Naughty, naughty mOm

She’s gone off to the wilds, the wilds I say, of Saskatchewan (although whether she’s off to be a Saskatchewan River Pirate remains to be seen) and in the time she’s been gone she’s neither phoned, nor emailed, nor in any matter indicated that she’s still in the land of the living.  pOp and I attribute this to a number of possibilities….

She forgot her own telephone number.  Hey, it happens.

She’s being held in an undisclosed location so that a bunch of well-meaning rellies can convert her to Christianity.  Hint.  Good luck, Chuck!  That’s one die hard mother of an atheist ya got there.

She’s just damned busy and has no internet access.

She’s killed her travelling companion in an attempt to get a little peace and quiet and is working on a suitable body disposal method.  Ontie Mary rocks the free world with her memory and her sense of humour, but the Energizer Bunny hides in terror from her mouth.  I say this as someone who occasionally makes with the pressured speech herself.  Okay, that is the polite way of describing it… I’m a motormouth, are you happy now?

She figures we’re all bloody grownups and we’ll hear about her travels soon enough.

Jeff is continuing to spit blood and yard trimmings over the computer he’s doing up for mOm (it’s not that bad, but it IS a Windows machine).

I had total flow with customer interactions on the phone today.  No nasties, all pleasant and/or funny and/or appreciative of me taking the time to answer the questions properly.  After the weekend, and that SIX count em SIX escalation calls day last week, I figured I deserved it.  I even threatened to kiss one guy when he said, point blank, “So is this marketing speak or what?” about one of the single most pernicious uh, LIES, LIES okay… did I make that clear enough??? that the Marketing wonks ever passed off on an increasingly weary and skeptical public, and I said, “Yup, that’s what it are; a more reasonable expectation of the product’s behaviour, life expectancy and usefulness to your application is….x”. And he thanked me.  He thanked me a lot.  Okay I just remembered, I got off the phone after one call and said “I tremble for my country when I reflect that we have Newfies,” and SalmonMan snickered over in his IT corner.  But the Newfie wasn’t evil, he was just not clear on the concept of a warranty period.

Mike has been phoning me and taunting me to convert my options and sell out.  I’m lazy, I’ll wait for the deal to close.  He lectures me about opportunity costs, blah blah blah.  This time he phoned from Wreck Beach, the bastard; I could practically smell the suntan oil and stray whiffs of reefer and there’s me on my way home from work thinking I should have just taken a mental health day and gone with him.  I’ll get him, dagnabit.  He keeps leaving massage oil here, maybe I’ll grease up the kitchen floor without telling him.

I just found out who one of my lurkers is, via email.  He says he loves my blog.  Hint… he loves musicals.  All the best people do, you know.  It’s a canonical law, in my universe.  Why I even had a dream one time, recounted in this blog, that included a giant insectoid alien singing in a musical.  He was having a gas pretending to be a railroad man in a musical set in the nineteen thirties. Johnny Depp was in it, too.  Can’t go wrong with a twist like that.
It was really weird having garlic bread tonight and nobody to share it with.

kids over

It was lovely to see the kids; we lazed around and ate takeout and watched CSI reruns and Scent of Green Papaya (Keith was bored).  It doesn’t sound too exciting but frankly I was still recovering from my day in the sun.  Jeff should be back either today or Friday. I miss him ferociously, and the cats do too; Eddie did the CUTEST thing I have ever seen a cat do.  When Jeff phoned day before yesterday, on a lark I held the phone up to him so he could hear daddy’s voice and his ears immediately perked up, he looked straight at the speaker on the phone, and then he started rubbing up against the receiver, all in less time than it takes to describe it.

For reasons best known to god and my volunteering spirit I will be orgalizing an X-1 company reunion. In otherwords, the company I joined when I moved to Vancouver, which morphed into the company I am now working for.  I am now racking my brains for a venue… there could be upwards of 100 people, if we crack open the invite list to spouses.  I’ve got to figure on a date, too.  I know we could do it in a restaurant but I would prefer a quieter venue.