The Halloween party rocked. It happened before the move, on October 28. We rolled all night, we felt the love, I wore PVC and bindis. It was good. The pix are analog, so be patient for the development/scanning to happen.

The moving of Nicholas sucked. He has too much stuff. But all that’s done now, so it’s really not an issue. I’ve managed to whittle down the number of boxes in my floor to a reasonable amount and I like the way the furniture and lighting has worked out. Anybody know a grandfather clock repairer?

Last Saturday, November 11th, was my birthday. It was fabulous, thanks to my 2 favourite people in the world: Andy and Nicholas. They got me a kick ass, original tattoo (complete documentary in the photo gallery) to commemorate my age and to mark this turning point in my life. 2000 has been a big year for everyone, I know, but I really feel that it’s been a significant change for me. Hell, I’ve gotten by fairly well as a contractor, I’ve made Andy a friend and Nicholas a fiancé, I am a certain age that demands attention. It reduces to the karmic number 8 – and I really do feel the karmic energy of what I’m doing. It’s all very exciting and I alternate between being thrilled and scared shitless. I’m mostly thrilled. Mostly.

Now for what you all love to read: my list of current offenders. Let’s see, it’s a long one this time, so I think I’ll just go chronologically.

1) Mercury retrogrades suck. This one was particularly heinous and I’m damn glad it’s finally over. It was 3 weeks of HELL. It wrecked the election, too, I’ve noticed.

2) U Haul sucks. They are stupid, inefficient, technological morons and they have equally inept employees to further their assault on Customers everywhere. The idiots took my money, yet I got no truck. Monday came, and U Haul could not process my order that was placed 6 days earlier and they could not get me a truck. I’ve still gotten NO refund and I still get stupid, insolent employees when I call about getting my money back. Oh, I will get the money. Yes, complaints were filed with them and the BBB. U Haul are buttlickers. Ryder, on the other hand, ROCKS. They had a truck for me and I picked it up within the hour.

3) Nick has too much stuff. Having to rent the truck an extra day and having to rent a second storage bin sucks.

4) Customers who drag out payments suck. I hate to wait.

5) Being way older than you look can be very cool. But it can suck to have this much experience when your friends don’t. Like Yoda I feel.

6) Birthdays are beginning to suck. This one was waaaaaaay cool thanks to my favourite humans, but I can see where hating birthdays can be a real thing. I must remember that this number reduces to the karmic number 8. Use this power I must.

7) It sucks when people who are supposedly your friends FORGET your fucking birthday. Geez, people, a freaking e-card wouldn’t kill ya, would it? You know who you are.

8) It sucks when you have to give up on a person you’ve tried to be friends with for 2 years. It’s the age thing again. She is too young and too self involved to even give a shit whether or not she burns bridges. Hell, I can’t condemn her for it — I was impetuous when I was twenty-freaking-three. Gotta let it go, though. She is brilliant and lovely and sharp like a broken bottle in shallow water. Maybe in another life or maybe later on in this one. But not now.

9) And finally, that goddamned Artist Way class. It has commenced its previous suckage with a vengeance. I’m not going any more. I really like the book and I enjoy the tasks and stuff, but the classes themselves SUCK ASS. It’s simply AA for artists. This one chick has decided that the class is all about her “process” and I’ve had enough. I’ll tell ya what her “process” is: it’s attending goddamned Meetings every single night and having no life other than wallowing in her own self pity. Ugh. I’m more than a little peeved at the leader of the class as well, who advised me to attend Al-Anon Meetings because I’m trying to find out how to support my fiance’s efforts to unblock himself. She (and obviously the Meeting addict) think that the whole fucking world should attend Meetings!! That is soooo offensive to me! She has no idea how offended I really am. Heh, guess she will now. :-)

