I am three Ace's Pears, one half episode What Not to Wear and one half episode Survivorman (let me just say this: he ain't no Bear Grylls and he certainly ain't doing any push ups, thankyouverymuch) into my night. I suddenly found myself wishing two things:

1) I wish I had Sex and the City DVDs to watch at a time like this.
2) I wish I was on What Not To Wear, instead of this vegan-dreadlocked-"I'm too down to earth for clothes"-under-appreciative chick.

Like the Rolling Stones song goes, you can't always get what you want.

With that being said, I decided to plunge myself into a walk down memory lane and attempt to dazzle you with some of my famous creative works prior to my arrival on the blogosphere. Put yer reading glasses on.

---

July 26, 2004

Under Construction

There’s one that didn’t make it,” he says with a sort of contemplative tone. I look to my right and see what Brian is referring to—a small abandoned building with sparkling windows and brand new brick and mortar. The exterior is neatly landscaped, pink geraniums thick inside whiskey barrels. It is a harmless looking building—its newness makes it all the more inviting. However, the sign outside the building is blank, a fresh coat of brown paint looking rather bare. There is no sign on the front of the building, although there is a drywall arc painted gold that crowns the entrance. At one time—probably not even a month ago—there had been a name; there had been a sign.

We slide into a long row of cars waiting at the stoplight that was on the corner next to the empty parking lot. I look at my surroundings with much more interest than I probably need to project. Since I am from out of town, I feel like I can get away with being totally engaged in staring at the empty building, as if admiring the Coliseum in Rome was equally comparable.

The truth of the matter is that I am visiting a town a mere two hundred and twenty four miles away from where I live. The truth is we are sitting on the access road of the interstate highway, waiting to enter the onramp. I see hundreds of these frontage road landscapes every day—and they all look the same. Orange reflective construction barrels, casual dining restaurants, and the occasional sporting goods store or home improvement warehouse is nothing new to my seasoned traveler’s eyes.

I glance over at Chris. He’s studying the pewter Mustang GT in front of us, eyeing the tailpipes and the size of the tires. I follow his gaze and see the car. That’s it. Just a car. Maybe this is the problem, I think. We don’t really have a common hobby. He is crazy about speed—race cars, his heavy-duty truck, motorcycles. He has a silver Camero that he races for fun—it has purple flames that fade into orange on the sides. I can appreciate a nice vehicle, but when it comes to anything more descriptive, I am at a loss.

Brian and Lisa, Chris’s friends, are cuddling in the back seat of his truck. Lisa is sitting in the middle seat, so she can be closer to Brian. Her hand is curled around his forearm, which is draped across her thigh. His fingertips rest on her right knee. My eyes look at the light. Still red. I can tell Chris is in a hurry. He wants the color to change.

“Dude, that place wasn’t even that bad, either,” Brian says. He’s staring out the window: it’s an abandoned restaurant. If I wasn’t so paralyzed with anxiety, I think, I could ask him what kind of restaurant it used to be.

“Yeah…wasn’t that a, like, Big Bowls?” Lisa asks. She sounds as young as she is. I cannot believe she’s engaged and only twenty. Then again, if I found a guy I loved, I’d probably be engaged too.

“Oh, Big Bowls?” Suddenly Chris is interested. “That was one of Wheeler’s restaurants.”

“Wheeler?” Lisa sounds confused. Wheeler, I think. I could ask who that is. Why can’t I speak?

“Yeah, you know, the guy that owns all of the Frenchie’s Fries and Boxtops. That was his attempt at a Chinese place.” Leave it to Chris. I think that’s actually one thing I like about him. He knows a lot about running a business—entrepreneurial trivia included.

“You know what I think someone needs to make?” Brian interjects. “A place called ‘I Don’t Care.’” Brian laughs. I laugh too. I get it.

“What?” Chris says, glancing in the rear view mirror. He doesn’t get it…I can’t stand dense people. He takes his life way to seriously, I think. The day before, we were driving towards Dallas in silence. I had said “Tell me a story.”

“Tell you a story?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, once there was this girl and she was out with this guy and she asked him to tell her a story, so he did.”

Dense. No creativity.

“I Don’t Care. So when you ask a girl where she wants to go eat and she says ‘I don’t care,’ you can say ‘Okay. We can do that.’” Brian chuckles, and Lisa bats her eyes at him. I’m about to turn around and bat my eyes at him. She’s lucky. “You could have all sorts of food—Mexican, Chinese, Italian…it could have just everything.” Brian’s postulations are starting to sound really good to me. I wish I could say, That’s a really good idea. But my mouth stays shut.

Chris smiles, and laughs a little bit. “That’s not a bad idea. The problem you run into with a place like that is your overhead. You can’t serve that much food or else you’ll run out of money. That’s why places with really small menus do well, and the places with big menus are usually well-established chains.”
“Oh,” Brian says. “That makes sense.”

Did I say I liked that quality in Chris? His business prowess? Suddenly, I’m backtracking. I take it back. I glance over at the abandoned restaurant.

The line of cars is moving slowly. I feel bad that we are stuck in such horrible traffic, and wonder why I feel bad about it. Chris was the one who invited me up here. Considering this was only our third date, and he invited me to go out to a fancy restaurant and then spend the night at his house, I thought we were going to have more fun.

I can’t figure out where, between Thursday night, when we had been talking on the phone, and Sunday morning, after I had slept chastely on his couch, we had gone wrong. I guess I knew in the back of my mind that there would be no love or marriage or baby carriage between Chris and myself. I am from the school of thought that you know when you know. I also am aware that my short attention span in my relationships has kept me from dating a guy for more than a month.

We are coming over the hill up towards the traffic light. There are still at least fifteen cars ahead of us in line. The restaurant is still in the corner of my eye, and now a giant incomplete freeway looms above. I want to ask what they are building there. When will it be done? I can’t. I realize how tense my whole body is, my left leg twisted into a knot, my toes digging into my black slides.

“God, it will be great when all this construction is done,” Brian mutters.

“No kidding,” is all Chris says in response.

The overpass that is being built over head, I realize, will eliminate this long traffic light in the future. They definitely have a while to go. There are concrete beams running up toward the unusually cloudy summer skies. The beams aren’t even completed—there are gaps and open spots where I can tell the crews have been working. The road that will one day lead across these pillars hasn’t even begun.

We are almost to the light, crawling forward and uphill behind the steely gray Mustang that is shaking with desire to resume its comfortable speed. I am suddenly overcome with grief, and can hardly keep my focused stare on the construction zone above me. The brown and gold restaurant is still in my peripheral view, abandoned and bare. I realize my relationship with Chris is closing its doors like this restaurant. My hopeful heart feels as empty as the rooms inside.

The light turns green, and the Mustang jumps forward. Chris’s black truck follows in suit, and I am relieved to be moving forward and away. We cross under the overpass and start a quick, fast glide down toward the highway. I relax a little, glad to be able to look at something other than the concrete canvas of parking lots and instead turn my focus to the cars we were passing.

“I wonder when they’re going to finish that overpass,” Brian asks, breaking the silence. “That light just plain sucks.”

“I have no idea. From the way it looks, it’s going to be a while,” Chris says, pulling up alongside the Mustang.

“Yeah…” Brian is quiet for a moment. “It’s sure going to be nice, though. When they’re done, it’s sure going to be nice.”

