HAAAAATE

I am FURIOUS with the fuckers over at Integrated Alarm Services. I called back in July, wanting to cancel my account with them because I never use the damn thing, and they told me "Oh, your contract doesn't expire until January 16, so you can either pay us a big ass block of money now to get out of the contract, or wait and send a letter and cancel it then." So I opted to cancel it later. They told me to send a letter 30 days before the contract expires. Fine, I sent off a fax today - yes, it's a couple days late, but it's JUST a couple days. Now they're telling me that I needed to send the letter 90 days before the contract expired. NINETY days. No. They are giving me the fucking runaround and I am sick of this shit. It's not like they didn't know I was going to cancel. They did have notice, y'all. I am FUCKING PISSED. I am considering actually changing my bank account to keep them from getting their grubby fucking hands on any more of my money. Haaaate!

And if that's not enough, Rugrat's GATE teacher is retiring in January, and nobody seems to know what's going to happen to the program. They're certainly not hiring anyone yet. They are taking this time to "re-evaluate" the program. Translation: they can't afford to do anything and they are stalling. Haaaate!

This is not a good day. Not good at all.

CPSIL update

OK, CPSIL has gone off the deep end. Babydaddy tells me that she told PBIL she "made a mistake" when she left him. So she...wants to get back together now? After being separated for over a year. And after having vicious screaming matches with him all the time, in front of the kids. And after deciding that her kids are expendable and she doesn't want to deal with them anymore. And after making every excuse she could think of to get more money out of PBIL and at the same time spend less time with HER OWN CHILDREN.

And now she wants to get back together?

I hope PBIL tells her to go take a flying leap. The woman needs to be institutionalized.

Books, books & more books

Last year I started keeping track of the books I read. This year, so far, I've read 133 books (although seven of them I either did not finish, or am still reading). I knew I read a lot, but more than 11 books per month, on average, is probably a little excessive. Maybe I should cut back next year and do something a little more productive with my time, like keep up with housework or, maybe, find a date. Heh.

Anyhoo, the standouts on my list this year were (in the order I read them):

• The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini - this book was fabulous and heartbreaking
• Something Borrowed and Something Blue, both by Emily Giffin - fun chick-lit fluff, but with substance; taken together, the books form two sides of the same story
  
• A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey - not exactly non-fiction, but VERY well written and compelling
• Undead & Unwed, by Mary Janice Davidson - another fun fluff piece, this time about a rather shallow young woman who becomes a vampire
• The Glass Castle, by Jeanette Walls - disturbing non-fiction memoir
  
• Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger - a coming-of-age story about the bonds of family and duty
  
• A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving - another lovely coming-of-age story, focused on faith
• A Dirty Job, Christopher Moore - more fun stuff: a man who becomes one of Death's helpers (Christopher Moore is always a good bet for offbeat, humorous "horror" stories)
• Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer - powerful story about a boy searching for clues to his father's past after he dies in the 9/11 attacks
• Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro - creepy but hopeful at the same time

I hope one or more of these books ends up on your 2007 list, if you haven't read them all already!

Pulp Fiction...the really short version

You must click here.

I laughed for a full five minutes after watching this. Because I am twelve years old.

Gossip

Remember crazy pseudo-SIL (CPSIL)? I haven't talked to her in a year, at least. But the other day, Babydaddy told me her latest psychotic tale. She's decided that she "can't handle" her kids anymore and is foisting them off permanently on her ex-husband, my pseudo-BIL (PBIL). Apparently, CPSIL is convinced that the kids hate her, they don't appreciate anything she does for them, and she's certain something is wrong with A, the youngest, although the doctor has told her repeatedly that he is fine.