I happen to feel that Meetings only help 1% of the 1% of the population that actually go to them. All the rest of the habitual attenders are just substituting talking about their addiction for the actual addiction. And I think that is sad. I’m of the opinion that wallowing in your problems is not a way to get out of them. I think you’ve got to suck it up and get off yer goddamned ass and do the work to dig yourself out of whatever pit you’ve fallen into. No therapist or group wallow will do the work for you. Ever. Heh, but that’s just my opinion. And that’s how it worked for me. My 3 years of therapy didn’t really do that much — it’s the work after the therapy that got me on the right track. I think unless one is truly mentally ill (as in: medicated by Doctors and/or committed) neuroses are self inflicted and self cured. We are a country of neurotic, self involved crybabies who adore whining. Why else would trashy talk shows be so highly rated?

Well. That sure felt good. I’ve had about enough hanky twisting for a while. I’m happy to have the burden of that class off my shoulders. I hope Nick understands and I hope he can still get something out of it. After all, I’m having to do a website in exchange for the class and I’d hate to have to do all that for nothing. He is not as offended by the whole AA atmosphere as I am, anyway, so I’m sure he’ll finish.

Oh, and let’s not forget: it’s ALL about ME now. By God, I’m 35 years old and I am hitting my stride. The rest of you can kiss my karmic number 8 ass. You think it’s bad now, just give me a few more years. :->

EAT MY DUST.

Here it is, October 27th. I’ve not blogged in more than 3 weeks! Gads! That should tell you something about my life at the moment! I know, you’re thinking “yeah, you have absolutely nothing to say!”, but NO, that’s not it at all. I do have quite a lot to say, actually and you’ll wish I’d kept you up to date when I’m done blabbing.

The creativity class (The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron) has sucked most of the blog energy from me, I hate to say. What with all the fragging writing and painting and Sculpey clay and glitter glue, who has time to do such things as keep one’s online journal up to date?? Oh, and let’s not forget that Nicholas is moving in this weekend and Andy is not moving out as planned, so that has made my stress levels just a TAD HIGH. As a matter of fact, I came dangerously close to totally freaking out and breaking stuff just the other day. Luckily, my cohort in crime Darbi took me into her home and we drank beer with some friends until I didn’t really give a rat’s ass about Andy or Nick or how all this is gonna work out. Thanks to Darbi for the support!

Hmm, as for others in my life, I’ve had my head so far up my ass, it’s been difficult to keep up with anyone other than me. I suppose Michelle is OK, I’ve not heard anything from her and she has had cryptic stuff in her blog, so I don’t have any idea how she is. I sent Don an email and he didn’t respond, either. I wrote Jana an email pointing out her shortcomings and haven’t heard back, so I suppose she has gone her dour and mopey way. I had to cut her loose because she absolutely must stop being the perpetual victim. It is draining to have friends like that. I did it in a very nice-but-honest way and she responded exactly as I knew she would. I’m sorry for that, but it had to be done. Dani and Allen have been around a bit and I’m glad for that. They are a lot of fun to party with! Speaking of parties, the big Jody Halloween Party is tomorrow night! WooHoo! The theme is sex and goth. Can you say Hot Wax Booth? Or Whipping Booth? Mwhuhahahaha! I’m gonna be in Mistress heaven! The Mistress will be very happy to have a night out – she’s been needing a to hear the smack of leather on ASS all week!! >:->

Quote from last time: “It’s all women except for Nick and about half of them are pretty fucked up. Lots of eating disorders and self esteem issues. I don’t really care for the class itself,…” Well, my darlings, I want to amend this entry right now! Last week’s class was quite a shocker! The one chick who I thought was the worst off of the bunch has turned out to be a real spitfire underneath all that angst! She has told her husband to get the hell out and totally changed her attitude. This other chick with whom I felt a lot of camaraderie has decided to stop being a corporate lawyer for companies such as WalMart that use sweatshop labour for their Low Prices Every Day. She is even moving back home to Sarasota! Wow! I am very impressed with the power of this class and I look forward to seeing if it affects Nicholas in such a dramatic way.

