I Hate Everybody

Oy, what a day.

I had many, many things to do today - oddly enough, a lot of them actually got done, but I'm damned if I know how.

The first thing on my list was to get my computer hooked up to wireless. It seems that everybody else in the immediate universe can do this, but I, for various reasons, none of which I understand, cannot. The reason for hooking up the wireless is so that Joshua can use my computer in the kitchen. Now, I have no objection to this, because when my desktop heaved its last sigh, I certainly availed myself of HIS computer. It's only fair that he should use mine.

And so it began. First of all, I called Time Warner, from whence emanates my DSL/broadband/high speed...you know. Time Warner informed me (three people later, not to mention the attendant bits of voice mail hell and the music they play WAY too loud) that in order to have wireless, I had to go out and buy a hundred dollar router. I told them that I HAD a perfectly good router, but that it was an Apple router. TW then told me to call Apple, and they would set me up.

Onward to Apple. I was doing quite well at Apple (I was only on my second person and very little voicemail, and their music is very low), when I was informed that I couldn't actually do anything because I wasn't the owner of record for the router, and they needed a verbal OK on the telephone from the owner of record. Now of course what I should have done right here was to put down the phone, made obvious walking noises, and come back to the phone and dropping my voice three octaves (yeah, I can - I'm an actress, for heaven's sake) announced that I was Joshua Steele and my cousin could do whatever the hell she wanted with the computer/router, etc.

Unfortunately, I am only the most law-abiding human being in the world, so of course I hung up until Joshua got back from wherever he'd been and then I started all over again.

This time they never bothered to ask about verification at all. THIS time they told me that actually the Apple phone help had run out, and if I wanted help I (all right, Joshua) had to sign up for a three year contract for it or pay by the question. Yeah, well...

So then I started looking around my desk and suddenly my eye fell upon my Netgear router, which isn't plugged in because the only working computer has been the Apple, which of course is hooked up to the Apple router. Aha! I called Time Warner back and asked them how I hooked my PC up to the Netgear router, and after several go-rounds about how I had to plug this into that and that into this (but no actual hard information, such as WHICH this and that - you know, like the one on the left), I frankly sort of gave up. I didn't think I could stand one more second of having the damn cell phone stuck to my ear while I one-handedly fiddled with various wires and plugs and....I couldn't take another minute of it. So the hell with it. For the moment, I shall remain wireless, and when Joshua wants to use the computer he can damn well come up here and do it.

Meanwhile, my strategy is working, by God! Once I told Joshua that the gal from building management was coming tomorrow so she and I could decide what needed to be done, it evidently occurred to him that I actually meant it, and he has actually started packing! Naturally, he hasn't started packing all those 397 books - that job he has handed over to me.

Anyway, in the interstices of all those hours with various techies on the telephone, I managed to clean my bedroom and the upstairs bathroom, make a large pot of (and freeze portions of) very good spaghetti sauce, and portion out and freeze a big chunk of London Broil I bought the other day. Also yesterday I made a big pan of kielbasa and sauerkraut, which I happen to love. So I shall be nicely fed for the next week, at least.

The spaghetti sauce recipe, which is not by any means authentic, is just something to sling together and freeze in meal size portions...I can make full dress sauce, but if it's going to be just for me, I don't bother.

Take a large jar of cheap spaghetti sauce (supermarket brand). Put it in a pot and turn on the heat high...turn it down to simmer once it starts bubbling a bit. Now toss some olive oil in a frying pan and take the skin off three or four hot Italian sausages. Throw them in the pan and break them up with a wooden spoon into small bits as they brown. Once they're cooked (no trace of pink, please - they're PORK), scoop them out with a slotted spoon, throw them into the simmering sauce, and do the same thing with a pound or so of ground chuck. Once the chuck is in the pot, take a bunch of sliced mushrooms and saute them in the same pan you had the meat in. Then just throw the contents of the frying pan into the sauce, including any brown bits and whatever juices are still left. Now mince or press three or four cloves of garlic and toss them in, then sprinkle some thyme, oregano, and basil in there. Stir it all up and just let it simmer until you feel like eating.

As I said...not at all authentic, but it tastes good on a cold night. Don't forget the salad, Parmesan and garlic bread.

Joshua enlivened my evening, by the way, as I was finishing this meal, by starting to rant about how I was getting terrible advice and this was the wrong time to sell, and I was going to be destitute and on the street in five years, and I was selling Sarah's inheritance...and he was quite insistent that I should take over his "book business". This, I believe, was the point of the rant...anything to offload the damn books on me. Fat chance. Besides which, as I pointed out to him, I don't WANT to sell books. He got quite upset by this...by God, he'd made a plan and here was someone who wouldn't agree to it? He was quite snotty about the fact that I wasn't doing anything at the moment, and...

If you'll pardon the expression, who gives a fuck? But I do wish people wouldn't snarl at me while I'm eating.

Love, Wendy