Month: November 2006 (Page 3 of 3)

I’m not kidding. This week has three weeks crammed into it. Maybe even four.

Just to illustrate how I’ve lost control over my basic motor skills & rational thought: I’ve agreed to go back to Crate & Barrel. On Saturday. Around noon. Shoot me in the face right now. Perhaps I should take a vicodin or something before we go.

My take on MO politics: Everyone’s an ass-fucker. Everyone’s cheated the cancer patients, worked for Penthouse, lied, slung mud, and is in favor of rape and pedophilia. Maybe even legalization of meth. The commercials are why I’m now exclusively watching all programming via the DVR, so I can skip the mayhem. Just another few days…..

If you work in collections, you might want to start reading another blog. If I have to deal with these Pizza Hut mo-fo’s again next week, someone’s losing the battle, and I can guarantee you, it won’t be me. This has evoked the same emotional, primal reaction on the same scale as when I battled the ocean. I will not go under, folks. If I do, I’m taking the entire PH corporation with me. Get your Big New Yorker this weekend, just to be safe.

(Great. Now I’m on a fucking watch list. More problems. I feel like a persecuted rapper. P Diddy, I feel your pain.)

The good news is that most of the Lizard Ridge has been blocked, and I’m shooting to get it all done this weekend. If all goes as planned, I’ll fall over in shock and awe, and maybe I won’t get up until the election’s over, and my fraud charges have been cleared up….. and the parking lot at Crate & Barrel has emptied…..

Ahhhh, dearest Kristin. You know me so well.

See, I thought I was in the creme de la creme. The Shopping Elite. The Who’s Who of Crate & Barrel’s mailing list. Instead, I was shopper drone #812, and when we got to the private event, there were no parking spaces left. No valet, just a bow-tied woman telling us to park across the street. After thirty minutes of sitting in line to park. Hey? Concept? Tell us BEFORE we’re stuck in a no-way-out line of cars. And women should just not wear bow ties. Unless they’re getting married in a civil ceremony, to each other. Otherwise, please. Don’t do it.

Folks, have you ever been to 119th & Roe? This is not crossing a cobblestoned street. This is crossing 6 lanes of haywire traffic, and we picked a less-congested parking lot, and appparently? The one with fucked up sidewalks and uneven terrain. So already, we were not off to a good start. I immediately backed off purchasing anything that weighed more than -oh – a can of soup. We apologized under our breath as we traipsed through the still-fresh landscaping, and I felt the distinct sinking feeling as I trod on fresh sod. Just helping those roots take hold, that’s us!

Inside? A fucking madhouse. A zoo. A gigantic cocktail party, where more people were drinking and noshing and Thurston Howelling with each other than actually shopping. Note to C&B: Y’all need to have a Driven! The Jennifer Shopping Event, and only true shoppers can come. We’ll stop and have drinks when we’re waiting in line for our purchases to be rung up. There were far more people preoccupied with brie and white wine and standing around and waiting for the sun to start orbiting them, than people who were actually cognizant of the fact they were in a STORE that someone else might want to look at something on the shelf behind them.

I could go on and on. Let me hit some of the high notes: I was pawed by a woman who admired my velvet jacket; we got free coasters when we left; the policeman at the corner did not want to chat and he started to be a crossing guard for us when the light changed, but abandoned us after one lane. Hey! So we went over to Dean & Deluca. Where we met the most charming young man who peddled me three different kinds of black licorice (because HE believes in giving out samples!) and he’s a dancer, in a very-intensive training program (5 hours a day) and we had an extremely long conversation about licorice, Christopher Elbow chocolates, and the state of downtown Kansas City. Really, I’m not a difficult person, or shopper. I can make friends with the best of them. (Helps if they’re gay.)

It was on the way to Dean & Deluca that I learned Kristin had told her husband we wouldn’t be out late, because I was going to get angry with the crowds. I find it interesting that other people know what to expect from me more than I even do from myself, sometimes. It’s good to be known, I think. James thought it was HILARIOUS and also, Not Surprised.

I, on the other hand, am going to plot a “sick day” or something and go in the morning when Crate & Barrel opens, a few weeks from now, and preferably mid-week, and I’ll see then if there’s anything I simply must have. Until then, I have a lot of black licorice to tide me over, and some photo coasters to fill. And, apparently, some angry eyes to put away…..

Do you like how I’m putting the time on my blog posts to the future? I feel powerful doing it. It’s like I’m blogging – when I’m asleep! Tricky, tricky! But if I don’t do it, I’ll forget the gems of the day.

