Happy Halloween!

Halloweenstuffs...hell, yeah!

God, it's practically Halloween. I am going to be blogging and trying to get other people to do their part of a project by harassing them via email...let's see how it goes.

This is a really nice story, except for the part about losing the kitten in the first place...ding-dongs.

I don't know what I am going to show up to work tomorrow dressed as; probably nothing. Well, besides me, that is. I skipped last year for some reason, and before that, I think I went as a witch. Oooh, I was feeling all creative and original *that* year, but at least I wasn't *stupid*-looking. In my mind, this is how Eviljob will look tomorrow:





GAH! Somebody come rescue me and take me on like, a hay ride or something! I mean, I've kinda been a good girl this year! :-\ Well, I *said* 'or something'. And 'kinda'.



In Transylmania, you are a vampire with a vampire teddy bear, and you get to turn villagers into zombies--hell, yeah! Bonus points for the teddy bear and linking to other cool game (Evil Elves!!) at the bottom.

Uh, oh... I'm Toast! I died and got run over, poisoned, and molested like, 12,000 times; this is what I get for being honest in my answers. Maybe I should have read the directions. Depressing, iddnit? It's ok--I went back and cheated and got my certificate, anyway. Well, I would *still* try to help that man find his kitten. Saving kitties = Hell, yeah!

(and four days later, as I'm being dragged by my ankles down to his home-made abattoir, it would occur to me to ask, 'you don't actually *have* a kitten, do you, Mister?')

Check out Blackdog--all kinds of cool stuff, including a screen saver with Halloween jokes! Yay! Oh--and--hell, yeah!

And Caverns of Blood (now how Goth is that?) has a ton of stuff (including the Magic 8 Ball of Horror and Magic Ouija Board of Horror!) Caverns? Blood? Hell, yeah!

Creepy downloads...Freaky fun stuff...Monster music maker...Halloween recipes...HERSHEY'S! Hell, yeah! Chocolate is better than blood! No, rilly--and no Dahmer cracks; I beat you to that segue by like, light years. He prolly didn't own a kitten, either.

beat you to that one, too. NYAH.

Spooky Word Search! Hell, yeah! Bobbing for Apples! Ok, that one's kind of boring, but...hell, yeah! This Whole Site! HELL, YEAH!

Halloween name plates! I am making one and using it tomorrow. Okay, maybe not one as snazzy as what they have, but I am going to draw a spider web on it. Or I will wait until I get to Eviljob and use company resources to print off some. Hell, yeah! :-D And Halloween poems! I am going to submit one...just as soon as I write one. I wrote a really, really good poem once when we were forced to (over my protestations that, contrary to the stereotype of goth girls, I am not a fucking poet) at badgradepoint in High School. I even remember it. Here:

Squirrels in my Shoes
by
Ancodia

There are squirrels in my shoes
And they're plotting to kill me
And make it look like the FBI did it.
They did it to John Lennon
and John Kennedy
So I'm scared.
But I'm not really, really scared,
'cos my first name isn't John
So they might not get away with it.
Anyways, if I think they're about to try,
I'll just tie my shoes really tight and hope that works,
'Cos I sure can't count on any help from you people.

I also wrote another one for that class:

I hate you.
by
Ancodia

I want Mr Peabody's Way-Back Machine
And I'll kill him to get it if I have to.
And then I'll go way-WAY-back
And get away from you people.

I personally don't think either of those are non-compliant and hostile, but what do I know--I'm not an English teacher at a High School now, am I? This is the same bitch who said that my favourite season wasn't allowed to be garlic; what does she know about anything? huh? Garlic is cool. And so is free verse.

butsoanyway. I may start writing poetry for the Holidays. I'm sure my former teacher will be glad to know I've come back to it after all these years. I may even phone her to let her know.

At three in the morning.

And NOOO, Paul Neil Milne Johnstone (or Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings) is a WAY WORSE poet. Say it again, and I'll kick your ass...and see if I don't!



Ahem.

But back to Halloweenstuffs!


Counting by ones, twos, threes. Ummm...not spooky. Sorry. maybe hearing some kids who can't do it would be spooky, though. :-D And the stories aren't very spooky, either. No hell, yeah. Sorry--not even with the King of the Cats story, which I actually thought was cute. But that's just 'cos I like cats.

And this is cool: Bonus! I am playing the murder mystery The Dead Case right now, and it is difficult to get used to, but pretty cool. After I solve my own murder, then I will probably carve a virtual Jack O'Lantern for a while.



See? I should make people do their own work *every* day...geez...

Happy Halloween!

Being all abandoned-like

...is not too bad. :-) Meg went off to Biloxi and took Mom with her
(not that she had a choice; Mummers dropped off her cat with me on
Thursday at 5am--much to my surprise--and then took off to go with
Meg...much to her surprise). So i've been without anything to do.
Ok, well, anything to distract me from what i *should* be doing. So
today i decided to majorly clean house. Blecch...I need to do this
more often. Heh. I thought about setting a trap out, but i am
swimming in kitties, and i don't know where i would put them at this
point. So i decided to stick to my plan of just TNR-ing them when
they are old enough. I think. Gah. Fucking off today means that i
have to double up, blah, blah, blah, but i have actually enjoyed it;
i've gotten to watch total crap with no redeeming value whatsoever.
Yay. For the last few hours i have been watching a House marathon. I
had been intending to see it someday, so that's cool. Plus, L & O SVU
is coming up soon, and i think Mariska Hargitay is just cool as hell.
Mom does also, and putting SVU on is one sure way to shush her up for
at least a little bit. :-) Another good thing is that i got to
spend a few hours (spaced out, of course) with Rhett and Cookie. They
are becoming SO friendly that it is going to break my heart to see
them go. Sigh. Ok... I've had enough of a break; i need to finish up
so that i can go-do tomorrow. Augh.

