the everyday adventures of sabrina

so, the other day, i was running in to osco to pick up tiger’s syringes, and on my way to the door, i spotted someone’s credit card on the sidewalk.

by the time i realized what it had been, i was already halfway past it to the door, and i thought it would look weird if i went back and picked it up. and what would i do with it anyways? but, what if someone else picked it up and used it to steal the person’s identity, or something? i could have prevented that possibility, if only through not personally being an identity thief (or ordinary sort of thief). i dithered over the dilemma all the way up to the pharmacy and, as i ponied up the $33 for my cat, i decided that if it was still there on the way out i would pick it up.

it was, so i did.

it’s someone’s debit card, in fact. losing a debit card is worse than losing a credit card — for one thing, you’re on the hook for more cash; for another, if someone does use your debit card you lose *real* money immediately, you don’t get the luxury of sitting on hold with your credit card bank waiting for them to straighten it out, when the bill won’t come for another 20 days. so, i’m glad i picked it up. i hope it was not too late for the person, that he had just dropped it and no one else had used it and discarded it in the meantime.

but then i realized: i have no idea what to do with it. i thought about turning it in at the jewel customer service desk, but then — *they* might steal it. (yes, i’m a suspicious sort of girl.) and besides, they’re probably not going to go back to jewel looking for it anyways, just because they’re probably not going to know where they lost it. after that, my first instinct is to hand it in to the bank, but … i, quite frankly, do not want to have my name in any way associated with this card, because if it turns out it was stolen, they will need someone to blame, and i do not want to be blamed. so that’s out. i thought about anonymously mailing it back to the bank, but what are they going to do with it and with my statement that “i found this at 7PM on wednesday at jewel, please send the person a new card since they lost it”? they’re a giant bank, they’re going to (a) fuck it up, or (b) get hopefully confused and do nothing. so that option sucks. i can’t contact the actual person, obviously, and even if i could, that gets back again to not wanting to be associated with a lost card in case i get put on the hook for something. so, i guess, in the end, although i wish i could save this person the bother of having to order a new debit card from his bank (and save him the worry of, in the meantime, hoping desperately no one found it and stole his money), i guess that in order to protect myself, the best solution is actually just to stuff the card through my shredder and forget about it.

still, it seems like there ought to be a better way.

so, remember the part where i ordered dsl, and it was totally easy, and i was in disbelief that it was going to all come off without a fuss?

i was sorta right…

i finally managed to excavate enough boxes to get access to my desk today, and get the computer set up, and the wireless, and so forth. i plugged everything in and the computer happily rejoined my wireless network, and that’s the point where i went to go reconfigure the access point away from my old static ip ethernet configuration over to bog-standard PPPoE, and i realized that although my dsl seemed to be live, i had blinky lights and everything, but i’d forgotten to get my username and password from the sales agent on the phone. oops.

after sulking about it for a while, and trying all of the rather a lot of wireless networks i have within range all the way up here (seriously. there are like a dozen “linksysNNN” networks alone) and finding not one individual trusting enough to let me mooch bits from, i decided that… i would try the last username and password i had for sbc PPPoE dsl, and rely on basic ISP account maintenance incompetence to have prevented them from ever having purged that long-cancelled account from the authentication servers, and see if that worked. keep in mind, the last time i had sbc PPPoE dsl was when i lived in hyde park, which was before i lived in printer’s row last time, which puts it at about 4 years ago. it worked great! hooray for basic ISP account maintenance incompetence, the one thing that is universal through all providers everywhere!

i feel so flattered! somehow, a hillbot stumbled upon my little blog here and in response felt that i should “shut the fuck up.” i wonder why — was it the derision about hillary supporters’ inability to accurately wield allusions (again, ladies, racism uses ‘back of the bus’ to illustrate examples; sexism uses ‘get back in the kitchen.’ if you’re going to cliché, frankly, it’s the least you can do to cliché correctly), or was it the fact that i referred to the incessant whining of “baby boomer feminist clinton supporters” as “whining”?

