Downstairs Neighbor UPDATE

My new downstairs neighbor is so far so much better than any and all of the previous ones! For one thing, her TV is pretty small, and she doesn't play it very loudly. For another, I noticed as I was walking back from taking out the recycling and trash that she had some friends over... I could see into her apartment because it's dark out and she had the lights blazing inside. As I walked toward our apartments, she came to the window and closed the blinds rather frantically. A second later as I passed her front door, I heard her coughing... and not sick coughing, but that weed coughing, while other people were giggling. She's a weed smoker! All the noise she will make will be some mellow random giggling and chuckling, with the occasional coughs thrown in there.

Bobbi Brown Packaging Change

Bobbi Brown blushes and eyeshadows have recently gone from round to square. The square ones are also made so that you can pop them out of their cases and add them to a palette with three or four or six squares in it. You can now get the discontinued round eyeshadows and blushes on eBay for a really discounted price! I don't know if they were slated for destruction and someone saved them, or if they fell off a truck or what, but I've been stocking up on the rounds for $9, $10 or $12 each. They retailed for $20 or so.

Wicked, the Musical - next month!

Around mid-May, I finally get to see Wicked, the musical. I loved the novel by Gregory Maguire, and I missed Wicked in San Francisco the first time around because I kept seeing the ads in the BART station but I was too clueless to figure out that it was a new musical and that I wanted to see it. It's easy to ignore advertising in the bowels of the BART system, expecially when most of what they advertise is banking services. For a while, this company called ING Direct paid your BART fare, but you were completely bombarded by these hire-a-marketers as soon as you exited the gates in the station. So while the Wicked posters were up, I saw them, but I kept my head down and moved fast to avoid any sales interactions. Then someone lent me the novel and I loved it and quickly read several other books by Gregory Maguire, such as Confessions of An Ugly Stepsister and Mirror, Mirror, which was my favorite. tried to see Wicked in New York City when I was there but couldn't get tickets.
So it's back in San Francisco, and I finally get to see it! This green rose hairpin thing is the first part of my Wicked outfit!

Ring Ding

I recently got this amazing vintage amethyst, pink sapphire and rose gold ring from an eBay auction, for less money than a pair of premium denim jeans. I really wish my hands weren't starting to look so old...

Life in the Dorm

One would think I'd have left the dorms a long time ago (seeing as I've seen age thirty come and go)... when I was in college lying perfectly still on my extra long twin bed (extra-long because I'm 5'0" tall. Oh, wait, extra-long because they are the same government-issue beds they use in prisons!) to fantasize about when I'd get out of college, get a nice job, no longer a minimum wage job at JC Penney or at SuperCrown books, and have my own apartment) but it turns out that apartments, at least ones with adjoining walls, and ones that I can afford, are always just an extension of dorm life with the usual LOVELY neighbors... screaming and yelling... drunken crying... cops are called... cops lead sobbing angry girl away... just a typical Friday early morning at, say, 3:00 am.

DD and I have lived in this apartment for three and a half years. In that time, the apartment downstairs has emptied and filled four times, if you count the person who just moved in today. Tonight. Or at least, she started at 11:00 pm and, well, since the people helping her move appear to be her parents, who are rather portly and slow-moving in their middle aged-ness, it's still going on.

The first couple was pretty noisy. They enjoyed chasing each other through the apartment and giggling, which is cute, I suppose, except that they were each over 250 lbs and their footfalls on the cheap hardwood floors and their bodies bumping against the walls had me in a perpetual state of fear that an earthquake was starting. (I lived in Northridge, California during the huge Northridge Earthquake. In fact, I lived in the dorms, most of which were damaged so badly that we had to double and triple up the next semester.) I had to draw the line when they got out of their huge SUV and hit my car door, denting it, then had the nerve to try to rub the mark away, leaving an oily circle AND a dent. We had a talk which resulted in CarolAnn making her passenger and the culprit apologize to me and then they gave me a bottle of wine.

The second girl was better because at least she lived alone. Very alone, with a very big TV with amazing sound, amazing bass. It would rattle my floor and windows. She favored loud movies. Always with the gun sounds. It couldn't be Memento, the movie about Chopin, for example, or, like, Rivers and Tides, that documentary about Andy Goldsworty. She rarely went out, and when she did she returned with huge cases of food from Costco. She liked Marie Callender's potpies.