That’s a big buckin’ chicken…

I have totally stolen the below from Wikipedia, but this came up in a trivia-related conversation tonight: Burger King has, by far, some of the worst slogans in the history of advertising. Did they actually pay for these??? ‘Yeah, I just ate that’ has to be my personal favourite, though it’s close…

• Are you hungry for Burger King now?
• Burger King: Where kids are king
• Have it your way (this has been one of the longest running slogans of any company in the United States; Burger King has been using it since 1973)
• When you have it your way, it just tastes better
• If you ask us, it just tastes better
• Your Way Right Away
• We're America's Burger King
• Home of the Whopper (some Burger King locations built in the 1960s and 1970s still have this slogan beneath the Burger King sign on the rooftop)
• The Fire's Ready
• Fuel Your Fire
• Get Your Burgers' Worth
• @ BK You Got It!
• We do it like you'd do it!
• We know how burgers should be
• The BEST Food for FAST Times
• It takes Two Hands to handle a Whopper
• (In an ad featuring Mr. T) Mo Beef, Betta Taste
• Magic makes it Special when you're with Burger King
• BK Tee Vee: I love this place!
• Aren't You Hungry?
• Got the Urge? Come to Burger King
• Burger King, where you're the boss!
• BK4U
• In the land of burgers, Whopper is king
• Got the Urge?
• Wake Up With the King
• (Burger King Kids Club) Great food, cool stuff, kids only
• Taste Rules
• Stack it high, tough guy (promoting BK Stackers)
• Feel the Fire
• Eat like a king. Not a clown. (In reference to Ronald McDonald of McDonalds.)
• Bigger, Better, Burger King!.
• Yeah, I just ate that
.

Suggestions?

What do you do with someone who takes things you say and presents them as their own material and/or understanding(s)?  After having thought that I left this crap behind me, I have recently realised that I have run into yet *another* personality like this, and I am afraid that I don't handle them very well.  Perhaps it is just a pet peeve, but this behaviour *really* gets under my skin in no small way.  Today our director had walked away for a moment and (after this one person interrupted me multiple times), I finally managed to ask our Presenter a question--in a really condensed nutshell, I was asking if they were saying that the magnitude of a particular change was more important than the direction for a certain measurement.  Presenter had tried several different ways to explain his take on a concept that is a bit difficult for any of us to wrap our minds around (being condensed it sounds simple, but it is not only more complicated that that, it is wholly and completely counter-intuitive given the situation; it is like saying that it is more important for Squooshable to have a heart than to DNA test as a feline, and until you frame it with respect to wanting Squooshable to be *alive*, it is counter-intuitive; you'd think that we would want Squooshable to be a cat first just because the way things are thought of, having a heart is a subset of being a cat.  That's the best parallel I can come up with at this late hour; we want a living Squoosh, so he has to have a heart. His DNA is distracting, but actually immaterial to the issue because he can be dead and have no heart yet still have the DNA of a feline [god forbid, knock wood, and all that crap]), and that was the best I could make of what Presenter was saying.  Presenter responded that yes, that was pretty much what they had been trying to say.  Director comes back, and before Presenter or I can can give this simplified explanation (I paused to defer to Presenter in case Presenter wanted to approach Director with this explanation first), Interrupter talks over both of us and explains that Interrupter has just figured out that for this particular situation, the magnitude of the change is more important than the direction.  I look at Presenter, and he doesn't even seem to notice.  I get pissed off, and leave to go get coffee.  Fuck Interrupter, I figure; I'll be god damned if I'll give the Reader's Digest version of any other equations...let Interrupter do their own math.  So I just went into non-participatory mode after that.  Well, for the most part. 

And this is not the only example; the other day I explained a relationship between two events verbally (right now at work we are in a math-heavy stage), and Interrupter said nothing; within two minutes, Interrupter was scribbling something out on a paper and showed it to Director, explaining that Interrupter had just realised X...which happened to be exactly what *I* had just said.  That time, I interrupted Interrupter and said (slightly testily) that I had JUST SAID that.  This got no response from Interrupter at all--nothing.  Then later Interrupter asked me in a challenging way what my background was to be speaking about this, because my current program does not 'entitle' me to speak authoritatively on the topic we are currently tackling.  I replied that my background was irrelevant (to Interrupter; Director and relevant others are fully aware of my background, and have never expressed any puzzlement whatsoever over my 'entitlement' to hold an opinion), but that I came to my current program by way of a short stint in a graduate mathematics program, after I decided that wasn't the direction I wanted to take in my academic career.  Then Interrupter asked if I had actually been *accepted* into aforementioned program, or if I had just taken classes; I told them that I had, in fact, been accepted, and again pointed out that this issue was irrelevant, that one doesn't need to prove one's authority to discuss something that is clearly factual and not open to interpretations which would need to be authoritative interpretations.  I have the feeling that Interrupter did not understand what I was saying, and when I got the impression that Interrupter was trying to say that they had a difficult time believing that I would withdraw from a certain institution's Math Program X if I had been accepted, I gave up and walked away.  I have to admit that I was offended. 

Now true, on some level my background *is* relevant, but I do not feel that I need to justify myself to Interrupter, especially when it is put in a way that comes off as a challenge.  My feeling is that I am being brought into this group, and in on any given group discussion to which I have been invited, for a reason--and that reason need only be justified to the people who hired me.  I have a LOT of varied experience, both real-world and academic, and since I am not claiming expertise (merely interpreting or conveying facts), I don't feel that I need to attempt to establish myself as an authoritative source for much (if any) of what is outside of my actual discipline, because I don't NEED to be an authoritative source.   Hartford will continue to be the capital of Connecticut whether the janitor is telling you, or Rand McNally.  Facts don't change, and one doesn't have to claim to be a mathematician to point out that 2 + 3 = 3 + 2 is an instantiation of the property of commutativity. 