The abundance continues and I am very pleased. I’m still not rich, but I’m staying afloat and that is a fine thing! Thank you, Universe!

Wow, I guess that is all I have to say, after all. Seems like there was more, but I guess my work has been most of my busy-ness lately. That, and the overall stress levels. Oh, well, there’ll be more after this weekend fer sure.

TTFN

I get SO SICK of SPAM in my inbox. For real, man. I get more fucking spam than anyone really should. To this end, I’d like all 4 of you to go to Spam Cop right this minute and set up an anti-spam account. It’s free and it is the only way, I’m convinced, to stop the fucking spam. Spam Cop sends the offending server address to ORBS for tracking – and baby, those folks don’t screw around. If you get in their database, you get booted from more mail exchanges than you can count. Just remember, tho, to go to hotmail.com and set up a dummy account (blah@usa.net) for all those spam notices to go to, lest you end up getting the anti-spam stuff sent back to you! That sort of defeats the purpose. Besides, it’s best to associate a dummy account with the spam reports so the pissed off ISPs that have been put on notice can’t boot *you* from their domains. Yes, I’ve had it happen to me. I sent a spam report to the assholes at home.com and they reported me as a spammer and blocked my domain from their mail servers. Buttlickers! Trust me, get a dummy account. They got a decent free counter for yer pages over at usa.net, too. It’s called nedstat basic . I use it on many of my sites, but not this one, cuz it throws errors if I use the code. Anyway…

HR and marketing people are the most useless bunch of employees on the planet. These are the people who have no discernible talent for any task, but companies hire them because they think that they need to have Marketing and HR departments. I always find it amazing that HR people who by definition must deal with resumes every single day, are the ones who cannot open a single file that they are sent. They are so computer illiterate that they are baffled by any attachment that is not a Word 2000 document. Too funny. Marketing people are the same, but at least they are not required to deal with attachments and such as a part of their job! And let’s not even get into Recruiters and temp agencies. These people are such losers that they (with a straight face) expect you to find candidates for jobs for them, cuz they have absolutely no clue about what they are hiring for in the first place. Total morons, no sense of propriety at all. Especially ThinkJobs! Those people are not only stupid and rude, but they have illusions of grandeur on top of all that. They are such jerks that they had to change the name of the company to get rid of the ill will they had bred! They used to be ATS and they sucked then, just like they suck now.

I am taking the aforementioned creativity class, you know. It’s all women except for Nick and about half of them are pretty fucked up. Lots of eating disorders and self esteem issues. I don’t really care for the class itself, but I am enjoying the ‘homework’ and the journalling. It does take away from here, IMHO, but I think I can keep up both. It’s not that I dislike anyone in the class (I truly do NOT) but I feel that I’m waaaay too normal (read: happy) to hang out with some of them. And I don’t feel creatively blocked. I have been blocked for most of my life, but all that changed when I met Nicholas and my second chakra just blew right open. I am in this class for several reasons, but not for blocked-ness. I am in it to see what others do for fun, to see what may pop out of *me*, to see if it helps Nicholas get past his block and just for plain old fun. I have no problems doing any of the stuff and I take Artist Dates all the time, so that’s nothing new, either. When I go shopping for food, or clothes or whatever, it’s an outing for my child. She loves to shop! I have lots of free time, so I can do what I want, when I want. This freedom has allowed me to explore my creative child and let her ‘out’ to run rampant whenever. I think this is part of the problem for Nicholas. Being trapped in a 40 hour work week really cramps the style of one’s creative child and finding time to play is hard. It is a challenge for me to give him time alone at night, when all I want to do is hang out with him, but it has to happen and it will. He’s doing his thing tonite, actually.