I have major, major issues with this. First of all, knowing CPSIL as I do, she's probably just got a boyfriend who doesn't want her kids around and so she's dumping them. Or maybe they just cramp her style - she can't go out and party as often as she'd like with her friends. Doesn't matter, really, the point is: you don't get to delete your kids from your life and still be considered a decent human being. Those poor little boys are being abandoned by their mother and her excuse for doing this is that they don't appreciate her? THEY ARE LITTLE KIDS. Of course they don't appreciate what she does for them, no child under the age of 18 appreciates what their parents do for them (you know, not until they move out and have to fend for themselves). That is no excuse. And they probably do act up more around her, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. She's high-strung, impatient, and obviously not responsible enough or emotionally invested enough in her children to put them first. I'm sure they pick up on that. But what REALLY galls me, what absolutely horrifies me, is that she was desperate to have children. She pushed PBIL into it, she went through fertility treatments to get pregnant with those little boys, and now she is ready to throw them away like they're trash. And what will happen to those boys when she decides in six months that she misses them, or (more likely) her parents guilt her into trying to get the boys back? It will completely fuck with their heads, and then she'll throw them away again when she gets tired of being a mommy.

I...have no words. Just NO FUCKING WORDS. She is inhuman. I hope PBIL gets sole custody of the boys and a restraining order against the bitch.

Oh, and CPSIL was trying to get PBIL to carry more than his share of the load before this, and she somehow used ME as an example -- something about how Babydaddy and I have things worked out, and how CPSIL and PBIL should do things differently (obviously something to her selfish advantage) because what works for us must work for them. Ummm...no. I don't know what point she was trying to make, but she made it sound to PBIL like CPSIL and I are still great friends and talk all the time, when...no. Not happening. And for her to try and use me as leverage in her fight with PBIL is just totally fucked and completely irrelevant. What works for one family is not necessarily going to work for another family. And what she doesn't seem to get is that I LOVE MY SON and would NEVER abandon him, and both Babydaddy and I are committed to making things easy on Rugrat and therefore we get along and are flexible with each other. Plus Babydaddy is a good friend and a great person. Whereas CPSIL is completely fucking out of her mind.

That is all.

Vegas recap

I went to Vegas this past weekend for a reunion of sorts - a bunch of people that I used to work with all got together to get drunk and gamble and stuff.

I arrived just before 10 PM on Friday and waited at the airport for a while as the people I was meeting up with were all on delayed flights. We caught a cab together to our hotel (the Strat, way at the far end of the Strip) and dropped off our bags and jumped BACK in a cab to the Bellagio for our midnight meetup with the group. Had a few drinks, some late night food, and back to the hotel to sleep at around 4 AM.

Saturday morning I awoke bright and early at 8 AM, not even hung over. Yay! We cabbed down to the Luxor for a semi-group breakfast buffet, and then folks went their separate ways. I did a little shopping at the Venetian, then headed for the Mirage and my spa day with A, one of my old project managers. She and I got luxurious pedicures, then I hung out at the spa (AWESOME steam room) until my 4:30 massage. Took a shower, did my hair, then hopped a bus back to the Strat to change for the evening into the lovely lavender silk top I bought at BCBG that day. I got ready in ten minutes (I know!) and jumped in another cab with the guys at the Strat, and we went to Ellis Island for a BBQ dinner with the whole group. Fantastic BBQ, by the way. Juicy chicken, delish beans & corn on the cob. Plus microbrew beers that were pretty damn tasty. A group of us left Ellis after a couple hours and headed to Mandalay Bay to drink some more at House of Blues, and then watched the guys play Pai Gow (while we drank some more). Had a nice conversation with JL, who managed to fly in from LA after his motorcycle broke down and he missed his meetup with JW, who was driving from LA. Then we moved on to the Monte Carlo, which was kind of funky because I was following part of the group and didn't realize that they were heading back to sleep at their hotel - the Luxor. I ended up cabbing separately to the Monte Carlo and meeting up with the group again as they played...craps? Blackjack? I dunno. I put three dollars in a slot machine and drank some more. There was (obviously) lots of alcohol involved in this evening, but I don't think I embarrassed myself too much. ;-) Stumbled back to the room around 3, I think.

Sunday morning I woke up around 7 AM and couldn't get back to sleep because H was snoring like a truck driver. LOL. Grabbed some coffee and biscuits & gravy at the cafe in the Strat and then headed to the airport with a group of folks. The airport was a mob scene, but I managed to check in & get through security in about an hour. I got separated from the rest of the group and they didn't make it to the gate until it was almost time to board! And...that's it. Flight home was uneventful. I took a nap when I got home, and Ryan was wonderful - played quietly in his room while I slept for a couple hours. Then I went to bed early. Ahhh, bliss! Sleeping in my own bed...