I haven't visited a driver's license office in many years. I have the same dread most of us do: I might have to take a test; I will surely have to wait in an interminably long line; and I'll wind up carrying around a truly horrible picture of myself. Whenever possible, I do things online.
Volunteering at the high school directly behind my house, however, requires a California ID. My Washington State Driver's license won't do. Apparently, proof of existence in Washington state doesn't mean I actually exist in California. (I wonder if I would disappear if I lost my WA license while in CA?) Swell. A visit to the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) was in my immediate future.
My first overture to the DMV was on the internet, of course. I was able to set my appointment online. Yay--something I recognize as a Good Thing! The office was very full when I arrived, but I was moved fairly quickly through the lines. A man complained bitterly that I was getting preferential treatment. He was told an appointment is a Good Thing (see? I knew it!). I filled out forms, answered questions, and actually got to the front of the line--ready to have my picture taken. But the printer wouldn't work. Then the computer wouldn't work. Then the phone stopped working. Uh, oh. I broke the system!
I felt compassion--and not a little concern-- for the DMV employee who stood on a chair to tell hordes of people in myriad lines that all systems were down in Sacramento. Everyone had to come back later, maybe tomorrow. The bitterly complaining man's face turned bright red and a vein stood out on his forehead. He stormed out the door. A Good Thing, because just then the beleagured employee behind the counter told me my information made it through before the system crash, so I wouldn't have to come back.
As the sunshine hit my bemused face outside the building, I mentally gave hero awards to the DMV employees who braved sullen crowds and continued to work--fairly cheerfully--under such daunting conditions. And I wondered if I really would get the ID card in the mail within 3 weeks, as the man behind the counter said I would. (I did.)
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Randy Goat Breaks into Strip Club
A randy male charged down the main aisle of a brand new strip club Saturday night. Not so unusual, you say? It is, when you consider the club hadn't opened for business yet, and the male in question was not human (but you didn't know that, from just the description of the behavior, did you?)
The goat crashed through the glass door of the Coachella club when no one was there, resulting in a call to the police from neighbors and the alarm system. They played the surveillance video, probably did a double take, and laughed their heads off. Then they put away their paperwork and decided not to file a report. ("We don't do animal reports.") A local goat farmer (who takes better care of his goats than this poor creature's owners) says goats are "timid little things." He says the goat must have seen his reflection in the glass and charged. The video shows him walking around, dazed, looking at himself in the wall of mirrors. He must have thought he'd attacked some sort of warlock goat who threw him into an alternate universe. He left before anyone got there and wandered off into the night (much as his human counterparts will be doing when the club opens next week.)
Ah, the vagaries of life in an agricultural community whose urban area is growing faster than zoning laws change. I'm having a little tea party today to cheer up some of my neighbors. (We're in day two of a week of gray, rainy weather. It's hard on desert folk.) We live in a gated community that is zoned and CC&R'd within an inch of its life. I suspect we will not be bothered by party-crashing goats!
The goat crashed through the glass door of the Coachella club when no one was there, resulting in a call to the police from neighbors and the alarm system. They played the surveillance video, probably did a double take, and laughed their heads off. Then they put away their paperwork and decided not to file a report. ("We don't do animal reports.") A local goat farmer (who takes better care of his goats than this poor creature's owners) says goats are "timid little things." He says the goat must have seen his reflection in the glass and charged. The video shows him walking around, dazed, looking at himself in the wall of mirrors. He must have thought he'd attacked some sort of warlock goat who threw him into an alternate universe. He left before anyone got there and wandered off into the night (much as his human counterparts will be doing when the club opens next week.)
Ah, the vagaries of life in an agricultural community whose urban area is growing faster than zoning laws change. I'm having a little tea party today to cheer up some of my neighbors. (We're in day two of a week of gray, rainy weather. It's hard on desert folk.) We live in a gated community that is zoned and CC&R'd within an inch of its life. I suspect we will not be bothered by party-crashing goats!
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Party 'til 3am
I look like hell today, and I feel worse. My head hurts and everything seems a little skewed. Party time? Hardly--unless "poopfests" count as parties.
