Sunday, February 14, 2010

It's all in the DEETails

While most of the country is stocking up on batteries and firewood, here we are suffering through a plague of mosquitoes. It's been relatively wet for the last month, and apparently it's been warm enough for the little buggers to get crazy. I usually don't worry about clearing out pools of standing water during winter, which is why I was attacked by a swarm yesterday. My own fault.

Anyhow, since I was wearing a long sleeved sweatshirt, jeans, and hiking boots while digging weeds out of the lawn yesterday, the mosquitoes had to go after my hands. Do you know how annoying it is to have multiple mosquito bites on your fingers? It's irritating. Or maybe that's the malaria talking.

So here are some other things that have pissed me off lately:
  • The dog. First off, I love my dog. Really. You would know this if you saw my doorframes. But she was really annoying me this evening with her random barking and wandering around trying to find the cat food, so I gave her a bath. To be fair, there was no question that she needed a bath -- her nickname for the past week has been "Stinky McGee". However, she hates baths so much that I usually ignore the problem. Nothing makes you feel guilty like an elderly, blind, arthritic dog struggling to stand in the tub and whimpering. Tonight, though, I hardened my heart and got the deed done. As my reward she's been snoring on the couch for the past three hours.
  • People who can't do their jobs. I'm not saying that a firing squad is the answer (see how reasonable I am!), but people who consistently waste my time may have their email mysteriously forwarded to my spam folder.
  • Internet Explorer. It's a piece of crap. And yet it's the only browser officially supported by the company. Next they'll be claiming that the only operating system they support is DOS.

That's pretty much it. (Okay, that's a lie, all kinds of things set me off, but those are the worst of the lot.) Anyhow I'll leave you with a random anecdote that I still find funny after many years:

Jeff had some friends who absolutely hated potlucks. Instead of just refusing to go, they brought the same dish to every one so that they wouldn't be invited to the next: Vienna franks in lime Jello.

That's brilliance.

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