Oh, sure...Blame the Russians...

In looking for information about the link I put below I found this blog, which is about the only information I have found about the free movie site:  Russianzzz?

I guess they are not as capitalistic as one might like, seeing as how I am missing the part where the site owner is making a profit.  Silly Russians, altruism is for the good ol' США.

Gee-YAHD; they'll *never* get it right!

;-) 

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Reasons to Live, Part I:

I am happy.  Er.  :-)

First, in Gmail I was just greeted with this banner:

Quote of the Day - Martin Heidegger -
"The possible ranks higher than the actual."

And then, a quote found by the Lovely and Talented Ms Grammarian :

For six months, the calendar had been heading straight away from the 2006 Christmas holiday. Now it's finally turned the corner and is moving toward this year's busiest shopping period.

Oh, yes.  The Holiday Season approacheth.

And there was much rejoicing.

Yay.

Karol is gone -- *gone*.  His stuff was out of my office when I returned from my afternoon meeting, and this ISO 9000 schtuff he was trying to foist upon us (sorry, no matter how much you may love it, it is *not* an option at this point in time for many facets) was in the waste can.  Whether that was a parting statement or not, I fail to care; Kate told me about another email in which he basically called her a liar for saying she had a boyfriend (or male companion, whatever), which is just so fucking bizarre that I do not even know where to start.

And Arby, my mother's cat, seems to have some infection; she had blood and white blood cells in her urine.  I told Mummers that I thought Arby did not look well on...what was it?  Sunday?  Then last night she peed in Mom's foyer and sat right next to the puddle, to make sure Mummers saw it.  Mom cleaned that up and fussed at Arby (Mummers fussing at Arby over anything consists of wagging a finger in her face, and trying to 'reason' with her not unlike a Python Pepperpot by saying, 'Now, no, no, no! We don't do that!'), then Arby spewed on her sofa this morning.  Mom phoned me (as I am at work, of course; everyone I work with must think I am batshit at this point), and I told Mom that Arby had looked a tich dehydrated to me on Sunday, and I thought she was behaving weirdly then (yes, I mentioned all of this to Mom, and she said she disagreed), so were it me, I would take Arby to the vet *stat*.  So she did, and now Arby has a loading dose, 100cc bolus, and some take-home Baytril, and should have some huge blood work back in forty-eight hours because Mummers' vet wants to get a complete profile and rule out cancer and other deeper problems the in-house blood profile does not screen for.  Her Dr Vet said he was surprised she had the bladder infection, though; she is not appearing terribly sick right now.  I think that is all it is.

Anyway, I have to get some sleep; I decided to stay up late to watch 300...for free.  Online.  No idea how they are doing it, but if you have not seen the site, check it out:  Free Movies.  And I would REALLY STRONGLY suggest checking out their movies, 'cos some of them I doubt will be available for long.  I am currently deciding whether I want to watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force or Night At The Museum next.  I am dying to see ATHF, but I never get to go to the movies, and I felt wholly gypped one of the last times I had to travel for business, 'cos I missed Night At The Museum in-flight by ONE FARKING DAY.  ONE. 

Bastards.

Maybe I will just fuck off tomorrow and watch both. 

One of the guys I work with told me about that site as well as Pandora, which is a pretty cool idea.  It does make for a good chunk of decisionless listening, at least.  :-) 


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Just another day in Paradise...

Sometimes i would swear to god that i am related to the most selfish,
self-centred shit heads on Earth. The only thing holding me back from
making public such a revelation is that it would lead to the question
of what *i* am then, genetics being what they are, and all.

Assholes.

Burning Down the Nasty Restaurants, One Gar Woods At a Time

Well, then.

Today's meeting went well, I guess.  Karol was told on Friday that he was being let off-contract on another unrelated issue that neither Kate nor I knew about (and still do not), and so today's revelations just sped things up a bit.  Sigh.  We have been told to not associate with him any further, so I guess in effect *we* are the ones on warning, but whatever. 

In Other News, hopefully Gar Woods, the Nastiest Restaurant on Earth, will burn down:  Tahoe Fires.

When Meg and I were there this past March, the service sucked ass and the food was absolutely revolting.  I made the mistake of getting their *nasty* crab sandwich -- imagine a grilled cheese sandwich dripping with butter (or 20/50 motor oil) with some crab inside coated in what certainly tasted like watered-down deli mustard and mayonnaise. 

Ok, now imagine someone asking you to pay $18 for it.

Burn, Gar Woods...BURN!

