elfination

1) I have had recent occasion to ponder the act of Naming. While most bad demon-fantasy prattles on about Knowing the True Name of the Beast Allows You To Control It, they’ve actually got a point. I don’t know much about knowing the True Name of most demons, but knowing (and using) the Name of the Customer allows some form of connection, some form of drawing-together, and ultimately a small amount of control. And many customers I’ve talked to could well fall into the demon category, too. (And it does pretty much take drawing a pentagram on the floor in blood to get them to test their signal strength.) One should not use Naming lightly, and I have many ideas about the Naming of Creatures and the appropriateness of Names. There’s a well-written essay in here somewhere, but it’s not coming out yet.

2) We went to Missouri (pronounced “Misery” in some circles) to visit my friends from Long Ago and Far Away. I knew Kimberly in college, and had met her now-husband Andrew a few times also. They are wonderful people, very kind and warm, and probably Just What We Needed. First, Kimberly is studying to be a CPA, so she was kind enough to tackle our federal and state tax forms … and Andrew is working on his second doctorate in Psychology … so we got some little mini-sessions. We were only there for maybe 24 hours, and we were only away from home for about 36 hours, but it felt like a real vacation. (YAY!!) We will have them up to visit probably in March, when Andrew has a spring break from school. I am quite excited. And they don’t live too far away - about 3 hours’ worth of driving on a Flat Boring Interstate Through Farmland. (Uh, yes, that would be Rt. 44, yep.)

3) I have a friend named Nicole who is coming over today, bringing along her son (who recently turned 4). I don’t know how the cat will react. Nicole is very outgoing and is quite intelligent (she used the word “mediocrity” correctly in a sentence. Twice.) We’re going to do pretty much nothing … hang out a bit, do laundry, etc. Basically, I talked Nicole into keeping me company while I clean the house for Barrett’s Office Poker Night on Friday.

4) I had better get my ass in gear and get off to WalMart to get good deals on HomeMakery Stuff before Barrett gets up and my brain gets derailed.

Well… maybe not everywhere. But in a lot of places.

I evicted Yet Another Small Brown Wolf Spider from the house today. The spider was pretty disgruntled about it, but then again spiders have no real sense of the future or of ominous unknown dangers or of teamwork. If they did, this spider would have realized that if it cooperated with me, it would avoid getting squashed in a couple of hours by Barrett’s Large Foot. Alas, spiders don’t always know what’s good for them.

The spider in question had a legspan of maybe the width of a quarter. It was fairly common as Wolfies go in this area, and it’s getting springtimey warm outside some days, so the spiders are starting to think about coming out to hunt. . . . but when it gets cold at night, they like to come inside.

I did eventually get the spider to (unwillingly) participate in being photographed for posterity’s sake, and then I took it out onto the porch and released it, which the spider was quite unhappy about. You see, it’s a nice warm 70-something inside the house. . . and about 45 degrees outside. It wandered off, muttering something about glass jars and flashing lights and alien abductions.

The whole experience took maybe 5 minutes, mostly because I locked Kismet in the office so she wouldn’t “help” catch the spider. With wolf spiders, I’m not really concerned about her being bitten; wolfies are not terribly poisonous, although their bites can itch and swell in certain allergic individuals. . . but more that I’d rather release a relatively healthy (if disgruntled) spider, rather than one that’s missing a few legs or has been patted and played with by the cat. (Spiders aren’t usually welcome houseguests but they make great cat toys, according to most cats.)

All things considered, I don’t mind the spiders. They eat ants and roaches, which I DO mind quite a bit. I just prefer that the spiders do their hunting outside the house, around the perimeter of the house. I picture them patrolling the outside, waiting for a roach or ant to think about coming in. . . . and then it’s snacktime for the spiders.

There are some significantly fat orb weavers that live around here, too, although I haven’t seen them since that little eviction proceeding in November. I’m sure they’ll be back, building webs on the stairs of the deck, in hopes of catching something human-sized. (I’m kidding) . . . After reading up on them, I’d like to study them further . . . they left their webs up during the day but the webs had no markers on them to prevent birds from swooshing through them . . . so maybe the spiders have something going on.

Anyway. In the meantime . . . Wolf spiders go outside.

