Karma karma karma karma karma chameleon...

...karma over here so I can wring your neck, you little bastard!!!

Warning!! Warning!! The following LJ entry contains venting, ranting, raving, babbling, kvetching, frappéing and bitching.
Oh yeah, and harsh language. It does not contain angsting, however. I leave that to the true professionals. Excelsior!!

Oh boy, I've had a day. A bad karma day.
I don't know which particular deity I pissed off today (God, The Fanged God, Jehova, Shiva, Ivanova)...

First, I got to work late, mostly because my nutty brother decided to listen to Vangelis' "Mythodea",
which is a fine piece of work, all operatic and awe-inspiring, but damn, until 2am!?!?!
And he was cooking too! And he clogged the garbage disposal with vegetable peels! I had to get the plunger and get
that sucker unclogged. It took about 10 minutes of running the disposal and plunging. Geeze louise...
So I got to bed late, and woke up late. Yea.

At work, I call my tax preparer to find out if my refund check is there yet. It's there. Not only is it there,
but it's BEEN there since Wednesday the 3rd. They called me then and someone answered the phone, telling them to
call back after 8:30pm. By that time, they're closed. Yeah, my brother took the call, and didn't tell me about it.
I next call up my good friend Spino to see if we can do lunch and grab my check on the way. He agrees. Yea!

Lunchtime rolls around and Spino shows up, about 15 minutes late. Traffic was bad says he. Hmmmm, could be.
We go to my tax preparer, and the check they hand me is for half the amount I was supposed to get. WTF!?!?
Extra time is wasted trying to figure out just why this is. Apparently, it's the disbursing bank's fault.
They're giving me half now, half next week. Okay, fine, not much I can do about it I guess.

So off we go to my bank so I can deposit the check into the ATM. Which is down. And so is the one next to it. WTF!?!
I go inside the bank to find out what's up. The ATM network is down. The whole network.
And there's a huge line for the tellers. And I have about 15 minutes left on my lunch break.

FSCK!!!! Nom de dieu de bordel de merde de couille de fils de pute!!!!!!

So we go to a nearby Taco Bell and get lunch. Hmmmmmmmm, chicken quesadilla...
Afterwards, we drive by the bank again, just to make sure the ATMs are still down. They are.
"Take me back to work, Captain Spino."
On the way there, we lose a solid 5 minutes because of a forklift unloading construction stuff in the street. Yea.
Back at work, we go straight into our weekly QA meeting. Nothing too exciting there, thank goodness.
Later, I call the bank to find out if the ATMs are back up. I'm on hold for about 10 minutes. This, sadly is pretty
normal with this bank. Since I want some privacy, I'm using one of the testing cellphones and I'm in the stockroom.
I finally get a live person to talk to, so I tell her why I'm calling. While she's processing what I just told her,
the cellphone loses reception. I lose the call.
I do NOT scream. I do NOT stamp my foot. I do NOT smash the first thing that happens to fall under my huge paws.
No, I just close the phone and mutter "of course...".
And I go back to the QA lab and try the call again, putting it on speakerphone.
A mere 3 minutes go by and presto! I'm talking to a real-life humanoid again. And this one understands me!
He assures me that the ATMs are back, and they came back online about an hour ago, sorry about the incovenience.
Good. So I glance at the bus schedule and plan my strategy.

So I'm testing this game on this cellphone. One of the test I do is send a bunch of instant messages to it while the
game is running to make sure that the game pauses and the cellphone tells you a message has come in.
Well, for some reason, none of the messages I sent made it to the cellphone. And this is with a carrier that is
usually pretty good at routing messages right away. Bizarre. More Karmic crap?

So now it's quitting time. Well, it was quitting time about 45 minutes ago, but I need to finish up a few things.
Then I head out and go to the nearest bus stop. I sit down and wait. And wait. A bus goes by in the other direction.
I wait some more. A second bus goes by, again in the other direction. I look at my watch again. It's been 20 minutes.
The bus is supposed to come by every 15 minutes. I wait some more. A bus appears, headed the other way. That's #3.
FINALLY, my bus shows. It's been 25 minutes.
This always seems to happen when I ride the bus: 3 buses go by in the other direction before mine shows up.
And on a similar note, one thing I don't miss about shopping at supermarkets is always winding up in the slowest lane.
Bless you Trader Joe's! The lane is sometimes slow, but never like at the supers!

Okay, ride the bus, get to the bank, deposit the check, get some cash, go next door to Rite-Aid to get some toiletries.
Sure enough, they're completely out of the razor blades my sib and I need. Yea.
Back to the bus stop. Bus shows up somewhat promptly, with another bus on its tail. We race each other for a couple
of stops, then the Bus Police pulls us over. As the officer approaches the front door, I think to myself in a
bad Southern accent: "D'yall realize how fast you was going back there, m'am?".
The officer gets on, turns to us and says: "Sorry for the inconvenience folks, but could you all disembark and move
to the other bus? This bus is running really late and I need to turn it around."
Chinese Fire Drill!! Well, sort of. So we comply and off we go.

I get off near the Best Buy to make a couple of necessary purchases, and to avoid further mass-transit-related oddness.
Pick up a black ink cartridge for my darling Epson C80. Pick up "Dune: Director's Cut" on DVD. This is the mini-series
that aired on Sci-Fi Channel. It's pretty cool and very faithful to the book. And this edition is in widescreen, Dolby
everything, with 30 extra minutes, and tons of extras. And at $14.95, it's a good deal!
Best Buy is giving out "Hellboy" preview DVDs with any media purchase, so I got one of those.
Haven't looked at it yet, will report on it when I do.

So after that, I just walked home. And wrote this.
And now, bonus features!

Movies I Will Not See:
Taking Lives: that one looks extremely violent and evil.
50 First Dates: it's got Adam Sandler in it. 'Nuff said.
The Passion Of The Christ: that definitely looks TOO violent!

Movies I'm Interested In Seeing:
Hidalgo: well, I love me a good western, especially in the desert. And hey, Viggo Mortensen! Could be cool.
Secret Window: luckily, Sony will screen that next week, so I'm all over it!
Hellboy: oh man, that looks like FUN!!! That's more than 3 weeks away though.

And now, I go bed! Yea!
Remember kids: winners don't use drugs!