My anxiety is slipping, and I think that maybe it’s okay. Maybe it’s okay to be single, failing at relationships one after another. We pass by a row of restaurants, all with full parking lots harboring the dinner crowd. Some I’ve heard of, others look new. Who knows which will last and which will fail. Maybe Chris knows; maybe he knows about the overhead and the budget.

What Chris doesn’t know is my destination. He doesn’t know how long it is going to take me to be complete. I am working, forging ahead at a steady speed. I am anxious and flawed, sometimes quiet but stubborn. Yet I know that my heart is still under construction. When it’s done, it’s sure going to be nice.

---

July 2002


Bat Place


We were lounging around in the pool, just Megan, Marc and I, when, laughing gaily, Margie and Cecilia (Marc’s mother) came teetering out on their summer slides across the limestone patio. Cecilia was Margie’s friend from Washington, D.C. and she and her 8 year old son were vacationing at the B's for a week. Cecilia had already pissed me off for the day, ordering me around as if I was working for her, while I knew I wouldn’t be paid extra for the extra child. I had thought she was French—I guess that goes to show you what an idiot I am, seeing as I apparently cannot tell a French accent from a Spanish one.

“Rachel,” Cecilia stumbled over my name with her thick foreign accent (whatever nationality it was) “we’re going to watch a movie in the media room…can you have them showered and ready by 6:45?” I paddled around in the shallow end with Megan holding onto my shoulders in a vise-like grip, trying to keep from drowning us both. We probably would both have been better off.

“Sure,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Rachel’s getting married in three years, Mom!” Megan shouted, as I cringed and continued paddling.

“Down we go,” I said, ducking under water, my last glimpse being of Margie sitting on the teak bench beside the pool with a curious look across her face. Damn this child…here we had been, just fantasizing about my aforementioned wedding to be held at the B's residence, and she was already sending out wedding announcements. I was completely happy to continue contemplating my guest list -- whom out of my circle of enemies was worthy of an invitation, that sort of thing. We had decided that Megan would be the head flower girl (I had to compromise) and would ride her spotted pony Patches down the aisle. She was nice enough to lend me their bay mare Audrey for me to ride down the aisle. The flower girls and bridesmaids were given pale blue dresses, and we had decided that Lou, so that his feelings weren’t hurt, would be allowed to be a bridesman, outfitted in a baby blue tux. The thought had made both of us laugh devilishly.

When we resurfaced, sputtering like a bubbling bowl of Ramen noodles, Margie said “Twenty one is too young to get married, Megan,” more to me than to her daughter. Megan slid off of my shoulders and before she could get another word in, I interrupted.

“We were simply discussing marriage and Megan decided that in order to be a flower girl she would have to be under the age of 11, and since that’s in three years, that’s when I am getting married.” It was true—we had both agreed after 11 she would certainly be too old to be a flower girl.

“I see…” Margie hadn’t quite bought it, surely still worried that I was seriously considering getting married at the age of twenty one. Evidently one does not actually need a suitor these days to be considering marriage.

“Okay, well, we will be watching the movie! Do not forget, ready by 6:45…that is an hour from now…” Cecilia ushered Margie off, and I groaned inwardly, not sure that I could take another hour of human submarine.

I managed to convince Megan and Marc that we should play a new game and within minutes had them playing as dolphins with me as the flamboyant dolphin trainer. For my own enjoyment, I took on a foreign accent similar to Cecilia’s and began teaching them tricks. I taught them yes, no, and the colors of the rainbow in Dolphinglish, the language of the bottle-nosed dolphins.

“ARE WE READY?” I’d shout, getting them to jump up and down as if we were a football team about to take on our hometown rivals.

“Eek-eek!” They’d shout simultaneously, the Dolphinglish word for “yes.”

“Are we cows?” Hey, it was the first word that had come into my mind when teaching them the word ‘no.’

“Ook-ook!”

“And….what color is the ocean?”

“Aaaieee!”

“And the dirt?”

“Snoweeee!”

“And the grass?”

“Ooga-looga!”

I don't know much about dolphins but...human children are easier to train than dolphins will ever be.


I am proud to say that both children were dressed in clean clothes with combed hair by exactly 6:42 that evening. I was hoping to make a quick exit, excited that it wouldn’t be a late night. For some reason, every job I had in my short time in the working world had somehow ended up having me work 12 hour days, repeatedly, until I no longer had the will to live. The only reason this one was lasting any longer than the rest was because I was earning more than a high school teacher. I'd go fishing, swim, watch movies, and occasionally want to kill a kid each day and go home with $150 dollars. Teachers read books, teach, watch movies and usually want to kill 150 kids and go home with less than that.

“Rachel…” Megan began slowly, in the sort of voice that I knew was leading up to something I probably didn’t want to hear.
“Yes…” I whined back, trying to brush my hair into a manageable mass that could resemble a pony tail with her child-sized Winnie-the-Pooh brush.

“Are you coming to dinner with us…?”

“I don’t think so.” I had to smile, imagining myself in my Austin City Limits t-shirt and Birkenstocks in the posh Shoreline Grill, the sister restaurant of the Four Seasons Hotel in Austin.

“But why not…?”

“I don’t think your parents want me to go.”

Within seconds, Megan had cantered out of her bedroom and galloped into the kitchen to ask her parents if I could come.

I didn’t know how it happened, but the next thing I knew, I was standing with Megan and Margie in the master bedroom’s closet the size of my house. “How about capris?” Margie selected an outfit for me to wear, considering my babysitting/fishing attire was not exactly fresh and clean.

I ended up wearing a pair of size 8, black stretch capris from Talbots Petites that, to my utter horror, were tight around the waist on me, paired with what I would assume was a tennis tank top, with a little zipper up the chest and the bottom hem that came to a V at my waist. If you just looked at me from my neck down, I could have been Margie.

A pair of black slides later, and I was following their round bubble of a Lexus down the freeway, with Megan and Marc chattering in the back. Since introducing Megan to Latin pop in the form of Enrique Iglesias, the only music she wanted to listen to was “that Hero guy.” I was probably the first person to pull into the Four Seasons of Austin with Enrique crooning in Spanish on their portable car-ready CD player plugged into a 1991 Bronco.

Lou, of course, in an almost nauseating show of chivalry, pulled into the valet drive, and I had no choice but to follow him because hell if I knew where to park. I have flashbacks of my wreck with the three Mexicans and pulling into this parking lot, but now is no time to think negatively. The valet is approaching my car as I giggle hysterically.

“He has taken your ticket, ma’m…” The valet motions towards Lou, so we all unload from the car. I see Lou helping Margie out of the car and swallow hard. Is it possible to like people so much that you also simultaneously cannot stand them?

“Thought I’d take you to dinner and make you pay to park, huh, Rachel?” Lou chides in his elfish voice.

“Thank you…” I mutter, while flashing a toothy smile. I have begun to believe that when in doubt, smiling from ear to ear will win over any situation, which all things considered probably isn’t the worst habit to pick up. One time in San Diego, my friend and I had had been laughing at a joke when we passed a black gardener tending to a lawn in front of an apartment complex. When I had caught his eye with the leftover smile on my face from the joke, he had shouted “Girl, you got a Colgate smile!” The man had validated what I had always held true—people react to whatever is on your face. I could be saying to Lou “You know, after careful consideration, you have won the contest out of whom in your family I dislike the least,” but as long as I was smiling, he would simply nod back at me and say something like “Nice night for bat watching, huh?”