hillary clinton’s candidacy has been a massive disappointment to me; starting from a point where i would have been just as pleased as punch if she were my democratic candidate, the campaign has done nothing more than progressively disillusion me. i posted in 2005 that “i think she’s a hell of a woman [and] i’d be happy to vote for her,” a sentiment which gradually shifted to “i think you kinda blew it”-style relative indifference as time and the primary campaign season passed, and has finally settled pretty firmly on “yeah, uh, no way.” the only mildly ironic part about it is that hillary’s campaign has done more to damage baby boomers, as a class (and especially classical Gloria Steinem-style feminists), in my eyes, than it actually has done to clinton herself. which just makes the hillbot comment more entertaining, considering she (i assume) (a) totally missed the point — OMG YOU DON’T HEART HILLARY, YOU ARE SUCH A MAN!!!!!!!!11!!1!1!!!!111!!!!! — and (b) was really, seriously, dude, just fucking whining. i mean, at the risk of being just another one of those latte-drinking intellectuals who don’t know what it’s like to be a real american (i guess my citizenship got downgraded when i went to college), what exactly makes you think one flavor of gender-bias is more acceptable than another? y’all people are messed up, and that’s why we’re not listening to you.

dear everybody,

if, in the course of reading this blog, you come away with no other, more helpful information, at least you should know this:

i really, really cannot recommend coming down with the evil death flu a day and a half before moving into a new apartment. it is a bad idea. it is no fun. it is going to make tomorrow suck.

(at least i had the good sense to hedge my bets, and leave out my painkillers and some sudafed, while packing up the rest of my bathroom. still: ow.)

:(,
–s.

dear baby boomer feminist clinton supporters:

Cynthia Ruccia, 55, a sales director for Mary Kay cosmetics in Columbus, Ohio, is organizing a group, Clinton Supporters Count Too, of mostly women in swing states who plan to campaign against Mr. Obama in November. “We, the most loyal constituency, are being told to sit down, shut up and get to the back of the bus,” she said.

Grow up. I’m so fucking tired of reading how it’s the duty of all women everywhere to vote for Hillary because she’s got the same chromosomes. Yes, sexism is doubtlessly bad but it’s not the same as racism so quit making allusions to the back of the goddamn bus. Also, your candidate is losing because her platform sucks and she lies; get over it.

Geraldine Ferraro, you can bite my shiny metal GenX ass, but you won’t, because you’re too fucking busy whining.

no love, and just so you know, this is totally the sort of bullshit that drove me to quit supporting NOW,
–sabrina

4 days!

just a little left yet to box up. boxing things up is, as it turns out, sooo boooring. and thursday is shaping up to be quite busy with non-packing:

• Bank – cash for tipping movers
• Jewel – bottled water for movers at both apts
• Clean fridge out and move everything to new apt
• Drop carload of crap at Brown Elephant
• Get keys back from cleaning service
• Get keys back from laundry service

i think i’ll spend basically the whole morning and probably early afternoon on thursday running those errands. (joy!) i’m getting pretty close to being done packing, though — in the kitchen, i just have my cookbooks, wine glasses, and some coffee mugs and plastic tupperware stuff left to go; in the bedroom, my nerdy t-shirt collection which i forgot about due to its being in the bottommost drawer of my chest of drawers; in the computer room, my printer and speakers that can get packed ahead of time, and the computer itself plus networking gear, which goes in last; and my CDs/DVDs, which i have not yet packed on the basis of “i might want to listen to those while packing!” oh, and a little bit of soap stuff yet as well. and the guy is coming by tomorrow after work to disassemble my elliptical. actually, it kinda does sound like a lot of stuff yet. but mostly what really needs doing is cleaning and hauling stuff away to donate it.

everyone keep your fingers crossed that in the next 6 days, someone will (a) lease the apartment and (b) decide to take me up on keeping the air-conditioners, so i don’t have to try and hock them on craigslist, which will inevitably lead to two people bailing on me before the third shows up alone, thus forcing me to help them haul 3 a/c units down two flights of stairs. — i am somewhat surprised and yet not surprised at all that no one has (evidently) leased the place yet. it’s a great place, location-wise, and frankly if you’re only visiting briefly to see about leasing it, you wouldn’t know (as i didn’t know) about the weirdnesses like the shouting neighbors and the OMG so leaky porch roof and the furnace of doom. i wonder if $landlord raised the rent substantially? i certainly wouldn’t pay a grand for this place. and the poor person that does take the place is going to get smacked with some ugly-ass gas bills next winter, especially if the gas rates keep increasing. oh well. not my problem, i suppose… i just hope someone wants to take those air conditioners off my hands!

dear chicago city clerk and everyone else in the known universe:

WHY DOES EVERYBODY ALWAYS SPELL MY NAME WRONG QUIT IT QUIT IT QUIT IT QUIT IT QUIT IT!!!!

