Saturday, March 12, 2011

Just so you know...

... my laptop was dead. The hard drive failed and I just had it repaired. I lost everything after 2006.

In the near future I hope to get back on track and post to my Beescape more often.

In the meantime, I'm saying prayers for the people of Japan.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Coffee culture french style

Coffee in Paris
Not sure how coffee bar culture works in France? Here's a quick guide to get you started.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/987692/coffee_in_paris.html



Honey Bee here - This is the first time I have used a gmail Blog link to a post by someone else. I knew it was possible but I never tried it before now. I want to thank Residence Fr for writing this small piece about the intricacies of finding a cuppa joe in Paris.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Book review - Atlas Shrugged

I am soooooooo sick of reading Atlas Shrugged. This book was recommended to me and since I had already read the Fountainhead, I figured why not? I've read fatties before but this is taking me forever. I've renewed it twice from the library.

Ayn Rand wrote a whopping 1168 pages, in three sections of ten chapters each and my main beef with her is when she writes .......as if...... and then goes on and on to compare one situation with an arbitrary circumstance which may or may not compare. My other beef with her if when she notes of a character's inability to name something, mostly his feelings. "That which cannot be named...." I swear, on one page I read as if seven times!

Atlas is very in synch with today's economic problems. It is about people who work their asses off and the politcal machine of greed and looters who take advantage of the hard workers. Then of course, the workers get sick of eating shit and go on strike, at the behest of an unseen and unnamed evil, they retire, hide, sell out, quit and give up and let the mooches go hungry.

In all my years of reading, only once have I stopped reading a book I started. That said, I really, really, REALLY want to like this book and finish it... in a timely manner. But damn, when I picked this book up, I was hoping to ease down a steak. Instead I find myself sitting at a table with a knife and fork and an elephant on my plate.

Since I am only on page 450, I will reserve my final judgment until I am done.

"Who is John Galt?"

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Happy New Year

Well. I'm baaaaaaaaa - ack!

I am grateful I don't suffer from guilt because of the months I've neglected my Beescape.

So many things have happened, let me start in the middle.

My sister lost her house. She went upside down, the Sheriff showed up with a 72 hour eviction notice and whammo, she moved in with me. More on her shortcomings later.

My co-worker has breast cancer. She's been out for months, had a mastectomy and is getting chemo treatments. I have been doing her job AND my job, in half the time, at half the rate and if she comes back in February, I have no reason to think my work will say NICE JOB, WELL DONE, THANKS for FILLING IN. I suspect they will do whatever they have to in order to save hours, cut costs and then whammo, I will be back in poor land.

I would call in sick and try to fuck them up at work but I cannot afford to lose any hours. I haven't called in sick in years.

Christmas sucked. I didn't even get to go to church.

New Years Eve seriously sucked. On NYE I broke an upper molar while I was getting ready for a party. At one pm I went looking for a dentist. By 2:30pm I was one molar lighter. I went to a guy nearby, walked in, said my co-worker went there and since we had the same insurance plan, can you help me? I have this broken molar hanging from the back of my gum, if you can help- great, if not -I will go away. They took me in, took x-rays, turns out there wasn't enough of my molar to save so short of investing $4500 on titanium implants, it would have to go. Okay, take her out! The injection in the upper palette was a bit painful. That's when the panic attack started.

The next day I woke up with my mouth glued shut from the blood. I felt like my face had been beat in with a baseball bat. If I feel like it later I will tell how it sounded being ripped from my gums and the pulpy bloody mess that used to be my molar looked sitting on the tray!

So, when I went back to work after New Year, I saw that co-worker and told him about the dentist and asked which one he saw and it turns out that the office I went to IS NOT THE SAME AS HIS! Ha ha ha. My new dentist looks like Chris Martin of Coldplay.

My mail in my mailbox was ripped open before Christmas. I was out shopping and when I returned my Christmas card envelopes were tampered with. I think someone saw a fatty enveloped with the letter from my Aunt Margie and thought it was a gift card or cash and decided to help themselves. Fuckers!