The entire way to the restaurant, Marc had repeatedly asked “Are we at the bat place yet?” Shoreline Grill is located on the river that winds through Austin, and during the summer, you can watch from the windows and see a mass of bats swarm out of the nearby bridge for their evening meals. I don’t know what Marc had in mind, but apparently the world-class chef and fine wines were not what he was excited about—the exclusivity of watching the bats had to be why they had the valet guys out front.

I was still trying not to laugh as we walked through the restaurant towards the best seat in the house, but it was hard not to. Megan had changed into an outfit exactly like the one I was wearing in her usual fashion—she always would strive to wear the same clothes as me, but she never wanted to admit to it. “My mom made me wear these capris,” she’d say. While I suppose I should have been flattered, it always irritated me simply because she had a closet-full of extremely hip children’s outfits that I would have loved to have in my size.

We all sat down and then the actual nails-on-a-chalkboard-meal begins. For starters, I was stuck next to Lou, my least favorite of the family (I really only like Margie), but am staring straight at Cecilia, who I would rather avoid any kind of eye contact with due to the fact that I feel as though “the help” shouldn’t be dining in her company.

Within seconds, she manages to launch into a totally un-P.C. diatribe about how people in Mexico, whether rich or poor, have housekeepers and maids. She somehow manages to tie all of this into Lou’s mention of a children’s menu. I never did quite understand the connection, but apparently she had a point and managed to talk about maid’s quarters, salaries, and how the children don’t come to dinner and stay home with maids, all before the waiter came to take our drink orders.

Obviously, maids and the like are not what you want to discuss when you have the Indentured Servant sipping a Dr. Pepper at the table with you. I eyed the polished knives I had at close range next to my right hand, but finally decided against any kind of homicide as I really wanted to house sit the next time they went out of town.

So I figure out she’s from Mexico, which makes me laugh because I really did think her accent was French. My sister had a rowing instructor from France once and these women could be one in the same except for the fact that the woman in front of me was a passive-aggressive, diamond-encrusted bitch. Other than that, though, one in the same.

I feel better knowing she’s from Mexico, as if I can simply chalk all of her insecurities up to the fact that she is a wannabe Celine Dion born in the wrong country. I am still trying to decide what to order. On Megan’s kid’s menu, there’s the $3.95 buttered noodles. Then there’s the angel hair pasta in a goat cheese crème sauce with lemon butter and asparagus for a mere $16.00. Or, if I’m really feeling bold, and I convince myself that Lou isn’t hurting from the recent stock market crash, there is the steak, in a chipotle and lemon sauce for $32.00.

I finally decide to go with the $16 plate, as I feel I probably would spend about an hour and forty five minutes here at this dinner and have to laugh at the fact that $16 is exactly what I would make. I like to think that they are paying me for my charming wit and my dazzling Colgate smile. Plus, I want to see if their asparagus is as good as how I make it.

A slight murmur ripples across the room as all of the waiters parade into the room. “Bat alert!” Our grim waiter informs us. This man makes my skin crawl because he looks way too much like the child-molester bus driver I had throughout middle school. Margie apparently had the same vibe, because I heard her whisper to Cecilia that “Our waiter looks like he should be holding a sign saying ‘Retired Vet’ on the side of the road…” after he poured their bottle of red wine.

Excitedly (way too excitedly) a few of the couples rush out the door onto the balcony, where Marc has already staked out his spot. I feel obligated to get up after Margie and Cecilia rise, even though I could care less about bats and actually would rather not think about bats unless it is Halloween.

I stand up and notice Lou is still sitting, and flash my "winning excuse for not having anything to say" smile. “I’ve seen enough bats fly…” He says, with such rehearsed calmness that I wonder if he sits out a lot of these father-daughter moments. Megan, naturally, does not seem too broken up about this.

We walk outside and sure enough, swarms of black dots are in the sky, as people watch them as if they’re fireworks. “Look!” Marc keeps shouting, jabbing his chubby finger at the sky, as if there were only one or two instead of one or two hundred thousand. His enthusiasim is, sadly, not contagious, but I pretend to be impressed.

“Wow…” They look like birds to me, I think. “Look at all of those mosquito catchers,” I say, in a statement that eerily sounds like something my dad would say.

Margie laughs, and I smile my grin at her. My biggest fan, I think. I half expect Cecilia to turn to me, and with a French accent say “Vut eez it zu say? Mozvito? Vat are dese? En Vrance, ve do not have dese.”

I try not to be biased, I really do. I am not sure if it is because I have grown up in Austin or what, but I find the entire bat spectacle entirely overrated. From where we stand, they could be just another flock of grackles. And so what if they are bats? They are creepy, infected mammals that I just do not get.

It must be the same thing as fancy restaurants. As I chomped into what I figured to be a $2.50 spear of asparagus, I immediately thought “Mine are better.” I was listening to Lou wax on about college, as he does whenever they take me to dinner. He has a crazy notion that by taking me to nice places he will see where you get with a college degree. Margie, my posse, says “Well, I’ve seen a lot of roofers with college degrees.” I am, by this time, too ticked off to even think straight and have checked out mentally, grinning wildly but not listening. You can put the valet out front, put some pasta in a bowl, call it angel hair, but at the end of the day, my mom makes a better pasta dish.

When the check comes, I of course offer to pay for my meal, with everyone knowing it is merely a formality and that I have no intention of paying and that Lou should have every intention of paying if he expects me to babysit tomorrow, a Sunday.

We all shuffle outside to where the valet has brought out our cars, and the offer is made.

“Do you think you can take the kids to dinner and a movie tomorrow?” Lou asks, handing me a dollar bill to tip the valet.

Somehow, it is much easier to sign up for a second day of children on a full stomach of carbohydrates. “Sure…what time?”

“Oh, I don’t know, late morning, early afternoon…”
“Well, she does have a riding lesson, doesn’t she?”

They both look at me, as if I am suddenly the most amazing person on earth, and Lou says “Why, yes…I totally forgot.”

Everyone giddy, whether it is from three glasses of wine or from seeing a flock of mosquito catchers, or simply knowing that dinner and a movie is the easiest babysitting there is to do, we pile into our separate cars.

The illuminated sign as we exit on the main drive says “Shoreline Grill” in a sprawling script. Personally, I think they’d get more business with a name like “Bat Place.”

Tonight I drink alone!

Is there anything better than predetermined solo-drinking?

I drink for the following reasons tonight:

everything that happened this week
everything that will happen next week

I just got back from the Austin Displace Me meeting. It was interesting -- I'm excited about the April 28 event and excited to see what sort of influence it will have on a global level.

While I was waiting for the meeting to start, I grabbed a slice of pizza from the Whole Foods counter and was sitting outside in their patio area. I couldn't find a table, so I just sat down off to the side on one of the concrete planters (what is it with me and planters?). I people watched, which is always a great Whole Foods activity, and was having a grand time sitting there in the perfect March weather.

I see a man walking toward me carrying some sort of food, and as he passes by me he says "You're all by yourself over here!" and keeps walking.

