Post Holiday Crud, and other news

Jason and I came home from Stephanie's house with the crud. We used to call this sort of thing 'con crud' because normally you picked it up at whatever convention you'd been to that weekend. But since he and I aren't part of that world anymore, it's the 'post holiday crud' now, because typically, we get it from having gone somewhere other than our house. Mostly it's sinus issues, though he seems to have gotten it worse than me. Either that, or (as he suggested to one of the ladies he works with) I'm just not as much of a baby when I'm sick as he is.

A lot has happened since my last posting .. which really wasn't all that long ago. Two weeks ago exactly, at this time, I was dealing with the aftermath of a burglary in my home. Some 19-year-old nitwit broke into our home and stole Jason's and my wedding rings, the Wii and our games, Jason's laptop (but left mine sitting in plain sight), and a ring Jason had bought for me that was hidden well in Jason's office closet.

The whole story starts like this: I left that morning to pick Brandon up. We were planning to spend the night at Jason's parents' house since they were supposed to be out of town. Well, on the way back I had to stop to get gas .. I hadn't been planning on it but when the gauge says 'E' you kinda have to. Anyway, we got home about noon and I sorta half noticed that the laptop wasn't where I remembered it being. Then I saw my jewelry box and the drawer it was in were sitting on my desk. And I went upstairs .. looking for the laptop .. and saw the jewelry armoire honey got for me on our honeymoon was standing open too.

All of this didn't necessarily add up to being robbed though, and I continued to go about my routine, commenting to Brandon that "Jason must have come home and got the rings because he's gonna have them sized for Christmas .. how sweet is my honey?" I decided, however, to call him anyway, just in case. I started to go about my business and emptied the dishwasher, and Brandon commented 'Someone's been in the presents.. ' and I remember fussing at isis for it.

That's when I reached Jason, and he told me that no, he hadn't been home and that if the deadbolt was locked I needed to get the heck out of the house.  Which I did. We went and sat in the car while I called the police and waited for them to get there. I was starting to fall apart then, realizing that someone had been in my house .. in our bedroom .. and had taken our wedding rings. That was the worst part, really. I was terrified we'd never see them again.

The police responded pretty quickly .. first with a single officer who checked the house out for me, figured out the guy'd gotten in through the back office window, and assured me the house was empty, then with the K-9 units and finally the forensics units. Jason got home not long after and helped reassure me everything was alright. Brandon and I went over to momma and diddy's a few hours later, while the cops were searching the neighborhood .. one of the K-9 officers told me they were sure he hadn't managed to leave the neighborhood.

The story does have a happy ending. About 6pm Jason called me to tell me that they'd caught the guy and that all our stuff had been recovered. We stayed at the in-laws' house that night, though the window was 'secured' by use of a 2x4 jamming the window in place, and spent a lot of the time stalking the York County Sheriff's Current Inmate's website to get a look at the idiot who was caught.  His name is Gavyn Michael Lovett, and he just turned 19 on December 1st. Come to find out this is not his first time at the rodeo, and he's more than likely ruined his life with this most recent run of burglaries.

The next day I was on my way to bring Brandon back home to Kannapolis when the detective handling the case called me to have me come pick up my possessions. If I hadn't gone then, I'd have had to wait because everything would be in the evidence locker. Of course, i went and picked it up .. including the ring Jason bought me for a Christmas gift. So we have everything that was stolen .. except for our peace-of-mind. But that will come in time. We have to send our laptops in for repair .. mine got covered in magnetic fingerprint dust so I want to checked, and Jason's using the opportunity to have it fixed finally. In addition, we have to have the back window replaced, and are using the burglary to get the bedroom door replaced and probably replacing a couple of chairs as well. There's lots to get done still. But we're getting there.

Driving me crazy ...

That's what the process of trying to register for classes this semester is doing, it's driving me crazy.

Apparently, we never paid PTC for the transcripts to be sent to UMUC. So they of course never sent them, and I never noticed. So I'm missing all that coursework from my degree evaluation. So they want me to take Writing 101 again. Writing 101. I'm a freaking English major! (Not that it shows in my blog posting, where I use really awful grammar and can't always spell, but that's irrelevant!)

*sigh*

So now the laptop I just freaking bought is no longer working. Won't boot, not even from the install disk. Gee. What a freaking surprise, considering the first laptop we bought from Dell had the hard drive crash days after we got it. I'm annoyed, to say the very least. I've got an email in to Dell's tech support, and I've done -everything- I know to do, including trying to boot from a CD and repairing the OS. It looks like something's wrong with the drivers for the hard drive. *growls*

So. Now, I wait. Which annoys the ever-living shit out of me.

Bleargh

Well, so much for sleeping. If I actually did sleep, it wasn't much, and it was in short spurts. And this is the second night in a row, maybe third, that I've woken up around 3am and just have been unable to get back to sleep. Part of it, I think, is that it's just hot out, so it's hot in the house. And with the ceiling fan upstairs not working .. well .. that makes it worse. If this keeps up though, I'm going to have to resort to extreme measures .. aka sleeping pills or something.

