Our Mr. B has been having some health issues lately. He regurgitates saliva and hasn’t been eating. We took him to the vet and they said it could be a number of different things. They ruled out parasites by extracting a fecal sample (fun job). His blood work didn’t indicate anything serious, but a slightly elevated protein could indicate some sort of infection. They gave him a shot to combat nausea in hopes of getting him to eat again and they told us to try giving him Pepcid AC to calm his stomach acids. Since then he’s been eating chicken and treats, so that’s a good sign. We’re going to monitor him over the weekend and if he goes back to regurgitating and not eating we’ll have to take him to get a chest x-ray. Why don’t they have doggy health insurance? Why isn’t Obama making that happen? How many dogs are uninsured right now? Millions.

On a side note, I decided to say “phucket” and do something I know I will regret and kind of already do. You know what I mean.

Here’s a small list of things I have observed recently while going to school:

• Abandoned car keys near some stairs.
• Abandoned cell phone on a bench.
• Guy on bicycle almost eats it when his front tire dips into the rails in the ground for a trolley. His rear tire flew up into the air behind him. He held it together, though, and I didn’t have to perform CPR.
• Bicycle goes flying by and seconds later I here a snap. I look over and see the guy still pedaling and his chain flapping behind him. Then he looks down and back and tries to figure out what’s going on as his bike is slowing down while he’s pedaling faster.
• At work, all my co-workers communicate on this program called Breeze. It has a whiteboard and someone drew a smiley face vampire. Then someone said a three-year-old could draw better “then” that. I wanted to correct it, but I didn’t. After 30 minutes, someone corrected it, then someone else sarcastically wrote that a three-year-old would be able to discern between the homophones of “then” and “than.” Then I replied that they aren’t homophones. Then someone else replied that they are pronounced the same way if you are AMERICAN. I was pwn3d.
• On my way to school this morning, I drove through a flooded street. As I got closer to campus, I saw a geyser shooting straight up. The construction crew working on a new dorm building apparently broke a water line to create Old Faithful.

Just finished watching Transformers 2. Just finished napping. What a garbage heap. Not that I was expecting it to be any better than rotting feces. Still, I can’t help but wonder why they let Michael Bay make such long and bloated pieces of cinema. What made it even better was when I went on Netflix to rate it 1 star, I found that it had an average rating of 4 stars! And many of the reviews on the main page were 5 stars talking about how great it was. One guy gave it 5 stars and at the same time said that it was too long.

There was one good moment, though, when John Turturro’s character is climbing up the side of the pyramid and looks up to see two giant wrecking balls and says into the walkie talkie, “I’m directly below the enemy’s scrotum.” Pure gold.

The Situation: I purchased an album from my favorite Canadian artist through iTunes. Two of the ten songs had quality issues (background clicking/skipping sounds). I reported the issue, and they gave me store credit for the two songs. I read on the musician’s website about other people having similar issues.

The Problem: I don’t want $1.98, I want music files that work. I wanted them to send me a link to download the corrected files. Or give me a time frame for when they would correct the issue and I would be able to get the new tracks free of charge. Instead they said they will investigate the issue and that they don’t even know if it will be resolved.

The Solution: I downloaded the pirated version that someone encoded to MP3 from the CD they purchased. No skipping/clicking sounds or anomalies. It’s amazing that some dude in his parent’s basement can make an error free digital compressed audio copy of a music album, but a giant company such as Apple can’t.

Final Thoughts: I’m done with paying for music through iTunes. I don’t do it very often, but I’m definitely not going to do it any more. I might experiment with other ways of paying the artists for their hard work. But I’m not going to pay for an inferior product and then be told they can’t do anything about it. If I download a pirated album and the quality sucks, well, I can understand that it’s coming from amateurs. And sure, Apple can say that the source is corrupted and it’s not their fault, but that’s a garbage excuse. They should have quality control and if it sounds like crap, don’t sell it. Wait until the music label can get you a source copy that isn’t messed up.

Tonight was my second-to-last night. Thursday is when it’s all finally over. I, literally, can’t wait. I will go, work 4 hours, pack up my shit, say my goodbyes, and be gone. I have to say that I’ve enjoyed working there. It’s taught me a lot about working on cars and more than anything, it has shown me the kind of job I don’t want. It’s also lit a nice little candle under me bum to do the right thing and search for a good job. In past years, and past lives, I’ve seen the job I don’t want while I’m working there and ran away from it. This time, I didn’t have the option of running. I had to be a clever girl and face the music that I would either find something better or be stuck there. Nothing is a better motivator than being faced with perpetual hell. And there were many times when I wanted to leave without finding another job, but I didn’t. I waited, and waited some more until it seemed like no one would call me anymore. Then they called.

Today, before my soon-to-be-former boss left for the day, he asked me to go online and do my Reaffirmation of Commitment. It’s this thing that every employee is supposed to do twice a year, which basically says that I will do my best to be a good little customer service drone. You might be asking yourself: why would he want someone to do this when that person only has one day left with the company? I told him I would, but then I went to do it and I just couldn’t. As a man of principle, I don’t want to reaffirm anything with that piece of shit company. I’m done signing things and reaffirming things. I’m done, dammit! No more. The only commitment I’m going to reaffirm is that I don’t work there after Thursday.