Subtitle: FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!!!

Happy good fucking friday to you.

I awakened to MY CAR BEING MISSING!!!!!

I went to put some stuff in it in preparation of going to work sometime today.

But guess what? It was gone.

I called the police and they said Dominion Towing took it.

The FUCK??!?!

So I called Dominion Towing — who promptly told me that it had been towed because my inspection sticker had expired.

JESUS H CHRIST, PEOPLE!!!

I explained to the girl that I am moving to D.C. RIGHT NOW. RIGHT NOW — and I am going to get legal in D.C. instead of paying to be legal here for a week.

Well, apparently I will keep getting towed until I get legal.

Fuck you CURRENT APARTMENT COMPLEX for turning me in!

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate.

So, that’s $100 for the tow, lord knows what for the CAB RIDE and then another $75 for inspection/emissions.

Only to have to go register my car in the District next month. Sweet Jesus.

And, to boot, as I do not have Maddie’s rabies tag and the new apartment building needs it, I have to go get the brat’s shots updated right now or else I can’t move in. Cat vet bills always top $200 for shots in my world. I’m so excited, and I just can’t hide it.

Forget eating meat today — I’m going to just go smoke some crack.

*sigh*

Weeks ago, I thought I was. But now that the lease has been signed and the apartment has been viewed, I’m feeling such a letdown.

It’s smaller than I remember. And if that’s what they call clean, they need a reality check, because Maddie has done less damage to my current carpet. I signed my lease on the condition that all the crap gets taken care of before I return to pick up the keys.

It’s kind of noisy there, too. It’s sort of wedged between two busy streets. I have a Starbucks within view of my balcony, though, and somehow that makes it all worth it. 😉 Hooray for girly, frou-frou drinks on demand!

Read the rest of this entry »

Because I’d rather play on my website than, oh, pack up my kitchen.

Trying to share music the “legal” (*cough*) way …

I keep finding notes to myself that I wrote when I was supervising the Incoherent Twit from hell. You know, there are more days than not that I miss being in management — I think I did OK with teambuilding and getting folks out of the office for one-on-one, not-just-a-cog-in-wheel time. But other days, we remember the ones who gave us all our hard knocks … at once.

Written circa late 2001:

Give honest, ongoing, consistent feedback about their skill sets. Figure out how their ambitions can possibly be integrated into the department’s overall function/mission to keep them engaged.

Dude, she’s got to be good at SOMETHING other than going AWOL or simply existing to annoy the shit out of me. She knows which buttons to press with me but I need to counter that with buttons to press with her that will make her productive. Clearly she’s not interested in what she was hired for — that’s fine because she is terrible at it and I’ve spent half a year cleaning up her messes and trying to show the superiors what I really do with my time.

I asked her what she wants to do. Write. Network with the community leaders. Build up a good clipfile. OK, so on top of my 16-hour-a-day job, now I am going to have to help her to bring her writing ability up to the third-grade level and ALSO take her along to my meetings with potential donors (who are CEOs and VPs in the community!) where she will promptly talk about her boyfriend in jail and the bathing suit she bought at Spiegel.com ON WORK TIME?!?! Good lord, give me something to work with here!

Don’t try to change the way you work; you will fail.

Then again, I’m failing already — if I can’t fire the problem child based on bloodline (despite a well-documented file of behavioral issues), my only adjustment is to work more hours. Yeah, that’s a GREAT solution. Almost as good as trying to help others to change the way THEY work.

Ask people up-front what we need to know about their strengths, values, etc.

I like that — I wish someone would ask ME. I need help, but when I ask for it I’m told to use the people I have at my disposal, when I wouldn’t trust my main person to carry my trash to the curb. My values are to have a strong team, a respectful one — one that wants to pitch in and do well — we might get praised individually, but we sure as hell fail together.

What are my values, though? Think about this one. Because I have a funny feeling that I’m continually going against them. At least, that would explain the rock in my stomach all the time.

Recognize that there are chiefs and Indians; it’s OK to not be in command.

I liken that to there being visionaries and cleanup crews. I like being a visionary; I just wouldn’t pay even immigrant labor rates to most of my Indians. My vision is constantly blurred by my exhaustion from being my own best Indian sometimes.

I love finding this stuff. Because I moved on from that job and had the dream staff. And now I’m back to being an Indian. (I have such a strange career path!) I think my life might have taken me back down this path again so that I can become an even greater chief someday — one that actually has the power to choose who stays on the reservation and who gets voted off.