New Computer!

Both of my computers have arrived. Finally. Despite annoyances in shipping with both DHL and FedEx, I have my new computers. I've been spending the last week setting them up. And i still have to copy all my pictures from my old PC to the new one. But I finally have my email and music and everything fixed. I probably should spend some time copying my music now from my laptop to my PC, but it's all at least on my laptop, which is what's important anyway.

The annoyances right now are that I have lost -all- my favorites in my web browser, and lost a bunch of macros and stuff in WoW. But I can get acces to them if I really want to work at it. It's just .. time consuming. And I have to switch my monitor back to the old PC so I can set the whole computer shared. And I'm just being lazy about that.

*grumblerawr*

Well. I waited patiently. I did. Well, anxiously, but I finished cleaning, and did laundry, had lunch, sat down and knitted and was good. Until 5pm.

Then I got growly. Which, by the way, I can in part blame on Mercury being Retrograde. I texted Jason, and he said to use DHL's Live Chat feature again. Sure, why not.

Heh.

The pain in the ass I got the second time was less than helpful. Informed me that they were 'too busy' and I shouldn't have waited. Well, that's nice but why did the first guy tell me I should expect it? *grumbles* So. I can go pick the package up in Charlotte if I want and should they hold it for customer pickup? By now, I'm pissy. I realize after closing the chat I didn't confirm that I was going to go pick it up. *sigh* But wait .. I can't find a direct number for the DHL location? WTF? *deeper sigh*

So I get -back on- the Live Chat .. and get someone -even less- helpful. Who informs me that I have to wait -an hour- .. it's almost 6pm now, they close at 8pm .. for them to call me to confirm the package is waiting there. So that'd give me barely an hour to drive into Charlotte, in an anrea I don't know, that's right under the freaking airport.

Have I mentioned my completely irrational fear of planes?

While I'm dealing with completely unhelpful jerk, I call customer service. I go through the whole story after warning the girl that I'm -not- happy, almost break down into tears I'm -so- frustrated because I had a ton of things to get done today but put them all off waiting for this delivery that was never gonna happen in the first place. She tells me she can connect me to the local distribution center. Well why the hell could the guy in Live Chat not tell me that? *annoyed sigh-growl*

Why yes, miss, I'd love to talk to them. I hold. They connect me. Two minutes later I'm in the car on my way to Charlotte with hand-written directions because I don't have a printer any more - the old one won't work with Vista, so I'm gonna sell it in the Big Yard Sale. I made it safe and sound .. well, safe. Sound I can't claim, cos I was still growly, and had like 7 planes fly right over my head, and dog does that freak me out. But I got my precious package, and headed home. On the way I talked to honey, and decided we'd get McDonald's fries and chicken wraps for dinner, cos he was feeling sick and salty usually helps.

Did I mention Mercury was Retrograde? I think I did.

So I get to McDonalds. I order. 1 bbq grilled wrap, 1 honey mustard grilled wrap, two orders of fries. I get my receipt: 1 ranch wrap, 1 honey mustard wrap, 2 fries. I get to the second window, and ask the girl if the wraps are correct, they should be bbq and honey mustard. She has to ask someone. They assure me it's a bbq and a honey mustard.

I get home. Two wraps. 1 honey mustard ..... 1 ranch. *siiiiigh* Jason eats the honey mustard, because he just can't stomach the ranch. Which is why I got him the bbq.

Anyway, I have my laptop. It's gonna take me the better part of this week just to get used to it. Lastnight I sat in the living room trying to get the basics set up .. the nifty gadgets, the desktop cleaned up, enabled my LoJack for the laptop, that kinda stuff. I've just found I can copy files through the network, so that's how I'm gonna transfer all my music and pictures I think. I also managed to figure out the Bluetooth mouse Jason got me, which is nifty-keen. I don't enjoy the touchpad usually, though this one is better than his old one.

Now the concern is FedEx. My PC arrived in Charlotte last night. So it could be out for delivery now. I've never had issues with FedEx delivering things a day earlier than they say they're gonna .. but I don't want to miss it, too.

Rawrawrawr!

Why am I having so much trouble with getting things delivered to me?

First there was the whole HipKnits debacle, in which the proprietor responded to one email, then conveniently forgot/lost the email/ignored me and only finally got on the ball again when I pitched a bitch fit at her. And believe you me, I can pitch a serious snit.

Now, supposedly, a package from Amazon was delivered on the 9th. Except, it's the 15th and I haven't seen it. Maybe it was an invisible package? Filled with invisible books? Because they can tell me all they want that it was scanned as delivered, but until it's in my hands and visible, I'm going to call them liars.

And while I'm at it, what the hells is up with the companies making it as hard as freaking possible to reach their customer service departments? I had to wade through 20 minutes of voice-activated menus to get the lazy annoying twat on the phone at USPS, only to have her roll her eyes and laugh at me. And honey, I was a tech support rep. I can tell when you've muted yourself. And Amazon's just as guilty. It took me 20 additional minutes to find anywhere to send an email asking what to do about a package I never received because my post office is on crack.

