Rant & Rave Thread

Rave: The twin does not have leukemia
Rant: They're not sure whats going on and will get a bone marrow biopsy.

 

Rant: A TIBer who's a close friend and one of my favorite people is quickly losing his mom to cancer - she has made the decision to discontinue curative care. They're waiting on a g tube to be put in and they're moving her to hospice. So I'm asking that you all take a moment and say a prayer (or whatever, if that's not your thing) for peace for our friend, his mom and his family.

 

This is neither a rant or a rave. Maybe it's a ravnt. I dunno. My husband and I are separating. Don't feel like going into the details right now, but it is an amicable split. We'll be selling the house and he'll be moving out of state. Hopefully the house will sell for a nice sum so that I can afford a decent place.

I guess my feelings on this are:
1) I feel sad because this was my second marriage and hoped it would go the distance. It was certainly a much better one than the previous, but still didn't knock it out of the park. I have zero plans to try for #3 because...
2) This is an opportunity to dream of a future of my own making without someone else's wants/needs. I've spent the past 17 years being where someone else needed to be. When my daughter graduates high school in 5 years, well we'll see what happens.

 

Rant/Rave: My five year old Samsung smartphone finally died, I can't believe it lasted that long after the abuse I put it through. I replaced it with a $100 LG model and it is hilarious how much they have advanced since then, although I will miss being able to easily use it one handed- even with huge hands I'm not a fan of what feels like a tablet sized phone. The iPhones are obviously way smaller but I'm not about to spend that much.

Rave: Got ms. katokoch her first legit fishing rod and reel for her birthday last week and she just caught her biggest fish yet with it yet this weekend (a nice tasty northern pike). It was awesome and she is dying to hit the water even more now, a win-win for me.

Rant: Just had my five year anniversary at work and am struggling to feel motivated, you can probably see through my acting at this point. I've been buried with additional work since they recently fired my boss and all the while I'm still stuck in RFP hell (they don't. stop. coming.). Does management here wonder why we have awful turnaround issues in some departments, or do they just not care? My dad would remind me that working harder than expected now means I'll be rewarded more than expected later, something like that, but having that mindset today just makes me cynical because here it means just more early mornings and late evenings for jack shit in return. It could be worse, I mean I'm still getting paid and I have decent job security but it blows to feel a cloud over my head as I'm headed to work in the morning again.

 

RAVE: Mille-feuille. My local garage has an on-site bakery (don't laugh, they do a great trade and there is often a queue waiting), and the mille-feuille is one of the best I have ever had.

Mille-feuille is known to many as the Vanilla Slice, Napoleon or Custard Slice.

 

Rant: Well, I received formal rejections from 2 of the 3 jobs. And to add insult to injury, I had recruiters calling me and asking me if I was interested in trying to get an interview for one of the two that formally rejected me, because they still had an opening(s?).

Rant: I had yet another job interview about a month ago, and the same thing happened: I received a formal rejection a few days after I interviewed, then I had at least two recruiters calling me on that same day or the day after and telling me that that same company needed people and asking me if I was interested. "I'll see if they'll reconsider you." Riiiiight.

Rant: I've scrapped the bottom of the barrel now of almost every company in my area that does work in my field. Fuck, my self-esteem is at an all time low; this is far worse even than being rejected for dates.

Rant: I'm going to have to find the money to go to speech therapy regularly. I know that my speech impediment is the reason why I have been rejected for most, if not all of these jobs.

Rave: I had to go back to work today (yay for having a boss that doesn't believe in formal interview questions!), but I had a very nice and much needed week off from work last week.

 

Rant: On my way to Australia, I somehow managed to have zero jet lag. Between not having a set schedule every day, having a generally tenuous relationship with time as it is, and the trip being SO long that it was kind of easy to just ignore time and be able to believe it was whatever time they told me it was at any given point I adjusted pretty much immediately. Not so much on the way back. I've been home for three days and I'm still completely fucked. I just wasted a lot of my last free day by trying to "nap" at 3 and waking up at 10:30. I'm so anxious for what it's going to be like going back to work tomorrow.

