I took training class, almost all day every week day last week, learning a new software product that our office is going to start taking customer service calls about, pretty soon. The good news is, it's a product I used to be an end-user of, 9 years ago, on a previous job. The bad news is, its had so many updates to it that it many ways it's completely new to me anyway. The other good news is that it's so similar to the product I've been supporting for the last 5 years of my life, that I really do understand how it works, for the most part. I'll just have a hard time remembering how to call up a lot of the specific options and functions that their end-users may be asking about. My schedule for this week is the same.

This week end I worked at Sam's Club again. 8 hours Saturday , 8 hours Sunday. I find that I'm more fond even than usual, of some of my co workers there. They're such hard workers and such nice people, and I'll probably be leaving them very soon. I want to quit Nov 20, so I can go to my in-laws the next week end, and spend the "Christmas season" (which as you may know, I hate, in itself) with my children (who don't hate it, and who I should be putting on a show for). Items returned for refunds? The usual ill-fitting clothes. More boxes of baby diapers than usual. A Stir-Fry cook book. Old ladies are always returning paper-back books that, once they get it home, they then figure out they already have it and have read it.

Friday night I was surfing on yesterdayland.com, in my basement, and I saw a mouse! I set a mouse trap (left over from a whole family of mice we had to kill last January) and killed him in less than an hour. Now we're setting other traps in our house to see if we kill more , but so far we haven't caught any.

Saturday all 4 of us , my husband and I, my two kids, drove to Best Buy to buy an extention cord for our VCR and DVD players, so we can network them all up properly with our TV and all our in our gorgeous, new, wooden, home entertainment center. And while we were there we picked up a little device that is supposed to repair scratches in DVD's and ROM's. This same week end I read a news story about how women in Afghanistan die in child birth because although they may now have the legal right to leave their homes, their husbands and male relatives still won't let them go to a hospital, even if they are dying! Our search for extention cords and mouse traps is just so trivial.

I am the worlds oldest sullen teen, and the worlds most priviledged woman.

Are you tired of all those sissy, mushy "friendship" poems that always sound good but never actually come close to reality?
Well, here is a series of promises that really speaks to true friendship!

1. When you are sad, ...I will get you drunk and help you plot revenge against the sorry bastard who made you sad.

2. When you are blue, ...I'll try to dislodge whatever is choking you.

3. When you smile, ...I'll know you finally got some.

4. When you are scared, ...I will rag you about it every chance I get.

5. When you are worried, ...I will tell you horrible stories about how much worse it could be and to quit whining.

6. When you are confused, ...I will use little words to explain.

7. When you are sick, ...stay away from me until you're well again. I don't want whatever you have.

8. When you fall, ...I will point and laugh at your clumsy ass.

This is my oa! th, ...I pledge 'til the end. Why you may ask? Because you're my friend!

Send this to ten of your closest friends and get depressed because you can only think of two, and one of them is not speaking to you right now anyway.

Remember: A friend will help you move.
A really good friend will help you move a body.

Tomorrow at my software company we're having clients visit the office all week, so we have to dress up like professionals and not wear our usual software-slob-wear. Dang. I hate that.
Tomorrow I need to ask my manager, why won't she hire my friend with all his great experience in our industry? Were his references that bad?

Put in 16 hours at the "Member Desk" at Sam's Club this week end. Unusual items returned this week end: Half a sheet cake. Ordered chocolate, was labeled as chocolate, was custom decorated. But when the customer brought it home and cut it, it was white cake. Ate half of it, then returned the rest for an exchange for similarly priced chocolate cup cakes. (Similar to the price of the whole original cake). I wanted to ask why if they hate white cake so much did they eat half of it first, but I didn't bother. I'm going to quit soon anyway so I guess I don't really care. People returned the usual wrong-sized clothing. One guy returned a gigantic TV and a VCR. He had bought them for his daugher to take to college with her, thinking she'd drive. But she flew and could not take the items with her. So he returned them both for a refund. I spent my whole college career memorizing which first-floor dorm lounges were able to receive which local broadcast channels. My senior year, one campus facility got an actual VCR that students could use, if they could manage to get ahold of an actual video.

