Pet Peeves

Christmas Tyops

Mom got us a new toaster oven for Christmas. TW was excited because it is big and it does lots of things. Plus, it has automatic shut-off for people like me who leave sculpey clay in for three days ’cause we got distracted. Or like Chris who leave hashbrowns in there for 6 hours because we’re forgetful.

TW opened it up this morning and started giggling. Typo on the control panel! And, she laughs more when she opens up the instruction book to find another typo! POEWR of the OVER! Cool. I love this toaster.

The instruction manual.

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The face of the toaster oven.

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Click to Enlarge!

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I’ve been silenced!

I have stuff to say.  Important stuff.  Brilliant observations about kids and family and friends and POLITICS and FOOD but Cox has censored me by popping my connection in and out in the most horrid of manners. 

All is moving along nicely and then 30 seconds later, my wireless is trying to connect me to the Hyatt – the Hyatt in San Jose!  What the Fudge?  Others in the house hold their connection but me, I’m being connected all the way across the country?  Turns out it is my sensitive little Stinkpad noticing Cox is having some connection issues because finally TW and Prince J and Michelle and Christopher all begin to have connection woes as well.  My little Stinkpad is just way too sensitive and tries to be awesomely helpful and seeks out a connection in California rather than muddling through with low connectivity here in town.

Tomorrow will be better, surely.  I have a day off and I plan to blog and blog and blog (and do laundry and run all of those errands I totally blew off this weekend in favor of family time and reading and napping).

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Good Grief People

I understand you people just HAVE to know what’s going on with Sweetney but for goodness sakes could you just let it go.  If you know, then you know and if you don’t then it’s probably not important for you TO KNOW.  Even if you mean well and you want to be supportive, you can do that without searching all over the internet and the blogosphere for the gorey details, can’t you?

Oh maybe you can’t.  Maybe you can say you’re supportive but you don’t mean it and that’s why you have to go and find all the nasty bits you can find.  Is that it?

Just stop it.  Go back to your own blogs and play nicely.  And be nice to Sweetney too.  If she wants to share every detail with the blogosphere then she will.  If not, then leave it and respect her wishes.  Geez. Geez. Geez.

52 hits today for people looking for information about this mess.  52 and I doubt Sweetney reads my blog (and I don’t read hers, now that I think about it).   The drama.  Bah.

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Daily Dose of Kids and Construction

The house next door is getting an addition.  I thought at first it was going to be a swimming pool.  Then I thought it was going to be a fence (they are one of the few houses without a fence).  But then construction got going and no, it’s an addition.  Which doesn’t make sense to us because the people are old, there don’t seem to be many people who live in the house, and the house is already very large.  (And no, we’ve never met them even though we have lived here for 5 years.  Oh except Chris who met the old dude when he fell on the sidewalk and could not get up.  Chris helped him up and since then the dude rides a motorized scooter around.)

So that construction.  It is bugging the big kids. 

Michelle ranted last week that there should be laws preventing construction noises at 7am when she is trying to get another half hour of sleep before school.  She ranted and ranted.  I reassured her that it wouldn’t take long because they got a TON done and it looked like it just needed a roof and some finishing on the outside and then surely the inside construction would not wake her.

This week, they are in fact working on the roof.  And now Chris is disgusted.  Not with the noise of the hammers and stuff but with the ridiculous chatter of the construction workers.  His room is right next to the construction site and apparently these men talk about the DUMBEST stuff.  And he simply cannot take listening to their idiocy any longer.  So he left to hang out with people who don’t talk about dumb stuff.

I’m finding the whole construction thing sort of amusing simply because of the angst it is causing the big kids.  Too loud when she’s trying to sleep – ha.  Dumb conversations – ha.  Payback in the form of construction workers.  Who knew?

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Daily Dose of Pet Peeves – Side Walks

I have been ranting for several years about walkers and joggers in my neighborhood.  And over the last six months or so I’ve taken to ranting about a couple of joggers in my town for the same reason.  None of them use sidewalks.

We have sidewalks in this neighborhood.  Why do single walkers and joggers and groups of walkers and joggers and moms walking with strollers and men walking their dogs not use them?  What makes them walk in the road at all hours of the day and night?  I don’t understand it.  At. All.  It’s annoying and it is dangerous. 

Sometimes, early in the morning, I have to drive someone to work and when I do I always see a jogger on NW 8th Ave.  And I do mean ON NW 8th Ave.  He isn’t on the sidewalk.  He is in a LANE like he’s a car or something.  He isn’t even crossing from one side of the street to another, illegally, he’s simply JOGGING in the MIDDLE of a lane.  Does he not realize it is dark at 6:30am and CARS use the road?  It’s a four lane, very busy road, at 6:30 and 7am – particularly on weekdays when it is a prime thoroughfare to the University.  What is this man thinking?  Why isn’t he on the sidewalk?  Does he have a deathwish?

Pedestrian deaths are a problem.  I wouldn’t be surprised if that jogger or some folks in my neighborhood became one of those nasty statistics sometime soon.  I don’t think the Florida DOT is getting their message out very well – or maybe these people just don’t think it could happen to them – or their children.

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Daily Dose of Breast Cancer BS

No I don’t like Pink Ribbons or the Pink Ribbon Campaign.

Yes I think big business and the  medical community (and the doggone patriarchy, for that matter) are doing a great job of causing women to be afraid of a cancer that probably isn’t going to kill them.  And, they’re doing an excellent job of using breast cancer to continue the attack on women through negative body image messaging.