It’s Saturday, and it really is Saturday, both by the calendar and in my brain.

I’ve mostly lived through the Death Flu, and have come out the other side with very little voice to speak of (PUNNY!!) and some residual sinussy ick. I went to work on Thursday and Friday, and croaked through all my calls. I think I got my callers off the line faster because my throat hurt. That will help my stats. . . . I should lose my voice more often.

I’m still not interested in eating a lot of food, a condition which I’m trying to encourage. 

In other news, on Wednesday, Barrett and I decided that new climbing furni would be a great first-birthday gift for the cat.  She’ll be 1 on 2/25.  We bought her a couple of furniture pieces which we’ll be bolting together to make a Kitty Tower eXtreme.  One piece is a three-hole kitty condo, with a big scratching post to one side … and it has a flat top.  The other piece is something I fell in love with and insisted that we purchase … it’s a castle hidey-hole that has a roomy interior, sheepskin base, and is perfect for the relaxing kitty. 

Is it not perfect?  We got one that’s dark-gray on the outside.  We’ll bolt the castle to the top of the condo, and put it by the window, so Kismet can watch the birds at the bird feeders.  Kismet, being a cat, has decided to stash some of her favorite toys inside the castle already.  Barrett found two Octos and her Jellyfish inside the castle yesterday.  (Octo = “Great balls of Fur” from Hartz … Jellyfish = similar to the upper-right plushy jellyfish, only … a little over-loved…)  Kismet also plays hard with her “birdies”, the feathers of which are strewn all around the new furniture.

Are we suckers for the fuzzy cat?  Oh, and how.   But she’s the best.  I bought her actual ADULT kitty food, which she immediately applied herself to.  She’s not a fussy eater, which is oh-so-nice.   And throughout my flu, Kismet was a real trooper.  While I was up at 3 AM in the office having breathing treatments, she’d lie behind the computer monitor and purr, and occasionally reach out and pat my hand.  It was very sweet. 

She deserves a good birthday, although she has absssosooolllutely NO concept of “birthday” at all.  She is Cat.  And that is all.   But she enjoys the new stuff rather a lot.  And she’ll love being on the tip-top of the new tower, which will remind everyone of her status: Cat Queen of the Whole House and All the Birdies Outside.

My doctor has this really cool test. They “swab” you, then they put it in some solution, and it tells them magically whether you have Oklahoman Death Flu or whether you have Some Other Terrible Virus. And by “swab”, what I mean is, “stick a super-long q-tip up your nose until you sneeze so hard it jams into your brain and you launch infectious snotrockets at the nurse.” Ok, that’s a slight exaggeration. I did feel like I was going to sneeze, and had I actually sneezed, that likely would have been the outcome.

Me, I’ve got Death Flu.

My doctor did say that, surprisingly, I’m the “healthiest flu patient” she’s seen thus far. I guess the flu shot DID help ramp-up my defenses before the full-on assault hit me. What’s more surprising is that I have ACTUAL DEFENSES that are ACTUALLY WORKING. This is almost unheard of for me.

A comment about my doctor: She’s really wonderfully generous with the C-III cough syrup. I have a new best friend, and it claims to be grape flavored (although I know better), and it has codeine in it. And, surprisingly, the cough is really very suppressed. This is gonna be a great weekend… just me and my new lil’ cough syrup friend, lying on the floor, talking about life and contemplating the universe. Maybe we’ll invite my other friend “Jell-o”. Who knows.

–Em

Oh, yes, it’s morning again. And it’s Tuesday. (or Saturday, depending on how carefully you read a previous post.)

Oklahoman Death Flu is sweeping the city. On Sunday I was the fourth person from my team alone to go home early due to extreme illness. And it’s bad, people. It’s bad. For me it settled right in my lungs and it hasn’t budged. Every now and then my whole body is wracked with a coughing spasm that lasts about 30 seconds and feels like The End is Near. (I discovered that taking some of Barrett’s snazzy ketoprofen seems to alleviate most of the pain of The End Being Near, but the whole experience is still unpleasant.) I have, however, managed to lose six pounds. I’m sure that’s not permanent, but it’s a nice thought. I’m sucking down so much Very Hot Coffee that the three doses of NyQuil I took yesterday failed to knock me on my ass like usual.

