prev
archive
next
I wonder how 7*up got its name?
Make 7
up yours
High: I didn't get eaten alive in a muckety-muck meeting like I was fearing.
Low: I have to go to school tonight, when I would MUCH rather be sitting at home watching TV with Marie and Calvin.
Finding out if my package is still in Hartford, CT.
I just heard Calvin come in the door.
Nuthin. But I plan to download more songs real soon, regardless of what that preachy guy on the Grammy Awards said.
There was drama.
Storyteller
Bio
Dramatis Personnae
Who I Read
Recipes
March 4, 2002
Morning or Mourning?
Those doves that you either love or hate depending on how crazy they drive you - are they "mourning" doves because they sound so mournful, or are they "morning" doves because they coo in the morning? Really, they coo whenever it's twilight - either in the morning or the evening. So which one is right?
For the sake of this entry, I shall call them Morning Doves.
I'm of the camp that loves them. They remind me immediately of home when I hear their call. It's a sleepy sound, accompanying the dusky light and dusky mindset of morning. When I heard them for the first time in Arizona, I was surprised. I remember exclaiming, "Oh, good! They have morning doves in Arizona!" My ex was not so thrilled - he's of the opposing camp of dove-haters. Bet you're shocked to hear that.
I hear them when I wake up in the morning, through our open windows (in March. you wish you lived here). I delayed getting up on Sunday morning just so I could listen to them, snuggled up next to Calvin (I was, not the doves). "whoo-WHOO... whooo. who whoo".
I have a newfound respect for those guys that write the phonetics of bird calls in bird books. What I can hear clearly in my head I find difficult to represent in letters.
The woodpeckers of the neighborhood do NOT thrill me, however. Calvin calls them "metalpeckers", which fact I believe I've mentioned before. We've got one (at least, I think it's one) that flies around the neighborhood from metal chimney to metal chimney, spending about five minutes at each house before moving on to annoy the occupants of the next. It's annoyingly LOUD in the house when he's landed on ours - the pecking on the metal chimney reverberates among the tile and ensures that we WAKE UP. RIGHT NOW. NO LAYING ABOUT IN BED *THIS* WEEKEND, NO SIR!
And then there are the suicide sparrows that live in the eves of our garage. Every spring we get attacked by kamikaze chicks tumbling from their nests and splatting on the driveway. Eeee--eeee--eeeeewwwwwww!!!! All buggy eyes and bulbous heads and featherless skin...
Okay. That's enough of that imagery.
I talked to my uncle earlier in the week, and he's sent out the box o' nostalgia that I mentioned in an earlier entry. It's got my mother's Hummel figurines, and my ribbons from horse competitions, and some other things that my uncle says his girlfriend stuck in to surprise me. I'm tracking it via Fed Ex's website (love the internet! love it to little bits!), and it appears to be stuck in Hartford, CT. What a place to be stuck in (sorry, any Hartford readers). What annoys the crap outta me, though, is that places like Fed Ex, and credit card companies, and banks, etc. assume that people can get by without talking to a human being.
"Have a question? Well, we've thought of these dozen questions that our automated system can answer, and how could you possibly have a question that doesn't relate to any of them? Why don't you try option 2. No? How about option 3? No again? Well, surely option 4 can help you!"
So I'm muttering, "How about "Press 1 to speak to an ACTUAL REAL LIFE HUMAN BEING"? Seriously, I went through the entire menu of options (all eight of them) and not once was I offered the option of speaking to a "Customer Service Representative". I tried pressing "0". It said "Thank you for calling Fed Ex." And then it hung up on me. As if to say, "Sorry. You pushed the wrong button. Your telephone will self-destruct in 10... 9... 8..."
All I can do is sit there and take it. They have all the power, and they know it. They've got my box. I want it, I have to play by the rules.
Which apparently means being here at home between 10:00 am and 8:00 pm tomorrow, for when they decide they feel like delivering it. Heaven forfend I'm not here to sign for it. It'll get lost in the black hole that is the Fed Ex Depot Station. An hour and a half from here.
It'll be worth the hassle. They'd just better not break anything in that box, or I'll take it out of their asses. Yes, I will.