An Irish Wish…
Posted on March 17, 2007 - Filed Under Birthdays, Deep thoughts, Humor, Just For Fun, WTF?, ab fab costumes, acts of valor, adventure, beautiful photos, brain farts, classics, funny bone, laughs, satire, saturdays, voices in my head
And in the meantime, check out some of these Irish dance moves.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/USMKJUr8SaA]
Happy St. Paddy’s Day everybody! 
WC
We Interupt Our Normal Programming to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY BILLIE!
Posted on March 6, 2007 - Filed Under Birthdays, Humor, acts of valor, adventure, american idol, cool cats, fangirly, favorites, friends, funny bone, good wishes, kindred, my opinions, tay-tay, voices in my head
Hey, I don’t care - it’s my blog and really if I can’t use the worldwide web to wish a good friend happy birthday then what good is it?
Billie I love ya and want you to have a great birthday. You are and always will be my first real Taylor Hicks buddy. We shared a very special obsession and truly without you it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun as it was.
I wish to hell that someday we will go see TayTay together in concert and complete the making of total fools of ourselves in utter splendor and abandon - cuz honey if I’m a gonna do that - then you’re the one who I want to do that with.
I thank you for your cheer, your caring, your humor and even your bitching. Love ya doll. Happy Birthday!!
Hugs & Kisses,
Annie
PS: We all pitched in and got you a stripper.
You like?
Renaissance Man
Posted on January 9, 2007 - Filed Under Birthdays, Deep thoughts, Family, Heroes, I'm in awe, Life, Writers, acts of valor, adventure, amazing, good wishes, honor, kindred, that's class, tribute, wishes, writing
(I originally wrote this post last summer while guest blogging for the subject of the post. In honor of his birthday, I repost it here. Happy birthday, Michael - you’re one in a million. Annie)
He’s a writer. He plays a mean piano - by ear no less - hard on the head but easy on the hands from what I hear. He’s a dad. He’s a husband. And to me, a friend. What you would call a real friend.
It’s funny, though we’ve never met face to face and honestly I’m not sure what it would be like if we did, we have fostered a friendship over the last 4-5 years that is rare. We go beyond friendship, almost all the way to family.
He’s shared with me about the tragic illnesses of both of his parents. I’ve told him about my brother who died of AIDS. I know all about his beautiful daughters and how special each of them are to him. About how his wife is one in a million. About his cute little cats. And his big silver truck. He knows about my love-hate relationship with cigarettes. My sloppy, anal room-mate. My hilarious dog.
We met at an online writer’s group, of all places. It was one of those places that wanna-be writers flock to and need-to-write-to-live writers approach with caution. What the heck, it was free and you also got to meet other writers. What’s not to love?
We swapped crits (critiques) on each other’s assignments. Culminating into a ‘story’ at the end of the course. His was the “Goodbye House” mine was “Faith.” From the beginning I admired the work and the man. Always taking the time to really say something, really give you his honest opinion. You could tell this guy had a lot of heart.
Well, our stint at the online group didn’t last long. We both realized in our own ways that truly we were engaging in Writer’s Socialism. Struggling to help the writers who couldn’t and barely having time for the writers who could. We both like to think we were among the latter.
But our friendship didn’t end there. After there were emails. More story swapping. Talking about anything and everything. Yakking on the phone about this and that. Really, somehow this guy became the brother I lost so many years ago. Somebody who I could talk to about anything and everything. Somebody who really cared about what I had to say.
I was amazed by his life and how he took everything in stride. Juggling parents that needed constant supervision, a family, a marriage, a job, doing music gigs on the side and somehow still finding the time to write. For cripes sake he wrote on the train into work.
Not long ago, we got into this wild marathon email where we starting discussing deeply writing - the ins and outs - where to publish - how to publish, the whole ball of wax. And it got positively addictive. It got to the point where we were each jonesing for the next response. We even had discussions about posting it on his blog. But realized that only a lunatic or a psychic would be able to follow it. It’s done us both good. And I hope it continues to do us both good. Keep us inspired and motivated.
Recently, he went on vacation and asked me to babysit his blog. Frankly, I was a little scared. I’d read his blog and hell I’ve read his writing. A little intimidating to say the least. I was sure his ‘readers’ wouldn’t like my style. That it would be a shock to the system to go from warm, gentle Renassaince Man to whacky, who the hell knows what’s firing those synapses Writer Chick. But…I like a challenge and try to force myself to do things that scare me.
So, I’ve struggled along this last week. Trying hard to entertain the troops in his absence. I hope I have done him justice. Cuz he’s a helluva guy and a true Renassaince Man is a modern world gone (almost ) mad.
Writer Chick
What a Life
Posted on November 28, 2006 - Filed Under Birthdays, Humor, Just For Fun, Life, Rants/Opinions, WTF?, acts of idiocy, adventure, dasterdly deeds, double yoiks, drama queen, head exploding, in my head, laughs, little rants, rat bastards, really stupid shit, temporary insanity, voices in my head
You know, I have this talent for pulling in the most annoying people on the planet. I’m not sure if it’s that I’m bored and need fodder for this blog and other writing endeavors or if I have royaly crappy luck.
