Sharks With Frickin' Laser Beams...

People often say to me, "you remind of someone I can't place". Or "you look familiar, but I can't place who you look like". OK. I got it. Average. Not a problem!

So, I did the celebrity look-a-like thing online and I must say....seriously, I've seen a mirror and I do not look ANYTHING like most of the celebs they paired my photo with. Or the dude! (OK, maybe the dude and I have sort of the same smile...) Check it out and have a good laugh! I mean, really. This website needs LASIK or something. I am average. These ladies are well above! I am still chuckling! Makes the whole computer crashing/landscape snafu of earlier today just a blip in the past.



Thanks to Anonymous Coworker's blog for giving me the idea and strangely cheering me up!

Posted by Luck o' the Irish at 31.10.06 | Permalink | Comments

UPDATE! Tuesday also sucked. Apparently, the automatic updates for the laptop sent my apparently semi-bad hard drive over the edge to ALL bad. It's corrupt. Which means new laptop #3 (#2 was a mandated replacement by the company) tomorrow and once again trying to remember all my friggin' bookmarks. And, in the name of cracksmoking home improvement people, the landscapers finished my front yard today, and for some reason decided that yanking a bunch of shrubs out of my backyard (which was NOT the job I hired them to do) was totally necessary. WTF? I am allergic to some of the shrubs in the back, but I did not tell them to go ahead and ruin the landscaping work I'd done in the back and rip them out. I just learn not to brush up against them. Dumbasses. Don't think I haven't already left thema message. No payment until they replace the mess in the back. For free.

Due to basement remodel stuff, I have to work from home today. So, I log in and apparently, my laptop has some automatic updates. And it asks me to restart. Which I did. And somehow, by the magic of someone who must hate me today, my laptop has blown up. It's says that some file is missing or corrupt and they can't fix it until I get to the office, which won't be today. Bummer. I am totally working via blackberry and cell phone....two things I hate!

Let's hope Tuesday is a little better!

Posted by Luck o' the Irish at 30.10.06 | Permalink | Comments

I have now seen what is possibly the worst job EVER to have. Deer parts scraper. On my way to work this morning, there was a big slowdown on the highway. A deer had been hit. Poor deer. Sadly, it had also been obliterated all over the highway. I get to the office and realize that because of some golf tourney today for the company or the department or whatever, no one is at the office. Well, not no one. But very few people. Me and the soup shuffler. So, a few hours later, I decided to leave and work from home. On the way home, on the other side of the highway, I see the deer part scrapers. These poor guys from some road maintenance department have to shovel the ick from the highway and try not to get hit by cars (the bulk of the ick was on the lane dividers). I hope they get paid well!

Needless to say, breakfast was a no-go for me. And lunch isn't looking all too good either.

Posted by Luck o' the Irish at 23.10.06 | Permalink | Comments

To explain me. Or at least things either my friends and/or I think are kinda weird about me. Well, not kinda. Just weird.

- I don't watch much TV. Not the primetime stuff anyway. I generally turn the TV off at 8pm and I have never seen Dr. McNugget/McFlurry, don't watch any of the CSIs, law shows, or fictional medical shows. Or any reality TV like Dancing/Singing/Baking/Knitting/Typing/Spitting/Jogging with the Stars. I mainly watch A&E, Bravo, HGTV, TLC, Style, Discovery, Discovery Health, CNN, MSNBC, History, etc.
- And the weather channel. I have GOT to know about the weather. It's a thing. Back in the days when I lived in NC and could let my dogs out while I was out work, I HAD to know the weather to decide if I was gonna leave them out or in. Now, I just need to know. I am, as one friend calls it, the Weather Ho.
- I don't watch movies. Not in the theater, anyway. I've never seen Titanic, Dances With Wolves, the newer Star Wars, Harry Potter or any of those movies that EVERYONE has seen. If it's not on HBO or one of the other channels I get, I'll probably never see it. And even when they are on TV, I'll probably never see it. I own 3 DVDs. Renting or buying DVDs is out of the question. I just am not motivated to do so and then sit down and actually watch them.
- I do, however, like movies that are historical pieces. Vanity Fair, The Girl With the Pearl Earring, Valmont, that type of stuff. Not sure why. Goes against my usual comedies.
- I've never liked cartoons. When I was little, the "old time-y" cartoons would give me nightmares. My sister doesn't like cartoons either. We never knew any of the old nursery rhymes in our youth, either...except that mockingbird song, which I HATE. And don't even get me started on claymation. Anyway, I'm now proud to say I've seen several animated films, and I liked them. Shark Tale is my favorite so far.
- I'm not a cell phone person. I have one and it's new and cute and all that, but I rarely hear it. I don't ever have it "on" me. And mostly not ever near me. It's usually buried in my purse somewhere and once in a while, I check it to see if there are any voice mails. I use it to call people long distance and that's about it. And Cingular, lovely company that they are, has issues with my street. So I drop a lot of calls. Or, that's what I tell my friends. HAHA.
- I'm also not a text message person, or an IM person with all the jargon that is used. Don't text me, it costs me money on my phone bill. Just pick up the phone and call me. I like IM, but I'm definitely not up to speed on all the abbreviations and jargon. otherwise, i'd type lk ths w/no capitals or periods and say things like how r u and c u l8r. I have a Blackberry for work, but even then, I need to type "regular".
- Punctuation. Bad punctuation drives me nuts. Especially at work. My old boss used no punctuation in e-mails, but instead would do a hard return after every sentence, and then end the sentences with two dashes. It looked like friggin' morse code. --.-..-...---.-.--.
- I make my bed every day. Every. Single. Day. Old habit from my youth. My mom was pretty militant about that, and it made sense. We had cats and dogs and no one wanted them to jump on the bed and get their grime and stink and general pet ick all over the sheets. So, we made the bed and the dogs and cats were allowed on the bedspreads. But not the sheets. Never the sheets.
- Watches. Wristwatches. I love 'em. I have one in nearly every color. I especially like the lime green one from Italy that was only 7 or 8 euros. Most of mine are inexpensive, because they are purely for fun. I'm on the hunt for orange and yellow watches (although I have to say, I don't have a lot of orange and yellow in my wardrobe that would REQUIRE a complementary watch. But hey, I gotta round out the color wheel).

