Author: Allegra

Born when atmospheric carbon was 316 PPM. Settled on MST country since 1997. Parent, grandparent.

Bwa ha ha! Signs that you are working for “My Company”

This is from 11 years ago. How much, how little has changed.

You’re half way through a meeting before you realize you’re in the wrong

one.

You know there is test equipment around, you just don’t know where it is

or who’s using it.

All the available power supplies are broken. (What do we make again?)

You can monopolize three test benches and nobody cares as long as it looks

neat.

When you meet co-workers at the bar on Friday there is always a new face.

The waitress at the golf course knows you better than your co-workers.

You go to a meeting after working at the company for three months and are

jolted out of a pleasant doze when your manager refers to you as “one of

the old hands”.

The temps last longer than the salaried employees.

Nothing makes sense, but it’s consistent.

You are told in a meeting to embrace change, and when you raise your hand

to say you’d rather fuck it doggy style, half the room nods, but nobody

laughs.

Your idea of a good joke is to send a new employee up to “The Dude We Don’t Name who used to be the CEO”  to slap him on the back and call him Mo.

Half the employees can’t make road trips to the States because of what’s

in the ashtrays.  “Better use your car, sir.”

 

At any given time, at least one of the following is down or MIA:

 

1.        The security system

2.        The bathrooms

3.        The coffee machine

4,        The switchboard

5.        The speakerphone in the boardroom

6.        The photocopier

7.        Morale

8.        Air quality

But the network is up all the time…..

 

We already know how much we could be making in the States…. the same as

now, in US dollars.

Nobody knows who’s repping what account, but somehow the orders get

entered.

You’re used to taking customer calls with nailguns going off in the

background.

The one place you can be sure not to run into your boss is the gym.

Following someone into the bathroom to continue a conversation is normal.

Following a member of the opposite sex into the bathroom is still frowned

on.

People don’t talk about cubicles…. they talk about Territorial

Ambitions.

You hate the people who can still laugh at work.

There seems to be a “Most annoying cellphone ringing contest” but nobody

has told the contestants that first prize is having a filing cabinet

tipped over on them.

 

You have 4 stages of employment:

1.        Chipper, but up to the challenge

2.        Deer in the headlights, brink of panic

3.        Full blown hysteria.

4.        Amusement at the people going through the first 3 stages.

 

In Victoria

Jesus iced Christ on a pogo stick, it’s snowing.  Or trying to. We’re here, we’re going to go to Value Village and then Radjuli.  Then tonight we’re off to Brannigan’s for dinner and the trip up Island has been cancelled for reasons of harrumph won’t get into that now.  Katie has interesting friends.

I got into the wrong lineup at the ferry this morning and the car wrangler cheerfully said, ‘I don’t care, please get on the ferry.’

So much for reserved sailings.

MUMMY I love my mother, she found me a copy of Mother’s Day, so it’s on the site now.  Oldest Homily have got.

Happy Birthday to me!

And now a word from our recently retired Comox Valley Animal Control Officer

This is from Craigslist.  It will disappear, so I reproduce it in full, spelling mistakes and all.

 
Hello kids. I’m your friendly neighborhood Animal Control Officer, and I’d like to officially tell you all to bite my butt. Before I ride off into the sunset, however – here are some parting words…

1) To all the jackasses who ask me if I don’t have something better to do than giving them a ticket for no license/dog off leash/being a douchebag. The answer is no. No, I have nothing better than to take my precious time and taxpayer dollars to write you a COMPLETELY LAME ticket for not doing what was your responsibility to do in the first place. I love nothing more than babysitting grown adults who seem incapable of wiping their own butt without law enforcement present. Thanks, dirtbags.

2) To all the jackasses who ask me why I’m not rounding up all the killer pitbulls. Where…WHERE!? Where are all the killer pitbulls that are roaming the streets and attacking your women and children. My god, the city should just issue you all SHOTGUNS to fend off these land sharks. In other news, THERE IS NO VICIOUS PITBULL EPIDEMIC. Let’s all hold hands and say it together folks, the only epidemic is misinformation, ignorance and animal neglect. Thanks, please drive through to the second window and receive a punch in the face.

