Spidermonky’s Neighborhood

Many thanks to Brennig Jones for bringing this clip to my attention.

For those in the UK, Peaches Geldof may well be known to you from the pages of The Sun, for anyone who has escaped her, she's the air-headed daughter of the scary haired two hit wonder, Bob Geldof. And she is another of these girls who is famous for being the daughter of someone who actually did something to become famous.

And so I give you Peaches Geldof, surely a future guest speaker on the intellectual conference circuit....

I am not a fishing fan, but these are good.

Specially the way the links look like the Predator...

God, I feel like I'm running on a treadmill.  I've been running around everywhere and getting absolutely no where.  Sigh.

So these past couple of days, I've just been crazy busy but I don't really seem to be getting anything done.  Work... well, I'm pretty much always busy at work, hence why these entries have been waning (besides the fact that I no longer have anything interesting to say anymore).

Okay, okay, so let's organize my brain here. 

A few months back, I had made an appointment for a new tattoo.  The guy I chose to do it is really really good, and always has like, a 3 month waiting list, right?  So we scheduled something for October 22 to see the drawing, and November 13 to do the actual tattoo. 

[Reschedule 1]:He called me a couple days before the 22nd to let me know that he had double booked and rescheduled it to the 30th.  I called the shop on the 29th and left a message with someone to see if we're still good for the 30th.  No word.

[Reschedule 2]: ...At least not until November 13, when I got a text message from him saying that he's still not done, and needs one more week.  So we say the 20th. 

[Reschedule 3]: On the morning of the 20th, I texted him and he's all like, "oh crap!  I forgot to call you yesterday, I'm still not done!"  Well, considering the following week was Thanksgiving weekend, I was busy, so I said I'd have to wait till after the holidays. 

[Reschedule 4]: The holidays ended, and I walked into the shop after work on the 30th, and he tells me he's sorry, but he left the folder that my drawing is in at home.  Can I come back tomorrow?  Sure. 

[Reschedule 5]: During the day on Dec 1st, he texted me saying he can't find the folder anywhere, so he has to redraw it, and we tentatively scheduled something for Saturday.

Now that's one thing.  Here's another:
So I've had this record player that hasn't been working the way I want it to, for several months now.  I had been far too lazy to actually get it fixed up until a couple of days ago.  Kevin told me that a place called Positively 4th would be able to fix it.  So I called ahead to confirm that they do, and hauled my record player over there, only to find that they actually can't fix it because it's an electrical issue.  The store clerk tells me to look on the internet.

So the next day I do.  I look on the internet, and the only place that I could initially find were places in New York, and I'd have to ship it.  I thought fuck that, that's bullshit, so searched for general electronics repair and found Bob's Electronics Repair.  I called and asked if they can do turn tables, and he said, "Sure!  We do those all the time!  Bring it on down, and I'll give you a quote!"  So later that day, I do.

Turns out the record player isn't broken at all, it's just that it's not compatible to my reciever, and I could probably find a converter at Radio Shack.

Went to Radio Shack, bought an RF modulator, which turned out to be the wrong thing, went back to Radio Shack and returned it and it turns out they don't have what I'm looking for (which is bullshit, because they're called Radio Shack.  They should be specializing in audio hardware). 

One more!:
So I have this laptop that has never charged properly.  The power cord has become frayed really badly.  So on an errand that I was doing for work, I tentatively bought a univeral charger at Office Max to see if the laptop would charge properly with that.

When I got home, I still had to do the weird propping up thing (it's hard to explain, let's just say my laptop is really ghetto).

So I decided that Best Buy would probably be a better place to go to find a replacement charger.  (I also looked to see if I could find a audio converter as well, and of course found nothing).  It turns out that Best Buy also only has those universal AC outlet things.

Okay, so now, I'm probably going to look towards the internet to reorder everything that I need.  Jesse told me I should just bite the bullet and get the laptop fixed, but if I'm planning on saving up for a new computer anyway, why should I waste my money on a ghetto laptop?

On the positive side, I have ordered these new really cute Hello Kitty checks.  I AM SO EXCITED!

Trouble has have moved into our house, and I need to know how to get it to move out!

Things you do not want a telephoning child to say - We have a problem. How do we turn off the water?

Things you do not want to find when you arrive home - Water pouring from the light fittings, the ceilings in general, flooding on the floor, discovering some of this water is hot.