Weird items people have returned in the past : The Mosquito Deleto. Everyone bough one. Everyone returned them . They looked like a lantern. You were supposed to light it and leave on a picnic table near by or something and it was supposed to somehow attact mosquitos like the Death Star, and then kill them. The only mosquitos the Mosquito Deleto ever killed were those that just happened to fly in to it because they weren't' watching where they were going . So we got back all these boxes of lanterns that stunk up our corner of the store, smelling like those old Shell No Pest Strips, and also coated with real live dead, decaying mosquitos all over! Another item someone returned was a king sized mattress and box spring. Underneath their original plastic, he insisted that they smelled like fish. I smelled it. I couldn't argue with him!

One of my first days at Sams Club ever, started with a withered up old man coming to our membership desk and asking for an asprin. He was calm and pleasent, but explained he needed an asperin because he was having a heart attack. So my manager at that time ran across the whole store, ripped open a bottle of asperin from our pharmacy area, gave him one, called him an ambulence. He remained calm and pleasent. The ambulence driver told him no, he could not bring with him in the ambulence, the cake he had bought. Then the old guy threw a fit! Then just before we closed, by about 5 minutes, a lady brought a warm garbage bag full of a doughy half-baked home-made pizza. She said her pizza was ruined because the cheese she had bought at Sam's was so "moldy"! She was not impressed by my co worker reminding us all that all cheese is mold. She didn't have the receipt for any of the items she was demanding refunds for. She also demanded to be refunded the price of the other items in her pizza, bought elsewhere, because because she said our chese had spoiled the use of them. Our manager allowed us to refund her some amount he and the customer agreed was fair, but only after listeing to this hag go on for 20 minutes and argue with everyone. Then I had to throw her disgusting garbage bag full of dough and meat and cheese away in a "back dumpster" the location of which no one wanted to tell me exactly! Saddest Item any one has returned to me at Sam's Club? A bag of dog food. The dog had run away and never come back.

Well I've been taking home an extra $400 - $700 a month just to hang around with a bunch of college students, drink frozen coke, take pictures and give people their money back. It will be hard to give up the money!

Today my 8 year old daughter was listening to my husband goof around. I don't even remember what he was doing. In all seriousness she said to me, "I'm surrounded by a WEIRDO!" I didn't argue with her.

Recent emails between me and all my old high school friends (we all, but 1, graduated hs in 1987)

Dear Roberta, Kathy, Tim and Gary,

I have been enjoying the slew of Sci-Fi and Fantasy movie critiques (and the Yoda Song) that have been sent my way these past few weeks. Thank you!

It is great to be almost John Lennon's final age and to relate to the fun things in life. I am certain that all of us fit under the "Cool Aunt/Cool Uncle" title when our nephews and nieces think of us. (Roberta, your work station sounds like a haven!!!!!!)

However, in all of this movie discussion, no one has ever mentioned BLADERUNNER. Tisk-tisk! How could any Star Wars sequel, prequel or Nyquil be a success without Harrison Ford or Rudgar Hauwer!

Now for my 2 cents on TV shows; Star Trek (with the original cast) will outlast all of the Star Wars movies combined because it's plot had so much MORE sexual tension. Wasn't Mr. Spock was the biggest tease?
Here was Captain Kirk making it with every bouffant babe in the galaxy, and poor Mr. Spock stuck with getting his Captain and all of the crew out of
another jam...Trekkies couldn't wait to watch an episode where Mr. Spock might succumb to his human side and make a few conquests of his own.

I was on an "I Dream of Jeanie" kick all throughout my last pregnancy. The first five episodes are SO SUGGESTIVE. Anthony Nelson is unhappily
engaged to his superior officer's daughter, when his space capsule takes a wrong turn and leaves him stranded on an island until he frees a beautiful genie, named Jeanie, who rescues him.

Jeanie is disgusted with his fiancee because she (his fiancee) doesn't appreciate how sexy he looks in his astronaut suit or his AirForce uniform! Unfortunately, as he begins to show more of an interest in Jeanie, her character becomes less cunning. She slowly turns into a ditsy Barbie Doll genie. The show really loses it's steam after
they're married. Too bad, it got off to a great start!

