Average Jane’s Little Annoyances

The accumulated irritants of the week have been bringing me down, so in celebration of Friday, I’m going to mention them all here and sweep them out of my consciousness for the weekend.

• Comment Spammers. One of my posts has been getting a rash of comment spam in the last week or so. I finally had to go in and close its comments, which I’ve rarely had to do before. Grrr.
• Regular Spammers. My job involves monitoring an e-mail account that’s accessed through an old SquirrelMail e-mail client. It has NO spam filtering whatsoever, so I get to watch batches of related subject lines come and go as I scroll through the junk trying to find the few legitimate e-mails that may have crept through. For the last few weeks, the most noticeable subject line trend has been "My boyfriend’s [x] is too big for my [y]. The best part is [x], which encompasses a full thesaurus’ worth of terms, many of which do not mean precisely what was intended. I think my favorite [x] of the week was "phallus." Hee! ‘Cause everybody talks like that, you know.
• My Car. I’m actually feeling favorably inclined toward my car this week in one way: ever since the weather got cool enough that I don’t need my air conditioner, my gas mileage has improved. The bad thing is that it has a burned out headlight, which got me pulled over on the way home from band practice Wednesday night (at midnight, I might add). I didn’t get a ticket and the officer actually said, "I appreciate your wearing your seatbelt," which I thought was some nice positive reinforcement, but the idea that the next guy might ticket me $80 did not make me at all happy. I have an appointment at the crack of dawn this morning to get a new headlight and also find out why the "maint. req." light is on. [Update] It turned out someone forgot to reset the light after my last oil change. I was in and out in less than 45 minutes and my headlight replacement cost $12.
• My Brain. I have been incredibly forgetful this week. For example, I left my cell phone at home two days in a row. On the second day, I made a special trip home specifically to get my phone before I went to some after-work activities. I still walked off without it.

Okay, I’m finished griping now and I’m ready to start the weekend with a clean slate. If you have something that’s been bugging you, feel free to write about it in the comments and leave it behind as you start your weekend.