Month: January 2009

The Plan…

So, Gene is still in NJ (through Wednesday, so he can have face time with the Boss’s Boss), which I am bummed about but I also feel that timing is impeccable:

The W-2s are at the office and I have to have them…oh, let’s say the hell out of my office… by Monday night. No matter what. So, I’ll be at the office ass deep in W-2s tomorrow by 10-ish. Gwen and D both told me that I don’t have to work tomorrow but compulsive loony Elaine absolutely refuses. Think of how much I can get done without a zillion other people around to distract me! Maybe I’ll even use the Do Not Disturb feature on the phone so I won’t even have to listen to it ring. Such riches!

So, the plan is, I’m going to the chiropractor tomorrow at 9:30, then the office for a few hours, then I’m coming home and taking two rotten beagles to the dog park. And then I’m going to Cheeseburger in Paradise for a yummy cheeseburger and pina colada. Yippee! And after that? I don’t know but it will involve relaxing. And probably laundry.

Yep, that’s the plan. I hope the W-2s don’t take too much longer. I wonder what it’ll take to get the music from my iPod to play through White Dog’s speakers. I will have to figure that out.

Politics as Usual…

Did I tell you all that I was going to go be co-Governor of Illinois? Stefania, my coworker and former boss, and I were going to go run Illinois after Governor Blagoveich was ousted. Our theory was that we couldn’t do worse than him, right? We had big plans! We were going to work one day a week and spend the rest of the time with puppies. And Fridays were going to be Crazy Pants days in the office. (Fridays were going to be the day we worked, obviously).

It turns out that Illinois has a Lt. Governor. Oh well.

More music…

So, around Thanksgiving, the Muzak channel changed from “Cool Songs that Elaine doesn’t Automatically Hate” to “Hits of the 50s and Eeeeearly 60s” and stayed that way until a week or two ago. Actually, I liked the old music channel because I hadn’t heard two of my favorite old songs “Let’s Hang On” by Frankie Valli and “Hello Stranger” by Barbara Lewis in years (I now have them on the iPod, making my “Elaine’s Favorites” playlist officially the only playlist on the planet to include the above two songs AND “Wake Up Call” by Maroon 5).

Anyway.

One of my favorite things was when the Muzak would play “It’s My Party” and then “It’s Judy’s Turn to Cry.” Those songs are amazing! You really feel the narrator’s heartache in “It’s My Party” and then her triumph in “It’s Judy’s Turn to Cry”. I was trying to explain this to Stefania (old boss) a few weeks ago, how glad I am that Judy, that bitch!, got dumped right back. I mean, Johnny clearly is a loser not worth either girl, but that doesn’t mean that Judy deserves her.

(Don’t mind me, I’ve been meaning to get that one off my chest).

the chair affair…

(hee hee, that rhymed)

Ugh, chair is at FedEx. Finally. When my only time out of the office during daylight is my lunch hour, sometimes I have to do things I wouldn’t normally do, such as struggle with a screwdriver in a light Cheesecake City rainstorm. Additionally, I wanted the damned office chair out of the car (sooner or later it was going to put a hole in a window or upholstery) as every time I accelerated the stupid thing rocketed all the way to the back of the cargo area in the Murano.

Got home from work to find that FedEx has a package for us that requires a signature. 800GOFEDEX promised that I could sign for it (it was for Gene), so I decided to kill two birds with one stone (hey, it was what Betty would do) and get the chair (finally in two pieces) boxed up, sealed up, and the heck out of my life for at least the next 12 days.

FYI: even half of an Aeron office chair weighs a fuck ton. My back is KILLING me. If I end up missing work right now because I was trying to be a good wife I will be SO upset. Lugging that box through the house, into the car, out of the car and into the FedEx office 20 miles away was rough.

More FYI: if the instructions on disassembling a chair tell you to sit on the chair and press the lever to lower the chair, do not scoff at it because the center support is already on the ground and the seat is broken. Just sit on the damned chair and press the freaking lever. Trust me.