That's all for now,
Bye.

When did Jeannie and Major Nelson get married? I had no idea!
-Gary


Jeannie and Tony Nelson got married in the final season of I Dream of Jeannie, due to a combination of protests from the League of Decency , or what ever their television equivalent, and their declining ratings. I always thought that it was a good move, because it allowed Tony to make of of Jeannie's wishes come true for a change, but also a bad move, because then it just became even more of a duplicate of Bewitched. They already had the evil, brunette-wig twin cousin, and allowed Boyce and Hart to be guests, they didn't need to be more alike. There's an especially funny I Dream of Jeannie, after they're married, where all the supporting characters do some kind of intervention on Tony, because Jeannie keeps refering to him as her "master" and they're afraid he's abusing her!I am not joking, I remember seeing that as a teenager.
Harrison Ford or no Harrison Ford, where ever George Lucas is writing akward, stilted dialogue, people are claiming to love each other but not acting like it ( I swear to you George Lucas has never been in love, not even once!!), fatherless teen age boys are whining about being held back, ILM is making stuff blow up, lenthy POV shots let you know in advance what the video-game tie-in is going to be, and John Williams is writing the music, it's a Star Wars movie! I need a pack of stale, over-priced Red Vines licorice, just from thinking about it.

Michelle, what was that cartoon you left me a voice mail about last week ? I'd never heard of it. You were right about Freaks and Geeks reruns. I only saw one , but It was hilarious!

Not only are we all nearly John Lennon's max age, but I also remember [Our English Teacher] Jane Schwab's 40th birthday, when I was a Junior at Davis.

Love Kathy

Today at my week -end job at Sam's Club, we were supposed to give away a free, boxed, apple pie to each person who completed a credit card application. My excellent, co worker , Brad, is cute, funny, just turned 21. Anyway he looked in one of the boxes and showed me two little fruit flies flying around in one of them! I set that pie aside, and labeled it so no one would give it away. I named our two new pets "Sammy" and "Bud." And I watched them throughout the day.
Everyone there knows that while I'm working, I always like to go to the Sam's Club cafe and order a frozen coke, or the red, minute-maid equivalent. They act worried if they see me without my drink!
Except for the distraction of my little pets, the rest of the day went as usual. Just 3 of us worked the membership desk today, taking everyone's picture for their new membership card, giving them their money back for stuff they don't want or that broke. Ho hum.

Yesterday I got an email at work. It was a bulk email sent by our national headquarters, "inviting" all employees to wear red white and blue on Sept 11. Today my husbands office did the same thing to him. My 8 year old daugher brought home a xeroxed note saying not only are children in her (public) school "encouraged" to wear red white and blue, but also they're going to have a school assemebly in which they will recite the pledge of allegiance and sing the national anthem and God Bless America. Jingoism just doesn't get any better than this. I"m tempted to keep all 3 of us home, plus our baby, just to get us all out of this and to celebrate my husband's birthday, Sept 11, free from all this insincere, embarassing group-hysteria.

I broke down and ordered basic cable tv this week.
When we first moved to New Brighton , August 1999, we ordered basic cable. In a few months we decied we couldn't justify spending almost $50 a month just for tv, so we called the cable company and told them to cut us back to this $10/mo local channels cabled to your home package. So from then on, we just got a bill for about $12/mo...but continued to receive most of the basic channels all along! MTV, Catoon Network, CNN! We were so lucky!
But last week several of those channels stopped coming in! And we knew we could not call the cable company to complain about it, because we weren't paying for them. Times are better now, so we called them and said we want to order basic cable again, which now turns out to included Noggin and BBC America! Yay!
Well channels 29 - 65 still don't come in, but at least now we could legitimately complain about it! A cable guy came out and said that there is a tree branch interfering with the cable. Xcel Energy is going to come tomorrow to safely remove the tree branch and repair the cable line, apparently.
Yes, in this world at the brink of destruction at the hands of Dub-Yah Bush, I am still wanting my MTV! Go figure!