tech calamity!!

My sister has been trialing an iPhone these past coupla days. My tech envy is FIERCE. My phone is just too shamefully shabby to begin with, and add to that the fact that my iPod has , as of late, come down with a mild case of fucked-up. So I feel almost justified in getting something new in which to reposit all my tunes. And if that something new just happens to be a 300X upgrade of what I've got for a cell, well, that's just gravy eh?




Ah, but the iPod is just *mildly* fucked up. It's still working perfectly fine. And, the personal finances being what they are, the smart plan of action would be inaction...keep on keeping on, making do..etc. Oh, bollocks.




Minor though my iPod flaw is, I'm still sorta livid about it. I LOVE my iPod...though I'm sure it' s my own idiotic fault the thing's damaged..although I'm not quite sure how it happened. The other day I noticed a little line in the the display. I thought it got there either through me leaving it in the cold car on some occasion (although I really try not to do that) or it was a pressure fracture. Many a night, I fall asleep listening to that thing, I wake up in the morning and it's under my ass. Oh, sure it sinks into the mattress alright, but that's still a *lot* of pressure coming from above. So I have been extra careful with it since spotting the line, carrying it in a little case, and making sure to bring it into my desk at work. Well, then on Friday night, I went to happy hour with a coworker, and I didn't want to bring into the bar anything but my wee, stuffed-to-capacity, clutch purse. My iPod was in a case...and then I shoved that case inside a woolly mitten...I thought that would be sufficient insulation.


Well, as my italics have insinuated, I exacerbated the flaw. Later Friday night, I went to use my iPod and saw that the line was BIGGER. So it was probably the cold and not my ass that hurt it in the first place. Whatever, it's my fault either way, and I'm ever so distressed over it.


Here, I give you the offending line itself--

Playback/operation doesn't really seem to be affected. And of course, for music, it doesn't really matter one whit. But I have a good deal of TV and a few movies on there. To illustrate...this is what I'd see if I began watching my fave episode of The Mighty Boosh...

Pesky, eh? BUT, I suppose I'll adjust. (suppose I have to)

IGOR!!!Fetch Me a Sammich!!

I wonder...if I was a boss that had "underlings" or an exec with an assistant (sheeeesh I can't even TYPE that straight-facedly. .I am sooo not management material) would I be able to send them out to get my lunch? Well, surely (in this hypothetical world)I could ...I suppose what I'm really pondering is: would I ??

I don't think I would. I have a difficult time delegating work to begin with (that's prob'ly the top reason I could never be a manager and this is all moot musing) Perhaps I could get over that (and it's likely that I did, iffin' I make-believe made it into the managerial ranks) but I don't think I could bring myself to command people to do my personal errands. But that's pretty commonplace I take it: assistants picking up lunch, making reservations, etc. etc. (picking up the boss's dry-cleaning is a classic, right? Shit.. I've shifted into Family Feud mode. "DRYCLEANING-YES!Good answer! Good answer!" clap clap clap ...)

I didn't just start contemplating this out of the blue, by the way. I was working at the front desk today at around 1pm (covering the regular receptionist's lunch) and wished Chris, our CEO's assistant a "God speed and drive safe!!" as she bustled out the door into a EFFING NOR'EASTER to go pick up lunch for the CEO & the VP. I don't know which bitch ordered her to do it, but it struck me as especially imperious on a day like today.

Photo/ video of my hum-drum weekend

No money to do anything fun this weekend. So OBVIOUSLY, I would avoid housework too. I mean, if you're in such a morass of suck that you can't afford to do anything fun, why *further punish* yourself with tiresome toil?? Usually such circumstances call for a movie marathon weekend, but I had an unusual swelling of creative juices yesterday (perhaps this is owing to my 15 hours of sleep after conking out at around 7pm on Fri night) and I went out in the fluffy precipitation and made a snowman...er, I mean, a snow beastie....

He smelled like fish guts, cashews & hair product. And that is indeed a foil-wrapped peanut butter cup as his schnozz but it is NOT candy abuse, as I had some dreadful Palmer brand chocolate on my hands (including some PB cups).

Today was more of a movie marathon day, though I was slightly more ambitious and did some pedicurin' while I watched my movies. I left my toes in one of those foam toe separator jobbies while my polish dried and then just left it in my toes long after they had dried, simply 'cuz I got wrapped up in the movie. It freaked me out a bit when I took it off, as it seemed to me that the toes on my left foot were all gnarly. Not gnarly in good way. Gnarly in a GNARLED way. I don't know why it would be on my left foot *only* as I left the foam jobbies on both feet, but that's the way they were. Particularly off-looking was my little piggie sans roast beef (3 over from biggie) So, not trusting my own perception, I took Flip Video footage of my feets. YOU be the judge....will I never again be able to snag a foot fetishist??

