out, juju, out!

So here are all the annoying, irritating, horrible, wretched, awful, and miserable things that have happened to us lately:

• the sick thing
• the car thing
• I special-ordered some Where's George stamps from Stamp Connection for my 7th Georgiversary (which was March 24th). I tried to be as specific as possible with my (admittedly numerous) special requests - I even called when I placed my online order, to make sure they could do everything I wanted. I've had good luck with them following my special orders to the letter before, so I didn't think I had any reason to be concerned... but sure enough, when my package arrived, they'd made a bunch of mistakes. They were happy to fix them when I e-mailed, and I appreciate their prompt attention... but I really wanted the stamps, all correct, by a certain date. I know, at least part of this one is my fault, for wanting so many changes, and wanting them so quickly. But still, it's disappointing. Luckily, there's a place in town (Bradley Specialties of Ft. Lauderdale) who were able to make me a few stamps really quickly, so I still had some new stamps to show off at the WG meeting on my Georgiversary.
• The WG meeting on the 24th was great - but in entering the bills I received in trades into my favorites, not only did I screw up a ton of times (and the bill lookup feature resets all your presets every time you have to restart it, which is a giant pain), which was frustrating (I was totally sick-addled at that point - I probably should have been in bed instead of entering bills), but I also caught two bills that had originally been entered incorrectly. That's a bit disheartening, to get such a lesson in how many Wild-and-Crazy Georges are probably out there... Translation of this bit for all you non-Georgers: this thing I did was more of a pain in the butt than it had to be.
• My bike was stolen. I had had it chained up in the building's laundry room. We found out on Saturday evening when Johnny came back from getting the mail and said, "Would this be a bad time to tell you your bike is gone?" UGH. Bunch of fucking savages in this town. I wasn't sure at first if the landlord had cut the chain and moved it because, technically (as Johnny told me after the bike was gone) we're not allowed to store anyting in the laundry room - and the landlord had been by that morning doing some maintenance work on the building. So I called the landlord on Sunday - he didn't call back until Monday - but he said that when he got there on Saturday morning, all he found was the smashed chain-lock. UGH. And he said oh, btw, I should've moved the bike anyway, since the fire marshall had been by and stuck a notice on the laundry room door (which I never use) saying we're not allowed to store anything in there, and he could've been fined for my bike being there (thanks for telling me that now!). I love it when I'm supposed to follow rules I don't know about. And I especially love it when people steal my stuff. UGH. So I'm in the market for a new bike, if anyone has any suggestions (I want one of these babies, but they are so way pricey). It has to be lightweight and pretty, since I will be carrying it upstairs and it will be forming a large part of our living room decor (since there is nowhere else for me to put it). While we're at it, Johnny should probably get a bike, too.
• A plague of flies seems to have been visited upon our apartment. There are more and more of them every day. I spent most of last night swatting every one I saw in the kitchen (I killed about 8 of them) - today, there are even more. Johnny thought they were breeding in the trash, but today I think I discovered that they're breeding in the kitchen bay window - the one where I keep my plants. In fact, I get the sinking feeling they're breeding on my plants. Does anyone know a way to get rid of flies and keep them off plants, short of trashing the plants? I will cry if I have to get rid of these plants that I babied all the way down from Syracuse.
• We were out of tortilla chips, and Johnny had made guacamole. He went to the grocery store on the way home from work last night and bought some, along with some bread, and a few bags of other stuff. When we were sitting down to eat... hey, where are the chips?? They didn't give him the bag with the chips and bread in it. He had to go all the way back out to the store (and not the close Publix, the one by the interstate). Fucking Publix. As Johnny says, there's no way to win with them. Either Wegmans needs to hurry up and take over Publix, or the Penn Dutch needs to start staying open more reasonable hours. We can't go all the way out to the Whole Foods every time we need to run to the grocery store.
• We were hoping to go to the April 6th hockey game between the Lightning and the Panthers when we go visit my cousin Em in Tampa, but it is so beyond sold out. We didn't realize that's their last home game, or we would've bought tickets ages ago. Ugh. Now I am going to have to order my personalized Vincent Lecavalier jersey online, instead of being able to buy it in person at their arena shop. And I am going to miss out on seeing my hockey heartthrob again this season! :( (My poor little heart is breaking, boo-hoo!)
