Just walked out on my dentist. After driving for 30 minutes to get to the appointment (which I arrived at 20 minutes early because I was driving direct from another doctor's appointment), I sat in the waiting room for 20 minutes AFTER my scheduled appointment time, only to discover that the doctor was "running behind" and wouldn't likely be available for another 20 minutes.

So I walked. Didn't schedule another appointment. And now begins the process of changing my various health practitioner to find ones that *aren't* half an hour's drive away.

First step: PCP and talk therapist - I have an appointment this week for each, at the Watertown Harvard Vanguard down the street from me. Dentist? Not sure yet, but it needs to be soon.

Add to this loveliness another doctor's appointment at 3:20, labwork that requires me to eat nothing until 3pm, and a full day of work, and I am officially Not Happy.

Thank goodness this is just for today.

This amused me muchly:

( cut because for some reason it won't stop autoplaying, which is annoying - but the video is funny )

That Oreo Pizza is the scariest thing I've ever seen.

The benefit to spending 20 minutes on the phone with Advanta listening to the various bullshit reasons why they think 20% is an APPROPRIATE APR for a woman who's never missed a payment, gone over her limit or been late with a payment, and who has an excellent credit history with all her OTHER cards and student loans, is that it fires me up to make more money so I can pay that shit off.

The excuses (these are actually somewhat amusing):

• "when we calculate APR, we look at the history on the account (in my case, completely unblemished), other accounts (aside from a late payment due to Capital One's website being down for three days, nuttin), and your overall credit history (which has been improving steadily for the last several years)."

When I pointed out the obvious flaws in THAT excuse, they give me this classic:

• "when we calculate APR, we also have to take into account the economy, and in times like this, there's a higher likelihood that people will go into default; thus, we have to take that risk into account."

Me: "So, you're telling me that, because I MIGHT be broke, I should give you more money. Do you see how that doesn't make sense?"

So, after having it explained to me that, should I not agree to the terms, I'm more than able to close out the account and just keep paying off the card, I explained to them that it doesn't make sense that I should have to do that in order to avoid being shafted on my rate, essentially, "because you feel like it."

So, not using the card anymore. Paying it down. Keeping it open (after all, it's a no-fee card with a large limit), but me and Advanta are DONE.

And I have cold calls to make.

Does anyone know how the hell to customize a Joomla site?

I installed it the other day in the hopes that I could use it to power my portfolio site, and the final installed site is nothing but marketing speak for Joomla. There's NO information on how to customize it, where the hell this information goes, nothing. How the hell does this work?

Anyone who knows what the hell I'm talking about - if you wouldn't mind pinging me please, I'll love you.

I was driving home from the gym today and heard the following on the radio (paraphrased):

"Did you ever wonder why Swedish people look so thin and healthy? It's because we have a weight-loss supplement that's clinically tested to help us lose 50% more weight - and you lose all body fat, not muscle."

Sounds innocuous enough, but notice - clinically tested. Not so much proven. But they tested it. There was a test. In a clinic. Don't know if it was proven, but yeah. Tested.

Pure. Marketing. Genius.

That last year's Aquaforce (or whatever it's called) Lite-Brite terrorist thing is NOT something that I feel really needs to be commemorated? Do I need this many posts in my friends page (including communities) making note of this idiotic day in my city's history?

Just sayin.

Also, today, I witnessed deep fried chocolate cheesecake EGG ROLLS. Paula Deen is a disturbed, disturbed woman.

I tell ya, folks - Pure. Class.

“I have just created 14 book covers for my boss to look at in one day. A child could create these covers. This would have taken me 2 weeks if I didn’t have your software.  I can’t tell you how excited I am about this program... The ISBN number coming up right away blows me away....

http://www.bookcoverpro.com/

You know, I'm generally feeling relaxed and pretty cheerful today. That is, until I tried calling Planned Parenthood to order my birth control ahead (because, annoyingly, I'm out of pills and need to pick them up in Davis today).

10 MINUTES of pressing random numbers, just to get an operator - followed by ANOTHER 10 MINUTES on hold, to finally be told that, despite the fact that there is NO OPTION on their automated system that will allow me to SPEAK TO SOMEONE, "it's really easy if you just press the number to make the appointment."

FINALLY I get to a person, FINALLY she hooks me up (so she says) with the Davis office so I can order the pills. And what happens? I get asked for a fucking PASSWORD I DON'T HAVE. After two frustrating attempts to input said password to no avail, the machine hangs up on me.

This is proof that we're all going to hell - because the people who are supposedly there to HELP US get us so caught up in neverending bullshit voicemail spirals of doom that I'm more likely to just get knocked up than deal with these fuckers on the phone.

ARGGHHHH!!!!!

okay, that feels better. Now to be productive.

Saturday night Nick and I stayed in and watched movies, one of which was American Psycho, which I saw for the first time. Now, mind you, Silver Jeep (a particularly psychotic ex of mine) ADORED this movie and regaled me with stories of the Business Card Scene after showing me the 1992-fabulous solid-block-o-Copperplate-on-Red-Stock that was his business card (mind, this was 2003ish). To him, it was a classic example of the stuffy, ridiculous American business man (who he detested completely, but only because he couldn't be one) trying to be the first to one-up the next guy.

Then I saw the scene (below):



The brilliance of this satire for me (aside from the obvious fact that there's not much of an actual difference in the cards themselves) is two things:

1. It's allegedly major Wall Street firm. Are you REALLY telling me that they wouldn't have stock cards with the official company logo and fonts? I know times have changed, but I really don't think that this would be that different in 1987.

2. My personal favorite: Bateman's card is actually fairly elegant. Nice paper, fairly elegant type. It gets one-upped by TIMES NEW ROMAN, which then gets one-upped by ARIAL, which then gets one-upped by COPPERPLATE. SERIOUSLY. Then later, they all get one-upped by GREEN AND RED ARIAL.

Neither of these scenarios, to me, is remotely believable, and thus it really does highlight the ridiculousness of his world. This may not be as amusing to the layfolk on my flist, but to a relative typophile (or, at least, a design junkie), the only thing that would be funnier is if the final blow was in Comic Sans.

While I appreciate the idea behind the program (giving inexpensive layout capabilities to the untrained non-profit secretaries of the world), I never. Ever. Want to use the program again. It is ACTUALLY worse than Publisher - and THAT'S saying something.

That having been said, Work is officially done for the day. Tomorrow I have two deadlines to meet. Christ.