The not-so-fired edition

172. The fact that I spent around a month freaking out day and night, slowly taking my belongings home bit by bit, in anticipation of being fired around Thanksgiving. Only it's now well past Thanksgiving and two days before a big company meeting and party. And apparently I'm speaking.
173. The fact that my now definitely-ex bf says we are definitely breaking up and we are definitely not going to have sex any more.
174. The fact that even though he was lousy in bed, I still feel a pang of regret.
175. I just ate an entire pack of cooked turkey bacon.
176. Realizing that I really, truly am a living-breathing drama queen. Oh, fuck...
177. That my poor fish is dying in slow motion. He's been lying on his side for three days. But every time I come near, he waves a fin at me. I am not kidding.

The commemorative pre-firing edition

165. Having my boss "secretly" start interviewing candidates for a job-like-my-job 3 weeks ago. How do I know this? The suit. She wore the interview suit.
166. My boss having 3 interview candidates into the office yesterday.
167. My boss speaking to me only once yesterday: To ask me for the quiz we use for interviewing people who do my job.
168. Asking my super-control-freaky boss for input on a big project Friday before I got started. Then Monday while I was 10% done. And still no feedback. Tomorrow we have the Big Meeting about the content.
169. The fact that everybody at my company thinks my manager is a fucking angel and so bright and "on it," when in fact she's an insecure, threatened bitch who forces me to execute half-baked ideas without helping to resolve the problems they cause.
170. The fact that Mom had a very bad wreck with a truck and was knocked unconscious. Her Firebird was totaled. And she told me all this in email a week later.
171. The fact that I will likely be fired tomorrow.

Night 22

162. Having the program manager call me out in front of the entire company because he doesn't want to accept the bug I think I've found in the software. Look, it's not my fault your fucking sw has to be full-screen to look almost okay.
163. Having a super-intelligent program manager pretend like he's an idiot who just doesn't get what I mean and yet, treat me like an even bigger idiot because he just doesn't get what I mean.
164. Bad job applicants. The unemployment rate is ridiculous. Yet I have so many resumes from quote-writers-quote or quote-editors-quote who can't even proof their own resumes or figure out where to put commas.

A tired night

161. I'm pissed that I spend so much time formatting and reformatting and re-reformatting the same crap.
162. I'm pissed that I worked until 10:30 last night because I had to spend 3.5 hours yesterday trying to figure out how to fix a numbering problem in HTML that it turns out couldn't be fixed.
163. I am very angry that my nephew, the self-righteous minister-in-training, is a blatantly antisemitic racist and hater of Catholics.
164. I am even angrier that my family gives this shithead a free pass to say anything he wants without a thought in his soft head for what it means.
165. I'm even ANGRIER that my mother, who is married to a Jew, tells me to basically shut up about this dumbass nephew's racism.
166. And PS today I sent her very expensive flowers for her birthday, and she is punishing me by not even acknowledging the present.
167. I have no real family.
168. I am born into a clan of two-faced morons.

A Thursday night

158. I'm pissed that my crappy ex, whom I KNOW is an asshole, liar, jerk, LIAR, JERK, who I think finally came home from Asia today, because he emailed me yesterday from the airport, is now avoiding contact when I debase myself by trying to call and chat on the PC. Yeah, I'm real pissed at both of us for that. I'm crying mad, that's what I am.
159. I'm mad that my work is so time-intensive and goes so slowly but I have exactly 14 days to get a Web site of old material revitalized and live.
160. I am so mad that I just don't have any time left to find real love. That I absolutely wasted nearly every year of my adulthood on phantoms. I'm crying mad about that too.

156. Meeting a great candidate for assistant and having my boss say she wants to get someone who's either in college or right out of college.
157. My boss saying, "I just wanted to find somebody with some spark. But I guess people like that don't stay [my 12-year career] very long." Yeeeaah. And who's still wearing turtlenecks and high school hair?

