In which I go off an an industry giant, maker of Norton Anti-virus and other crap.

An open letter from an ISP tech:

Dear Norton,

I hate your website.

I hate that your instructions for disabling your stupid firewalls hardly ever match the actual products out in the field.

I hate that you don’t have a fucking telephone number for your customers to call when they can’t connect to the Internet due to problems with your products.

I hate how your products block Internet connectivity when your stupid preinstalled-on-every-Windows-box trial versions expire.

I hate that more often than not, people who can connect but not surf are being blocked by their very own paid-for Norton products!

And most of all, I hate that I have to support your stupid shit because you won’t.

Argh.

Sincerely,
Mush
ISP Support Technician

Caveat: I realize that the Internet is a dangerous place and that your typical luser really does need a highly aggressive security package installed. I get all that. What pisses me off is that your customers have to be connected to the Internet in order to go to your web site and request a $9.95 call back for support but your products keep them from being able to connect.

In which my work schedule’s been changed back to M-F, so K and I only get one day off together.

I just lounged around at the house on Saturday and didn’t accomplish much of value except sweep the patio for Gramma. I played the Sapolil tasting room Saturday night with half of the band. It was fun. K bought us a bottle of the ’05 Syrah and WE DRANK IT. Yum.

Yesterday morning I woke up craving a bloody mary. K doesn’t like bloody marys and wasn’t exactly on board with the concept, but eventually he agreed to drive me somewhere in search of one. We hit the liquor store and then Loney’s for vodka, cranberry juice, bloody mary mix, celery, garlic stuffed olives, bleu cheese, spring onions…

Back at K’s we made drinks, then lounged in the shed for awhile.

We made lunch. After food and two rounds we decided we needed to go do something before we ended up wasting our day off together napping, and K made noises about hitting some little driving range or putting green or something golf-y, so we hopped in the car…

…and blew right past the golf place and ended up in the Blue mountains. We found a little place at the top of Mill Creek in the Umatilla Nat’l Forest (a little place that wasn’t bristling with KEEP OUT or PRIVATE PROPERTY signs), and we sat on rocks next to an ice-cold creek in the sun and meditated and looked at nature and breathed the pristine air for an hour. It was utterly perfect and gorgeous and restful and invigorating.

I love being back in this part of the country. Nature in the summer is supposed to be like this: clean and sweet, not muggy and infested with billions of insects.

On the drive back down, we listened to my (current) favorite album, Shri Durga, and felt all Sunday-mellow. (There’s something deeply surreal about listening to Eastern trance-remixes with sitars and ragas and shit while looking out the Buick’s window while Walla Walla rolls by.)

We hit the store again and dropped by my place. We watched the last hour and a half of the US Open with my Gramma, then snagged the blue dog and went back to K’s.

We made dinner together – chowder and insanity bread – and ate outside in the perfect weather. Later we walked through the aviary over at Pioneer Park and looked at ducks.

It was a mellow evening. We went to bed at a decent hour, I heard K’s Bloomsday Run story, was well and thoroughly ravished, and slept like a rock. This morning K got up, made coffee, packed me a lunch, put out fresh towels, and then came and woke me up. He made me breakfast and drove me to work.

I am so totally spoiled. It’s awesome.

In other news, my laptop won’t boot up because it’s not getting power and now I have a bunch of testing to do, and my dog had a seizure-like episode last night that scared the living shit out of me.

In which I’ve returned home! Yay!

The remainder of the Seattle trip was great. I saw an old girlfriend from high school. I stayed up all night for Devi Bhava. I mat an awesome British chick and had breakfast with her and we shared a cab to the airport.

I slept on the plane for a bit, then woke up in time for airline coffee. The flight was half empty so I got a whole seat to myself.

I was picked up at the airport by a so-excited-to-see-me-he-was-practically-vibrating K. He drove me home and went to work. I unpacked my suitcase and then CRASHED OUT HARD.

Got up, showered, dressed, and promptly got whisked away by K when he got off work. We dorked out and talked and fooled around and cuddled all night. It was awesome.

I so missed him.

I had yesterday off. (They scheduled me an extra vacation day for no apparent reason.) I took two naps, had K over for lunch. Last night we went out to Kelly’s and had cocktails and fried food, then went back to the basement and talked and dorked out and… well, yeah. Lots of that. YUM. *waggles eyebrows*

Today I’m back at work. There were only 41 open tickets when I got here, so it must have been fairly slow in my absence. (I get worried when it’s slow at work. I hope I don’t get, like, laid off or something.)

