Eight. Minutes.

Calling Tech Support

Our Satellite went out a few weeks ago. I don’t watch regular tv during the day so I kept forgetting to call. Here lately, I only watch regular tv when I go to bed. And by then I am not calling about it. Yesterday I finally remembered during reasonable hours. 

I called Dish Network Tech Support so basically I called India. A very nice man named Bert answered the phone. 

His real name was not Bert.  I find it slightly sad that when a company outsources all of their calls to a foreign country, the actual residents of that country that work there have to Americanize their names.  His real name is no doubt something Indian with great meaning, yet to appease the pompous Americans, his name is Bert. 

So I gave Bert my account information and I tried to explain the problem.  The box works just fine. We can still view everything on DVR but we kept getting the “Searching for Signal” screen (Error Code 015, if you were wondering) which said to me, the dish itself was faulty.  I explained this to Bert.  He asked me a few questions and I answered them as best as I could. 

Five minutes pass with mundane questions such as: What is the weather like outside? Is it Sunny? Is it hotter than normal? etc.  Basically, Bert wanted to know if it was raining.  It was not. What saddens me as well is that Bert deals with these pompous Americans all day long and I have no doubt that some people call during a thunderstorm because their signal is lost making this Bert’s first question.  I bet at that call center in India, they could play a drinking game. Everyone take a shot when someone calls because of a lost signal due to the rain. It interrupted their American Idol watching, dammit!  FIX IT!  

After I answered all the easy questions to weed out the really stupid people who usually call, I interrupted Bert:

“Bert, you are a super nice guy and I hate to waste your time. But I have checked all of these things already and I think you are going to have to send someone out here. Can you just send someone, please?” 

Bert said he would like to do that but he has to ask these questions before they send a technician. 

23 minutes later...

Bert: “Stacey, we are going to have send a technician.”

You don’t say?

Twenty eight minutes of questions. During this time I turned it off, turned it back on. Unplugged it, plugged it back in. Check the set up about 4 times after making minor adjustments that didn’t do anything. Made sure the cables were properly attached to the box and the wall, etc. All of the things I did about 2 weeks ago. But I humored Bert and did what he asked. As I said, he was a nice guy. 

Bert told me a technician would be there between 8:00 and 12:00 today.  He also told me that we have a warranty (we do?) and we wouldn’t get billed. He congratulated me on having the warranty and then reiterated, “That means you will not be charged.” Thanks, Bert!

So I get up early this morning, around 8:45.  I could have slept much longer but I figured with my luck I would be asleep and then they would be here. Stella would go nuts at the door and I would still be half asleep when I answered the door.  Also, every Dish Network guy that has been out to our home have both been pretty cute...I’m just sayin.

So I get up and go about my morning routine just waiting for the doorbell to ring so we can get this fixed and I can go on about my day. My morning routine is as follows:

Pee (of course)

Brush my teeth

Make the bed

Grab a Perrier out the fridge

Fix a regular water in my Memphis Tervis Tumbler

Turn on the fan in the living room and turn the air down to 70 ensuring that I am freezing

Get a blanket and sit in the red oversized chair and read.  

I usually read for at least 2 hours every morning. Sometimes 4. It just depends. You know that point when you are reading and you are sitting there and you are like “Okay, I think I am done.” I just wait until that happens. 

So I go about my routine, still expecting to be interrupted. 

Dude gets here at 12:15.  Of course he does. I could have slept so much longer. He leaves at 12:23.  Eight minutes. It took him eight minutes to fix the problem.  He had to replace some splitter thing that had gone bad. 

And this guy wasn’t cute. Bummer. 

Making Sushi

I attempted to make sushi on Sunday.

I didn't do anything fancy. I did some vegetable and fruit rolls with cream cheese and a crunchy shrimp. If I sucked at it, I didn't want to waste a whole hell of a lot of money on ingredients if it was all going to be a blob of crap.

My only concern was, "How does the rice stick together so well?" There is no trick to it. Rice is sticky and you have to continue wetting your hands to keep it from sticking to your hands so you can actually manipulate the seaweed. It also stuck to my hair, my tank top, my face and my foot.

I didn't do too shabby for my first time. It was very messy and I hadn't a clue of what I was doing but every single one got eaten. Not in one sitting, even though that has never been an issue with us, but it was tasty.

My next sushi venture will be raw. I think I am ready. Yes, just after one time I am ready for the big time. I am a genius at cuisine, you know.