But the real issue is that, for whatever reason, I do not handle people like this very well.  They irritate me to no end, and my reaction so far has always been to either rage at them like a rabid maniac or withdraw; I am having a hard time arriving at a middle ground.  I am having a hard time SEEING a middle ground, or a tactful way to handle it when I find myself in the middle of such a situation.  Today I *probably* should have interrupted in front of the group and said, 'Interrupter, do you realise that you have just stated exactly--verbatim, really--something that *I* had just said, and you did not give me proper credit?  And that, similarly, what I said was essentially a rephrasing of what Presenter has been saying, and you failed to give *him* proper credit as well?' and just called Interrupter out in front of everyone...but for whatever reason, *that* reaction does not occur to me until later.  At the time, my perception of my avenues of response were between screaming out, 'you stupid fuckhead, QUIT STEALING OTHER PEOPLE'S IDEAS!  Did you HEAR me, BITCH?  HUH?  HUH?' and stand there and *demand* a response, or just getting up and walking out.  I felt I was compromising by staying and just falling silent.  And seething.  A lot. 

And I don't know at what point this changes over from being petty to actually being a legitimate complaint; I mean, I know at this point that it *is* a legitimate grievance, but this is after a few weeks of wondering if I am just being petty (there are way more examples of this behaviour, I am only listing a couple from this week).  I have never found myself at a loss for ideas, and for that I am grateful, so it is not the issue of intellectual theft insomuch as it is of proper credit as well as civility.  I mean, if someone 'steals' my idea, I will have another one; they, however, may well not-- and that's really sad.  So it is not that, but it is the attempting to show my work--understanding, ideas, whatever, as someone else's when we are measured by our contributions in this group that gets me.  In a way, it is like Interrupter is stealing a portion of the hours I have worked and claiming they are Interrupter's.  And *that* is what I have a problem with--Interrupter should do their own work, just like the rest of us.  Aha.  I've identified my real problem here; that at the end of the work week (as it were), Director looks at the fact that Ancodia has completed A, B, and C, and contributed ideas x, y, and z to the group--when my x, y, and z get stolen, I end up looking like a hard worker (having completed only A, B, and C), but not exactly a hotbed of innovative ideas or superior comprehension.  And uninspired hard workers in this field are a dime a dozen--it gets you *NOTHING*.  One is in the wrong field if all one has to offer is hard work; that alone will not lead to a thriving career, and I don't want to be advised in a year or so that I might want to set my sights a 'little lower', or something.  The thought of losing the complete support of my advisor and Director to pursue the course I have chosen terrifies me, and that is what is going to happen if I end up with letters of rec (or, worse, private comments) like, 'Ancodia isn't the sharpest pencil in the case, but gosh, she sure is a hard worker!'.  Sniffle.  I wanna be known for being as sharp as at least MOST of the pencils in the case. 

And Interrupter also does the exact same thing someone else I used to work with did--listen (or half-listen, probably) to someone's proposed plan of action and either not respond or reject it.  Then the proposed idea percolates with them for about five minutes, and then they pipe up with, 'Hey!  Why don't we do [previously proposed plan of action]?' as if it hadn't *just* been mentioned.  The other individual was *famous* for just saying, 'oh.' and dropping it when they were told that what they had just said was exactly what Person X had just said; Interrupter just stops talking--doesn't even *acknowledge* the correction.  And that annoys me as well.  Well, the whole damn thing annoys me, but these jackasses should at *least* be apologising when they get called out. 

Usually I just whine, stew, and plot.  I'm trying to be mature and productive in my actions, and suggestions are welcome.  Fire-bombing is out, sadly. 


Bwaah!

.

White and Nerdy!

Someone cool shared this with me (thank you!), and I'm *still* laughing!

let's make this quick...

So I have this MAJOR deadline coming up at work, and it is starting to freak me the hell out.  I haven't been able to devote a ton of time to it so far, and so with every passing day I am getting more neurotic.  I hate that feeling.  :-\ 

I have been feeding the parking lot cats damn close to every day, and I just put another phone call in tonight to good ol' WeLuvvem Kitty Rescue (the ones who think I should be able to round up all the feral cats in Eviljob's lot on my own and house them all in my garage, or out on the lanai, or just throw a tarp over them in my back yard, or maybe house them all in a storage facility for a month so that I can get free spays and neuters through them, which ups their numbers and demonstrates that they are filling a community need), to see if we can work out some kind of negotiation--I just bought a few of my own traps, and they sent out a newsletter via email asking for trap loans/donations because they are having a round-em-up, and are--in their words--desperate.  I am waiting for a call back, and I am going to propose that I lend my traps if someone will come out and help me to get some of these guys in the round-em-up.  I'm sure the answer will be, 'no, but we'll be happy to take the donation of the traps!', but I am going to give it a try anyway. 

And no, I am not exaggerating about the month-long wait.  If they had their way, my home would be wall-to-wall with angry feral cats crammed into Hav-A-Heart traps, all waiting for their appointment.  Bwaah!  Or I could 'plan ahead', as one of their volunteers suggested, and wait to trap right before the appointment date.  I would be willing to do that, but Mehitabel keeps telling me she'll have her Girl phone my Girl, and nothing ever comes of it...sigh. 

The 'planning ahead' thing would work if every time I set a trap out at Eviljob I got a cat, but it doesn't work that way--I have set my traps out TONS of times and caught Not Shit.  But whatever...I'm not trying to gripe. 

No, rilly--I'm not; it's just happening.  :-)

Okay; I have to get to sleep, but I wanted mainly to bemoan the fact that I have a deadline coming up, and that I have yet to do anything really holiday-ish.  And that blows goats.  I am trying to think of something sorta quickish that I could do as a spirit-lifting thing, and I keep coming up with bupkis. 

g'night.

.

Unable to connect. There could be several reasons: (1) You do not have an ISP; (2) the Internet is broken; (3) You are going to a site.

*I* should pay Microsoft $35 because *their* 'new and improved' IE7 won't recognise an internet connection? Oh, I don't think so...


They're *funny*!

I just decided to switch over completely to Firefox. Fuck that shit.

Go ahead and click it...you cannot break it anymore than it already is... ;-)


Humor Monkey

Wondering where I came up with the title? Try IE here (go to Start and Go Online, but you will have to close a few error boxes first, kind of like one always must with Windows): WindowsRG--Really Good Edition!

Don't worry; it's just a simulation. ;-)

.

People stop and stare at me; we just walk on by...

