Some sort of recap…

SO, here we go…

Work: I’m back to the same pay, back to the same schedule, back to the same customers, back to the same everything except my old extension, because the phone system is shut down…. because the actual company is “shut down”… except it’s not. We still do what we do, we are still getting paid by FNIS, we just had to shut down our “public face” — the website, the phone system, whatever. Now we have one number that goes to one guy who essentially handles everything for us… and I thought I was having a wonderful time. Poor Jonathan.

So, I am back, but Pam and David are gone. David hired on directly by RMGA to do other things than what we did, and Pam off to her own devices. Leaving me with “Salesguy Mac” as my partner to pimp websites. Already today I’ve spent a good hour venting about how useless he is at these appointments. I might as well be going alone to these. Other than introducing himself to our three customers Friday, he did nothing else. Didn’t say another word until “Well, thanks! Have a nice day!” when they left.

Admittedly useless, though, he bought me lunch saying “it’s the only thing I could do to help you today.” That is NOT going to cut it.

Other work: The contract job that I have been working on a website, business cards, brochures, etc. etc. for decided to change their company name and direction while I was away. Today I get to do a whole new logo, as the first step toward doing a whole new website. Not thrilled.

This week: I have today at home to play catch-up from my vacation (and general job-insecurity slack-offness), then I’m out on appointments the entire rest of the week — with useless Mac. Again, not thrilled.

I’ve been instructed to email Mac a “primer on pimping sites” today, in an effort to help make him useful, but his reply to a very basic instruction I emailed him earlier doesn’t leave me hopeful. “I’m sorry, that’s just over my head. Maybe if I watched you do it once.” The instruction: “In your editlive menu, select “Insert –> Table”. You get a popup with all the table settings. Use: 1 column, 1 row, width=650, and border=0. Then just cut the text content you have and paste it into the table.

A caveman could do it…

Which reminds me: Great-niece Ivy thinks the Ziploc commercials where the woman hands her bag to the kid to close is offensive to children. It’s so easy a child could do it, she whines. How rude!

I am intrigued by the commercial for the new gameshow I saw last night, though… Are you smarter than a 5th grader? Only in America do we revel in our ignorance. Celebrate it. Laugh at it. It’s like we aren’t smart enough to know to be ashamed.

There should be a real recap of mom’s mentalness on the San Diego trip, too, but frankly I may just be too embarrassed to actually set that down with any permanence. Best to just forget it all.

Fun stuff: This weekend didn’t turn out quite as planned, but fine none-the-less. I finally ran across an ebony DS lite in the store and decided to buy it. Managed to put it down long enough to get to the grocery store, do some laundry, and clean a little house before game night. Brad’s outting for beer was of course, more appreciated by the guests.

Wait… I’m supposed to throw in a line here about how lame Ben & Maggie are… making excuses and not showing up… after I bought them a special present home from San Diego and everything. Oh well. Maybe if I’d told them about the present…

Kit & Bert managed to show up Saturday night, though. We played the Wii, a touch of guitar hero, ordered that pizza anyway, then Riffed on boron… I mean The 5th Element. That is definately a good one.

Joel’s site, www.Rifftrax.com, has a lot of new ones that we’re looking forward to checking out, including the truck-driving, arm-wrestling classic: Over the Top. Have to say also that the Reign of Fire Riff was uninspiring. Of course, Mathew McConnohowdoyouspellits character in that really didn’t need any help being absurdly funny.

Speaking of absurdity: Because He Thought He Could

And last but not least, if you’re not reading (and why not?) then you may not have heard about this movie review site, with a format that seems like something the Adult Swim people would have thrown together. Check out: www.Spill.com.

Oh yeah: Through some cosmic miscalculation, we had the dates wrong for Mr.T’s fishing trip with his Dad. He doesn’t leave until March 23rd, so that leaves us available this coming weekend to go snowboarding with Marc and Jennie… if either of us is up for it. I may be insane from a solid week of useless Mac, and JamesT is on morning CMR meeting duty this week, so he may be insane from lack of sleep. And he wanted to go see Dick Dale tonight, but that very late show would kick his ass in the morning.

And just FYI: They have cut down all the hedges in front of all the apartments here, and I think the place now just looks bald… desolate… and sad.

We also got new neighbors who have replaced crazy-can’t-park-his-big-ass-truck-in-a-space-so-i’ll-block-the-garage-doors guy, who used to do woodworking in his garage at all hours. Today, they are incessantly rearranging their heaviest pieces of furniture, hanging pictures on every square inch of wall that connects to our apartment, and apparently strangling their dog and causing him to howl. Mostly, though, they are interrupting poor Brad’s trying to “sleep in” on this holiday day.