Things it is quite nice to find when you get home - your three male children have managed to deal with a crisis without making it worse. And the dinner wasn't ruined either.

The boys were cooking dinner and went into the garden for a cigarette (as they are not allowed to smoke in the house). They took Heidi out, smoked their ciggies and chatted. 10 minutes, 15 max. When they got in, it was raining. Inside. 

The massive leak was caused by a joint going in the piping from our hot water tank (middle floor bathroom) to our shower (top floor bathroom). Unfortunately for us, that water gets from A to B using a substantial pump. So it pumped and it pumped and it pumped.

The lads got the water turned off, having to move all Husband's quite heavy diving cylinders out of the way, they got towels and receptacles under leaks, they turned the dinner down so it didn't burn and they turned the lights off.

So, right now these are the things we do not have:

No lights downstairs - somehow, the light fittings did not appreciate water dripping flooding rushing over them.
No hot water to our lovely en-suite shower - but we do have cold, so the toilet flushes and we can clean our teeth (and sleep commando!)
No Internet - our hub was in the under-stairs cupboard, directly under the leak.

We need to decorate quite intensively - the stairwells, the under-stairs cupboard, downstairs toilet, computer room, hall, and dining room all suffered varying degrees of dampness, resulting in varying degrees of paper falling off and damage to the plaster.

Ah well, on Friday we find out how much of this our insurance will cover. Fingers crossed for us, please.

Take your finger out of the socket dumbass

Thanks to the BBC, I discovered this story from the BBC. Apparently energy "Smart-Meters" are now the way forwards. The way it works is this - The Department of Energy and Climate Change (and no, I wasn't aware we had one of those) wants to see "47 million meters in 26 million properties by 2020". Good luck with that chaps. According to the Beeb, it is hoped that the technology will help people cut their energy bills by giving you a visual display of how much electricity you are using. This, to my mind, is avoiding a fact - if you're too stupid to realise that by leaving all the lights on and boiling the kettle you're going to be using more leccy than if you sit in the dark drinking orange juice then you shouldn't be in charge of anything as potentially lethal as a plug switch, just in case you're overwhelmed by the urge to discover what happens if you ram a fork into it. Anyhow, dispensing with the detail, let's look at the practicalities shall we?

Trials of smart meters have suggested that SOME people may be prompted to moderate their energy use and that the £8bn scheme may help people save £28 a year. May I be the first to say that I don't personally think spending £8bn in order to get a few people to switch off the light and save the monetary equivilent of 8 pints a year is terribly practical? The meters are going to cost about £340 per household anyway, so their first 12 years of savings are going to be spent paying off the sodding thing. Lord Hunt, our esteemed climate change monkey-in-charge said, without a hint of irony that 'Smart meters will put the power in people's hands, enabling us to control how much energy we use, cut emissions and cut bills", entirely missing the point that people have been able to do this since electricity first arrived in houses just by using the 'off' switch. In days gone by the populace was even deemed intelligent enough to work out that having the bedroom light on upstairs when they were sat downstairs was unnecessary without the aid of a little electronic gadget that produces a pretty coloured graph. And uses up more electricity to power itself. He also said that case studies showed the meters 'could' get people to reduce their bills by about £100 a year by changing behaviour but we can safely ignore that figure because we all know that the government doesn't believe the electorate can understand a number unless it starts with '1'  and ends in '0' and so they've clearly just rounded up the £28 mentioned to the next largest figure that follows this rule.

The energy suppliers are going to be able to recoup the cost from customers through higher bills or upfront fees. Quelle surprise. And what, ladies and gentlemen, do we think the energy companies will do if (and we're taking a wild leap of faith here, following the fatally flawed assumption that the scheme makes any difference) our energy use begins to tail off dramatically and profits begin to fall? Any guesses? Yes, that's quite right. They'll ramp the bloody prices up so they can still make umpteen billion quid a year.

So am I going to be applying for a Smart Meter? No, I'm not, because I'm intelligent enough to figure out the times when I use most power and what to do to reduce it and frankly I think that a list should be made of all the people who don't think that they can figure it as well so require a meter. This way someone can be sent round to all their properties to disconnect the electricity and the gas before they hurt themselves...

This is the time when, as women, we’re supposed to be the most liberated isn’t it? We can have it all – family, career, kids etc etc.

