I'm back. It would appear that I like to blog every 2 years. When I logged in this morning, I was actually surprised that I posted something that recently. I figured it had been 4 or 5 years since I wrote anything. A couple of my friends recently started blogging, so I was inspired to crank mine back up. I'm certain someone somewhere missed hearing the mundane little details of my life. Although, I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who has viewed my blog, probably ever. And that's OK for now.
To sum up life since I last blogged, a couple of years of off and on turmoil- both personally and professionally- has finally leveled out a bit. I'm in a much better space personally, due in large part to just some good old-fashioned growing up. But I must admit that a lot of that is also due to finding love with the person I know I'm meant to marry. Now I've settled into a nice little home life, and I couldn't be happier. At home.
Work, on the other hand, is still a mess. I'm in a soulless job that I can barely tolerate, and I live in an area with the highest unemployment rate in the country, so finding a new and/or better job is slow going. Yes, I know I should be happy to have a job, and I am, but having to put with up with ridiculous bullshit on a daily basis takes it toll. I'm in real estate, specifically the apartment leasing business. When I applied for this job, I thought to myself: "A customer service job with regular office hours and commission? Sign me up!". Little did I know, it's really just like the hell of retail with better hours and only slightly better pay. Seriously though, you think selling products or handling someone's food is bad, try handling someone's home. And not just getting them to rent an apartment, but dealing with them regularly the entire time they live there. It's like if you are a waitress and you have that annoying table that never leaves. Ever. And neither do any of the other tables. And you weren't actually trained to wait tables or told about the food you serve, so you've been flying by the seat of your pants the entire time. Mix in a horribly unorganized and understaffed corporate office and you've got my job. Living the dream.
I'm not sure what direction I plan on taking this blog. For now, it will probably continue to be random thoughts (read: rants) and maybe a few book/music reviews or recipes. Maybe I'll actually throw in a picture here and there this time. Or maybe, I will just blog again in another 2 years. Let's wait and see, shall we?
9/28/12
10/26/10
Tornado Weather
The weather outside this morning has a very specific feeling. It's what we in the south call "tornado weather". Even though it's hard to define exactly what that means, everyone here knows what it is and will agree with you if you say that's how it feels. It's cloudy, unseasonably warm and pretty windy, although it's not quite gusty just yet. Despite the wind blowing and the leaves swirling, it is oddly still. I think it's the stillness that makes it tornado weather.
It struck me this morning that the weather feels not just like tornado weather, but like California weather, too. Not the beautiful, unending sunny weather that California is famous for, but more like the weather when the Santa Ana winds move in. It's not quite as dry as that and not quite "earthquake weather", but the feeling for me when I stepped outside was distintcly California, and I had a very visceral reaction to it.
This kind of day always feels like change is in the air, like I am on the cusp of something big happening. I'm never sure quite what it is, and if I look back, I can't seem to recall any great change actually occurring after a day like this. But somehow, it feels like something in the air is brewing, and it makes me take notice and feel cautiously hopeful.
Of course, it really is tornado weather, since the night before last I was serenaded with the nearby siren that signifies a tornado warning is in effect and a funnel cloud has been spotted nearby. So there's that.
It struck me this morning that the weather feels not just like tornado weather, but like California weather, too. Not the beautiful, unending sunny weather that California is famous for, but more like the weather when the Santa Ana winds move in. It's not quite as dry as that and not quite "earthquake weather", but the feeling for me when I stepped outside was distintcly California, and I had a very visceral reaction to it.
This kind of day always feels like change is in the air, like I am on the cusp of something big happening. I'm never sure quite what it is, and if I look back, I can't seem to recall any great change actually occurring after a day like this. But somehow, it feels like something in the air is brewing, and it makes me take notice and feel cautiously hopeful.
Of course, it really is tornado weather, since the night before last I was serenaded with the nearby siren that signifies a tornado warning is in effect and a funnel cloud has been spotted nearby. So there's that.
10/11/10
TGIF
After a 2-year break from blogging, I'm back with more exciting tales from my life.
I was really looking forward to this last weekend, as I was going to visit family and meet up with my boyfriend, who I had not seen in a few weeks. I should have known things were going to go awry when I made dinner on Thursday night. Because I apparently think there is no reason to open the oven door all the way, I wound up with a pretty painful and unsightly burn on the outside of my wrist. Smooth. This is why I don't cook that often, people.
Friday morning, in spite of the burning purplish-brown spot on my wrist, I was looking forward to a great day. I loaded up all my stuff for the weekend, including the big bottle of pinot noir I bought so as to avoid drinking all of my parents' stash (which I knew we would blow through anyway). So there I am, plugging through a pretty boring work day, taking a short lunch so I can get off a half-hour early and hit the road, watching the clock.
