The Peevery

Not Even If They're Named "Monty!"

I can't even think about the Burmese python explosion in Florida without getting seriously creeped out. I also wonder what's going to happen if the government declares a bounty on the pythons. No doubt several very strange cottage industries will thrive. Eeeeeuuuuwww.

Rain Rain Go Away!

Why on the rare occasions I plan to go out on the town the weather is always crappy?

Road Rage

People of Ohio:

The season of winter is upon us. In winter, the white stuff that falls from the sky is snow.  It can be slippery. This is not a new weather event for the state of Ohio.  Please adjust your driving accordingly. Also, there are days when the sun shines and there is no reason to continue to drive as if we are experiencing blizzard-like conditions.  

Related: the passing lane is for passing.

Thank you.

Nursepez

Shut Up, Keep It Down Now

There are several Christmas songs that I think the addition of lyrics sounds hokey and contrived.  Way better as instrumental compositions. These include the following.

• Sleigh Ride
• Carol of the Bells
• theme from Chariots of Fire.  Not Christmas but so lame when sung by I believe it was Melissa Manchester.

Let's Hear Those Sleighbells Jingling

Normally, I get frustrated at the fact that Christmas music on the radio begins on November 1st (at least it does in Canada). Two months ahead is ridiculous. But the UK doesn't seem to follow that silly practice. Instead, it is now December 7, less than three weeks to Christmas, and I have yet to hear anything other than the occasional Mariah Carey "All I Want for Christmas Is You" or "Dominic the Donkey". Where is the Christmas music?!

Jim Cantore would call bullshit.

It really irks me when it's pouring rain, thundering and lightning on a TV show or movie, yet it's sunny and there's not a cloud in the sky.

Baby It's Cold Outside

Yesterday I was out jogging and I saw a few guys wearing wool caps.  I figured they were just hipsters.

Then I saw a girl wearing earmuffs.

I checked the temperature on the way home. 

62 degrees F.

My office is so cold...

How cold is it?

...I want to wear sheepskin boots in October.

...I have to wear my specially padded bras so as not to overtly demonstrate the chill.

...my hot coffee turns to iced within a matter of minutes.

...my ears are numb enough to be pierced without feeling any pain.

Noah must have let morons come onto the Ark.

Despite the fact that it's rained almost constantly for the past zazillion days in Maryland, I am surrounded by people totally inept about how to handle it. It's not hard to remember to leave some extra room between cars because the pavement is slippery. You will not melt if those drops from the sky touch your arm as you walk 10 feet to your car. Umbrellas take up space, so leave some extra room as you pass people on the sidewalk. Most importantly, get the heck out of my orbit if you cannot comprehend these basic facts!

A Nip in the Air

Look, I too am glad for a break from the round-the-clock oppressive heat.  However, during the day the temp is still up around 90 degrees F. Just because the mercury dips below 70 over night does NOT mean that you should repeatedly remark that it "feels like fall". 

How's this for a workout excuse?

I was all pumped up to go get pumped up at the gym but a flash flood on the road on which the gym is located thwarted my efforts.

Rain On My Parade

I have spent the last six months of my job organising a charity cycle relay in honour of my employer's 75th anniversary. The relay starts tomorrow and runs for two weeks*. It is scheduled to rain all but one day this week. I must have forgotten what part of the world I live in (United Kingdom - where sunshine is practically a myth).

At least I get to drive the support van and don't actually have to do any of the soggy cycling. Sucks to be those clowns.

*If I can manage to get Typepad-friendly Internet access on the road, I will endeavour to do my own mini-Peeve-a-thon of daily cycle relay peeves, just to get you psyched for the real Peeve-a-Thon coming to your favourite blog.

A Dried Up Old Prune

You know that part in When Harry Met Sally where Sally freaks out about turning 40, except she's only 37? I turn 37 in this month. Sally, I totally get it.

Category Five Stupidity

As much as I rolled my eyes at the apocalyptic descriptions of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene leading into the weekend, I'm even more irritated by the people complaining that the storm was "a joke" because it was less severe than predicted. I'm happy that I have power and didn't sustain any property damage, but many of my friends, neighbors and family members are not so lucky.

Suck It Heat Wave!

You know it's going to be a bad day when you step outside at 7:30am to go to work, and you are immediately drenched in sweat. Why? Why must mother nature insist on 95 degree weather so damn early in the morning? Remember this in January. Remember this in January. I hate summer.