Amma was great. Work is great. I have gigs every weekend all month. Other than the fact that my G’ma thinks I’m a total trollop, my life is great. Yay!

In which there are totally pictures about the whole thing.

Saturday morning after K dropped me off at home I took a 4-hour nap. He had to roll in to work and I felt a little bad about that, but I just haven’t been getting my usual 8 or 9 hours a night since I started hanging out with him and I had to be on my game for the Dayton gig.

Curtis & Syl came and picked me up around five and the three of us drove to Dayton. After burgers and a few drinks at the bar, we suited up and proceeded to make the music from nine to one. (Pics from the gig are here.^*) The gig was fun, but whoa, Nelly! was it ever redneck! I nearly got brained by a couple who were dancing where my mic stand was supposed to be, I picked three cowboy hats up off the floor and handed them back to their owners, and overheard a completely earnest conversation about spurs. And if that weren’t bad enough the band, to keep the drunks on the dance floor, broke into In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, which scarred me for LIFE. I mean, it’s not like I haven’t done Shotgun Wedding eleventy-hundred times in my career, but In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida?!?

Looking forward to those festival gigs.

Sunday we had a bona fide full band rehearsal for the first time in months. RB recorded it and burned us all practice CDs, so we’ve even got material to work from. Since I still haven’t installed the big hard drive in my laptop, I’ll have to figure out how to get the thing onto my iPod without utterly aggravating myself so I can listen to it during downtime this weekend.

Thursday I’m flying to Seattle for my annual (and much needed) Amma-time. Next Tuesday I expect will be a little surreal for me; I’ll stay up all night for Devi Bhava, get myself from Puyallup back to the airport by nine thirty, and be home by eleven. (K: “Can I pick you up from the airport?”
Me: “On Tuesday?”
K: “Yeah.”
Me: “But you’ll be at work.”
K: “I don’t care.”
Me: “You want to take time off work to pick me up at the airport?”
K: “Yeah. Whatever. Pleeeeeeease?” OMG teh cutez.) Once home I’ll probably drag myself up the stairs, unwind my sari, curl up with my blue dog and sleep all day.

Later today, I’ll be going to the cemetery with my grandmother to do the Memorial Day duties. Later, after doing the wiring at my cousin’s, I think we’re BBQing at his place. The area’s having severe weather warnings, but right now it’s a perfectly gorgeous day.

[^* I may have created a monster. In the past three weeks, K’s gone from being a normal human being to having a domain name website he won’t shut up about and carrying a super sweet tricked out cell phone he uses to Twitter and Flickr from. (Sound like anyone else you know? I swear, I’m dating the male version of myself.) (I’ve always suspected I was conceited, but I may have outdone myself this time. Promise you’ll kill me if I threaten to take up golf, though. Pinky swear!)]

In which the dork-o-thon continues, in all its kick-ass glory.

We have this habit of parking on this particular overlook out on a gravel road somewhere and having Deep Conversations. Like, ass-kickingly, blown, insane, emotional, silly, soul-baringly deep Deep Conversations.

I’ve got it so bad, bitches.

Yesterday I spoke with three stone-cold argumentative bitches in a row and got a little aggro, so I talked K into taking me to Oregon after work so we could drink and smoke and eat fried foods all at the same time. Someone won at Keno and bought us a final round we really didn’t need on a school night, but eventually we got out of there and went and parked in what has become our freak-out spot.

Once there we proceeded to do what we do, which is talk at an incredibly rapid and efficient pace about ourselves and each other and past damage and definitions of what health might be, all the while cuddling and crying and laughing and yelling and whispering and carrying on, and even occasionally peeing next to the car in the dark.

I’ve got it so bad, bitches.

I was in bed by half past midnight. I slept like a rock. This morning I didn’t get out of bed until twenty-two past, but somehow managed to shower and dress and walk to work with two minutes to spare.

Right now I’m eating nuked Michelina’s fettuccini alfredo at my desk, listening to K miraculously keep his cool in the 112th minute of the WORLD’S LONGEST DIAL-UP SETUP CALL, EVAR. (The poor fucker. I never-ever-never want to support whoever it is that he’s talking to, because not only should setup even with neophytes always take fewer than ten minutes, but because only morons think they’re gonna start a new career in day trading over a fucking dial-up connection!!!) Hopefully my phone will start ringing soon, because once I’m done eating I’ll have nothing to do if it doesn’t.