No I don’t think all breast cancer research is worthless. 

Yes I bought a pink roomba which did "sort of" support breast cancer research.  But I bought it because it represented Hazel (the TV show you culturally illiterate people) and not because it supported breast cancer. 

No I would never buy THESE and I cannot see why anyone WOULD buy these. THIS is an example of how we are being USED.  If you buy these, you are allowing yourself to be USED.

Yes I would donate money to breast cancer research or breast cancer support groups.  I have done so in the past and I am sure I will do so in the future.

No I don’t love the Red Dress campaign either. But as sassymonkey has recently pointed out, marketing seems to be the only way to reach women (why is that – I have my theories, do you have yours).  At least the Red Dress campaign is helping to make women aware of a health condition that probably WILL kill them. 

 

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Daily Dose of Voting in Florida

Voted Today we voted.  Primaries you know.  Now that I have voted, I’m going to rant just a little bit.  Oh wait, I need to remind Christopher to go and vote – hang on, I’ll be right back.  OK he’s heading off to vote.

My first Florida primary voting issue is with the Republicans and the conservative special interest groups.  They call here too darn often.  By the end of last week I was no longer willing to answer the phone if the caller ID did not indicate someone I knew was calling. I didn’t get any calls from Democrats or liberal special interest groups. Or maybe they just called after I got fed up with the conservatives and stopped answering the phone. Whatever.   

The other problem with these groups is that they don’t always make it clear who it is they want you to vote for or don’t want you to vote for.  Here’s an example…

The phone rings and the nice woman’s voice tells me that candidate ____ says he is a Jeb Bush style Republican but he isn’t really.  (I immediately wonder if this is good or bad, from my point of view or theirs.  Do they like Jeb? Or do tney not like Jeb?  Not all Republicans like him, you know.)  She begins to explain why he isn’t like Jeb and it becomes clear that she does like Jeb after all so this guy maybe is not who they want me to vote for (Or TW actually since she is the Republican in the house).  But then, one of their reasons is because a very large gay and lesbian family group is supporting character ____.  (Hmmm, maybe they do want TW to vote for him after all since TW is a lesbian parent and a Republican.)  Oh wait, she says "Florida deserves better"… (Better than what? Jeb Bush? Candidate ____?)  At no time did they suggest another candidate.  This seemed to be a just don’t vote for ______ phone call. 

To make matters worse, TW investigates Candidate ____ and sees no reason why a gay/lesbian parenting group might support him.  She’s not always aligned with gay/lesbian parenting groups but there’s nothing there that indicates he is even remotely supportive of gay folks.  Weird.  The phone call indicated otherwise.

If that wasn’t annoying enough, there’s the woman running for governor and her only agenda seems to be to ditch the FCAT.  Umm hello, I’m anti-FCAT but you do realize as governor you might have to address other issues, right?  What might your position on those issues be?  What a waste of my time to even bother to research the woman. 

OK enough of that, I was all ready to cast my vote when I discovered my polling spot had been moved!  It hadn’t moved to a completely different place, thank goodness.  I was still to vote at the church around the corner but now I had to vote in a different BUILDING and of course I pulled into the parking lot on the wrong side.  The side where all of the campaign signs were and where the campaign sign holding woman was standing.  Geez.  Could you have moved the signs to the proper entrance? 

At least I got an "I Voted" sticker.  They sometimes run out of them and that really annoys me.  I want my sticker.

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Daily Dose of Traffic

There are about two weeks out of the year when driving on the UF campus is not a nightmare – this is one of those weeks.  I can’t even enjoy it though because I’m still thinking about the summer madness and dreading the fall madness.

In the summer, traffic headaches are numerous – all of those preview mommies (yes there are some daddies and of course there are students, but the mommies are the worst) those huge gangs of preview people who block traffic by crossing by the hundreds right in front of the bookstore.  Why can’t they direct them to cross at the light instead?  Those mommies who choose to wear the WRONG shoes for a full day of preview walking, they are stumbling and slow at 8am having only walked a mile from the parking garage to the Union.  And then there are the mommies who carry these huge bags, bigger than anything their kids will ever need to carry as students on this campus, and feel some need to dig their cell phones or their lipsticks out of their bags in the middle of the crosswalk – holding up traffic because they cannot walk in those shoes and dig stuff out of their bags at the same time. 

In summer, you’ve also got the camp kids – 4H, dance camp, volleyball camp, golf camp – you name it, there’s a camp.  Gangs of kids with surly looking adults crossing everywhere and anywhere, often against the light (if they even bother to cross in the crosswalks).  Summer, I hate summer on campus.

In the fall, the back to school unloading of stuff.  Oh the stuff college kids bring.  Oh the parents who park alongside the road, in the bike lanes.  I’m so not looking forward to that mess. 

And once everyone is all moved in, then there’s the bike lane issue.  Don’t flame me for this, or go ahead and flame me… what makes 18 year old girls who haven’t ridden a bike regularly since they were 12 decide they must ride a bike on campus?  It’s dangerous.  I mean really dangerous.  They are all wobbley, they can’t make it up the big hill, and going down that hill, that is just a nightmare waiting to happen.  They can’t cross the street properly on those bikes and they aren’t good at paying attention to right turning cars and pedal at the same time.  Nightmare. 

Let’s not forget football mayhem, leading into basketball mayhem.  Oh the traffic, the traffic, the traffic.  Go gators, bah! 

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