My HOA can Bite Me!

The 'president' of my HOA just rang my doorbell ... to inform me that any 'modifications' I make to the exterior of my home ... including landscaping ... 'do not belong to you'. WTF? This aged bitch who sounds like she's had a pack-a-day habit for 50-years wants to come 'inform' me that I can't landscape my fucking yard? She can take my stones and shove them up her ass. Better yet. I think I'll help her.

Nosy busybodies need to avoid my doorstep. Because I'm more likely to get in a fistfight than discuss something. I have to get 'approval' to plant a fucking flower? I have to 'take a picture' and submit my work for some dumbass bitch and her cronies to 'approve' something I put my sweat into? Yeah. Fuck you, bitch.

This has completely ruined what was otherwise a lovely day. We went to a farmer's market in the next town, visited with one of the ladies we met in the Rock Hill Knitaholics group Wednesday, had a wonderful little lunch, and I -was- excited about putting in some new plants. Not anymore. Fucking bitch had to come over and ruin my day. Now I'm all pissed off. And have no way to vent it.

A/V Annoyances

So. Sauron lived in our old DVD player. Whenever we attempted to watch a dvd, it would skip, stutter, stop until the movie was nigh unwatchable. My darling husband in a fit of I-don't-know-what brought hom 5 new releases he wanted to watch this weekend. I love him. I do. But good gods, he doesn't realize it takes him 5 hours to watch 1 movie.

After making a concerted effort to watch Beowulf while Sauron refused to let us enjoy it, I made the command decision that we would buy a new dvd player. He got home .. we attempted to show him just -one- part of Beowulf and even that wouldn't cooperate, so he decided we would hie ourselves off to Best Buy and purchase a new DVD player.

$800 later, we returned with a new home theater system in the back seat of our covertible. This is how my husband shops, you see. I did my wifely duty of making certain we could afford it, but he makes about four-times my salary, so who am I to say 'No, we can't buy that' if it's what he wants? We hooked up only the dvd player - a Phillips dealio that was working lastnight fine when we hooked it up by itself. Cool beans, working fine, yay us.

So today, we decided to hook the audio stuff up. Surround speakers, powered sub-woofer, the works. After finding the wire strippers... which I had to hunt through the whole house to find that for some unknown reason they were in the bathroom dresser, I managed to cut and strip all the speaker wire .. having to do one twice because we didn't cut it quite long enough. But now we can't get the dvd player's sound to work. And so somehow, in the process of turning the damned thing around for the eightieth time, I managed to knock a speaker and an oil-scent-thing my stupid sister-in-law gave us for christmas. So the house now smells pine-fresh, and -not- in a good way. It's also manage to ruin the paint on the wall. Whee.

I'm having such a wonderful day.

They will get more!

Lord, why do people think that they have to do -all- their damned shopping this one day. Is it possible the stores are going to run out of things? hell yes. Probable even. but guess what. They will get more!

*sighs* At least I didn't have a heckuvalot to do today.

Computers. Grr.

So I've got to decide if I'm going to try to repair stupid Outlook on my computer, or not worry about it and go back to Thunderbird. I've already had to switch back to IE, since my work and school websites won't work properly in Firefox .. but it's okay, cos IE has finally put in tabbed browsing.

Speaking of school ... I apparently can't get financial aid anymore because the school accepted every freaking credit they could, even ones that have nothing to do with my program, so i've got too many credits. *mutters8

My current DM for work is an idjit. That's all I've got to say. I will not .. I repeat -will not- begin working a project that so clearly does not have a place in my store. And I'm sure as hell not going to start learning a project because "Now's as good a time to start as any .."

No, dumbass. It's not. It's not a good time to start because Christmas is what .. six weeks away? In what univers is six weeks from Christmas a good time to try and learn a program that has nothing to do with my store?

I hate kids. Not children, per se.

I hate kids. Not children, per se. But kids. Those in the 12-16 age group, typically, who seem to think that the world exists just to please them.

I had a couple young ones .. probably 11-12-ish .. horsing around outside my house. And I tolerated it a while. but I finally had enough, and asked them to leave. They both got snippy, but finally ran off. It was only when they came back, with their older brothers or something, that I decided to call the cops. After one of the first pair started hollering 'Hey lady .. I'm in front of your house in the street!'

Uncalled for. And frankly, I don't tolerate disrespect well. So I called the cops. At which point the older two decided to talk back to me about how I didn't have to call the cops on them. That they werne't doing anything. They sat outside .. for like an hour. In the freezing cold .. and when the cop finally got there, she went to talk to them. And apparently they told her they weren't the ones causing trouble.

*sighs* The end result is they got spoken to. And the cop said she'd take a drive through the area when she was on patrol. And if the kids bothered me anymore, I should feel free to call them again.

Me: 1 - Computer: 0

So.

I have been working on my computer since I woke up today. I think I've finally wrangled the beast into submission, except for one thing. Outlook keeps trying to install something, and I don't have the CD .. at least, I don't know where it is .. so it can't. And it -keeps- trying to install it. Like .. repeatedly. It's annoying.