Various Things that Piss Me Off

If you list them, they might go away...at the very list, they are flushed from your brain for a while:

1. Ignorant people. I seem to be surrounded by them on message boards where debating is involved lately (research is apparently a dirty word as are logic, tolerance, reason and compromise). I can understand not knowing everything about all things...well, at least I can relate to the concept ;-)... but I cannot and will not every understand why some people are perfectly happy with being willfully ignorant about the most basic things about their fellow man and then not only being stubborn about that, but also being flauntingly, defiantly PROUD of the fact that they don't know shit from shinola about diddly for whatever zealot, xenophobic, homophobic, edcuationophobic, politophobic, vaccineophoibic, fill-in-your-phobic, conspricacy-threorist, bad science reason. Oh, and then, just for shits and giggles, they like to insult those who think by calling them names because that's what those who are intelligent do, I suppose.
2. Humidity. Seriously. Fuck global warming. I'm tired of hearing about that--global humidity is the more serious problem.
3. Political ads. When I'm rich, I am going to spend scads of money running policital parody ads to offer some relief for those like me who are tired of seeing these grinning chimps blather on about how they are going wrap themselves in barbed wire, kill all the turrists, stop abortions, pay all the teachers a gazillion dollars, eliminate taxes and make big bidness pay for it all while they protect "real families" and the flag from the bums who've been running the state or the country so far.
4. Dumbass ammendments. I think that the next ammendment should be to preserve the sanctity of Apple Pie. They've screwed baseball up, we have unwed mothers *gasp*, but I think we can all get behind Apple Pie and quit putting g.d. artificial sweetner in it.
5. Fat chicks in skimpy clothes . I get to rant about this because I can talk about my own kind--you? are not allowed if you wear clothes that don't have double digits in the size, of course, but I can say this with complete and total freedom: Put your fat ass inside your shorts--the top of them AND the bottom of them. Pack your boobs in a bra that fits (and by God, you better have on a bra). Get some sleeves that cover your arms and all parts of them that hang out and all around--that means NO tank tops and NO cap sleeves and have enough length on your shirt that we don't see anything that the top of those shorts might have missed when you are standing still OR when you raise your arms. If your shirt is acting, in any way, as a girdle or method of contrstaining, then you have bought it too small and it has to be tossed. If you lean over and anything larger than a baseball could be dropped down the cleavage opening, then the shirt is too low cut. I don't care how cute your tatoos are--no one wants to see them if they are undulating along rapids of fat on the river of pudge, so either tone it up or cover it up.
6. Summer television. I cannot remember when anything comes on, I hate almost all of it anyway, save The Closer and Project Runway (must set DVR for PR). I think it's a sign that I'm getting old, maybe. Who knows.
7. Purple fur. Another sign that I'm getting old--Wal Mart was chock frigging full of it. Who the hell would decorate with purple fur?
8. Tunics. I think it's time this look was over, but I have a feeling we're going to be in full-tunic this fall. I'm sure that I won't be since a would be most hideous on me.
9. Legos. This one isn't new, but I've stepped on so many more of them lately that I just had to add them .
10. Star Jones. Already posted, but I saw her in a magazine or two while I was waiting for Sam's surgery to be over (it went well--it's on his webpage), and her arrogance/spin/total divaness just pisses me off to no end. Why is she famous and I'm not? How the hell does this happen? Is it the legal degree, the ethnicity or the name? I'd be willing to change my name to something more cheezy if needed and I have a nice advanced degree even if it isn't quite as glitzy....I'm screwed on the race, but I do have a varied and interesting heritage, albeit Anglo-European as all get out, but there are Pilgrims and even a wee bit of royalty...surely that makes me somewhat marketable if Star Jones can be famous.
11. Dirt. My house is full of it and unless a tornado comes along and sweeps it and the junk that is damming it up, I've no choice but to go deal with it because a week from today, my blessed summer vacation ends. Forget what I said about wanting to go back to work. I wasn't properly medicated or something. I'm not.

Lazy Days of Summer My Ass

Who ever coined that phrase didn't have children, pets, a yard or a house.

Yeah, I've been lazy to a point, but dammit, it's from sheer exhaustion or an attempt to hide from the 9,407 tasks that I should be doing.

I don't know why I'm always so eager for summer break every year--I'm more frantic than ever, I think.

Must go to swimming and then hurry home to pack last minute things for the boys and go drop two off for a visit to Nana and then back home to prep Sam for a tonsillectomy tomorrow. This weekend will be spent nursing him, trying to get to a t-ball ceremony and continuing the quest to find my closet floors and flat surfaces. Next week, the Goodwill man will know know me on a first name basis since I anticipate a daily, if not twice daily visit to drop stuff.

School starts in less than TWO weeks for me. I'm almost excited about it.