 

Rant: Getting tired of driving my families hand me down cars. There's always something wrong with them because of the age and the fixes are never cheap because thats how cars are. I hate coughing up a few grand every year in car repair bills.

 

Rave: FYF Fest in LA this weekend. Stacked lineup for today -- Grimes into Air into Tame Impala into Hot Chip into Kendrick Lamar. Stoked.

Rant: Worked at 5 AM today, will basically be going to festival straight from work at 2 PM. Then I work at 5 AM tomorrow.

Rave: That said, glad to be back working at the NFL. Took an extra month to get back in because they restructured things and I was starting to run out of money. The Summer of Mark is officially over -- attended nine music festivals during that stretch including six in six weeks. Time to restock that bank account.

 

Rant
Wiped my ass with scrubbing bubbles flushable wipes because we were out of toilet paper in that bathroom and I didn't read the package when I reached for it.

Holy. Fuck.

I once put Nair on my balls and left it on too long. That was a fucking picnic compared to the fire emanating from my asshole. I almost jammed a popsicle up my ass to quell it.

 

Rant: My new apartment complex is full of attractive horny college girls

 

Rave: I fucking love my new job at Enterprise Rent-A-Car. A good interim job during schooling, good pay.

Rave: Talking with people while picking them up or dropping them off is usually pretty great.

Rant: We had a raunchy old alcoholic who had a county prosecutor for a wife and thus was sort of grandfathered into the company. He was weird, depending on who you were, passive-aggressive or just plain angry alcoholic. He finally got fired because he struck one of my co-workers with a fucking broom. Many people formerly employed also came forward and were like, "Yeah, why the fuck is a 67 year old man with a shit-tier back, alcoholism and a penchant for beating the shit out of people verbally or psychically working at a job where he needs to be around customers and other staffers and not kill everyone or go otherwise apeshit?" The funniest thing to me is that apparently he hates his old battleaxe a ton, and would squander his full-time profits there on garage sales and pawn shops. I just don't understand why this could not have been taken care of sooner; like his wife who probably despises him would come in and raise a stink?

 

Rant: My boss is a piece of work.
One of our sales guys comes around the corner to say hello to me and starts off with "Mrs. [One of his products that I get permits for]!"
Boss: "Is that like Mrs. Doubtfire?"
Me: "Uh... Mrs. Doubtfire was a DUDE."
Boss: "Well, not when he was in a dress."
Me: "NOPE. STILL A DUDE."
<awkward silence>

 

Rant: We're at a lake about 120 miles from the east coast. I pulled my boat up to the shore and tied it off, like normal. I come back the next day and the lake level has dropped enough that it is sitting on the ground.

I guess they let some water out in anticipation of this tropical storm coming through on Saturday. Hope it comes back up enough to refloat it. If not, it will be a huge pain in the ass to get it back to deep enough water to take it back to the trailer.

Rant: I'm here volunteering, cleaning up the park, we get to camp for free in exchange for working a few hours a day. People are nasty sumbitches. They throw their trash everywhere. One campsite had used diabetic test strips everywhere. WTF?

 

Rave: Just got back from an amazing trip in Ireland/Northern Ireland with the g/f. We spent a handful of days in Dublin, Galway and Belfast while doing various tours to surrounding areas of those cities. Such a beautiful country with such awesome and friendly people. We also managed to prove that we can be around each other for two weeks straight and not kill each other. Or come too close to it, anyway.

This being my first trip abroad, I think I may have caught the travel bug. We were already partially planning another trip (Poland, possibly) while in Ireland. Here's hoping we can make this an annual (at least) thing.

 

Rave: I got a raise. Woot!

Rave: Gene Wilder marathon! Starting it off with "Willy Wonka..." I think I watched this about a MILLION times when I was a kid.

 

Rave: got my boat refloated this morning, before Hermine comes through. I had to dig a trench about 8 feet long, 1 foot deep, 1.5 feet wide for the rudder an prop to get to deep enough water. Took about three hours.

Rave: My wife's grandfather just offered to sell us some land in a gated lakefront community for less than half of its appraised value. It's a development filled with cabins on wooded lots, not mcmansions with manicurred lawns, so it'll be nice to build us a great little place.