I have had a most abundant couple of weeks! We’ve done the work for Wolfbrook and I’ve been busy with support calls. We sold 2, yes, 2 Powerbooks this week and Nicholas got a $1.75 per hour raise, which translates to $280 extra a month. I am blown away by and grateful for such wonderful abundance! Note to Universe: thanks and send more!!

Synchronicities are afoot this week as well. I was thinking about Allen and Dani for a couple of days when Allen showed up on my doorstep yesterday! It was very cool to see him after many months! And another small one is that we needed some wine glasses and they had them at the Dollar Store when I was there. I suppose all the money falling on my head right now could be a synchronicity, too, but I truly hope that it will continue on this way indefinitely, if not more so! I am ordering a CASE of those money candles! I bought one on a whim and started burning it in my good fortune feng shui corner and BAM! now money is coming from everywhere! Coincidence? I think not! heh heh

That’s it for now. Abundance is everywhere, you just have to accept it.

Today, I got a good sign. I pulled the Unlimited Potential card from the Medicine Deck at the Center. I’m thrilled to get this kudo and I certainly hope that the good karma will carry over to my business meeting tomorrow with the Logo People (Wolfbrook). These are the new clients that contracted us a couple of weeks ago.

So, all’s well with that, they love the logo, they’ve signed the letter of agreement and I expect to be $450 richer on Saturday. Much needed money, of course. Me and my money karma, you know…

This is from the last Rant: “I found myself angrily writing an email to him, so I printed it…” As my friends know, I’m not much for sitting on my feelings or holding back my objections if I feel the need to Rant. I get very antsy if I have the feeling that there are unspoken resentments floating around. Like now. I feel there are unspoken resentments with some of my close friends (you know who you are). Not that I *want* there to be, mind you, but I get the feeling that I’ve said something along the way that has brought up some sort of objection. Of course, I could be totally wrong and just having a paranoid fugue or something… If so, then the feeling will pass and I’ll forget about it.

I wish that I could be totally laid back and unconcerned about life’s little injustices and inequities, but I just can’t. It’s just not in me to sit back and let it all go. Like, for instance, this whole email problem that I had with NameSecure last week. Sure, I could have just kept calling Customer Service and sitting in the hold queue for hours, but I just don’t work that way. I did my own tech support, found the cause of the error, contacted the people in charge of the hardware that gave the error and got it fixed, ALL before NameSecure could even figure out who was in charge of the department that handled email problems!!

Naturally, I had to file a Better Business Bureau report about all of this, just like I did for the Airborne Express clusterfuck the week before. I don’t feel guilty about filing complaints. I truly feel that if *everyone* would complain about shitty service, then we’d have a lot less of it. I think that poor customer service has come from apathetic customers who just take it, rather than speak up about it. After all, it does take some effort to gather up your complaint and write it down and then send or email it to the proper department or the BBB. But it’s worth the effort! I got a call from the Office of the President of Airborne Express about my complaint and I’m very happy to report that the asshole who treated me badly has lost his position because of it. So THERE!

Also from last time, [the woman who wouldn’t make a decision until her hubby gave the OK]: “We were discussing a trade for services: a small website designed by me in exchange for 2 passes to a class that she teaches.” Well, she got the gumption to do the site. I’m happy that she is going to do it and I can take the creativity class, too. The Respect Meter ™ is still low, but I feel better about her ability to learn how to stand up for herself.

Back to the theme of unspoken truths. If you feel something to be true, then why not speak it? Why not throw it out there for perusal and make it real? I’ll never understand the logic of only acknowledging your true feelings as long as they are secret. (?) I know I’m an exhibitionist (in more ways that one!) and I have found my niche here with semi-public blogging and I know that it’s truly not for everyone. But I also know that speaking your mind is very cleansing. It also makes what you think a reality. I try very hard to not harbour little bullshit grievances. I either say them or I eliminate them totally [usually by dreaming it or visualizing it then letting it go].

“I’m glad to be a bitchy feminist!” Umm, yep, I’m still running with this. It works for me. :-)