The Web site edition

140. All those stupid, loser-ass ads on the right margin of Facebook. I KNOW I'm single and lonely. I don't need your fucking "Jill and Stuart met and fell in love on Match.com" ad. I stalk my ex-bf on Fb as it is.
141. Lifehacker's new home page. It used to be where you could read the expanded or condensed version. Now that option's gone and the whole satisfying experience of being able to read long lists of tips is gone. For a site dedicated to solving problems, its Web site is a big one.
142. Posting an article comment on Lifehacker. I write a (well-informed voice of experience) post with five fairly original and useful tips for staying warm without turning up the heat. I spend half an hour crafting this. And the comment disappears into Comment Neverland.
143. DontDateHimGirl.com. I tried 3 times to post in detail (because they want you to post in detail) about how a certain ex totally jacks with women. And three times, this long, detailed, patiently written post fucking gets timed out or just disappears or joins my LifeHacker comments for drinks.
144. Bipolarworld Yahoo group. I have belonged. I have tried to speak the truth. And they cannot handle the truth. So I have left.
145."Sorority Life." A game that shows you how mean people really are, located on a timesucking site you cruise to get away from how mean people are?
146. The Fb app "Causes." Every day I log onto Fb because I want to tune out how inadequate I feel at work and how hurt I am from a breakup and the fact that I only have a fish to come home to, and there are these "X has joined Cause for Leukemia. Join X in supporting this effort," or "Help find Mary Lou's dog" or whatever messages in my inbox. You want to live and let live, but sometimes you finally have to write your evil good-doer relative to lay off.
147. Microsoft Outlook help. I kid you not, there is a circular reference on it about recovering your archived email files. It never actually tells you how to do it--just how to find out more about archiving. If I didn't have a vague memory of how to do it already, I would have been screwed. As in not being able to recover the emailed resume of the dwarf I had to interview 15 minutes later.
148. iTunes. What are you, Microsoft? Do you have to muscle in on every available processor timeslice and every kb of married-but-looking memory???
149. I'm gonna say it. Thisfish.com, the otherwise very entertaining blog. All these heartwarming stories about the author and her LIBF, the Dork Lord. And even with this huge "Dork Lord" in the tag cloud, I cannot zero in on their cute meet-up history. WTF? This is not "Lost."
150. Hulu. For the many of us who missed much of last week's first-run "House" episode due to MLB overtime, we couldn't hurry over to hulu and get our fix. They have to wait until the episode is at least a week old before posting it. Jesus, people. Don't stand between a junkie and her drug.
151. (Relevance: image search on Lifehacker's founder, who shall go unnamed as a rare display of respect.) Women with buzz cuts. If you're not Pema Chodron, quit with that pretentious I'm-not-into-my-looks crap. Is that why your image is all over the Internet with your horrible non-hair?
152. Windows 7 Launch Parties. I guess I won't be pictured tossing Jell-O shots with billionaires in Valleywag.
153. Amazon. Stop trying to read my mind and deepen my insecurities by suggesting more fruity self-help books like the ones I bought from you "privately" so I didn't have to face a Barnes & Noble cashier with those books and a name-bearing credit card. Do you also want to suggest brands and models of vibrators? Would that be your Valhalla? Bring it. And bring a box of tampons while you're at it.
154. Bing. Bing is even worse, if that is possible, than shopping.msn.com was. MS wields a broadsword to force people into the mindless collective. And they also don't know how to find the Coach bag I am all over the Internet for like a dachshund on a hot dog bun.
155. (Slight diversion: Web app.) Evernote. It's supposed to be this lifesaving organizer of data you find on the Web or whatever, and it's been on my favorites bar 3 weeks and I haven't found a single instance when it could do something that bookmarking or email can't.