My next ethnic food attempt will be: Indian. Real indian. Not like chicken curry.

Betty Crocker is a Chump Compared to Me

Making Delicious Breakfast Pastries!

In addition to make delcious bread, the breadmaker also has dough settings.

David has asked me a few times these past few weeks, pleaded with me actually, "Please stop making things."

I like to cook and bake and there are only two people there to eat whatever I make so the duty goes to David and myself to make these things gone. I don't care for being wasteful.

What I used to do, when I had a job, was bring at least half of it to work and give it away there. I suppose I could still drive up there and deliver my home baked goodies to my former coworkers but I just don't see that happening.

One day I made soft pretzel dough and when looking for that recipe I came across the recipe for cinnamon rolls. I pointed it out to David and his exact words, "Please don't make those." And I said I wouldn't.

So I made them on Sunday. I made them while David was gone doing something or another. He walked in smelling the aroma of fresh baked cinnamon rolls and he looked at me and said, "What did you do?" He acted mad for about two seconds and then he ate one. That day I had one cinnamon roll that I saved throughout the day. David had 4. I am just saying.

He does like to complain about me making an entire cake for two people to eat and when I fix his plate for dinner he always says, "That is way too much food." But does he ever have an issue cleaning his plate or putting a large dent in a cake? No. No he does not.

And the cinnamon rolls have been frozen in packs of 3 for later consumption.

Don't tell me those don't look delicious (they were).

Bake Delicious Breakfast Pastries

In addition to make delcious bread, the breadmaker also has dough settings.
David has asked me a few times these past few weeks, pleaded with me actually, "Please stop making things."

I like to cook and bake and there are only two people there to eat whatever I make so the duty goes to David and myself to make these things gone. I don't care for being wasteful.
What I used to do, when I had a job, was bring at least half of it to work and give it away there. I suppose I could still drive up there and deliver my home baked goodies to my former coworkers but I just don't see that happening.

One day I made soft pretzel dough and when looking for that recipe I came across the recipe for cinnamon rolls. I pointed it out to David and his exact words, "Please don't make those." And I said I wouldn't.

So I made them on Sunday. I made them while David was gone doing something or another. He walked in smelling the aroma of fresh baked cinnamon rolls and he looked at me and said, "What did you do?" He acted mad for about two seconds and then he ate one. That day I had one cinnamon roll that I saved throughout the day. David had 4. I am just saying.

He does like to complain about me making an entire cake for two people to eat and when I fix his plate for dinner he always says, "That is way too much food." But does he ever have an issue cleaning his plate or putting a large dent in a cake? No. No he does not.

And the cinnamon rolls have been frozen in packs of 3 for later consumption.

Don't tell me those don't look delicious (they were).

Instead of a Chinaman Peeing on a Rug, it's a Chihuahua Peeing on a Couch

Painting a Couch

Yeah.  When I tell people this they look at me like I am crazy or stupid or both. Alcohol and boredom yield very peculiar results. I didn’t use fabric paint or anything nor did I look up the proper procedure for painting a fabric couch. I just did it. 

Our current kitchen table is a hand-me-down from my parents from when I was a kid. We each had our own seats where we always sat at every dinner. I now sit where my mom used to sit, which is weird (if you were wondering, we do eat at the kitchen table a lot, just me and David. It’s a good habit to get into, I feel). I painted the legs on the kitchen chairs the same purple as the wall. To kind of jazz the table up a bit since we can’t afford a new one and the table is still in pretty good condition. And while I had the paint out I started looking at the couch. 

It’s a loveseat that was, again, another hand-me-down from my parents. We aren’t too cool for used furniture. If it’s free, it’s me. 

It’s a cheap fabric loveseat that my parents threw upstairs in what people call a “playroom” for their slothful children to destroy in time with their snack food eating and non-stop tv watching (It was 1998 when it and the matching couch were bought and my sister and I were certainly old enough to know how to treat furniture, we were just slobs).  

Christy and I would fight for the couch every Sunday morning.  The first person to get up and get their beverages and snacks for the day won the couch all of Sunday.  The couch laying honor was only given up when one of us actually got up to leave the house for candy or TCBY.

There were some days when Christy would never show up on Sunday. Probably still passed out from the night before in someone’s front yard (What? This actually happened). And I would have the couch all to myself to stretch out on and watch endless TBS.  And there were many a day when the loveseat would go unused, keeping it in pretty good condition. 

