It can't just be me.....

The whole "Do Not Call" registry was so great for awhile, but when did it all start going to bleep?

The past couple months we've been getting half a dozen calls lately where the caller ID is blocked or it's a number we don't know, and over the years I have developed a habit of giving about two seconds to hear a response before I hang up the phone, and these have all been automated calls and I usually hang up before I start screaming at the person on the line. Keeps the blood pressure down.

So.... let's see... going thru the caller ID history of the last 50 calls we've gotten...

Unknown numbers that connected me to automated systems -
20

Local companies calling trying to drum up business (at least identifiable on caller ID) - 1

Charity calls -
2 (and at least they stop calling them once you tell them "no, sorry")

No call registry = FAIL.

The hubby and I are grumpy people. We don't like dealing with unsolicited calls of people trying to sell us stuff or things like that. We like the no call list. It has saved us a lot of time, since we don't spend half the evening yelling at the unsolicited callers and trying to make such a stink that they actually WANT to take us off their lists.

And hubby and I also both did some work for actually companies where we cold-called people to try and get surveys done... we do have sympathy for the folks that are doing that and just trying to get through their shift. We'll happily spend five minutes on the phone with those people.

I'm just not happy with all these phone calls lately. Not cool.

Is it Monday yet?

Actually, by the time I'm done typing this... it might be.

Left work early on Friday, very happy for some extra time. I scrapped my plans to go to Ikea since traffic seemed like it was a mess, and opted to go for an all-exciting oil change instead. Oh, the life I lead!

Came home, and found a wonderful letter stating "thank you for completely paying off your college loan" for one of my loans. Of course, not the big one, but exciting none the less. I was happy... even though it was Friday the 13th, it was looking to be a pretty good day!

Of course, it all went to shit then.

Hopped online to check in on what was up with my peeps, and stumbled right upon the real-time frantic situation of some friends trying to find out if the news of a death of one of their friends (I met the guy only once, but I was a fan of his band). Sadly, it was not a Friday the 13th joke, and he had indeed passed away. Friends are kinda (expectedly) a mess right now. And yes, he might have been someone who could have made some better lifestyle choices, but he was a genuinely good guy, and our world is a little worse off not having him in it.

So yeah, despite some great geeky TV between Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica and the new Venture Brothers streaming over the webfeed, but the night was still kinda a downer.

Saturday, running hausfrau-ish errands to replace some kitchen stuff and pick up some aprons, I ran to Ikea. On the way there, noticed a club from my more wild days (that has been closed for ages, but still) was torn down and replaced by a discount grocery store. Wow, that brought me down.

Today wasn't too bad... went over to the parent in-laws and played around with the kids, the brother in-law made some chili and brought it over, I brought over some guac. But, still... it's yet another Father's Day without my dad. And it still stings a little. And the firth Father's Day of the man's cousins and aunt without their dad/hubby. And I know how bad that sucks.

Got home, and it appears one of the files for my login for the computer got currupted, and I spent awhile fixing that problem. Luckily, no data was lost and as far as Windows problems go it wasn't too hard to fix, but still a pain in the ass.

Kinda looking back to getting back to work, back to the mundane.

I hate it when.....

It's already been "one of those" weeks. Nothing major going wrong, but it's just not going as smoothly as I hoped.

I hate it when I use up an ingredient I'll need later in the week. This time, it was onion. I cooked up some ground turkey breast on Monday for use in quesadillas. To give the meat more flavor, I figured I'd throw in some chopped onion as a bonus. Too bad I forgot I needed that onion to make sausage gravy later in the week. Ooops.

I hate it when things are deceptively packaged. The local grocery store had a sale awhile back on pork tenderloing, a two for one, so I picked up a couple. What I thought was one nice, big, fat tenderloin was indeed two smooshed together in the vaccuum pack thing. No fair! I hate cooking with those skinny ones. I ended up throwing it in my small crockpot with some salsa to shread it later. That will go in to the freezer and get pulled out at a future date. Perhaps the week after we get back from Vegas.

I hate it when the supposedly "microwave safe" plastic containers melt in the microwave. Seriously... it was only two minutes! It should not have happened, and I hate it more when it creates the mess it did.

I hate it when I learn the hard way that you should be early to lunch meetings where they're bringing in sandwiches for everyone. No choice in sandwich for me (I ended up with roast beef). It's not like you can turn around at that point and head out for lunch.

I hate it when I get a new cooking magazine and there is nothing good in it.

I hate it when I have a feeling how I should change up the recipe for something and I don't do it. Happened with the malted milk ice cream. I knew I should have left the malted milk balls out and just sprinkled some on top rather than mixing them in to the ice cream before it finished freezing.

I hate it when I am a mere eight days away from being in Vegas. I wanna be in Vegas NOW.

Husband for sale... Husband for sale.....

No matter how much you love someone, there are moments where you look at that person and your mind wanders to the dark place where you wonder if you've watched enough episodes of CSI to hide the body and never get caught.

Today is one of those days.

Since Thursday night he's been on my case about something totally not under my control, and I'm about ready to go looking for a blunt object.

He came home from a crappy day at work... and let his bad attitude follow him right in to the house.

When I have a bad day? I get home, I clean up a little, I cook dinner, I eat, I clean again, and I just try to leave the day behind me and not make my bad day also end up ruining his day. I'm not that lucky.

I'm also highly unhappy after the cleaning and organizing of the basement this weekend, my excercise bike down there somehow got busted. I'm not namin' names, but when I was on it last week it was working fine. And with as stressful as today was and the week looks to be, I was really looking forward to getting on there and workin' out some stress. Instead, I'm chain smoking. That's a healthy swap out???

Did make some awesome (well, I thought so, hubby again let his bad mood try to ruin my dinner) crispy shrimp largely based off this recipe. I cut the oil to one tablespoon that I used to brown the panko in a skillet before the breading, and used one egg and one egg white. I thought they were pretty awesome.