Oh, come on, people, I know you're out there. I know you're reading this blog: I can read the WebTrends reports as well as anybody. Some of you even make comments. So why won't you sign my cheesy guest map? Please? It'll make me happy. You want me to be happy, don't you?

Right. Didn't think so. How could I be this bitter, sarcastic and generally snarky if I were happy? Well, there's only one way to find out. Sign the freakin' map.

Thanks, and have a nice day. (Insert wretched little smiley face icon here)

I had this dream last night where I was preparing dinner at someone's house: a dinner party. And I was roasting meat, or trying to. But the woman's husband had reset their oven to baud rate instead of degrees farenheit. So whereas I thought I was roasting at a certain temp, I was, instead only working at about 140 degrees.

Maybe I'm having these kinds of dreams because Marc and I have been listening to an audio book of Steven Hawking's "The Universe in a Nutshell."

Or not.

I take the train to work every day (and, by extension, home) and there seems to be no low to which my fellow passengers will not sink. I'm almost immune to the shrieking into their cellphone people, and the packs of wild teenagers who go to the art school downtown. Truth be known, I'm fond of those kids: they make me smile.

But yesterday morning was just appalling. And me without my camera. There sat a young adult male in a business suit and his skanky girlfriend, and she was picking at his zits for him while he sat there and took it. On the train. In full view of all other passengers.

Once more, I must ask: Have you no dignity? Have you no concept of social proprieties? Have you no boundaries?

STOP THAT RIGHT NOW, before I vomit on your wingtips.

Mine has: my nightguard, because I'm grinding my teeth. (Quel suprise, eh?)
The Red Queen's house with miniatures
Eeyore by John R. Wright
Pocket Piglet and Piglet with Violets, also by John R. Wright
The Damon Runyon Omnibus
The Complete Diaries of Samuel Pepys
A Hello Kitty Lamp
a few books on dreaming
a dozen back issues of Gourmet
a dish of semiprecious stones
dust
an old cherry wood recorder

When I first got the job of webmaster at this fine institution, it was by default. Default of my own big fucking mouth. At the time, I was merely the art director, and I had a new Director of Public Relations as my boss. She tossed me out of a meeting to discuss the possibility of doing a web site saying, and I quote: "I don't want you at this meeting. Nobody wants to hear what you have to say. You will only tell us what is wrong, and this doesn't have to be done right, it only has to be done."

So I found someone who did want to hear what I had to say, and I said it in a three-page "Jerry Maguire"-type memo. The person on the receiving end of said memo immediately stopped work on the "it only has to get done" web page and convened an oversite committee with my memo as its starting point. My PR director promptly fired me. The CIO (the guy who DID want to hear what I had to say) took that opportunity to merely have me moved to another department where I was tasked with building the web site.

Which is where the Little Red Hen comes in. Nobody in the PR office wanted to give me content, but they were the department in charge of content. I had to steal it from all the brochures I had ever produced as the art director.

Once the site was up and running, there came a battle for control between my new department (business development) and the PR office. Now that it's done, said PR, it's no longer a developent issue, it's a PR device. The CIO split the baby, and sent me and my website to the Medical Network Services division.

Well, that was two years ago, and I'm still in the Medical Information Services department, the PR department still can't stop the Miami Herald from hemmoraging bad ink about this hospital, and yet, even though one would think that possibly that group of vicious little people would have better things to do with their time, like, say, brushing up their resumes in anticipation of our first new president in 15 years, and one who has a mandate to be a new broom, they are back flogging the same dead horse as ever. To wit: That I am someone that none of them wishes to work with and I'm difficult.

To which I say, I may be difficult, but you are idiots. And I'd rather be a bitch than an idiot any day of the week.

I went to a huge bead show this weekend. In fact, I went twice. And I spent money. I wish I knew why little bits of glass and silver get me so hot. It seems that a LOT of women feel the same way. The joint was packed with women (and men) all fondling beads and buying beads and showing off their creations of beaded jewelry.

When you see some of these baubles, you understand why beads are currency in so many civilizations. Except for the part about you can make them yourself, I don't see why the custom of using beads as money ever went out of fashion. I told one vendor that if she needed a website, I could build one, not for money, but just for beads.

Seems a fair deal to me, because if she gave me money, I'd only blow it on more beads. Glass and gem stones, and silver and vermeil. Now, in your best Homer Simpson voice, repeat after me: "OOOOh, Garnets."