I started dating a guy who turned out to be a quasi-celebrity. He races hot rods. I wonder why he complains that people recognized him but he won't wear a shirt that does NOT say his racing team name on it. I never saw his TV show and didn't know he was some race car dude. We went out to dinner a few times and everytime he bitched about how poor he is. Being poor and cars, that IS ALL he ever talked about, EVER!! So on Dec 26th, we went to dinner at Pietro's and I asked him why he asked me out. He said, QUOTE! "I'm alone all the time. I had nothing better to do".

I stopped returning his calls. He cannot afford a ravioli plate without bitching.

I have an old fashioned TV. I got my two DTV2009 coupons in the mail and bought the converters at Walmart for $49 ($9 cost to me). So I hook it up, yeah! Picture is good but now I don't get channel 7, or more importantly, Jeopardy!

My sister, who should be saving her fucking money to move out has a flat screen plasma TV, Blue Ray DVD player and blah, blah, blah. I asked her not to bring these things into my small apartment but oh well. Fuck me and what I say. Now she wants me to get a new antenna so I can get channel 7. I said thanks but no thanks, I cannot afford it. No, no, I'll buy it, they're cheap! But I don't want it. Don't get it. NO NO NO. What does she do? She goes out and buys a new antenna that I don't want. She has a heart of gold and a brain like a fucking BB. I hate that she won't listen to me. I hate that she thinks new shoes, new pants, new DVDs, new phone, bag after bag after bag of potato chips and eating out whenever she feels like it is the best way to save MOVING money.

I am wearing the same pants from two years ago. My work shoes had holes in them before I'd replace them. I don't eat out, I buy dented cans! My cupboard looks like a food bank.

I resent that my sister makes twice as much money as me and works twice as many hours and she cannot save ten bucks a week! My utilities have more than doubled. She gets cold and turns up the heat. I get cold and put on a sweater. I have not wanted to ask for rent because I want her to move. Now it feels like I am her mom and she won't respect me or what I am trying to do to help her.

I had high hopes for this year. Now it all feels rather depressing.

Friday, December 05, 2008

Maybe its the accent

I rec'd this in an email from a mexican co-worker. I couldn't stop laughing, does that make me racist?

From The Mexican Dictionary

  • BODYWASH: I can ' t go to tha cantina tonite cuz no BODYWASH my kids.
  • SHOULDER : My tia wanted 2 become a citizen but she didn ' t know how to read so I SHOULDER.
  • COCKATOO: My friend was in the bathroom and I told him to hurry because I had to go COCKATOO!
  • SODAS: My vieja has beeg tatas and SODAS her sister.
  • JUICY: Hey vato, I will roll the joint, and ju tell me if JUICY the cops!!!
  • JUAREZ: My viejita slapped me and I said JUAREZ your damn problem!
  • TISSUE: Hey vato if you don ' t know how to do it, let me TISSUE how!
  • HEATER: My lil sister started to choke...Perro my mom told me to HEATER in the back!
  • BRIEF: Hey homes, my lady farted in the car and I couldn ' t BRIEF!
  • JULY : Ju tol me ju were going to tha store and JULY to me! Julyer!!!
  • MUSHROOM : When my familia gets in the car......There ' s not MUSHROOM left!
  • CHEESE : I went to dis bar and some vato try to hit up on my vieja. I said ay vato CHEESE with me!!
  • TEXAS : My pinche friend always TEXAS me with dumb jokes.
  • WATER : My vieja gets mad and I don ' t even know WATER problem is!
  • HERPES : Me & my ruca order some pizza, I got my piece & she got HERPES.
  • HIGHWAY : I turned around in bed, looked at my wife and said HIGHWAY! Put some make-up on cabrona. You scared me!
  • HORCHATA : You can keep talking your crap, HORCHATA hell up!
  • FRITO : After arguing with the pinche policia he told me I was FRITO go!

Monday, September 01, 2008

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Ah the married life

The girl I work with named Yvonne was married on the 2nd. I didn't go to the wedding. I had something else to do, which I could have cancelled but I was still bent outta shape about the shower and how that was handled. Anyway. She was gone for a week on her honeymoon. Her and Jason, Mr Newlywed, went on a cruise to Mexico.