3) To all the jackasses who refuse to spay/neuter, or who think they’re “breeders” because they put fido and fifi together and produced a litter of mongrels who will all likely end up in a barrel behind the shelter by the time they reach sexual maturity: Die. Diediediediedie. I wish to god that there was a mandatory spay/neuter law and that the penalty for breaking it was to be forced to spend a day working in the euthanasia room. Seriously. It’s simple fucking math, people. Every dog or cat you carelessly add into this world takes away a home for a dog or cat that is already here. So breeding means killing…so have a good day, executioners! I hope the 50 bucks you made off that puppy sure feels good.

4) There is no goddamn thing as “No Kill”. I hate to burst your collective bubble, but when you call and ask if our shelter is “no kill”, don’t treat me like a kitten murderer when I tell you NO. There are simply not enough resources or homes available to find every pet a home and that is NOT MY FAULT. Quite simply, there is no “dog whisperer” in the world who can save your eight year old Rottweiler that spent his entire life chained to a tree in your backyard. Sorry, buster – but this one’s on you. And the places that claim to be “No Kill”? They simply send the unplaceable pets across the street to Animal Control who do the killing for them. WAKE UP. Until mandatory spay/neuter becomes law, killing is going to happen.

5)You know what’s fun? Being told that I must “really hate dogs” because I’m an Animal Control Officer. Yessir. I put up with retards like you, the abysmally low pay, and this fabulously flattering uniform just so I can take all my bitterness out on your dog. That’s also why I foster animals, paying for their care out of my own pocket and using up my precious little free time to do it. Yeah, that’s it. Now how’s about you shut your mouth and put a leash on your dog you hineyhole, so I don’t have to peel him off the street later.

6) LEASHES, PEOPLE. They’re not just for the “bad dogs”. Quite frankly, dogs are carnivores – predators, if you will. When they see something furry and running fast, like a squirrel or a cat – they tend to chase after it. Next thing you know, I’m scooping up Scooby with a plastic bag…not fun. Or, how about the person who does not in fact, like dogs and has to be accosted by your poochie when they walk down the street? Or, what about the dog aggressive dog being walked safely and in control on a leash until your unleashed dog comes up and just wants to say “hi”? Dog fights are pretty ugly, and NO ONE seems to anticipate them until it’s too late. So don’t piss and moan when I give you a verbal warning for having your dog off leash…because that leads me to:

7) Your mouth will write you a ticket. Oh yeah, no kidding. I hate writing tickets. They’re a pain in the butt. I have to deal with your melt down, then I have to go back to the office and write a report about it. Next, I have to show up in court because you want to contest the ticket, even though 60% of the time YOU NEVER SHOW UP YOU CHICKENSHIT BASTARDS. So, the deal is this – if you’re nice and not eggregiously breaking the law, I’m probably just going to warn you and then go about my day. As soon as you break out the lip however, I’m breaking out the ticket book. Press hard, there’s four copies.

In conclusion. I quit! Actually, you dipshits broke me a while back and it’s been months of therapy before I could write this little missive. I still shudder when I see a pair of testicles on a dog though, so watch out.

Memory lapses

so… I wrote a song called “mythical” back in the happy days of yore when I was still living at the Augur Inn.  I got the chorus but nothing else.  Then sometime in the last year or two (I have no idea when, because I made changes to the file and thus overwrote the original save date) I a) put the Seagull in a DADGAd tuning, invented four verses for it, recorded it, and then promptly forgot about it.  I listened to it yesterday for the first time since I recorded it with a horrified feeling.  I had NO recollection of doing it.  None.  Zip, Nada, nussingness, nullity, a lack, a void, an absence and a big goose egg packed with missing.

