Can you please tell me why people look at their caller ID for calls they missed, see a number they don't know and then call the number back and more or less demand who you are and why you called them? I'd really like to know.

I'm also tired of a call that comes into work where they want to give free magazines to, and I quote, "Working women like you". It raises a number of points in my mind. What do they say if a man answers the phone, do they ask for a girl? Why are they offering crappy, girly magazines? And, is it really so odd to find women working in this day and age? I'm sure I'm thinking about this too much, but they've tried twice to send me Ladies Home Journal and Cosmopolitian. It's a bit insulting. They're not even useful magazines, if such a thing exists.

In a recent conversation with a co-worker I explained the term lubber, as in landlubber. It was a term he'd never heard before, that I had known from childhood. Perhaps it is because I am from a coastal state, (in fact, I believe the state has more coast than borders). He is from Alabama, which has very little coast. He put it down to me having been a sailor. Then he remarked that I "don't cuss like a sailor." I didn't get a chance to disabuse him of his misinformation.

The absolute worst 'sailors' I ever worked with cursed every other word and were generally very unintelligent people. The best sailors I've ever worked with cursed when appropriate, usually when things were going bad. They were the most intelligent people I've worked with, and it showed in the words they chose.

My point is that it's people in general that possess good language or bad, I use large words in the stead of curse words, most of the time.

You know what's great when you're hungry, tired and cold?

A bowl of homemade barley stew, crusty bread with butter and the hotest, blackest cup of tea that I can brew. Then crusty bread with cheese, another cup of the blackest cup of tea I could brew and a homemade chocolate chip cookie, all consummed in the span of an hour, sitting next to the Little Woodstove That Can(TM) watching NCIS while it snows outside . . .

Priceless my friends.

Today I spent $2.15 on my Halloween costume at the thrift store, not bad, if I do say so myself. I just wish everything you bought from a thrift store did not inevitably smell like an old lady's house.

It is also ironic to note that I can tie a bowline, a sheetbend, a sheepshank, a reef knot and all other manner of sailing knots but have no idea how to tie a tie.

I have two flavours of angry: frustrated angry---inwhich the girl genes take over and I cry and that makes me angrier; or pissed---inwhich the white hot fury makes me go very quiet and kind of violent until I scream or hurt something. Or drive like a lunatic.

I am pissed. Here's why.

I currently work for a vet, it's a place holder job that pays me money. I started in the kennel but I work all over the place now. I work the kennel on Saturdays though, where you have an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon inwhich to bother me. We are very good about telling people this. Some people are special though and don't feel that the rules apply to them.

I recieved a call from a woman (who was suppose to drop her dogs off yesterday), she's calling to let me know her mom will be dropping her dogs off, but won't get there 'til five, when I close and leave. I said fine, as long as she was at there at five. Otherwise I was going to leave.

Did I mention these dogs were new to us? No? Well, new dogs have a habit of not showing or not calling to say they're not showing, happens constantly. Then if they do show a great big load o' paperwork needs to be done. 'Kay?

So at five, no one's there, I go to shut down the computer and get my keys when a young girl walks in, kind of agitated. She starts asking me if I can wait ten-fifteen minutes for her mom to get these dogs and bring them over.

Here's what got me pissed, the mom didn't send the girl in to find out, SHE LEFT HER THERE. The girl was somewhere between 12-14 and the mother left her at a local business with a complete stranger because she didn't want to deal with her older daughter's dogs for a night. One night.

This appears to be a very irresponsible family. This woman left her daughter for twenty minutes because she couldn't bother to be on time or make her older, adult daughter run her own errands. I just don't get it. It's not that I don't think a young girl can take care of herself, it's just that I could have been anyone. Nor did I have to stay. I did of course, but the whole thing was ridiculous.

I just don't understand, and I'm not sure I want to.

