“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”–Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Yes, I took two days off of work this week. It does the soul and mind good to get away from the ol’ grindstone once in awhile. And besides, I always wanted an excuse to use that quote. FBDO isn’t my favorite movie, but it’s still a good flick with what I would call heart and warmth.

Let me go off on a tangent.

Telemarketers annoy me. Telemarkerters who have a “private name/private number” immediately get put on my “it” list because not only are they calling me at …oh…around dinner time, they don’t have the guts and/or courtesy to let the me (the callee) know who’s calling.

Take, for instance, today:

The phone rang. No identifying number or anything. I ususally don’t pick up on calls like that, but I did today. I guess I wasn’t thinking. Dumb me. Hey, I left my brain at work where it belongs.

I heard a woman say: “Is there a Mr. or Mrs. Peterson here?” Ahhhh…the typical telemarketer’s ‘pick up’ line. Nothing is sweeter… Feel the sarcasm here, people, and roll with it.

I replied, “There is no one here by that name.” Technically, it’s true. I’m a Ms. Peterson–at any rate, I knew it was a salesperson and didn’t want to deal with it. So I hung up. I expect most people to honor my desire not to engage in conversation. Looking back, I probably should have added…”Have a good day, good-bye” to that. But oh well, hindsight is 20-20. As the mysterious “they” say.

The phone rang again…barely a second after I hung up. It was the woman again, ranting against my hanging up…”How dare you be so rude…blah blah…”

CLICK. Seriously, I don’t need to be yelled at by some lady I’ll never meet. And to be honest, I won’t put up with being screamed at. Period. Plus, I didn’t feel like starting a phone feud, because I was getting angry. That’s why I hung up on her again.

For a minute, I wish I had the rocket launcher from the Halo games to blow up my phone. I would have loved to have seen the silver and black chunks that was my phone fly all over the place. As well as the blackened hole in the floor of my house. I guess that’s another item to be added to my X-mas list. I’m sure to get it because I’ve been an awfully good girl this year.

THE PHONE RANG AGAIN. This time, I didn’t pick it up. Just turned off the ringer. I just had a feeling it was her.

Look, I hate being rude, but darn it, telemarketers bug the perdition INTO me. And lady, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry if I was inpolite. Next time, I’ll do as I did above and not answer the phone–thereby saving us both face.