To make life even more jolly, I had no notes about the bizarre open tuning chords I used to back the song up, so I spent a very chastened hour last night trying to figure out a) WHICH open tuning it was (Paul was very instrumental in solving that problem) and b) what the hell the chords were.  I then went to my song list and found out there were HALF A DOZEN songs I hadn’t put on the list.  My plan for the folks’ place when I go visit is to try to get some order pounded into this chaos, and perhaps write a few more tunes down.  I can’t say ‘It’s gotten away on me” because THAT would imply that I, you know, had some control over whatever you may call my proclivity for writing stuff.

sheeshkabobbers.

Put gas in the car (Ziva was down to fumes), Katie cut my hair, there’s more beer in the fridge.

I joined Lumosity.  I am so frightened of losing my mind I’m doing paid exercises for my brain now.  It’s loads of fun and I have a (Howard’s mother’s voice:) KEWPON FOR IT.  If anybody wants to sign up, hint hint.

I am a terrible mother

Fortunately Keith has forgiven me.  I am a lucky, lucky woman.  And yes, Jeff warned me not to do what I did that made me a terrible mother.

Katie was snoozing on the downstairs couch early this morning.  I moved into the guest bedroom with the computer so I wouldn’t disturb her and Katie came in and snuggled.  I don’t care how old I get, the day I don’t want to crawl into bed with my kids and snuggle at least once in a while is a day I really start dying in earnest.

Jeff has offered to take me to brekkie (with Katie) and I am in favour of this notion.

I should buy beer and get a haircut today, I mean besides going to church.

Growing up in the future

When I grew up, I was raised by people who became atheists as teenagers, as a product of their own thought processes.  The religious people they associated with were circumspect and candid, always a fine balance to strike in matters of personal opinion, with respect to their religions.  Most of the elders of my tribe stated their beliefs without thinking they were going to get disassembled and reassembled as a wall trophy, and without any visible conviction or expectation that any of the rest of us would hear them out on the subject of the transubstantiation.  As an example.  There are many kinds of crazy my father warned me about explicitly.

I didn’t grow up in a world of crazy.  I grew up in a world of endlessly cool stuff.  Our family friends like Ron and Leo also brought mountains of cool into our lives with shared wilderness and canoeing, and ceilingward fountains of fascinating books on every conceivable scientific and botanical and cosmological subject.  My parents were the unGoth Addams Family, two madly in love kids, kids of their own in tow, growing scary plants and having eerie pets and allowing the discharge of air pistols in the house on special occasions.  SF, Horror and Fantasy, and Military History were part of the visual, verbal and written environment.  We watched 16mm sound films in the basement. Charlie Chaplin was silent and WC Fields was not… just hearing an old style projector fire up is a sound that immediately puts me in a happy place.

And there was always the latest tech pOp could get on his budget.  That’s what I meant by growing up in the future.

Feeling somewhat better

My knee – which was so bad I couldn’t bend it to go down stairs – is now much improved.

I am loving having Katie live with us, mostly because I know it’s temporary, and mostly because I forget how much fun she is to have around.  She’s still decompressing from being squeezed into the D-space, and figuring out who she is after spending so much time defining herself against something that didn’t meet her needs and values.  It’s a hard process and an important one.

Muffin fell asleep in Jeff’s (empty) laundry hamper.  What a cat.

Eddie still expects me to have infinitely extensible arms when I am petting him.  What a cat.

Keith came over for dins last night.  We had a major season 3 Breaking Bad Fest, and finished up with the new Lost Girl, which triggered me to compose a song about Selkies.

Happy Diwalloween!

I am in full regalia including the Foncy Hat.  And, of course, got dragged into a meeting where I can only thank a merciful providence that the new Customer Service Overlords couldn’t see me in my “vampire slaying outfit”. 

For the first time in 30 years I won’t be handing out candy or stickers this year.  I’m okay with that.  Maybe I’ll feel like it next year.

I am off from 11th to 21st November… whatevva shall I DO????  I suppose a visit to my parents is in order.  I am too gravely in debt from the last trip to go anywhere.  Maybe I’ll just book a spa day for me and Katie and call it happy birthday.