All posts by Mush

About Mush

I want to be a veterinarian because I love children.

Vegas Was Great, Thanks For Asking!

Travel, ,

In which I recap a very, very killer vacation.

Most of it’s already a blur. But here is the Flickr set, and below are the most important highlights:

Moar SlotzI played a lot of slots and drank a lot of booze.

The food was uniformly great.

Vegas looks pretty nasty during the day but is like a giant, endless Times Square at night. It’s fun, and gaudy, and weird, and I enjoyed the hell out of myself.

The shrine between Bally’s and Caesar’s Palace was beautiful and unexpected.

Teh BF is a completely easy-going travel companion, which bodes well in general.

On my birthday, my friend Adam – who booked me as part of the opening act of one of his very first shows ever, when he brought Richie Havens to Iowa about a decade ago – took me and his sister Mona, and our friend Jason, and KJ out for birthday dinner at Nove, a chichi restaurant at the top of the Palms. The food was incredible, the view was stunning, and the company was superb. I had so much fun I could have popped, but I didn’t get any pictures because it was so dark in there.

After the meal, we went downstairs to The Lounge and listened to my new favorite band, Santa Fe and the Fat City Horns. (You can hear ’em here.) Holy fuck, this band smokes. They’re like the new Tower Of Power. They’re all monster players – studio cats and seasoned players all – and they groove like you simply would not believe. This is the band I want to be in. I bought a CD and ripped it to my iPod when I got home last night. It’s been on the top of my playlist since and will probably stay there for months.

Although we never managed to make it over to Fremont street nor go bowling (we’d had the idea that bowling in Vegas would be hella fun), we did accomplish some sushi-eating on our last night in town. We stopped at Ah Sin and gorged on all-you-can-eat sushi. (Well, I gorged – I had six rolls. Teh BF had, like, four.)

I bought myself a new wallet. It was ten bucks. (I’m a big spender, I know, I know.)

When we got back to W2 yesterday evening it was thirty degrees colder than we’d been used to, so we stopped at the new Thai City restaurant and ordered yummy spicy food. I had the green curry and it was brilliant; Teh BF had pad thai and when I saw him on my lunch break was still raving about it. Thai City absolutely rocks.

In other, totally unrelated news: yummy cell phone pr0n! I totally want this, omgwtfbbq. Srsly.

Pre-vacation Geekfest

Travel, , ,

In which I’ll be in Vegas in twenty-four hours!

I’m certain I’m over-packing because it’s in the 70’s here. It’ll be in the 90’s in Vegas; of course we’ll probably spend a lot of time indoors and that’ll be air-conditioned, but I brought pants and long-sleeved shirts and in spite of the sun dresses I packed will probably end up buying a tank top somewhere anyway.

All of my shoes suck. I am so serious. I don’t own even a single pair of cute shoes. I might have to fix that in Vegas. Since I don’t really gamble I’ll need to blow my cash somehow. Wouldn’t want to come home with money, now would I?

Facebook fucking rules. Through it, I got Adam and Mona’s numbers – even texted with them both last night! – and Mr. Appel’s as well, and will hopefully be seeing some of the old Fairfield contingent during my stay there.

Monday is my 40th birthday. My life will be roughly half over, but I expect to be having an auspiciously hella good time when that little landmark is passed. (Teh BF says he bought me a present, but won’t tell me what it is and says I can’t have it ’til we get back.) I want to go out for sushi. Yum, sushi!

We’ll be packing my laptop along, so there will be updates on both our sites; hopefully the trip doesn’t finish loosening the panel ribbon from the motherboard and find me hauling around a useless bit of electronics. Even if the worst happens there’s Twitter and Flickr so you’ll know where I am.

I am so excited I could freakin’ pop, I tell you! Whoohoo! Vegas!

Fiscal Maturity

Finance

In which I do it all over. Again.

When I was 18, some ignorant asshat gave me a credit card with a $500 credit limit. (Or maybe it was $250. I can’t remember anymore. It wasn’t very much, but it was more than I could pay off at the time.) Twelve years later, I paid upwards of three grand to get that little account settled up, and at the same time cleared up the rest of my abysmal credit. I spent hours feeling awful, making embarrassing calls, feeling incredibly angry about the insane usury, and wishing desperately that all those asshats hadn’t given me credit at such a young age.

