Dear Bank of America, Vanguard, E*TRADE and McClatchy,
You owe me tax documents. Get your shit together. I’m very anxious to file my taxes and find out how much my refund will be.
If I said I was saving up for a boob job, would they get here any faster?
You know, hypothetically. Since none of you have actually seen me.
Love,
Katie
I am conducting an experiment in annoyance.
I am on the receiving end of the annoying behavior.
The goal is to determine how long I can sit there thinking, “shut up, shut up, shut up, SHUT UP” before I involuntarily start shouting those words.
This is not an experiment that I entered into willingly.
Tomorrow might be the day I crack. She already drove me to nailbiting.
There are some things I don’t understand about other people, like why they buy SUVs, why sweater twinsets exist and why people keep dumping leftovers into the drain on the ice machine when the sign clearly says not to pour anything into it. I chalk this up to being a nerd and thinking differently from most people.
But there is one thing that I will never understand.
When two or more people at work are wearing similarly colored clothing — it doesn’t have to be the same exact shade, it could just be that they’re both wearing green shirts — everyone needs to point this out and make a “clever” remark about it.
“Did you call each other this morning to coordinate?”
“Great minds think alike!”
“This is why everyone in my department plans their outfits the day before.”
Sometimes they take pictures the matching pair standing together, eyes rolled at the lame humiliation. I would link to relevant coworkers’ blog entries, but I don’t need to out people who outrank me, do I?
But every day — EVERY. DAY. — someone has to point out, “hey, you and someone across the room who is generally badly dressed ARE PRACTICALLY TWINS TODAY!!!!! WHAT ARE THE ODDS???!?!?!??”
Good. The odds are good.
A funny and otherwise charming columnist likes to call this matching phenomenon “twinkies.” Today, when he was wearing a brown jacket and I was wearing a brown jacket, he leaned his sleeve near mine, and declared, “almost twinkies.”
Because coats come in so many different colors.
There are a finite number of colors of manufactured clothing. And in a given year, most clothes produced come from a much smaller subset of trend colors. And there are a lot of people in the newsroom. On any given day, many of us will be wearing similar colors. It is neither a rare nor a meaningful occurrence.
I tried to be proactive. When I find shades that are less common, I buy them. Because the day I wear that garment, no one will call me twinkies. I am safe from twin-hood for a whole day.
So I bought an orange corduroy jacket. It was cute and looked good on me, and it wasn’t brown or black or charcoal or tan, so it was pretty atypical.
And the first day I wear it to work, I step out of my car. An editor — a noteworthy twin-labeler — steps out of her car. SHE IS WEARING AN ORANGE CORDUROY JACKET.
I may have to revolt. Hawaiian shirts everyday. Stripes won’t save me if they can still identify a dominant colors. The busiest, most multicolored disasters are my only hope. Don’t even bother following dress code. I’ll sell my soul to paisley and thin-striped plaids. Become a walking Jackson Pollock. As long as I’m fully covered, they can’t reprimand me for what I’m covered in, right?
Maybe I should just get a job somewhere with uniforms. I could go work on the presses where everyone wears navy coveralls.
Or I could become a nudist.
“Wow, you have the same mole on your cheek as Amanda. You two are practically twins!”
Kyle and I went to the zoo yesterday.
I’ve watched enough episodes of Meerkat Manor to know the Sedgwick County Zoo’s meerkats look nothing like real meerkats. Real meerkats are skinny. Zoo meerkats look like they’ve been dining at China Buffet.
But the animals at the zoo have nothing on the kids visiting the zoo. What the hell is wrong with parents these days?
I’d read statistics recently on the percentage of overweight and obese Kansans, and I’d been how it’s possible that 23% (!) of Kansans are obese because most people I see…aren’t. Well, that 23% was well-represented at the zoo yesterday.
I don’t know that there’s anything more heartbreaking and disgusting than seeing an obese eight-year-old. I remember begging for Little Debbies and ice cream when I was little, but my mom usually said no. This kid doesn’t need a sno-cone, doesn’t need Blue Bunny, doesn’t need a Coke.
And I understand that you want to indulge your child and see him happy, but it’s pathetic when a little kid walks over to a park bench, wheezing and begging for a break. If you told him no more often, he’d be able to make it through the zoo without getting winded. And he doesn’t have the impulse control, critical-thinking skills or long-term planning to realize that he doesn’t need a Drumstick right now. So freaking tell him no.
Rant aside, the zoo was lovely.
I hate flying Delta. They always prove themselves to be idiots. I would say that Wichita airport’s Delta staff is particularly lousy, but they’re lousy at every airport I’ve been through.
Maybe I’ve had bad luck. Maybe I’ve flown through particularly lousy airports.
But when I’ve flown AirTran, everything was perfect. When I’ve flown Southeast, everything was perfect. When I’ve flown Allegiant, the most ghetto airline in the world, everything was perfect.
But Delta? I’d rather drive.
So at this moment, my dad still has the title in his name and he’s paying the insurance. Next week, we’re switching the title to my name and I’ve just purchased an insurance policy.
I will own. a. car. I don’t really think I should be trusted to own anything, so I’m thinking that there’s gotta be a trick somewhere.
And I feel really guilty that Dad’s giving me a whole car — but then I remember how they didn’t have to pay a cent of my college education and I know that would have cost far more than my car, so…maybe I don’t feel quite so bad. Still spoiled, but deservingly so?
Anyway, the real point: WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WITH CAR INSURANCE? I don’t get it.
I decided to see if Geico and Progressive are really as awesome as their ads claim — if nothing else, I like the idea of getting a quote without having to talk to a real person, especially a real person who’s trying to get hundreds of dollars from me.
First I got a quote from Geico. It was a lot of money, but fair.
Then I got a letter from Liberty Mutual (because the fucking Alumni Association sold my contact info to fucking every company in the world) that said they’re offering a discount to recent graduates. So I called them up to get a quote. HOLY WHOA. They were asking 50% more. Why is there that big of a difference?
(I ended up buying a renters insurance policy from them instead. Hopefully they didn’t rip me off on that one — $13/month sounded like a deal to me.)
Then I went back online and got a quote from Progressive. Even cheaper than Geico — like 20% cheaper. I’m sold.
I understand that insurance is tricky because it’s about complicated risks and a fair amount of randomness, so of course not every company is going to offer me the same exact price. But shouldn’t it all be reduced down to a system that’s at least vaguely consistent? Shouldn’t someone have come up with a universal formula by now?
If Liberty Mutual wants to charge me five or six hundred dollars more than Progressive, how the hell do they stay in business? Are they ripping everyone off, or just new college graduates with a single accident on their records?
I’m sure someone could provide me with a detailed, rational explanation for why insurance companies are so dumb. Or maybe the answer is that Progressive is going to jack up my rates the first chance they get. But, damn, these companies are so dumb.
I’ve been thinking that
it would be way awesome if
Al Gore was my dad
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