I, too, have encountered Dan Wineman’s experience with restaurant websites.
I’ve always just assumed it’s because they didn’t want to pay for a real web designer, and instead enlisted the owner’s son’s friend who just finished a course in web design and is eager to show off his Flash skills.
Yesterday the Director was sniffling and coughing and lethargic. This morning when I went to wake him for school, I wasn’t surprised when he said he was sick.
Now, in our household we have a rule about missing school: if you’re too sick to go to school, you’re too sick to play on the computer. This rule is to prevent a kid with a case of don’t-wanna-go’s from staying home just so he can spend the day playing video games. Sick kids must spend the day quietly resting.
A little after ten, Alpha Geek called down the hall to me, “Would you help me get this kid off the computer? He’s just giving me dirty looks.”
“He’s on the computer?” I called back. “He must be feeling better. I can still take him to school, there’s several hours left.”
By the time I got there, he was shutting down the computer, with much heavy sighing and glowering in my direction.
Yep, I’m a horrible parent.
A few months ago, I got crowns on two of my molars.
They’d been aching pretty regularly up to then. For a while, no more hurty teeth. Yay!
Lately, the one on the left has started aching again. I’m going to have to go in and have the dentist check it out.
Dammit. If they tell me I need a root canal, I may tell them to just yank the fucker and be done with it.
Director: I wish our TV could do vertical and horizontal polarization so it could show Avatar in 3D.
Me: That will probably be the next big thing. Right now 3D is their way of getting people back into theatres.
Director: What will they do to get us into the theatre when we have 3D on our televisions?
Me: I guess they’ll have to perfect Smell-O-Vision.
Director: Oh, God.
I’ve seen this ad a few times, it’s for some toilet bowl cleaner or other. (I’m sure the marketing guys would just flop over dead to hear that I honestly don’t remember what brand.)
Among its other virtues, the ad proclaims that it cleans “invisible stains.”
Every time, I find myself thinking, “If it’s invisible, it’s not a stain. Visibility is part of the definition of a stain.”
Yes, I’m sure it’s cleaning things that are not visible. But those things are not stains.
Sheesh.
Yesterday I went and had an ultrasound. At my preliminary walkaround and tire-kicking, the doc observed that my thyroid seemed a bit large and my gall bladder a bit tender. So she wanted ultrasounds to check those out. And as long as they were looking, they also had a peer at my liver, kidneys, spleen, and who knows what else.
Getting an ultrasound when not pregnant is an entirely different thing from getting one while pregnant. When they’re just looking at the baby, they just glide the ultrasound sensor over your big, round belly. You’re well-insulated from the thing, and what they want to look at is protruding so much they can easily get the sensor at any angle they like.
Getting an ultrasound of your own internal organs is a little more… intimate. They press down quite firmly. They have you breathe deeply and hold your breath, to shift your organs down below your ribs where they can get at them. They dig in to try and get a better angle on the things.
Funny, before my first trip to the doctor I was barely aware I had a gall bladder, or a spleen. Now I know where they are and what they do.
The gall bladder is fine, but the spleen apparently looked questionable in some way that I didn’t quite understand when the nurse called me with the results while I was still half-awake. Something about it was probably caused by an infection and is likely nothing to worry about, but they want to have a CTI done.
And this morning I finally got the blood drawn for my ALCAT screening. Four vials. The nurse was very good at it, I barely felt the needle, but I still get squicked at the draining sensation of having a lot of blood drawn.
Now I have a two-week wait for those results. I hate waiting.
A number of years ago, I started getting sick after we had pizza.
No one else in the family got sick. Just me. Several hours after eating I would experience horrible gut cramps. Generally I would spend the rest of the evening on the toilet, praying for death.
Needless to say, for a while I stopped eating pizza.
One night I made myself some garlic-butter shrimp. Several hours later, I had the same reaction I had from the pizza.
Putting two and two together, I deduced I was having a reaction to the garlic.
That sucked. I love garlic.
I went to a doctor and had them do a blood test. They tested me for allergies to garlic, dairy, and wheat.
Nada.
Must have been a coincidence. I celebrated by having some garlic bread.
My digestive tract attempted to turn itself inside out. I resumed my self-imposed garlic boycott.
One afternoon Alpha Geek suggested lunch at Firehouse Subs.
“We can go get you something, but I can’t eat there any more,” I replied. “The last few times I’ve eaten their subs I’ve gotten really sick afterwards. I guess it’s too much meat, or something.”
Later, after he’d started on his sub, Alpha Geek remarked, “No wonder you got sick. This meat is drenched in garlic.”
Dammit. I love Firehouse Subs.
A year or so ago, I was having lunch with my friend Romilly, and mentioned my blood test.
“I don’t care what that blood test said,” I concluded, “I’m allergic to garlic.”
“You might have a food sensitivity, rather than a food allergy,” mused Romilly, who has food allergies and is painfully familiar with the topic. “That’s an entirely different test.”
Well, shit. The damn doctor never mentioned that.
Romilly offered the name of her own doctor, who had done a more comprehensive workup and found all her allergies. Unfortunately the tests involved are prohibitively expensive, and the doctor in question does not take insurance—she doesn’t want her treatment to be restricted by what an insurance company decides she should be allowed to do. Our insurance would probably reimburse us, but first there was the matter of having the money to start with.
So (nearing the end of my rambling little tale), we agreed to use our tax refund to cover the cost of this expensive testing and find out once and for all what my gut is reacting to. Is it just the garlic? Is it actually something else, and the garlic is just making it worse?
I’ve already been in for a preliminary walkaround and tire-kicking, but I had to put off the followup while I was working all day at the post office in another city. But tomorrow I’ll be going in for the full monty. They’re doing something called an ALCAT blood test. I sincerely hope within a week to know for sure what I can and cannot eat.