I left work early on Sunday, stayed out on Monday, and basically crawled from computer to couch to bed to shower to bed to computer to bed to shower, etc. I was bored stiff but in too much pain and overall too weak to do anything. Watching TV is for wimps, no I will NOT watch TV, I don’t think of TV as a cure for boredom. I basically stayed out of the shower long enough for the hot water fairies to come make the water all hot again…. and then I was back in the shower for another 30-40 minutes at a time. It was about 4pm on Monday when I realized … if this gets any worse … and I go to the doctor… they’ll put me on Prednisone … and oh god, I don’t want that. Thus the ketoprofen. Then I sent my loving husband out to the pharmacy to pick up the most extremely expensive refills I could think to order, namely Pulmicort … better get some inhalation-only steroids in my lungs so systemic steroids are cast in a poor light.

Work is very insistant that I have a doctor’s note to explain, in detail, why I was out. They insist upon this from everyone. Thing is, it’s oh-so-extremely against HIPAA privacy regulations to request / demand such a note. It doesn’t stop the managers from requesting it, and thankfully the doctors and nurses will simply give a note that says, “{Employee’s Name} Was seen Today and May Return To Work.” Most managers will still refuse this note as insufficient (although they’re not supposed to,) and employees can be heard sobbing in the hallways at their managers, “But this is the ONLY NOTE THEY’D GIVE ME.”

I used to work in health insurance. I know better. And my managers have all been made very aware that I know better. (I ususally get, “oh, right. That law thing.”) You will NOT ask me for a diagnosis. You will NOT ask me for a treatment plan. And you won’t even THINK of not accepting my note. I explain that having THE NAME OF MY DOCTOR on the little slip is actually more information than I am required to give them under federal law. It pisses me off that they’re basically jerking every other employee around though. I try to counsel as many teammates as possible … “You give them the note that says you were treated in the ER. Don’t you DARE think of giving them any more than that, you have a right to privacy, and an employer can’t ASK for this information.”

The way it works is: If you want to be out sick and have only ONE “occurrence” for it (badness point), you can provide a note that basically says you were treated by a doctor and may return to work on X date (not more than five working days out). If you believe that you had an emergency such that you a) had no control over it, and b) want ZERO occurrences for being out, THEN you have to explain why you were out. We’re talking Heart Attack, Asthma Attack, Loss of Life and Limb, etc. Now, I absolutely also understand that our Short-Term Disability insurance wants details. That’s appropriate. And I believe HR has some information about that. But we aren’t talking about Short-Term Disability here, and we’re not talking about I-Want-ZERO-Badness-Points…. we’re talking about I-was-out-for-three-days-straight-and-I-want-only-one-occurrence-for-it kind of issues.

We were told in training, “if your doctor keeps you home and you’re contageous, you’d better have a note saying what it is you have.” Ohhhhh, I raised my hand. “Um? AIDS is contageous? And I don’t think if I had AIDS I’d be telling everyone at work about it, because I believe it might cause Human Resources to view my employment in a tainted light.”

(I was almost kicked out of the room.) Oh, I know they meant something different, and I know that HIV is contageous through sexual contact, something that I wouldn’t be caught dead doing with anyone from work … but that’s not what they said.

Apparently there’s a nurse who works in the HR department who reviews these notes and Emergency Documents and stuff. This smacks of Conflict of Interest to me. I’d totally crusade to bring the whole system down, but… I am only one person, and I’d like to keep my job, so I stay on the outside fringe of it all. I don’t give my manager any reason to be questioning my notes, and I don’t take a million extra little breaks at work to make my employment record look less than spotless. And I know if the system were overturned, 95% of the employees at this place would abuse it to no end.

Anyway, I do have an appointment to see my doctor today, so she can give me a lameass note that says “Emily is a patient of this office and may return to work on Thursday,” and I mean, the lamer and non-specific the note, the better…. And I’ll take it to work with me on Thursday (if I’m still alive then) and my manager will give it the Hairy Eyeball and say, “This isn’t enough. They want a diagnosis.” And I’ll have to argue that I only want ONE occurrence, not ZERO occurrences, and Thou Shalt Not Break the Federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.