And usually this talent manifests itself at work. I’ll give you three examples:
First there was know-it-all-Nora. We needed an admin assistant - a nice name really for a gopher. Somebody to do all the stupid crap that nobody else wants to do. Get my drift? So we decided to hire the daughter of a friend of mine. Though I hadn’t seen her in many years she seemed to have matured quite a bit and I was happy to give her a job. Within about 48 hours it started to become a problem.
I would ask her to write a letter. A no brainer activity since we have templates we use for various types of letters to clients and prospects. You simply plug in the name and the job into the template, print it out - print an envelope and you’re done. Well Nora didn’t like that at all. No, she felt that a different font was in order and that for some reason we needed to print the postal bar code on the envelope. And then there was the wording which she felt she could truly improve upon. No matter how many times I told her that the owner wanted things the way they were and wanted the letters done as I showed her she would not relent.
Out of frustration, I let it slide. I just rewrote the letters when she wasn’t around. I asked her to update the database. Call past clients and verify addresses, make any changes and let me know her progress on a weekly basis. Instead I discovered she was simply calling people and having nice long chats with them. The database was never done and I ended up having to verify everything she’d reported as done.
It got unbearable when she started issuing orders to me. Now, you don’t really know me but if you’ve read this blog for any length of time you probably know I wouldn’t take kindly to this sort of thing. The fit hit the shan as they say - and after lots of stupid touchy feely, let’s just all get along crap from the owners, they finally saw the light and gave Nora the boot. After a couple of weeks my jaw unclamped and harmony returned to the universe.
A few months later, our bookeeper who is a heck of a gal had a death in the family and was quite understandably overwhelmed by the loss. She gave her notice and left. We scrambled but managed to find another bookeeper who had all the markings of a damn fine replacement. Well that illusion lasted about two weeks.
One of the owners started coming to me and showing me the many emails Sylvania was sending him. She was advising him to fire employees who had worked for them for years (literally), insisting they had to join a businessmen’s association or she could no longer work for them, taking it upon herself to compose marketing letters and campaigns and basically refusing to have anything to do with the books and the keeping thereof.
She was so intimidating that the owners were scared of her and kept at me to do something with her. I of course recommended firing her, which they just couldn’t do. No they, being the bastions of bravery that they are preferred people to fire themselves. Yes, that’s the ticket. If you just let them stay on and wreak havoc with your business until they are as miserable as they have made everyone else then they will finally just leave.
I must admit, that in a way it sort of worked. Suddenly she was cutting back her hours and confiding in me that the owners were crazy. I had to agree with her but for reasons she was unaware of, like the fact that they were still signing her paychecks for example.
Suddenly the other job she managed to land wasn’t as rosey as she thought it would be and voila she increased her hours again.
She had all manner of advice for me. What I should be doing, who I should be marketing to, how I should be handling the employees and the owners and what we would have to do to put the place in order. Not to mention the fact that she had the resident carpenter in a rage over completely manufactured maniacal intent on the part of the owners.
Little did she know that the previous bookeeper was a neighbor of mine and she and I had had several talks. And I was quietly working on getting her to come back to work.
Well, finally the bosses had had enough of her when she sent them over 10 emails on the same thing. They begged me to tell them how to handle these incessant emails (now mind you, her office was but 25 steps from theirs and an email was completely unnecessary) and I told them to go and talk to her about them in person. But they were afraid.
I’ll admit Sylvania from Transylvania was creepy and had that kind of smile that made you wonder if she carried a big knife behind her back - but the two of them could have taken her.
Finally I told them that the previous bookeeper was interested in coming back to work for them. Overjoyed, they told her that they were laying her off. They volunteered to write a letter of recommendation - but she left so fast they had hardly started to compose it. With good reason, we later discovered - as she had messed up the sales tax - tax report, hadn’t recorded the income properly, had all the files mixed up (which took weeks for our returned bookeeper to sort out) and apparently had no idea to use Quick Books. How we managed to avoid bouncing checks and screwing everything up completely during her tenure, I’ll never know.
Now to our current jerk in residence. Rodney the genius. Now Rodney is a crackerjack craftsman and that’s good since that is what he was hired to do. He makes amazing models and props and works efficiently and ably. All good, right?
Not so much. Apparently Rodney has too damn much time on his hands because he is constantly making ’suggestions’ as to what marketing should be done, how we should handle clients, and the ways in which we can drum up some business. Did I mention this is a guy who makes props and sculptures and so forth? And that he wasn’t hired to do anything administrative whatsoever? I mean I don’t know when he does all that prop making since he is constantly in my face about who, what, where and why. And he absolutely must interupt the morning meeting to ask questions that could surely wait.
But today took the cake - literally. It happened to be one of the owners birthday. I’ve worked for these guys for 2 1/2 years and we’ve become friends to say the least. I decided that I would do a little something for him and made brownies and got birthday hats, noisemakers, etc. - all silly stuff - just to make him feel good, you know? No big deal.
