whine whine whine

Until yesterday, I'd managed my 1200 calorie thing OK (I've lost 5 lbs so far, if you're counting the days). After work, I was depressed and felt like I'd been hit by a truck. Most of my depression could be traced to the shitty weather. Normally, if I feel out of sorts, exercise will make me feel better. Unfortunately, the wind and cold is what was making me unhappy. I so fucking sick of winter.[1]

I couldn't bring myself to go for a walk. In fact, I couldn't bring myself to get off the bed, so I suggested that I wanted to solve this problem with food. And we did. We went out for what passes for Italian food in this part of the world, and I ate whatever I wanted. I still only ate 1800 calories yesterday, so I don't even have any residual guilt about that. And I felt a whole lot better too.

Yesterday, the gentlemen who cleans our office insisted on kicking me out of my cube so he could clean my chair. I don't mean the part where I sit, I mean the plastic parts. They get dusty, I guess. When I came back, all my carefully adjusted chair settings were changed.

I think I'd have rather had a dirty chair.

This morning, I have a message from the boss man that I need to install Yahoo Instant Messenger, turn in my nick and run the thing all the time. Dammit, I already run AIM regularly and all my friends are on AIM on on fucking Yahoo Instant Messenger. Never mind that everyone I know at this company already runs AIM. No, we have to fucking change it.

Said boss man (formerly known as beeping man) has been sending out all sorts of random shit lately. First, we all got a message saying that thousands were being laid off at Worldcom and that we should pray for our laid off brethren and for some improvement in the Telco line of business.

Yesterday, we got a bunch of definitions that look like they were copied out of Newton's Telecom Dictionary. These, however, were in HTML text (we are forced to use Outlook/Exchange here, though rumor has it that will change soon) that was all...different and ugly. One of the defined terms was Tiger Team, which is a phrase that just gets my hackles up due to various stupidities that occured at another company for whom I worked and for whom Tino still works.

From Salon:

Still, no new laws

Paducah, Jonesboro, Springfield, Columbine and now Santee, and Congress hasn't passed a new gun control law since 1996.

Oh, fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Jake Tapper. Why the hell should they? What makes you think that the Congress of the U.S. can "keep guns out of the hands of children?" Just how stupid and naive are you? The only people who can "keep guns out of the hands of children" are the adults around them.

Furthermore, what makes you think that even that would cure suburban disaffection? It's obvious to anyone with a brain that the guns aren't the cause, they are merely a means to an end. If there were no guns, they'd build pipe bombs. What's really sad is that no one paid attention to these obviously fucked up kids. To get attention and help, they had to kill their classmates. That's what's really sad.

I can't imagine a worse time to be a teenager than now. They have more restrictions and more responsibilities than ever before. And their parents are less available than they've ever been due to the ridiculous schedule that most Americans have to work to keep up with the Joneses. Kids have no independence, and parents have to time to pay any attention to them. Now that's a tragedy.

And why does the father get off the hook just because he has a safe for that gun? Obviously, the gun wasn't in it or the kid knew the combination. That seems pretty damn irresponsible to me, but of course, the parents were too oblivious to realize that their child needed help, so I shouldn't be surprised about this either, I guess.

I guess the real question here is "why are you reading Salon anyway, Nicole?" Well, they share one thing with me: suspicion bordering on hatred of the Bush administration.

[1] Ed pointed out to me yesterday when I complained about the wind and cold that I am from Chicago. I had not forgotten this salient fact. It's just that I had gotten used to the wimpy winters we've had for the last four years. I thought that was the way of things, you know, now that I live in the Beautiful South instead of the Cruel Midwest. In every previous year, we'd had a few days (often consecutive) of shorts weather by now. Not this year. The first winter I was here, it was 84 on January 4. I'm not making this up.

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