Far West of Outremer

You know how, when you read a really, really amazing “up until three in the morning, can’t stop thinking about it book,” you make that “good book noise” happy sigh as you’re thinking about it and waiting until you can read it again?

There is some kind of rage-y counterpart to that where you are up until three in the morning grinding your teeth, and can’t stop thinking about the book for ENTIRELY the wrong, rage-y reasons.

And then you go complain about it on the Internet, because, you know, why not share the rage? :-)

The sad thing is that the rage-inducing work of literature in question isn’t even an entire book-- I am getting this Hulk-smash-set-things-on-fire level of arrrggh based solely on an excerpt of the prologue and maaaaybe the entire first chapter. That is the level of special we are talking about here.

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This day, I cannot even tell you.

It was my first day back to work after a couple of days out due to one of the horrible creeping-crud-unidentified viruses going around. So, you know, a fair amount of "ack, halp, reschedule!" all over the place.

I was, however, VERY proud of myself, because I got up early and managed to get a nice smoky bean and beef chili into the slow cooker (chipotle peppers, mmmm....) before heading out to catch the bus.

.... of course, when I finally made it home, Intrepid Roommates informed me that I had neglected to plug in said slow cooker.

She had turned it up on high once she got home, but we were both a leeeeeeeettle bit uneasy....

Me: I'm .... just gonna call my mother. Hi, Mom? Is this the Virginia Cooking Hotline, food safety division? Uh-huh. Well, see... uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay, then?
d_ragondaughter: What's the verdict.
Me: We've basically ended up with the Death Stew of Deadly Death in there.

Did I mention the part where the traffic was completely nightmarish due to an 18-wheeler running into a highway sign, thereby shutting down one of the main commuting highways for ALL of rush hour? Took her two hours to drive what normally takes 20 minutes; the bus ride was insane (not even counting the bit where I caught a bus that then proceeded to sit there for fifteen minutes due to...scheduling, I guess? I don't even know).

Considering that her day started out by falling down the stairs, I'm thinking this day overall is just fired. Possibly out of a canon.

Good grief

Well, we are now on site, for the Grand Apartment Hunting Excursion (or at least Part One, because, seriously, THERE MAY HAVE TO BE MORE OF THIS... because, you know, we have SO MUCH TIME FOR THAT).

Everybody, keep us in your thoughts as we slog through this nonsense.

So far, we have had: traffic (not unexpected), a real estate agent who...um.... seems to either have legitimately hit her limit or be trying to foist us off on somebody else (can I just say how unimpressed this Remax office has me at the moment? Seriously? I mean, huge database and large number of agents or not, when the conversation starts with, "I filled out your 'for an immediate response, send us an e-mail' form with everything about our rental situation" and the nice office lady's response is, "Huh... I don't actually know who those e-mails go to...'.... it probably would have been wiser to run). The thing is, I suspect that we got routed to her because she was the person who just happened to be in the office at the time, not because she actually knew anything about what we wanted. She's shown no initiative in terms of hunting down new listings based on our criteria. I understand that we are complicated renters, due to the multiple pet situation, but I think it's perfectly legitimate to get annoyed when she suddenly decides that she might need to refer us to a rental specialist right at the point when we are heading down for our sole weekend of looking at properties (and considering how fast they seem to be getting rented, I don't necessarily think more lead time would have helped... although now I'm stressing about whether trying to talk to realtors a week earlier would have been useful, argh).

AND to top it all off, I am down writing this in the business center of the hotel which we picked due to free internet. Free internet which is conspicuously not working in our room. Our SECOND room where the internet was not working (although at least the phone is not completely dead in this one?). In what is supposed to be a 3-star hotel-- that is, NOT a bargain-basement hotel. Grrrr. Nice air-conditioned business center is nice and all, but not the same as what was advertised.

Right. Ending rant now and heading upstairs to get some sleep.