Of course, if my doctor insists upon my consumption of The Evil Drug Prednisone, I will insist upon her signing massive documents for our Short-Term-Disability insurance indicating that I will be in no way fit to attend work due to raging drug-induced psychosis. Think I’m kidding? I was suicidal last time I was on prednisone, after about three days of near-schitzophrenic feelings. Nevermind that that one drug is solely responsible for me weighing in at twice my “healthy” weight. People say it actually takes just as long to gain a pound as it does to lose a pound, and they’re wrong. During one particular round of Prednisone, I gained 20 pounds in 10 days. Even my doctor was incredulous, and insisted that the nurses had clearly not weighed me correctly 10 days previous. Granted, about 10 of those pounds were just water-retention, but the other 10 were permanent. (See this flub right here? there they are. All 10. Still with me.)

Now, of course, if I don’t go on prednisone, I really am tempted to have my doctor write an official treatment plan and stuff for an illness I don’t have. Of course, they’d then claim fraud, so I won’t. But it’s tempting.

In the meantime … It’s all about Barrett’s ketoprofen. And hot coffee. And NyQuil.

–Elf

I get a phone call from Mr. Extremely Old Guy himself. He’s REALLLLLLY old. He doesn’t understand me when I ask, “May I have the name on the account, please?”

(”My account has a name?”)

Anyhow, as he’s wrestling with whether he should give me his name or his phone number or his account number (seriously, I asked for his name, he put the phone down and like, wandered off, I guess to find a bill to look at … ) I looked at the earlier call-tracking. I see the following:

“Technical - Other —- Black Screen / Video outtage —- Changed Settings —- TURNED TV POWER ON.”

I’m thinking … greeeaaaaaaaaaaatttt … one of those callers. I gear myself up to suggest turning the receiver on, too, without making the customer sound / feel like a complete idiot. After all … he’s just old … and hard of hearing … not necessarily below average IQ.

He comes back, I ask again for his name, he gives it to me, and I ask how I can help him today.

“I wanna know why I’m not getting any High Definition channels. I keep trying to use them and I don’t see the High Definition ones.”

And I can’t help but think… “the guy who didn’t remember to turn his TV on earlier needs help with high definition now?? oh, crap.”

He then continues with, “Oh and I couldn’t see NFL on Sundays either. Why? I wanted to get the games. Can you tell me why I can’t see my NFL package?”

And I think, “oh no, now I have to explain that Sunday NFL games were .. a) ON SUNDAYS and b) OVER NOW because it’s long past the SuperBowl.” In addition I can think of about seven hundred different reasons why he might not have been getting NFL games, not the least of which is that he sometimes forgets to TURN HIS TV ON.

So I say, “well, the NFL season is over … and it’s not sunday, so we can’t really troubleshoot why you couldn’t get those games. You know it’s always a good idea to call us when the problem is happening right at that minute… but let’s see what we can do about that High Definition issue.”

We try turning to the DiscoveryHD Theater channel. He says, “oooh it looks like it’s all under water.”

Being an informed technician who knows that this statement can mean multiple things, I ask, “Sir, do you mean the picture is really washy, or faded out, or it’s wavy? Or do you mean it’s a good picture of, like, an underwater scene?”
“I’m watching a little gold fishie swiiiimmming around a coral reef!” he exclaims.
“So it’s a good picture?”
“Oh, yes it’s great.”

We try a few more channels. They all come in in pristine HD quality. Exactly as they should. Didn’t change any settings, didn’t do anything except turn to the channels. I’d have been baffled about this, but then again he did forget to turn his TV on earlier, and had to call Tech Support to get it figured out.

“How’d you do that?” he asks.
I consider explaining that I sent a Magic Satellite Fairy over to his house to figure it all out for him, but I avoid the question entirely by saying, “so… did we get that resolved for you? Does it look like those channels are coming in? Ok GREAT just let us know if there’s anything else we can do, OK?”

“oh KAY!! Bye!!” he says, all happy now to be watching HD on a TV that’s turned on. Yep.

–Em

“Da power? Juz wen’ out? On like, mah teevee an’ mah box an’ mah vcr an stuff?”

“OK, ma’am … did you blow a fuse?”

“No, I ain’t mad, I just wan’ mah teevee back on.”