4:30 rolls around and I bound out of the building, certain that leaving 30 minutes early is going to make a huge difference in my evening. I open my passenger-side door to put my purse on the seat and am confronted with an odd smell. I look down to discover that my wine is open and a quarter of the bottle has poured out. I have tan interior and this is red wine, so you can imagine the horror. What happened, you ask? Well, apparently, leaving an unopened bottle in a hot car (it was in a brown bag in direct sunlight) can pop the cork. Which it did. Luckily, my car is usually pretty messy, so there was a plastic bag full of trash under the wine bag, so almost all of the wine that poured out was in the plastic bag.
So that was the first big mishap. Which doesn't seem all that bad since very little of the wine stained my seat, except that I was making a 2-hour trip with an open container and a car that reeked of wine. Luckily, I'm not a crazy driver, so the likelihood of getting stopped was slim. I'm chugging away, doing a drive that I do every couple of weeks, singing along to my music, when I hit some traffic. Now normally, this drive is 2-hours long, and that's with a tiny bit of congestion coming out of the mountains and into Chattanooga. This is the only place on the entire trip that I encounter any traffic, and I usually am stuck in it for about 20 minutes (it occurs during the 20-minute stretch before you get into the city proper).
So I'm sitting there, not too annoyed because this is pretty typical. 20 mintues goes by, and I haven't moved much, but I know it will clear up shortly. 40 minutes go by, and I start getting a little aggravated. Time keeps ticking away, and I get angrier and angrier. I left 30 mintues early, after all, so I expected to be home that much earlier. My boyfriend is driving up from Charleston to meet me there, and I'm already an hour late. It smells like a bar in the car, and I'm hungry. I call my dad, who says, 'Well as long as you are moving, you should stay on the freeway.' Oh yeah, I was moving alright, about 3 miles an hour every 10 minutes or so. Finally, after an hour and 50 minutes, my dad was able to guide me to an alternate route to bypass the traffic. Four hours after I left work, I arrived home, less than amused. A 2-hour trip took 4 hours, due to traffic jamming up a 20-minute stretch of road. I lived in LA for 10 years and never experienced traffic like that there.
So that's how my lovely weekend began. No, it wasn't Friday the 13th, believe it or not. And yes, we did drink the rest of that wine, which was amazingly not ruined by cork-popping heat.
I was really looking forward to this last weekend, as I was going to visit family and meet up with my boyfriend, who I had not seen in a few weeks. I should have known things were going to go awry when I made dinner on Thursday night. Because I apparently think there is no reason to open the oven door all the way, I wound up with a pretty painful and unsightly burn on the outside of my wrist. Smooth. This is why I don't cook that often, people.
Friday morning, in spite of the burning purplish-brown spot on my wrist, I was looking forward to a great day. I loaded up all my stuff for the weekend, including the big bottle of pinot noir I bought so as to avoid drinking all of my parents' stash (which I knew we would blow through anyway). So there I am, plugging through a pretty boring work day, taking a short lunch so I can get off a half-hour early and hit the road, watching the clock.
4:30 rolls around and I bound out of the building, certain that leaving 30 minutes early is going to make a huge difference in my evening. I open my passenger-side door to put my purse on the seat and am confronted with an odd smell. I look down to discover that my wine is open and a quarter of the bottle has poured out. I have tan interior and this is red wine, so you can imagine the horror. What happened, you ask? Well, apparently, leaving an unopened bottle in a hot car (it was in a brown bag in direct sunlight) can pop the cork. Which it did. Luckily, my car is usually pretty messy, so there was a plastic bag full of trash under the wine bag, so almost all of the wine that poured out was in the plastic bag.
So that was the first big mishap. Which doesn't seem all that bad since very little of the wine stained my seat, except that I was making a 2-hour trip with an open container and a car that reeked of wine. Luckily, I'm not a crazy driver, so the likelihood of getting stopped was slim. I'm chugging away, doing a drive that I do every couple of weeks, singing along to my music, when I hit some traffic. Now normally, this drive is 2-hours long, and that's with a tiny bit of congestion coming out of the mountains and into Chattanooga. This is the only place on the entire trip that I encounter any traffic, and I usually am stuck in it for about 20 minutes (it occurs during the 20-minute stretch before you get into the city proper).