• I just got my first non-positive feedback on eBay (it was neutral, because I left the guy neutral feedback, and it would have been ridiculously unfair of him to leave me anything negative, since I held up my end of the deal flawlessly). I don't want to get into the details - it'll just take forever - but I am really annoyed about this one, because not only do I feel ripped off, but then he has the gall to be rude to me about my feedback for him??? UGH. All I'm going to say is, asswipe, how did your "clear and concise" pictures make the pen appear to be a different color than it is, and hide the fact that it is dirty and broken?? "Excellent condition," my ass. He is lucky I didn't leave him negative feedback - I probably should have, but it's too late for that now. Anyway, I think the pen will still clean up ok, and the broken bits shouldn't affect how it works too much (I hope). It is still a fine-point Sheaffer nib, so I am (somewhat) happy to have it.
• I got an e-mail in my gmail account the other day from some company saying that a purchasing account had been opened in my name. I just marked it as spam and didn't think anything else of it, until I got an e-mail newsletter from the same company, and that also got delivered to my inbox, as though it were legit mail. So I dunno what the hell is going on - I don't think anyone can make me pay for their shit ordered in my name if they don't have any of my financial info, can they? I haven't received any receipts for orders placed, so... the whole thing just kind of bugs me. I dunno if it's a weird phishing scam or what. I went to the company website, tho' (it appears to be a legit company), and wrote to the e-mails provided on the Contact Us page, requesting that if they do have an account associated with my e-mail address, that they close it and remove my e-mail from their mailing list. We'll see if my address is subsequently deluged with fresh spam. :(
• This week is pledge drive week at WLRN, the local public radio joint (aka "what I listen to every waking moment that Johnny is not home"). Pledge drives are annoying enough as it is, but WLRN's is irritating in several unique ways. They don't do that thing where they read people's names on air when they pledge, which doesn't bother me that much - I'd assume they get too many people pledging to do that, since they're a station in a major metropolitan area. Yet they never, ever seem to meet the hourly dollar-amount goals they set for themselves. Ever! It's ridiculous! I know it's the spring pledge drive, which is always slower than the fall. But they're trying to raise the same amount of money, all while cutting the drive to (as they love to repeat) 5 days and 5 hours ("our shortest spring pledge drive ever!"). They're so not going to make it, at this rate, and that is just sad. Also, since the pledge drive is shorter, they cut into the shows for longer periods to beg for money. No other station I've listened to (admittedly, limited selection: WRVO and WAER in Syracuse and WHRO/V in VA) has cut into the programming so much during pledge time. And they do this annoying thing where each day, everyone who pledges that day is entered into a drawing for a daily prize (yesterday was iPods - today, it's a pair of plane tickets to the Caribbean), so they spend all day talking up the damn prizes. Oh! And they keep going on about how easy it is to pledge on their website - which is utter b.s. - their site is one of he most broken, alternative-browser-unfriendly public broadcasting sites I've seen (I am not the only person who thinks this). I tried to pledge on Monday, and I couldn't do it in Firefox on my machine, couldn't do it in Safari, and eventually had to get on Johnny's Windows desktop where I could barely get the site to work on his Firefox. Like, don't they want my money? I am still not entirely sure the pledge went through, since I have not received an e-mail confirmation (I'll have to call them before the drive ends and check). But also, this week our radio seems to have been overtaken by a static monster, so when I am sitting on the couch, if I lean the wrong way at the wrong time of day, or if I get up and walk past the purple end table into the kitchen, the signal disappears in a wave of kssshhhwlafionsdfkhuujdfsp. Very irksome, and I can't figure out why this would just start now.

Ok, I think that's about it. That's a monster of a list, I know, and I don't blame anyone who skimmed it. It is a litany of woe. And I'm guessing, just based on statistical probabilities, that it must be coming to a close, soon. It just must be. This can't go on forever. I am tired of feeling like the world is shitting on me. So, begone, bad juju! Give me a stretch where everything goes my way for a while, okay? Please?