zonkered.net

I have been having mail delivery issues.  I put it on hold for Christmas, they apparently started it a couple of days early, and it wasn’t redelivered yesterday when it was supposed to.  Naturally, I called USPS to complain, and they did the only thing they ever do – they started a ticket, and told me the local post office would call me back today.

They didn’t, so I called back.

USPS employee: The ticket is still in process, which means they’re still looking into it.  If you don’t hear by tomorrow, call us back and we’ll start another ticket.

Me: *doesn’t understand how starting a new ticket helps anything, but knows that arguing with a customer service rep with a crappy government agency is an exercise in futility* Oh, ok.  Could you tell me who my delivery office is, so I can follow up with them?

USPS employee: Certainly.  *pause* Your local office is Pompano Beach, on Atlantic Boulevard.

Me: Uh, okay.  Thanks.

Pompano Beach, I think; that doesn’t sound right.  It sounds kind of tropical.  But it is New Jersey, there are beaches, we are on the water – I guess its possible.  So I check the list of local post offices.  No matches.  Check for post offices on Atlantic Boulevard.  No matches.  Hmm, I think.  I google Pompano Beach.

Pompano Beach, people, is in FLORIDA.  As has already been established, I live in New Jersey.

So I call back, and use their office locator to figure out my delivery office (the real one, which is the Bergen South branch on Martin Luther King in Jersey City) and call them.  They’ll deliver my mail tomorrow.

To Jersey City, not Pompano Beach.

Just got back from Christmas break (well, this morning at 1:30) and I’ve come to a conclusion:  I am the only one in my family who has not been infected with the lodge-look obsession.

We spent Christmas this year at my brother’s country house outside Grand Rapids, Michigan and on the day after Christmas we went to Holland to browse the tourist trap stores.  Holland is pretty much like any other tourist trap across the country; they sell Michigan-specific crap, Stonewall Kitchen mixes, and many candles.  We spent most of the time in one store, where the furniture was made out of fake driftwood, the fabrics all depicted moose and bears, and the scent was relentlessly piney.  There was nothing in there I found even slightly interesting, but everyone else seemed compelled.

I finally escaped the store when the pine candle smell got to be too much for me.

I’m sure the love of the look comes from our family vacations in the Boundary Waters, and since the most I remember getting out of them is muddy and miserable, it’s not surprising that I’m very much into it.  Just surprised that everyone else seems to be, I guess.

Yesterday we got the delightful news that we’re all being cut back to a four day week as of January 1.  Which means 20% less money, which means Amanda? Is on the poverty diet starting in the new year.  I hope to develop a love of peanut butter.

Fuck me.

Tagged by Amy, here is my year, such that it is.

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before
I visited continental Europe.

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I resolved to exercise more, and I did! Until about July.  Not going to bother renewing the gym membership.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Also no.

5. What countries did you visit?
United Kingdom and Portugal

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?

I’d like to be a little more comfortable financially than I am right now.

7. What date from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory and why?
January 4, 2008, when I left the hell that was my previous job.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Getting a new job and leaving the really bad situation at the old one.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I’m not sure.  I had lots of little failures and little stresses, but nothing huge.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
No, not this year.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
My MacBook.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
Mine, especially in this last month, and Amy’s, due to the shit she had to put up with.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Personally? I can’t think of anyone.  Politically? Sarah Palin, Rod Blagojovich and Eliot Spitzer.

14. Where did most of your money go?
My MacBook, romance novels, and shoes.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
The Presidential Election.  I used to be a big political junkie, but it had depressed me for the last several years.  Now I’m excited again.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
Carmelldansen.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
Much happier.

ii. thinner or fatter?
Maybe a little thinner.  But about the same.

iii. richer or poorer?
Poorer, unfortunately, despite the fact that I now make more money.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Writing

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Procrastinating.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
In Michigan with the family.

22. Did you fall in love in 2008?
No.

23. How many one night stands?
That would be….0.

24. What was your favourite TV programme?
“Chuck” and “30 Rock”

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Not really.  But there are some who started to annoy the crap out of me.

26. What was the best book you read?
“Acheron”

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Sleater-Kinney.  Yes, I know I’m about ten years late to that party.

28. What did you want and get?
A new job.

29. What did you want and not get?
I can’t think of anything, actually.

30. What was your favourite film of this year?
I didn’t go to many movies this year, so I’ll have to go with one of the two I did see: Definitely, Maybe.  It was silly, but didn’t try to be more than it was.  I want to see Rachel Getting Married before the end of the year though, and I suspect I’ll love it.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I went to work, and I remember it as a really awful day for the most part where I was almost in tears for a long time.  But they did buy me a cake at the office, and I was 28.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Telling my former boss where she could shove her attitude.  Didn’t, but man.  I would have enjoyed it.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2003?
In 2003? Jeans and tees and sweatshirts.  I was in grad school.  In 2008? Comfortable professional, with a bohemian twist.

34. What kept you sane?
Daydreaming.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Rahm Emanuel.  Shut up.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
The presidential election.

37. Who did you miss?
My family and my friends.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
Some (but not all) of the people at my new job.  The New York Jezebelles

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.
Never let them see you crack.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

It’s 1:45 AM on Thursday morning, and I’m sitting up in bed because my shuffle’s battery is dead and I refuse to endure the commute tomorrow morning without music.  In most ways, the commute is better, thanks to the fact that New Jersey actually has semi-reliable public transit, unlike other suburban areas I could mention, but it some ways it sucks a lot.

For instance, I was watching the first India episode of The Amazing Race Season 5 earlier this evening with Mura, and she was pointing out the horridness of the train in Mumbai, and I said “Actually, that’s about what the 4 is like in the morning.  Except we don’t have people hanging out the doors.  The MTA frowns on that.”

The Metro-North was much easier.

Tomorrow at lunch I need to go Christmas shopping.  I keep meaning to do so after work, but after work I just want to go home.  So I do.  And no shopping gets done.  I need Christmas cards.  And presents for people.  And I want to get it over with as soon as possible.

It’s 1:56 am now.  I think I’m going to call it a night.  The shuffle should hopefully be charged enough now to get me to 42nd Street tomorrow morning.