Furthermore FYI: this chair is now in so many pieces I am terrified it won’t go back together. The back of the chair is in one piece, the seat and bottom of the chair (minus the casters) are in a carton on their way to Illinois for repairs, the casters, the screws from the back of the chair and the screws from the “comfortrest back” part that gave me such fits are in a shoebox in my living room. By God, if something happens to that shoebox in the next 2 weeks, I will run into traffic.

what the heck?

So I cracked open the W-2s today and they are sorted who the hell knows how. I mean, not alphabetically, not by city or state or location number. Just some random who the fuck knows method. Apparently our payroll provider outsources the W-2 stuffing to the company that hires homeless people to hold “STORE CLOSING” signs on the side of the road at the mall.

I haven’t been that stunned in a long time. It was so bad that I just couldn’t tell my boss, Gwen, about it. I think I was hoping that if I walked away, magically the problem would be fixed. So I tried that a few times to no avail. Oh well. So Gwen and I sent fuming emails to our rep at the payroll provider as well as the salesman who sold us the system. I left at 12:45 for a doctor’s appointment (nothing serious, just my usual shrinky-dink appointment) and by the time I returned at 2-something, the rep had driven from South Cheesecake to our office to pick them up. He’s spending tomorrow sorting them. I’m sorry I missed getting to say “hello!” to him but also, these W-2s have been a Battle Royale and frankly, Groundhog Day will not come too soon. (Jan 31 is a Saturday so we legally have until 2/2/09 to send them out and I know this because I have said this 10,000 times, never believing we’d actually have to use those extra days, but, here I am).

So far, no one has called me to ask for their W-2 forms from an entirely different company (no, we’re not IHOP, Cracker Barrel or Sonic, sorry) but two different people have called to bitch at me because their W-2s are wrong. “Umm, they haven’t been sent out yet. That W-2 is NOT from us.” (shakes head).

Oh, and some dork keeps calling me – sometimes 3+ times a day – to ask when they’re going out. I don’t know if she’s too busy smoking crack to hear my answer, because the 12 o’clock show is the same as the 9 o’clock show is the same as the previous day’s 4 o’clock show. The answer is NO LATER THAN FEBRUARY 2. And NO I WILL NOT FAX YOUR W2.

(Seriously: if it’s a friend or family member calling to fuck with me, you suck. Harumph).

(And for the last time, when I say “If you don’t have it by Valentine’s Day, call back” I say “Valentine’s Day” because a) everybody knows when that is, b) It’s a Saturday so I won’t be in the office, heh heh and c) The Internal Revenue Service will not give – and I am quoting them directly – a fat flying fuck about your W-2 until the 15th. Which is a Sunday. So maybe 2/16 instead.)

Grumble

1) The W-2s arrived from our payroll provider today. Complete with the 800 fucked up W-2s all mixed in. Great, so you sent me 4000 good W-2s and 800+ screwed up ones? Like THAT won’t be a major disaster. Ughhhh. The rep suggested I just send them all out, letting my people know that “they may receive a second W-2.” As if the employees wouldn’t be halfway to H&R Block so they can spend their refund windfalls on diapers, formula and Busch Lite. Geeez, dude.
2) So I broke Gene’s fancy office chair the weekend before he left this time. The plastic on the seat is cracked, no bones about it: the chair is buh-row-ken. Mercifully, the chair is 4 years into a 12 year warranty, so it’s covered. Meanwhile, arranging the whole thing has been a huge headache. They faxed me directions on how to take the stupid chair apart except apparently they have never seen a Herman Miller Aeron chair before because they were shocked that there is a wire connecting the top half of the chair to the bottom half. And the wire is held there by a screw. And in great news, the fucking screw is in there good and tight. Gene said I should take the chair to work and get some man to unscrew it for me. So now Gene’s chair is in the back of the car so I can try and beguile a coworker into not completely stripping the screw (a job I have begun all by my lonesome). Why does everything have to be so hard?? I am thisclose to taking the entire chair (and the handy prepaid FedEx label) to FedEx Kinkos and just letting them handle the shipping back. I wonder if they’d charge more? I just want Gene’s freaking chair to work another 8 years because there is no way in hell we can buy another one of those chairs.
3) In better news, in only 3 months I will be on a short vacation to Florida. Gene inexplicably fell for the sales pitch from M*arriott Vacation Club so we are going to FL for a little vacation. If I can just survive the W-2 season, I will be home free. (The W-2s are killing me. Today, I had a girl call me THREE FREAKING TIMES about her boyfriend/husband/brother/jailhouse lover’s W-2. Get a freaking life).