So I'm sitting there, not too annoyed because this is pretty typical. 20 mintues goes by, and I haven't moved much, but I know it will clear up shortly. 40 minutes go by, and I start getting a little aggravated. Time keeps ticking away, and I get angrier and angrier. I left 30 mintues early, after all, so I expected to be home that much earlier. My boyfriend is driving up from Charleston to meet me there, and I'm already an hour late. It smells like a bar in the car, and I'm hungry. I call my dad, who says, 'Well as long as you are moving, you should stay on the freeway.' Oh yeah, I was moving alright, about 3 miles an hour every 10 minutes or so. Finally, after an hour and 50 minutes, my dad was able to guide me to an alternate route to bypass the traffic. Four hours after I left work, I arrived home, less than amused. A 2-hour trip took 4 hours, due to traffic jamming up a 20-minute stretch of road. I lived in LA for 10 years and never experienced traffic like that there.
So that's how my lovely weekend began. No, it wasn't Friday the 13th, believe it or not. And yes, we did drink the rest of that wine, which was amazingly not ruined by cork-popping heat.
3/11/08
working for a living
So I originally began this blog to talk about music, which is my passion. However, seeing as I work 50-60 hours a week, I haven't been listening to as much music as I would like to, so now I have to bitch about (what else) work. Let me preface this rant by stating that I love my job. Really, I do. I work for a really great independent company, I sell interesting products that I love, I have great customers (for the most part--see below), and I work with amazing people. However, I do work retail, and you know what that means. Standing on my feet for long hours, handling people's money (gross), less than stellar pay, working weekends and holidays, and dealing with the average customer. Let me reiterate, I really enjoy most of my customers. But then there are those that make you wonder how some people manage to actually get through life without getting socked in the face on a regular basis. You know the ones I'm talking about. I feel I must share my pet-peeves in the hopes that someone, somewhere, will read this and stop acting like an asshole to the sales clerks at their favorite stores.
Music Gal's Customer Pet Peeves (the list is endless, so these are just a few off the top of my head)
1. When I ask you if you'd like a bag, it's really not a life-altering question. You either want one to carry your stuff or you don't. It's simple really. Also, if you know you don't want a bag, perhaps you could tell me initially, rather than watching me bag up hundreds of dollars worth of items and then saying "oh I don't want a bag" after I've struggled to fit every last thing into your bag and now have to remove every little thing.
2. I know I work retail, but I'm not an idiot. Yes, I do actually know how to do my job, and no I don't need you to tell me how. Believe it or not, I actually get paid to do this. I have been trained to do this job--I can process simple transactions for you and make change! And bag each item successfully! So drop the holier-than-thou attitude--I'm not some idiot that walked in off the street and jumped behind the counter 5 minutes ago.
3. When you walk in the store, or up to my counter, when I say "hello" to you, common courtesy and decency suggest that you actually respond. I know we would never engage with each other outside of this venue, so I'm not trying to be your friend or anything. Completely ignoring my existence, while I handle your money, really isn't the way to go. I say "hi" to you, you say "hi" back. Just like kindergarten.
4. Gentleman, this is a store, not a pick-up joint. When I am helping you, it is never appropriate to stare at my chest, make lewd jokes/comments, or hit on me in any form or fashion. Period. Ditto for the ladies.
5. When you walk into a store and see someone with a name tag, company uniform or apron, that means that they work there. Do you realize how ridiculous it is to ask "Do you work here?" while staring at my name tag that has the company logo prominently displayed? Typically, people don't wear those just for fun while they happen to be shopping in the store of the same name. Strange, but true.
6. If you are having trouble finding what you are looking for, or are just generally irritated for whatever reason, it is not a good idea to ask how old I am or if there is someone older that can help you. First of all, I'm not as young as I look (and even if I were, being young doesn't make me stupid). Second, I've worked at my store for longer than most of the rest of the staff, so even if I find someone older to help you, it's doubtful that they know more about the store than I do. There are just as many morons over 35 as there are under 35. Hard to believe, I know.
So in conclusion (for now), whenever you go shopping, stop acting like a jerk. It may seem strange, but if you are polite and exercise some degree of courtesy toward your salespeople, they might just provide you with better service. Or, at least, not spit in your latte.
Have a nice day
Music Gal's Customer Pet Peeves (the list is endless, so these are just a few off the top of my head)
1. When I ask you if you'd like a bag, it's really not a life-altering question. You either want one to carry your stuff or you don't. It's simple really. Also, if you know you don't want a bag, perhaps you could tell me initially, rather than watching me bag up hundreds of dollars worth of items and then saying "oh I don't want a bag" after I've struggled to fit every last thing into your bag and now have to remove every little thing.
2. I know I work retail, but I'm not an idiot. Yes, I do actually know how to do my job, and no I don't need you to tell me how. Believe it or not, I actually get paid to do this. I have been trained to do this job--I can process simple transactions for you and make change! And bag each item successfully! So drop the holier-than-thou attitude--I'm not some idiot that walked in off the street and jumped behind the counter 5 minutes ago.
