Poll Time!
So, it's been about a year (or maybe longer?) since I've run a poll, but now I have a poll (ends Monday, 11:30 am, CST) that actually may have a prize attached:
As you may have figured out, I'm stuck in a one-sided carpool that sucks. Nobody else from works wants to be in my shoes, so whenever I switch hours with people, I'm told not to tell my carpool (excuse me, call her Mooch) until the last possible attempt.
Even after I pass along the news that I can't drive her, she usually doesn't quite figure it out because she's just that absentminded. For example, I requested off on April 7 (a Friday - hooray long weekend). I had the day off approved on Monday, and for the rest of the week, I was doing happy dances at the thought of having a long weekend. EVERYONE knew that I had off on Friday. Somehow, this news escaped Mooch, and on Thursday night (I shit you not), she's like "Lauren! You have off tomorrow???" I was like, "where have you been all week??????" So yeah, she doesn't always pick up on things right away...
So I'm not going to be able to drive her on Monday because I'm not going in until 11:30 (instead of my normal starting time of 10:00). I informed her of this yesterday after work "Mooch, I'm switching with Nicole* because Fred is out of town and Nicole doesn't want to not come home from work until 8:30 because of her kids."
So my poll, is "Will Mooch call me on Monday morning when I don't show up to pick her up??"
A. Yes
B. No

If you answered yes, what time do you think she'll call me? I usually pick her up between 9:15 and 9:20.
A. 8:30
B. 9:00
C. 9:15
D. 9:20
E. 9:25
F. 9:30
G. 9:40
H. Other - please specify

She calls at one of the aforementioned times, will she then...
A. Call work and tell them she'll be late, asking me to pick her up before I leave
B. Call in sick.
C. Tell me I never told her I was switching hours!
D. Frantically try and find a ride
(can pick more than one of those options)

Poll closes Monday morning, 10:00 CST!!
*names have been changed
- posted by L. @ 10:43 PM

 
I can call you Betty, and Betty when you call me, you can call me Al!
So, Mill Creek (a local watering hole on College Ave) has this wonderful thing called "80s Night" every Wednesday. Having put off my 80s night debut for the last couple weeks (though last week I had a good excuse - free tickets to a comedy club), I finally made my 80s night debut with Courtney, Katie, Mary (aka Shoutsy) and Erin. Shoutsy decided to bypass the parachute pants this time, but it was still a good time. See, the freaking coolest thing about 80s night is that it's not even just about the songs....it's also about the freaking huge TVs that they have playing the videos! How freaking cool is that????
Anyway, I was also introduced to the greatness of the Hotdog Man on College Ave - the Hot Dog man freaking rocks my socks - where else can you get such service for a $1.50?? And the pickles at Jimmy Johns along with day old bread that was, might I add, free because the Jimmy Johns workers are awesome too. 80s night is wonderful!!
Speaking of other wonderful things, the Timber Rattlers are playing again. So there will be minor league baseball fun this summer (which is much cheaper than major league baseball, as well as closer and not as much of a mess with parking, though it will be sad to not see Bernie Brewer at games with his slide that should still end in a beer pitcher - whoa, run-on sentence).
Also wonderful things to count down to:
5 days to Cats!
8 working days till the carpool from hell ends!
13 days till Sigur Ros in Milwaukee
15 days till townie fun in Redgranite with Joe & Andy...oh, it doesn't get much better than this. Seriously. :)
Memorial Day is coming up along with a free-three day weekend (no vacation day required), and then Kevin's wedding in June. Yea, things should be fun for the next few weeks.
Now, if only I could get my cat to stop waking me up at 7am...considering I don't get up until 8:30....
Oh yeah, and there may be Cat #2 in the future...but we shall see.
- posted by L. @ 7:16 PM

 
Spoke too soon...
So, after this fucking terrible weekend, I find out that my last post was another outlet of Famous Last Words (boy, those have been MIA for a while).
First off, mooch-girl got a car, but it broke down on Friday morning, so hence, I had to drive her home on Friday night.
Then, I get a phone call tonight saying that she can't drive her car until she gets an occupational license, and god knows when that will be. She says she's going to try and get said license this week, and if that doesn't happen, put her two weeks in at work. Best case scenario: only a few more days of driving her. Not-as-great scenario: Two week notice = only two more weeks of driving her (but that means two more weeks of getting fucked over moneywise). Worst case scenario: She will wait to get occupational license and not put in two week notice.
In the meantime, I, in a futile effort to try and get SOME sort of reimbursement for the last miserable nine weeks of my own life, declare that I need gas money tomorrow for the last three weeks and charge her $40. Not because she owes me $40. By all of my calculations, I figure she owes me at least $52.50. And that is the bare minimum. But if I asked for the full $52.50, I know I wouldn't get it because I know she doesn't have it right now, therefore forcing me to get payments, but I will never get paid past the first payment. And that's not including any days I'll be driving her this week...
And I know I've given this lesson before, but please don't let your car insurance lapse, and if you lose your license, GO GET YOUR FUCKING OCCUPATIONAL AS SOON AS YOU CAN FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! And if for some reason that's not possible, and you DO need to get a ride with someone else, FUCKING PAY THEM! In nine weeks of driving her (and might I add, going OUT OF MY WAY - driving SOUTH to pick her up so I can then drive NORTH to work), I've made a measly $85. Yippee, $9.44 per week. And if by some stroke of luck, I do get the additional $40, that brings it up to $125 for nine weeks, equaling to a whopping $13.88 per week. God, I'm glad I've been lucky enough to participate in a one-sided carpool with the flakiest person on the face of the earth.
- posted by L. @ 7:33 PM