She was due to come back Thursday the 14th but she showed up on the 12th because she missed us. Okay. Thursday I worked in close enough proximity to hear all the details of the cruise, the food, the sex, the dancing, the people there, etc. Yesterday, a full 13 days after she tied the knot and one day after blissfully sharing TMI, she came back from her lunch break in tears. WTF?!

She was bawling to Yolanda, who was just standing there chewing her gum. Yvonne's shoulders were shaking, her face wet, geez! I went to Yvonne, put arms around her and patted her back and made cooing noises and told her to take deep breaths, come on sweetie, deeper.... relax, relax, calm down, you're okay now, I have you, deep breaths....

It turns out that she and her new husband had a fight over a friend of his, who presumably has been a poor influence on Yvonne's hubby and the hubby, while defending his friend, PUSHED HIS NEW WIFE OF 13 DAYS INTO A WALL!!!!

Excuse me.

::deep breaths::

I am all about pre-marital counseling. I would never say I DO to someone without counseling. I want to know up front what the deal breakers are. Being someone's punching bag is a deal breaker.

I told Yvonne that when she goes home, she needs to tell Jason that physical violence is not tolerated. Arguing or fighting is fine as long as you use words to work it out. I then suggested to her that she tell him, "Jason, this was your one and only time to ever be physically abusive to me, for any reason. If it happens again I will call 911 and press charges. It better not ever happen again."

I told her she has to mean it when she says it.

She's nineteen.

Fuck ATT and the Wi-Fi they rode in on...

The nice man who lived next door to me moved. One day I will recount the way we met. He was being held up by thugs trying to steal his backpack but I thought he was being hit by a car on his bike. Anyway. His departure could be significant because he took his Wi-Fi minus the firewall with him. Where I live the city is going Internet Ready in order to attract new business and keep old businesses here. AT&T is the provider.

I hate writing this.

I was working online and was punted off. In order to resume my work I signed up for the AT&T Metro Free Internet service. I registered, filled out a ton of personal information and waited. Then I waited some more. It takes forever to log onto the Net with AMFIS. Some times the pages load, sometimes they never load. I hate it.

My little laptop has a Google toolbar. It measures about an inch and a half. My task bar at the bottom of the screen measures almost an inch. My whole screen is nine inches tall. AT&T, those fuckers, have a gobbed up the screen with a generous two inch banner for their crappy company. Now my nine inch screen is reduced to four and three eighths inch. When I click to open a new window, the banner spams that window too! Oh joy.

Today, right this moment in fact, I had to use the AMFIS to get online. The sign on page is fucked up. You may sign on but it takes about four or five retries to get the IE to kick on. I tried to play CP with my nephew but it just said, "Logging in ______" for like forty minutes and I had to give up.

I know having free Net should be a good thing but when the service in inferior I just want to scream. It took me four tries to get this POST to load and God knows whether it will publish on the first click.

I tried to address the problems by using their handy dandy AT&T Customer Support link on their banner. Guess what? All that did was pop up another banner saying the Certificate was not secured or some such shit. What does that mean? I don't know.

Perhaps my city is too cheap to provide reliable Internet services to the companies it is trying to attract.

(Small detail - adjacent to the SAVE NOW button under this window there is an Exclamation Point in a yellow danger triangle and it is saying "Autosave FAILED". )

Friday, July 04, 2008

People Who Cannot Take a Hint

I was getting ready to leave work yesterday (Thr 3 July) so I stopped where Yolanda was working to wish her a happy Fourth of July. Surprise, surprise, she was by Yvonne, the young lady who is getting hitched, thus the bridal shower and the magnificent Thai salad problem mentioned in my last post.

Yolanda says to me, "Oh hey. I am trying to get the menu in order. Are you going to bring your salad?"

I said, "No I'm not."

Her, "What? Why?"

Me, "No. I am not making you salad. Do you want to hire me to make you the salad?"

At this point she actually did one of those pffts noises and rolled her fucking eyes. YGFBKM!

Me, "I'll take THAT as a no. C'est la vie, no salad for you. Have a nice Fourth."

I turned and walked away.

In the immediate time after she tried to shanghai me into making the salad and I said I'd give her tips for her party, Yolanda was constantly with Yvonne. There was never a private time to approach her and tell her that what she did was rude and would be an imposition on me. Then a couple weeks past and I let it go. I figured she'd just know it wasn't going to happen.

