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.

The weekend and kitchen issues

The weekend was fun. I went to a boxing match with a few friends. I like boxing. I used to box, in fact. I trained for 4 years and a few times my trainer (who’s also a promoter) asked if I would ever consider taking off the head gear and fighting professionals. I thought about it for a total of 5 seconds – enough time for my father’s disappointed face to appear in my mind. Also running through my head was the image of my nose being shoved to the other side of my face by a manly-chick-kissing-woman who wears her broken cartilage like a badge of honor. I think not. I do enjoy a good spar and it’s fun to go to the matches. They’re gritty and raw.

Celebrated a friend’s birthday for the first time (we will be celebrating again on Friday). And last night, went to see “21” with Kevin Spacey. Great movie. I’m now obsessed with learning more about the true story upon which the film is based. I swear, I need to spend more time watching documentaries.

Another highlight of the weekend was countertop and tile shopping. I’ve been on a kick to update my kitchen. If for no other reason than my kitchen sucked when I bought the place, and the last 8 years has only solidified the sucking. Laminate countertops are the worst, and I don’t care what that woman on HGTV’s kitchen remodel show says – laminate may have come a long way . . . but it still sucks.

So, I went to pick out new ones. I thought I had settled on quartz, because it’s supposed to be less maintenance than granite. That was until I actually laid eyes on the quartz. Not so much. Now I’ve decided to revert back to my original decision of granite.

There’s so much involved here. I’m overstimulated by choices. Once I select the countertop, I need to choose a backsplash . . . and a sink! Not only is this adding up, financially, but I’m stressed to death over it. What if I choose a countertop, and I hate it once installed? What if my backsplash clashes with the rest of the kitchen? What if the grim reaper shows up and takes me in the middle of the night? (That last one is probably the least ominous, because I would actually be absolved of my countertop selection responsibilities.)

I’ve narrowed it down to two styles – one is very dark. One is dark, but not as dark as the first one. Initially I said I didn’t want dark, yet here I am, drooling over dark granite. And then there’s the matter of the backsplash. I want small glass tiles, but what color? More decisions!!!!

It’s raining but i have to review a bar tonight. I swear, my work is never done.

After a long blogging vacation . . .

Lots to blog about. I’ve come to the realization that the blogging gets away from me. It just does. Between work, and work, and the column and my family and needing a few glasses of wine from dealing with the abovementioned, the blog falls by the wayside.

However, I’ve been coerced to keep a more regular schedule because it helps me. Blogging helps me vent, sharpen my ranting claws and communicate. I so love to communicate. Really, I do.

So, here are a few things that I’ve been dying to blog about over the last few weeks:

Halloween – fortunately my house wasn’t egged or vandalized. At least not that I’ve yet realized.

Drex in the Morning on KISS-FM – I love listening to 103.5 in the morning. Granted, I don’t always drive in, but whenever I do, I make sure to tune in. They have the best topics. For example, this morning the topic was “My significant other’s kids love me, but I hate them.” I had to weigh in on this one. I called in, and Mel T. started in on me immediately to tell me that I don’t return e-mails. WHAT? I have no idea what address they’re using, but I would have written them back immediately had I received a message.

The story I shared was about a guy I dated MANY moons ago, who had the most unruly kids ever. I would find anything to do rather than hang out with them. And the interesting thing is that they really liked me, despite the urge I controlled to take them across my knee and give them the non-politically-correct spankings that they needed.

And, as an aside, what is it about the fear of spanking these days? Let me be clear – I was spanked as a child. But . . . was I abused? Absolutely not. Before you call DCFS for retroactive parental arrest, relax! I don’t have any permanent scarring, and I’m not in therapy trying to deal with my parents’ disciplinary tactics, or feeling guilt, or shame, or whatever it is that people like to say is the root cause of their fucked up adult behavior and inability to deal with life. (If you’re one of those people, don’t e-mail me or leave foul comments. My opinions will remain the same.)

The truth is, I was a bad-assed little kid. Plain and simple. I know exactly why I got each spanking, and I can say with surety that I deserved every one, and never repeated the act that got me spanked in the first place. I will even go so far as to say that the mere threat of my mother’s wrath kept me from doing a lot of things that I shouldn’t have. Before doing something questionable, I imagined the spanking, and thought better of it. Because, really? After you administer a few good spankings, you can stop, because the memory lives on. My mother only had to look at me, and I would stop dead in my tracks.

I have friends who refuse to spank their kids. Some are lucky enough to have mild-mannered kids who are really good kids and fine without the occasional swat. Others . . . well, let’s just say that some of them are raising little criminals in the making who run the household, and could stand an afternoon with my parents to straighten out some of that behavior.

And what’s the rebuttal? “I don’t want to stunt his creativity!” or “Spanking is abusive. I just think it’s wrong!” You know what’s really wrong? Wrong is kids who bring guns to school, or have no fear of authority or don’t respect adults and think that they can say and do whatever they want. See if time out cures that problem.

The real problem is that there are people that go too far. Our country is full to bursting with citizens who don’t know when to stop and then laws have to be set by what the most extreme, out-of-control person is prone to do. It’s not enough to have anything in moderation — it has to be done to death.

Doctors can’t tell pregnant women that it’s okay to have an occasional glass of wine because there’s someone out there who thinks that ‘occasional’ means once every two hours. And those are the very women who will sue their doctors when their children, carried to term, weigh in at .86 pounds. Some of anything probably won’t kill you. The occasional spanking will not hurt a kid. Every day bludgeonings with an extension cord is a bit much.