25 Things, a crosspost from Facebook

1) I blog at laineyd.com. (I know, Duhhh right?)
2) I just found a problem with around 900 of my employer’s W-2s for 2008. I hope my boss remembers this the next time I forget to do something minor. (I talk about W-2s a lot this time of year, it’s just a weird thing about me)
3) I don’t always like my job – okay, I almost never like my job – but I am inexplicably committed to it.
4) When my husband is out of town I spend a lot of time on Pogo.com.
5) Okay, I do that when he’s in town too.
6) I also try to spend time reading and writing.
7) I finished The Time Travelers Wife earlier this week and cried like a baby.
8) When I was on vacation in Kuala Lumpur, I read 6 books. It was like a dream.
9) I have a degree in journalism but I have never, ever used it.
10) July will mark the 10th anniversary of graduating from college.
11) January marks the 8th anniversary of being a payroll clerk.
12) The above two facts are just sad.
13) I don’t have any children, but I have a stepson and two dogs. My husband says I can have three dogs and no babies or two dogs and one baby.
13A) It’s probably time to just get a third dog
13B) If for some reason we had triplets, would I have to get rid of the dogs?
14) I miss Indiana. I like where I live now and I love our house and our life, but I do miss Indiana.
15) I wish I’d stuck to my guns and voted for Stephen Colbert in November. Obama still won even without my vote. Heck, I don’t think my state ever officially was “called” either way.
16) 2009 feels a little bit like 1993 (the year Bill Clinton was sworn in as POTUS), but not quite as “It’s a wonderful whole new world!” as it was then. Then again, I was a teenager in 1993 and now I’m an adult. Makes sense I’d see things differently.
17) As I said above, I love living here (a large city in the Southeastern region of the US) but I hate it when people suggest everyone here is a hick. Southerners aren’t stupid.
18) For cryin’ out loud, they invented sweetened ice tea. How dumb could they be?
19) I lie about my age, but I do it humorously. I change my age frequently. It’s gotten to the point where even my own dad doesn’t know my real age. (31 going on 32)
20) My little brother just turned 29, so I am going to start telling people that we are fraternal twins.
21) I don’t know if my dad will buy that, though.
22) I love to do math in my head. I can’t sum big numbers but I do pretty well.
23) My high school senior prom was the only school dance I went to in high school.
24) I don’t know if I’ll ever have a kid, but if I do, I’d want her to grow up just like me.
25) Or else become a cheerleader. For real.

Nothing new under the sun…

Here is the latest with me:
1) Hit another high today in terms of people visiting this site. Just in case any of you had it open and just kept hitting refresh in case I posted something fabulous and new, here is your reward. (Suckers)
2) Finished The Time Travelers Wife, a pretty good book. After I finished the book, I laid down on the dog bed (a/k/a our couch, now that the real couch is gone) and cried like it was my new hobby. I thought about if I could travel through time when I would travel to. I considered early 1993 and Christmas 1997 for entirely different reasons. If you like to read fiction, I do recommend this book. Very good.
3) Found a massive issue with our W-2s. I am so freaking glad they haven’t been received by the employees yet. If I had to deal with THAT I’d go nuts. The downside is that it’s going to be very tight, getting the W-2s turned around and sent out before 2/2.
4) I haven’t done anything with the Illicit Gymbo Stash yet, but I have leads on two different secondhand stores in the Cheesecake City area that I think will take them off my hands. I’ve considered asking what they’d pay for the MBUS and accessories but I don’t have high hopes and I don’t think I want to get rid of the MBUS yet. (Not sure what I’m waiting for).
5) I am glad that the Inauguration is complete and Barack Obama is our president. As always, good luck.

Good night!