Category Archives: Rants

Housing Grumbles

As if substandard heaters aren’t enough, the electrical upgrade the landlord did around the time we moved in wasn’t sufficient to handle all the new electrical heaters going at once. Our power blew yesterday, and our heaters were offline for about twelve hours.

More excitingness included a half dozen emergency vehicles blocking off our street yesterday and brown-outs. I know Hydro-Quebec’s system is stressed when the temperature drops like this, but these problems aren’t general, they’re limited to our building, or ours plus the building on each side. The tenants have all decided to make a list of Things To Be Addressed and send it in a registered letter to the landlord. I know the heat is a big issue, but for me, the most annoying day-to-day problem is the front door. It’s a split door — the doorway is wide, and has two doors hung in it. Problem is, they’re each narrower than your average door, and the left one is always locked. When I leave with my cello over my shoulder, I have to struggle to pull the door open, hold it open because the spring closing is aggressively set, wriggle through and immediately run down the five steps while the door slams shut because there’s no landing on the other side. The door isn’t even wide enough to get a laundry basket through without turning sideways.

Sure, fine, you might say; it’s not so bad. Right. Except that locked left-hand door is highly illegal, because any emergency crew trying to get in won’t be able to fit. They’re lovely doors. I’d hate to see them get hacked down. Worse, if there’s a fire inside, it’s not a legally safe exit. We’ve got about fifty people in this building; the thought of all of them trying to jam through that narrow door is just ugly. (Fire escapes? What fire escapes? We discovered last summer that they lead right back into the basement of the building.)

Wow, I didn’t mean to go on a minor rant like that. I like this apartment a lot, I really do. One always discovers good things and bad things throughout a stay somewhere, though.

Good things yesterday involved the beginning of a new game (with lots of sugar! Yay meringues!), and getting long-awaited info to appreciative parties including friends, students, a newsletter co-ordinator, and the US acquisitions editor.

And today… home-baked cookies!

kill kill kill…

Foiled. Foiled, foiled, foiled, gods damn this ruddy printer.

It can join the computer Skippy intends to launch out a window as soon as he has a complete operative system. It will be incredibly therapeutic to throw it and watch it smash into a jillion pieces on the pavement below. It will be just as useful as a pile of bits as it is now, whole, silent, unmoving, and entirely a waste of space.

I’m now officially in the market for a new printer.

muttergrumblegrr

I hate, hate, hate that my whole day can be put off by a single, small, event.

I had a terrific evening with close friends last night which involved poetry, much discussion of phobias rooted in childhood, fairy tales and nursery rhymes, Little House on the Prairie, and lots of my father’s delicious red wine. I woke up with my day all planned, and settled down to review and correct a pile of student homework.

The very first thing I picked up was a journal which began with negative response to, and criticism of, the material covered in the first two classes, and questioned the teachers’ qualifications to teach them.

It soured everything. The next two journals and sets of homework I read were fantastic, full of reflection and creative, thoughtful responses to the home exercises. If only I had picked up one of them first!

Why do we focus on the negative issues to the exclusion of the positive? Why do we remember the bad things, but not the good?

I resent the fact that this person has affected me to this extent. Logically I know that it’s a personal response, and it’s perfectly valid in a journal, but it doesn’t change the fact that it was the very first thing I read. I’m irritated because it had such an effect on me. As a result, now I’m grumpy, and nothing I seem to do snaps me out of it.

To quote a very old friend: “muttergrumblegrr.”

Booky Rant

I have to rant.

If you work in a bookstore, and a book has in its title, oh, I don’t know, “Wicca”, and you have a section called “Wicca”, don’t you think the book should go in that section instead of a completely unrelated section? (Substitute “Christianity”, or “Buddhism”, or whatever floats your boat. It goes in that section, not a section marked “Islam” or “VoDoun”.)

And if you’re shelving a book, shouldn’t it go next to the other copies of that book already on the shelf, rather than two shelves below it next to a completely different book? (If you try to use the shelving by title excuse, you automatically die.)

If someone wants to pay me for reshelving books that are already put out, I’ll do it. But otherwise, there’s no excuse. If you’re a bookstore employee and have been for any period of time over one month, you should understand the sections of that bookstore (clearly marked) and the methods of operation utilised within that bookstore (clearly outlined in the handbook and reiterated several times at staff meetings).

On the other hand, and completely unrelated, the graffitti in high school washrooms amuses me. They call each other “hoes”. I wonder if they understand that by misspelling the insult, they’re comparing themselves to gardening implements.

In Which She Muses On Stress

I know I haven’t been terribly communicative, but it’s my sandbox, and I’ll play when I want to. Expect me to be very absent over the weekends, because I simply have no time or inclination to fire up BiFrost, Computer of the Gods after three solid days of teaching.