“No, I mean… did one of the fuses in your fuse box just blow out? Did you lose power to like, lamps and stuff too? You might have blown a fuse or popped out a circuit breaker or something.”

“oooOOOOHHH!”

Believe it or not, I then had to explain that this isn’t something I can help her with. . . it’s not something that our company caused. Call a fuckin’ electrician.

–Em

I spent most of today typing up a tutorial for my mom so she can learn how to use Yahoo! email. Lots of screen shots and dashy lines and arrows saying “CLICK HERE”. I had to sign her up for Yahoo email so that she could buy a camera on ebay. Why did she want a camera on ebay? Well, because my cousin Andrew was selling it. It’s a long, complicated story that ends with me having to spend a long time at the computer logging in and out of yahoo, ebay, and paypal to get it all worked out. Because she kept calling me and saying, “Emmy. Emmy make it go. Make it go. No YOU do it.”

I did try to explain that she could use Yahoo all by her goofy self; a concept which she rejected outright. “Don’t have a ‘puter” she said. “Go to the library,” I said.
“They’re closed,” she said.
“GO WHEN THEY’RE OPEN,” I suggested. No good.

What a trip.

I’m sorely missing New England right now - where any grocery in existence would have proscuitto and gruyere cheese and a seafood counter that has bay scallops … but nooooooooo not in Oklahoma. (Not that I wanted bay scallops to go with the proscuitto and gruyere, but you get the drift). Heck, even the really crappy / skeevy groceries in the bad neighborhoods had proscuitto. You probably didn’t want to shop there, but they had it. Sure, the scallops were scary and often were sitting raw on top of cooked shrimps … but … you know… they had it.

Here: You can buy scallops, sometimes, at the really superhuge walmarts, in hard frozen one-pound bags … ocean scallops only, with water injected, so when you let them thaw and dry out a bit, you end up with about a half-pound of falling-apart shellfishyesque fiber-splats. Then you have to trim the little bitter foot-edges off the scallops and you lose another 10%.

Proscuitto? Well, they have it at The Market. (12 miles away.) Sliced to order. Gruyere? oh, no we don’t have that.

Gruyere? They have it at Wild Oats. (7 MORE miles away.) Wild Oats doesn’t carry proscuitto.

However, if I were to desire to head out toward Utica Square, and go next door to the Miss Jackson’s store (Miss Jackson’s carries incredibly expensive clothing for incredibly skinny people) ….. I could probably get both proscuitto and gruyere. (but not scallops. Never scallops.) Except … the store is about 16 miles away….through three towns.

Merrimack: I could head about 2 miles to Shaw’s and buy it all.

sighs.

There is a grocery within two miles of my house. Well… no, check that, it’s within three miles. But anyway. Their definition of “seafood counter” is “Boxes of Van DeKamp’s”. I asked one time if they had salmon. The clerk led me over to the freezer full of fishstix and said, “I don’t know what kind of fish it is.”
“That’s COD,” I said, “and it’s BREADED. And ALREADY COOKED. Do you have fresh fish? ANY FRESH FISH??”
She blinked rather blankly, and that was the end of that conversation.

After hearing that I’d have to go to two stores to get the two final ingredients for the chicken cordon bleu for tonight’s dinner … Barrett said it’d be fine if I used ham and a mixture of chevre (for gooeyness) and asiago (for flavor) instead.

Well, chalk one up for having a mileage-concious husband.

I had to have my car repaired yesterday - nothing earth-shattering, just a rattly noise (turned out to be an un-secured windshield clamp that rattled a bit when I got up to highway speeds) . . . and, of course, I had to leave my car there, which necessitated their little shuttle-driver-dude to shuttle me back and forth to Barrett’s work so I could use HIS car.

This is unimportant except that, when my car was done, I said I’d need a lift from Barrett’s work. They said they’d have to round up the driver, he’s “somewhere”. Well, it was cold out, and so I asked if they’d call my cell phone please when they get close so I could meet the guy in the parking lot. Gave them my cell number (again). I should note here that my cell number is still from New Hampshire.

