2002-08-01

The Firm videos and Trident gum – but I saved some money by buying the super-big-ass jug of Whisk rather than Tide, so it all evened out. Well, I didn’t save $17.99 on the laundry detergent – which is what the videos cost – but every little bit helps. Or somethin’. * * * You know, I hate my fucking mailman more and more each day. I was balancing the checkbook last night (I use Quicken), and found that three checks I’d written at the end of April – three checks I wrote on the same day, and went out in the same batch of mail – hadn’t cleared. I called the bank to double-check and found that none of those check numbers had been through the system in the past six months, and I always place the outgoing mail in my mailbox and put the flag up so that the mailman will take my bills and carefully make sure that they go into the mail system and reach their destination, and the only conclusion I can reach is that he lost all three of those pieces of mail, which just pisses me off. And it’s so unusual that anything pisses me off, isn’t it? * * * The spud’s school had scheduled it so that the parents of kids going into the 8th grade could stop by with registration fees and pick up their schedules last Thursday. Since we were out of town on Thursday, I called the school Friday morning and asked if there would be a make-up registration day. “There sure is,” the woman in the school office told me. “Monday from 9 to 1.” So this morning (remember, I’m writing this on the 29th), I show up at 9:20 and ask the lady in the front office where I can pick up the spud’s schedule. “Oh,” she said. “That’s next Monday, from 9 to 1.” Silly me to assume that “Monday from 9 to 1” would mean the upcoming Monday. * * * Fred had occasion, over the weekend, to visit Staples. I He was doing some self-editing with his baby, and decided that he needed a red pen rather than the black pen he was using. When he got home, he proudly said “Well, there are two more people who know that I’ve written a book!” “Oh really?” I said, surprised. “How did the topic happen to come up?” “Two girls were standing and talking in the pen aisle, stocking while they talked, and I said ‘Can you tell me where I can find a red pen?’, and one of them said ‘Do you mean like a marker?’, and I said ‘No, like the kind you’d use to grade papers’, and they said ‘Oh, are you a teacher?’ -” “Oh!” I interrupted. “So you said ‘No, I’m not a teacher. I’M EDITING MY MANUSCRIPT!” I made the “my manuscript” come out very deep and echo-y. For the rest of the day, I teased him by saying things like “I can’t do the dishes. I’m EDITING MY MANUSCRIPT!” Y’know, I have way too much fun making fun of that man. Heh. Okay, that’s it. I’m outta here, and there’ll be no more entries until sometime next week. Try to live without me!]]>