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Traditional Sunday Post

This past week has been *busy*! Yet another week where I was glued to my work computers, and I am too cautious to even log into gmail and post. I started several posts by phone and ended up having to abandon them all; I wish gmail kept WAP drafts.

Butsoanyway.

The Big Deal presentation I had on Tuesday could not have gone better if I had paid someone. I was quite floored at how well it went, but I had That Feeling when I was getting everything called up to start (PowerPoint, etc…) – I used to get That Feeling all the time when I worked in the theatre; I am not an actress (tech all the way, baby!), and whenever I was called upon to be, right before I walked on stage I would have this moment of absolute terror, followed by a total dissociative calm. I was Adel in Self-Torture and Strenuous Exercise in this thingy our theatre troupe did, though (the director begged me to do it 'cos he said that I *am* Adel…augh), and I barely remember a moment of the day (and virtually none of the actual performance, save for one fleeting second when I looked at our Alvin and saw that I was scaring the fuck out of him), I was *that* 'gone'. But I did well then, and I did so again on Tuesday, and that is what is important. Our group is under a lot less pressure now, and that presentation was a huge part of it. Whew.

I actually fucking kicked ASS as Adel, I was told. I do know that I probably gave myself a concussion from slamming my head on the floor, and our Bethany was a charm to be sure, but she was a heavier girl and I am not unhappy that I do not remember her squooshing me when she jumped on me and sat; my friends and family reported hearing quite a ker-THUMP, eclipsed only by the WHAP that heralded my concussing myself.

Seriously. I had a raised bruise on my forehead for a while after. If you want to read any of it, pieces are here. It is a fantastic play, one of my favourites.

Butsoanyway; so far we are up to last Tuesday.

Then on Wednesday, I received a phone call from a lady at Animal Services; they had picked up a cat near Eviljob, and I am (I found out Wednesday) on record as the 'mom' of the feral colony – not only at Eviljob, but in the *entire* corporate park Eviljob is in.

This is a *large* corporate park, with a lot of cats. Sigh.

So they have this cat, and wanted to give me a chance to re-home it before they put it down. I asked if it was friendly, and she told me yes, that she had just been holding it a little bit ago. I made some phone calls and got a place for the cat to stay with the president of the rescue group, who said she would evaluate the cat to see if she is adoptable or needs to be put back out in the corporate park.

Ok, awesome.

Then on Thursday, Harry is coming back from lunch (in Eviljob's cafeteria), and he sees four men and one of the security guards running around in the lobby. He looks out into the lobby, and they are chasing a small black cat! He went out and made them stop chasing it, and managed to catch it himself when it stuck its head into the hollow at the bottom of a sculpture in our lobby and decided that if it can't see anyone, that means no one can see it.

This is a *baby* cat!

Harry picked it up and it immediately hid its head in his neck; Harry tried to get it to calm down, and it started *purring*! He tried to phone me, but I was already upstairs at work, and had to give him the number of the same lady who had taken the cat from Animal Services. She couldn't come out right then, so Harry put the cat in his car and phoned his GF to come get the cat, and he went back to work.

No – not mean; first-off, Harry has a '05 or '06 Grand Am, and the air conditioner turns itself on every so often to keep the cabin at a below-baking temperature, his windows are tinted, and he cracked the windows, plus girl friend was only fifteen minutes away. The position Harry has right now prevents him from just *leaving*, and I was trapped and could not even leave the fifth floor. So GF got the cat and fed it (she ate a HUGE amount of food), and it went to the rescue president Friday morning. Harry and Prez both said the cat is NOT feral at ALL – it is very playful, and probably just got put out at Eviljob and went inside to get food. It is definitely an indoors cat, about six months old; she's a girl, and she is *very* playful, and LOVES attention. :-) Along with the cat from Animal Services, she will be tested for AIDS and leukaemia, spayed, and adopted out.

We have had other cats who were probably former pets look at the glass front of Eviljob longingly (and a couple I have trapped and gotten adopted out if they are friendly), but none have ever come *in* Eviljob! The guard told Harry that the little girl just walked right in with a group of employees!

This kind-of breaks my heart, you know. She was trying to get to some place that had food and water. Poor little baby!

If I ever catch the bastard who puts cats out in our corporate park, I will beat them senseless.

Butsoanyway.