After some time of not hearing from them, I decided to just head outside to wait. Sure enough, there’s the little van with the severely buck-toothed driver sitting behind the wheel. Had he called me? Why, no, he hadn’t. I asked him about that little discrepancy, and he produced a slip of paper with exactly my phone number, area code included, written on it. “All they gave me was this number,” he said.
“yes. . . that’s my phone number.”
“do you got to dial ALL those numbers? EVERY TIME you call?”
“??”
“’cause it’s like, way too long to be a real phone number.”

oh. oh…. oh. oh. >blink< oh.

I thought (wrongly) that my mother would appreciate this little story.

She didn’t. It launched her into a tirade about how she’s positive I’m going to get stuck with like a bunch of children in some house somewhere in Oklahoma, while my husband went out and … Well, I’m not sure where she was leading with that but I interrupted her to tell her I’m actually pretty happy with the house and my job and everything.
“OH DEAR GOD DON’T SAY THAT,” she howled.
“Why not?”
“You can’t be HAPPY out there!! You’ll get all rooted down into some sad little housewifey life out there! You’ll never do anything with yourself!! You’ll be like LORINDA. I got stuck in Ohio. I should never have moved here, but I had you … but I regret ever moving to Ohio, every day.”
I decided not to press by asking how she was managing to blame 24 years of unhappy life in Ohio on me, but I did say: “um…. Ok. So you’re saying I SHOULDN’T be happy out here? That I SHOULDN’T enjoy my life? That I should be MISERABLE in a brand-new lovely house with a nice husband? So, I should like, loathe every minute of my existance out here until I can move back to somewhere where we can’t afford to own a home? Are you saying I should resent Barrett for bringing me out here?”
“No I’m not saying that.”
“Ok then exactly what were you saying?”

Well, now that’s just ♥lovely♥.

But anyhow, I baked some nice cookies. And I bustled around the house. In my sweats. And ratty t-shirt. And I’m going to use

HAM

in the chicken cordon-bleu. And I made Jell-o. And I thought about how I could get a better deal on little boxes of Jell-o if I bought them at Walmart. Just to spite my mother.

–Em

Ahhhh. It’s Monday.

I ♥ Mondays!! It’s like, Friday, or something. I also like Fridays. And TGI Fridays. But not as much. Yep.

Monday = Friday because I have Tuesday and Wednesday off from work. Friday = Friday because I have Saturday off, too. Sunday = Monday, Thursday = Monday, and Tuesday and Wednesday = the weekend.

Got all that?

Friday = Friday, Thursday = Monday, Monday = Friday, Tuesday = Saturday, Wednesday = Sunday, Saturday = Saturday, and Sunday = Monday. Got it?

There WILL be a test later.
I’m all happy and sated with a stomach full of hot sweet creamy coffee (caramel flavor) and low-carb waffles with low-carb peanut butter dripping off of them.

And I even managed to wear a shirt that I either a) didn’t get any peanut butter on, or b) is exactly the right combination of colors for the peanut butter to be invisible. . . .

And I survived all the morons calling in about SuperBowl Sunday … Like the dude who hasn’t had his local channels since, oh, you know, like September, but he really wants them NOW to watch the SuperBowl, and what do you MEAN he has to pay for a service call and we can’t get out there until Tuesday? I pointed out that he hadn’t called us since September about anything at all, let alone his local channels, and the Super Bowl has, in fact, been scheduled for February 6 since … well, since September. Sir, there were FOUR MONTHS in there that you could have called us for a service call, many of which would have been under your initial installation’s warranty.

WTF ever.

Then there was the guy who harped on the fact that I had to ask him for his phone number (which he gave me amid monstrous griping and snarling; I should note here that the area code was 516, which is western Lon-GY-land, draw your own conclusions), and then he went ballistic when I had the audacity to ask him for his name … oh my GOD I should be fired for that. Anyway, he then angrily snarled something like, “Oh just GREAT I’m talking to ANOTHER IDIOT SOMEWHERE.”

oh? Because I didn’t magically know your name from your sunny voice? Your winning personality? Did you just call me an idiot? *putting on long red fingernails and snapping my fingers while moving my head around … * ohhhhoooooohhhh NO you DIH-ENT.

“Sir? I would appreciate you NOT calling me an IDIOT. I am here to help you. If you do not want my help I can disconnect this call.”

Allen, my illustrious co-worker, who sits next to me and knows what a stunningly nice person I am on the phone, looked over at me with this half-meek half-awestruck “oh my GOD did you just come close to telling that customer off?” look ….