David and I took the set with us to our apartment.  The couch was already covered in unidentified stains (don’t want to know) and the cushions had seen better days.  At the apartment is when we also added Stella to the Logan Family.  She was a teeny adorable puppy and potty training was in motion so both pieces of furniture were spotted with Puppy Pee as well. Some parts were actually soaked in pee but we just turned the cushions over. 

When we moved into the house, the couch was retired to the Deer Camp, where all hand-me-down anything go to die. 

The loveseat we kept, and in its years here it has sustained some hell.  It sits in front of uncovered windows and, in the sun, it has faded considerably. My one hanging inside plant that I have yet to kill hangs over it and when I do remember to water it, I tend to over water. The water then drips onto the left arm of the couch. So now we have a faded, water-stained couch spotted with aged Puppy Piss.  It’s dirty and dusty and I have had to resist the urge to burn it for a very long time. 

So the loveseat was going to be thrown away and replaced with something else. 

I finished painting the chair legs and I looked at the half-empty can of paint. Paint that will no doubt be sent to the garage to age and probably thrown out in time. I then looked at this disgusting, festering eyesore of a couch. From the paint, to the couch. And I thought “Why the hell not?”  

The end result was surprising. And I think it is going to hold up for quite some time, as well especially since it doesn’t see a lot of traffic anyway. 

Please ignore the white sheets covering the cushions.  Those will be recovered once I pick out fabric. The white sheets were given to us by our Asian neighbor.  She is a housekeeper at some hotel (she told David which hotel but he has a very hard time understanding what she is saying...and so do I. It takes some concentration).  We think it is a fancy hotel because she tells us (at least we think she does) that if the sheets have any small defect they have to be thrown away. The same goes for towels or rags.  I would never use hotel sheets for actual bedding. I am sure the sheets have been bleached to high hell and are perfectly safe, but they skeeve me out.   She has given us countless sets of sheets so I used them to cover up my grody, embarrassing loveseat.

Many other things have been painted in my time off but that is for another blog for another day. 

Learn New Skills! Like Cleaning!

Mopping the Floor

I am not the best housekeeper.  I didn’t know how to work a washing machine until I moved out of my parents house in 2004. Everything was always done for me and for that I will always be grateful to my mother. 

During my endless hours at home I mopped the floor for the first time in my life. I am in no way exaggerating. I have never, ever mopped a floor until Monday; August 10, 2009.  

My least favorite thing in the world is washing dishes. Especially the dishes that have been sitting in the sink overnight (or, let’s be honest here, for a few days) and the water has been sitting in a dirty pot and it’s now all cold and murky. To me, mopping the floor is like taking grody dishwater and smearing it all over the floor. It just seems counter productive. So I just don’t do it.

I got the idea to actually mop while watching tv. I asked David “Do we have a mop?” He looked at me for a second, speechless, and then said, “Uh, yeah.” I didn’t know. I have never used it before. The few times (very few) that the floor has been mopped, David has done it. It never even crossed my mind that the floor needed to be mopped. 

I started with the kitchen and since everything was out and the sink was full of Pine Sol and Windex (I didn’t know...) I might as well do the rest. In doing this I came to a very sad and enlightening observation...we are some gross people. 

I am a messy cook.  Flour, nuts, cornmeal, sprinkles, all of it goes undetected once it falls on the floor. If it’s a big chunk I just call Stella and she takes care of it. If it’s small enough it sticks to your feet and then once you walk on a rug, it gets transferred to the rug and then it gets vacuumed up every week (that’s a lie, ever other week).  The floor gets indirectly swept.  It’s taken care of.

Not so much.

Some people reading this may or may not know that David is a flooring contractor and he is responsible for all of the flooring in our home* (if anyone happens to need flooring installed...help the Logans out, I am unemployed you know). And I used to work at a flooring distributor providing us with a nice discount. So the floors in our home are very nice. Probably nicer than our dirty asses deserve. 

Our laundry room, you know the place that we take our clothes to be cleaned, was vile. And, yes I am slightly embarrassed to admit this, the tile floor in our laundry room has never been cleaned. We have been in this house since 2005.  Four years, with a dog who violently sheds, and we have yet to clean the laundry room. It’s been organized and cleaned “out” but it has never seen soap of any kind. And if we didn’t store broom in there, it wouldn’t have seen that either. 