Every once and awhile I go through my stuff and throw things away(or put them up on Amazon for sale, depending), I am very good at this. Sometimes I wonder why I haven't gotten rid of x, since x is of no use to me and then promptly go through x and get rid of y and z as well.

This afternoon I went through what I thought of as my writing folder; it contained old notebooks, school assignmnets and some scribbles I couldn't read. (I have very neat printing, it is in fact, neater than my typing, but if you demand cursive out of me---well, you had better be prepared to spend some time deciphering it, that's all I can say.)

I'm not sure why I was saving the school assignments, since you never write anything good for a teacher, at least, not the teachers I had. Those were easy to toss, in fact, most of it was, especially since I had transcribed anything good to my computer shortly after I bought said infernal contraption.

Then I came across an offical letter thing from what appears to be a university. I never applied to nor attended any schooling after high school, so it puzzled me until I turned it over. The back was covered in neat lines of my printing and I realized what it was before I even read it. It was my screw you letter to the first people who fired me*. It's a thing of beauty I had thought I threw out years ago. It's full of big words and an almost Victorian turn of phrase that I seem to write in when I know I'm right and someone's being stupidly wrong. I mostly write such things for myself, but it would have served those idiots right had I sent it. Now I need to ponder what exactly to do with it.

And try to figure where exactly the piece of scrap paper came from (mostly becaue curiosity has yet to kill this cat). It would be ironic if it belonged to my former employers.

*They fired me because I wasn't a shallow valley girl willing to sell them my soul.


BTW, best thing I heard today: "The guy that invented the radio just dissed Jack the Ripper."

The Nation Park Service had been conducting what they call "Controlled Burns" in Rocky Mountain National Park for the past two days. I live a stones throw outside the boundaries, and I call it "Little boys playing with fire".

It's kind of nerve wracking, I keep thinking I've left the oven on or there must be something burning on the range. It's left a smokey haze over the whole town, is playing merry hell with my allergies and I think it's slowly smoke curing everything, which may be their plan after all.

I know controlled burns are usefull and helpful in many environments, but I'm not sure that is the case here, especially since they are burning what they burned last year. I really would like a downpour to put an end to all of this.

I've never really understood comics and have always had trouble reading them, even though I tried here and there. I've just figured out why this is so.

My sister has me reading an online steampunk comic called "Girl Genius", which has so much back story it makes my head spin, but that's not the point. I've only recently started to get into it and some of the characters. And while I was reading some of the speech bubbles and lamenting the ample clevage of the female characters, I realized that I was hardly looking at the pictures as my interest in the story and the words increased. (Especially as I have no interest in cleavage, thank you.)

I don't need the pictures, they get in the way, I'm sure I'm missing some of the story by not really looking at them, but I'd rather read just the story I think. Maybe with an illustration here and there.

Well, I've solved one mystery, it seems.

Everything I know about computers could probably be written out on a sheet of paper, with room enough for a doodle of a schooner and a square rigger. (Because, yes, I'm the kind of dork who doodles tall ships, shut up). So when I fix something that isn't working, like the often on the fritz internet connection to our house--a cable connection--(which is funny, I never remember dial up as being so very tempermental)it always makes me feel very smart.

Even if all I did was turn it all off, unplug it all and start it all up again. Must remember to do this with not only the modem, but the wireless router, for some reason. Still. I fixed it, without calling the cable company and feeling like a dork when they fixed it in five seconds.

I have a terrible, nostalgic habit of Googling the ships I have sailed on, mostly for pictures, but also for gossip. I did this not too long before feelng the need to relate the results in LJ, mostly because the cat is the only other sentient being here, and I can tell he cares less.

Someone bought the Clipper City and they painted her black! It doesn't improve her lines any, but it certainly makes her a nicer boat to look at (a ship that leaks rusty water over its hull should not be painted white.) Perhaps someone is finally taking care of that blasted ship. I almost want to go to New York and find out (apparently that's where she is, at least some of the time.) However, I do not like New York, or the Clipper City quite that much, but it certainly caught my interest.