I just hate dreaming sometimes. I mean *really*.

I got off early from Eviljob (and yes, fed the cats even though I didn’t see them), came home, and promptly feel into one of those DEEP sleeps where you wake up completely disoriented and freezing cold in a dark room, wondering who in the hell could be phoning you at this god-forsaken hour, not that you know what hour it is.

So I accomplished little today, but that’s not surprising at all to me, ‘cos I am just completely burnt-out. I really, really am. The only things I accomplished at Eviljob today was readying my vacation and getting into a disagreement with a co-worker who insisted that Ciao is a native, non-appropriated French word.

Just shoot me.

I don’t remember what the commercial(s) were for, but stuff like this reminds me of those commercials a little while ago where one employees explains to his co-workers that they have fringe benefits, not French benefits, and so on. I empathise with that guy; I have given up on trying to get one especially annoying line at work changed from ‘perk’ to ‘perq’; I have also given up on ‘ladie’s’ and ‘ensem’ (as in the fingernails-on-a-blackboard-like request, ‘please be sure you are in an appropriate ensem at the company picnic’).

BWAAH!

And yes, I have *seen* a memo that says that, ‘for all intensive purposes we will be launching X on Y date’. I work with ‘conversating’ people who get ‘flustrated’ over the latest security ‘install’. And I could go on. No really—I could; I am trying to remember a really funny one I read just the other day, but it is escaping me. I was on the phone with a friend watching Flavour of Love when New York said that it would be ‘beneful’ for them to be apart for a while. Yes. Beneful. As in the dog food. I had to translate for the person with whom I was speaking—after all this time at Eviljob, I parse ‘beneful’ without a moment’s hesitation. It means full of benefit.

You know—kind of like the dog food.

Sigh.

Bear in mind that I am only kvetching to take my mind off the fact that today I got nothing done and even lost out on a really good dream. And it is now officially the 22^nd, which is always a sucky-assed day in October, anyway.

My apologies to anyone born on this day. Well, except for one person—I don’t apologise to one particular person who fricking made this a sucky-assed day a few years ago.

Butsoanyway.

Speaking of FoL and thinking about sex (now there’s two topics that don’t often converge in my mind), I think that is is tres-way sick that New York didn’t stand up for herself when Flav wouldn’t answer her question about whether or not he was sleeping with Deelishis. Blecch…if you are sleeping with someone, you sure do have the right to know who else they are having sex with! Flav, you’ve disgusted me. That clip (from the Belize episode, where Flav and NY are out on the boat with Gary Busey…Gary Busey *was* there, right? ;-) ) should be shown to every sex ed class on Earth. Girls, leave any man who behaves like that! Stat! That was practically a textbook example of a bum trying to weasel out of answering a legitimate question by blaming the woman, calling her mad, bad, or wrong. And whatever happened to a girl having some class and pride? New York not only took that shit, she went on to sleep with him *again* that night! That girl has the self-respect of a turnip. I could go on, but Ms Grammarian pretty much already said anything I could say a little over a month ago. I was just so, so, SO disgusted and offended as a female by that one part. And I am not saying that New York isn’t crazy as a loon, but I *am* saying that it sets a REALLY BAD EXAMPLE to let some jerk get away with treating a woman (with whom he is having sex) as if her request to know who his other (and previous) sex partners are is a ridiculous request. I do watch FoL for the same reason others watch bad traffic accidents, but…there are impressionable chirrin watching that show who don’t know the difference. I don’t like Flav as much as I used to. Icky. If I were New York’s mother, I would have beaten her senseless(er) after seeing that. And dragged her out for an AIDS test and a flea-dip. Blecch.

Butsoanyway.

Speaking of fleas, as far as kitties go I think my plan now is to just catch the other kittens when they are old enough to be spayed/neutered, make them so, and then put them back. I guess that is all I can do. And I have to get one more whatever vaccination for Rhett and Cookie, and then find them a home. They need to go together, ‘cos Rhett relies on Cookie. Cookie is REALLY smart, and Rhett is, well…he’s a boy. A kind of stoopid boy. A really slovenly, slightly stoopid boy. But he loves me. :-) And I do love him. And please note that Cookie agrees with me that he’s a tich stoopid—he sits in his water dish and then gets up and sits in the (clumping) litter box, fer chrissake. Sometimes, he’ll then go back to sit in the water or food. Cookie and I are simply tired of cleaning him up. It’s kind of funny—it really is like Cookie got the manual on how to be a cat, and Rhett was watching football when it was handed out, or something. Back when I had them in a cage, Rhett knocked over (again!) the water dish, and he was just sitting in it until he noticed that Cookie had jumped into the litter box and was dry. So then he went into the litter box, only it was too late—he was soaked. So I opened the cage to pull them out, dry them off and fix the flood, and Cookie leapt out of the litter box (over all the water) and came over to me, purring. Rhett saw her do this, and tried to copy her—he jumped out of the litter box *into* the water (he’s much porkier than Cookie), and then ran into my lap, coating me in clumping litter and kitty water. GAH! He was dripping all over Cookie and me, and she just looked up at me as if she were saying, ‘he’s SO STOOPID!!’ Cookie’s just given up and adapted to Rhett—he eats all her food and monopolises their toys. No really—I have to let her eat by herself sometimes to make sure she gets enough to eat! I don’t know what Rhett thinks he is accomplishing by starving her, though…who would clean him if she were gone?

I like to classify my cats as humans (and vice versa sometimes!), and if Rhett were human, he would be a lot like Sandy Lyle in Along Came Polly. It was really funny to watch Rhett try to imitate Cookie and walk across the roof of the cage—Cookie managed it with agility, leaping up to the top shelf and zipping across the roof; Rhett lumbered up and fell down about twenty times before he finally made it, but that’s ‘cos he’s close to twice the size of Cookie (or maybe more) avoirdupois-wise. That’s a lot to hang upside-down.

But he is cute—he has very fine, thin, super-short fur that I swear to god feels almost like *skin*, and when I came home today, he fell asleep on me at some point in my nap. He will be a good companion to someone, just as soon as he quits using his claws so much. And he purrs whenever he sees me (Cookie does, too). And he thinks I am his mom.