3. When you walk in the store, or up to my counter, when I say "hello" to you, common courtesy and decency suggest that you actually respond. I know we would never engage with each other outside of this venue, so I'm not trying to be your friend or anything. Completely ignoring my existence, while I handle your money, really isn't the way to go. I say "hi" to you, you say "hi" back. Just like kindergarten.
4. Gentleman, this is a store, not a pick-up joint. When I am helping you, it is never appropriate to stare at my chest, make lewd jokes/comments, or hit on me in any form or fashion. Period. Ditto for the ladies.
5. When you walk into a store and see someone with a name tag, company uniform or apron, that means that they work there. Do you realize how ridiculous it is to ask "Do you work here?" while staring at my name tag that has the company logo prominently displayed? Typically, people don't wear those just for fun while they happen to be shopping in the store of the same name. Strange, but true.
6. If you are having trouble finding what you are looking for, or are just generally irritated for whatever reason, it is not a good idea to ask how old I am or if there is someone older that can help you. First of all, I'm not as young as I look (and even if I were, being young doesn't make me stupid). Second, I've worked at my store for longer than most of the rest of the staff, so even if I find someone older to help you, it's doubtful that they know more about the store than I do. There are just as many morons over 35 as there are under 35. Hard to believe, I know.
So in conclusion (for now), whenever you go shopping, stop acting like a jerk. It may seem strange, but if you are polite and exercise some degree of courtesy toward your salespeople, they might just provide you with better service. Or, at least, not spit in your latte.
Have a nice day
12/7/07
The Coup
If you are into hip-hop, particularly less mainstream hip-hop, check out The Coup. I discovered them on the 2nd stage at Rock the Bells this summer, and they are really cool. "My Favorite Mutiny", in particular, is dope. It's just great lyrics and great beats, not like all that bullshit that's on the radio right now. Don't get me wrong, I do like commercial hip-hop, to some extent. But if you are looking for artistry, look at The Coup.
12/4/07
Fa la la la la
It occurs to me that Christmas music is some of the most beautiful, yet most irritating music ever. I find that most "good" Christmas music is rooted in nostalgia. For instance, Alvin & the Chipmunks singing Christmas songs is silly, and their voices are so obnoxious, yet I consider it classic because I distinctly remember sitting on my brother's bedroom floor playing the record (yes that's right, record) repeatedly. Is it good? Probably not. But there are so many memories attached to it that I think it's great.
I feel that I have lots to say about Christmas music. Working retail for many years exposes you to lots of bad holiday music, as does having a parent who thinks Kenny G is jazz. What makes me an expert, you ask? I'm not, in music or anything else, for that matter. I just love music and like to talk about it, much to the chagrin of many of my chums.
Your best bet for good holiday music is jazz. No, folks, NOT of the Kenny G variety. I'm talking Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Michael Buble, Harry Connick Jr. "Christmas with the Rat Pack" is my current fave, although, you really can't beat "Christmas with Dino". I'm sure some of you are thinking "Rat Pack? Are you kidding?" No, my friends, I am not. Just give Dino's "Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow" a listen and you'll see what I mean. Are these perfect Christmas albums? Not quite. Are there a few boring songs and arrangements that you find extremely irritating? Yes. For some reason, nearly all artists who do a Christmas album feel the need to create a new song, hoping it's the next "Winter Wonderland" or something, I guess. A word of warning--these original songs are rarely good.
I could ramble on all night, but since this is my first ever blog, I'll wrap it up.
Try listening to Aaron Neville's "Ave Maria" if you have a chance. That's all.
I feel that I have lots to say about Christmas music. Working retail for many years exposes you to lots of bad holiday music, as does having a parent who thinks Kenny G is jazz. What makes me an expert, you ask? I'm not, in music or anything else, for that matter. I just love music and like to talk about it, much to the chagrin of many of my chums.
Your best bet for good holiday music is jazz. No, folks, NOT of the Kenny G variety. I'm talking Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Michael Buble, Harry Connick Jr. "Christmas with the Rat Pack" is my current fave, although, you really can't beat "Christmas with Dino". I'm sure some of you are thinking "Rat Pack? Are you kidding?" No, my friends, I am not. Just give Dino's "Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow" a listen and you'll see what I mean. Are these perfect Christmas albums? Not quite. Are there a few boring songs and arrangements that you find extremely irritating? Yes. For some reason, nearly all artists who do a Christmas album feel the need to create a new song, hoping it's the next "Winter Wonderland" or something, I guess. A word of warning--these original songs are rarely good.
I could ramble on all night, but since this is my first ever blog, I'll wrap it up.
Try listening to Aaron Neville's "Ave Maria" if you have a chance. That's all.
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