But it's a dry heat

I know I can't complain about weather since I live in San Diego, but my tiny condo has poor insulation, no A/C and is blazing hot in the summer. I can open all four windows and my front door and turn on my ceiling fan and it's still too hot to be comfortable. Portable A/C units are expensive (for my small budget) and have to vent out a window or be installed in a window. So I bought a big square fan to set in a window, hoping to add to the ventilation and air flow...only to discover that all my window sills are too small and I can't set the fan on any sill in my home. I have started sleeping naked on top of the bed with an ice pack on my chest and a wet washcloth behind my neck.

Can I pretend I spilled water?

Why the hell am I outside when it's 100 degrees outside? I'm too afraid to get off my chair, fearing that I will have insanely visible back and booty sweat.

Weeds!

Stop growing in my landscape beds. Why isn't all this mulch deterring you?

I am not a bunch of snowpeas!

It's that lovely time of year again, when it's 95 degrees (which feels like 110 with heat index) outside, but my office is air conditioned based on the comfort of old men in suits. The "quick cook, then flash freeze" method is great for vegetables, but not so much for people.

Tick-Tock

Yesterday the BF and I enjoyed a sunny afternoon at the local zoo. Afterwards we ran a billion errands. We came home and I changed clothes, then grabbed a book and sat under a blanket on the couch to read.

And then I noticed a freaking woodtick crawling on me.

What kind of freaking bionic ticks are there, that they managed to stay on my clothes (I'm assuming) through a billion stops, and where the heck was he hiding that he didn't stay on my clothes when I changed them?

Creeps me out. And makes me shudder thinking there may be more lurking. *Shudder*

X-ray vision not needed...

Apparently, I was the last person to know that my shirt is see through. Especially when it rains. It wouldn't be so bad, except Wednesday evenings are dedicated to washing my work bras (aka boring, old, unattractive). Therefore, those who listened to my presentation first thing in the morning, had the pleasure of seeing one of my "sexy bras." Again, it wouldn't be so bad, except it is a black see through mesh number. At least it was a push-up bra, I guess.

Ain't Nothing But An 'E' Thang

Say "thunder and lightning." That's right, it's lightning, not "lightening." This drives me nuts, although why I'm not quite sure. It just does.

And, for the record, there is an 'e' in tornadoes.

This grammar lesson brought to you by Jim Cantore.

No Power, No Common Sense

After thunderstorms blew through this morning, I lost electricity. These are the things that went through my head:

I guess I'll just do some laundry then.

Why is the light in the refrigerator not working?

I suppose I'll just make some coffee and use my book light to read.

If I take a shower, will the water be hot?

Here's the problem - I'm dumb. All of those things involve electricity, including my hot water heater. I can't function without electricity it seems. Thankfully my ancestors were a lot more resourceful than me.

Amy Grant me a wish: Shut the hell up!

I had the pleasure of meeting with the head of accounting today. The meeting took approximately one hour, and the whole mother-effing time I had to listen to her Amy Grant iTunes list in the background. It doesn't matter how faint it was, I could still hear it.

Window Offices are Overrated

I have an office on the first floor of my building.  One entire wall is windows.  This would SEEM like a nice thing, except it isn't.  My ears are assaulted every damn day with lawn mowers, rototillers, weed wackers, leaf blowers, etc as the grounds maintenance crew does yard work on the tiny patch of grass and flowers outside my window.

Yellow is the new ick.

It's pollen season down here in Georgia. Besides the usual complaint about the allergies and such (and wow, even my allergies are bad this year, when in the past they have been okay), what is really gross is driving and seeing a humongous cloud of pollen swirling through the air.

EVERYTHING IS COVERED IN YELLOW DUST. Gross.

Anyone Have a Blackbird Pie Recipe?

There are a lot more than 4 and 20 blackbirds nesting in the two trees right outside my flat.  They don't tweet like warblers, they squawk like ducks on crack, and these bastards are LOUD - especially when there are about 50 of them going at once.  Also, they are HUGE and kind of intimidating.  In addition to being loud and huge, I narrowly missed getting my head crapped on last weekend.  I need a rifle and a good recipe.

You do not like green eggs and ham? Errr...No.

Asking a waitress to have the chef make me another lunch entree because she openly sneezed all over it as she served it, is pretty reasonable. Right? Apparently not at this new self-proclaimed "urban chic" establishment. Instead of getting a re-make, I got myself an ear full of the chef going ape shit on me about how it's "cold and flu season" and what does he want me to do, "buy everyone's meal for the five months while we wait for this season to pass?" Eventually, I received a "new" meal. However, I did find it odd that the top of the strawberry I ate from my salad, and placed on my plate when she took it away, was still there.