IT’S NOT ‘DOWNWARD’!!!!! JESUS CHRIST!!!!! I EVEN SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU PEOPLE OVER THE PHONE!!! D O W N A R D!!!!!!! NO SECOND W!!!!!!!! QUIT PUTTING IT IN THERE!!!!!!!!

QUIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTTT!

I HATE YOU ALL WITH ALL THE HATE IN THE WORLD THAT COULD POSSIBLY DRIVE ME TO USE ALL CAPS AND MULTIPLE EXCLAMATION POINTS.

:(,
–sabrina

today at petsmart, to buy a new kitty litter box (what? how else do you celebrate moving into a new apartment than with a shiny new kitty litter box?), i fell for the impulse buy: the plug-in feline anxiety pheromone calmer-downer thingie. the *$35* plug in feline calmer downer thingie. kiyoshi has been so upset lately, he won’t leave me alone, and he keeps jumping up on boxes and howling at me. he comes in to the computer room while i’m working and wails miserably until he gets my attention, then he runs away and comes back five minutes later and starts again. i didn’t really want to spend $35 (plus tax!) on something i honestly didn’t figure would make a difference, but on the other hand, cat is driving me nuts lately.

i went to petsmart right after work and came home to clean some stuff up before the Apartment Weenies came to do a showing (5 hours notice! — which was enough to get an OK from me to show the place; however, the guy who tried to give me 30 minutes notice at 3PM went away disappointed and, i think, not entirely prepared to be rejected since when i said “i’d prefer not until after 6″ he was silent for a good ten seconds before he recovered), and plugged it in then before leaving. when i got home later after meeting d. for dinner, both cats were utterly chilled out. kiyoshi hasn’t been in the computer room *once* in 20 minutes to howl at me. he hasn’t bothered me. he’s hanging out lying on the living room floor. tiger’s napping with his chin on my foot.

THIS MAGIC KITTY PHEROMONE CALMER-DOWNER THINGIE IS THE BEST THINGIE EVER, OMG. that $35 (plus tax) was so worth it! i love you, magic kitty tranq!

courtesy of d.:

18

Created by OnePlusYou

Dear Apartment Leasing Agent Jerkfaces:

Okay, guys, for real this time, say it with me now: CALL FIRST. Seriously. I was even *home* this time. In pigtails, no doubt looking my absolute best in a dusty nerd t-shirt (“Distributing Clue to Lusers,” by O’Really), and carrying an armload of sheets that were about to get shoved in a box…said boxes all over the damn place and hardly any floor actually open to be walked on, and the apartment not exactly in prime condition to show. Because I was packing. Because I am moving. *Honestly*. Frigging CALL FIRST.

Grrrrrr.
–sabrina

Dear Jesse White, Illinois Secretary of State:

I am moving, so I just went to the SoS office to get a new driver’s license with my new address. OH MY GOD THESE ARE SO UGLY. Who did you have design these things, kindergarteners on LSD? This is so horrible it actually makes my photo look good in comparison. They might be really hard to forge now with all those technicolor wavy lines, but only because no one with a fake ID would be caught dead with something so tacky.

I should have just kept my old one and explained to people for the next 4 years that the address was out of date. Never ever ever ever ever EVER let the person who designed these things design so much as a doodle on a paper napkin, EVER AGAIN. I think I’m blind!

On the bright side, I feel compelled to note that the people at the 69 W Washington, Chicago “Express” office were, as usual, fast, cheerful, and competent, and five bucks is a wholly acceptable amount to pay for a replacement license, plus I like that I don’t have to sit for a whole new awful photo, you just reprint the old one, so the replacement process was quite painless, except for aesthetics.

Mr. Secretary, don’t hire the kindergarteners next time, no matter how bad the budget situation is. Please, I beg of you.

sincerely,
–sabrina