Yesterday was our last day counting mail for the post office. I’m sure the carriers were all glad it was done; although we did our best not to slow them down, we couldn’t help but disrupt their routine and get in the way at least a little bit. But it had to be done, and they were glad we could help get it done as smoothly as possible.
Friday morning we came in to find a couple of tables set up near the break room, with cake and chips and little sandwiches and other goodies. Our supervisor said it was for us, in appreciation for coming and helping get the count done. So throughout the morning everyone would cruise by and grab a sandwich or a donut to snack on.
Around a quarter to eleven we had basically counted everything, and were just waiting around to make sure there were no last-minute express packages or something that had to be counted on the way out. My lady with the busiest route came over to let me know she had two certified mail pieces. As I noted them on her count sheet, she laid an envelope next to me and said, “This is for you.”
It was a thank-you card, and a gift card to a local grocery store. Wasn’t that nice of her? I guess she appreciated my efforts to make sure her mail got counted first, since she came in early and had so much of it.
I won’t miss counting mail, but all the people there were great to work with.
Yesterday was my last day of the temp job at the post office. No more getting up before five for me!
All those early mornings took their toll—not to mention being on my feet five or six hours at a time every day. Yesterday I went to have a nap around three o’clock, and didn’t get up again until eight this morning.
At the end of last week, I caught a cold.
Two days later, my period started.
No surprise. I’ve never been remotely regular (except when I was on birth control), but for the majority of my adult life if I catch a cold, I’ll usually catch it right before my period. That just seems to be the time when my immune system is looking the other way.
Just one more way my period tries to makes me miserable.
Four days left on the post office job. I’m glad to have a job, and I’ll be glad when the job is done. Counting gets old after a while. And getting up at five in the fucking morning gets even older.
AND… this morning I got up at four in the fucking morning, because Mondays are absolutely brutal and the supervisor asked us if we could come in an hour early. What I said was, “Okay,” but what I thought was, There’s earlier than this?
Seriously, at that hour of the morning the only other people on the road are the police, the drunks, and the big rigs. And I passed some of each on my way to work.
Mondays are rough because, although the post office is closed on Sundays, the mail keeps coming anyway. So Monday morning there’s almost twice as much mail as usual. One of the carriers speculated on what this would look like if the post office closes on Saturdays as well, which is once more being considered.
It’s a more tiring job than you’d think. We don’t sit in a quiet office counting; we stand at makeshift stations around the sorting room, dragging over bins loaded with magazines and flyers and catalogs. We have to get there before the carriers do, because the carriers can’t start sorting the mail until we’ve counted it. After the first couple of days I had learned which of my carriers has the most mail on her route—and she arrives an hour before anyone else to start sorting it—and I make sure to get the bulk of hers done by seven so she’ll have something to work on.
There are big machines sorting mail on one side of the room (it’s more like a big open hangar than a room), and it provides a noisy backdrop for most of the morning: the roaring of the engines, the clatter of the trays, the strident beeping when one gets jammed up and wants attention. There are regular crashes and thuds as heavy bins full of paper get dropped on the floor. There’s the clang and rattle of the metal carts on concrete. There’s the radio in back playing the local pop station.
Around 10:30 or so (later on Mondays, when there’s more mail), the machines go quiet. After that the counting is pretty much over; we gather up a few stragglers that got kicked out of the machine sort, or were thrown to the wrong route (that’s the term they use, “Who threw this?” as in, “Who put this piece of mail in my box?”). We count up the parcels, which is another kind of exercise because they get counted differently if they have special treatment like delivery confirmation, insurance, and whatnot.
Finally the carriers report the mail they had to “mark up,” for whatever reason (no such address, no mailbox, whatever). Often the supervisor sends me home before all my carriers have done so, because after the bulk of the carriers have left the supervisors can easily handle the remainder.
In the afternoons, one of us will remain to count the mail the carriers picked up while they were out. We take turns with that one. It’s considerably easier, as the carriers tend to come back one or two at a time, and there’s not nearly as much coming back as there was going out.
So that’s what it’s like to count mail for the post office. It’s not that hard, and the carriers can usually answer any questions about what category something should be counted as. This is one of those jobs that’s tailor-made for a temp—it’s great to do for the short term, but I wouldn’t want to make a career of it.
I only have a two-week job, but I managed to get a cold before it was halfway over.
The spouse and one of the kids have been sick, but I don’t think I got it from them—they were pretty well on the mend by the time I caught it. I suspect I picked it up from a co-worker; half the people around me seem to be sniffling, coughing, and/or sneezing.
So I have to drag my sick, pitiful ass out of bed at five in the fucking morning. Because if I don’t show up for work it would be really hard on everyone else who has to pick up the slack in my absence.
Thank $DEITY for Dayquil.
Today my first paycheck came in the mail! (I need to get my direct deposit set up, stat.) Not a lot, just for the hours I spent training for this job. Still, it’s great to be getting a paycheck again.
For the record: counting mail is boring. It’s one of those jobs that is monotonous and mind-numbingly dull, yet requires your full attention. The count must be accurate because it affects the carriers’ salaries. You also have to categorize things correctly, because some are worth more (pay-wise).
Most days we get all the mail counted and leave before noon. They do need one person to stay until the carriers return from their routes, and count the mail they picked up. We’re rotating days so we all get a couple each week; I drew Saturday and Tuesday for my long days. Saturday was an eleven-hour shift. I haven’t been on my feet that long since my waitressing days.
It’s not a job I’d want to do all the time, but as a temporary thing it’s tolerable. At least I get to work in the back and don’t have to deal with customers. Locker room gossip informs me they’ve recently reduced the number of clerks out front, and the ones remaining are swamped.