As I sat there and continued to gnaw on the pizza crust, I pondered this thought:

What is so wrong with a woman eating a slice of pizza while sitting on a concrete planter by herself? Would it have been more acceptable had I been sitting with someone? He wouldn't have said anything, that's for sure. And so why is it so socially unacceptable to sit by yourself that a random man walking by has to comment on it?

I felt like yelling after him, "Hey! You forgot to say that to the three men sitting by themselves that you passed when walking over here."

I would never think -- no, presume -- to say that to a man. There were plenty of men sitting by themselves. Why is it so much more remarkable that a woman should be sitting by herself?

This reminds me of men who are in your presence -- always random strangers -- who look at you and say "Smile!"

To which I want to say "Fuck off!" I am not your Playboy bunny. I hate how people think that by telling someone to "Smile!" they're somehow improving their day. A woman would never say that to a man, so why do men think it's okay to say that to a woman?

Stepping down off my soapbox...

---

Boot camp. Sucked. Ass.

My productivity at work was indirectly proportionate to the amount of lactic acid buildup in my muscles during the morning hours. I also learned today that I am really good at a new exercise, which I happened to invent. "The Pencil." This is where you stand. And that's it. You just stand, with your hands at your sides, unmoving. Bonus points if you are laying down and you win a t-shirt if you are asleep while practicing The Pencil.

Quite the calorie burner.

---

And finally. Today I am quite proud of IS2, for reasons that I fear would affect OPSEC if I announced them to the blogosphere.
IS2 is the best.

A recent conversation surrounding Joe the Drummer:

Me: JTD commented on my blog!

Mrhe: Holy shit. This is incredible. I'm so happy and jealous all at once....

Me: I know. I thought it was DD pranking me for a second, but then I realized that he could never write so correctly. AND of course he referenced that I should have won.

Mrhe: This should be the greatest day in your life. Because I think it's mine.

(Editor's Note: Perhaps this is why 1/2 doesn't have a girl who is more than a friend?)

The Quote of the Day sums up the last six months (and more particularly, the last nine days) quite well.

You must do the things you think you cannot do.
-Eleanor Roosevelt

Not much longer to go. Not much longer at all.

---

Boot camp was good today, even the Indian run was tolerable. Evidently there is a new caste system for the Indian run where there are now three groups of runners and one power walking group. Apparently I was supposed to be in the group filled with fast people. Ha. Not going to happen. I went with group 2. It was a little bit of civil disobedience, but I thought it went over pretty well.

Oh and to the girl who took my spot behind the planter: not yours. Again. Don't make me throw down with you.

---

Joe the Drummer is awesome. All free-drink disputes have been recanted by the Mid-Tour Meltdown Board of Drunks.

Jon Jovi's been rocking it lately too. Did anyone know that he's playing over Memorial Day weekend in Vegas? Tempting. Very tempting.

Tony Snow underwent surgery today to remove a growth on his abdomen.

No jokes please.

We (as in, me and my quads and hamstrings) wish him all the best in his recovery.


Perhaps they also implanted a conscience while he was under the knife.

I've decided to do this in parts, mainly because I am incredibly hung over and feel as though at any point I may need to take more Advil, drink more water, or put my head under the pillow. I feel as though breaking up my recap will help me do a little at a time. So bear with me.

The Mid-Tour Meltdown got off to a raucous start, with the arrival of Dr. Goldie in from PVD, who is known for her fantastic hair-tossing while working a stethoscope. Nothing says "party animal" than a girl that announces she normally eats dinner at 4:30.

Nevertheless, she bravely agreed to head downtown with the other seven (yes, seven) of us. We met up at my apartment, where they had all decided if I didn't show up by 7:40 they would call the police. The natural assumption was that I had been murdered. It's hard being Mean Rachel.

The crew went like this: AJ, Tall Rachel, The Lightweight (Emily), Cash Money, Melanie, and a girl from Colorado. And Mean Rachel & Goldie.

Off we went. Our plans to eat at the Iron Cactus were (like everything else that happened last night) thwarted, so the girls settled for a slice of pizza instead. As Tall Rachel noted, "More drinking money."

The Ivory Cats was the natural progression from there. I have never showed up there before eleven o'clock. Last night, however, was different. It was a night when dreams come true and girls show up at the Ivory Cat before the piano even starts being played.

Kenny Luna tickled the ivories for about thirty minutes, playing a soulful rendition of "Cheeseburger in Paradise." This is when The Lightweight and I decided to start a running tally of how much we drank. Somehow every time I have gone out with this group, The Lightweight goes from being tipsy to "somebody get a motorized scooter for this girl" in seconds. I wanted to see where her threshold was. We also decided to tally how many times we peed and how many glasses of water we consumed in between drinks. Rather scientific, really.


At one point we showed it to some guy who said "What a ratio! 'My name's Rachel, I've had fifteen drinks and only peed once.' What's that at the bottom? Four AZO?" I had to explain to him that no, that was four H2O. My mom's cringing right now, I can tell. A proud moment. Oh well. Perhaps you should not read my blog for the next 2-4 years.

Okay. Back to the Ivory Cats. So a thirty minutes into Cheeseburger in Paradise, Joe the Drummer showed up. This caused quite a ruckus, mainly from me. And, friends, I obtained this photo.

I then began the process of attempting to explain to JTD what an internet following he had. I finally gave up and just wrote down MeanRachel.com and Dunndee.blogspot.com on a piece of paper. But I will make this even easier for you, JTD, if you did actually come here to see your fan base. Here are a few snippets:

Fame
Fortune
Fabulousness

Okay. So, the party got started with the addition of a little percussion. Kenny Luna went off to do important things, and David began his stint with a rousing rendition of "Cheeseburger in Paradise." I had this funny sense of deja vu. Nevertheless, you can never hear songs about cheeseburgers too many times.

I then began my second wholehearted attempt to win the free drink. My last attempt, during Crapentine's, was rather discouraging because I didn't win. I chalked it up to two things: we were too far off to the side, and that the girl who won was sitting right up front. I also decided I needed to have crowd participation. Fortunately, JTD set me up by -- are you sitting down? -- announcing MeanRachel.com to the entire crowd. I know, I know.

So I unveiled the flag and began my singing flag-waving routine. I then did high kicks to New York, New York. I then got a chorus line with random strangers going of us singing Friends in Low Places. I made a silhouette of Prince's guitar with a candle and a pencil during Purple Rain. I perspired, I bled, I belted it out. It was like the last episode of American Idol in there. A woman from Houston even came over and told me that I was going to win the coveted Siamese Mai Tai. I told her not to get her hopes up - that I'd heard these lies before, and somehow never won.


It was time for the announcement. I'm not going to lie. I was nervous. They mentioned some guy with a mohawk as being a good participant and I kind of chuckled - naturally they wouldn't immediately give the drink to me, we had to at least pretend that there was a competition going on. Then, suddenly, I realized...wait....Mohawk is walking up to the stage...taking the drink...my drink!

I'd lost. Again.

Here's the thing: I'm a reasonable woman. But AJ is not.

"Let's go," she said, already gathering her things.

And we went.

Win or lose, I was just glad to be nominated by the random woman from Houston. She had my back. It's the journey, not the destination; the rainbow, not the pot of gold; the reunion, not the deployment-- oh who am I kidding. I was pissed.

But the dream is still alive.

This is pretty freaking awesome.

