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Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

  • I’m being punished for doing my job too well.

    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

  • Sick and tired, like whoah.

    You know the illness has me good and floored if I can’t even bring myself to sit at the desk and putter around on the computer. Seriously: I’ve checked mail and that’s about it. Even writing this short post is just about all of the “glowing rectangle” time I can muster this afternoon.

    I have a fever, aching joints and muscles, tender skin, an off-again on-again cough, and for some reason it hurts to breathe through my nose. (That’s a new one on me!) I’ve also been subsisting mostly on water and cold meds due to a near-complete lack of appetite. All of this has gone on for three solid days, and as of yet I don’t feel one whit better now than I did Sunday… in fact, I’m feeling worse in most respects. (The coughing’s gone down a bit.)

    I need to get better, and quickly. Missing two days of work, especially the two that I have so far, is not enhancing my standing at the office any. Argh.

  • Karel’s Birthday Present

    I despaired of finding the perfect present to convince everyone that they should get me, but now… I think I’ve found it.

    [youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GAUnuuBkW4]

    That should do nicely, shouldn’t it?

  • I’m awake now, thank you.

    I often joke about my list of five hundred fifty three reasons I’m glad I was born a boy-type person. One faces little dangers on occasion, however, in this form. For instance, you could be getting dressed in a daze after a bad night’s sleep, not really paying attention to the usual safety requirements of (for the want of a sillier turn of phrase at this hour of the day) product placement, and end up pinching oneself in an article of clothing.

    Later I’ll probably be dozing off, but right now? I’m quite awake. Ow.

  • I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.

    Well, some great-and-powerful computer geek sysadmin guru-type fellow I turned out to be. I came home, got onto the computer to check my mail and do the other usual just-got-home online stuff, and the machine pops up a message saying that I’m low on disk space.

    “I am not!”

    Then I decided to check anyway.

    Huh. Go figure.

    So I burned off a couple of DVD-ROMs’ worth of downloaded videos; now my computer’s a bit happier with me. Apparently I have a new priority project for the foreseeable future… and my tax refund shopping list just acquired a new line item: A large secondary hard drive.

  • Thanks a lot, brain.

    That’s funny, I don’t remember asking to be awake at 5:30am on a Saturday. Yet here I am, sitting at the computer trying to distract my brain from a nightmare that woke me up startled enough to cry out. Man, I hope my roommates are still soundly asleep, ’cause I’m pretty sure I sounded like a damsel in distress. I embarrass myself often enough when I’m conscious, I certainly don’t need help from my subconscious.

    Tarantula-like creatures have no business crawling around in my psyche, particularly when I’m asleep, dammit.

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