Really digressed on that one. Let’s see . . . what’s next?

My new appliances, that’s what!! I used to have white, generic appliances. They were Kenmore, which is a good brand, but really not the sexy stainless steel that I had in the old place. I missed my sexy stainless.

So . . . I finally broke down and took the plunge. I’m SO glad I did. I mismatched the brands because I wanted the big Maytag, French door fridge with the ice and water in the door, but I also wanted the GE range with the griddle in the middle. The good news is that the handles match so that my kitchen doesn’t look like a hodgepodge of random appliances.

My cleaning crew was at my house today, and I hope to God they knew what to clean them with. Somehow those people manage to screw something up EACH time they clean my house. One day they cracked a mirror. Another day, they put the electric AirWick air freshener back into the outlet upside down, which spilled lavender oil all over my floor. I love lavender, but seriously? WTF??? Most recently, I suspect they somehow broke the dimmer switch in the living room. This was also coupled with a few scuff marks that remained on the floor. This is their last shot. If something else is ruined after today, they are never darkening my door again (or brightening my floor).

More later (post inspection).

A good weekend

First, the patio is done! After many weeks of toiling and worrying, it’s in and it looks gorgeous. Of course, there were issues.

The day began at 7:00 am. We went to Home Depot to rent something called a vibra-plate-something-or-other. The purpose of this machine was to compact that sand and gravel that comprise the base of the patio. Apparently this procedure is called tamping. We also planned to rent a truck, having been told that the machine wouldn’t fit in a car, but when we saw the machine, it was determined that the tamper could fit it the car — possible even in the trunk.

After much finagling, we got the damned thing in the trunk. And then it took us an additional 40 minutes to buy the rest of the materials that we needed.

We returned to the house and began loading the gravel into the massive pit that we dug a few weeks earlier. Just to give you an idea of size, the patio is 14×8, which is 122 square feet. The materials required were 88 bags of paver base, 22 bags of sand (or so I thought), and 300 pavers.

After dumping every 2-4 inches of paver base (which is essentially gravel), we had to wet it down and tamper it. Oh, and please don’t be fooled . . .the BF was clearly doing most of the work here. My job was to take the bags of material off of the pallet, bring them to the front of the garage, and slit them open for him. I would dump the occasional bag myself, but he seemed to have a better idea of where the stuff should go.

The sand was where the trouble started. I ordered 22 bags of sand using the multiplier provided by the company. Take the square footage and divide by six. The answer should be the amount of bags required. The key word in that sentence is SHOULD. Not only was it not the correct number, but I had to return to Home Depot not once, but TWICE to get what amounted to 34 ADDITIONAL bags of sand. The suspension on my car is probably completely fucked up, given that those bags weigh about 15 pounds each. The BF said that it was like having 3 fat people in my trunk.

Once we got the sand down (all 56 bags of it), we began laying the brick. That was where my drama began. Because I’m not the type of girl who can be satisfied with just regular old bricks, I had to go and pick the pavers that were oddly shaped, with the end result looking more like cracked stone than layed brick. Because of the odd shapes, laying those pavers was comparable to doing a jigsaw puzzle.

I’m a perfectionist, and I get very flustered when things don’t fit the way they should. Having said that, I became frustrated when the stones required a little bit of thought when laying them. I snapped at the BF a few times, which prompted him to say that he was never going to do another project like that with me again in his life.

I could bore you with more specifics, but I won’t bother. The result is a beautiful patio, complete with landscape lighting!

The backyard would be a beautiful vision, if the garden looked better. The next step is to get the garden to look like it’s not overrun with weeds. Every time I go out there, I swear someone’s going to be swinging from a vine.

But that’s okay. By the 4th of July, it will be a botanical paradise. I hope.

In the process of procrastination So, I bought cu…

In the process of procrastination

So, I bought curtain rods yesterday ($130, thankyouverymuch). These rods were purchased to FINALLY install the valances that I bought . . . oh . . . SEVERAL months ago.

I’ve been on this quest for home improvement lately, and I’m procrastinating it. I don’t really know why.

I can tell you that, right now, I’m only blogging because I don’t feel like going downstairs and putting the drill to use to install these curtains. Although I know I’ll feel MUCH better once it’s done.

I should just stop being such a lazy girl, shouldn’t I?

I’m also on the first day of a cleanse. I do this cleanse quarterly — or at least I used to. I would guess that it’s been about a year since I’ve done it the last time. It’s basically fruits and vegetables only for the next 7 days. I don’t know what it is about being food restricted that makes me crave shit that I would never eat to begin with.

I don’t eat red meat, and haven’t since I was about 19 or 20. Therefore, I can’t comprehend why I had a craving for a Quarter Pounder this morning. Also, yesterday, in anticipation of the cleanse, it almost seemed like a good idea to have a Krispy Kreme doughnut. WHAT? (Okay, truthfully, I had 1/2 Dunkin Donut a few days prior when someone brought them in the office for a birthday celebration. Still. Not the point!).

So, I will proceed to drive myself absolutely insane for the next week as I maintain a steady diet of “twigs and berries,” as the BF calls it, but I will feel completely de-toxed by the end. And a little bit lighter.

Okay, to avoid becoming the goddess of procrastination, I guess I’ll go get the drill ready for my installation. Ugh!