From: donb@igor.tamri.com (Don Baldwin)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary in TIME
Date: 23 Jan 93 00:48:39 GMT
Organization: TOSHIBA America MRI, South San Francisco, CA

My major peeve for today is...time.

To start with, I was going to complain heartily about what a pain it is
that we have such limited time to work with, so little time to reach our
goals in life before we're worm food.  But then I decided that it would
probably come off more as a whine than a peeve, since that fact of life
is something that every human since the dawn of time has had to accept
in the end.  Besides, the fact that we don't have an infinite amount of
time to live probably adds a good deal of spice and forces us to approach
life with a greater intensity, instead of languidly slipping through
the millenia and developing at a snail's pace.

So, instead I'm going to peeve about something related but completely
different:  the completely subjective fact that the times when we have
an intense desire to spend our time in a certain activity are precisely
the times that another (less interesting) activity will stand up whining
and demand our attention.

For example, last night was the first night since Monday when I've been
able to spend any time working with my new reloading press.  At about 9
last night, I sat down and began expanding the mouths of some new shells.
About 45 minutes later, I began seating primers in the virgin and
eager (yet shy) brass shells.  About a half hour later, a friend of
Gillian's called and started talking to her about life.  A little after
10, our friend asked Gillian to put me on, as we hadn't talked for a
couple weeks.  Oddly enough, I was at that moment just starting to
throw powder charges for the cartridges, exactly the ONE time when you
do not want distractions such as people talking to you on the phone,
angry wives slapping you on the ear with a dead salmon or crazed pit
bulls bursting into the room.

At about 10 after 11, I FINALLY managed to extricate myself from that
conversation and return to my work.  It was well past the time when
ancient software geeks are supposed to retire for the evening, yet I
went ahead and measured out the charges carefully, then seated the bullets
and crimped the edges.  After 4 days of having a pretty good press sit
in my apartment, I _finally_ produced my first 10 rounds of complete
ammo. :) :) :)

SubPeeve:  Nice people who want to talk over the phone too much.

I have a number of friends (really!) who are really great people.
Unfortunately, a few of them also positively enjoy conducting long
conversations over the phone.  Myself, I like to get on the phone,
get my business done quickly and get off (then smoke a cigarette :).
I just can't stand talking over the phone for long periods of time
and, when friends box me into doing so, I spend the whole conversation
chafing and looking for an excuse to say Goodbye.

Well, last night THREE of those people called me.  First my friends
Bill and Sandy called to say that another couple of friends had
successfully pounded out a kid.  That's all very nice but they ended
up keeping me on the phone for about FORTY-FIVE minutes!!!  I knew I
was in trouble after 15 minutes, when Sandy turned me over to Bill
(the major league talker of the pair).  A half hour later, the phone
rang again and it was my mom; she had just talked to Bill and Sandy,
who had gotten confused about where I live and told her that we were
under water.  My mom is also an unbelievable talker and, moreover,
is usually most interested in whining (not peeving) about the politics
in the department store where she works, about my aunt (who owns the
house where they both live) and about my sister's dog, which is given
to shitting on the rug.  Fortunately, I managed to convince her that
our apartment was on fire and I needed to hang up right away.

Ten minutes later, the phone rang again.  I had my 32 shot .44 magnum
ultra-mag assault pistol out and had drawn a bead on the phone, before
Gillian pushed my arms up and answered it.  Fortunately, it was a
wrong number.  But later in the night, Gillian's friend called.

Anyone need spare phone parts??????

   don