Vice President of WHAT??

Has everyone seen the picture of Dick Cheney wearing a COWBOY HAT to give the commencement speech at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy??? Well, check out the following picture (i can't believe i am permanently adding a picture of Dick Cheney to my blog):

A FEW things pop to mind [please…comment away]:

• Today’s Commencement Address: “The Rootinest Tootinest Democracy in the Whole Wide World.” by Dick Cheney


• No country for old men


• Darth Vader at the OK Corral


• Did he lose a wager in a cabinet meeting or something? Next thing you know you are going to see Bush’s Secretary of Edumacation wearing a sombrero to the Immigration bill signing.


• And McCain is worried that Iran won’t take BARACK seriously???


• Is he supposed to be incognito? Ummm, pssst…Sir!….the subpoena servers are still going to be able to find you.


• This is what NOT to wear to a job interview…well…unless you want to go to work for a big, dopey manchild who thinks he’s a real live cowboy. Oh wait a second… (besides, that’s Scott McLellan’s line.)


• I bet it his gay daughter is the one who told him it makes him look smarter


• Apparently the Vice Presidency is a natural stepping stone for Mayor McCheese


• “W….I wish I could quit you”

Does anybody need a futon?

You know what is a LOUSY start to a holiday weekend? Renting a truck. Nothing good ever follows a truck rental. What is it about a day off work that makes people decide to work!?!?! The earlier basement cleaning turned out to be just a light dusting…this past weekend it was time for the heavy lifting…that’s right….Goodwill.

And let me just tell you…giving your stuff away at a metro Goodwill is like a sociology project. You know all those recovering addicts that Goodwill helps? Well, I think a few of them decided to cut out the middleman (Goodwill) and go straight to the source (me) because they were ALL there at the Goodwill on Saturday. (However, I am not so sure about the “recovering” part of this particular assemblage.)

Seriously, this cross-section of humanity included a blue-shirted Goodwill worker who knows that a holiday weekend coincides with unloading 800 truckfuls of other people’s garbage, another guy who was suffering from a deficiency of fingers AND teeth (someone REALLY lost a bar fight), a guy who looked remarkably like the tattoo “artist” who removed my belly ring and a baseball-cap-wearin’, beer-stinkin’ wretch who hadn’t showered in days [oh wait...that was me!]. It was a veritable beehive of dereliction right there in front of the Goodwill.

And then I had to negotiate for them to take half the stuff! Seriously…how bad does your junk have to be for the Goodwill to reject it!?!?! “But it’s an ANTIQUE Wilco radio – it’s not SUPPOSED to work.” “What.do.you.mean you won’t take the futon?!?! Look my friend, I am here for two reasons…a tax deduction and to ditch this futon. [and oh yeah…to donate to a worthy cause, blah, blah, blah] “I mean…the REST of this crap I can dump illegally – but I need YOU to take the futon.” At which point…it's sad to say…I tried to bribe the Goodwill guy to take the futon. How.low.can.you.go when you try to bribe the Goodwill guy??? And get this…he declines. And not just declines, but declines righteously, with a tone of well-earned superiority. Excellent…this basement-cleaning has ruined my Saturday AND my integrity.

The guy must have ultimately felt sorry for me (which is pretty rich in irony given the company we were keeping at that moment) because he finally did agree to take the stinkin’ thing – “but no receipt for it” [he knows how to hit me where it hurts]. But it was good timing, because I was just about to offer Mr. One-Tooth sixty bucks to take it. I guess he’ll just have to settle for a Wilco radio.

Belly ring

Like I said…some adventures just SCREAM to be included in a blog, e.g., removing a belly ring. It’s one thing to be the only accountant at the office pool party with a belly ring. It’s another thing to be the only “invitee” at the G-7 summit in Rio to have a belly ring. The fact that eighty percent of you reading this are thinking…"Maeve still has that ridiculous belly ring?" only emphasizes the point.

