the village people had it all wrong

this is the mission of the YMCA in the united states, according to its website:

"To put Christian principles in to practice through programs that build healthy spirit, mind and body for all"

i'm here to tell you that mission is not alive and well.

i've been searching for a place to work out in knoxville while i'm stuck here. i'm not buying any memberships so long as i have one to the williamson county recreation center in nashville. but, i figured there would be places around town, say the ymca, that might allow me in on a single-time pass.

i sought out a city-owned rec center first, recalling the time i lived in chattanooga and the city owned a weight training room that you could patronize for just 50 cents. the one i decided to try is just a hop and a half away from the boyfriend's house, and the city's website advertised it as having a weight room. false advertising. i found the gym and the bridge center, but no weight room.

so i drove over to a nearby ymca. i also recalled a few times while in chattanooga (and too poor for a gym membership) paid $5 to get into the ymca's weight room. a little over priced, but not to expensive to keep me away.

gal at the desk of the knoxville y: can i help you?
me: yes, i don't have a membership. i'm visiting from out of town and was wondering if you do single-day passes?
other gal at the desk: ha!
first gal: weeeeeeeeeell, we do, but they're $15.
me: $15? that's a lot of money. um, nevermind.
first gal: ok, see ya.

ok, when i think of Christian principles, i do not think of exclusive, overpriced and unfriendly. but those words pretty much summed up the principles at this ymca (and presumably all the ymcas within the east tennessee region). come to think of it, this is also the case in middle tennessee where the ymcas are COUNTRY CLUBS. seriously. i visited one when i was thinking about getting a membership there and it crossed my mind that i had been in country clubs not nearly as fancy as the y i was in.

from the Book of Matthew, Chapter 19: Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

something to think about, ymca.

hell on wheels

picture this: i'm about to turn left onto the interstate on ramp. there's a minivan in the right lane slightly in front of me, hovering. i see the driver's eyes in the rearview mirror. i can tell by the look in them that she wants to get over so she can get on the interstate too.

question 1: do you think the driver has her turn signal on to signal she would like to get over in front of me?

question 2: do you think i let her over?

(i'll give you a hint, the answers directly correlate.)

i know, i'm a bitch, but seriously people, using a blinker is like the easiest principle of driving.

when you want something done

as i was attempting to do my laundry on monday, i noticed it was snowing purple fuzz into my back yard from a vent above my kitchen window. crap. how does one get their dryer vent clogged with lint EVEN THOUGH one cleans out their lint trap after every use of their dryer.

because i do not have the 10-foot ladder needed to reach the vent, i called the homeowners association's "help line" as soon as i discovered the problem, and the dude at the other end agreed to send a maintenance man out to help me.

i drive to knoxville. wednesday, i drive home. dryer vent still clogged.

i call "help line" again. this time lady at the other end says she'll get right on it. a few hours later, i get call back from original "help line" dude who says, "i'm sorry, we can't help you. keeping the vent clean is not the homeowner association's responsibility."

(i'll spare you the profanity that followed ... i made the mistake the other day of saying my homeowners association was much better than most.).

so, when i got home today, i put on my macgyver thinking cap, grabbed the stepladder, a broom, a yard stick and some duct tape. let's just say that while the vent may now be broken, the clog is no longer a problem.

you want to do what?

boyfriend says yes when girlfriend asks if he wants to go out to dinner + boyfriend decides to have a cookout with his guy friends
= very unhappy girlfriend

they call him mr. unpersonality

i attended my first homeowners' association meeting tonight and i realized one thing about homeowners' association/cities/life:

there's always the neighborhood antagonist.

i don't mean the neighborhood bully who's just plain mean to everyone and does whatever he/she wants with careless disregard to the people around them. i mean the person who is the first one to get up during the question-and-answer session of the meeting and has a laundry list of complaints to air. they also are very, very, very sure that the person in charge of said homeowners' association/city/life is trying to cheat them out of their money. i've sat through enough council sessions and similar meetings. i've seen them all.

our neighborhood's very own mr. antagonist jumped up at the beginning of the q-&-a session tonight asking very pointed questions about the annual budget accounting form that he had of course raced to the back of the meeting room to get when they were set out on a table in the middle of the meeting while someone was giving a presentation. where's this account? why doesn't this line and that line measure up? he pretty much accused the accountant of lying when he didn't understand the answers provided to him.

he also felt the urge to interrupt everyone else's questions with his own comment about how he'd try to get such and such fixed but they told him it couldn't be done and how he saw such and such going on at a certain time and no, mr. president you're wrong cause i SAW IT with my own eyes.

really?

let me say it again ... really?

by design we live in one of the friendliest, cleanest, nicest, best-kept neighborhoods in nashville. it's one of those fancy-schmancy new-fangled new-urbanism communities where everything is carefully planned out and where there are sidewalks and fancy streetlights and flowers everywhere.

i'm pretty sure they're not taking my money and spending it on their new yacht. i'm pretty sure they're taking my money and spending it on flowers and a big crazy halloween party complete with hayride. and you know what? that's ok because that's exactly what i wanted/expected when i decided to move here.

