SwimFinsSF

A few things for a Monday morning

On my shuttle on the way into work so figured i’d throw a few things out there… All completely unrelated and random – but what the hell! :)… Weekend was good but not many good stories to tell.. Dinner with R&R friday night was great… Chores and work Saturday.. Brunch and the park with Audrey and Brian.. Then walks in the GORGEOUS weather yesterday.. And watched Balls of Fury last night after dinner… Very nice.

Trip back east

Kevin and I spent Saturday morning booking a trip back east to visit family. When we first started looking at this it was stressing me out – not because I didn’t want to see folks but rather just because of all of the variables we had to plan around. We wanted to go to Gettysburg to visit my family, North Carolina to visit Kevin’s family, Washington DC for a set of HRC meetings, and Kevin wanted to stay longer and maybe go to Atlanta. Well we skipped the last part but we managed to find a great set of flights that pulled it all off.. Kevin is going to visit his family on a monday, I’m meeting him there that friday and staying for a few days before we head north to visit my family. after a few days there we’re heading to DC… Now that its all taken care of the trip actually is sounding like a lot of fun to me and i’m really looking forward to it.. I can really use the break.

High Class

We saw the trashiest example of drunken behavior yesterday afternoon… We walked out the front door to go to an early dinner to hear some woman spewing profanities with a slurred voice.. I rolled my eyes and wrote it off to drunks on a sunday coming back from the bar. But when I got a glimpse I saw her unbuttoning her pants and I assumed she was mooning her friends. New but still random drunken-ness so I kept walking. Then I glanced back to see if Kevin was coming only to see that that same girl was doing some strange crab walk with her pants around her ankles – and peeing.. Dear lord… A drunken slutty girl with a foul mouth peeing on the sidewalk about 10 feet from our front stoop – right where our dog craps on a daily basis… NICE…

Hypocrisy

In reading this article on John McCain trying to distance himself from the endorsement of a Texan pastor. Aparently, in addition to this guy being anti-gay, he’s also spoken about catholics conspiring with Nazis against Jews. Because of this American Catholics have been leaning on McCain to renounce this guy… Thats all well and good – but what I found interesting was this quote:

“By publicly addressing this issue, you will reaffirm to the American public and to Catholics that intolerance and bigotry have no place in American presidential campaigns,” Chris Korzen, executive director of Catholics United, wrote McCain in a letter sent Thursday.

Is it just me or is a quote like this kinda funny coming from a representative of a catholic organization – particularly after things like this coming from the head of that church.. I don’t know.. i’m just sayin! 😉

Tags: Family, gay, hrc, mccain, north carolina, pennsylvania, Politics, religion, travel, washington dc

In a continuing effort…

to ping the blog a little more often here is my morning bus-bound-note! :):)

Though actually not a whole lot to report since yesterday… Our friend Ray is in town visiting from Calgary.. Poor guy came from Canada undoubtedly expecting a little California sunshine. Boy was he wrong… weather here this weekend is going to be NASTY.. rainy and cold… ah well – an excuse for me to finally check out the De Young.. :):)

Other than that just the usual. Am trying to plan a trip back east to visit Kevin’s ‘rents and mine before our dive trip to Fiji in may. so current plan is week in march in Gettysburg and Winston-Salem (Pinnacle actually) and then a week on a boat in Fiji. Neither of them can come fast enough for me.

And on a final silly note, I’ve got a new favorite quote and a new favorite site… I stumbled on Wikiquote… I really enjoy different proverbs and how they translate and this site is full of ’em.. Anyway – found this one and it has seemed kinda fitting lately (and I’m going to plead the fifth when asked why it resonates right now! :):))

Klug zu reden ist doch schwer, klug zu schweigen noch viel mehr

Ok.. thats it for now… more

Tags: blog, friends, sprichwörter, travel

He Lives

Once again, I fell off the face of the earth for a while.. but back now.. Lots going on and rather than wait till I have time to write about it all i’m just going to post a quick hi and fill in the details as I have time…

But the reader’s digest version is things at home and work have been keeping me VERY busy. I’ve been a little cagey about it since its not entirely my story to tell but the long and short is Kevin found out last june or july that he had Lymphoma. Thats the bad news.. The good news is today is the very last of his radiation treatments and then, knock on wood, its all taken care of… But for the last few months he’s been going through Chemo and Radiation to deal with it and i’ve been trying my best to hold down the fort and help him out… Not going to say no big deal cuz that’d be a lie. Its just one of those things in life that ya just deal with and try not to ask why too many times – cuz there isn’t an answer… But things are going VERY well and we’re doing fine… Kevin has posted some stuff on his blog if you want more dirt! 🙂