Just a Word of Caution

I'm going to be working on web stuff this weekend--updating ugly things, moving files and hopefully getting everything that is supposed to be active, active. This will, of course, cause things to go boom at some point. But I'll be back, of course. You shan't get rid of me that easily.

UPDATE:

Obviously, I changed stuff. Comments on haloscan are gone--it was just too much of a PITA to deal with them and I like these better, but I'm not going to go back and pull those in manually.

Still working on the colors. Not crazy about this, but it will suffice...and yes, I realize that the header isn't wide enough, too. That's easy enough to fix, right? Riiiighhht. It always seems like it, anway.

I am missing loads of credits and such, but that list isn't working yet and the old template was just fried.

Must go study now. Will tinker later.

Coursework DONE

Now I just have to mail the real estate stuff in and study for the stupid test that will be the death of me. I can' t wait.

Root Canals?

They um, pretty much suck.

Never let it be said that I am without profound insight into life.

Reason #234 I'd Never Wear a Wig

Obviously wearing a wig is hazardous to your mental health. May I present Exhibit A?:

I'm not sure if it is the fact that the scalp doesn't get enough exposure to oxygen and sunlight or if the actual structure of the wig squeezes the capillaries too tightly or maybe, just maybe, there's toxins in the glue, but Star Jones isn't a stupid woman. Arrogant, obnoxious, loud, tacky, overbearing, self-obsessed, yes, but stupid? No. So, there has to be some other reason for her stupidity beyond all reason for thinking that it was a good idea and a smart career move to take a big ol' screw you swipe at Barbara Walters on live television. I mean, you can think that maybe she was getting some bad advice--obviously she's got some terrible synocphantic people working for her or she'd never have tried the whole "pay for my wedding" or "I'm an author" gig or the most offensive of all "Star! on the red carpet" travesty--but I can sort of see where those ideas might have had a positive spin on them to someone who has no qualms about putting her own portrait in her bathroom. There's no excuse, no logical reason to think that anything good was gonna come out of trying to play the martyr and paint Barbara et al as the enemy.

So, it has to be the wigs. Never wear a wig, my children, never wear a wig.

WTF?

My template is totally screwed. I use Firefox (as you should be doing--go clink that little icon in my sidebar or where ever it is if you're not) and it has looked okay there, but suddenly, my image is gone. "Poof!". The rest of the page was there, but the background was white. However, when I clicked over to check out the page in IE, I like to have died. It was like Picasso's blog on crack.

So, if you're looking at this in IE (and really, why are you? Get Firefox already), then I'm sorry. I'm not as inept as that makes me look. If you're looking at this in Firefox, you may or may not see images. Who the hell knows. I'll be addressing that shortly. I didn't really like the whole look of the thing anyway, but I was working on the Rambling one. Guess I'll get this one fixed and then go to that one again.

Oh, and some people can't comment. Buggy emailed me that she couldn't and I don't know if anyone else is having trouble. If you are, please email me...kim at kimmah.net (two Ms, not three like the gmail thingy). The comments are through Halo Scan, so I'm not sure why some are blocked and some aren't, but I'll see if I can figure it out.

Blogger hates me. It's clear. I can't see my own images that I host on my own frigging server, but other people can. I don't know what is really missing and what's just not showing up here and what just is in the infamous Blogger lag, so I'm done for now. I'll try to sort it out tomorrow or something.

Good thing I don't have a job, eh?

A Sure Sign of Aging

So you ever want to get drunk for no good reason?

Just feel the temptation to drink yourself into oblivion? Once upon a time, I could drink with no regard for the after effects. I'd drink a fair amount, be blitzty and maybe have a headache the next day or feel a little funky. That was it. Every once in a great while, I had the misfortune to throw up--usually when I made the mistake to drink tequila in some form or fashion or when I just REALLY overdid it with something like beer and had some weird food, but I could probably count those times on both hands (like anyone really cares about that). Sidenote, Cary wasn't around when I had my really unfortunate run-in with tequila at the AGR house my freshman year, where I learned the hard way that one shouldn't mix gin, vodka, rum, beer, schnapps, and the evil tequila. From that day forward, the mere smell of tequila is enough to make me queasy and every other time I've tried to drink it, I've ended up sick....I remember being at The Lap once and learning that the hard way and Cary was there for that, I believe. A sink was involved, dear heavens, and some Tri Delt's shoes, perhaps...ah, good times and oh, so classy. Oh...and speaking of puking...eeek, Cary, do you remember the puking out our apartment window by the Kappa Sig? Ack! The memories. I should stop now because, well, I'm suddenly remembering things that are probably best left quashed.