I paid off old bills that had bloated to incomprehensibility, paid off trivially small old debts, and even refinanced all of my student loans. A lot of work… just to get a small personal loan so that The Ex and I could make our down payment for the farm. Let us say that my credit was in fairly good shape when I bought acreage in Batavia and got married. Time passed…

The Ex didn’t work much during the last couple years of our marriage; from what I could tell it was half slow economy and half disinterest. Since I only worked part-time myself–he wanted a housewife, remember–our income was extraordinarily limited for a significantly long amount of time. (And then there was the whole let’s-go-sell-roofs-in-Indianapolis fiasco, but that’s only worth mentioning in the sense that we really didn’t pay our bills properly for an entire quarter. I didn’t borrow money for that endeavor, he did, so he gets to pay that shit off.)

The Ex had never been much involved with the bill paying during our years together, and really didn’t understand that we’d barely made our bills when we were both working full time nor that some bills weren’t being paid at all while he took his little sabbatical. I saw no point in nagging him about it; either there’s money or there isn’t: bitching doesn’t help.

Our mortgage, the property insurance, and the cell phone bills got paid. Other bills were paid sporadically or not at all. (The Ex paid for his big shiny late model truck and its insurance, of course, because that was important – it was in his name.) Everything else had to wait because we just didn’t have the money. Time passed…

By the time I left The Ex, I had three credit cards in collections, student loans nearly in default, a $1500 judgment against me, two cell phone contracts in collections, and a checking account with a lien against it. (I still can’t open a checking account because of that, actually.)

I was homeless, heartbroken, and had been laid off. I couldn’t even cash a fucking check by myself. So I ignored the whole debt situation and drank vodka for a year. Time passed…

When I landed on the left coast, I sought the assistance of one of those debt assistance programs. I’ve been dumping hundreds of dollars into the assistance program each month, and dutifully paying four different companies for my surgery (I almost have my surgery paid off, w00t!) and feeling pretty responsible. Time passed…

Then The Ex contacts me last week. We play phone tag for awhile, and then finally manage to speak one morning. He’s working somewhere outside of Iowa, and has a friend crashing at his farm house. (I say “his” farm house because I signed a quit-claim deed. I don’t want the damn property, and I couldn’t afford the property taxes on it anyway.) The friend says a deputy’s been trying to serve me papers out there for a couple of weeks.

Fuck. Fuckity-fuck-FUCK.

Yesterday I got my credit reports and printed them out and poured over them to find out who the hell could possibly be serving me papers. I was freaked that things were going to look really, really terrible.

The paper-servers are probably the fucktard monsters Capital One sold my accounts to, the ones who broke my checking account a couple years ago. (They’re aggressive and not overly concerned with being legal.) The debt in question is less than two grand, but doubtless they’ve already spent well over that in man hours alone, not to mention all the certified letters and visits from the sheriff. Ah, well – my debt reduction program people will deal with them.

The point is, I was expecting total insanity but in point of fact only have a few loose ends on my credit report: the things already in my program, The Ex’s satellite bill, The Ex’s cell phone bill (the one from Indy that he swore he’d take care of, no matter what), and some really old department store card I once used to buy Christmas presents with when we were broke.

I’ll pay off the old department store myself, and try to get The Ex to handle the other two. In less than two years, I should be free and clear again!

I just feel so responsible. You know, for a total fucktard.

Ranting about work!

Work

In which I go off.

First, this crazy woman called and left a message for support. I called her three times and her line was busy, so I moved on to the next ticket.

Meanwhile, one of our three techs was out today, so we were short staffed.

Then the woman called the sales queue… three more times. The first time she called, Kaje put notes in her open ticket, the next two times he told her to have patience.

Eventually her ticket was next and I called her.

The woman is batshit nuts. She freaked out that deleting emails from Outlook Express didn’t put them into her Recycle Bin, then she went on about how bad a time she’d had talking to Ro on the weekend (Ro put notes to the effect that the customer was abusive), then she wouldn’t shut the fuck up for me to tech her problem. I said, “Ma’am, please. Can we deal with your issues one at a time?” and she flat out said no.

After a bit I told her to stop, she refused, so I hung up on her. I don’t need to listen to a pissed off old lady yell at me; I don’t get paid enough for that!

Then the woman called back five more times and left teary, screaming, demanding voicemails. AND she sent four emails, in caps, demanding a call back.

Gah.

Then, the icing on the cake: the final customer I spoke with typed “at” instead of @ in his email address… and then made me explain to him, over the phone, step-by-painful-step, just exactly HOW to click in a field and edit its contents. (!!!) I nearly said, “Listen, dude, I’m Internet tech support. You need basic typing lessons.”

Sometimes clocking out and going home is such a relief, I’m tellin’ ya. Sheesh.

On a school night!