I already have the name of my management book that I want to write — someday I guess I have to string all these crazy meanderings together and make it happen.

I wonder whatever happened to the idiot I wrote about. I would rather hammer my own toes than give her a good reference. Last I heard, she quit that job to go on welfare because she was tired of working. Proof positive that I ain’t makin’ any of this shit up!

Further proof that the gene pool is contaminated:

Boy gets caught in toy-filled ‘claw’ machine

“When the 3-year-old Austin, Minn., boy crawled through the discharge chute of a Toy Chest claw machine at a Godfather’s Pizza in his hometown, he ended up on the other side of the glass surrounded by stuffed animals.

“Rescuers had to pry the door open to get Devin out, though the boy was in no hurry to leave.”

I think that was a waste of rescue efforts — the parents should have proven their skill at the game and played it to try to get him back. Now THAT would be entertainment!!!

I know, I’m so going to hell for this. Either that or I’ll probably have a kid who does that or worse.

In any event, the article made me hungry for Godfather’s Pizza, which was pretty much the highlight of my Minnes”cr”ota episode.

I suppose the parents are just lucky that the brat didn’t crawl into the pizza oven instead!

As I am in mid-move and therefore cannot cook at home (for one, I don’t want to have to throw food away, and two, I packed most of my small appliances), I’ve been hitting the fast-food circuit altogether too much. Which, let’s not talk about the expanding size of my ass, but I digress.

What I’d like to talk about is how EVERY ORDER I have made in the last two weeks has been SCREWED UP in some way. And how I figure that, well, if I only paid a few bucks for the meal, I really don’t have the energy/right to complain. Much.

However, I almost rammed a tip jar up someone’s ass yesterday. And she so would have deserved it. Because SHE was mad at ME for making her REDO my order!!!

Read the rest of this entry »

So I opened a new bank account in preparation of my move. Because I am not wildly in love with my own bank and, besides, I wanted something uber-convenient to my new locale. I also trust the hell out of the new bank as I’ve had several accounts through it before.

Well, the right word in this scenario is trusted.

Read the rest of this entry »

I wasn’t going to go out last night, but rare is the day I will miss a D.C. blogmeet with the usual suspects. It was a small gathering this time ’round, as April brings chaos and destruction for everyone (myself not excluded, as I should have been packing rather than guzzling cherry-wheat bear at the Cap City on New York Avenue with the gang), but the escape was worth it, as always. Even if it meant fighting through residual tourons who’d attended the parade.

I mean, who wouldn’t want to be in the company of Pat Sajak and Anthony Federov (from last season’s “American Idol”)? Although don’t hate, but I wouldn’t have minded seeing Martha Wash. Anyway. …

Thanks to the lovely Cat, who always manages to herd us cats together, and as always, I was happy to see brand-new daddy Buckethead (welcome Jocelyn!), The Wonder Formerly Known as Blogless, friend and current neighbor Neil and new neighbors (squee!) Nic and Vic. Good times, as always!

As it was a chilly night and I didn’t want it to end sooner than it had to (and as I was dumb enough to drive into D.C. — like I didn’t learn last week and every time I try that it takes an hour to drive 11 miles), I offered to take Nic and Vic home. And they humored me as I told them this long-winded story about, well, someone I don’t talk about here (as I would not necessarily enjoy being hunted down and killed or, at least, whined to about it).

SHARED PASTS

And it got me thinking more about blogging in general — how goddamned clever we all have to be to not get “caught” in this Information is King kind of world. But moreover, no matter how much we all exist independently (at least, I seem to), anything in our past is inextricably tied to someone else’s. And there’s a code of honor in protecting the shared past, even though sometimes you don’t want to respect it — you just have to.

I think that’s the underlying principle beneath so many of us getting in trouble with family members and employers past — we’ve spoken outside the family. It’s all well and good to know you’ve got the drunken uncle (or a challenging upper-management-type), but you are ordained by some unspoken code of internal ethics to never EVER mention it.

Same thing with exes and ex-friends and whomever else — even though you find a story repugnant or hilarious or something you just really wish you could have some help processing, unfortunately, you can’t talk about it online. I mean, you can, but it’s not worth opening the can o’worms. It’s like saying Beetlejuice — every time I so much as hint at someone from my past, whomever shares that past appears like an STD outbreak.