10-20-09

134. Wearing a doomed satin blouse: The first I tried to iron it, it got water stains from the iron. Hello, drycleaner. This morning I got to the office at 6:30. I got coffee all over my cuff because of...
135. Horrible coffee accidents. I made coffee, it was French Roast, it was going to be really good. So meanwhile I go to check e-mail, happy my hyper boss hasn't sent anything, then I go back to the breakroom--and it's the fucking Ganges River! Approximately 60 paper towels later, I notice that my sleeve feels... wet.
136. The colors and they styles in the November J.Crew catalog. What is that crap, Charlotte Russe? Baby blue and baby pink winter coats? Ruffled cashmere cardigans the color of a dehydrated drunk's urine? Just ...no.
137. Condiments! How is this whole thing worked out? How much of what do you put with which condiment? And oh yeah, how do people eat that vile crap?
138. Gwen Stefani: How can she be (a) such a freak, (b) a rock star, (c) the wife of a rock star, (d) a model, (e) a clothing designer, and (f) a mom who wheels around a glittery gold stroller?
139. Electric blankets have automatic shutoffs after 10 hours. Except I happen to love staying toasty in my bed.

10-19-09

127. Missing House.
129. Missing Gossip Girl as well as House.
130. This book I tried, tried, TRIED to read by Robert Wright. He thinks women have no purpose after 35.
131. Wishing I could afford the clothes I want in J.Crew. And by the way, not being too old for them.
132. When I post on Facebook that I was finally victorious over the shitty software. And even put a link to "Hella Good" on it. And n-o-b-o-d-y cares.
133. Feeling too tired.

10-17-09

101. Shitty instructions or manuals.
102. SQL Server.
103. The 500 pages of ads in the 700-page Vogue September issue.
104. The fact that I can't remember what movie I last saw at the theater. Oh, wait, it was Moon.
105. Feeling compelled to work on a beautiful Fall Saturday afternoon.
108. Coffee stains.
109. The fact that the nephew I actually like wants to be a Bible-barfing preacher just like his more obnoxious and less intelligent big brother.
110. That I missed the whole Rick-roll thing.
111. The fact that Angelina Jolie still has boobs and a waist after birthing 3 kids, and she can still get away with leather bustier dresses.
112. I'm going to go with the pedestrian but true statement, here, that mean people suck.
113. The fact that I get catalogs and e-mail targeted for old people. Hello: AARP, ugly Chico's shit and and early bird specials--but still no fucking grocery store discounts!
114. The new Fame . Irene Cara, I remember your name!
115. My suspicion that Michael Jackson and Liz Taylor were such big buddies because she'd let him go in her closet and play with wigs and makeup.
116. Why do people care so much about sex? Really: You have about 40 minutes of pleasure a week (for awhile) and for that, you have to deal with laundry stains as well as financial and social manipulation. Then you realize not only does he think foreplay consists of just showing you his woody, he never bothers to get you off and finally he stops wanting to get off while you wait it out.
117. Windows Vista.
118. People who go 30 mph in the middle lane of a busy road because eventually, you're going to come up on a light that's turning red and all the other suckers around you will have to use their brakes and waste a gram of gas while you're sitting pretty and 12 cents richer!
119. Talking on cell phones in cars. If God wanted you to do that while driving, he would have given your dick fingers.
120. Every "teenager" on shows like One Tree Hill, 90210, or Gossip Girl is actually a short 20-something with 5 o'clock stubble or frown lines. Oh, and guys who live in Brooklyn (naturally in lofts) and are "poor" with no social contacts get their shit published in the New Yorker while they're in 11th grade. Kind of makes you wonder what planet they'll find somebody new to sleep with after they're 40.
121. The way dogs' claws scratch stuff up but particularly glass panels in expensive doors, wood floors, and leather car interiors.
122. The fact that every dog genetically knows how to get to your closet and has supernatural knowledge of which shoes you love the most.
123. Cat afterbirth. In the floor of your closet. On the shoes you have to wear with your interview suit.
124. Bathtub rings. I am not that filthy! How is my tub a fucking sandbox?
125. Living two houses away from a rec center with little kids' soccer tournaments and screaming parents from dawn to dusk every Saturday no. matter. what.
126. What makes Plano churches think they have to chime every hour of every day? They used to do it at the half-hour mark as well. But I heard somebody got shot.