This is the time when your marriage is supposed to be a fulfilling aspect of your life, married to someone who you love and who loves you back, a partnership. You don’t need to stay in a bad marriage if you don’t want to in the same way that our mothers/grandmothers did way back when.

Apparently that’s bullshit.

I met up with a couple of friends recently, one of whom – S – I’ve known for 22 years now. She’s an Asian girl who I met during my first week of university and back then was always a bubbly, giggly, fun person to be around, as well as being a good friend. She studied law like me, but unlike me, she qualified as a solicitor and started practising law. But in her family that mattered for nought because she was taking her own sweet time about getting married – the be all and end all for her Asian family.

S is incredibly attractive and during uni she had a number of boyfriends – from a lovely Sikh guy to an English guy four years younger than her. While they were special relationships to her, with men who clearly adored her, she always knew that it was never a long-term thing, that she was never going to marry any of them. Because she was always going to do what her parents expected her to do....... marry a nice Hindu guy. Not just any old nice Hindu guy, but someone from the right caste.

Years after uni she met the ‘right’ Hindu guy (how she met him escapes me now) and she did end up marrying him thinking that he was sufficiently westernised (he smoke, he drank, he’d had Western girlfriends) that would mean that she wouldn’t end up in that age-old Asian trap of living with her in-laws. 

Oh wow, how wrong could she be???

Within a couple of months of her wedding her father-in-law died and S’s husband – being the oldest sibling and all – moved him and his new bride into his parental home – utterly against her wishes but she bit her tongue because her husband was grieving so it would be wrong to make a point about ending up in a place she never wanted to be. The weeks turned to months, turned to years – all despite her husband’s reassurance of it being for “just a little bit longer”.

They finally did move to a place of their own (5 minutes from his mum’s house) but each time I saw her she seemed more and more unhappy and each time we met up, me and mutual friends from law school would remark on how defeated and frighteningly thin she was becoming and how her wonderfully lively spirit seemed to be seeping out of her at every passing meeting.

It was bad enough that she was in her husband’s parental home but S slowly began to realise how driven her husband is about his work. Whilst she was traditional enough to want someone that was able to provide for them (especially once they had kids), she didn’t quite appreciate that It.Was.All.About.The.Work. And, any minimal amount of time S’s husband isn’t at work, is spent being in the house (though not necessarily interacting with their children) or playing golf. Seven years after having their first child and she feels that she’s more or less been a single parent.

Talking to her about her marriage last night made me indescribably sad for her. She’s in a marriage with a man who’s unable/unwilling to show her any affection, who isn't really involved in their kids and routintely doesn't really seem to consider her in the decisions he makes. He also thinks that being the 'provider' for his family is paramount, is enough and that it more than makes up for the fact that he's not 'there' physically or emotionally for his boys.

And the really sad thing? That she just sits back and accepts it. At least now she does. I think at the beginning she would flag up issues she had with her husband which led to massive arguements which made her incredibly miserable and depressed about the whole sad, sorry situation and how her life had ended up precisely how she'd never wanted it to.

I just don't know which is worse though - being depressed by being in a bad marriage or just accepting it and getting on with life, understanding that however much you fight it, things won't change. I thought that we were so beyond the times when you just resigned yourself to a shitty marriage for the sake of the kids/because culturally it wasn't the done thing.

She said something the other night that worried me but thinking back on it I realised that I'd already come to the same conclusion - that one day she'll get so fed up of being starved of affection she'll have an affair.

Welcome to the House of Dying Appliances.

Dishwasher -

Dead and gone. Sadly, not actually gone - still waiting for the delivery of new Dishwasher and collection of old Dishwasher. This should have happened Saturday, but we have heard nothing. I hate Currys!  

It died last week, so I have had a whole week of washing up for six people. Bugger that - now I remember exactly why I got a Dishwasher in the first place.

Fridge-Freezer -

As you know, this is not that old. So when the fan started making a terrible, grating whirring sound, we were worried. Fortunately this is still under Manufacturer's Warranty, so we just had to make a calll. Simple - well, no. Because my life does not suck enough. I phoned the Repair Line, told the nice lady all about my troubles, she said "OK I will put you through direct to the manufacturer's Repair Centre". But she screwed that up, and put me through to the Parts Department. No, I want an Engineer. So I call the Repair Line again, only to be told the computers had crashed, and to phone back later.

