Rants, Rants, and More Rants

I'm annoyed because:

I'm too fat for Agent Gibbs, a.k.a Mark Harmon.
Ditto for Tom Selleck.

You see, if I had a lithe body, even though I am of mature years, I could press it up against these guys and whisper into their ears.  Then their security would drag me off and I'd wake up heavily medicated.

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I'm annoyed because when I went to the supermarket yesterday, hoping to get away with once again not cooking, there were no rotissiere chickens in the case.  A woman standing there with an expectant look on her face said, "There aren't any more chickens -- they said it would be about 20 minutes.  He's wrapping the last one for me."  It was then that I had this mental cartoon-like image of us wrestling each other to the floor in a life or death struggle over the last chicken.  I moved on quietly. Actually, I told her of my brain cartoon and she only looked around for help for a short time.

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I'm annoyed because it has been raining for two days and everyone here is so happy that it's not snow that they don't even notice that it is dank, DANK, I say.  Bah humbug.

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I'm annoyed because even though the crockpot chicken in marinara sauce came out wonderful and was yummy with pasta for lunch, now I have to figure out something for supper.

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I'm annoyed because I have been called a racist.  Again.  No, I didn't do anything.  We have had a kid or two scrawling racist graffitti (aimed at a black teacher) in the bathrooms of the high school.  Said teacher told the School Committee that the schools and whole Town are inherently, institutionally, racist.  Don't I have to be some kind of participant in the offense to be branded?

Since the incidents (see: Larry Kelley's blog Only in the Republic of Amherst), there have been meetings galore and now the schools are going to have anti-racist programs.  There are two separate groups using rooms at the Library holding meetings to try to combat this racism.  (Why two different groups -- in addition to the NAACP-- I wonder?)

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Finally, I am annoyed and really angry that my petition for an upgrade has been denied.  Again.  Somewhere around 1995, with the other boss, we asked to have my position upgraded.  They just re-did my job description, adding more duties.

Two years ago, my then new boss supported an upgrade of two steps (with documentation).  It was denied.

 About 8 months ago, we asked again, with more documentation of increased responsibility and duties.  I was put in with the professionals' job review (even though I am not on a professional level).  They asked what I do and we told them.  The human resource consultant thought an upgrade would be a slam dunk when she spoke with my boss and me.  What happened? Town of Amherst Human Resources said no upgrade and they added the extra duties to my job description with no added compensation.  I again looked at the job descriptions of those positions two grades above me -- they have fewer responsibilities and fewer tasks.  And, to top it all off -- I cannot 'work to rule' because they added all of those extra duties to my current job descriptions.

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O.k., I'm done griping.  I just had chocolate molten cake and it's yummy.  Who knew that a mix I bought about two years ago could be so good?  My daughters love to go spelunking in my food cupboard and throw out expired things.  Ha! I'm going to eat them before those kids go nuts.

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It dawned on me that since I found Stephen Wright's blog, I haven't written here.  I feel inadequate next to his writing.  However, I would not want to go national the way he does -- boy, does he get criticism!! All of the crazies love to glom onto him.  I like being the only crazy here just fine, thank you.

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I love the Upworthy posts on FaceBook -- even if they do make me think.  But today's post by Stephen Fry (the actor) about Humanism explained a lot to me.  He's basically an atheist and he was saying even though there is no divine plan (in his opinion), we can all make ourselves happy by just living life to the fullest.  It was such a simple and straightforward explanation that I now know why on Baptist minister preached a whole sermon about the evils of Humanism.  Because Humanists go one step further than, "We don't need no steenking priests," right on to, "We don't need no God."

I know you're not supposed to discuss religion and politics at work, but I thought it was o.k. with good friends at home.  Yesterday I observed that I thought a woman who is going through a terrible family problem is probably going through these trials due to her bad karma resulting from years of being downright nasty.  My friend said to me, 'You were raised Catholic -- how can you believe in karma?'  I didn't have an adequate answer then, but I was thinking, 'What about the do unto others thing?'  What about the concept of hell if you don't behave?

I know bad things happen to good people and that makes the above nonsense.  But I really feel there's a germ of truth in there.

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So, the other day, I had to register several people at work for a conference in Worcester.  The conference administrator needed a tally of who wanted chicken or vegetarian for lunch.  So I was getting emails such as: chicken, chicken, rubber chicken, chicken, and CHICKEN!  <--- Actually that was a colored cartoon about 6 inches high of a yellow chicken with red accents.  It was clip art that my boss had sent to be funny.  And it is that -- funny.  I laughed out loud.  So I did a copy and paste so I could print out the chicken and put him on my bulletin board.

My work computer is weird.  (Now wait a minute, there's a point to this. I have not gone totally soft yet.)  If I do a control C (copy) and then do a control V (paste), it works fine.  The next time I highlight something else and copy and paste, I get the first thing all over again.  (Every time.)

So after printing out the chicken, I was copying a form letter to thank a donor and pasted it onto letterhead. And I got CHICKEN!  Sigh.

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Well, it's time to think about supper. I usually eat it with 60 Minutes (7 p.m.).  Do you think they would notice at the supermarket that I'm still wearing jammies when I go look for a rotissiere chicken?