i'm curious to know what makes these people tick, but i'm going to go ahead and guess that they themselves were bullied as a child and never had the floor to speak without getting laughed at but have managed to build their confidence. and the level of confidence they have is directly proportional to the amount of time they now spend hogging the floor and is inversely proportional to the number of people who care what they have to say. (i'm pretty sure everyone wanted to vote this dude off the playground today).

and as the nutty dude sitting behind me pointed out, it just feels like 3rd grade all over again.

top cowboy

i'm sorry, i'm too distracted by the fact that the top cheftestants were in the motherland tonight to think about the episode itself.

well, maybe that's not true, but i totally missed what happened in the quickfire because i was too wrapped up in thoughts of me needing to be in colorado where i belong. instead of watching them make their trouts a la crap by the creekside, i had to close my eyes and pretend i was standing right there on ajax mountain or at the maroon bells.

and what do they do upon arriving in God's country? they bitch and complain about how they don't do trout and they don't do elk and what do cowboys eat? beans, beans and beans? no hung, some cowboys are just as pretentious as you about the food that they eat.

ungrateful brats. do. not. deserve. to. be. there.

anyway.

brian goes. fine, peace out. i'll miss your chatty clucking about the show. i pretty much don't care anymore who wins. i'm not really excited about any of you. why aren't there twenty rereuns of antm? i totally missed it tonight.

here are some on-topic bitches (or beefs, if you will): three contestants in the finals? THREE? if there had been three finalists in season one, lee anne would have been there and she totally deserved to be there. because there's so much talent? whatever. youz need tuh mahn uhp and get ridz ov tooo ahf dem.

and what were the sob speeches at the end? i've become a chef again ... i'm constantly being reborn ... I LOVE EVERYBODY! Wah wah wah.

p.s. doesn't valerie bertinelli look like she could be mandy moore's older sister now that she's lost all that weight? go val, you rock.
p.p.s. i'm really just cranky about having to be downtown for work tomorrow at butt-crack early tomorrow morning.

karmaflu

i complained all august about how unnecessarily and impossibly hot it was. now, in my typical bad-karma fashion, i am paying for it. it's been unseasonably beautiful with highs in the mid-80s, sunny skies and low humidity. i've been celebrating it with a weeklong sinus headache and stuffy nose to go with.

the good news is, after about a month, i'm back on my meds :-)

observations du jour

because i've been on the road so much lately, all my astute observations are driving-related:

- i parked in a garage this afternoon in knoxville, and before returning to my car, i made sure to get some cash money out of the atm because i had none -- not even a dollar. when i got to the pay booth, there was a sign in the window that said "no 20$ bills." now who doesn't accept an andrew jackson? that's un-american and certainly anti-tennessee. because my standard atm withdrawal is $40 all i could do was look at the lady in the booth and say "sorry, all i've got is a $20." she gave me my change in ones and pocket change. whatever. more change for the wii fund.
- question: what do you get when you add an airhead sorority girl with oversized sunglasses, a cell phone and a sports car? answer: a right hand turn into not one but two lanes of traffic including one lane which was already occupied by a driver -- me.
- it took me an extra 30 minutes to make the drive between knoxville and nashville today because of one of my biggest pet peeves: slow-ass drivers in the left lane. THERE ARE SIGNS EVERYWHERE: "Slower traffic keep right." ABIDE, PEOPLE! in the time i spent in england, i learned one thing about driving. vehicles are only to use the fast lanes (which in this case are the right lanes) when attempting to overtake another vehicle. as soon as you've completed that action, you get back into the slow lane.

something to think about.

on the road again and again and again

in the past week i've driven nearly a thousand miles and spent almost 15 hours in my car.

i'm exhausted.

and, i think i'm about to head to knoxville again, less than a day after i returned to nashville from knoxville.

i hope my company values me as an employee.

bad business, bad

these two companies are hereto and forevermore on my sh** list. if you choose to do business with them, don't say you weren't warned.

1. forest city residential, owners, possibly former, of the landings of brentwood apartments in brentwood, no wait, franklin, tn. (minor detail they'll lie to you about, but i tell you the people at the brentwood library care a great deal about that little lie).

upon moving out of my apartment, forest city decided to charge me for my slightly spotted carpet. this irritates me for two reasons ... they put crappy, therefore impossible to keep clean, carpet in to begin with AND they charge you an exorbinant deposit and pet deposit. and they keep all that money, by the way AND then charge you even more for the (slightly) damaged carpet.

rather than acting on my desire to bitch them out, i complied by sending them my credit card number SIX MONTHS AGO. last week i get a letter in the mail from them telling me my card has been declined. NO CRAP. i lost it last month and the credit card company, being the responsible financiers they are sent me a new one with a new number.

why the hell did it take them SIX MONTHS to try to charge me for my "damages?" they're obviously not the money grubbers i took them for that one month when they tried to charge me for rent twice.