100 things that piss me off in 1 hour and 12 minutes

1. Dallas Tollway traffic at rush hour. Any rush hour.
2. People in SUVs on the Dallas Tollway who honk their horn 10 seconds if you merge in front of them, then get beside you and make like they're going to ram you with their H3. Extra points for doing this at 6:45 a.m.
3. The bubble under my wood flooring in the hallway. It bends every time I step on it.
4. Office people who are lower than you on the food chain but insist on bulldozing some task on you that has to be done right away.
5. People who bulldoze their task on you, then try to make you sign off approval on their presentation without making your changes so if anybody looks bad for the errors, it's you.
6. People who bulldoze their work on you and then throw your work away, in effect wasting your time and patience.
7. Trying to learn a new job in an office where asking for help is seen as a weakness and indicator you probably shouldn't be working there.
8. Working for a software company whose product is so fucking ridiculously complicated to install (complete with background installs they also don't tell you how to do) that you can't load the product.
9. Being expected to install a fucking impossible-to-install software package to do your job.
10. Always getting gas after an evening glass of wine. It makes going to sleep difficult.
11. Facebooking your BFF from college and having them totally ignore you.
12. People on Mafia Wars who attack you and take your money while you're offline. Asswipes!
13. People who are late.
14. People who say "I'll come over at 5:00" but mean "I'll leave my house at 5:00 and get there at 5:30, and I will not call because I don't consider myself late."
15. People who circulate list-serv emails because they say email to 10 people within 24 hours. I am gonna break your chain that's been around the world 5 times so hard you'll hear the crack.
16. Beggars who come up to you and say "I'm not going to ask you for money. It's just that I'm having this treatment and I can't afford...".
17. Mercedes anything. Expensive pieces of shit where everything in the interior breaks.
18. People who used to come up to me and say, "How did you like your Saturn?" That's why I got rid of it. I didn't.
19. Manual transmissions. Spend a month driving in stop-and-go city traffic (first-second-first-second-third-second-try to decide which gear and grind the transmission while you ride the clutch-third) and tell me you want to live this way.
20. Squeeze bottles. Flip caps get nasty, and separate caps always get lost.
21. The new flip-cap style of toothpaste tube. I don't care how careful you are or which way you attack it, you are going to get strings of toothpaste crap everywhere.
22. People who almost use the bottom of a bottle of something then open a new one and leave the old one around without decanting the extra in the new bottle or throwing the old bottle away.
23. People who have three bottles of anything open anywhere but especially in the shower or fridge.
24. The fact that Coke has so many calories and turns your teeth brown.
25. The fact that Diet Coke has aspartame in it and never fails to give me a headache.
26. Glue that will not flow out of the bottle when you've done everything you can to unstop it.
27. Hairspray that gets dried gunk over the spray hole so it comes out at weird angles on your face or your outfit instead of on your hair.
28. Paying a fertility clinic $40,000 fucking dollars and getting nothing out of it but a breakup.
29. Guys who date you for 6 years and tell you they love you and they don't know what they'd do without you, then say they're not into sex with you right now and don't want to move in together--yet.
30. Guys who start Facebook accounts but "forget" to friend their girlfriends.
31. Bitches in San Antonio who make a whole lifestyle out of being The Piquant French Chick and leave messages like "When, darling [your boyfriend's name] are we going to have dinner?" in French on their walls.
32. Boyfriends who have 16 model-y female "friends" on their Facebook account you've never heard of before, then lie as much as possible to get out of trouble, then try to deflect on you that you're paranoid and controlling.
33. Tomato sauce stains that absolutely will not come out of brand new shirts you've worn once.
34. Magazines that email you that they've already renewed your subscription on your credit card as a convenience to you, so you have to call two people to un-renew it and refuse the charge.
