Back on facebook

And it’s about damned time!

Still a Facebook reject!

Now I’m getting seriously pissed off. And I have no way to retaliate. When I receive less than satisfactory service, I typically have something that I can hold over someone’s head – like the name of a supervisor, or a threat to use my media reach for evil, not for good.

For example, Tomek (alias Tom) of Stanley’s Granite and Marble, the contractor who installed my countertops some months ago managed to dent my (brand new, expensive) microwave in the process. I only used Tom because he was referred by a friend who’s a restauranteur, and now I regret it.

I didn’t notice the dent until he had conveniently left, with my final check for the job in his hot little hand. When I called him, five minutes after he had packed up and was on the road, he seemed apologetic and really nice. He promised to call with a plan. After a few weeks of promises, promises, promises, I began to seethe with anger – particularly since I have to look at that dent every single day. It’s like a knife wound on the cheek of a beautiful woman.

I’ve been relentless about calling him. I think he thought I would walk away after his refusal to answer the phone multiple times. Not so much. There’s a note in my office, on my computer screen that reminds me to call him at least twice a day from all four of my phone numbers – cell phone, blackberry, office phone, home phone. I’ve even sent a few text messages. Contacting Tom is as much a part of my day as going to the bathroom.

I’m like that stalking crazy ex-girlfriend that eventually receives a restraining order from her exasperated ex-boyfriend/obsession. The exciting part about this, however, is that I’m legally in the right. He can take his happy, microwave-breaking ass to the police if he wants to. In fact, I wish he would so that we could get this over with.

I finally caught up with him last week. The conversation went something like this:

Tom: This is Tom
Me: Hi this is Gina – the person who’s been trying to reach you about the microwave?
Tom: Oh, Gina! Hi! I know . . . I’ve been meaning to call you about the microwave.
[Nervous laughter on his end. Icy silence on mine]
Me: Yeah, well we need to straighten that out.
Tom: Will you be home tonight?
Me: No, but I will be home tomorrow.
Tom: Okay. I come tomorrow [sic], and we’ll get this straightened out
Me: Great. I’ll be home around 6:30.
Tom: I will see you tomorrow evening.

I called him the next day to confirm, even dangling the bait of potentially having more work for him (yeah, like I’d ever hire him again). No response. And as I suspected, he didn’t show.

Could I be angrier? Probably not.

So . . . I’ve decided to use my talents to get back at him. (Not what you’re thinking! )

The first step was to amass a list of the most popular review sites for home improvement (if anyone has a suggestion, please leave it in the comments).

The second step was to leave a scathing voicemail. Up until now, I had hoped to kill Tom with kindness. Now I’d like to kill him with the nearest blunt object – or perhaps wrestle my dented microwave from the wall and crack him in the head. But, since orange isn’t my color, and I don’t think I could bear sharing a cell with Da Brat, I decided that a mean message would have to suffice.

“Hi Tom. This is Gina. I think you know who I am. I’ve continually attempted to contact you regarding my microwave, and it’s become increasingly clear that you have no plans to fix it. Which is a problem. It’s a problem for me, because it’s entirely unacceptable for you to break things in my home, take no responsibility for it, and continue to waste my time by allowing me to think that you’re going to fix it, when you clearly have no intention of doing so. Until now, this hasn’t been a problem for you, which is very unfair. So . . . here’s what I’ve decided to do. Just to balance this situation, Tom, the first action I will take is to give you bad reviews. On every website. With every person I know. With every contractor. With every friend. I’m going to give you tremendously bad reviews because you deserve them. It will be my personal mission. If you would like to fix the microwave, I will stop. If not? Well . . . let the games begin. You have a great day.”

Now . . . there’s a good chance that Tom will never listen to that message. If I were Tom and I saw a message from me, I would be less than enthused about picking it up. I would even delete it before listening to it. No problem. Even better if he doesn’t, actually, because he will go online one day and do some ego-surfing, at which time he will be surprised at what he finds.

He might never pay for the microwave – in fact he probably never will. But I’m certainly going to make this situation memorable for him.

I haven’t yet figured out step three, but when I do, trust me when I tell you that it will be a whammy!

The moral of this story – don’t fuck with the appliances of a vindictive woman.

If you see me on Judge Judy one day, don’t be surprised.

Kicked out of Facebook? wtf???

So, this morning, I was trying to access a video sent to me by one of my Facebook friends. I was informed that I had the wrong version of Flash, and was instructed to “click here” to install the new one. I clicked. Nothing. I clicked again. Nothing. I clicked a third time, and afterward a fourth. Still, nothing. Then I said, fuhgeddaboutit . . . I’ll just view the video later. But then the computer started doing weird things. The next thing you know I get a menacing red message that says something like “Your activity is that of a spammer, and you’re disabled from Facebook.”