I understand that you SHOULD be able to just unscrew a belly ring. But despite about two years of effort, I could NOT get the bastard out. What does it say about me that I can’t even figure out how to unscrew a belly ring? I am in the lower 10 percentile of belly ring wearers?!?!? And yet still the smartest McC =)=) [double smiley face]

Which brings us to minor surgery 101. You know what’s better than getting your belly ring pierced when you’re young, foolish and drunk? Getting it taken out when you’re old, foolish and sober. I do have to hand it to my medicinal friends…what they won’t come across with in prescriptions, they are HAPPY to contribute in antiseptics. All we needed was a surgical element. I was hoping to use something from the Williams Sonoma collection…so imagine my anxiety when the garage door (!) went up. Instead of Williams Sonoma, I got the ONLY non-pristine element in all of Rita’s house. Remember that Twilight Zone movie where they methodically cut off fingers with a used, rusted stem-cutter when the bettors couldn’t light the lighter? Well…somehow…Rita ended up with the props from that movie and decided to use it on my belly ring.

Let’s just avoid the #&$^#$ cuss words and say the home remedy was unsuccessful. So after cerrating the damn thing to a fine point on three-quarters of the perimeter, we set out on a cultural tour of SD’s underbelly to find a tattoo parlor. Oddly…the underbelly was largely within walking distance of Rita’s house…

The FIRST tattoo parlor…honest-to-god…was closed on account of “infestation”. Did I mention SOBER?? The SECOND tattoo parlor [how often do any of you get to say “the SECOND tattoo parlor” on any given day!?!?] apologized profusely that their “piercing artist” was on sabbatical [rehab?]. Finally…the THIRD tattoo parlor said “sure – come on back”. 20 seconds later it was all over. It would have been smooth as silk if not for the aforementioned cerrating.

But the trip did give Rita a chance to get my name tattoo’d on her ass. =) =) =)

Basement cleaning

Cleaning out someone’s basement (or garage) sure reveals a lot about a person. So here it is…tales from the crypt of my basement-cleaning expedition:

• It’s hard to believe that futons were EVER in style, isn’t it? (what…they weren’t?!?!?) And this PARTICULAR futon is like a ship in a bottle…no IDEA how we [Lorri Morgan] got it in here, but we have to bust open the stairwell to get the bastard out.
• There were about a dozen boxes of Artrageous CRAP in this basement from 2004. Artrageous a Can-Can. Either I was a REALLY dedicated volunteer or LOUSY at returning things [comment function disabled].
• There were FOURTEEN Tivo boxes in that basement. Apparently, the prior occupant didn’t get ALL of her things out upon “movin’ on up”. I keep looking for the Chinese children making all these gadgets…but thankfully, no dice. But…every.last.box had a cut-out UPC code (the Rebate Fairy has been good to SOMEONE).
• All those work files I thought I would need after that last subpoena appear worthless. [And you guys wonder why I don’t leave this site open for potential clients to google].
• If I successfully negotiate the release of another couple cases of Montelana wine deliveries, can I start calling this “my wine cellar”? What?….wine cellars and futons are mutually exclusive? Got it.
• I own the entire contents of the 1995 Pottery Barn catalogue. Remember that wall of CRAP I used to have?!?!?!? Yard sale Saturday.
• Judging by the basement rejects…I’d say my Christmas shopping is FINISHED (What scholarship grad student doesn’t need a futon!?!?!?)

UPS

I hate UPS. Getting a package from them is like negotiating a hostage release. I have SERIOUSLY never seen a delivery company so disinclined to actually make.a.delivery. They have a delivery record that is unblemished by success. According to UPS, you.veel.be.there.vaiting at the appointed hour (which happens to be between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m.) or you will get a little.yellow.postie.note telling you how bitterly close you came to actually getting your urgently-needed, can’t-work-without, extra-shipping-costs, new laptop. Those yellow posties are my nemeses!!! Damn you Yellow Posties!