I don’t really sweep either. We have a hardwood vacuum for the massive amounts of dog hair and I use that quite often but a broom seems so...archaic. Since it has never been cleaned or swept there were some super gross things in the laundry room floor: forgotten pieces of dog food, a ziploc bag with “Stella”  written on it that I know was from 2006, empty spider eggs, dead spiders, and (sigh) a small, dry pellet of dog poopie.  

There was also a green blotch on the tile that I thought was a naturally occurring aspect of the tile. It wasn’t. The blotch is still unidentified but it surely did come off with a little scrubbing. 

Overall the mopping experience was a good one. The floors looked so...clean when I was finished. Who knew? I am not saying I am going to do this again any time soon but the results were quite impressive.  

* I did grout a closet before we moved in and it was the most horrible thing ever. It was so messy and time consuming that I eventually started crying and threw a small hissy fit.  David then took it away from me and did it himself in about a tenth of the time it would have taken me. 

If Cookies Don't Get Me Hired, My Boobs Will

Resume Perfecting (Fake and Real)

BLAH. The word “resume” (as in that thing you put together to get another job not as in continue what you were doing) strikes an uneasy, about-to-vomit reflex, to me at least. 

I have never needed a resume until now and when faced with the task of actually creating one, I was lost. And, to be honest, sort of annoyed at having to do this in the first place. Annoyed at what? Not really sure. Maybe annoyed that people aren’t lined up to hire me (how dare they!).

I went on Monster and filled out all the blanks and that was the template for my resume. I didn’t have much else to add to this and I really didn’t know what to add. Thankfully, I have friends who deal with resumes and they were happy to jazz it up for me. It was much, much appreciated.

But then I got to thinking; Why do resumes have to be so formal and boring? This does not show what sort of person I am or what I can even do, really. Sure it shows the countless computer programs that I am capable of operating but they don’t know how good I am it. I guess that is what my portfolio is for. 

Can’t I just say the things that I want to say about what type of chick I am and how I would be to work with? Isn’t that what people really want to know in an interview? I have no doubt that I can do whatever job is offered to me, and I know I can do that job well, but how am I as a person? Here is my Fantasy Resume. The resume that companies SHOULD ask for when hiring anyone:

Stacey Garrett Logan

Job Title: Being Awesome

Years Experience: My Whole Life

Skills: Kicking Ass. Taking Names.

Objective:

To have a job that I enjoy and doesn’t make me want to kill myself.  

Qualifications: 

I am super qualified, for anything. For real. I could do any job you would ever need done.  Of the many computer programs that I can operate, I have taught myself each and every one of them in record time. If your company requires me to manipulate a computer program that I have never seen before, give me 2 days and I will rock your face off. 

So, like, why hire me: 

I am a cool girl, and I have been told I am fun to work with. Isn’t that what is most important? To spend an entire work day with someone who you don’t mind hanging around?  When the opportunity strikes, I can also be very entertaining.  I excel at story telling especially when the story contains my family or my friends. I like to laugh and my level of Goof is off the charts when time and opportunity permits. 

I am a hard worker. I worked for the same company for 10 plus years and in that time I worked in every single department. In those departments I worked hard and I always got the job done well and it was done in time. And most of those years I only worked part time and STILL outworked the full timers. 

I am a good cook and excellent baker. I can give you a long list of references that can vouch for this fact. I also like to bring treats to work to share with my coworkers on a random basis. Who doesn’t love treats?! Can you say, “Increase company morale”?

I am pretty giving. For every holiday, if I like you, be prepared to receive a “happy” from me. Usually consisting of childish trinkets and loads of candy. And if you have any sort of pop culture obsession, be prepared to be inundated with said paraphernalia. 

I am creative thanks in no small part to my love for reading, television and movies.  Every creative aspect from my former company for the past five years was solely created by me. Coworkers even came to me with personal requests as well and I was happy to use my creative skills to help a dude out. 

I am smart. This resume should prove that. 

I am unemployed. I need a job. Mostly because I would like to keep a roof over my small family’s heads and, to be honest, I need cable and I enjoy my fair share of trips to amazon.com. I also like to be occupied for the majority of the day and job helps with that considerably.

So hire me. I promise you will not regret it. Be ready to receive a pat on the back from each of your superiors.  They will recognize the genius in you for hiring me. I’ve seen it happen and it could happen to you.