It’s been a pretty exhausting weekend. Apart from the teaching of four three-hour classes, there was a birthday gathering, and three separate stressful situations that I was involved in or peripheral to. The highly ironic aspect of the weekend was courtesy of the stress-management lecture I gave, and the subsequent lecture I taught on how to function as an effective counsellor.

(See, Tal? Those ten-plus years of offering you tea after a break-up gave me training! Thanks!)

I will not go into details, because all of it’s confidential. As a priestess and a teacher I function as a counsellor, and I stick to a counsellor’s rules of engagement. I can, however, offer you my basic conclusions:

A) People in general have to smarten up and become aware that there are other individuals in the world around them who matter too. Grow out of the six-year-old I’m-the-centre-of-the-universe identity thing, and join the adult perception of cause and effect. Please.

B) Common sense is all too uncommon. I think it’s connected to (A) somehow.

C) Taking advantage of others just sucks, okay?

D) While it’s acceptable to feel tear-limb-from-limb anger, acting on it is a no-no.

Today is dreary and I have candles lit to help cheer things up while I read an excellent book for review. If anyone wants to take a look at how and why a Wiccan ritual is set up the way it is, read Deborah Lipp’s Elements of Ritual.

I’m also reading Sarah Water’s Fingersmith, a stunningly well-plotted and -written work about a Victorian underworld scheme to liberate an heiress from her fortune. I’m taking Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Avatar in small mouthfuls to savour it, unlike my consumption of the previous two books in the series when they were released. And I’m still going at Hermione Lee’s Virginia Woolf and Lucasta Miller’s The Bronte Myth. The latter isn’t so much a biography as an examination of the whole marketing/legend that has grown about the Bronte family. Fascinating stuff, if you’re a literature addict or a Victorian pop culture nut (score two for me!).

I think I’ll go for a walk. Fresh air, some rain, exercise, maybe the used book store.

Argh

I realise that I haven’t ranted about my latest “it’s not fair” experience. Prepare for Rant Mode.

Now that I’ve started wearing my glasses 95% of the time, I’ve discovered that one pair is not enough. Why? Because if I take them off at night they get left on the bedside table when I toddle off to work the next morning, or by the computer, or — once — beside the computer at work.

So! Responsible Autumn locates her last set of frames and resolves to have up-to-date lenses made for them. She shops around.

My prescription isn’t that high, and I don’t need progressive lenses or bifocals or anything fancy. All I need is basic lenses with anti-glare so my computer screen doesn’t slay my vision.

I’m still going to have to pay between $160 and $210 for a new set of lenses.

Slowly it penetrated into my stunned brain and I remembered why I usually buy new frames as well. It’s not that much more expensive.

I ranted at my husband for a while, and then decided that I’d look into contact lenses. If I have to be wearing the things most of the time anyway, I might as well. I’ll need an optometrist appointment, but they might end up being cheaper. And I certainly won’t leave them in odd places. Then my current glasses become my back-up vision enhancers.

It’s worth a try. It might be hopeless, but at least I’ll know.

I think the most frustrating aspect of the situation is that I’m trying to be responsible by having a second pair with me. It’s akin to replacing socks with holes, or buying new underwear: it shouldn’t be this expensive.

So when I found this quiz on Roo’s blog this morning I took it, and now I feel much better, because it’s really me.

My inner child is ten years old today

My inner child is ten years old!

The adult world is pretty irrelevant to me. Whether
I’m off on my bicycle (or pony) exploring, lost
in a good book, or giggling with my best
friend, I live in a world apart, one full of
adventure and wonder and other stuff adults
don’t understand.

How Old is Your Inner Child?
brought to you by Quizilla

Mumbles and Mutters

I want a mouse with a scroll wheel set into it. I use one at work and I love it.

I want an optical mouse. I now hate my mouse cord. I’m still considering a light tablet.

I want to try an ergonomic keyboard. I almost had a free one, but it won’t work for various reasons.

I need to put new lenses in my previous pair of glasses, because now that I’ve started wearing glasses all the time, I take them off and forget them in odd places. My glasses on the coffee table at home do not help me when I’m sitting in an office staring at a computer screen. (Two pairs of glasses might mean I lose them twice as often, but at least I’ll have increased my chances of having an operational pair close to hand.)

The Kim Possible: Secret Files DVD was released this week, as was the second season of Angel, and the second season of 24 comes out on DVD next week. Either studios are counting on the arrival of student loans across North America, or it’s all an evil plot to keep me in abject poverty. (What? You didn’t know that I’m a huge Kim Possible fan? So huge that I want a new cell phone so it can beep like her pager? Yes, I’m a geek. Sue me. How can I not love a show with a theme song that begins, “I’m just an average girl/And I’m here to save the world”?)

I’m tired of slow dial-up, and I want high-speed or DSL.

And the problem with waking up before dawn is that you’re ready to do things like banking and shopping before banks and shops are open. Drat.