Blurbs

In which I couldn’t break one hundred to save my life.

Bowling
My bro worked for our uncle this week and scored some cash, so he invited me and Teh BF out for a drink after work last night. We went.

…and ended up bowling, via a short visit to the Crossroads (where the open mic was lame), and going to bed – drunk – at midnight. My bowling game totally sucked. I don’t think I even broke 80, let alone a bill.

Out ’til midnight! On a school night!

Work
My bro got hired by my employer. I will shortly be the only person in the office who works with both a partner and a relative.

At today’s company meeting, I got to do show & tell with my new Dalek. I passed out printouts of this, and drove my beloved R/C toy around and had it holler at my coworkers. It was freakin’ AWESOME.

Gigging
I’m pretty excited about the gig this weekend, though more for the vacation-like aspects than for the set itself.

Teh BF and I will be rolling out of here tomorrow sometime between noon and three, and driving about 4 hours to Morton, WA where we have a motel reservation. The venue is about 10 miles from the motel.

The gig’s only an hour, and it’s from 11pm-12am anyway, so we’ll see if we even have a crowd at that hour. Mostly I’m stoked to get out of town, sleep in a motel, eat brunch somewhere interesting.

Elsewise
Right now Teh BF’s momsie is in ER. He took her over there earlier because she was complaining of dizziness, chest pains, and shortness of breath. They may decide to keep her overnight, in which case Kaje may stay here this weekend and I may be going to and from the gig with the band. Which is alright, considering the reasons. I hope she’s okay.

I'm Too Damn Loud, People!

Work

In which having a strong voice is more of a bug than a feature.

Depending on how closely you read the ‘box, you may or may not be aware of the fact that I am now sitting in what is my fifth location at work. In only ten months! I started in the back room, got moved to the front room, moved again in the front room (because of the glare of the skylight on my monitor), then was moved back into the room I started in, and am now tucked comfortably in the back hall next to the inventory/modem room.

I like where I sit now, for two reasons. One, even though where I now sit is technically a hallway it seems kinda like a little office. Two, my boyfriend sits at the opposite end of the hall, so I can throw things at him. (I never do, but I could!)

My Desk at the end of the Hallway

Well, today I was sitting here minding my own business when my supervisor came over and screwed a divider to the wall right next to my desk, effectively putting me in a boomy little cul-de-sac. I hit mute on my phone and hissed, “Jeeze! What are you doing that for?!”

He shrugged. “Mom told me to do it. You talk too loud, apparently.”

I opened IM and texted Mom immediately. “I really dislike these dividers. They’re boomy. They’re made out of the wrong materials to dampen sound. Help!”

She explained that when management barges in on the new hire’s calls, I’m HELLA LOUD over her headset, and so they want to make me quieter. There was some mention of moving me back into the front room! Ack! I complained more over IM. My supervisor moved the divider about eight feet away.

I still can’t see Kaje, but at least I’m not locked up in a little box.

Watch me learn to whisper!

Giggin'

Blurbs

In which I go over the weekend’s activities.

Saturday I gigged with the boys from 1:30 to 5:00. It was warmer outside than I expected, and there was no band shell so I got a sunburn on my back. Ouch. While I stood there in the hot sun I got to watch drunk people party in the pool about 4 feet in front of me.

View from my mic

After the gig I was so hot – plus it was just right there – that I jumped into the pool fully dressed.

After the gig three of the band members went out for Mexican food. I invited Teh BF and my bro, and Rocket had Syl with him, so it was a nice group and we had fun. I was sunburnt and tired and made Kaje take me back to his place, where I crashed.

Sunday Kaje and I walked the dog, had coffee, BBQed, watched three episodes of season two of Doctor Who, and ate fudgesicles.

Now it’s Monday and my Dahlek is here and I am TERRORIZING MY OFFICE WITH IT! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!

In other news, I’m playing the Rainier Jazz Blues Wine & Brews festival this weekend, and will be staying here.

The New EP is In The Can!

Music, ,

In which I went to the studio last night.

Barefoot has decided that there needs to be a Mush Morgan EP to sell alongside Coyote Kings CDs at blues festivals. To that end, he’s organized the boys and recorded some tracks, and last night I went over to the studio to do some vocals.

I got three charts recorded in three hours. (That sounds like a long time but it’s pretty good, actually, to get a good take in an hour per song.) None of the performances were brilliant, exactly, but I’m sure they’ll do.

All three tracks were originals he wrote. Add the two covers we’ve already done, and presto! A five-song EP! I’m pretty excited to see how they sell at the Rainier Blues Festival, actually.