But she had to ask, again, in front of Yvonne, again and I had to tell her no, again. Besides her presumptiveness, her devaluing my time, skill and feeling I somehow owe her bridal shower $200 in free food, I am pissed off now that she felt, if she did, that by asking me again in front of Yvonne I'd be too nice to say no.

Well. Fuck no.

Maybe the title of this post should be

People Who Are Too Dense to Take NO For An Answer.


(Addendum- Today is Tuesday July 8. Yolanda was very frosty to me today. She wouldn't even say g'morning and she worked as far away from me as possible, right along side Yvonne, who btw, was especially nice to me.)

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Don't volunteer me

I work with a bunch of women, guys too. I work pretty exclusively with a woman named Yolanda. Some days she is lazy and other times she actually gets some work done. She is close to another employee named Yvonne. It is when she is around Yvonne that her productively drops to below zero. I know Yvonne, I like her, she is getting married in August. I think she is twenty, I don't know for sure because altho we are genial to one another, she has never invited me to her house/apt. See, I don't even know where she lives. These two women know I am an excellent cook. I have brought stuff with me to work and shared and they rave about how fabulous I am. I already know this. Another lifetime ago I owned my own successful catering business and I was the head chef.

So. Back to Yolanda and Yvonne. This one day at work a few weeks ago, I saw Yvonne talking with Yo about her bridal shower and they were looking over a price sheet for relish trays, sandwich trays, fruit or veggie trays, meat and cheese trays. You get the idea. Some of these ran close to $50 and more. I asked who was throwing her shower. She said no one.

Red flag.

No one? I asked, "What about your aunts or your bestfriend or the girls you go to church with?" Nope. No one. I think she talked Yolanda into doing it. So Yolanda says to me, right in front of Yvonne, "Honey Bee, why don't you do the food? You're the bomb!" The first thing I said was, "WOW, thanks for volunteering me. I hate when people do that." I gave her a few pointers but said, totally serious, if she cannot afford these trays, she cannot afford to hire me to do her food. I am expensive because I am the bomb.

This seemed to bend Yolanda out of shape and she said, "Sheesh, but she's your friend." Well, arguing about this would have been lost on her since she's been to Yvonne's house and gets rides from her to work and they hang out. Not with me tho. Plus another thing, it would have been cruel to point out the absurdity of this remark in front of Yvonne.


I said, "If you want tips I'll be happy to share. That's the best I can do." i just walked away shaking my head.

Today as I was walking thru work I saw Yvonne and asked her if she straightened out her bridal shower food choices. She shook her head rather strangely and said that they were not going to do trays, they were going to do salads. Oh how nice.

A few hours later Yolanda shows up for work and says to me she is going to need my address for the bridal shower invitation. I say yeah. We're still working and a little while later Yvonne comes by and asks for the address too, I give it to her.

Not twenty minutes later as we're moving onto another phase of our work, Yvonne is tagging alone and Yolanda is yapping away and I'm not paying attention. She says, "Honey Bee, you can bring your chicken salad, that'll be good." "What chicken salad? Where? I make three different kinds, what are you talking about?" "To the bridal shower, your awesome chicken salad." I'm thinking WTF?

"We want you to bring the salad." "The Thai Salad? For you?" "Yes." Then Yolanda says there are going to be twenty people there. Oh for God's sakes. I said, "I'll think about it."

I didn't need to think about this. Out of the kindness of my heart have have shared food with my co-workers and they think this entitles them to invite me to a bridal shower with the sole purpose of getting me to bring the food. Guests do not bring the food. If it were a potluck party that'd be way different.

My Thai Salad is spectacular. It is also expensive. To cater this main dish salad for twenty women at a bridal shower would cost a minimum of $200. Like I said, she cannot afford. I also don't feel like I know her well enough to cough up all that money and time bringing food to a bridal shower I have no intention of attending.

IF SHE wants to pay to have me make the salad, she needs to hire me. Not invite me and my food. I am so pissed off at Yolanda. I told her before that I didn't appreciate her volunteering me or putting me on the spot and having to point out that Yvonne doesn't have anyone who can afford to hire me for her party.