Well, I'm all tapped out now, but I'm sure my buds will remind me of some topics I missed.

My name is Luck O' the Irish, and I'm weird. There, I said it. I'm off to watch the weather channel now, probably whilst I make the bed, read some badly punctuated e-mails, check my cell phone and respond to people via text jargon on my Blackberry. C U L8R!!!

Posted by Luck o' the Irish at 18.10.06 | Permalink | Comments

So, my sister went skydiving this weekend...

OK, that's not really relevant to this post, but just wanted to denote that she is CRAZY.

No, what I'm talking about is something good. Not a rant! A good thing. And that is the stock market. I loves me some Dow Jones Industrial Average. I am trying to rollover an old 401K into an existing IRA account and had called Friday to get the info on what to do. And just between Friday and today, when I called them back to close the account, it had gone up about $50. Woo-hoo! OK, I know, not massive amounts of excitement for the rest of y'all, but I'm all for making $50 with no effort!

I'm off to do the Up, Up, Up and Away dance...maybe one day I can actually retire and not have to work when I'm 70.

Posted by Luck o' the Irish at 16.10.06 | Permalink | Comments

****I'm so worked up about the following subject, that I said "recrap" instead of "recap" in one of my meetings today! ****

So, our HR dept held some meetings at my office yesterday to review the new medical "benefits". I didn't go to the first meeting of the morning because, well, it was the first meeting of the morning and I had just gotten into work. Apparently, it got a little out of hand. The HR people kept trying to sell the plan as "maintaining an active, healthy lifestyle" and "preventative medicine". Yeah, right. First of all, we are not a senior center and second of all, trying to "sell" the plan isn't gonna work since we have only one choice for a crappy HMO and then we can "choose" plus or basic, both of which suck major ass to the tune of a 27 times higher deductible. Anyway, in the first meeting, they only got through two slides. Chaos!

I went to the second meeting, which was slightly calmer, but found out that if we go in for a "wellness visit", such as a physical, which are 100% covered, and then the doctor finds something, THEN you will be charged for the visit and have to pay as part of your deductible. WTF??? So, basically, this is not health insurance, so much as catastrophe insurance. Unless you are 100% healthy all of the time, all you have to do is pay higher contributions from your paychecks. SCORE! Ugh. Or, we'll all benefit if we get in some horrible accident or fall severely ill the first quarter of 2007, meet our deductible and also the out of pocket maximum right away and THEN we'll be covered 100% for the rest of the year and can get all the brand name, expensive medication we want. Woo-hoo!

I'm off to plot my day for January 1, 2007. Maybe I'll go play on the double yellow line, so I can get the "benefit" of this new insurance.

Posted by Luck o' the Irish at 10.10.06 | Permalink | Comments

OK, so I'm semi-over the cereal thing, although I did try another type of cereal that I did not like, so now I'm out of cereal completely and need to just go back to the kind of cereal I DO like. And, as of this morning, I'm out of bread. Hmmm...maybe I should hit the grocery store later.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there.

My real beef at the moment is health insurance. My workplace announced yesterday that we are changing our plan for 2007. OK, no problem...we probably just have another provider with similar choices and maybe our insurance deductions from our paychecks go up a bit. I can deal with that.

Nope. Instead, they changed plans to something so asinine that my deductible went up TWENTY SEVEN FOLD . Yes, 27. 2-7. AND, they want me to pay more for that out of my paycheck. Can I get a WTF? Supposedly the new plan "combines affordable employee contributions with higher deductibles". No shit, Sherlock. "Affordable contributions" means you pay twice what we had been paying. And we get two options. HMO Basic or Plus. Now, I've always had HMO...as a single person who rarely goes to the doc, it was just fine for me. I don't think HMOs are all bad...at least not the ones I've had. I go, I pay the co-pay, and that's pretty much it.

But now, I have a medical issue and some of the tests I've gone through have cost upwards of $3000+. For one test. I'll be damned if I have to pay most of that for my next test in about 6 months and THAT is how I meet my deductible. Because I just have thousands of dollars lying around for ridiculous medical deductibles. And the cap before they start paying 100% of costs is twice my new deductible.

So, now I go off into the world of trying to get individual health insurance, which might cost a bit more per month, but has no deductible and no co-insurance. Yes, please. Sign me the hell up.

Posted by Luck o' the Irish at 6.10.06 | Permalink | Comments