My parents have a shiny new kitchen, complete with a shiny new microwave. Silly me, I decided to use the timer feature. Everything was going well until about 20 seconds after the countdown ended. The damn thing refused to stop beeping. No matter what buttons I pressed or the order I pressed them in, the microwave continued pleading for attention. I called my dad, whose best suggestion was the useless manual. Next came mom, who had previously dealt with with this auditory onslaught. Sadly, she was still searching for the correct way to make it shut up. She did suggest a brick, but I have a feeling I'd be eviscerated if I chose that route.

If I end up locked up in a mental asylum by the end of the day, blame Bosch and their engineering department.

American Airlines lied. They said my suitcase would be delivered by 2am. I went to bed around 4:30, having given up for the evening. I called in the morning to ask them which country my suitcase was visiting. As it turned out, it arrived at Newark as scheduled last night, but then the driver decided it was too late at night to deliver a suitcase to a private residence, and I could suck it. But my suitcase would definitely be delivered by 2pm. Then I got a call saying my suitcase was in the truck and would be delivered in about an hour. I won't mention that it was almost 4 by then.

The delivery guy didn't lie, and my suitcase was soon home. I'm reasonably sure that it was red the last time I saw it, but I could just be forgetting the grime. First order of business: inventory contents. Interesting. I don't remember wadding up my dress into a ball. Or taking my shoes out of the shoe bag and putting them soles down on my white sweater. Or unfolding all my shirts. Or not packing my hair iron. EGADS! My hair iron is missing! Okay, okay, don't panic yet. Must call Matt! He can check at home! Maybe I left it? I hope... But alas, it was not to be.

I called AA, then waited on hold. I was told to call another number, then waited on hold. I finally acquired the number for baggage services at Newark, and they DUN DUN DUUUUUN put me on hold. There I waited, where hours turned into days and days turned into months. Then, after 10 minutes, the evil call system hung up on me. That was the last straw. Screw them, I'm going out for ice cream with blue sprinkles.

This morning I took a deep breath and tried calling again. Round 1, the phone just rang until the phone company informed me that no one appeared to be answering and I should try again later. Useful. Round 2, someone answered around ring 37. I told her what happened, gave her the file locator number, and answered a few other questions. Then she asked what the missing items were. "Just my hair iron." "Hair iron?" "Yes, for straightening my hair." "We don't reimburse for electronics. Only for clothes and shoes. Sorry." "Is there anything that you can do?" "I'll put it in the report, but that's it. Thank you for calling." Click. AAAAAAAHHHHHHH! What kind of stupid numb nuts policy is that? That's basically giving your employees a free pass on stealing anything with a circuit since the company doesn't do a damned thing about it! Exterminate! Exterminate!

AA might be an evil conglomerate, but not only did I buy the iron with my American Express, I charged the plane ticket with it as well. Tonight, or tomorrow, depending on mental weather conditions, I will call them and they'll make everything happy.

Miracle of all miracles, my flight landed at Newark on time. My luggage, however, was "detained by the TSA for unspecified reasons." Gee, great. But "it'll be on the next flight out." Um, the next flight from LAX to EWR is tomorrow. But wait! They already rerouted my bag, so it was waiting for me. In St. Louis. How useful. Theoretically, it will be on a flight from St. Louis and landing at EWR around 9 tonight, enabling a 2 am delivery. I might not have to be naked tomorrow! Yay!

In honor of today being Thursday, I'm wearing one of my Mets baseball caps. Specifically the 2009 Inaugural Season one, since it matters. While walking in Westwood, a homeless guy noticed and started yelling at me:

"Hey Mets! What are you doing in LA? Go back to New York, you Yankee bastard!"

The bedroom ceiling fan has been on since Sunday. The sliding doors are open all day. The ambient temperature is around 75F. It's officially summer!

What better way to threaten the opposing team than an inaugural game flyover?



More pictures to follow, pending my acquisition thereof.

Things Jess said today:

"You're my sanest friend."

"In that case, you can have a jigsaw."

And I have two witnesses to both statements.

This is the second year that I have my very own Yahoo fantasy baseball team to screw up. Last year I had no idea what to do or what anything meant, despite working at a fantasy sports company. The RotoHog stock exchange game is so different from standard leagues that I couldn't apply anything but the category abbreviations to Yahoo. Shockingly, I lost with flying colors.

Then came the NBA Ultimate Fantasy Commissioner game and its complete lack of a stock market. The result? I learned how normal fantasy sports leagues work.

Now it's April, my amazingtacular job has disappeared into the aether, and the fantasy baseball season has gotten underway. Everything on Yahoo's site reminds me of something I did for RotoHog, namely the UFC project. I click on a link, I think of what the RotoHog code looked like. I set my line up, I remember how annoying it was to get that working correctly. While my team is doing better (which doesn't take much when you were the proud holder of last place), just using the site make me miss my job.

There are fewer brain-meltingly stupid entities than state governments. However, the California Employment Development Department has found a new way to make my life miserable.

I applied for unemployment after my final day of work. I was going to apply before hand to get it over with, but they said NO. Not a big deal. So eventually I get a little piece of paper that I needed to return. Basically it's a formality where I say, "yes, I did in fact search for work, but alas, I didn't find any, now give me my money." I filled it in for the two weeks indicated, the first two in February, and I mailed it back. I got one slip of paper in the mail saying no money for your first week, you lose. Um, okay. I didn't get the damn check until halfway through March. Attached to the check was the affidavit for weeks 3 and 4 for February. Well, silly me, I filled that form and sent it back.

A couple of days later, I received my response. "YOU ARE A HORRIBLE HUMAN BEING AND YOU ARE SO NOT GETTING ANY MORE MONEY FROM US UNTIL YOU COMPLETE A PHONE INTERVIEW." Specially, I have to tell them why I mailed my February form in 3 weeks late. Uh, because I didn't receive it until then. After all the crap about the EDD being overburdened being repeated by the media, I assumed that it was just taking forever to process my claim instead of being lost in the mail. The worst part? They assigned me the first open interview, which is still over two weeks away.

I can sort of understand why things work this way, but that doesn't make me feel any better. With 1 in 10 unemployed around here, the thought of calling the scary bureaucrats when I had only been waiting a few weeks didn't seem particularly necessary. Now I know better.

I'm not sure who enjoyed the experience less, but Zero is officially done with his antibiotic eye drops. Thankfully, that also means he is officially done with his Cone of Malcontent. So what does a newly freed hyperactive little mutt do first? Lick his crotch for thirty minutes. *slurp*