Tuesday, November 27, 2007

My Wonderful New Job

[How many times must I tell the same 5 people to shut the hell up in here?!?!]

Sample conversation between 2 guys (spoken loudly across 2 computer carrels):
  • Do you eat at restaurants?
  • Yeah
  • What kind you like?
  • Yeah
  • Italian?
  • Yeah
  • Pizza?
  • Yeah
  • Fish?
  • Nooooo...
  • Wanna eat dinner with me sometime?
  • Yeah
  • Do you think (name of girl here) will eat dinner with me?
  • ....yeah....
  • Do you like Italian food?
  • Yeah
  • Hi, Steph! So, are there cameras even in the parking garage at the casino (11 millionth time he's asked me this...)
  • Yes, they're everywhere- if you want to chitchat, you have to go downstairs.
  • Ok! SORRY!
  • Ssshh!
  • Do you like Italian food?
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhh!


(I had multigrain pancakes with cheese & scallions today. La Wombat seemed to think this was blog-worthy....)

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Licking Stick

...that's the song that was echoing around my head this morning. Odd, because I saw two shows last night, not one of which had a single James Brown cover....

J10X, Lushy Luke & I went to see our friends Anne Castellano & Dorian James play at the Annex right in town- for once, didn't have to travel to hear good music! The Annex is a large brick-lined room above the art gallery of Main Street - and a convenient 45 second hike to the Main Street Pub. The sound is actually quite good there and we've seen bands ranging from acoustic solo performances, like Anne, to full-on noisy (the Chuck Hestons come to mind...)

Unfortunately we had to leave halfway through Dorian James' set in order to get Luke to New London for the Gamma Rays gig. The Rays recently acquired the fantastic Johnny Customs on bass, and that man can play! His presence has really charged up the rest of the band and they were fast & loose! Opening for the Gamma Rays was a duo from Maine called Meantone - they were loud, punkabilly & very rock'n'roll (a double bill of Meantone & The Royale Brothers in the future would be just divine). The singer/guitar player 'Meantone' was a fantastic player & during their set wore a gas mask with a mike inside. The drummer, Little Brett was terrific and part way through the set, Johnny Customs played with them for a few songs- too bad so many people missed such great shows last night - both places were pathetically short on audiences.

Levez-vous et dansez!

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Who I'm Hatin' On: Bank of America- Incompetent Jerks or Evil Empire?

It's both! BoA is loaded with terrible, horrible attributes.

Sit 'round the fire, children, and let me tell you a story:

I was rewarded with a letter from BoA after paying off my unsecured cauldron loan that not only was the loan was paid in full, they were canceling a lien on my mortgage......?!!?!

Boys & girls...unsecured means I had the loan with no collateral and I had only held my castle's mortgage for two weeks at that point- pretty fast work on their part, considering they only have pig's feet with which to write!

So, I decided I would merely place a friendly call to the customer service village to find out what was going on. Two days and no less than FOURTEEN customer service trolls later, I still did not have an answer. Not surprising, as the completely unhelpful a**holes (a.k.a CUAs) spent a great deal of time transferring me around to the auto loan department, the 'we-only-take-applications-for mortgages-department', various flying monkey 'supervisors' (who were thinly disguised CUAs), the broken broom department, etc.

Now thoroughly irritated, as any Queen would be, I decide to send a message via magical email to BoA. Wow, if telephoning wasn't bad enough, the four CUAs I've contacted can only respond to my request for information via cut-an-paste scripts - the poor people working at BoA aren't even allowed to think for themselves! The final email I receive informs me I need to go to one of their branch offices in the deep, dark woods. As if I don't hate them enough already, I will have to get my slippers-of-silver-cloth dirty!

At this point, I have now reported them to the CT Banking Commission office. I want my grievance on record, recorded by our ogre-scribes.

So, I head to my local BoA branch, in the deep, dark woods. And you know what? It only took the very pleasant young fairy princess I spoke with for 5 whole minutes to inform me that it was all 'just a mistake'....

And if you're all very, very good, I will tell you the end of the story another day....

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Authors Day!

A happy, inspiring Author's Day to my brilliant friends who write about everything from Tombstones to The Mangrove Legacy to Terry & the Pirates to Totoro Bento lunches to The Goth Scouts!