Oliver must have eaten something he shouldn't have (a category which encompassses everything, except canned food for dogs with IBD, mixed with pumpkin.) It rips my heart out to see him in distress. He strains and strains and just little stinky drops (often mixed with blood) come out his rear end. That went on--out on the patio, on the tile floor (and a few times on the carpet) until 3 a.m. Every time he had an attack of messy spasms, I cleaned him up with baby wipes. When he seemed to get enough respite to get some sleep, I rolled up the rugs in the Master Bathroom, put a dog bed and a water dish in with him, and enclosed all with a baby gate. I got the inside floors cleaned up, put all affected items in the wash with detergent and Pinesol, and passed out on my bed.
There is a public service commercial on TV about disasters called "World Upside Down" that shows a family floating as though weightless, with all their belongings floating around them. The point is that when disaster occurs, everything familiar changes, and you get very disoriented. Apparently, a disaster is not required for me to feel that disoriented; just worry and lack of sleep (which lots of people are experiencing these days--no wonder we're all so bemused.)
So, when the doorbell rang and the mail woman handed me the Priority Shipping boxes I ordered at Thanksgiving for my Christmas packages , I'm afraid I slipped into near-hysterical laughter. I didn't even try to explain. I just thanked her.
Then the nice young man from the furniture store came to exchange the dinette set chair that wobbled. He brought in the new one and set it on the floor. I grasped the back, wiggled it--and it wobbled. I didn't even have the energy for hysterical laughter. I just threw up my hands and told him it was better than the other one and I'd keep it. (I'd learned they don't wobble at all with round, middle-aged people sitting in them. Yes! Another advantage of boomerdom!)
I'd like to go back to bed, preferably before someone else comes to the door. But I have this patio to clean up...
Oliver must have eaten something he shouldn't have (a category which encompassses everything, except canned food for dogs with IBD, mixed with pumpkin.) It rips my heart out to see him in distress. He strains and strains and just little stinky drops (often mixed with blood) come out his rear end. That went on--out on the patio, on the tile floor (and a few times on the carpet) until 3 a.m. Every time he had an attack of messy spasms, I cleaned him up with baby wipes. When he seemed to get enough respite to get some sleep, I rolled up the rugs in the Master Bathroom, put a dog bed and a water dish in with him, and enclosed all with a baby gate. I got the inside floors cleaned up, put all affected items in the wash with detergent and Pinesol, and passed out on my bed.
There is a public service commercial on TV about disasters called "World Upside Down" that shows a family floating as though weightless, with all their belongings floating around them. The point is that when disaster occurs, everything familiar changes, and you get very disoriented. Apparently, a disaster is not required for me to feel that disoriented; just worry and lack of sleep (which lots of people are experiencing these days--no wonder we're all so bemused.)
So, when the doorbell rang and the mail woman handed me the Priority Shipping boxes I ordered at Thanksgiving for my Christmas packages , I'm afraid I slipped into near-hysterical laughter. I didn't even try to explain. I just thanked her.
Then the nice young man from the furniture store came to exchange the dinette set chair that wobbled. He brought in the new one and set it on the floor. I grasped the back, wiggled it--and it wobbled. I didn't even have the energy for hysterical laughter. I just threw up my hands and told him it was better than the other one and I'd keep it. (I'd learned they don't wobble at all with round, middle-aged people sitting in them. Yes! Another advantage of boomerdom!)
I'd like to go back to bed, preferably before someone else comes to the door. But I have this patio to clean up...
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Big Box Store Juggernaut
I don't shop much. I find no joy in returning to stores over and over to wait for prices to drop and to return things I thought I wanted. I tend to look for stores that reliably carry what I want, then I stick with them. When I lived in the Seattle area, I shopped at McLendon's, the fabulous independent Puget Sound hardware store, and Bartell's, my favorite independent drug store. I could buy swim suits (not sun-bathing suits or "resort suits," but real, honest-to-goodness tank suits for actual swimming) any time of year at Sylvia's Swim Shop. Gawd, how I miss them!