When she moved out, another girl moved in. She moved in with a roommate. The roommate had a giant teddy bear that lived in the living room. It was always kind of funny to come home and see the giant teddy bear just kicking it on the couch. I didn't care much about the roommate, because her bedroom was under the small bedroom I use as my walk in closet. The main girl drove me crazy with her cough. She apparently had some kind of respiratory ailment that required her to use a drug called DuoNeb. I know this because she had a DuoNeb box in the window of her car. Maybe it was like a Medical Alert bracelet. Like if she got in a car accident, the first responders would see that box and know she was on DuoNeb. She coughed like crazy. It sounded like gunshots. It made me so nervous and self conscious, realizing I could hear her coughing so clearly, that when I had a cold and got a cough, I slept on my couch in the living room.
Anyway, she was weird...we rode the bus together sometimes... sometimes I would force conversation, but most of the time she just ingored me, as if we weren't living in this very close situation where I could hear her coughing like gunshots.

So, she's now moved out (her parents helped) and the new girl, who is basically a clone of her, is moving in. What's with women in their 20's having out of shape daddy and uncles in their late 50's moving at the speed of molasses as their movers? My dad has never had to lift a piece of my furniture or drive a U Haul for me... why should he? I'm an adult. And Lord knows I've never moved into an apartment in the dead of night. Hell, I'm an ADMINISTRATIVE PROFESSIONAL. I'm more prepared than that.

A lukerwarm welcome to Downstairs Neighbor #4. Can't wait to hear your sound system coming through the walls.

Excellence In Action: Or, the Day My Boss Ignored Administrative Professionals' Day

Administrative Professionals' Day came and went with nary a whisper at my workplace. It was last Wednesday. It was just another day; same as always, with people asking me for this, that, a favor, rescheduling, time on so and so's calendar, whether the temperature of the cool water that comes out of the filter could be turned up because the cold water is too cold but they want it cooler than room temperature, oh, and the plant service I ordered for the office came to deliver and everyone who didn't get a plant right next to them wanted to know how they could get a plant (consider that I had to practically BEG the Mister President & CEO to sign off on this service because it costs a whopping $150 a month. But why can't we buy plants and take care of them ourselves? He asked. Because no one but me will, and I don't have a green thumb, I replied. But why? He asked. Because our office looks stark and unprofessional, I replied. Of course, he ordered a 7 foot ficus tree for his office, but who's noticing the irony or hypocrisy of that?).

There were no cards, flowers, lunches, half days off or monogrammed plaques saying, "God Bless our EA." No "Happy Administrative Professionals' Day". Nothing. Zip. Shit.
I bemoaned this fact to our receptionist. However, I had told her boss the week before that the day was coming, so the receptionist got taken out to lunch. The next day she came in with a tulip plant for me yelling about Happy Belated Administrative Professionals' Day. My work area is in a hallway right outside my boss' office; well, one of my bosses, as I now support no less than FOUR, count them - FOUR executives.
Mister President & CEO overheard, wandered out of his office and offered to take me to lunch. I thought it would look like I was holding a grudge if I said no, so, three hours later there I was eating a sandwich and drinking a can of ginger ale while he talked about work and treated me to "some insight into my (sic) character" . HIS character.

Wowzers!

The theme of Administrative Professionals' week this year was "Excellence in Action".

It Wouldn't Be Spring Without CRACK

A few days of warm weather in San Francisco brought out all the cracks.

SweetSpot Labs

SweetSpot Labs is a much more sophisticated "feminine hygiene" product company than any that have ever been launched before. For one thing, they provide non-judgemental, non-marketing-ish education about the vulva right on their website. For another, their angle is different from others' (Summer's Eve, etc.) in that SweetSpot states there's nothing wrong with the vagina or vulva, and that odor down there is as natural as bad breath, smelly armpits or general sweat. They sell a line of wipes, washes, sprays and the like.

It's fascinating that good, solid, non-mysogynist information and chick lit color schemes and cute Stila-esque drawings are now merging in marketing and product development. I'll be watching this one with interest!

Good Morning, Gmail Autopilot!

I woke early this morning to the sounds of spring birdsong (it was still dark and the birds sounded like they were on crack, actually) and checked my personal email. Gmail had a red tab or link about a new feature called Autopilot, which uses some type of artificial intelligence to reply to emails, mimicking your writing style. The description said it needs more than 100 emails to be accurate, and that you and another person can reply to each other a few times before the quality of the email degrades.
I was astounded, and started thinking about all the delightful implications for my work, where we use Gmail instead of Outlook or another email service. Like, maybe I'll just enable it and go get a manicure this morning... or a Bloody Mary. I began clicking around the internet looking for more information about this and then realized the date - it's April 1st. DAMMIT!