your task: click on links!

hi! several things today, in bullet form, because HOLY HELL WORK, STOP EATING MY FACE, and what i'm trying to say here is i've been a tad swamped and less-than-bloggy. obviously. anyway. on to the bullets!

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first and foremost, go see this post on jess's blog if you have not already. UNLESS YOU'RE JESS. then just stay away missy, mkay? but! if you're not jess! click on over! even if you don't know jess, it's still probably a good idea, so... *brisk clap* go on! i'll wait! oh, and NO COMMENTS in my comment section about this either, because if you can't tell, it's all secretive-like.

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next up: two of my good friends will be participating this fall in the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention's Out of the Darkness walk. this is obviously a really, really good cause, and they're walking in memory of a close family member who they lost to suicide. even if you haven't personally been touched by suicide, perhaps you're looking for a way to feel less guilty about dropping all that cash on those hot new shoes? or are participating in slynnro's vice reports and want your weekly total to reflect something more noble than 152 trips to starbucks? no matter the reason, any tiny donation is still helpful, so if you're so moved, you can donate here or here.

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finally, i had what has to be the dumbest problem possible yesterday: i couldn't get to work because the garage door on our apartment building broke. it was so ridiculously frustrating. the door is really more of a gate, basically made of a bunch of metal bars that clatter up into the ceiling (normally) to let cars in and out. except... the door would only open halfway, make a horrific grinding sound, then clatter back down, without ever opening high enough to let a car pass underneath. so i could SEE the outside, and *i* could get outside, but i couldn't get my CAR outside. it felt like one of those logic puzzles where if i just concentrated hard enough i'd figure out the trick solution, but.... no. the solution was that you need an open door to extract a car from a garage. go figure.

i called the garage door people and announced that their door was broken, and could they please come fix it? the garage door people replied that the property manager would need to call. except i live in a building made up entirely of individually-owned units, and there is no front office with a conveniently located property manager. i explained this to the woman, who did the verbal equivalent of a shrug, and basically told me she was sorry for my bad luck, and there was absolutely nothing she could do in that case unless i personally wanted to be responsible for the cost of fixing the door.

this is when i started channelling my mom, with the Stern Raised Voice and the Refusal To Take No For An Answer, and announced to the woman that she needed to look up our building by the address, and she needed to find the account that way, and she then needed to send someone out to fix the door because perhaps she didn't understand what i was saying, but NONE OF US COULD GET OUT OF THE GARAGE, AND WHAT IF THERE WAS AN EMERGENCY, HAD SHE CONSIDERED THAT? and perhaps she had a suggestion of what she thought would be a reasonable course of action if she wasn't going to look up the account, because her current suggestions were Not Adequate?

the repairman showed up not too long after that.