But my favorite call of the whole day was a guy who was at a campground with his RV, in a spot he’s frequented before, trying to set up his portable dish like he’s done before. . . and he said, “I set the angle, and then I’ve moved it left and right and back and forth and I can’t get a signal at ALL. I have scanned the entire universe, but I can’t get the signal.”
“OK, sir, so we’ve found life on Mars, but we can’t get the 101-degree orbital position?”
“You got it.”

Allen looks over at me, pushes mute, and mouths, “Life on MARS?”

My caller goes on: “Yep. The Martians are sending us a coded signal. It says, ‘Searching for satellite signal’.”
“Ahh, yes sir. Message number 771. Those pesky Martians. Let’s see if we can’t figure out what’s wrong with the setup.”

Yep.

I ♥ my job.

And it’s Friday.

(Two hours of my life gone forever)

Seriously. Barrett suggested that we head off to the movies to see this Academy-Nominated film.

Dear God Almighty.

To sum up: Miles (who is wandering through life as a bitter zombie since his two-years-ago divorce, trying to get an ungodly-long novel published), and Jack (who is an on-again-off-again actor / frat boy who hasn’t grown up yet but is getting married Next Saturday) head out on a week-long bachelor send-off (wine bender) in California’s wine country. The plan is to drink a lot of tasty grape juice (a passtime that Miles is snobbishly skilled at, and Jack is blatantly crass / unskilled about), eat a lot of yummy food, bond in a very manly-yet-touchyfeely way, and then Jack is off to the torture of Holy Matrimony with his potentially overbearing fiancee, Christine.

Jack changes the plans somewhat to include, “We’re gonna get you LAID, buddy!!!” and then also: “I’m gonna get laid and you’re not gonna fuck it up for me, you got that??”, which sends Miles into an even more mindbogglingly morose mindset. Jack can’t decide if he wants to call off the wedding (”to protect Christine’s feelings”) or not, and Miles has to hold his tongue to keep from being The Guy Who Made Jack Not Get Married.

It was like middle-aged Garden State meets de-surreal-ized Lost in Translation. Basically, it was both Garden State and Lost in Translation for baby boomers who have to be spoonfed a plot . . . people who thought Garden State was too teenyboppery and couldn’t appreciate the subtelty of Lost in Translation. And the academy loved it. Go figure.

There were a couple of amusing parts I can count on one hand. “I ran. And I had to cut through an ostrich farm,” was among them. Some part of me wants to say you have to see the movie to appreciate that line, but I’ll save you the trouble: The ever-partying Bachelor-cum-Sidekick-with-Dumb-Ideas (Jack) decides he’s going to pick up a waitress at a steak’n'ribs joint, while our protagonist (Miles)shakes his head at this New Dumb Idea and heads back to the hotel to sulk alone. At 7:00 the next morning, a very naked Jack (complete with shivering and holding onto his package for dear life) is knocking at the hotel room door, having been caught by said waitress’ husband . . . . Whereupon Miles remarks that . . . “That’s five klicks away! You walked five klicks?!?” (See above for Jack’s reply.)

While the image of Thomas Haden Church streaking naked through a flock of confused (and probably grumpy) ostriches is amusing, the rest of the movie was sort of a sad excuse to make an angst-filled indie film with no real point whatsoever. And oh my LORD do those people drink a lot of wine. Let’s hear it for four people downing 6 or 7 bottles of wine at dinner and then heading out to DRIVE somewhere to drink more wine, then driving home from there, too … Whoooeee. I mean, I thought that was just my mother … … … oh, um …….. that’s another therapy session I guess. (And speaking of therapy, we find that Miles is taking Xanax and Lexapro for whatever mental ailments… and tended to drink WAY too much wine at each sitting, something that I’m sure isn’t good for his liver, and the movie doesn’t say a THING about that, but I digress.) Anyway, the whole basic gist of the movie was to make “Now” a special-enough event to celebrate. Except that Jack goes way overboard, and Miles can’t function well enough to do that.

There is, thankfully, a weak tie-up at the end so we at least leave the theater feeling warmly dazed rather than overly angry at the Academy for recommending this film . . . but . . . dude. Don’t see it.

–Elf