I let everyone know and at the prescribed time we all gathered. Well silly other boss got some very quick burning candles and they started to melt all over the brownies -so we stepped up the singing. And I told birthday boss to blow out the candles. But old Rodney screamed “No! We have to sing right first.” So they like the goofy bots that they are did. And of course the brownies were covered with wax.
Which I have to say really pissed me off. I mean, who the hell is he? This was my party, I made it, literally, I paid for it - he had no place to open his big yap about anything except to stuff some brownies in it.
You may think I’m being petty and maybe I am - but this shit really pisses me off. I mean what is it about my stupid-ass job that has people lusting after it? Surely it isn’t the fame. Definitely not the pay and from the looks of things, not the respect. So WTF is it? Do they know something I don’t know? Am I about to win the fricking lotto? Am I about to become the most famous lucky person on the planet? Is my measly, insignificant job so fricking appealing that they are staying up nights trying to think of ways to take it from me by using their exemplary intellectual and strategic skills? Or are there just a lot of pathetically insecure people who think that the grass is greener?
I’ll tell you what though…if Rodney or anybody else pulls this crap again, I’m handing them my clipboard and phone and going after their fricking job. If I screw it up, so what? They didn’t want it anyway in the first place right?
WC
Happy Birthday Pinky!
Posted on November 21, 2006 - Filed Under Birthdays, Family, Food, Just For Fun, Life, dining experience, i'm hungry, perfect evenings, time to eat!
I saw Zelda for dinner the other night and she informed me my presence was requested for Pinky’s big day - his 39th birthday (well not really 39 but after a while you find an age you like and settle there).
The gang was going to be there. The gang being me, Zelda, Margarita (who makes killer magaritas), PG, Chief (a king among chefs), Skip (Margarita’s significant other and a killer griller) and The Kid ( Pinky’s son at least in spirit). While we hang with other friends as well, we seem to be the core group. The main herd. The alpha majors and minors.
So, it’s Sunday afternoon and I’m thinking some cheese and crackers a little sparkling water, possibly margaritas because Margarita can’t not make them and a cute little cake. Then home we go.
So we all arrive on time (a historical happening to be sure) which flustered Margarita and grabbed the cocktail parphenalia. Cheese and crackers appeared, sparkling water appeared, much hustle and bustle went on in the kitchen. And though we all offered to help we ended up sitting around the livingroom, munching crackers and chewing the fat.
We talked about PG’s dad, politics and the future plans for the ‘christmas movie’ (now a tradition) that we would be participating in for Zelda’s mom. (That’s a whole other post.)
Soon enough the incredible scent of amazing food began to waft through the air. Skip and Margarita’s beagles started a sniff fest and we humans did a poor imitation of same. Next thing we knew we were seated at the art deco table on the patio and eyeing steaks the size of Omaha.
We oohed and ahed and Skip beamed. Margarita excitedly explained about a couple of wines they’d discovered and they were good.
We ate and ate and then we ate some more. Thick steaks, grilled to perfection, secretly amazing string beans with herbs, grilled potatoes that melted in your mouth…it was poetry in motion.
As most of us were screaming uncle and pushing our plates aside (with ample scraps for the beagles) The Kid was scarfing up to beat the band. I’m not sure but there may not have even been a bone left on the plate. He passed on the green beans but went crazy on the potatoes and steak and I think I even saw him eyeing Chief’s steak since there was plenty left and a doggie bag in his future.
Then the conversation modules began. Zelda started talking about the nifty new back-fixing equipment she had bought. Stretching and squeezing and traction things. Ultra sound, no sound, nice sound - it was all greek to me.
Pinky, happy with a full belly took a nap with his eyes open. Yes, Pinky does have that special talent. You see, we rib him about napping at all our soires so now he can do it sitting upright with his eyes open. No lie. The Kid just kept eating and eating and eating.
Birthday cake, ice cream and espresso magically appeared, seeming to appear out of nowhere. Perfect. More oohs and ahs.
At my end of the table, me, PG and Chief talked blogging, writing, politics, conspiracy theories, movies and masterpieces. Now, I suppose this is probably boring you by now because nothing really remarkable happened nor did any major catastrophe befall us. It was just a bunch of friends eating really good food, celebrating the birthday of a friend, having really good conversation.
I can’t remember the last time I had such a good time and such good talk. It was fun, interesting and entertaining. I learned a lot of things I didn’t know about my friends and it was just one of those precious times when everything and everyone jelled. Truly a kind of magic moment among friends. A truly satisfying get together that makes you thankful for having such people in your life and having a life that includes them.
Since it was a school night, the evening ended all too soon. And before I knew it, I was back in Zelda’s big fricking truck (she calls him Chomp) being the ‘bobble’ passenger and we were headed home.
It was the best day I’ve had in recent memory - not for any particularly earth shattering reason - but for the simple pleasure of spending an evening with friends.
I would wish that everyone would have such evenings in their lives. Where the worry and trouble of the world doesn’t interfere, where the day to day grind never enters your mind and where you go home whistling.
WC