Okay, I need to quit talking about cats and get to sleep. I didn’t take the day after Halloween off, and I (again) opted to stay home instead of going anywhere (I am getting *so* old-and-boring), so I don’t know how this Halloween will go. I looked back in my archives, and realised that I never posted last year’s Halloween post (I may try to find it and put it up later)—Mom came over because she enjoys annoying me, I spent most of the night trying to keep a Halloween bow on Squooshable, and Mom actually told a gaggle of kids on my front lawn to throw candy at me ‘cos I fussed at her about something, AND THEY DID! And I still haven’t posted anything about The Haunted Shed, so before they get it up and running this year (yes, I am going to visit again if they do), I had better describe it quickly in case I need to refer to it again. Here goes:

Kids build a haunted attraction in a shed, which they call a haunted house. Put up signs—COME TO THE HAUNTED HOUSE! $1.00! Meg and I are driving by and see it, so we stop. I am nice, so I pay a dollar each for Meg and myself to go in, but we have to go in one at a time, ‘cos it’s a small shed. Meg goes in and is all tight-lippedly ‘okay, nice job, kids; that was great—let’s go’. I felt kind of bad because if I were a kid, I would be hoping that my haunted shed would be a good one, so when it was my turn to go in, I decided to pretend to be scared. So I go in, and they have a strobe light, some cobwebs and stuff, and two boys who jump out—one at the beginning, when you first come in, and one at the other side of the shed, right before you leave through the door at the other end of the shed. I said ‘eek!’ to the first one, and then decided that was kind of lame of me. I could see the other boy ready to pounce, so I got ready, figuring I’d be making his day; when he jumped out at me, I let out a huge scream, and yelled, ‘A GHOST!’. So then I open the exit door and the kids outside came running over, asking me if I was okay. Meg asked me what in the hell was wrong with me. I kicked her, and told the kids it was a really cool, scary haunted shed, errr, house. The two boys in the shed came out and took off their masks to show me that it wasn’t real, and another girl asked if I wanted her to go get her mom or the police. At this point Meg rolled her eyes, threw up her hands, and walked back to her car. I tried telling the kids that I was really okay, but they wanted me to sit down and catch my breath (???). Finally, Meg rolls down her window, and yells, ‘LET’S GO!’. As I walked away, one of the girls asked if I was going to sue them. I assured her that I wouldn’t, that I thought it was a really cool haunted shed they have there. I got in the car, and as we are driving away Meg tells me that I am the biggest moron ever. I tell her I was just trying to give the kids an ego-boost, ‘cos it really was kind of a crappy haunted shed. I mean, I totally saw the first boy jump out at Meg before she closed the door, and I also saw the second kid *way* before I was near him ‘cos he kept peeking out from behind a box or whatever it was. Meg asked if I wanted her to go back and drop me off there so that I could help them improve it. I tell her no, that I have my own shed, and I might just steal their idea and make it my own; I think there’s a market for haunted sheds. Meg tells me that I am an idiot. I tell her she’ll change her tune once I have built my Haunted Shed empire and she needs poker money. Meg responds that the one girl seemed to possess a particularly litigiously-oriented nature, and Meg felt that stealing their idea would be ill-advised. We go on to wherever it was we were headed, and on the way back see that the Haunted Shed has quite a few patrons in line. I think this is really cool—I like seeing industrious kids happy. Meg couldn’t care less if I paid her to.

And that is the saga of The Haunted Shed.

In Unrelated News, I just found this out—did everyone else already know this?

Alfred Kahn, an economic advisor to Jimmy Carter, upset the president and his cabinet by stating that the country's huge inflation could lead to a recession, or even "deep, deep depression." He was chastised for this assessment and told that words like "recession" have a very negative connotation and poor political implications. Unfazed, Kahn told the cabinet that he would use the word banana instead, as in "Between 1973 and 1975 we had the deepest banana that we had in 35 years." However, after banana companies started to complain he changed the word to kumquat.

(From Everything2.com)

That is very, very funny.

Okay, now I really, truly have to go to sleep; I have to pick up that dream where I left off!

Hugs.

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I know the plan, man!

I'm in my car, and i'm lonely and bored, so let me chat you up about
this Flavour of Love thing. I haven't seen the reunion show--no one
has--but i think i know what's going to happen if Flav does get with
Deelishis (however it is spelt). I know VH1 isn't going to stop
trying to milk this, so i have been wondering who will be the new
bachelor, and i think i have figured it out! I know everybody's
thinking, 'it's probably Gary Busey; he's in every VH1 show they
have', but no. I don't think it's Gary Busey. And i also think VH1
puts Gary Busey in every show they have 'cos he maybe won't leave
their studios, or something. He might even live at the VH1 studios,
and just wanders around talking like a weirdo to everyone, and the
only way they can keep him from scaring visitors is by distracting him
by putting him in a new show. You never know--it could happen.
Butsoanyway, i don't think it is Gary Busey. No, that would be the
*obvious* answer. Now maybe they will have a spin-off with Flav and
Deelishis, but i also think they're going to keep FoL going. And you
heard it here first: i think the next 'bachelor' will be...

Ready?

New York.

No, really.

mummy evasion!

No, not *my* mummy--*A* mummy. I am not very skilled at evading my own mummy, but after earning over 32k points, I will have you know that I am a Very Good Mummy Evader.

Look out for the mummy!

I am probably a good zombie evader too, I bet.

Someone come over here and make me go to sleep.

(that was a cry for intervention, in case you didn't catch it)

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my gyn is an awesome gyn...

Okay, so I have lived through another yearly. Yay. I am so farking busy that I didn't have time to do anything nice for myself as I usually do, so nothing to report there, though I know everyone is just dying to know how L'Orchidée is faring, so I'll go so far as to say that the preliminary answer is Just Fine. My gyn was funny, as he always is, though he didn't give me *half* the crap he usually does about my not fucking anyone this year--perhaps I am wearing him down. :-) This is a good thing. I did have to go have blood drawn for some crapload of 'being on the safe side' tests, and I tried my best to convince the phlebotimist to just draw from the HUGE-ASS papercut I'd given myself on the way to the lab (Dr Gyn is in a med plaza adjacent to a hospital, so he makes you walk over to the hospital to get blood drawn), but the phlebotimist didn't think I would bleed enough, so he said no. Weenie.