If you are at all curious about the soundtrack to this toe inspection, it's just the end credits of Hudsucker Proxy you hear in the background..

Lemme see... what's new avec moi...hmmm...

My New Year's Eve was pretty low-key & DULL. My sister had a small bash at her house--board games and drinking....and I was only down for the latter. Sure, I brought Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture DVD Edition, but I didn't wanna actually play it. Not to be a braggedy pants but...I pretty much always win...I certainly don't mind that, but it's just an EPIC* endeavor getting to the win. I think I just need a new Trivial Pursuit game and then I 'll get reinterested. Pretty much for board games I could go for, the entire list is:.Scrabble, Bananagrams, Battleship, or Connect Four. And that's it. (Guess Who would've made the list but they gave all of the characters a makeover and that somehow ruined it for me) And most adults I know won't play the last two. I don't know why. Okay, I recognize that I'm succumbing to a tangent but humor me for just a line or two longer. Y'know how they're resuscitating all manner of 80s toys, so nearly anything you played with back in the day you can get for your kiddos to play with (with a hefty nostalgia surcharge of course)? Well, I'm just dying for them to bring back the board game Cat's Eye. I used to effing LOVE that game. And yet..I'm pretty sure if they did bring it back it would wind up disappointing me ( a la "Hmm, I remember this being much funner")
So. Back to New Year's. I didn't do board games, I just drank champers and played with these that I got my niece Sadie for Christmas. And then we turned on the telly... I actually wanted to see Mtv drop Snooki in her little guidette hamster ball . We were actually watching Mtv for a bit, but then they started in on some racy banter and my sister switched over to ABC because my nieces & nephew were up still and watching. So it was New Year's Rockin' Eve with Dick Clark. I admit it saddens me a smidge, watching post-stroke Clark count it down. But I think mostly I'm glad he still does it. I'm sure there was a contingent at the network that wanted to have him back out of it, because he's not the height of hip, and he's old and unpretty and now he's not speaking clearly...but it pleases me to think he told them "Go fuck yourself! I'm Dick Fucking Clark!!"

So after that dull New Year's Eve (dudes, living it was even lamer than reading about it has been!! FOR REALS.) I dusted off my perennial resolutions (1. shed some tonnage and 2. have more adventures. ) and commenced 2011. And then, HORRIBLY, on my first workday of the new year...the government tracked me down. Well, not the *whole *government ...just the student loans part of it. Oh, also they are too pissed at me to ring me directly. It was some collections agency that called me at work. Anyway, long sob story short, I am now on some "rehab program" and my lifestyle motif for 2011 shall be summed up by the word: "MONASTIC" . This new way of life works pretty well with that parenthetical #1 (poverty diet, anyone?) but I don't know yet how I can make it jive with perennial resolution #2. Ahh, we'll see.

On Thursday, during my lunch break my boss came in, and told me that beginning immediately --as of the end of my lunch break-- med supply ordering was indefinitely being covered by Larry and I was going to be trained to do "MAPS" and become responsible for those. To relate to you as briefly as I'm able what MAPS is...hmmm...well, firstly MAPS is an acronym of sorts...and what it's an acronym for they don't cover in MAPS training. Hell, should that not be MAPS 101? I feel like all these acronyms that are supposed to make business easier just obfuscate everything. Anyways, we bill Medicare for a patient of ours...for an episode (usually a period of 60 days) of services and/or supplies... Medicare will sometimes refute a bill : "Uh-uh...we don't think so" at which point the first part of the process kicks in--a mass accrual of notes & documentation (all aimed to show we did what we said we did, and did so correctly and with an MD sanction) So we get that and like, reassert our bill , a sort of "Oh YUH HUH. We mean it." But we are still at this point, retaining that accrual. ..until Medicare comes back at us with some of those patient episodes (most, but not necessarily all that they originally balked at) and they say "OK...BRING IT." Which kicks off a huge mailing (of aforementioned accrual) with beaucoup cover letters and massive certified mail fees. That's basically MAPS....though I didn't manage to make it brief at all. Damn.
I haven't been doing this gig long enough (just for half of Thursday + Friday) to say for sure whether I like it or not, but it's a time-consuming task, and they only took away one of my regular duties. And I'm pretty sure the nurses are going to HATE Larry doing the med supply ordering (I know Larry hates it).

It just so happens Thursday night I had a dream that I was at the movies and I saw my boss there and I pelted her with baby carrots. It was kind of a sad thing...that I was noshing on baby carrots at the movies. But the rest of the dream was quite gratifying!! It was very funny, she was standing up and headed toward the center aisle and in this kind of exaggerated high-comedic way she was locked in place by the barrage of carrots.