1. Lunch entree I didn't eat, yet still paid for: $16.99 (not including tip)

2. Salad from the deli on my walk back to the office: $8.99

3. The fact that my lunch date is the new Food Critic from a very well know magazine in town: Mother F-ing Priceless

Weather Argh

For five months of the year, my city gets rain. Logically, residents should be really good at navigating in it. Illogically, when the drops hit the road, everyone forgets how to drive. Jackwagons.

Back Breaker Blues

Ten days of snow and ice - and the last ten days have been pretty generous with those things - is not easy to shovel out from around a car, even a small one.  Especially with back spasms that mysteriously set in last night and left me almost useless today.  Also a sore neck from the whiplash I suffered when I fell down three steps in my house a couple weeks ago.  Hopefully I have enough good pills around the house to get through work tomorrow.

Just Like Adrian Monk

It is so dry right now that no matter what I do I am building up a lot of static.  At work it has gotten so bad that I reach out and touch each of the metal doorframes as I walk down the halls so that I can have just a little shock as opposed to the big one I get if I just touch the door knob to my area.

Thoughts on a Recent Marathon

If you are at Mile 1 of a marathon and it is 70 degrees F and you are still wearing a Tyvek jacket and being passed then you are a hodad and have zero chance of placing and have no business hanging around at the front of the start line where even slow people are having to crawl over you to get free.

You finished a half marathon and that is great but do you really need to use up all the tinfoil looking mylar type spaceman blankets so that there are none left for someone who spent an hour longer in the rain, covering twice the distance?

I appreciate the kind thoughts in handing out beer at mile 24 or 25.  However, at this point, I'm badly wanting for something refreshing and cold.  Warm, flat beer is an emetic.

Below Freezing - Get Used To It!

For some reason, the English are in complete denial about the existence of winter.  If they ignore it, it will never happen again.  This means that there aren't any proper anti-freeze-laden windshield washing fluids available, so when it's -4C like it was this morning and my windshield gets a load of dirty crap sprayed on it by a passing truck, my choice is to try to see through the dirt or spray my windshield and have the spray freeze solid right in my field of vision.  At 60mph down a narrow winding piece of road, this can cause some problems.

Not so smart after all...

Dear Smart Car driver,

I'm pretty sure there is a reason why you don't see "your kind" on the roads during a blizzard. They're not made for snow. They're like golf carts on steroids. But, you thought you'd give it a go, rev your little battery as hard as possible and rocket yourself up the hill on our street this morning. Obviously, it didn't work. Instead, you scared the piss out of me when your damn glorified go-kart started sliding backwards down the hill, right towards me. Thank goodness for the large snowbank you plowed into on the way down. Your punishment for being so silly, I passed right by you with the "that sucks" face. Sorry, didn't want to be late for work. You made your bed...

Sincerely,

I love my huge SUV

Another one bites the dust

Walking in to work today, I slipped on the ice. Not only did I eat shit, but I broke my heel, and the seam under my armpit area tore. The cherry on top of this sundae is that my brand new Anthropologie skirt has a mixer of snow, salt, dirt, and whatever else you find on a parking lot ground smudged all over the ass. I can only imagine what my "falling face" looked like as I tumbled to my demise within eyesight of the hot construction worker I strut my strutter for every morning.

Steer Clear!

I am very self-aware that I am a white-knuckled, panicky driver. I take much fewer risks than I did twenty years ago when I'd drive 70 mph through a blizzard, weaving in between big trucks. I'm just not a good driver now on a highway or in crappy weather, I admit it.

This is why, on slippery icy days like today, I prefer to stay home like a little old lady shut-in. My job schedule works with my preference very well. But my new school schedule does not and attendance counts toward our grade. I just don't want to drive over a mountain at night when it could be icy on the road because ice scares me. 

I think it would be more sane to cancel in-person class and have an online lecture when it's inclement weather. Or perhaps it would be more sane for me to move to a warm climate with other old lady drivers, a.k.a. Florida.

Safety Can Suck It

Due to the circumstances that surround our lives, it has been seven weeks since I've seen my boyfriend. He was supposed to come see me tonight and ring in the new year with me, but the bastards running O'Hare decided the weather was too bad for planes to fly there today.

