Things that piss me off - When a parent calls me and wants me to do something that we don't do, I politely explain, give them another option, let them annoy the living shit out of me, and then they call the President's office and say that "they weren't making any headway with [Vortex]" You know, just because we won't give you what you want isn't a reason to claim that I'm not being helpful.

Doesn't that bug, Vortex?

An assistant manager at the bookstore has a new lip piercing, and she was telling me on Saturday how she's finding it fascinating how customers treat her differently. She's a tall, leggy blonde in her early 40s, very traditional looking until now, and she's always found it annoying how customers (specifically, male customers) think they can push her around to get the discount/refund that they want even if it violates store policy. Well, now she's got a ring in her lip, she doesn't get lip (heh) from the problem customers.

Also, she's not getting harrassed by some of the ogling guys either (one was outright disappointed she "ruined her face like that"), but some of the freakier (as in, slimy and disgusting) guys like to glom on to her now and tell her their life stories.

but some of the freakier (as in, slimy and disgusting) guys like to glom on to her now and tell her their life stories.

On the food thing, it is like any issue. You need someone over the top to win reasonable solutions, because otherwise the reasonable solutions are considered the extreme ones.

When it comes to titling the new blog, I got nothing. Well, one bad idea I'll share in case it sparks a good one for somone: "better than wonderbread".

is that a good trade off?

No, she said that was the one big downside to the piercing. Well, that and the time she thought she'd lost the ball that was originally in her lip right after she had the piercing done and spent 30 minutes tearing her apartment apart, only to find it in her half-eaten spaghetti.

Above anything, it's the way of life that bothers me -- the "fast food" mindset. It never struck me until we had kids, but there's no consideration for dinnertime anymore, or family time. In my experience, too many school events and baseball games, etc., are right around 6 o'clock. Bussing means a lot of kids don't go to neighborhood schools anymore, and are on the bus incredibly early and getting home late in the afternoon -- which not only cuts into the relax and play time I think kids need after school, but also means they're shipped right off to swim practice or gymnastics or whatever as soon as they get home.

I don't want to live in the '50s, exactly, but I would like the pace of modern society to slow the fuck down. One of the reasons I quit working in NYC when we lived in Bucks County was because I was getting on a train at 6:50 a.m. and getting home roughly 12 hours later, meaning I got to kiss the kids before I left and spend maybe an hour and a half with them before bed. I was exhausted all the time, and I can tell you this, if *I'd* had to make dinner, it would have been takeout pizza or mac-n-cheese 95% of the time.

Elsie just died. I'm not quite sure how we get from here to the next 20 books, but she was so upset about being sent to the convent school that she feel into a fever, and has been hallucinating for the past 20 pages or so, while her father prays that Jesus might take mercy on a sinner like him and bring his daughter back, but the doctor just declared her dead.

She'd had her aunt write up her will. In addition to things like which of her cousins got which of her dolls and books, she also said that she wanted her father to send a missionary to the heathens each year.

Hmm. Retcon in the next book?

Oh. In what has to be at least 20 minutes or so after the doctor said she was dead, she started blinking, and then opened her eyes and asked for water.

I know that nineteenth-century medicine wasn't all that advanced compared to what we have now, but surely they could tell the difference between alive and dead?

You have got to be kidding me. Elsie has amnesia. She's forgotten everything since just before her father first arrived home a year and a half ago.

Her father, by the way, has now pledged his life to serve God, because Elsie's illness has made him see the wickedness of his ways.