Spamming? I was trying to download a video for Chrissakes! I wasn’t spamming.

For some reason, I thought this was an easily rectified problem. I would write to Facebook, and tell them that I am innocent of this alleged crime, and instantly get reinstated.

Not so much.

I’m still waiting for the Facebook team to react. Mind you, it took less than 30 seconds to disconnect me, and we’re going on 24 hours to get even a response from their customer disservice department.

I’m not a happy girl, because I’ve become addicted to Facebook. I hope I don’t have to rebuild my profile when I’m finally reinstated as a member in good standing.

Coming back to haunt me

I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about the saga of my right knee. It’s never crossed my mind, but today it’s actually relevant, so here goes. Sit tight. This is a long one.

Many years ago, I suffered a knee injury while playing intramural football in college. As an aside, if anyone asks you to play in a game of powder pull flag football, do yourself a favor and say no.

I went in for the play, felt a snap and the next thing I knew I was laying on the ground with a bunch of sweaty college chicks peering over me. I went to get up, partially embarrassed, yet somehow happy because I’d successfully nabbed the flag. Getting up was futile. I couldn’t even mobilize my muscles to get up, like my body had forgotten how to lift myself.

Did I want to go to emergency? Of COURSE I didn’t! But it was clearly a necessity, as I didn’t see how I was ever going to make it up to my dorm without assistance.

So, the lovely security truck drove me to the closest clinic/emergency center. After an x-ray it was determined that my leg was not broken, although it was rapidly swelling to the size of a small country. They cut off my pants leg, ruined my favorite pair of dance tights, put a splint on the leg, taped me up, and said that I should go to a specialist. I got a painkiller (as it turns out, the best part of my day).

I continued as a gimp for about 2 days, and when it was clear that this injury would never remedy itself, I set myself about finding a specialist.

I was in LA, and found the best surgeon that my young resourceful crippled ass could find. He was recommended to me by a member of the surf team, who told the story of how he broke his leg in a million pieces, and wasn’t supposed to walk again. This doctor fixed him, and he was back to being a highly ranked professional surfer. If the doctor was good enough for him, he was certainly good enough for me.

I got an appointment with doctor and when I arrived for my appointment, I found it funny to be sitting among large football players, and found joy in legitimately being able to tell them that I, too, had a football injury.

He suggested surgery. I protested initially, until he challenged me to squat. He crossed his arms smugly as I attempted this impossible feat, and was thrilled when I eventually agreed to go under the knife.

Now . . . I could bore you all to pieces about the process of the surgery, how my roommate passed out in the hallway and broke her tooth when coming to pick me up from the hospital, and my horrific rehab process. But I won’t.

I’ll just tell you that after surgery, I was informed that I had severely damaged my PCL, posterior cruciate ligament, and that it had been removed. Removed, but not replaced.

I started rehab, and eventually my knee was healed, but pretty unstable. I ended up transferring schools, largely because my knee wasn’t healing very well, and my parents were concerned that the terrain of the campus (and my party schedule) were interfering with progress.

This was all fine until some years later when a freak boxing accident caused a miniscal tear. (don’t ask)

I was back in Chicago by this time, and I went to see another sports medicine guy. Dr. Nuber is the surgeon for the Bears and has a great rep (only the best for me! LOL)

Anyhoo . . . I told him my story, he examined me, and sounded skeptical about my last surgery.

Have you ever been to the hair salon, and your stylists asks you “who cut your hair last?” Same thing here, except with knee surgery. Kinda scary.

Had an MRI, and it was revealed that I had a posterior cruciate ligament. What was missing from my leg was my ACL (anterior cruciate ligament), which makes a hell of a lot of more sense.

He wanted to repair the ACL then and there, since it was determined that I would need a scope to cut the torn meniscus, but for some reason, I decided that I didn’t want to be away from work for so long.

I have no idea why I made that decision. Here are the factors 1) He was already in there, and I was already sedated. I had to rehab anyway, so why not? 2) I HATED that job, and should have been finding ANY excuse to get out of there. As it turned out, the woman who ended up being my “boss” was a lying whore (seriously . . . no exaggeration there. Her name was Noreen, and my little nickname for her was Whore-een), she was eventually investigated for racial discrimination (I was a happy witness, having heard her make MANY inappropriate comments), and the company had to basically boot her in her alcoholic ass to get rid of her many years later. But I digress . . .

So, he scoped my knee and cut out the torn miniscus with the warning that my knee was probaby not going to get better — TRULY better — without the necessary ACL reconstruction.

This brings us to now. Several years later and my knee is achy, uncomfortable, and I can’t fully participate in any great sports. Not being able to run is no loss, but options are everything.