So I did. And the lady at LG said "What is the serial number of your fridge?"
Well, I do not know that.
"It will be on the left hand side" she said.
So I looked, and looked, and looked. And failed to find it.
"Well, I am very sorry", she said, "I must have that before I can book an Engineer Visit."

I was gutted. Than I liooked again and thought "Fuck - mayber I should get Left and Right tattooed on my hand"

That was on Thursday. All is good now - the man cam this morning and fixed the fan. Verdict - don't put so much in your freezer that air cannot circulate. Whoops! OK, I will be more careful in future.

Washing Machine -

This died Saturday morning, just as I put a load in. And we do all the washing for the six of us on Saturday / Sunday / Monday due to working the rest of the time.  So I phoned my Washing Machine Repair Man, who said he should be able to do it Monday but he is having an operation on Tuesday. So I am waiting to hear from him. Fingers Crossed!

We had a shitload of washing - siz bags, and one laundry basket. I spent three hours at the laundrette (and may I say thank goodness for laundrettes!). It was so freaking BUSY in there, and hot. And expensive!

Vacuum Cleaner -

We bought this, and it was crap. You need training to use it properly and if I get the kids to vac, they break the band that turns the beater, so it stops being any good for pet hair. I finally said I must have a new one, when it, too, died. What is it with this house this past few weeks?  Luckily, someone we know runs a business selling and maintaining professional vacuums (for hotels, conference centres, anywhere they use lots of cleaners and need them to be ready to use at all times). So he is selling us one, cheap, and we get it later today.

I hope the Appliance Killing Field leaves the area soon.

I guess I like complaining.  I only really find the desire to write in here when something bad happens.

So yesterday... yesterday... what a day...

It starts in the morning, freezing, and myself desperately trying to scrape off the ice that has formed on my windshield, making me about 20 minutes late for work. 

I don't actually have a real scraper, primarily because I'm self destructive and I hate myself, and have been using an old CD case to get rid of the ice and snow that leeches onto the windows of my vehicle in the winter time.

So after about 10 minutes of laborious hacking and frozen fingertips, I hopped into my car and started driving.  Half way there, I hit a bump and heard a soft -pop- and suddenly there was a foot long crack in my windshield.  I hit another bump, and suddenly the crack grew another 2 feet.  And after suppressing the growing rage from the pit of my stomach, I got to work, and things were fine.

Spoke to the local Diamond Glass, and they asked me to come in to see what exactly my windshield size is and then schedule an appointment.

Went there on my lunch break, passed it, pulled into a parking lot that was filled mostly with water in order to turn around and pulled into Diamond Glass.  As I got out of the car, I heard a hissing noise coming from the side of my car.  Decided to ignore it and waited for 25 minutes for the Diamond Glass people to look for what size of windshield my car takes.  They told me that it would be about $150 for the glass, and $10 for the molding.  Went ahead and scheduled the appointment for the next day at 10:00, and headed out to enjoy the remainder of my lunch, only to find that my rear passenger side tire had gone flat.  Again.

Pulled into the shop of Diamond Glass where homedude helped me put on a spare, and I drove off to Sebastian's.  Showed Sebastian my flat tire, and apparently I had gotten another nail in the same tire as before.

Sebastian fixed it free of charge, but did not have time to put it back on.  Fortunately, I know how to change a tire, so I just said thanks and left for work, since it was just down the street.  I had apparently left my tire iron at Kevin's house, and there at Kevin's house it still is, so I had to borrow one from work.  Changed the tire, left to go run errands and grab a bite to eat, and thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to ask Sebastian if he did windshields as well.  Apparently they do, and he could get it done for me for $145, and they could do it that day.

Wheee!

Finished the rest of the day at work, got a ride from Tony to Sebastian's and picked up my car to pick up Jesse from the trax down town, since he had been in Orem/Provo getting dental work done.  Apparently he had been holding the urge to urinate for 2 hours, and Subway down town wouldn't let him use their bathroom, and he peed his pants.  So I drove him home so that he could shower and get a clean pair of pants.

I should mention now that Sushi, after just a few weeks of bringing him into my home, had commited suicide 2 days ago.

So after Jesse finished showering, he and I went to the pet store and picked up a replacement, and a bigger tank.

After much deliberation, I've decided to name him Mooka-Mao, because the new fish is a butthead that gets startled by every noise, and Jesse sometimes yelps out "Mooka-mao!" when he gets startled.

Woo Happy Thanksgiving!