Of the Day's Annoyances, These:

As you all know by now, I love football. Pro football is definitely third on the list behind high school and college, but I love it nonetheless, and especially on Monday night. There's nothing like watching a good matchup with Al Michaels and John Madden on the mics, on a Monday night when nothing else is competing for my attention. Unfortunately, ABC has, in their final year of hosting Monday Night Football before it moves to ESPN, chosen to fill part of their halftime show with "entertainment" from Tim McGraw and Jimmy Kimmel. This means that each Monday I'll be looking for someone to knock me unconscious for about twenty minutes.

Of course, that's an annoyance from yesterday, not today, so it's a little out of line with this post's heading, but hey, I'm the one calling the shots here, and I say it's okay.

Today, first and foremost, I'm irritated with myself to a high degree. At work, I finally ran into the lady I need to talk to about a pay raise and had a golden opportunity to ask for a few minutes of her time so I could make the request. Instead, I totally froze. I just asked how she was doing and kept moving. I don't know what my problem is. I know I deserve more money, and I'm nearly certain I'll get more once I ask for it (whether I get as much as I ask for remains to be seen, of course), so what's my deal? I need to just do it and get it over with, because I know I'm not getting a raise unless I do ask for it.

Staying with work-related issues for a moment, there is one person in my department who is annoying beyond belief. Conveniently, her desk is situated directly behind mine. She has caused me to ponder the very nature of inherently irritating people, and to wonder whether or not they have any clue how annoying they are. I don't think she does, at least. She talks all the time, which in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing: being rather quiet myself, I have a tendency to like talkative people. This person, though, has a whining edge in her voice even in normal conversation. She also feels the need to inject herself into every single conversation that takes place in our office, no matter how trivial, even if she has to contribute something totally unrelated in order to do it. It's amazing, really. She was relatively quiet when she was first moved to her current location (she was moved, I might add, primarily because the people on the other side of the office couldn't stand her), but she's been getting progressively worse.

I had to stop at the grocery after work today, and for some reason browsing through the aisles reminded me of several product variations that I absolutely loved which have, for whatever reason, gone away. Quite some time ago, Pepsi was available with different fruit flavors added, and I was quite fond of the raspberry version (Wikipedia reminds me that it was called "Raging Raspberry," and says it was only test-marketed). I remember having some around Halloween during my freshman year of high school, which was in 1991. Fourteen years later I still haven't forgotten it, which means either it was really good or I just have a hell of a memory (or both). At least a little later than that, there was a variety of Skittles that came in an orange bag. I can't remember what the variety was called, but it doesn't matter. They're gone. Salsa Verde Doritos? According to Frito-Lay's website they still exist, but I sure as hell can't find them, and I look in every grocery store, convenience store, gas station, and vending machine my travels bring into my path.

I'm getting dangerously close to stomping on my iPod. Actually, as I've noted in previous complaints, that's not entirely true: I love my iPod, but iTunes (the software that transfers the music files onto the iPod) is a piece of shit. Right now it's selectively refusing to put music on my iPod. It was kind enough to transfer several songs that I purchased from the iTunes online music store, but it's refusing to transfer some tracks I ripped from CDs I own, as well as a couple of other tracks I downloaded from an artist's website. It also will not create or update playlists on the iPod. I've been playing with it for several days, trying everything I can think of to make it work. Eventually I got to a point where iTunes was convinced there were only 14 songs on the iPod (there are, in fact, better than 2,700); then I got it to believe the iPod was blank (it wasn't). Starting from that point, it's now theoretically re-transferring every single track; I'm hoping, in the process, that it will finally actually add the 14 songs that started this whole mess. I have a feeling I'm going to be disappointed.