 
FREE!
This definitely merits a post.
I'M FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
But I'm definitely poorer because of this fucking ordeal. Poorer, and there's about 450 more miles on my car because of it.
Lesson to be learned kids: don't lose your license. Don't let your insurance policy lapse. Ever. And if you carpool, make sure to fucking pay your ride.
And that's all I have to say.
- posted by L. @ 7:41 PM

 
State pride, maybe...city pride, not so much...
So the two boys in Milwaukee have been found and it's a sad day because they were found dead, but there is closure in this case. The families know what happened (more or less), and now there is no just wondering what happened and where they are. There are answers.
But I'm disgusted at the other breaking news from last night that kept me up past midnight just watching the news (no tonight show at that point). I'm outraged and saddened. Apparently in Milwaukee, if you're a police officer, you can just go and beat the shit out of someone while off-duty, then have a nationally televised trial where you are declared not guilty. What, did Jude just beat the shit out of himself??
It doesn't matter that those three officers are never going to be MPD officers again (no matter that they're still on the fucking payroll almost a year since getting fired thanks to a stupid law). It matters that this shit can happen, and they can get off declared not guilty.
Yeah, I don't have anything else to say. I'm just blown away that this trial turned out the way it did. Yes, I know that one of the officers still faces another charge, but it's the lesser of the two charges, so big deal. Unbelieveable.
- posted by L. @ 5:40 PM

 
*blinks* whoa...
So it's been forever and a half (don't I start every post out with that?), once again. It's really because there isn't anything good to write about.
Let's see.
What could I write about?
I could write about formal (it was fun).
I could write about the importance of keeping your car insurance policies from lapsing (don't let that happen).
I could write about why semi-truck drivers are jackasses (this is old news!).
Or, I could write about how people are stupid (also old news).
And let's not forget that I think there's a new law out there about how turn signals are option (very infuriating).
I could write about how there's less than a month now until the Sigur Ros concert in Milwaukee (yay!), and hopefully an extended vacation at that point (wednesday, thursday, friday! and then the weekend! and the memorial day weekend soon afterwards).
I could write about a photo study I'd like to do someday about how culture in particular towns freezes (I'd like to take photos about culture in small towns, that would be cool).
Friday night yo! It was so awesome. We had quite the overload of culture in many different varieties. Starting at Nakashima's (Japanese restaurant in Appleton)...habashi, sushi, sake (sp?)...good times. From Nakashima's, the culture went up to Crooked Lake, where Andy, Joe & I went out into the middle of freaking nowhere to the house in Joe's family. From the exploration of the property at 10:30pm, with Joe reminiscing, trying to break into the house (with the old key -guess the locks were changed), and freezing...we then went to the local watering hole in Crooked Lake. Welcome to The Pines...local townie bar that blows any townie bar in Ripon out of the water. Whoa! Totally felt out of place. It was weird. We were the only non-truck in the parking lot (okay, minus two other cars). It was crazyness, but good times. After kicking back a few drinks, we hopped back into the van and headed back to Appleton, where the night was rounded out with the culture of Perkins at 1:30 in the morning. Was it really only in July/August where I thought 1:30 am wasn't late?? Rargh. I definitely didn't wake up until way past 11...but it was good time.
Northern Wisconsin is definitely a culture of it's own...like I said, I'd love to do some sort of anthropological/historical study on the lack of evolution for those towns. Anyway. Life has resumed back to normal.
Next stop - more northern Wisconsin culture....
I can finish off with the fact that my cat is super adorable. :) But you all knew that already.
- posted by L. @ 12:10 AM

 
State Pride?? Maybe...
Today, while at work, my day was somewhat lackluster (as usual for a Friday), so I perused the Journal Sentinel in hopes that maybe I would find something interesting on one of the recent cases that has been seemingly plaguing Milwaukee: the missing boys, the Frank Jude trial, the kid that was beaten to death while waiting for a bus....you know, the usual craptastic Milwaukee crimes that make news headlines.
But alas, there seemed to be little information of interest in any of the aforementioned cases...two arrests in the beating case, people of interest are presenting mixed stories in the trial, and the boys are, alas, still missing.
But loyal blog-fans, to take your mind of the gruesome news stories of Wisconsin's finest (or most scum-bag filled, depending on which way you look at it) cities, I'd like to take the time to point out that Wisconsin, while it has really lost it's claim to fame with being the Dairy State (bite me, California), and Milwaukee has lost it's claim to being the City of Beer (a big fuck you goes out to St. Louis for that one, and it's production of Budweiser)...never fear Wisconsin fans. Out new claim to fame has been established.
That's right.
We are the kings of poisoning rats.
Stop laughing and compose yourself.
Really.
I'm not kidding.
Go ahead, click on the blog title, bringing you to a Journal Sentinel article, confirming what I have just said.
I for one, am proud to be a resident of the state that can claim leadership to the "rodenticide manufacturing capital" of the United States.
I mean, seriously, there will never be another case of the village of Hamlin if Wisconsin keeps up its production of rat-poison (don't know what I'm talking about? Brush up on your folk tales or Peanuts specials). Though rat poison is not nearly as amusing a guy (or beagle) dancing around with a flute/recorder/pan pipe in a funny looking hat with a trail of rats following behind.
But seriously.
I'm not, anyway.
Good thing I don't plan on moving elsewhere in the country for a temporary amount of time anymore. Especially since people totally don't even know where Wisconsin is, they think we talk funny, and are often found making fun of cheeseheads (thank you, Dogma).
But instead of cheeseheads, Packers, or the dairy state (and don't forget frostbite!), we can now be famous for Wisconsin Cheddar Cheese.
Formerly known as rat poison.
So long Dairy State, hello Pied Piper of the Midwest.
- posted by L. @ 12:40 AM