Supposedly I’m just barely under average height, 5’8″ tall. Too bad that doesn’t translate into a wide availability of pants. Everything’s got a 30-inch inseam or longer. Even when I find a “short” 30, or an actual 29, I have to wonder what the hell kind of body shape the pants were built for. There’s weird bunching going on that mystifies me. Or, to put it another way: Why in hell does it look like I’m smuggling a small animal in the front of my trousers?

(Yes, yes, go ahead and crack wise. I gave you a straight line, I’d be disappointed if you chose not to use it as you see fit.)

What I usually end up with are pants that are too wide and too long and bunch up funny, because the alternative is… what? A kilt? I don’t see my boss approving that as proper work attire, for starters.

Were I rich, I’d just have everything custom made. Since that’s never happening… I just have to live with the fact that, like in every other part of my life, I’m the odd man out when it comes to buying clothes.

Sloppy, guys. Very sloppy.

Why? Oh, it goes something like this… starting in late May…Dramatis Personae:

• GD – Your long-suffering chroma-impaired waterfowl
• DP – Future learning establishment of the eldest offspring
• SL – Government agency tasked with making the lives of parents with college-aged kids pure hell

DP: Okay, we need you to get an ID code and go to SL’s website, fill out a form, and we’re all done!

GD: Sure, I’m on it! All the best for the boy!

SL: Here’s your form, hop to it.

GD: *type* *click* *click* *type* *click* Wait WHERE DID IT GO?

SL: Where did what go?

GD: My completed form. You just said it was all done, now it’s gone.

SL: What’s gone?

GD: *headdesk* Okay, DP, what do I do now?

DP: That’s weird. Hold on… okay, here’s a number to call.

GD: *dials number*

SL: Uh, wrong department. Try this other number.

GD: *dials other number*

SL: Hi, how can I help you?

GD: *explains predicament*

SL: That’s weird. Did you click on this, that, and the other thing?

GD: Yes.

SL: Huh. That’s weird.

GD: We’ve established that. What do we do to fix it?

SL: Well, how about you take the completed-form preview, print that out, and overnight it to us. We’ll have it processed in three-to-five business days.

GD: Let me get this straight… an electronic system that’s supposed to have me in and out in a few minutes, no muss no fuss no messy cleanup… isn’t working right, and the answer is for me to print out a physical copy of a nearly-complete form and mail that to you.

SL: Correct! We’ll have it processed in three-to-five business days.

GD: *sigh* Okay. *prints* *signs* *seals* *pays $30 to have papers sent overnight to Alabama*

TIME: *passes*

DP: Do you have that form completed yet?

GD: I sent it to them days ago. They should have it.

DP: They say they never got it.

GD: $ExpressCarrier says otherwise. I have the tracking # to prove it.

DP: Aha! They say they got it, now. We should have results in two days.

FOUR DAYS: *pass*

GD: So, DP, about those results…

DP: They lost the paperwork.

GD: WHAT.

DP: Uh, you have that tracking #?

GD: Yes. Here.

DP: I’ll be in touch.

DAYS: *go by* (*and still I think of you*)

DP: Good news, they found it! We should have results in just a couple of days.

GD: Yay! Rejoice!

TIME: *keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping* *into the future*

DP: Bad news, they lost it! I need you to call them…

GD: I’ll call them RIGHT NOW!

DP: … on Monday, because their systems are down. Here’s a crap-ton of information you’ll need.

GD: WHAT.

DP: I’m very, very sorry about this.

GD: *sigh* Not your fault. *takes copious notes*

MONDAY: *I wish it were Sunday* *’cause that’s my fun day*

GD: *dials number*

SL: I’m sorry, Mario, but your princess is at another phone number.

GD: *curses* *dials another number*

SL: Hello! Ah, your reference number is… filled with copious notes. What a mess.

GD: You. Don’t. Say.

SL: So, have you tried filling out the form on the website?

GD: *tries to Force-choke someone through the phone* *fails* Yes. Just this morning, in fact, just on the off-chance it would actually work. It failed.

SL: Ah, I see that it failed because of [confidential data redacted]. We’ll have to change the ID #.

GD: Sure thing, how?

SL: Do you see it on the form?

GD: *scans form top to bottom, side-to-side, inside-and-out* No.

SL: Are you SURE?

GD: *resists urge to scream* Quite.