Aside from the riding me about having sex and the exam itself, I love visiting with my gyn; he's a MD JD, and knows freaking everything; he is definitely one of--if not the--most intelligent men I have ever met. He said that in about a year and a half, there will be a test (or tests?) that are better for detecting ovarian cancer than the CA-125 (or whatever) test, since the current one (it *is* CA-125, iddnit?) is notoriously bad for false positives, because women can have high CA-125 for a number of reasons. But he said that some place (I meant to remember where, but I think that memory bled out when I got the paper cut) has released preliminary studies on a larger study that are much more promising as far as markers go. At this point it should become really obvious that I don't remember what in the crap he said--I just promised him that I would concentrate really hard and try not to get overian cancer for another year and a half, and he said that would be great. :-)

Butsoanyway.

His assistant was funny--she was a younger black girl, and before he came in, she was griping about how she had really long, pretty nails until two weeks ago, when he made her cut them and take off all the nail jewellery as well as many of her rings and other regular jewellery (ummm...thank you, Sir). I tried to commiserate, but frankly I agree with him. She was funnier than some of the assistants I have been with before, so hopefully this is an upward trending. :-)

Now here--go carve a Jack O'Lantern! Yay! Pumpkins at Ben & Jerry's! or here: Pumpkin-carving courtesy of Georgeanory!

I am adding the Georgeanory site 'cos I continue to pray for the downfall of Ben & Jerry's because they retired my beloved KaBerry Kaboom, the stinking bastards. I don't want to support B&J any more than I must. ...until they bring back KaBerry Kaboom, that is. Then I will love them bestest again. I am fickle that way.

Now that most all of this crap is behind me, I just have work, work, work until break. Oh, christ. Meg is still taking weekends and travelling off to different points of the WPT/WSOP stuff, though she is going this weekend or next weekend (I forget which) to Biloxi to meet up with some friends, instead of to an event. I wish I could go, but I cannot; I have too much to do. Though I do have my little furry heart set on going to Tunica at the first of the year. :-) I made decent enough money last year just doing ring games that I think that may be all that I do--no more entries for me; I think they are a waste of my time and money. I may just not be a tournament player--who knows? I surely don't have the time to ponder it. :-)

I am feeling extra-guilty, 'cos I promised to do something for someone in my program as a favour last week, and I promptly forgot all about it. So that's on today's agenda for completion. God, I suck. :-\ And I wish I had some damned snack something here in the house (I am working from home today), but I never buy the stuff 'cos it always goes bad before I eat more than a little of it. After I finish the one thingy that I am feeling guilty over, I think I will take the rest of the day off and just surf for more Halloween stuff. Yeah. Right. Sure I will. :-) But I want to.

Oh, and I need to fix the template from where I migrated it, or whatever I did. Okay -- that, too. On my agenda. Definitely. And I think I want to change my template background, but that's a lot of work 'cos I don't really like any of the ones Blogger has pre-loaded, or whatever. And I need to figure out how to take posts private, or just give the hell up on it. Sigh. As if I didn't have tons of crap enough to do.

Ok; back to work.

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October

Is a stupid month. I am sitting in a five-hour focus group at Eviljob
that is being so poorly-run that i...well, that i'm blogging instead.
I feel better. I saw Mehitabel today and fed her. I'm sure after i
went inside the kittens came out and ate, too. :-) she's pointed me
out to them, ha ha. Shit... Of course, of course...why would anyone
need to familiarise themself with methods alternate to the glorious
system we are discussing? Heavens. And i ok'd doing this so that i can
have the afternoon off to go do my yearly exam. Oh, joy. Remind me to
never, ever do this again; this team thinks a 'design cycle' is what a
woman has once a month when she wants to remodel the house, fer
chrissake. Ok, now i'm resorting to making girlstuff jokes. Bwaah!
Why am i 'needed' when clearly you have all the answers, Mr Dingdong?
I swear...i am *so* owed more than an afternoon off for this! I am
now just going to stop trying to be positive and sit over here and
like, get in touch with my inner child, or something. ...just
shoot me now, willya? At least i fed the cats, so i did something
productive today. Yes, i am being sarcastic--it's one of my more
adorable features; don't even ask about the *other* features. :-)

rumours of my death...

...might be right on target. I have been sick as hell. I mean even too sick to go feed the parking lot kitties for two days, and you know I have to be REALLY sick to skip that. Plus I couldn't rustle up anyone to do it for me, which really ticked me off. :-\ I am getting better now and fed them this morning, now I just have to claw my way out from under the landslide of crap that has accumulated for me to do. BWAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, so true...

Surrounded by vegan Cali freaks, I crave toxic foods regularly...

Orthorexia

See? Don't be that weirdo--go have some banana bread, or something. I am.

p.s.: The kittens are wonderful! :-) I have to take them for shots tomorrow if my classes and meetings don't run too long.

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Tra Le La Le La La Triangle… Tra Le La Le La La Triangle…

My life's in such a tangle!

There; I finally gave up one of my punch line lyrics. :-) It's Patsy Cline, in case anyone cares. And with the exception of the whole love angle, this pretty much sums me up.

Sigh. It is always something.

I love Job II. Eviljob is the same as always. I am a spooked Blogger at the present moment, and this happens every once in a while (for legitimate reason, might I add), so I am just going to have to go with an 'Impressionist' blog for a bit.

But I do have to mention, in very vague terms, that I tried my best last week to help someone very dear to me out, and this dingbat just didn't want any help. Or did, but didn't know how to accept it. Whatever. I don't care—it doesn't hurt me, it's just hurtful. I will recover. I am ok.