Scroll down the page a bit - second from the bottom, but I'll take it.
As long as there's someone I can look down at, I'm doin' okay. I have no idea how my blog ended up on there.

Last night, Matt was finally able to redeem himself. Mainly because he yelled "HI ROCKY!!" when Gingy and I walked through the door. During their break between sets, he came over and met Mark, formerly known as "The Guy Who Paid $18 to see Uncle Bruno play the last time."

Gingy and I decided to take some time to work out, Mean Rachel-style. Maybe I should start a boot camp called "Austin Alcoholic Adventure Boot Camp." Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?




And that is all I have to say for now. I am nursing the first of two predicted hangovers for the weekend, the next one to occur in about twelve hours. The Mid Tour Meltdown is tonight. Hilarity is imminent.

Also, Goldie gets into town in about an hour on her spring break. In my opinion, twenty five year old wannabe doctors shouldn't have spring breaks, but no one asked me. Art don't worry - you can survive without her for five days.

My coworker New Matt, who's not to be confused (although he sometimes is) with the Newer Matt we just hired, is playing at Latitude tomorrow (Friday) night from 9-11 PM. His band, Uncle Bruno, is a pretty daecent NOLA funk band. I'm only going because he is supposed to be redeeming himself for the last event, where he snubbed me after the show. Cough.

Anyway, if you like funk, or if you just like drinking and having an excuse, you're welcome to come. New Matt -- and maybe Newer Matt -- has promised to buy every one of my friends who shows up a drink as penance.

He doesn't know that yet but he will tomorrow.

Holla at me if you want to meet up with us. And by "us" I mean "me." And my biceps. And my deltoids. Which I'm told are somewhere in my shoulders.

I would have written more tonight but my arms are too sore from the alphabet, ladder, planks, crunches (sympathy pains for my abs), push ups, and...well, mainly the push ups.

Which, by the way, are still quite hard to do!

That is all.

---

p.s. Horizontal lines changed my life.

---

p.p.s. Funny story real quick: I was looking at my monthly 30boxes calendar at work the other day, where on it I had made a note of Matt's gig. It said Uncle Bruno @ Latitude, but the size of the square for the day cut it off halfway. My boss walked up behind me (always incredulous that I actually keep a calendar of all of my shipments online) and was asking me about my color coding system (work, fun, workout, etc.). Then out of nowhere he goes, "Uncle Bruno at La Tit?"

There's not a whole lot to report right now. At least, nothing that I can think of. I realized just now that the more notoriety my blog gains, the less I can freely ridicule my world and the people in it.

I've been having a rough week. Between the perfect storm brewing at work -- why everyone and their dog (literally) has decided to move to Hong Kong during the two weeks I'm gone is beyond me -- and the hovering cloud over me from not hearing from IS2, I feel like there's a whirlwind that I cannot control. This causes me endless frustration.

I guess, to continue with the weather/storm metaphor because I'm cliché like that, it's always darkest before the dawn. Which I guess really has nothing to do with storms, but you get my point.

---

Boot camp has -- and will continue to until further notice from the management of the Mean Rachel funds (I may have to start taking up donations) -- successfully kicked my ass. The class is outtathisworldwaytoobig huge. There are 45 people in the class according to the trainer. Now. The thing about it is. I think our other classes started off about that large, but in the last two sessions the weather would quickly turn from "tolerable" to "arctic" overnight. This would cull out most of the group, aside from the hard core peeps like myself, motivated only by fear and self-loathing.

Now that our spring has officially sprung, and the twelve-non-consecutive-days Texas winter is over, the fair weather females are out in full force. Every day when I show up to class and see chickies wearing short-shorts, I think to myself "Bitch, please. Where were you during Icepocalypse 07? Mhmm. That's what I thought."

So I expect the large class size to remain. This leads to several pros and cons to consider, which I will now share with you.


1. More fast people. This really doesn't affect me, as I maintain a constant surveillance of who is fast so I can avoid them completely. However, it does increase my meanness a touch. I secretly plot Tonya Harding-esque sabotages when I'm doing crunches.

2. Less space. To the person who keeps taking my spot in the back row behind the mountain laurel bush: Not yours.

3. Longer lines of people to sprint past in Indian runs. We haven't actually done an Indian run yet, but I know they're coming (probably tomorrow). I will start anticipating the misery now.


1. More slow people. This is the equivalent to Mean Rachel camouflage. Think of a school of fish. Got it? Now s l o w the fish down. There's me, right there, front of the pack. Looking fast without actually going fast.

2. Increased revenue for The Owner/Operator Trainer. Perhaps this means she'll lower the prices? Please? Pretty please? Otherwise, this place is going to start looking like a Jerry Lewis telethon.

3. Continued self-improvement. Actually, I'm just not that positive of a person. I couldn't come up with a third, so I tossed this one in here for good measure. Doesn't it give you a warm-fuzzy?

---

Uh oh! Ten o'clock! I better go to sleep. If I stay up any longer, my glass slippers will quickly turn into running shoes and I'll find myself shuffling around a concrete path at 5:30 AM thinking to myself, "Wasn't I just here?"

File this under the "Tony Snow is an idiot" tag.

Yes, another one.

Tony Snow is going on and on about "show trials" and the fight to prevent senior White House officials from having to testify in the case regarding the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys.

However, as noted in this article, in 1998, when Clinton was facing scrutiny for Lewinski and his aides were being forced to testify, Tony Snow published an article titled "Executive Privilege is a Dodge."

If you don't care that our press secretary, who is supposed to be relaying information correctly and accurately to the press, is completely biased and lies through his teeth...well, you should.

A Google search that led to my blog:

wall sit punishment

Who was it? WHO. Gingy? Stephanie? C'mon. Fess up.

I finally have my iTunes full of my iPod's music again. Of course, it doesn't actually transfer over playlists, so I have 1007 songs in my library and not a damn one of them is in any sort of order.

---

For those of you keeping up with my Geek Squad saga, it continues. My response to the Founder & Chief Inspector, Robert Stephens:

Hi Robert,

Thanks for your email. I appreciate the timely response as well as your attention to my situation. My personal policy on outing service-industry failures is that if they can't spit in my food, I am more likely to provide negative feedback.

My situation with my computer has since been resolved. I went to pick it up (after I once again called the Geek Squad) and brought my recovery CD with me, as I was told to do. I think you should work into your operating capitol the supplies one might need to actually fix a computer - recovery CDs, AC adapters, etc. It's like getting your oil changed at Jiffy Lube only to be told that you have to provide a can of oil and a funnel. It seems prohibitive and pointless for me to have to take my supplies to the Geek Squad in order to have my computer fixed.

When I went in with my CD, the person working there offered to put my CD in and told me I could come back the next day once the operating system had uploaded. I asked him how long it would take and he said an hour or so. Then I asked "Is it just the matter of putting a CD in the drive?" and he said "Yeah." Since I've been putting CDs in CD players since Amy Grant was cool, I told him I was well-versed in using a CD. I took my computer home, along with the CD they had told me to bring in, and installed the operating system on my own.

I also didn't mention in my first letter that when I originally dropped off my computer and they were speculating as to what could be wrong with it, I asked if it could possibly be a virus. One of the geeks actually asked me if I had been downloading a lot of porn. I was a little offended - although luckily I can roll with the punches and I fired back, "No sorry, there's nothing on there for you to watch." I have since polled several sources as to whether this is appropriate customer service relations. While my boyfriend just seemed amused by the question, some other people (all women) thought it was rude and uncalled for.