I know, I'm not the only one impacted, but I'm the most important, bitches.

(BF is now booked on the ONE direct flight tomorrow from there to here. I'm not holding my breath. Stay tuned to see if follow-up peeves are necessary.)

Ring-Ring!

My husband totally phoned it in this Christmas.

Bah

I've come out from under the black cloud that's been covering me for the last few months.

I'm still not sending out Christmas Cards.

Gone Postal

Items in my U.S. Mailbox:

• 1 Christmas card, postmarked from Colorado, addressed to a household 40 miles away from me.
• 2 pieces of junk mail addressed to a household across town.
• 6 pieces of a neighbor's outgoing mail, including their bills, charitable contributions and a Netflix return.

I think the temporary postal workers need to lay off the nog until Christmas.

Asshole

It's such a nice feeling when your child's school cancels after-school activities because of snow and your child is in New York and you are in Philadelphia and you can't FOR THE LOVE OF GOD get ahold of your husband to let him know because he won't ANSWER HIS FUCKING CELL PHONE.

Conundrum

I don't want to get a Christmas tree.

I have a seven year-old.

I think we need to get a Christmas tree.

No Sucking

Yesterday was my home's scheduled "leaf pick-up day" with my city. The city makes a big show of telling us when leaves have to be at the curb and then they try to enforce the rule of not having leaves in the street after the leaf pick-up day.

The big sucky-truck thing was supposed to come and suck up all the leaves that we put in the street after we raked them three times, after they blew back around our yard during a few wind storms, and after being partially washed away by torrents of rain. Of course the sucky-truck didn't show up. Therefore the rotting leaves from our three big old trees will continue to clog the sewer drains and cause street flooding and look like crap. 

Christmas Cards: Murder Edition

I finally received (a week late) the disc with the photos from my family photo shoot and now the Shutterfly site is having performance issues. I will never get these Christmas cards done. So much for being proactive.

Update:

An hour later, I'm finally ready to check out and the site issues seems to be over with, until I am ready to enter my credit card information. Suddenly, my coupon is blanked out and my order costs $70 more than it should. When I try to re-enter my coupon code, the site tells me it has already been used. FAIL.

We walked uphill both ways, in the snow!!

My dad just called to find out where the bus drops my daughter off this afternoon so he can pick her up instead of her having to walk in the cold to our house. When I was her age, Dad insisted that the walk from school or bus stop was good for me (even if it was raining or we had 30 mph winds). Now his granddaughter can't be exposed to the elements for half a block.

Standard Peeve for This Time of Year

Daylight Savings Time ended blah blah blah dark blah blah tired blah blah suck it.

Repeat as necessary.

Blow Me

The sound of leaf blowers ruins perfectly lovely autumn days. I wish partial deafness on leaf blower enthusiasts. Is that too harsh of a punishment? I think not.

'Tis the Season

Does fall make people dumber?

All month long I have been hearing commercials on the radio for Mini Cooper:  It is "Motortober" and it's "dealtacular".

Then, for the Susan B Kamen breast cancer memorial or whatever, there are ads for "Trucks and Ta-Ta's Month".

These sure make me want to buy a new vehicle.

Then there are the political advertisements, which are a whole different realm of stupid.  Some that grate on my nerves the worst are when some guy (or woman) gets his kid to record a commercial.  Sure, your kids are cute and all but do you need to make them props as you troll for votes?  Oh, I see, the poor kid will be sad if I don't vote for her hack dad.  Of course I will cast my vote for this guy. Losers.

Me lose brain?  That's unpossible. 

All Joking Aside

I was informed today that the Halloween candy trick or treat transaction is only permitted once the kid tells the candy giver a joke. What the fuck is this all about? Has anyone else heard or encountered this superbly morbid and absolutely idiotic "rule?" Where I come from, you simply push the bell/knock on the door, scream "trick or treat!" at the top of your lungs, open your little bag and salivate while watching the candy drop. I don't have kids, but there is no way in hell I would subject them to this joke for a treat thing. It's bad enough that this year kids want to be Vampires, and Zombies, and Bella Swan, oh my! This whole Halloween gig has really gone to shitter since I was a kid.

Temperate Weather Advice Can Suck It

Yes, I'm perfectly aware that I live in a warm climate where fall clothes are only wearable for three months of the year. I've lived in this climate for nearly seven years so this is not a huge revelation. So don't piss all over my excitement to wear cute fall clothes because you can't stand to see anyone else take joy in the small pleasures of life.