35. Car dealership service departments. I don't need a fucking cappuccino, I need a not-$900 repair bill.
36. Young relatives who spout religion crap (the mean Old Testament stuff, not the merciful New Testament stuff) all over everybody and you have to look at it on your Facebook wall every day unless you ignore their status updates, then you miss the cool stuff they're doing.
37. When you're doing stuff that is technologically amazing but nobody in your family understands it (plus you're a girl) so instead they make a big deal about how your brother is a supervisor in his assembly shop now.
38. Badly. Written. Resumes. From. "Writers." Check your fucking tenses, capitalization, consistency, and spelling. And how about really showing off for me by using an industry-standard style.
39. Light-colored shoes with dark slacks. Even though they say nude-colored pumps go with everything, I'm sorry--they just don't.
40. Being 48 years old. And only a few months away from turning 49.
41. Crud in the grout between tiles. It's called CLR, people. Go to Walgreens and shell out $2.98 for that instead of Mini Reese Cups.
42. The grass in my yard that is so high due to all the rain, and the simultaneous muddy, swamp-like areas in my yard due to all the rain--so I can't mow.
43. Working people who talk about you in Spanish right in front of your face and never stop to think that you live in Texas and maybe you took it for 3 years in school and you understand EVERYTHING.
44. When people speak to you in French and even though you took that 3 years in college, you can't understand a damned thing.
45. Any pet of any age with a urinary or excremental "problem." Even though you've cleaned it up as well as you could every time and had the carpet cleaners out, I still don't want walk on that part of your carpet. Especially on your dining room rug.
46. Fleas.
47. Mosquitoes.
48. Hot water that never goes beyond pretty warm in the shower or tub, no matter how long you let it warm up.
49. Shitty coffee.
50. Sheets that just do not--I'm sorry, I'm not going to overlook it--fit your bed.
51. People who steal. Anything.
52. Throw pillows that either don't feel good when you try to use them for a nap, or people freak out if you mess up their arrangement.
53. Really good pens that run out of ink and then you can't replace them with something identical so you get something else that seems like it will be as good because it says "micro" but turns out to suck.
54. People who are so desperate for attention that they interrupt or talk over you every time you try to speak in a meeting.
55. Hair loss.
56. Vacuum cleaners that just blow the dust out of the back.
57. People who think athletic shoes or clothes are acceptable street clothes.
58. People who have somebody else's name (or even their own monograms) on every item they wear, carry, or use.
59. Leopard print. Especially on highly flammable fabrics.
60. Little girls under 13 whose parents think it's cute that their daughter wants everything she owns and wears to be leopard print. Just say no to the leo.
61. When your boyfriend, whom you haven't seen in 3 weeks and fly 2000 miles just to spend the weekend with, will not spend more than one waking hour without having his gaggle of friends along.
62. No. 61 plus points if your boyfriend is Italian (because they always travel in packs) and they speak nothing but Italian around you. Che figo, my ass. Che stronzo!
63. People who say, "Oh, I used to love the way you did your hair/the length of your hair before you changed/grew/cut it."
64. People who are not only cheap but stingy.
65. People who make a big show about spending a lot of money when you know they don't have jack and you'll wind up paying for whatever on the back end.
66. People under 78 without driver's licenses. Grow the fuck UP!
67. Ugly shoes.
68. When the DVR menu options are just slightly too small to see from where you're sitting, and you have to move, guess, or memorize.
69. Guys who take you out to dinner on your birthday and tell you to order anything on the menu, then get this pained expression on their faces when you order the lobster.
70. Cars that don't run.
71. Cars hiked up on cement blocks in guys' yards.
72. Guys who have 5 vehicles in various states of don't-work-hood in their driveways, yards, and the street beside their houses.
73. Phones where you have to press each key 3 or 4 times to get the right letter for texting or phonebook entries.