As to other things.. Well work is work… I could go into details there but its the usual Apple stuff – can’t talk about details… Suffice it to say the usual challenges continue to make me a little nuts but on a good day are a lot of fun.. The one good thing I can add is that they’ve started a bus system like Google’s to get me to work – so now I have nice buses that pick me up right in my ‘hood and deliver me directly to work.. pretty rockin…

Oh yea – and the puppy… Well she’s just too f-in cute for words… And she’s getting HUGE… Still a puppy though.. Cute as can be but a total handful. Training is going really well though I still don’t know why she does the things she does.. Some times she is PERFECT… sits at the corners on walks… comes when she’s called… sleeps like an angel at our feet while we’re chilling at home.. And then there are other times.. pulling at the leash.. random accidents for no reason we can see… ignoring us when she doesn’t want to obey… Just have to remind ourselves that she’s just a baby.. but we love her to death regardless…

Anyway – bus is half way to work and I have other stuff to do.. so rather than wait a while before posting this again i’m going to post and go… I’ll post more details later…

Tags: apple, cancer, dog, Family, kevin, lymphoma, nina, vizsla, work

Friday Stuff

just a few things that made me smile for your friday..

First a silly thing.. Little goofy jingle that made me smile so I had to share.. Click here

Then a wrap up on the democratic presidential forum on Logo last night. I only caught parts of it but its on the tivo so i’m going to check it out this weekend… but Logo has a good wrap up and discussion on the forum here…

Customer Service HELL

So this week has been one of those weeks where any interaction I’ve had with companies providing services has gone wrong…

Lets start with Comcast… Fucking Comcast… I got a shiny new HDTV and a new Gen 3 TiVo about a week and a half ago and to go with it I decided to order Digital Cable (I had DirecTV but they dropped TiVo – but thats a different rant).. Well I scheduled a service apointment for last Saturday from 12-2pm. I’ll skip the gory details but suffice it to say they never showed up after many phone calls and waiting around till 6pm that night for them.

So I reschedule for Wednesday over lunch (another 12-2 apointment). Well this time they show up and install the cable however of course they forgot the CableCards I need for the new TiVo. The service guy points to his invoice to show I didn’t ask for it to which I reply ‘I didn’t write your invoice – all that shows is that the person I set up the apointment with didn’t listen when I said VERY CLEARLY that i needed 2 CableCards’. So he proceeds to promise that his supervisor would come by by 5pm that night to deliver the cards. Well 6pm rolls around and no cards.. So I call to see what gives and they tell me that since its 6:05pm they can’t call the supervisor and I just have to set up another apointment.. (Imagine steam coming out of my ears). So I have to set up an apointment for this saturday cuz I have a JOB and can’t be there thursday or friday…

So today i’m driving to work and thinking ‘can’t I just swing by their office and pick the cards up rather than sitting around all day saturday (2-6pm) wondering if they’ll show or not’… So I call comcast and ask to which the guy says ‘Sure – you can just go by the comcast office in sunnyvale and get them’. Sweet… So much easier and I can use my TiVo tonight. So I show up to pick them up and the poor woman at the counter tells me ‘We don’t have the hardware here – the operators have been told not to send customers here’…

This is when my head spins around and I come completely unglued. I start nearly yelling at her about the cascade of fuckups i’ve been through. I know full well there is nothing she can do but i’m at a loss as to who I can talk to who can actually make sure something happens… So now I just getta sit around saturday afternoon and HOPE that they get it right this time. My bet? either they don’t show up at all, or they show up with 1 card instead of 2..

And then there is the Shower Glass folks for my remodel – I’ll keep this one short.. Short story is its 2 Months late and I still don’t have a shower in my house. They’ve used every excuse from ‘we can’t measure till the tile goes in’ to ‘we don’t schedule appointments until the glass has been deliverred’ to ‘the glass showed up but one piece was cracked’ to ‘we forgot to order the hinges’ to ‘turns out the chanels we cut don’t fit’…. AHHHHHHHH… I don’t care about any of that shit – it all boils down to DO YOUR FUCKING JOB… So now monday is the current date they’re supposed  to do the install – but I don’t believe it for a minute…

So thats been my week.. My blood pressure is through the roof and I’m very likely to rip someone’s head off if they look at me funny.. And all because I’m an individual consumer that actually expects that people do their job but one that has no pull to make sure that they actually do..  So I have to sit here and take it while grunting ‘Thank you sir may I have another’..

So right now Comcast and E—- Glass are on my shit list. Can’t wait to see who’s next.

Sorry.. I promise the next post will be friendly… I just had to rant…

I’m back

Just a quick post to say i’m back and i’ll fill ya in later.. But here’s the reader’s digest version: Belize for the holidays – 7 days on a dive boat – Dove the ‘Blue Hole’ – 1 night in Belize City – 2 nights at a super cool spa in the jungle – lots of skeeter bites… Pictures to come! :):)