I revisited Dr. Nuber the other day and he gave me my options, which were a) live with an unstable leg (an option that he delivered with no excitement), b) replace the ligament with that of a cadaver, or c) replace the ligament with one of my own tendons.

Unless the Dr. looks at my MRI results and decides that , with a bit of rehab, my knee will be fine, I think the prize is behind box B – but we have to make the deal that the cadaver is not from a 70-year-old who died of a debilitating disease. I want a young cadaver! Someone whose life was tragically ended while in the midst of a prime athletic career. I want the bio of the cadaver. Since this muscle will be living inside my body, I want to know things, like what nationality is the cadaver? Was the cadaver liberal, and would this person mind his/her muscle living on inside of a black woman? Would the cadaver be male or female? What was the cadaver’s aspiration? Did the cadaver come from a broken home?

This sounds silly, I know, but there’s something interesting about the thought of putting someone else’s muscle inside of my body.

I have my MRI today to assess the damage to the knee. We’ll see what happens.

Blogabsent

I haven’t blogged in what feels like forever. A lot has been going on. Because I have a penchant for bulletpoints, I’ll lead with the most important . . .

1. My father had surgery. He was diagnosed with colon cancer a few months ago. Really? Could 2008 get worse? Well . . . it actually got better. He was diagnosed during a routine colonoscopy, when the doctors found 2 polyps. One was harmless, the other was larger and cancerous. It was decided that it was contained. His CAT scan was clean. He wasn’t optimistic given what we went through with my mother. I, however, had received opinions from every oncologist who would listen, and based on their reviews of his path report, he would likely be okay. He had surgery to remove the area last wednesday, and I’m happy to report that he’s CANCER FREE!! Hooray! He feels SO much better, and I, of course, am on cloud nine, and thanking the Universe every day that he’s okay. Now if I could just keep him from overdoing it. A good problem to have.

2. I released a new column last Friday. I didn’t link to it right away. My bad! It’s all about when to exchange keys. Go here and check it out.

3. I took new headshots for the column. In fact, all of the RedEye columnists took new pics. I hope these actually look like me, as opposed to the other ones, which look like . . . well . . . someone else, I guess.

4. I’m preparing for our annual yard sale! Well . . . it’s not always annual, just for the last two years. Three of us — all ex-colleagues — combine our high quality merchandise (read: crap) and haul it Evanston to raid Jean’s yard. I’m selling a lot of my mother’s clothing, and I’m anxious to find buyers who will really enjoy it. I have SO much stuff, and I hope someone takes pity on me and buys it. Come on out!

5. I had my performance review. The good news is that I still have a job.

6. I think this is the year — the year that I finally cave in and get knee surgery. I’ve had two, and I need one more to get my ACL reconstructed. I’m not looking forward to it, but seriously? I’m certainly not getting any younger, and the older we get, the worst this surgery becomes. I have an appointment with my orthopedic surgeon on Tuesday, who will undoubtedly try to kick my ass for not coming in sooner. He wanted to completely fix my year nearly 10 years ago when he operated on me the first time. I can’t hardly wait.

7. I saw Dark Knight. Loved every second and mourning the loss of Heath Ledger more than ever. Also thinking that Christian Bale is kinda hot.

8. I saw Pineapple Express. I can’t get that time back.

9. Speaking of time . . . where the hell did the summer go? I guess that was really more of an observation than an activity.

Other than that, glad to report that I haven’t caught anyone having any meals in the bathroom lately.

Clubfunk

I just returned home from an evening at Lumen where I’m sure I was a) the oldest (because I’m not 22), and b) the fattest (because I’m not a size 0).

I’m also pretty sure that I smelled the best.

I made an observation that was so strong that it forced me to return home in the middle of the night and fire up my laptop — I never thought I would miss smokers.

I used to detest club smokers — even when I was one myself. I hated the smell, the mess, the fact that they could burn you haphazardly as you walked by, the smokers who enjoyed dancing with cigarettes in hand, and the smell of my hair in the morning when I rolled over, or the nasty scent of stale second hand smoke on my clothes (that precluded me from getting a second wear out of that pair of jeans).

But here’s the thing . . . ever since smoking was banned in Chicago, we have other odors to contend with.

A few weeks ago I was at Sonotheque, and marvelled over the malodorous BO that was as prevalent as the house music being blasted through the speakers. Seriously? It was like a busload of people who are violently opposed to bathing were let loose in the club. It was absolutely horrible.

And then, tonight? I don’t know what the Lumen crowd had for dinner, but there was an epidemic of bad gas flowing through the club. I don’t think my olfactory nerves will ever be the same again. WTF??? Is anyone working on a vaccine for bad gas?