It's 75 degrees here in Indio, the sky is blue and the sun is shining. I sure would like to sit out on my patio. But none of the big box stores around here is selling outdoor furniture right now. "Why not?" I asked one of the employees. "We have it in summer," he said. Right. Summer, when it's 118 degrees and touching the metal on a patio chair could give you 2nd degree burns. The high-end specialty patio stores have outdoor furniture, of course. Great, if you have a real budget and are not constrained to big-box-store-type prices. Personally, I'm considering moving my card table and chairs onto the patio. A couple of medium cardboard boxes would make good ottomans, don't you think?
I thought a few indoor plants would cheer me up. I tried to buy terra cotta pots to start some African violets from cuttings. Nope. No pots. Not 'til spring--when it's already 93 degrees here. Guaranteed to shrivel new plants in a matter of minutes.
Pet stores are not immune, either. An employee of a big box pet store told me when she worked at one of her chain's stores in a cold part of Nevada, they didn't carry pet water bowls with electric warmers to keep the water from freezing. But they have "tons" of them at this store, in a city where a nighttime low temperature anywhere freezing causes breathless reports of "extreme" weather on the nightly newscast.
I finally mail-ordered a swimsuit from Sylvia's Swim Shop, because the ones I have are turning to mesh and the stores around here don't get swim suits until...you guessed it: summer. After decades of marketing research, in a country rife with bright people, we find ourselves held hostage by huge selling machines that completely ignore the tenets of customer-oriented marketing. They offer overcoats to people in the desert and dog cooling beds to people in the Sierra Nevadas . Why does this surprise me? Shouldn't I be used to a lack of common sense by now? After all, I did work for the government for a year!
I want to support my local merchants, really I do. If I could only find them. Maybe they were all squashed by the big box store juggernaut. I feel sad--and more than a little pissed off. I don't need an overcoat, dammit! I need a swimsuit--and some patio furniture!
My hand is reluctantly poised over my mouse. The siren call of the internet tells me I can get whatever I want, whenever I want it. The siren doesn't mention what it's like to try to return things to faceless far-away vendors, and it doesn't lament, even for a minute, what taking the sales tax away from my own city does to the local economy. Gad. When did shopping become such drama?
It's 75 degrees here in Indio, the sky is blue and the sun is shining. I sure would like to sit out on my patio. But none of the big box stores around here is selling outdoor furniture right now. "Why not?" I asked one of the employees. "We have it in summer," he said. Right. Summer, when it's 118 degrees and touching the metal on a patio chair could give you 2nd degree burns. The high-end specialty patio stores have outdoor furniture, of course. Great, if you have a real budget and are not constrained to big-box-store-type prices. Personally, I'm considering moving my card table and chairs onto the patio. A couple of medium cardboard boxes would make good ottomans, don't you think?
I thought a few indoor plants would cheer me up. I tried to buy terra cotta pots to start some African violets from cuttings. Nope. No pots. Not 'til spring--when it's already 93 degrees here. Guaranteed to shrivel new plants in a matter of minutes.
Pet stores are not immune, either. An employee of a big box pet store told me when she worked at one of her chain's stores in a cold part of Nevada, they didn't carry pet water bowls with electric warmers to keep the water from freezing. But they have "tons" of them at this store, in a city where a nighttime low temperature anywhere freezing causes breathless reports of "extreme" weather on the nightly newscast.
I finally mail-ordered a swimsuit from Sylvia's Swim Shop, because the ones I have are turning to mesh and the stores around here don't get swim suits until...you guessed it: summer. After decades of marketing research, in a country rife with bright people, we find ourselves held hostage by huge selling machines that completely ignore the tenets of customer-oriented marketing. They offer overcoats to people in the desert and dog cooling beds to people in the Sierra Nevadas . Why does this surprise me? Shouldn't I be used to a lack of common sense by now? After all, I did work for the government for a year!
I want to support my local merchants, really I do. If I could only find them. Maybe they were all squashed by the big box store juggernaut. I feel sad--and more than a little pissed off. I don't need an overcoat, dammit! I need a swimsuit--and some patio furniture!
My hand is reluctantly poised over my mouse. The siren call of the internet tells me I can get whatever I want, whenever I want it. The siren doesn't mention what it's like to try to return things to faceless far-away vendors, and it doesn't lament, even for a minute, what taking the sales tax away from my own city does to the local economy. Gad. When did shopping become such drama?
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