My daughter moved to Florida over the weekend.  She has a new boyfriend, and loves his daughter too, and is very happy there.  So this morning I had to take her FIOS digital tv box back to Verizon to avoid the $5 a month charge.  Easier said than done, since I thought I could find the place by its address alone, and didn't think I needed to Mapquest it.  Hah - foolish me.

Spent my lunch hour searching for the Verizon place.  Learned that on this particular street the numbers are pretty haphazard, and it is no simple trick to find number 241.  Ended up parking by a bank, walking around the neighborhood, and luckily somebody on the street pointed the Verizon FIOS place out to me.  It took my full lunch hour to get that little chore done.  Glad I decided to do it at lunch time instead of on my way home.

Because on my way home, I had to bring my car into the mechanic to replace the tire I totally destroyed and converted into a rag over the weekend.  You never saw such an exploded, damaged, wrecked tire in your life.  I noticed the flat tire when I was in my own neighborhood, not far from my house.  I was unable to get the jack out of the car.  It was wedged into a corner of the trunk and wouldn't budge.  Rather than wait by Walgreen's for two hours for AAA to come, I drove my flat tire home.  It was like driving a washing machine, for all the noise and bumps.  Fortunately I didn't damage the rim.  The AAA guy couldn't get my jack out either.  Fat lot of good that jack is, unavailable.  It's part of the car now.  It lives there and will not be disturbed, thank you.  Good design, Toyota.

My trusty mechanic buzzed around all the tires and said I better get four new ones because they were all about to do the same thing.  He pointed out certain ridges on them, certain tiny cracks.  I didn't see what he was talking about.  Looked like tires to me.  Okay, get me four new tires, I'm just made of money.  Get me a big 2 gallon jar of black caviar too.  The industrial size.

Did you know that if you are a Verizon FIOS customer and you want to return one of the digital boxes you have, you can't just bring it in.  If you do, they'll reject it and send you home.  You need to call, get an id number, and have them ready for you when you get there.  It's not like Comcast cable, where they are so used to people bringing back their defective shitty Comcast cable boxes that you just show up, give in the old, and pick up a new shitty Comcast cable box.

I started off the work day attending to these matters, talking to Verizon on the phone, talking to my mechanic.  Then I got into a conversation with Sharon, but for the life of me I don't remember what it was about.  Something about her kid and his shoes.

Then I made the huge mistake of politely asking Marilyn if all her October 15th deadlines were met, and she answered that three weren't, and that those three cases should have been my responsibility.  Huh?  What?  She blew three deadlines and she's blaming me?  If they should have been my responsibility, it would have been nice if you had told me that three months ago, when I could have added them to my worklist and gotten to them.  Anyway, I'm sure they shouldn't have been added to my workload.  I was just surprised that I was opening a polite conversation and ended up getting attacked for it.  And I wouldn't put it past her to just make all that stuff up.  Maybe she met all her deadlines and just wanted to make that up because she thought it was funny.

Her idea of funny, a week ago, was to tell me that a file had been lost, and that she was going to lie to the boss and say that it was located in My office, that I was at fault for the missing file, even though I had nothing to do with it.  She thought it was funny to just blindside some innocent person like that.  Hahaha.  Didn't I think that would be funny?  I said that would be as funny as a Will Ferrell skit or movie.

And yet, although Marilyn has a major rivalry thing with me which I don't feel about her, she is the most helpful person in the office to me and the most interesting to talk to.  That's odd, no?  If I need advice, she's the go-to girl.  If the higher-ups need help, they ask her.  She's underpaid, overworked, and very helpful, and she adores talking to me, but she still has this rivalry thing with me.  She makes less money than I do.  She works harder.  She knows more. She puts in much longer hours. She's older.  But it's not a case of women getting paid less than men.  It's a case of a skinflint boss taking as much advantage as he can.  When I was first offered this job I was offered a salary half Marilyn's and I turned it down.  The trouble with Marilyn is that when she was offered her job, she had just been divorced, she was desperate, and she accepted a skinflint offer.  Not my fault.  When you work for a miser, you need to have some bargaining skills up front, because you are never going to get much of a raise.

Anyway, her financial position is a lot stronger than mine.  I'm supporting a family, paying for college, on basically one income.  She's alone and just inherited a sack of cash from a relative.  Of the two of us, I'm the one who can't make ends meet.

Then I got into a conversation with supervisor Rich about baseball and about what a tightwad the boss is.  He's on the same page as me, piping up as much as I do.  He was talking about how there is four million dollars in our 401k plan, and most of it must belong to the boss.  And about how we haven't gotten a bonus in years.  I came up with this imaginary scene of the boss sitting in his room surrounded by his money, and his wife walks in, she hasn't eaten in four days, her hand is out begging, and he covers his cash and says "Mine, all mine".

We were commenting on how our reward for the huge October 15th deadline being dealt with, was a stack of bagels and cream cheese.  I was saying how nice it would have been to have a little spread for the staff, some eggplant, some ziti, or maybe some cold cuts, or some Chinese, or at least some damn tunafish to put on the bagels.  This place is taking in money hand over fist.  This office is a gold mine.  And the tightwad doesn't replace any staff members who quit, and has turned it into a sweat shop.  It was a gold mine before it became a sweat shop.  There's no need for it to be a sweat shop.  Rich and I are the only two employees who steadfastly refuse to work on the weekend for free for this cheap son of a bitch.

Somehow, in between the conversations, I managed to get things attended to.  I read a really nice email from one of my clients thanking me very very much.  Two very's.  He was pretty appreciative.  I attacked a project that has been sitting unattended for months while I coped ruthlessly with nothing but the notorious October 15 deadlines, the biggest day of the year by far in my line of work, the day everything is due.

Back home, my wife gave me some chicken and some soup, and I'm really picky about chicken and meat in general.  I can't eat meat that is overcooked, well done, chewy, dry.  I'm like the story of the princess and the pea when it comes to overcooked meat.  A steak that you would be happy with, I'd take one bite and give up because it isn't medium rare and I really can't stand it.  It's not an affectation on my part.  I really can't stand it.  It's like eating a rubber tire or a sneaker.

There are some cuts of chicken that are just chewy.  The breast.  It's hard to make a good chicken breast, and when you do, I don't like it anyway.  I hate it.  Tastes like chicken shoe to me.  So what do I come home to?  Chicken breast.  And I try it.  And I hate it.  And then I start thinking damn, you have lived with me 94 years now and you still don't know or care that I don't like this part?  So I acted like an idiot, which is par for the course.

And that's about it.  That was Monday.