Let’s see. I have random things to assemble and throw, like grapefruit. Here goes:

Operation Halloween was a grand success. We learned from last year. In that some kids (and grown-ups with grocery sacks) come to your door without a costume on, and ask for candy. Rather than be ass clowns, and mean ones at that, and since these folk are often intermingled with perfectly classy costumed children, the Wo and I devised a plan: Two Sets of Candy. No diving in and grabbing, we hand it out. (We lost some volume last year to grabbers.)

Courtesy of our loverly CostCo, and the coupon, we had a box of absolutely fabulous full-sized candy offerings: M&Ms, Snickers, Skittles, Starburst and other Mars Products. Also courtesy of loverly CostCo, we had a box of Sour Gummi Belts, 100 per box, $2.97 a box. We even tried them, to make sure we weren’t being Totally Evil Ass Clowns. (They’re definitely more a kid food, we decided. But loads of sugar, nonetheless.) So when the kiddoes came a-knockin’, if you were in costume – and let me interrupt myself to say, there is nothing cuter than a baby in a bumblebee outfit. NOTHING. Except a walking toddler in a bumblebee outfit who won’t stop thanking you for her candy. That was the highlight of my night, right above the noises the dogs were making in their abject disgruntlement over not being allowed to charge the door and bark their heads off. Eating numerous squares of a Rosati’s pizza came right after that highlight, if anyone’s keeping score. Oh, yes, I interrupted myself. If you were in costume, you got an awesome full-sized Mars candy item. If you were in street clothes, or say, someone in their mid-50s with no obvious small child in even proximity to yourself, you got Sour Belts. I informed a nice couple at CostCo this was our plan, as I watched them debate over how much candy to buy. I’m just sayin’, we’ve gotten a little lax as a society, and just hoofing your ass around without a costume does not mean you deserve a big-ass Snickers. It’s Jen Justice, and for the most part, it works.

Let’s see. While I was battling people all day as if I were starring in my own version of Star Wars, taking on countless Storm Troopers of Evil Credit and Bad Doings, I saw what has to be the most challenging, exemplary customer service situation I think I’ve ever seen before in a restaurant. Kristin and I dined at McAlister’s for lunch, and we sat near two old biddies who were sharing a sandwich. They called the manager over, and motioning to another sandwich plate, with a big-ass sandwich sitting on it, and informed him they had no idea the sandwiches were so large, so they were splitting the one, and could he take care of the other sandwich they’d bought. He first offered to give them a to-go box. They said that they would do that only if they HAD to, but they’d much prefer him to just give them a refund and take the sandwich away.

And that’s exactly what he did. He had a choice, to make them take the sandwich (that they TOTALLY should have taken), and potentially never have them come back in, or to give them their $7, throw the sandwich away, and not have two selfish old ladies leave, never to return & possibly bad-mouth his restaurant. He gave them cash back and they ate their split sandwich and Kristin and I marvelled at the entire thing. I need to remember to call & commend him, because honestly, given the day I’d been having? I might have shoved their heads in a pitcher of sweet tea and told them to bob for their fucking dentures.

Oh, and I totally tried to pick a fight with the Bunn Automatic people, because the coffee carafe we have dribbles everywhere, and they (surprisingly, and wonderfully) responded to my email with a “Hey, call us, we will send you a new one free of charge”, and since it had been two weeks, and I was spending half my day tearing up the phone lines and ripping into people, I called them & they apologized profusely that at the time there was a backorder, and they were checking daily for the carafes to come in and I was on the list and it would be turned around as soon as possible.

I swear. Customer service. It just soothes the angry beast.

Oh, and our pumpkin-carving competition submission at work was completely subversive. We showed a pumpkin asleep, with a (my) letter opener jabbed in the side of its head, with ketchup blood falling down onto our weekly status (think: TPS Reports and Office Space). And to think, they were going to carve a bat with the company logo. Oh and no, we didn’t win the competition. But we won in our HEARTS! Let me just say that a pumpkin throwing up is NOT original. Not that I’m competitive. But with our theme we didn’t stand a chance.

Yeah, so I came home & took off the first round of blocked strips:

(Polly checked out the first set and gave it the A-Ok to unpin)

And then I pinned out the next round:

The third set of strips are “waiting in the wings” on the end there. It’s just astounding how much the color definition grows once they’re blocked.

It’s freaking gorgeous. When it’s all sewn up, I will fall over in astonishment at the combined beauty.

That is all. It was a full day.