The Venting Thread

[drbrt]

Self,

Before you get the brilliant idea to just buy lenses for your iPhone to save the bulk of a camera on safari, double check with the tour guide that iPhones are allowed on game drives. The time to find out about this fact was not when you arrived at base camp.

[bioteacher]

Spousal unit, 19 year old progeny, 15 year old progeny:
WTF?

I staggered out of bed at O Dark Thirty and put raw beast into the crock pot. I added the necessary ingredients to make one of your favorite dishes. ALL you had to do was make rice. That's it. You were home all day, aside from some errands. THREE people at home, all of them perfectly capable and actually experienced in the absurdly difficult task of making a pot of rice.

Spousal unit just came inside from taking out the trash and said, "I just noticed the crock pot on the counter."

SERIOUSLY? Are you all congested to the point of no sense of smell? Can you not SEE that device taking up most of the limited working space we have in our small kitchen? Returning from said errands should have ensured you hit a wall of goodness when you opened the front door and realized dinner was in progress.

I am tempted to take all of the leftovers to work tomorrow to hide in the work fridge. I got three fracking hours of sleep and am not a happy camper right now. 

... stomps off to check the rice. (Biokids are at Magic the Gathering game night, so they are out of range of my wrath for the moment. My displeasure was already made clear to them, however. )

[ergative]

I sent in my tax forms, properly filled out and signed and everything. IRS just sent them backing, saying that we need an ''original signature''. Dude, that was an original signature! Just because I didn't bother printing the forms in color doesn't mean the whole thing was a photocopy! I'm tempted to sign the replacement copy with bright pink or something, just to make a point.

[paultuttle]

A cricket in the attic woke me at 5:00 a.m. today.

I could swear . . .




[continuing with the sentence <grin>]



. . . that it moved around while we went looking for it.

Enough that if we were in the front room, it sounded as though it was about 60 feet long and on the porch, and if we then walked to the back bedroom, it sounded as though it was the same size and sitting on our cars (our parking spots are just behind our back bedroom).

Zreep zreep! Zreep zreep! Of course, it echoed throughout the house. (Why do such small things make so much noise??)

I'm hoping the high temps in our attic over the next few days will (ahem!) solve the noise problem.

[Parasaurolophus]

Whelp. It's confirmed: that "full-time" job is, in fact, sessional work. And not even very much of it, in the end.

At least I didn't turn anything down for it. Back to the alt-ac drawing board, then. Sigh.

[mamselle]

Ouch. Sorry that has happened.

M.

[Scout]

My spouse is traveling so I'm on my own. Our elderly dog, who is developing dementia and symptoms of sundowning, did not sleep all last night. This was after an extremely long day of opening week activities. Woke up exhausted, fed the animals, walked the dog. Went to leave for a morning meeting.

Our new house has a door to the garage that you can open from the inside, but it's still really locked. I went to my car and realized I forgot my purse. Of course the door was locked. We have a back 4 season room with an unlocked screen door. Hoping that I had forgotten to lock the door from the porch to the house, I headed there. No good. That was locked.

I have done this so many times, but managed to to luck out (a spare key was in the garage, the backdoor was open etc).

Not today.

Waited an hour for a locksmith.

Missed my morning meeting. And now that everyone's back, coming in at 9:30 means that parking is grind.

Went to print something very important I need this morning and the printer is dead.

Off to Title IX training. Whee.

[mamselle]

Well--maybe the only thing to say is that you hope you've had all the bad news you had to look forward to in one fell swoop....??

Or maybe not...just so as not to be seeming to put a Pollyanna touch on things...

-=-=-=-=

My vent/wish I could say/can't figure out what else to say that I haven't already said...:

This conference you want to do STILL doesn't have a room, or a set agenda, or the backing of the people you said were going to back it, OR the backing of the group we represent...and we do NOT have the funds to assist with it as we you had promised.

We need to BACK OUT now....not keep going.

Some people just can't seem to tell the difference between heroism and stupidity, and I'm getting tired of being the canary in the mine pointing out that we've hit the "stupid" side of the dial....

M.

[downer]

Someone asks for a book to be sent to them but does not give their address.
I ask for the address and they give it.
I arrange for the book to be sent.
I tell the person I have arranged for the book to be sent.
They write back saying that they won't be there for 3 months.

I refrain from writing back "are you fucking serious?"

[LibbyG]

Dear president, provost, and dean,

Please accept my warm invitation for coffee so that you three can get acquainted. Apparently you don't know each other. Why else, in the last two years, would ALL THREE OF YOU add all-but-mandatory re-education professional development sessions, each one four-six hours long, in the week before classes start?

Don't get me wrong. I love, with the heat of a thousand suns, those exercises that reveal to me with rapturous revelation what kind of leader I am. I'll laugh, I'll cry, I'll never be the same. And those table-by-table summaries of break-out discussion! I must stop talking about it, lest I audibly groan with pleasure.

But, y'know, maybe I should be at my desk instead? Fielding calls from students needing last-minute scheduling changes and, I dunno, prepping my own classes?

[Cheerful]

LibbyG, that is truly Hall of Fame worthy!  Just added.

So eloquent, so true.

Thank you and congrats on your entry into the Hall of Fame.

[mamselle]

I was thinking the same thing!

M.

[wareagle]

Dear president, provost, and dean,

Please accept my warm invitation for coffee so that you three can get acquainted. Apparently you don't know each other. Why else, in the last two years, would ALL THREE OF YOU add all-but-mandatory re-education professional development sessions, each one four-six hours long, in the week before classes start?

Don't get me wrong. I love, with the heat of a thousand suns, those exercises that reveal to me with rapturous revelation what kind of leader I am. I'll laugh, I'll cry, I'll never be the same. And those table-by-table summaries of break-out discussion! I must stop talking about it, lest I audibly groan with pleasure.

But, y'know, maybe I should be at my desk instead? Fielding calls from students needing last-minute scheduling changes and, I dunno, prepping my own classes?

There's a McSweeney piece in there somewhere.

[LibbyG]

LibbyG, that is truly Hall of Fame worthy!  Just added.

So eloquent, so true.

Thank you and congrats on your entry into the Hall of Fame.

Aw, thanks! My years of lurking have paid off. And this one only costs me 14 hours of professional development!

[Parasaurolophus]

The univesity email is broken, which makes it hard to do some of the things I set out to do (and actually felt like doing). Sigh.