(no subject)

I had a really nice time with posicat and tybis last night. I rented a carpet cleaner to take care of the cat smell that Sabrina left there when her litter box was neglected during my illness, and they both decided to come up to Kenosha and keep me company. Due to problems with leaking and missing buckets ("They stole mah bucket!!!"), I didn't get as much done as I would have liked. But that's ok. Instead, I did the vital part, then was kidnapped (a kitty and foxxy making cute faces at me broke down my will to continue trying to clean) and taken to Big!Lots.

Once there, we found salami to put on top of the pizza I had in the freezer. I also had to call Andrea to find out if she wanted me to pick up a set of king size flannel sheets for our bed. Since she'd just been complaining about the near-impossibility of finding king size flannel sheets, I figured she'd be interested.

Tybis was a very nice foxxy and bought me an entire box of Oatmeal Cream Pies in the attempt to get me to eat. This has been succesful. He also brought me a little bar of Lindt 70% dark chocolate, which I unfortunately forgot to bring to work today. Thank you Tybis!

Seeing people at the house again was a really good thing for my mental state, even though I got worn out and had to go to bed early. Thank you both for coming by and keeping my company. It's a wonderful thing to have friends.

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I bought a razor and beard trimmer using the money that I got for the server that I sold on Thursday. They both suck. I'm going to see if I can return them and get better models later this week. I should have known better than to get the cheap ones, but; any recommendations for good electric razors that don't cost more than, like fifty or sixty bucks? I saw models up over a hundred bucks there....

(no subject)

It really hurts my brain when I get an email from someone who is almost certainly a native English speaker (judging by his last name and the fact that he is in sales) that is written in English as poor, or even worse than the emails we get from our contractors in India. An example that I just recieved a few minutes ago:

"I am needing to please set up a (software conferenceing system) account.

John Salesguy
My company"

And further down in the email chain, under his manager's approval:

" Hey (manager) will you send me a quick response to this e-mail giving me approval for setting up a (software conferencing system) account, so I can get this rolling, thanks!"

I would be embarrassed to send such a poor example of written expression to my manager.

This just leaves me so confused. Most of our sales staff use this flavor of randomly mixed grammar and phrasing when they contact us. To me, this looks like the writing of someone who's thoughts are cluttered and chaotic. Who won't, or can't, put the flotsam that bobs along the surface of their stream of consciousness into a something orderly and understandable. Yet, these are the people who are in the field going from client site to client site, the best of the good communicators, establishing relationships with clients and trying to give the impression that we aren't all knuckle-dragging apes who've just descended from the trees.

Do people in corporate America simply not care if you can't use your native language with any significant degree of competancy? Really, do they just not care? Why would you buy anything from someone who communicates this way?

(no subject)

Dinner with my parents and akreaveter was nice tonight. My mom mentioned in her journal that there's a zen meditation group that meets at the local Unitarian Universalist church on Tuesdays. I'm not sure if I'm really interested in the UU folks; I don't know much about them. I guess I'll read some. But, and though I'm a bit nervous about the idea of meeting a bunch of new people, my mom and I are going to go to the zen meeting this coming week.

I'm finding that I have lots of things to think about. I wonder if that will help.

In the meantime, I'm eating oatmeal creme pies, thanks again to Tybis. They don't have any chocolate, so they must be good for doggies.