The happy ending to the story is that now my computer is functional. It apparently had a bad hard drive since the day I purchased it. Don't worry, I'm writing a disgruntled letter to Toshiba as well.

I went to the South Austin Best Buy, off of Mopac South and 290. I imagine I won't ever be able to go there again after this letter, but sometimes you have to sacrifice for a cause.

Kind regards,
Rachel

--

Rachel,

Thank you. This is helpful. Yes, I have a dream of somehow making thousands of restore CD images available to over 1000 locations. It's never been done but we're working on it. There is a reason there has never been a nationally branded tech support service before. Same reason there never has been a national plumbing service - it's very hard.

I hope you'll frequent that store again. You have my email in case you or anyone you know ever needs it.

Kind regards,

Robert Stephens.

...have one of those days where you feel like you just can't win for losing?

That was today.

It just hit me.

Driving to Fort Hood and back. That's totally what messed up my back.

It all makes sense now.

Well, Friday was like nostalgia night. It didn't help things that on Friday I got IS2's confirmed leave dates -- and finally allowed myself to get excited about him coming home for a little while. I had to keep reminding myself as I drove to Hood that I was not going there to see him.
A *certain* Dunndee had obtained an extra ticket to Ron White, and luckily I had managed to "take that shit and run," as IS2 had advised me to do. We seized upon the opportunity to drink beer in the Abrams Field House, which evidently has not happened before.

Ron White was absolutely hilarious. Which was to be expected, but we weren't really sure what kind of material he was going to do. A small side note: did you know that Ron White fought in Vietnam?

One of my favorite jokes was his interpretation of the levels of alertness the government has put into place. He described how his mom would call him whenever the level would go from yellow to orange because she didn't know what to do.

"If I were in charge," White explained, "we'd have two levels of alertness: Go find a helmet...and put on the fucking helmet. That way, when my mom calls, I know what to tell her to do. 'Honey, they raised the level to put on the fucking helmet, what should I do?' 'Do you know where your helmet is, mom?' 'Well, yes, I found it.' 'Then put on the fucking helmet.'"

Kudos go to the Army MWR program (Morale, Welfare & Recreation), which hosted the event. The only disappointing thing was that they didn't allow cameras for some unknown reason. Nevertheless, if you ever get a chance to see Ron White, MWR or otherwise, definitely seize the opportunity.

Then we met up for some grub with some of the 1st Cav girls who had also gone to see Ron White. The unfortunate part of dinner was our proximity to the jukebox which literally blared death metal over my shoulder the entire time. I would mutter "Easy on the bass...George Strait's always a good choice...ladies love a little John Mayer," in hopes that the ghetto-fab guy picking out Ludacris would change his mind and go with something a little more mellow.

From there, we made our way to my initiation at Wild Country, a dance hall wanting to be a club. I understand now why IS2 refuses to go to Wild Country unless he's had a few beers. I definitely should have knocked back a few more Port Aransases at dinner. If you're too aware of what's going on around you at Wild Country (mechanical bulls, professional portraits, people selling roses out of a basket, "fog" spewing from the ceiling), you start to feel somewhat insane.

Nevertheless, it made for a good photo-op.


Then it was time to marshal my emotions and go to the Harker Heights house for the first time in five months. Fortunately, DD45 had redecorated/cleaned (whatever you want to call it) the place enough that it almost wiped out the entire Doug & Petieness of the house.

But there was this picture on the wall.

Friday, March 16, 2007
8:43 PM

Rachel,

Thank you for taking the time to send me your letter. I rely on direct feedback from our customers like you to let us know how The Geek Squad is doing. I know the store management would very much like to know who that person was who offered such a poor experience.

Can you tell me which of the 3 stores in Austin you were serviced by? I will make sure you receive attention asap.


Regards,

Robert Stephens
Founder and Chief Inspector
The Geek Squad

Congratulations to...well...ME! I just broke the 400 mark - 400 posts written between November 2005 and March 2007. Not too shabby.

"Big in '07," our theme at work, is carrying over to MeanRachel. Enjoy!

To the PR firm Hass MS&L that keeps googling [Geek Squad] and ending up on my blog:

Geek Squad sucks! Spin that!

Freedom of speech is lovely.

Who am I kidding, I can't skip blogging for the night.

So I did want to post a link to this piece I read in Inc. this month. I don't know if any of you read the mag, but it's basically an entrepreneur rig that I read out of curiosity whenever I can steal borrow it from work.

The article is some woman's op-ed about how she doesn't like seeing emoticons (smilies) in professional emails.

Coming from a business that is almost entirely email-based, I felt a little put-off by her commentary. Now, granted, I don't fill my emails with emoticons, but I am never bothered by people who offer a smile here or there. Let's face it -- they all can't be fantastic writers like myself, able to convey their every meaning through words.

So I wrote a Mean Rachel rebuttal to Inc., just for the hell of it. Enjoy.

Subject: >:(

To the Editors:

There are certain inevitabilities about the working world that I am
willing to accept - being told "It's not personal, it's just business,"
Monday morning meetings, and three o'clock chocolate cravings to pacify
one's desire to lay their head on the desk and sob. :*( But after reading
Leigh Buchanan's "The Office: I Am Not :)" I definitely wasn't ready
to ban smiles from my working life. :-D

Since when did smiling become such a bad thing? :-? In an internet-based world where many of us never even see our colleagues, whether they're at a desk on the next floor or a desk in Hong Kong, these minimalistic yet expressive characters remind us that there's still a person behind the email. o:-)

I'm not saying I want to get an email peppered with "LOL's" and smilie faces. :-\
But don't you think that there might be something more to worry about -- like SUVs, which Ms. Buchanan should not accept as quickly as she does. Global warming is definitely something to :( upon.

Frankly, I'm glad Ms. Buchanan's not my boss. :-O! Otherwise, I can guarantee you that not only would my emails be void of personality, but my working demeanor would reflect the same. ;)

Come on! :) a little!
Rachel

In honor of going to see Ron White tomorrow night, I'm going to skip blogging for the night and grace you with some hilarious quotes of his.

• Yesterday I was sitting on a beanbag chair, naked, eating Cheetos and I was flipping through the televison and I saw Robert Tilton. He's a televangelist out of Dallas, and he was staring at me. He looked at me and said, "Are you lonely?" Yeah. "Have you spent half your life in bars, pursuing sins of the flesh?" ...This guy's good! "Are you sitting in a beanbag chair, naked, eating Cheetos?" ...Yes, sir! "Do you have the urge to get up and send me a thousand dollars?" Close! I thought he was talking about me there for a second! Apparently I'm not the only cat on the block that digs Cheetos.

• There was a guy down in Florida who said, that the age of 53 years old, he was in good enough physical condition to withstand the wind, rain, and hail of a force-3 hurricane. Now, let me explain somethin' to ya: It isn't that the wind is blowin'. It's what the wind is blowin'. If you get hit by a Volvo, it doesn't matter how many sit-ups you did that morning. If you have a Yield sign in your spleen... joggin' don't really come into play. "I can run 25 miles without stopping..." "You're bleedin'." "Shit!"

