I spent most of five minutes this morning convincing one of our clients that we do not, in fact, have an engineer on staff named “Karen.”

We can’t all be 100% detail-oriented all of the time. I know this. The process of reading comprehension involves a lot of mental streamlining, the eye pulling in patterns and the brain supplying meaning of some sort as the reader goes along. Thus, when people read my name in print their brains often fill in the meaning for what looks like a familiar pattern. And so, the myth of “Karen” perpetuates.

I shrug this off most of the time, but this particular client isn’t brand new and has dealt with me several times in recent weeks. And yet:

“Yeah, some gal there set up this new account…”

“Actually, that was me.”

“Huh? Sez here it was this Karen person.”

“Check again.”

“Huh?”

“Look at the email again. Are you certain it says ‘Karen’ at the bottom?”

“Uh.”

Eventually he saw the light of day.

I’ve noted before that we moved quite often when I was a youngster. Every few months it was a new set of teachers, new people at the church on Sunday (during Mom’s religious-leaning stretches) and so forth. Every few months I suffered a barrage of “Karen” and “Carol” and “Kara” miscues. Lots of teeth grinding on my part, as you can imagine. Add this to my scrawny physique and unstable home life and it’s a wonder I grew up reasonably sane at all given what a natural bully-magnet I was.

I still have to grit my teeth on occasion. Today was one of them. Normally, though, I can just laugh it off and forget about it, so it’s not like I’m constantly hung up about this.

Even so, I’m probably going to punch my father in the arm the next time I see him. Just on general principle.

The $150 professional in-person service confirmed what the $50 online service (no, I didn’t pay for that one, but that’s what it would have cost if I’d filed that way) said: I owe the fine State Of Oregon over three hundred dollars in taxes this year, and I’m only getting a bit more than twice that back from the United States of blessed America’s federal government.

You see, it turns out that I made too many bonuses last year. Terrific. I now need to adjust my withholdings so that the maximum possible taxes are being taken out. Awesome.

So much for any plans I had for doing… well, pretty much anything at all this spring. If you’ll excuse me, I need to find something fun and uplifting to do… something that I’m capable of doing, anyway, considering that I’m still a plague carrier with no stamina or breathing capacity or equilibrium. I flat out refuse to get depressed over this, but I am a bit… annoyed. Put out. Something.

Before I go, I’d like to address something to a surprisingly high percentage of my fellow patrons of Portland’s fine public transportation system today:

Dear unwashed, uncouth masses,

Would it kill you to bathe more than once a week? How about laundering your clothes while you’re at it? And hey, your friend is sitting right next to you so I’m 100% certain that you don’t have to converse at full shouty level. Oh, and while I know what opinions are like, it would still go a long way toward making you sound like less of a complete moron if you’d perform the tiniest bit of research into those so-called “facts” you keep spouting off about medicine, politics, religion or pretty much any other fact-based topic. I wouldn’t trust you people to tell me that the Earth will continue in its present orbit into tomorrow. You are all a collective blight upon humanity.

With disdain in my heart,

– The Little Grey Duck

I should lead off by saying that I just got home from a wonderful evening out with Kyla and Lyse during which we tuckered into the tasty, tasty chow at Black Bear and then wandered semi-aimlessly through Uwajimaya out in Beaverton Land. Monday daytime may have been a loss, but the after-dark portion made up for it.

But then, we’re the sort of silly folks for whom a simple shopping excursion can be the high point of the week. And there’s nothing wrong with that, I say!

Anyway. Stupid people. It’s what you came for, it’s what you get. We’ll start with an open letter.

Dear sir: That stupid muffler you attached to your almost-pink VW sedan makes it sound like the mating warble of an adolescent Wookie. I hope that was your intent, because otherwise you wasted a fair bit of perfectly good money. The next time you want to throw cash away for no good reason, look me up. I can help!

But wait, there’s more!

When I walked in the front door of my home tonight, The Ratboy was flipping channels and happened to land on an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. Our winning bit of mind-numbingly stupid dialog for the day occurs as the Supposedly Hot But Mostly Just Reptilian-looking Chick is plying One Of Our Heroes with foodstuffs. She hands him a bowl and says, I kid you not, “This is the closest we could come to water.” No, no it isn’t, you have spaceflight capability, I’m 100% certain that you can create dihydrogen monoxide! Sloppy, sloppy writing!

Okay, now I should get to bed. Tomorrow I’ll be visiting the rugrats. I hasten to point out that they are most assuredly not stupid. Just so you know.