Don’t worry UPS – I GET that you are a.little.brown.army of uniformity…but SOME of us have LIVES (read: happy hours) between 5 and 6 p.m. when you keep trying to deliver that package from Chateau Montelana.

And what a motley crew of undeliverable packages there are…the aforementioned weekly stipend of non-swill wine, whatever IT gadget Nicola has ordered to cure my latest technical catastrophe, an alarming number of replacements for lost power cords and not NEARLY enough packages from…say…work (but oddly…not a SINGLE graduation/birthday/mother’s day present in the bunch).

Honestly, it has proven easier to see Barack Obama than to catch a glimpse of the UPS man. The probability of the UPS man arriving is DIRECTLY correlated to Molly’s need for a walk. Meet the wine delivery or walk the dog? Talk about your modern-day Sophie’s choice…

Barack Obama here

Attend one Obama rally and you are prominently committed to mailing list mania. Which means I get hourly updates from B on the day’s happenings. Thank goodness…otherwise I would have to read the newspaper or something. The $25 donation couldn’t have helped…(just like a stray dog – if you feed it once…). NOT that I am comparing Change I Can Believe In to a stray dog (that’s Bill Clinton’s job).

ANYWAY, it’s a good thing I have checked all my objectivity at the door with regards to President Obama because otherwise, I might JUST have become jaded by the daily correspondence from Messrs. Obama, Plouffe, Kerry, et al. Honestly…if your name is Kennedy, you have recently sent me an email. And they all start out the same way…

Maeve,

[I LOVE that we are on a first name basis…can I call you “B” – cuz I already do],

John Edwards/George McGovern/Ben Affleck here. This is a critical time in America’s history….

[I don’t know about those other two jokers, but if Ben Affleck is worried…]

Then there is the standard three paragraph description of “how-we’re-still-ahead-of-Hillary [“Scoreboard! Scoreboard!”] / getting-shellacked-in-WVa-doesn’t-matter [only uneducated rubes come from WVa] / you-can-make-a-difference-in-Kentucky [seriously...can ANYONE make a difference in Kentucky? They don’t even have Starbuck’s].

And amazingly, they all END the same way…
You got us where we are today. Please help by making another donation of $25 now.
[don’t forget…stray dog]

I am telling you what…all these emails from B are REALLY getting in the way of my Dancing with the Stars e-updates. Just sayin’.

BTW, that WVa thing makes more sense if you know that Nicola was born there =)

Being home

Since this is the FIFTH week in a row that I’ve been home, I thought I would blog about what’s it’s like to actually be home. Wait.just.a.second…did I get FIRED and someone forgot to tell me? (not AGAIN!!)

But there have been some things I’ve noticed since I’ve been home:

• I have much better things to do than write a blog. (don’t worry – the blog is back on track now…I’ve got some inventory to burn through)
• Dress-up-day now means a shower AND no ballcap. It’s really a good damn thing I have happy hours planned or we’d be on orange alert for shower frequency.
• I have realized that since I am RARELY home, that when I AM home, I spend what would otherwise be my workday doing things like running errands, catching up on mail and going to appointments [don’t mind me…I’m just practicing the speech for my boss and if any of you are talking to her…ixnay on the appyhay ourshay Get it?]
• The mailman is pissed because he actually has to STOP at my house now (my mail delivery had been on “hold” since 2006). And that’s bad news for the mailman because ever since I disclosed my address to “Obama for America”…I seem to be getting about 300 pamphlets a week.
• Molly wants to know when she gets to go back to Nicola’s FUN house. The land of milk (bone) and honey. "Shut up and go get a carrot."
• I have sort of gotten used to the Hampton Inn. I keep expecting that little Spanish-speaking lady to come around and make my bed…[and anyone who comments “I didn’t know Rita could speak Spanish” is getting a complimentary registration on “Obama for America”]

=)