• I got thrown out of a bar in New York City. Now when I say I got thrown out of a bar; I don't mean someone asked me to leave, and we walked to the door together, and I said 'Bye everybody, I gotta go'. Six bouncers hurled me out of a nightclub like I was a Frisbee. Those big ol' bouncers that go home every night and watch "Roadhouse" and beat off. ..."Patrick Swayze hit another guy! Huh-huh-huh-huh-huh!"

• They had me do a field sobriety test. That's where you stand on one foot, raise the other foot six inches off the ground and count to thirty. I made it to "wuh". Is that gonna be close enough?

• Now, I'm between 6'1" and 6'6", depending on which convenience store I'm leaving, and I weigh about 235 lbs. Well, I didn't know how many of them it was going to take to kick my ass... but I knew how many they were going to use. That's a handy piece of information to have right there.

• One time I was watching a shootout live on CNN, and it went on for so long that eventually the criminal shot himself. And the cops are complaining by saying, "He's got on body armor, he's got on body armor!" And I'm thinking, "I can see his head! Shoot him in his fuckin' head!"

• Some friends of mine asked me if I wanted to go to a strip club, and I didn't... want to go. 'Cause -- back me up on this, fellas -- once you've seen one woman naked, you... pretty much wanna see the rest of 'em naked. It can be an old biker chick, you know they're gonna hang down to here. "Wanna see me naked?" "Yeah, I do!"

• Other states are trying to abolish the death penalty... mine's putting in an express lane.

• I believe that if life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade... And try to find somebody whose life has given them vodka, and have a party.

• I didn't get where I am today by worryin' about how I'd feel tomorrow.

• [My wife's] cooking's gotten a lot better since she learned the smoke alarm wasn't a timer.

• I never had much of a vocabulary...in fact my friend Bob Schnieder would still be alive today if I'd known the difference between "antidote" and "anecdote". He got bitten by a cottonmouth, and I'm telling him funny stories out of Reader's Digest.

• We're travelin' at about half the speed of smell.

• This guy next to me is losin' his mind. Apparently, he had a lot to live for. He asks me, "Hey man, uh, uh, hey man, if one engine fails, how far will the other one take us?" All the way to the scene of the crash. Which is pretty handy, 'cause that's where we're headed. I bet we beat the paramedics there by a half an hour. We're haulin' ass!

Subject: Does Being a Geek Preclude Customer Service?

Dear Mr. Anderson,

I am writing to you today as an extremely dissatisfied customer,
harboring a four and a half month grudge toward your company for its
poor customer service, poor follow up and poor general geekiness.

Most geeks whom I knew in high school fulfilled these obligations:
computer-savvy, overtly friendly to any girl who batted their eyelashes
and knew how to work Photoshop, and detail-oriented. So when I think of
incorporating those geeks into a company called "Geek Squad," I think
that I'm bound to get the technical attention I deserve. This is not
the case with your company.

I walked into the Best Buy in Austin, Texas on October 22, 2006. I was
there to purchase my first laptop computer. Over the years I had
received hand-me-down PCs from my sister and parents, but this would be
my first venture in computer ownership, and I had high hopes.

I was approached by one of your Geek Squad staffers while I was
eyeballing HPs on sale. He asked me what I hoped to do with my laptop,
and my answer was rather simple:

- I want to blog and surf the internet.
- I want to listen to music.
- I want to be able to make short videos.

The agent steered me away from the HPs and into the Toshiba section,
telling me that it was a far superior machine and that I should
purchase a Toshiba instead. He told me I could make movies and listen
to music and surf the internet all at once without any problems
whatsoever.

Nine hundred dollars later, I left the store with my new Toshiba Pentium
Duo, giddy with excitement. Your agents even talked me into purchasing
their services to set up my internet connection with the wireless
router I bought.

Every night from that day forward, my computer has frozen at least once.
At least once. When I am blogging, I apparently type too fast for it
to handle, and it freezes. When I open iTunes, apparently my musical
taste is too poor, and it freezes. When I am making videos, apparently
my videos are too sentimental, and it freezes.

I suppose I could blame Toshiba. But I couldn’t help but feel misled by
your agents whom recommended the brand to me, when I was there for an HP
(which I have used and enjoyed in the past).

I finally resigned myself to the fact that I had purchased a Lemon and
started referring to my computer as Lemon. So it was no surprise to me
when one day, Lemon went to sleep and never woke up.

I knew it couldn't be a virus - since your Geek Squad sold me as much
virus/spyware/firewall protection as possible. I decided to take Lemon
back to the scene of the crime: Geek Squad HQ.

This was Saturday. Sure enough, I ran into the agent who sold me the
computer. After harassing him for a little while, he told me that if
it was indeed a hardware problem, it was still covered under the
manufacturer's warranty. I said "Great, I'll leave it here to be
fixed." At which point he said, "Do you have the AC adapter?"
"No."

Apparently, unlike every other business in the world, you are required
to bring your own accessories when you drop off your computer. This
was the AC adapter that broke the camel's back and I flat out refused
to drive all the way home and retrieve my AC adapter.

"You cannot tell me," I said, "that you don't have an AC adapter that
will work with my computer, here in this store, this computer store."
The geek, sensing my anger, said "Well, we do have these."
He then walked over to a magical drawer and pulled out a bag full of
adapters, probably 200 of them. "But," he continued, "There's no
guarantee these will work with your computer."

He dumped the bag out on the counter and I started poking through them.
On my fourth try, the AC adapter clicked into place and -- wow --
problem solved. The geeks seemed proud of the fact that normally they
actually make people drive home to get their adapters. Why would
anyone give the geek squad something extraneous to not only possibly
break but also lose?

I left the store, having been told that they'd call me in 48 hours to
let me know how my computer was doing.

Three days later, on Tuesday, I decided perhaps I ought to call them.
Working in a customer service industry, this made me bristle somewhat.
Since when did it become okay not to call your client and give them an
update when they say they are going to?

The geek that answered the phone (by the way, Geek Squad needs to get
its own direct line separate from the Best Buy phone system, but that
is a whole different story) put me on hold for five minutes while he
went to get an update on my computer. He came back and told me that
they were still reloading my operating system and that it would be
ready on Wednesday. I asked what had ended up being wrong with it and
he told me they'd had to replace the hard drive.

"Does that mean the hard drive was bad?"
"We had to replace it."

So it was a lemon! I was actually glad to hear this, in hopes that I
would go back on Wednesday and pick up my computer and have it work for
the first time since the day I bought it.

"Will someone call me tomorrow when it's ready?"
"Absolutely, ma'am."

On Wednesday, I never received a call. So I called the Geek Squad to
see what the issue was. I got a different geek who put me on hold for
another five minutes.

"We need to reload your operating system. Do you have the CDs that came
with your computer?"
"I thought you reloaded it last night?"
"We don't have the CDs."
"Why didn't the kid yesterday tell me that you had to have the recovery
CD in order to reload it?"
"I don't know."

I was enraged. So tonight, on my way home from work, I am going to take
my recovery CD and pick up my computer. At least, that's what I am
going to try to do.

Don't worry about me, though. As soon as I get my computer back, I will
be able to rededicate myself to my blog. And you can bet that there
will be several more angry blog postings on MeanRachel.com telling my
readership what a mess the Geek Squad actually is.

