h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sneaking on for a moment while the Cd burner is going but before bed.

Been sporadically underwhelmed and unbelievably swampd with work at work this week... property tax returns and licensing renewals are due by the end of the month, and so it's been either feast or famine as far as the workload.

However, tomorrow *is* Friday!

And it's cooled down about 20 degrees from earlier in the week- tomorrow's forecast high is less than Monday night's low.

Not done much this week, watched a couple of Netflix which I'll catch up on the DVD thread, and went out a couple nights after work. Met T (Geezers guitarist #2) and his girlfriend for chicken wings (I had cider and celery sticks, ate a late lunch) on Monday, and had dinner at that lovely Columbian place this evening with K before we went grocery shopping. Bumped into a former co-worker at the train platform (take a different el train to get home than grocery store- I live a bit further west, unfortunately). Watched a great documentary on old monster flicks. And now it's almost time for bed.

Going to make polenta this weekend for the first time... wish me luck!!

That's about it. Nothing but boring, run-of-the-mill stuff. So, I'll stop now. Have a great weekend, all, please let me know what y'all are doing, eh?

Hi P/C, not too much goin' on here, it's been a pretty quiet & uneventful week. Oh, I've been watching that Rock Star:INXS - some great talent on there, including a musician from Chicago named Mart Casey-who's now in the final 3...last show next Tues.the 20th. Very cool, drizzly weather today & aside from the various evergreens(& the hardier trees), a third of the leaves around the city are a nice golden-yellow. Then of course there're those that're just a lighter green & those that're varying shades of burgundy. The local Jazz & Blues club( http://www.yardbirdsuite.com ) reopens this weekend, so I'm meeting my cousin & a friend of her's Sat. to see/hear a Japanese pianist - she studied classical piano for 16 years before switching to Jazz!

I've never really seen the attraction in polenta. But here's a way to make it palatable: http://flamingpie.memebot.com/Contents/Recipe67.htm

Palatable? Sounds downright tasty! Thanks!

Tonight is quite exciting here, it's the start of Circuit des Remparts weekend & today is the Concours d'Elegance, which is where all the classic cars drive slowly around the Jardin Vert so that everyone can go "ooh" & "ahh!" "isn't it beautiful!" before the real races start tomorrow.

So, a dozen or so of us (and skankydawg of course!) are meeting up at Karens for aperitifs & snacks then going on to gawp at the car cars (not to be confused with ca-ca's, which are poos!)

So i have been busy in the kitchen making dips, i have made:

Hummous "C'est formidable, ton hummus!"
Mushroom paté
Lentil paté
Cream cheese & chive dip
Spicy salsa
Another cheesy dip which is actually leftover cheesy sauce from last night, so it's cheating really

Meanwhile, viking is clambering about all over my kitchen work surface rearranging the walls, he has decided a marine influenced decor is the look of the moment, & has hung fishing nets & shells & crabs & stuff everywhere. It's best to just let him get on with it when he's in this mood, he just needs the occasional "cheri, you are a genius, yes, it's beautiful dear"

So now i have a computer desk which is disguised as a bedouin tent & a kitchen which resembles something out of Captain Nemo. And the bathroom is actually a library. As for the atelier & the attic, well, we just tend to go through grading system of "bordel" (Bordel means shambles)

ie:

Grade 1 bordel = my handbag
Grade 2 = the table top
Grade 3 = the kitchen
Grade 4 = the floor (excluding puppy area)
Grade 5 = the floor around puppy bed
Grade 6 = the bedroom
Grade 7 = the bathroom
Grade 8 = the atelier
Grade 9 = the stairs to the attic
Grade 10 = the attic itself

PC, you would last about 5 minutes here!!!! How viking copes as someone with huge OCD issues i don't know, maybe it's aversion therapy or flooding or something; his place is so organised you daren't put a finger out of place; here is just the opposite, but he is singing away happily pottering around sticking things here there & everywhere, occasional cries of "m*rde, s**t, bo**ocks!"; when the corks or drawing pins or clothes pegs wont co-operate!

Yael will be pleased to lean that her net she packed around the various treasures she sent is now the centrepiece of the display; it's now having bits of cork tacked to the edges....these are the floats apparently; i am expecting very soon!

Karen just arrived in her dayglo green Porsche (!) which now has wheels; useful addition really; to pick up the dips, so if i can get viking to calm down a bit maybe we can have a quiet drink & i might even manage a bath before we go out.

*Oh gawd, he is after a wooden circle, he seems to think i produce these things like from a hat!!!*

zdt*off to track down wooden circle last seen dangling from skankypups mouth*

>PC, you would last about 5 minutes here!!!!<

Oh, I dunno! I've gotten kind of lax myself. Used to be that all untidiness was relegated to the insides of drawers and cabinets and closets... but now K and I have found a happy medium of clean and clutter. As long as the clutter's kinda organized...

I can't imagine how hard it is for people with OCD to cope. Especially those with full-time jobs, too! Used to work with a guy who wore sticky notes on his fingers to keep from soiling them. It's mean, but I had to .

We keep the kitchen and bathroom sufficiently clean. I've never been one to make the bed unless company's coming. I moved the orange chair into the bedroom for K to toss his "not clean enough to hang up but not dirty enough to throw in the wash" clothes onto. And I haven't seen the top of the desk in weeks.

Those dips sound lovely! I haven't made hummus in ages. Or baba ghanoush. Been on a guacamole kick. Wish I could be there for the nibbles, though I'd skip the cars. They don't impress me much.

And what a day today was! Yesterday, toward the end of the day, our Controller came to my desk, dropped a pile of property tax returns on it, and said "if you can take care of these, and keep me out of jail, that'd be great!"

I started with 115. I'm down to 23 left. Phew!

One hour and 15 minutes till my shift ends, then it's off home for a glass of and my . And today's high temperature was the same as last Friday's *low* temperature, so it'll be good sleeping weather tonight as well!

"if you can take care of these, and keep me out of jail, that'd be great!"

And the day just gets more surreal... some days it's like I woke up in a Fellini film.

So I went online to pay my Citibank Mastercard. Of course, the site is down, and I'm set up for online payments only. I call customer service, fuming about the fact that now I'm gonna have to pay a service charge for paying by phone. And the guy waives my fee. So then I grumble that my payment's two days late on account of their crappy site being down. So he waives the late fee. Then he tells me the minimum due is $30 more than what I expected (it said $145, but apparently that's last month's balance, not updated. Sigh) and I burst into tears. I pay on three cards and it comes to about $600 a month. It's killing me. So I wail on and on about how I can't keep paying them this much every month, the interest rates are going to kill me. And what does he say? "Oh. Well, then I'll submit a request to lower your interest rate".

WTF?!

If I'd known they could do *that*, I'd have called them moaning three years ago when this whole fiasco started.

Wow, yay!! Give that customer service man a gold star!!

How about it! (And I'm gonna pull the same routine with Visa and see how that pans out. )

P/C!

Well, I would never have thought of it myself... but if it works with one, maybe it'll work with the others as well.

Good news, maybe... someone at work is leaving and I might be able to take over her position when she leaves! Dunno, we'll see... but keep fingers crossed!

Wow. Somebody's having a winning streak eh?

*fingers crids...well crossed after I've typed*

*waves & blows to ff*

Yup. PC went to bed one night a little over a year ago and woke up with a horseshoe in her ass...

*waves to jaz'd*Hello over there!

PC does that cause a limp?

No. But maybe now I know the source of the hemmhroids...

Hey, how's that bunny doing? Do we have a name yet?

I am home alone with loud , , and a very indignant .