And back from that digression....the point of the post was something totally different. It was...oh, yeah, it was at some point, I became old. I realized this when I became totally unable to process alcohol. Drinking sucks now because it makes me feel like total shit. That is, I feel like shit on the rare occasion I can actually drink more than one drink. Usually I don't even feel like drinking that much because I've sort of lost the taste for it. Not that I was really ever one to set out to be drunk on a regular or even semi-regular basis, but still, I did drink more than one beer at a sitting back in "the day", which was, oh, three years ago. Now it's like trying to force feed Ensure down Granny at the home for me to finish a stupid wine cooler (and yes, I actually drink the damn things. How gauche, I know). Every once in awhile, I get a whim and mix up something girly and fun like a nice daquari or something and I can manage more than one of those. If I'm with a really social group, I usually end up drinking more, too, just because I'm prone to eating or drinking in that type of setting and it's easier. However, the next day, I pay the price. I'm fairly sure that being run over by a truck and then having 1/4 of my bodily fluids drained and replaced with anti-freeze would be less painful than the way I feel. I'm essentially bedbound for at least 18 hours or so (and here is where W. would be so charming and point out that this is different than other days how?).

Of course, the burning question that most responsible adults have at this point is, why the hell do you care, Kim? You have three children and a job and a house and all those grown-uppy things. You're not supposed to be drinking and doing stupid things.

Yeah, well, good point, but that's the logical way of looking at things. It's not so much that I really WANT to sit around and get shitfaced. It's the fact that I can't do it if I want to...that just pisses me off to no end. I'm obnoxious like that. It makes me feel old and at this stage in my personal development, I'm not really particularly fond of things that make me accept my maturity. I'm rather fond of oblivion in as many forms as I can get away with it when it comes to things such as age/mortality and this is just one of those in-your-face signs that won't go away. Sort of like wrinkles, but there's not any plastic surgery for it, so I can't fool myself. And that sucks.

Sunday is Wash Day

I'm off to tackle a monstrous amount of laundry in a public washing facility. I do this from time to time out of sheer frustration and in order to wash the really big things all at once--spreads, blankets, coats, etc. I just found Jay's winter coat that had been left in my classroom since, what February? in a box of junk that I'd dropped at the end of school. Needless to say, it needs a wash. So, off I go--dressed in the appropriate costume of slouchy clothes and a ballcap, practically no makeup (mascara, though, natch), bottle of water, real estate book and calculater (grrrrr), and four giant receptacles filled with an assortment of things in need of laundering, some detergent, a few hangers and the fabric softener...oh, and fuckload of cash for the change machine. It's always something of a social experiment and even if I don't get much studying done, my van will smell nice and I will have plenty of blog fodder when I return.

Why We Englishy-Types Don't Do Mathy Things

I've never claimed to be anything that I'm not, well, other than allowing folks to think I'm a redhead and not really correcting people who assume that I'm essentially perfect, but on the really core things, I'm pretty good at admitting my own shortcomings. As such, I'm submitting the following statement:

I'm a fucking moron when it comes to math.

Seriously. And I'm not even giving to hyperbole as is my natural tendency. I swear on Pythagoras, Newton and even the beloved Aristotle that I'm just about two steps over incompetent when it comes to anthing that involves "computations" or "figuring" or "forumlas". For some of you, this is probably incomprehensible because I have some very smart friends--some of whom even make their living doing all sorts of bizarre things with numbers that I can't even fathom (hello, Cary and Tonya)--but for me, math might as well be presented in Russian pig Latin because I'm totally and completely bumfuzzled by pretty much all of it.

There are those who would be embarrassed to admit this. Me? Not so much. You see, I've come to embrace my complete lack of mathmatical comprehension. Really, there's no sense in fighting it--one might as well try to make a lefty thread a needle with their right-hand as make me figure algebra. It's against my nature, you see. I'm a word person, not a number person--or I should say an abstract and concept person, not a concrete and application person, since I do very much enjoy a nice Suduko-- and it's time that those who are of my ilk stand tall and be proud.

We Englishy types have a tremendous skill set that should be embraced; we create something from nothing. We dissect the written word and add to the breadth and depth of the human experience...or at least give folks something to read in the bathroom or on the subway and I think there's a universal appreciation of either one of those contributions. The fact that we can't figure out percentages without a calculator, a forumla and a quizzical look is really irrevelavant in the grand scheme of life because, honestly, when is one NOT going to be able to find some sort of calculator-things on the Internet or a little cheat sheet for your wallet to help you with that? Ratios? I mean, really? Ditto on that one. Area, volume, blah, blah, blah...in this day and age, one can buy any mannner of little gizmos to measure and calculate the stuff for you. All one has to do is point and click and make the laser stand straight and then hit enter. Trained chimps are capable of that...but can they craft a poem? Are they able to make someone cry from laughing or yell at their computer monitor simply by writing a paragraph? I think not. They can fling poo, swing around on ropes, play with toys and solve puzzles and puzzles=math when you get right down to it, so, well, you see the correlation, don't you? I mean, I took statistics for my doctorate program (and actually made a B) and I'm sure that I could make that work given the time and the effort and the right little computer program with which to run some sort of T-test or whatnot.