Signed,
Rachel Farris
MeanRachel.com

Open question to the audience: When did life get so freaking hard?

Maybe this new apartment is cursed.
I called this evening to check on Lemon, because of course the Bastard Squad at Worst Buy didn't ever call me back to tell me to come get him. After being put on hold for an extraordinary amount of time, the geek came back and told me they had to reload the operating system, and "Do you have the CDs that came with your computer?"
To which I said: "Um -- what CDs? And I thought the operating system was reloaded last night?"
At this point the kid goes back to check and informs me that no, the operating system was not loaded last night and that they needed the CDs that would restore my operating system in order to do it. Funny how last night, the kid not only told me the wrong thing but neglected to tell me they needed my freaking CDs.
I yelled at the kid for a while, asking him why they couldn't just use a CD they had on hand. However, finally I agreed to come back in with CDs and take my computer.
That was before I got home and found out the dryer is broken. Yes, that dryer.
Excuse me for a moment.

AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

We finally got our washing machine to (kind of) work. Now the dryer doesn't heat up. What the holy hell.

Seriously.

It occurred to me out of the blue today...okay. I'm not going to lie. I have been thinking about this non-stop. I can't pretend like I just now thought of my computer and how he's been doing, but play along with me here.

It occurred to me out of the blue today that perhaps I ought to call and check on Lemon, since he's been at the Geek Squad headquarters for over three days. He's no doubt been dismembered and defragmented all over the place the entire time. What happened to "We'll call you in 48 hours?" Being that I work in a customer service based industry, when I get the chance I like to raise a little customer service hell.

Best Buy has a terrible phone system. Actually, all phone systems are horrendous. Did you know that phone systems have gotten so smart that when you press "0", instead of directing you immediately to a customer service rep (no doubt with a red light blinking "Impatient bitch! Line 4!"), they either loop back the original message all over again, forcing you to listen to all the options, or say firmly with a tone of compassion, "Okay. I think you'd like to speak with a representative. Mind if I ask you some questions first?" This happened to me today when calling the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines phone system. This is how the conversation then went down:

Mean: "Okay."
Autowoman: "How many passengers do you have?"
M: "One."
A: "Okay. What city and country are you departing from?"
M: "New York City, USA."
A: "Okay. What city and country are you arriving in?"
M: "Singapore, Singapore."
A: "Okay. Let me make sure I've got this right: You have one passenger departing from New York City going to Seattle, Wash---"
Meanest: "Oh for God's sake! Let me speak to a representative!" ::jamming the '0' button wildly::
A: "One moment please."

I finally made it through the madhouse that is the South Austin Best Buy phone system, and got a live person from the Geek Squad on the line. After a lengthy amount of time on hold, the geek (it's okay, I can call him that because he is) said "Well, we just had to reinstall the operating system so it should be ready hopefully by tomorrow."
"The operating system? So what was wrong with it?"
"The hard drive was broken."
"It was?"
"Well, we had to replace the hard drive."
"So it was a hardware problem?"
"Yes ma'am."
"Not a virus?"
"Nope."

I felt like doing the cha-cha in my car. User error? Not on my virus-free watch.
The good news is that I don't have to pay for it (or so said the geek - it could be a whole different story when I get there tomorrow to pick it up). It's covered under the manufacturer's warranty. You mean four month old computers aren't supposed to freeze every five minutes? Huh. Who would have thought.
The great news is that perhaps, when I get Lemon back, they will have pureed his broken ass into lemonade, and he will be a lean, mean, blogging machine that I won't have to degrade and yell at every night.
We shall see. I've been around technology long enough not to get my hopes up.

I got in an extremely heated debate at the SXSW party with a person whom I will keep anonymous for reasons of not wanting to enrage anyone.

My mom believes the world is getting better. She subscribes to the MLK-turned-Obama slogan that "The arc of history is long but it bends toward justice."
Perhaps I'm jaded. Actually, I know I am. You don't grow up in a candy-coated world of the millennium and .coms, and then watch everything crumble apart after a cigar and a stained dress leave office, and not wonder a tiny bit about how the world is supposed to work.
My frustrations with the world stem from a long time ago, when I didn't know what a blow job was and yet the President - the person who was supposed to be leading me as an American, not in Oral Sex 101 - brought his dirt into my life. And we ask why our generation, and the one that came after me, is so corrupt with their sense of self. Nine year olds can access Paris Hilton sex tapes with the click of a button, and then are dragged to church on Sundays and told "Abstinence is the way of God." We tell our children that success equals money and possessions, yet the very people who have this success - the Paris Hiltons of the world - are the ones who show us corruption. Teenagers today have existed in a conflict of interest since the day they were born.
The arc may bend, but who defines "justice?" Is it Bush? Was it Clinton? I still reflect on being thirteen and listening to Dr. Laura and Rush Limbaugh. I realize now that I wasn't just bored that summer - I was angry. I just didn't know how to express my anger or why I felt so betrayed. Is justice going through an impeachment trial and then drawing crows of tens of thousands for speeches? Is justice setting Gore up for failure, only to allow Bush to enter the presidency?
The definition of justice: the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness: to uphold the justice of a cause.
Where is the justice? Have you seen it? Because I don't. In the very place where justice should exist - the courtroom - men like Scooter Libby take the fall for the unjust's wrongdoings.

I could go on. I am angry at the world. I am angry at people obtain MBAs and work chair lifts in Boulder, when they could take their gobs of money and resources and do some good for somebody else. I am angry at the public school system for thinking that by going to class, you are preparing young people to go to work. I am fed up with how young people, who don't have money for college or the grades to get in, are told that if they cannot go to college or even finish high school, then they might as well start flipping burgers. We then wonder why these same young people are killing, raping, stealing and complain about how they're crowding our jails and wasting our tax dollars. Then these young people are recruited for the military, where the cycle perpetuates itself.

I keep trying to see the arc. I feel like I'm looking into a grey sky for a rainbow, trying to tell where the pot of gold is, but the haze cuts it off halfway. Perhaps at one point in time we were on our way toward something just and right.

But in my lifetime, I have yet to see it.

Through a convenient computer glitch, which deployed an email to my mother whom then forwarded the invitation on to me, I was made aware of a South by Southwest (SXSW) party co-hosted by mediabistro.com and salon.com, celebrating the kickoff of SXSW tonight.
My abhorrence of what I consider to be "Austin trying to be LA" lifestyle typically keeps me away from anything and everything associated with the musical-and-film-festival-turned-tourist-trap. However, I realized this party would be good for two reasons:
Free alcohol.
Free shameless self-promotion.
And so Mean Rachel herself swallowed her pride and headed down to Club Deville. After all the drama surrounding Lemon over the last few days (still in the place where computers go to die), it was hard to feel too inspired to go promote myself for a blog which I have adequately neglected this week. However, I was justly rewarded.
I spied Joan Walsh, editor-in-chief of salon.com, whose editorials I have cried over and whom I've enjoyed watching on various news shows such as Scarborough Country.
It was rather exciting to get to shake the hand of someone I have nodded vehemently toward during my nightly consumption of broccoli florets and red wine, and have her so graciously agree to take a picture with me.


Now I only have a short list of female leaders I'd like to meet. Actually, a very short one.

1. Jody Williams
2. Arianna Huffington