74. Big phones that feel like you're holding a book next to your face. No matter what Blackberry and iPhone do, just no.
75. Long hair all over the floor and stuck in the blankets, etc. Extra points if it's not yours.
76. No. 75, but with pubes.
77. Noisy ceiling fans.
78. Guys who come over to your house to spend the night and then complain it's too cold/too hot, they're not in the mood for what you planned to make and don't want to go to the restaurant you suggest, throw all the covers off themselves or take all of them, and complain they could definitely hear you snoring lightly despite their earplugs. For real, do you want me to go to the pharmacy and pick up your Xanax?
79. Pants that are too short or way too long.
80. Girls who try to look hot by wearing spike heels with long boot-legged (expensive) jeans-du-jour, then have to walk real slow and careful because they might get their heels caught on their pants and either (a) mess up their pants or (b) fall.
81. The fact that I "have" dark hair and my roots start to become obvious after 3.5 weeks so I have to go spend $60 plus tip every 4 weeks.
82. The fact that my colorist swears up and down that she started doing my hair a year ago this month and she specifically remembers I said I was going to a Halloween party dressed like a nurse, when she definitely didn't and I definitely didn't and even tell her I had a real nurse's uniform one time but burned it in the fireplace after dropping out of nursing school, but finally play along to shut her up.
83. The fact that my boss sends me e-mail at 5:38 a.m. on Saturday. Concerning stuff I can't possibly handle until Monday.
83. Why are there so many god-damned TV shows about surgery and suing?
84. Neighborhoods where every house looks alike and their doors and shutters are painted one of four association-approved colors.
85. The fact that every house costing over $150,000 and built in Dallas city limits between 1988 and 2005 has some kind of two-story-tall arched doorway or window.
86. The fact that there is more than one neighborhood in Plano, TX where the houses are built in pastiches of Italian, Spanish, and Victorian styles and have about 10' of lawn to their property lines and then have addresses like Chatelaine Way and Bourguignone Drive. I dare the post office to route that mail.
87. The fact that catching fish is kind of fun, but cleaning them is absolutely disgusting. Ninth grade biology without the formaldehyde.
88. The fact that in ninth grade our biology club got together and bought a cat to dissect, and actually cut the membranes holding its intestines together and then stretched the intestines between classroom windows and draped them over the shrubs.
89. The fact that I got really sick with the flu and bad fever for around a week, and my mom let my pet bird die of thirst and starvation.
90. The fact that my grandmother used to beat my dad with a board when he was a kid.
91. That so many people go without dental care or decent medical care or nutrition or shoes or warm clothing.
92. The fact that if you are flying a small aircraft in the New York/New Jersey airspace, your ceiling is 500 feet, and that is exactly where all the pollution gathers so you can see firsthand what we're doing to our air.
93. Guys who dump their loyal middle-aged wives and girlfriends for pieces of ass who can barely vote.
94. Guys who dump their wives and live with/have a child with/marry a piece of ass, then get taken to the cleaners because they were too stupid to get a prenup and lose their shirt before they come crawling back home--and then two weeks a month you have to put up with the asshole's very young lovechild and its bleached-blonde mother who has way-too-long fingernails and ignores you and talks about shoes on a cell phone while you wait for her to hand over the kid's things, and you can never-ever move someplace far away from the bitch who stole your husband and your nice house.
95. Pamela Anderson. You're old. Deal with it.
96. People who spell their names with more than one element of punctuation.
97. The fact that because I was once diagnosed (perhaps mistakenly) with a lesser form of bipolar disorder, I am a red flag to any insurer and now cannot get short-term disability that's worth the paper it's written on.
98. The fact that my 72-year-old mother drives a silver New Thunderbird convertible and I drive an 8-year-old silver Jetta.
99. Being unemployed or underemployed.
100. The fact that I was able to list 100 things that piss me off in one sitting and it only took an hour and 12 minutes.