Englishy people are entirely too creative and nuturing to be worried with the constraints of something like a formula. Mathy folks like to do things in a certain order and if you screw up and multiply before you've added your dear Aunt Sally or whatever, then nothing you do after that will be correct. Or, if you've been asked to create some sort of statistical analysis, half a page of work can be for naught simply because you accidently forgot that 2x2 was 4 and not, say, 2 and then you'd have to erase an entire page of work and start all over again with a ridiculous table of numbers and you'd be worrying about running out of time on your exam, so you'd start to stress...well, uh, you get the picture. Math is very structured and confining--one could almost compare it to a jail of the mind, I think.

English? It's free and flowing. We let you put subjects and verbs just about anywhere you please. Want a sentence with one word? Fine. How about a sentence that has two hundred words? Go right ahead. If you can't think of just the right word, then by all means, just make one up. We're not elitist. You don't have to be some dead Greek in order to have control with the Englishy...even if we do pay an inordinate amount of attention to commas and Shakespeare, we're really very flexy on just about anything when you get right down to it. Some where along the way, we realized that we could have rules just like the Mathy folks, but we could also adapt those rules so that more people could play and, to be perfectly honest, so that we wouldn't all have to do the detail thing that some of us aren't really so great at. Voila! If you're an Englishy type, you may create your own style. Doesn't that sound divine? How very dashing and all, and there's just no way in the world that a Mathy person could ever get away with creating a new style for doing calculus. How dreary is that? The one time that anyone really tried to be adventurous in math was when the idea of New Math came along and, while I'm not even sure to this day what that was, it was pretty much roundly criticized by whom? Mathy types, of course. They're very proprietary, methinks.

My real estate class has served to highlight what I already knew--I'm not so much of a detail person. One has to be to be a Mathy person. I'm forever forgetting a decimal here or a zero there and, unlike a rough draft, it actually, uh, matters in figuring out interest rates or market values. There isn't a Math Check, which is just a damn shame, because it would really make things easier.

I'd like to be able to have a calculator that allowed me to choose a task, say, "Capitalization Rate" (I know, you don't really give a damn about a Cap Rate, either, but play along, just don't ask me to explain it because, frankly, I can't) and then be presented with a screen. Sort of like Word does when I choose New Document. Then when I enter totally stupid figures that don't have a chance in hell of computing correctly, I'd like a nice squiggly green or red line and some text to alert me. For example, if I'm supposed to figure out the value of a property with a cap rate of 25% and a net yearly income of $15,000 per month, there's a myriad of problems that can arise.

You divided the percentage rate by the income a property generates. Note that the number you have could not possibly, in any currency, be converted to a value of any kind. The forumula is Rate/Income=Value.

See, how helpful that would be? Instead, I get this:

.0000192

And no helpful hint, no suggestions, nothing. For those of us who are more literal and, I'll admit it, spastic when using a calculator, there is now a conundrum of sorts.

1. Did I enter the numbers wrong?
2. Should this convert to something and if so, what?
3. Was I supposed to divide or multiply?
4. Damn, how do you move the decimal again? Did I put a decimal in the percent?
5. What was the question again?

So, we have to start all over. Obviously, even I can't make .00092 turn into a number that is even remotely representative of value, so if you flip the two, you can get this:

60000

Which at least could be a value, but it's wrong.

In order to figure Cap Rate, you should use the Net Yearly Income, not the Net Monthly Income, which anyone with a basic understanding of simple accounting or who had read the book would know.

Ha! Screw you, pretend real estate calculator and math and logical thinking and Mr. Pythagoras and Texas Instruments and even that stupid little pi. Phfffft. The fact that I'm not one with my algebraic self is of no consequence to me. My inability to string together long sets of numbers and come up with numbers that don't make my calculator go EEEE is irritating, yes, but look at all the words I can string along. So what if the most important Mathy thing that I really care about is Word Count or my PIN number? That's why God made bankers and CPAs and all those other Mathy people--to serve at the will of the Englishy, who will in turn, entertain the masses and shape culture and history for years to come with our finely crafted words and painstakingly edited bits of literary goodness.

Disclaimer: Of course, when I get my real estate license, I will pretend to be pseudo Mathy and turn all actual mathmatical stuff over to W. or some fine assistant if one of the numerous gadgets that I'll be purchasing should fail me. I do like that other numbery-thing--money--after all.