Things that suck about today

In no particular order:

It's Monday

It's raining

My skirt/shirt combo is really unflattering with my shirt tucked in.

My skirt/shirt combo is really unflattering with my shirt untucked.

I'm working with text in Excel. Excel is for numbers, not words.

My sense of smell is super keen today and the world smells foul.

I have to be nice to people.

People keep talking.

People keep getting louder.

I am angry at everything and everyone.

I'm, so far, unable to think of anything to make me feel better.

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Update: Icing on the sucky day cake, someone likened me to Hitler. Ugh.

HRH

I'm going to need a lot of elastics

I am going to castrate the developers at Mircosoft and Apple.

I wake up this morning and my computer has restarted. It's a bit strange, but apparently there was a mega security patch that Windows needed to download to they could (shock!) make IE more secure. Usually Windows Updater asks me before I install it, but apparently it couldn't wait this time. Generally I don't object to automatic updates, but when they fuck things up, I lose trust and I lose my sanity.

So it's restarted, but for some reason, my ipod isn't showing in itunes. Windows Explorer shows it as a removable disk, but nothing in itunes can't recognize it. The best part, when I disconnect it, all the songs have been wiped from it. Gone.

A venomous fury erupts within me. M and the cat hide. Yes I can put most of the songs back on, but that's not in any way the point. Microsoft hath wronged me. They must pay.

I check that I'm using the right version of itunes, restart, reboot, sacrifice a goat... Nothing. So I try to restore the factory settings ask it asks me to do, and it can't because there's a newer version of itunes on the system. And thus it is decided that Apple must feel pain too.

I need to get to work at this point, so I can enjoy a music-less miserable day, so I have to leave the task of fixing it all for later. I think I have found the instructions for what I need to do so I can continue the ipod saga for the rest of the weekend. To keep in theme with the current holiday, my ipod will be playing the part of Christ.

And if my treasured ipod can't be resurrected... Apple, Microsoft... Doesn't matter to me. Someone's losing their balls.

HRH

Because everything I say is everything you've ever wanted to hear

Double whammied with the hate this week and it's only Tuesday. Between this article about the austounding and puzzling lack of trust Americans have for athiests and this article about how publicists are one of the least trusted professions I'm feeling awfully good. I could just stand here and bask in the warmth of the love of the world. Oh yeah.

Today's sing-a-long song: "Liar" by Rollins Band

HRH

Damn the man!

Pretty much everything having to do with our wedding has been fun and amazing. If I had smaller feet, it would be the perfect superlative experience. Really. It's been a blast, save this small detail: Finding someone to marry us.

In some countries, anyone can become an ordained whatever through a variety of mediums and perform a wedding or two and it will be legally binding. A friend that we know and love marrying us, well that would be awesome. It would be so personal and so genuine. But because the puritanical province of Ontario demands it, we can only be married by a certified officiant (a distinction that only can come with an affiliation with a religion), a judge (in chambers) or a justice of the peace. But wait, recently in this province the duties of the JPs were altered, no longer requiring them to do wedding ceremonies. So unless you know one personally, you can't find one to marry you. And if you want to be married somewhere other than in a judge's chambers, you're stuck with an officiant. Who I'm positive are some of the darn nicest people around, but leave me in a bit of a situation.

What do you do if you're an atheist? How do I get married by someone religious without being a complete and total hypocrite? And how do I get over the anger I feel at having to PAY hundreds of dollars to have a complete and total stranger come to a very special and private moment to legalize a commitment they have no part of with the sanction of a church and the state, two things I have little fondness for?

I suppose you just take it on then chin like you do when you pay your taxes and salute the bureaucracy with your finger of choice, or do like Zeus did and take a dump on the label for my tax return. Thanks kitty for doing what most of us have wanted to do from the day we got our SIN numbers.

Anyway, I thought I'd found a solution in hiring a Humanist officiant. While Humanists are not religious, they are, in the government's eyes a recognized religion. We met with one and I came away from the whole experience feeling like I was being led into a cult (something I think was a reflection of the individual I met with and not because of the values of Humanism). I don't like "isms". I think that identifying with them makes it really easy for people to make generalizations about you rather than putting in the effort to really learn what you're about. Even having to say that I'm an atheist annoys me because it's an "ism".

So you can only imagine the disdain I felt when this particular officiant stated that he adamantly wanted to include a line about the principles of Humanism into the wedding ceremony, as in "Humanism is...". People are entitled to their opinions and their beliefs, but when I've hired you to perform a service, it is not an opportunity for you to recruit people to your movement. To me, it was tantamount to another officiant stating that we were marrying under the eyes of the lord or something like that. Something completely irrelevant to us. If we were Humanists, it might make sense. But we're not. We're not anything but the people we are and that's kind of the point.

I'm being my usual idealistic self in wanting the person marrying me to believe in and value the same things I do. I guess then I would feel validated by their endorsement of our commitment and not like it's some stranger I've paid.

I know I should just let go and hire a retired minister or something like that. Odds are we'll get someone assigned to us from the city (an officiant and thereby affiliated with a religion, but required to perform a civil ceremony) or use AllSeasons (because they let us do our ceremony any way we want). Most likely it will be just fine and I'll be so wrapped up in the rest of the good stuff of the day that I'll forget. In fact, I'm sure that once I have this person booked, this will all abate into a tiny memory.

HRH

Why honk?

The walk from my streetcar stop to my front door is about six or seven blocks down a busy street. Normally it's a pleasant walk. In the spring and summer the trees in the park are in bloom and I'm either seeing them bathed in morning sun or through the halo of the end of day light. In the fall, it's all beautiful colours and fresh air. Winter is a bit of a bitch, I won't lie, but I still love my walk.

That is until some jackass ruins it by honking at me. Why do people honk? Honking is something that should be reserved for communicating to other drivers when they need to be made aware of your presence (or in M's case, be made aware of your rage) or to alert a pedestrian that may be crossing in front of your moving car. Why people need to honk at someone walking down the side of the road, completely out of danger and relevance I don't know.

It's not like most of the time I'm dressed in any kind of way elict honking. Like today, wearing a basically shapless white coat, a pink hat, scarf, knee-length skirt and boots... sorry, but that does not warrant honking. Sometimes I think I've seen people shaking their fists at me in anger, which I find really baffling. Since when does walking down the road warrant random anger?

I just don't get it and it's really annoying. I'm walking along, happily listening to music and someone honks and occasionally yells something at me as they speed by. I can rarely understand what's being yelled and really, what the hell do the honking people expect? I understand when it's a group of guys in the car. Understand is the wrong word. I know why, it's that stupid men in groups mentality that causes their collective IQ to decrease exponentially with each additional man added to the mix. Shouting at a passing girl has nothing to do with the girl at all, it's just bravado and sadly, I'm used to that.

The men who honk at me when they're by themselves in their cars, they creep me out. I mean they're honking and speeding by. If I held myself in such low esteem that honking actually caught my attention, how would they know? It's all really strange and it continues to ruin my walks down the street. Sometimes shouting back or flipping them the finger helps me feel better, but not really. My moment is still ruined. Stupid honkers, please stop messing with my walk.

HRH