Everyone else is ok. I am not getting a whole lot of sleep despite my best intentions, and so I am staying tired most of the time, but I like to look at the positive: Most of this crap seems to be flying by. It's hard to believe, but this semester is halfway over already.

Well, sort-of. To an optimist.

On the optimistic front, the weather is beautiful; we've slid into the cool and crisp part of the Holiday Season, and I even caught a whiff of what might have been burning leaves…I may go build a damn fire. If I ever have time, that is.

My classes could be going worse; the one I am doing the grad assistanting thing in is probably the most interesting one. Sad, iddnit? But true. And have I mentioned yet that I am tired?

I know it's time to go to bed when Nurse Betty IMs me and I start whining about how much I miss her.

Sleepy time bye-bye…here we go…

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When the world is running down...

Nothing on Earth is nicer than holding a warm, rumbling kitten.

Or two.

Or letting one claw the crap out of you as you hold the one that is willing to stay still and be warm and rumbling.

Good times.

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Straighten up and fly right. . . you jackass blog.

Ok, butsoanyway. I still cannot figure out what is wrong, and that's
after putting a whole five minutes of thought on it today. Pffft. But
i have found out where Mehitabel & Co. are. It looks like she has
three kittens left. If i believed in prayer, or even religion, about
now i would start petitioning ol' jeebus to help me the hell out
here--put more hours in the day, or something. This is close to the
worst semester ever, in terms of demands on my time. And what drives
me nuts is that i know that i am forgetting to do things, i just don't
know what they are (or were, rather), so i am walking around feeling
as if i am about to be blind-sided. Eek. Ok... Now time for trying
to sleep.

I Are (not) A Dreadful, Dreadful Thug :-D

You Are Not Scary

Everyone loves you. Isn't that sweet?

How Scary Are You?

.

Waited for again!

Mehitabel was waiting for me again today, but she ran away and watched
me put food down, coming over to eat only after i left. Today was a
long day, and it looks like this is how my whole week will be. I also
lost a few hours to a migraine that i finally had to give up and take
an Imitrex and lie down. I somehow need to thin out my schedule, but
i am not sure how. Argh.

How ironical

Today i ended up not making it out to Eviljob at all because i decided
to split up the day and take part of it as a 'me' day because it was
just so gorgeous this morning, and ended up running into my advisor at
a shopping centre where they were hosting a craft sale. We ended up
having a really pleasant lunch together. I feel guilty about not
getting over there, but i needed the break, and i did leave a huge
pile of food yesterday. Plus i will be out there tomorrow morning. I
promised to do some things for my advisor by tomorrow, so that's
what's up for this evening. It's not a lot, though; basically
glorified filing. The bad part about having breaks is that they
end...sigh.

Vell, Der Fuehrer says ve is de master race...

...and i've probably misspelt 'Fuehrer', but who cares. I'll fix it
later when i sign on. Meg is over; she is monopolising my computer
(and, true, i am too tired to break out the laptop), and watching some
documentary about Mr Hitler's poopy. No, i am not kidding. She wants
me to go out of town with her to a small tournament, but i have no one
to take care of the cats. These kittens need a lot of care and
attention, and i am only barely doing right by them as things stand. I
would pay a ton to board them without a reservation (Dr Vet charges
extra for Failure to Plan, as i probably would if i were in his
shoes), if he could take them at all (his boarding stays pretty
booked, hence the emphasis on planning ahead). I mean, same-day
boarding, unless it's an emergency, is double, if i remember
correctly. So i said no. I don't know about later on this year...she
wants me to go to Foxwoods with her too, and i already pay a lot in
boarding each year. Sigh. And i will eventually get my blog back to
normal, just as soon as i figure out what i did to it. This is what i
get for playing around when i should be working. And i guess right
now i should be sleeping or something.

Kitty lurve...as good as gets.

Ok, so i cannot take the afternoon off, but i did swing by Eviljob to
feed the cats, and Mehitabel was WAITING FOR ME at the feeding
station. She looks ok--only ok. I saw no kittens, but she probably has
them hiding. I hope, at least. I have to get back to work, but... I
think this makes me happy. I love that cat; she is a paragon of
motherhood.

Today could suck worse. :-)

Okay--I am in another meeting, but my first one went well. And today is a gorgeous autumn day; I am thisclose to taking the rest of the day off and doing the driving and looking at foliage thing.

just...this...close!

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Blogger for Word doesn't work in Beta? You bastards.

Okay, so like this is my first Blogger for Word post in Beta.

I would love to write this long diatribe about things, but I haven’t the time. I’ve been summoned to an early-morning breakfast meeting (with Job II’s Bossman), and I am mildly freaking out, so I will just do a drive-by posting:

Men suck. One of my jobs is cool. The other one continues to be just plain old Eviljob. I *still* see no Mehitabel, and no kittens, but someone is eating the food I put out. Classes are going ok. Thank god. I love my new office. I know I have already mentioned this, but I really have wanted to gush about it; I’m wholly unaccustomed to nice things happening to me. I need to get to bed earlier, and with regularity. Squoosh continues to be cute. Weebie continues to refuse to enter my family room ‘cos the kittens are in there. Rome continues to be grumpy, and refuses to eat chicken-flavoured Pill Pockets; he will only eat the salmon ones. Someone sent me an invite to GMail, and I really think that was super-sweet, but I am already on GMail, and have ELEVENTY ONE TRILLION invitations to give out, so if anyone wants one, email me; it may well be your easiest score of the week. Rhett Butler and Cookie continue to be a-fucking-dorable. They get more shots next Friday. Men still suck. I am tired most of the time anymore. I thought I was going to have a really bad migraine today, ‘cos I was feeling nauseous and couldn’t get the song Knowing Me, Knowing You out of my head (thanks to Coast to Coast AM, my migraines have a whole host of ABBA songs to pick from), but then I started craving a pineapple shake really badly, and when I got done I drove home and got one along the way. So I drank it as I took care of all the cats and started a load of laundry, trying to get stuff out of the way before I became worthless, and then I lay down on the couch figuring I was about to get blitzed, and woke up feeling ok about two hours later, so I watched two episodes of Crossing Jordan. Go figure—pineapple shakes really can work miracles, QED. And Nigel is really cute; if I met Nigel in real life, I would have him jumped and in a refractory phase before he knew what happened. Though men still suck.