SL: Uh. BRB. *puts me on hold*

GD: *listens to generally-inoffensive muzak*

SL: Right, so the ID # is hiding in plain sight. It’s actually listed as something else entirely that looks like part of an unrelated portion of the form.

GD: Huh.

SL: Yes, I’m as baffled as you are. So here’s what we do… *copious instructions*

GD: *scribbles notes furiously* Okay, got it.

So… A month and a half in, what’s the solution to making this all work? Printing out a blank copy of the form, filling in the blanks manually (well, kind of: I copy/pasted text via an online PDF editor to make sure there wouldn’t be legibility problems), and hiking over to the nearby pack-and-ship outfit during lunchtime to send off yet another version of a ten-page financial aid form to Alabama.

By the by? Those hole-in-the-wall pack-and-ship places are convenient, but they’re obligated (as is their right, and it’s not like UPS or FedEx will cut them any slack) to tack some extra cost onto their shipping services. What cost $30 three Fridays ago would’ve cost close to $45 today… so I cheaped out and only spent $32 for 2nd-day service.

Argh.

So, will this do the trick? I have no idea. Stay tuned…

Not last night, though.

Full-volume music. Several conversations taking place outside at full volume simultaneously. People wandering out to the street to be noisy gits. And this went on well past 11pm.

And past midnight.

And past 1am.

The party didn’t wind down until two-freaking-thirty in the morning. (And it took another half hour or so for me to calm down enough to be able to sleep. Joy.)

Icing on the cake? Eight-o’clock rolls around and one of them decides to drive somewhere… announcing this fact by blaring their car stereo for a couple of minutes before driving off.

Yeah, they’ve had their exceptional party. I hope they enjoyed it, because if they try it again, cops will be called. Persistently and promptly. After a generally crappy week of work, this was precisely what I did not need. Grrrr.

Mine: Trudged (through five more inches’ worth of snow than any forecast had predicted) for twenty minutes to reach a MAX station at which dozens of people had already been waiting for quite some time, only to wait another twenty minutes for a train to arrive. (Note that three outbound trains’ operators made a point of assuring us that an inbound train would arrive “in a few minutes.” Few. Right.) Train arrived, it’s SRO of course, the floors were slick with snowmelt, it’s dark, the windows were fogged, but hey at least we were moving, right? Wrong. Each of the first six stops after I boarded involved a wait of some sort… including one which lasted twenty minutes… during which the operator left the train for about ten of those minutes. Eventually the train chugged its way to downtown Portland, through which the going was dreadfully slow due to a combination of problems on the Steel Bridge and idiot drivers who thought nothing of blocking a train’s path so they could sit partway through an intersection.

Transit time totals? Twenty minutes’ walk plus twenty minutes’ wait plus ninety minutes on the train itself (boarded at 5:40, disembarked at 7:10) plus the rest of the walk home equals two hours thirty minutes.

Which is nothing. Because…

Kylanath’s: Get off work at 3:40-ish. Arrive at bus stop to find people already waiting for a bus… any bus of several… to arrive. These people have phones with which they check Tri-Met’s transit tracking system, and with which they call Tri-Met, only to hear nothing about problems with any of the scheduled lines which service that stop. Lather, rinse, repeat… for four solid hours. Finally a bus, any bus, arrives. At 8:00pm. Driven by the driver who normally shows up at 4:00. After an unusual route through ugly-as-hell traffic, arrive downtown after 9pm and choose not to race for a #9 which might have serviced Broadway but probably was going to whip around at Union Station and head out Powell again. Instead, board a Green Line MAX train… which switches to being a Blue Line train at Union Station! (I imagine several passengers were a smidgen… annoyed.) A slow slog across the river and a massive delay at Rose Quarter later, and finally get off the train around 10:00.

Transit time totals: Let’s call it a quarter hour of getting to the bus stop, four hours waiting for a bus, another couple of hours actually riding vehicles, and another quarter hour walking home from the train station for a grand total of six hours thirty minutes.

In short: Way to go, Tri-Met! You were so very prepared, weren’t you?

(No, seriously, how do you not service a stop for four hours? Without adding any of the routes which service that stop on your so-called “service alerts” page, even? THE HELL.)

So, that was our Snowpocalypse 2009 experience. What about you?

Sometimes, the spellchecker isn’t enough to save a sign’s maker from embarrassment.

These have been up on a residential block near Kyla’s place for months while an ugly-as-sin lump of condominiums goes in. I finally remembered to take a picture before construction completed…