2. at&t, which is the new (old) bellsouth. you can put your phone number on as many do not call lists as you like, there is one business exempt -- the phone company. they call me like five times a day. because i stayed home from work today and was in a particularly grumpy mood, i chose to answer it.

we want to offer you internet service. no. the last time i had bellsouth internet service it went out like once a week. i'm happy with my current service. but you've been a customer for so long now. i told you, i already have service that i plan to keep and you lie, i've only been a customer for like three months, i just finished paying the installation charges. goodbye. click.

drive

to the guy in the convertable today pointing at those of us sitting in traffic and sticking his tongue out at us:

GROW UP AND GET AN F'ING LIFE.

oh, and maybe keep your eyes on the road. just a thought.

pb

right now i'm eating forkfuls of jif creamy peanut butter - the crap i had to buy because of the pb recall a few months ago - and i'm lamenting over how much better my beloved peter pan pb is.

it may also be the fact that i accidentally bought the reduced fat version. so not worth the reduction in fat.

el fin

what? it's already the end of this season of kathy griffin's my life on the D-List? i swear it just started. and it's been the best season yet, so i'm having a hard time letting go of kathy and her gays.

p.s. the reporter from star mag was an idiot! i'm way better than she, i should f'ing be working for star mag.

exception

my green keds tennies are going to be held up a bit ... because ups can't find my house. surprise surprise.

the tracking info says this: EXCEPTION: DIRECTIONS TO THE RECEIVER'S LOCATION ARE NEEDED FOR DELIVERY. UPS IS ATTEMPTING TO OBTAIN THIS INFORMATION.;A POSTCARD HAS BEEN SENT TO THE RECIPIENT REQUESTING THAT THEY CONTACT UPS.

unfortunately, until i receive that postcard, i have no idea what number to call to contact ups and instruct them as to my whereabouts.

iScrew

a group of 12 friends and myself have a CD swapping group where each one of us creates a mixed album reflecting our taste in music and shares a copy of that album with each member of the group. it's a great way to learn about different kinds of music and about your friends' taste.

well, here's my chance to bitch about iTunes and apple in general, cause i hate them even though i use their products (which makes me hate them even more). iTunes will only let you make seven copies off one playlist. and no, you can't create a new playlist with the exact same content to get around that.

then there's also the issue of it not letting you make more than 10 (i think that's right) copies of the same track. i haven't had the chance to explore if uploading the track from an already burned CD will get me around that, but something tells me that won't work either.

i get why they do it, but for steve jobs' sake, i'm not selling these for a profit. i'm just trying to share with my friends. and why seven and 10 times? those seem like arbitrary numbers. why not 12 or 15?

i hate iTunes and apple because they do shit like this, and i hate them because they do such a good job at creating the 'i need that' feeling about their products.

mail

as i've said before, a lot of crap has gone wrong with my relocation to a new home. i'm trying to avoid bitching about it all, but i would like to share with you the most unique problem i've had to date.

when i moved in, i was told that the box where my lockable mailslot was located was only a temporary box, and that a fancy-schmancy mail center would be built nearby. basically that mail center is just a little hut with a whole lotta mailslots and some actual lighting in the middle of the expansive un-streetlight-lit construction zone.

well, the new mail hut is done, and i noticed the other day that i was no longer getting any mail in my original mailslot. the problem is, no one has provided me with a key to the new mailslot. and now, the old box is completely gone. without a trace.

mind you, before i moved, i'd never ever been late on a bill. i have now been late on about five bills thanks to my postal service, well, going postal.

address

i'm trying to change my address on all the subscriptions i've amassed, but i'm running into a problem. several of the services for which i'm trying to change my address try to immediately verify your new address with the postal service. and none of them can determine that my brand new house on its brand new street in its brand new neighborhood actually exists.

if the postal service can't verify my address, i'm thinking i'm not going to be seeing any of my mail for a while and that's a problem.

peanutty

so it turns out i have one, two, three, FOUR jars of the potentially tainted peter pan peanut butter. one's nearly empty, one is crunchy pb -- specifically called for in a recipe (i hate crunchy). i used a coupon at the store recently which required me buying two jars. and wouldn't you know, they all had numbers starting with 2111.

i've got the mailing address that i'm supposed to send the lids to, but i haven't had time to deal with it, so the tainted pbs have just been sitting on my counter.

and i'm sooooooo hungry right now. and i'm totally eating the problematic pb, because, well, i made it through 11/12ths of the jar without getting sick. i'm going to press my luck.

snowed

it only snows in nashville when i'm not there. my mom called this morning to say both nashville and memphis got about two inches. two inches!! oh well, i've got more than enough snow in colorado for now.

automatic for the people

i'm at the minneapolis/st. paul airport, bound for denver. i just visited the facilities, where everything was automatic -- automatic flush toilet, automatic faucets, automatic soap dispensers and automatic paper towel dispensers.

are we that lazy?

i can understand the automatic faucet and paper towel dispenser for the means of conservation. but whatever resources i conserve by not letting the tap run an extra 15 seconds, i totally cancel out when the toilet flushes two more times than is necessary as i'm trying to put my backpack back on and get out of the stall door.