Ok…wish me luck tomorrow. G’night.

(I ended up having to copy this and paste it into blogger. You weenies don't deserve a capital letter right now--how am I supposed to stealth-post from work? Huh? Assuming I ever have the time again, that is... But that's not the point!!)

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We Be Beta

...or so I think.  G'night.

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You ain't got to be so bad, got to be so cold...

I spent all day in meetings today.

Okay, well I am exaggerating a little; it wasn't *literally* all day, but damn close. I thought I was just going in for a two-hour meeting, and half-considered putting a trap out somewhere hidden at Eviljob and swinging by on my way back, but it is good that I didn't because it was over eight hours later that I headed home in the pouring rain that had been going on for at least an hour or so.

Sigh.

I am currently hoarding on my laptop over 200 MB of journical articles...yes, a whopping majority of which I have read, though I will vehemently deny having read a single god damned one of them for comprehension.

Okay, well maybe a few. I am all conscientious and anal like that.

Butsoanyway.

I like Job II--no, I LOVE Job II. A lot. I am happy, happy, happy...I just have NO time. And I am *so* grateful that Rhett and Cookie are healthy and good cats! They just play and sleep with each other all day, and I will get around to getting them adopted out just as soon as I (1) figure out how in the fuck one does that other than walking up to random people and asking, 'want a kitten?' (2) get their second and third round of those shots--the FVNBCABCCBSCBCNCICAFL/CIONRANWAY2K shots.

Yeah. Those.

and (3)...

I just forgot what (3) was. It'll come back to me, I hope. But I am waiting for it.

But my point is that they are such good little babies, and they have stopped hissing at me, though Rhett hasn't learnt to meow yet, and so the noise he makes is a cross between a hiss and a meow, and sounds like a creaky door hinge slowly opening. He opens his mouth as if he were hissing, and tries to meow--it's funny. Meg and I say that he is saying, 'MAAAAAAAH'. :-) And I have a really funny story about that, but I guess it will have to wait.

Cookie, however, can meow just fine. :-) She is so cute, and she is in LOVE with Squooshable--Mummers says she thinks he hung the moon. :-)

I don't want Rhett and Cookie to be the only lucky ones, but I don't know how I am going to manage to do much else myself. It is completely possible that I may stay this snowed in until December.

Ok; I need to finish reading some stuff that is WAY out of my discipline (and therefore feels as if it is going in one ear and out the other, or one eyeball and out that other, whatever) and then go to sleep. Our group has some new equipment, and it isn't as supported as we'd like it to be from the vendor, and so we are cramming a shitload of prepping into this week for a teleconference with the vendor on Friday. I am fully aware that at this point I have become stultifyingly boring, so in sum tomorrow and Thursday will probably be booked as well. Bwaah!

And I still have no problems with my new co-workers, save one slightly-kooky soon-to-be divorcee (details to follow) and one other person who I think believes that I am trying to take over our specific-interest group (I am avoiding keywords here), but I am not; I couldn't 'take it over' even if I wanted to. I am just so psychotically driven to get things done and put to bed that I don't sit and wait for things to happen like I think a few people have been doing pre-me. I need to eventually give a better explanation of how our group(s) are set up, but the bottom line is that I was brought in for a specific reason, to address a specific purpose, and I'm trying to do my best, 'cos I kinda like the place I am at now. If that ends up looking like I am trying to 'take over', then eh. Whatever.

And I target the 'taking over' thing as the primary possibility because this person has become increasingly begrudging of details and information given to the group, and I've found that when people do that, it is usually an effort to maintain a form of control, to protect their status, and/or to lock others out--so that is why I picked it. Even today, as we were playing with this equipment from the vendor, I said that I didn't understand why it did xyz, and this person replied with the speed of a knee-jerk reflex that I didn't need to understand it, 'cos *they* understood it, and it is *their* job to understand it. O-kay, then.

Now in fairness, I am there to replace a part of their previous function, but what I am replacing is a function for which they were over-assigned and under-qualified. My September ended having submitted a re-do of something they had 'researched completely' (allegedly) which was, and I kid you not, about five pages that essentially boiled down to 'this is so new that there's nothing on it yet'. Ummm...no. And I HATED turning in my reports which contradicted those glorious five pages, but that's what I am here to do. So oh, well. I'm sure that if I had written a 'here's the situation'-type report in *their* field, I would have completely screwed it up and made mistakes and had misunderstandings as well.

And I totally know that I am skimming over all of this, but if I don't address part of it, I will forget later, or too much will happen and everything will change. Who knows--we may be best friends next week. :-) I think another issue is that when I had to leave campus (work-campus, not school-campus) on a materials-hunting expedition, and I didn't take them. Yes, go ahead and gasp--Ancodia committed a social blunder. But I didn't know at the time that it was all that bleeding important to them, and one would think that, being an adult, they could *say* something if it were, but whatever. So that may be a part of it, also.

Okay, and I have to quit analysing the crap out of things now and get stuff done and go to sleep. Argh!

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Beta carrot-on-a-stick-dangling bastiges...

Ack! So I was going to convert this blog to Beta tonight as I am typing up more lab stuffs, only the link I did have to migrate is now gone.

Blogger weenies.

And here I was all ready to migrate and type a really ventingish post about general stupidity and make it non-public, and now I cannot. Pfft.

Which I guess is ok, 'cos I still haven't completely reconciled with myself how much detail I should be going into in non-public posts, anyway.

But still...it's the *principle*.

.

When it's time to change, you've got to rearrange...

I have three things left to finish before I can justify going and looking for kittens. :-
I have a meeting on Monday for which I do quite decidedly not have my shit together. :-
My throat hurts. :-
I am extremely sleepy. :-
I might as well move over to the beta thingy Blogger has made. :-?

Sha na na na na na na na na,
Sha na na na na.
Sha na na na na na na na na,
Sha na na na na.

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