Which is why the blogmeets have become something of alcohol therapy. You get to see the faces and hear the details behind stories you’d never have any indication ever existed. Because we all have secrets, things we want to get out into the open — and we want someone who will listen and tell us we aren’t crazy (or, conversely, someone who tell us when we ARE).

Let’s face it, we all become smarter and more attuned to each other and also more informed about all kinds of neat trivia and tidbits that you can only glean from hearing someone else’s point of view about the world. Anyway, I don’t have any a lot of friends, but the companionship found at these meetings is powerful enough to tide me over for awhile and really, truly look forward to the next excuse to get together again.

IF ONLY EVERYONE WERE AS FABULOUS AS MY D.C. BLOGGER FRIENDS

Speaking of people about whom I need to blog, I am so counting down the days till I am out of my apartment complex. We have one functioning washer in the basement; I finally finally got to use it today. (I’ve had to be creative with my attire these past few weeks. And not in a good way — all my favorite pieces were in a heap on the floor because I have to either fight with 15 other units for time at that one washer or go to the United Nations laundromat. Which, ugh.)

Anyway, my load had just finished and I raced downstairs with one more, only to find a neighbor just about to empty the washer of my duds so she could use it. Ew. I ended up ripping my clothes out of the washer myself and, skipping the dryer, dragged them and the detergent and the needing-to-be-washed load back up three flights in a fit.

I of course was in a frothy fit that she was waiting to claim the machine and even though she offered for me to keep it for one more load, I was too annoyed to see straight. I did one of my usual, “I’ll be so fucking glad when I’m out of here.” (She really is a nice person; I just get mad that I can never get the fucking machine and it’s obnoxious to have to run up and down the steps 20 times to check in vain.)

The weird part? She said, “What? You’re not staying in the complex?” And she was shocked, even though they’re dicking her around because they decided to build a FITNESS CENTER instead of finishing the renovations on the first building. Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

So, what the complex is doing is evicting her but as her new unit won’t be ready till sometime in June, they want to put her into ANOTHER unit that hasn’t been renovated yet. Meaning, let’s bounce her down a couple of buildings only for her to move on up later.

She’s fighting it; she wants to stay here till the intended unit is ready. Which, I don’t see why McManagement is being weird about it — per the memo I received, they’re acting like new tenants are coming into my unit. Because they were dumb enough to pre-emptively and foolishly forfeit rent on a third of the complex for an undetermined amount of time.

I get the feeling that I can leave this place spic-and-span and I still won’t get a fraction of my deposit back, as they are hemorrhaging money into repairs and not making it back because they’ve exiled a third of their tenants. What a brilliant scheme!

They say nonprofit organizations survive despite themselves; clearly, the adage can apply to big, dumb realty companies. And my neighbor wonders why I want to leave here — I really can’t come up with a reason NOT to!

HISTORY REALLY DOES REPEAT ITSELF

In sum, though, when I was looking at moving into my current place back in 2003, there was another place I loved down the street. But I didn’t want to pay the higher price, even though I adored the layout — that was a “you pay utilities” situation and I wasn’t making any money and I also wasn’t stupid — I took this nice enough place that had everything included.

And now? The situation has presented itself again. I had an all-utilities-included place on backup. It was OK, I guess. The woman I worked with was wonderful. But I wasn’t in love with it. I like having utilities included for obvious reasons, but now that I’m moving closer to work, I’ll have more time, oh, *at* home and thus I need to love love LOVE it. And ironically, the new building is SO reminiscent of the unit I decided to walk away from, three years ago.

I didn’t invest in my current place. I didn’t even order checks to reflect this address. I didn’t buy any new furniture because I didn’t like the layout so I didn’t want to get anything that would only work here. But now, I am looking at new couches and bedroom furniture — not that I can afford it right now, but I’m slowly but surely getting into the groove of making big plans.

And I’m saying it right now — this is the last time I move before I move in with somebody. So either I’m going to DIE in my new apartment, or this is the last time I am going through this aggravation by myself. I always say “speak it into existence.” So now it’s out there. Blessed be.

In the meantime, I have a thousand things left to pack and only two boxes left. *argh*

The current apartment complex continues to suck more than a toothless hooker who hasn’t eaten in a week. *sigh*

Read the rest of this entry »