Look, I get you only want to pay for what you order. I am in the same boat. But when you sit down and drink 4 bottles of expensive wine that someone was generous enough to bring to the restaurant and share, then balk at paying for the two bottles that were bought…. that is LAME. Particularly when you are dividing the bill between 11 people.

Maybe it isn’t even that. Maybe it irritates me when you STORM out of the restaurant, ripping your receipt off the table without even saying goodbye to your hosts.

I don’t care how the bill gets split. Just don’t cause a scene and don’t lay out the guilt like a 200 pound quilt. (Ha! That rhymes.) I won’t go out to dinner with you again.

Because Winemonkey and I apparently subscribe to all of the big magazines. I don’t mean “big” as in the most popular, I mean “big” as in format. Like the Wine Spectator, Rolling Stone, and Cook’s Country. We aren’t exclusive. We also subscribe to regular sized magazines, including Martha Stewart Living, Cook’s Illustrated, and ReadyMade, as well as little magazines like Craft. But the later two categories FIT in magazine holders so they are not an issue.

The magazine people and the magazine holder makers need to get together and solve this problem before I go CRAZY!

p.s. Up until this moment I had no idea we had so many magazines coming our way. No wonder we need organizers!

Notice the past tense of that statement.

I had a nice garden, not because my nice garden was ruined by squirrels or rabbits or birds. It was ruined by neighborhood cats. People’s pets have been using my garden as their personal kitty litter. It wouldn’t be so bad if they just dug up my plants. I can put them in pots and move them out of the garden beds. Or you can line your garden beds with aluminium foil (Don’t laugh, this was my first attempt to keep both the cats and the aliens out of my vegetable garden). But when you walk outside and all of your potted plants AND your garden smell like cat piss, you begin to think about taking matters into your own hands. I am going to have a hard enough time getting things to grow back there, I don’t need cat urine to get in the way.

Anyone out there have any suggestions on how to solve this problem? It isn’t that I dislike cats. I just dislike cat pee on my vegetables. And any of your suggestions are probably a thousand times more humane than any of the methods I am thinking of.

p.s. If you can’t help me come up with good solutions, can you at least tell me some good ways to get rid of dead cat bodies?

How the hell do people expect to sell fruit if people can’t touch it or smell it? Kind of ruined my Davis Farmer’s Market experience. I can guarantee that I won’t be going to her stand ever again.

I swear that David’s Bridal and US Air get their employees from the same pool of unhelpful, uncourteous ass hats. I was dreading going to DB. So much so that getting drunk was really on my list of things to do before trying on dresses. I was so antagonistic about it that I wore deoterant so that I could mess up their samples. (Yeah – call me a rebel! Look out!)

In order to make the shopping a little less painful, we made an appointment. They assigned us a woman, let’s call her Christine, because that was her name, who was pretty busy. She came over to us 20 minutes AFTER we arrived for our appointment to ask what we were looking for. She asked my size and I said that I wasn’t sure. I had about 3 dresses in my hand so she took me over to a dressing room and said that I could start while she went and looked for other things for me to try on. But she didn’t measure me or check to see what my size was. So either she is pretty good at looking at someone and figuring it out, or she didn’t care. Which do you think is true?

So another 20 minutes passes and when Christine is no where to be found, Porter decides that she should round up some more things for me to try on. And we find somethings that are really awesome. Like this skirt and shirt for example:

And I really like it. And I try on a bunch of other pieces as well, but we keep coming back to this one. Now, I am a pretty big girl. No matter how much I wish I wasn’t or how many times a week I go to the gym… I am who I am. So anyway. The top that I tried on was a size 14. There is no way that this thing fits me. And I don’t really know how I look in things with spaghetti straps or no straps. So Porter and my sister fish around for more things for me to try on so that I can at least get a feel for what style looks good on me. But I don’t have a strapless bra on so we have to find an employee to go and get me a bra to try these tops on with (another 10 minutes added to me being in a dressing room) but it was worth it I guess because we finally decide that I can wear something strapless or with spaghetti straps. (Two notes, there are no mirrors in the dressing rooms so in order to see how hideous or nice you look in something you have to come out and parade around the store, which INCLUDES MEN OUTSIDE THE DRESSING ROOM, secondly, the bra I put on, retails for $90. NINETY DOLLARS. Who are they kidding?)

Then what happens? Oh my?! Christine reappears. And says that she will measure me for the specific top that I want to get. And then?!?! She’s gone again. For another 20 minutes. So Porter asks another person on the floor if they can measure me. And I shit you not, she looked at me, turned to ANOTHER sales person on the floor (both of them have been doing nothing up until this point) and says that I need measured and then the second girl looks at me and scowls, the first one chuckles and they walk AWAY WITHOUT GETTING ME ANY FREAKING HELP!

Now up until those bitches scowled at me, my time at David’s Bridal, while not the best time of my life, was at least tolerable. I had found something to wear at Porter’s wedding. I had managed to convince myself that I just had to order the dress from them and pick it up immediately and NEVER go back there again. And then those two tiny stick girls who probably throw up their food every chance they get, scowl and giggle at me. Like, “You think I am going to measure the fat girl? No way!” And I swear to you, it took ALL of my effort to put on my clothes, tell my sister and Porter that if we don’t leave this VERY INSTANT I am going to freak out, and manage to control myself out the door. Once outside I yelled a little bit, but there are plenty of David’s Bridals and I don’t have to order my dress from that particular one. And I plan on writing a nasty, lengthy letter to the corporate people.

After three tries and THREE TERRIBLE experiences with David’s Bridal, I have decided that I would rather wear a sack in a wedding than deal with them. It is a shame that they have the biggest selection and the widest variety of sizes to try on. BASTARDS.

WE ARE NOT NEANDERTHALS! It is like the evolutionary step that was suppose to come after the knuckle dragging, yet some of us haven’t made the step!

WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH RUBBER BOOTS? First of all, it isn’t raining today… second of all, even if it was, they don’t need to be above the knee…. thirdly, YOUR SWEAT PANTS ARE TUCKED INTO THEM. Who are you? What fashion statement are you trying to make? I have seen 15 pair of those UGG or knock-off boots today as well. I live in northern CA folks. It is a CHILLY 66 degrees today. Break out the winter boots! Tuck our pants deep down into them so that no snow gets in… I’m sorry, not snow… GRASS CLIPPINGS…

Somebody please explain this fashion trend to me!?! The rubber boots?

Who the fuck do they think they are?!? For two years I had a contract with them. They have the record of over 5,000 roll-over minutes that I had accumulated because their service SUCKED. I thought that maybe it was my phone, so I thought I would give them a second chance at the end of my two year contract by getting a new phone. It still sucked, so I returned it within 30 days. Now, almost 1 year after I left them for AT&T (yeah, I know. I belong to Cingular again, but this time with AT&T towers) Cingular calls me telling me that I owe them $200 for ending my service before 180 days. WHAT THE FUCK?!?!? They said that I signed a 1-year contract, which I am fairly positive I wouldn’t have done if I wasn’t sure that the phone was going to work properly.

I am the type of person who will now worry about this until they figure out what the hell they are doing. When a middle man calls you ten times in one freaking day, without having all of the facts up front, what kind of business are you running? When your customer service is terrible, you are unhelpful, and basically call harrassing me ten times in one freaking day without knowing for sure whether or not I owe you $200!

This merger is going to kill my faith in large corporate customer service.

Thank you for reading my rant.