I have been a little sparse in describing all the people I now work with at Job II, and I should mostly keep it that way, but we are having a little drama there; one of the new(er) guys is a Romanian from Canada, and when he first showed up, we had nowhere to put him, so I offered up my office to share (I got my own office a few months ago, when Sophie lost hers), because I am not territorial, and I am usually in the basement listening to creepy beeping anyway. Plus, one of my dearest friends – Dorina – is a Ceausescu refugee in Toronto, I have known a lot of Canadian Romanians throughout my life, and we get along well. This guy is a bit younger than my friend, maybe by five or ten years (I am guessing), and I thought this would work out well. We have an *extremely* multi-cultural group (two Russians, a Greek, a Romanian, two Chinese, four Indian, a few Brits, one Scot, and two French, and I could go on…and that is not even counting the 'American mix' of Spanish, Black, and those who are just mutts like me). Several of them cannot be in certain rooms unaccompanied or work on certain projects because of citizenship issues (which is how *I* come to be translating the directions for something we are working on currently into French, which is funny; I am sure I am telling people to fuck off and take their broccoli with them or something [Merci de votre coopération. Veuillez prendre votre broccoli et aller à l'enfer…Quoi?!?], but our French-speakers are tasked with another completely unrelated project that takes them off-site, and I cannot ask the two other people who speak French to do it, 'cos right now they would be looking at code, and they are not allowed to do that…and I keep forgetting to just write it down and take it out of my basement for review; I'll just change whatever is wrong when I am done), and the restrictions are silly and annoying. They do not factor into my immediate story, though.

So I am sharing an office with this guy; we'll call him Karol. I was going to call him Mircea, but I know a Mircea whom I like greatly, so we're going with Karol. And I am friends with The Wacky Divorcee, whom I am going to have to call something, so let's call her Kate.

Kate is older – in her late 40's – and 200% Lucille Ball; she is American with two kids, and divorcing a Chinese artist at least ten years her senior. She has a HUGE history behind her (we brought her in because of her expertise in a certain area), and when I came on board there was no room (space-wise) for me, so Kate and I roomed together for a few months until I was conscripted into Sophie-saving (but that is another story), similar to what Karol and I are doing.

So Karol has been talking with me when I am up in my office area, and the conversations have been weird. They are not about business; he keeps asking me to check out his body (no, I am NOT kidding; he actually *points*), and so on. To the extent that I actually said 'let's change the subject' at one point, not that he then did. He *made* me put his number into my cell phone – as in stood OVER me as I entered it.

Oh! And! Karol has been calling the woman in the office next to me a 'sex goddess', and lamenting that he has no female companionship (and I am putting that oh so much more tactfully).

I have been doing a lot of hiding in the basement. Karol not only cannot go into the basement unaccompanied, he has no purpose in there at all; he is on a different project.

Kate, however, has to coordinate things with Karol; they *are* working together. And on Friday Kate and I took lunch together, and she told me what has been going on. She even printed out an email from Karol to show me which was *indescribably* rude, as well as having been sent through Job II's email, which is potentially some very, very serious shit, going way, WAY deeper than just basic sexual harassment because of the nature of Job II, and the nature of Karol's current standing (basically, not being an American, Karol has less rights at Job II. That may not sound fair, but that is the way it is; being psycho will land him back Home fast enough to make his head spin).

When Kate left her husband, she took up with a local contractor, and they have been happy (enough). Kate has looked up other old flames, and did manage to pick up TWO admirers when we were at a military technology expo late last year, including one guy who went *way* out of his way to have dinner with her (in the past four years, I have NEVER seen ANYONE make a love connection at those things; Kate may be older, but she is a major cutie patootie), but largely she is committed to Mr Current Muffin. Well, Kate made a comment to Karol about how she feels so tired and has no stamina these past few months (oh, tell me about it!!), and Karol sent an email to her that basically said Kate had no stamina because she needs to get laid, and Karol can tell Mr Current Muffin is bad in bed, if – IF! – they are even sleeping together, and if Kate ever wants to remedy that situation, she may call upon Karol any time.

I swear to you, I damn near fell off my chair right in the restaurant.

Karol sent that to Kate earlier this week, and Kate had done nothing about it. This is somewhat understandable, because Kate and I have similar histories, and do have a habit of just accepting some behaviours as our hardships to bear; I had not told Kate (or anyone else) about the gross conversations Karol and I had been having, and Kate had not told anyone about the conversations (and IMs, email) she had been having with Karol. For some reason, as soon as I saw it in writing I just realised that this whole thing is WRONG. I told Kate that I thought there was something wrong with Karol's mind, and she agreed, and told me about the *other* conversations she has had with Karol, which were as bad as mine, or worse. She had thought this stuff with Karol was a Romanian thing, and I assured her that *nothing* was being messed up in translation, as it were; I knew *no one* so crude, and I know quite a few Eastern Europeans; in addition, none of our other men are behaving this way. I tried to talk Kate into taking the email she had printed out and her IM history (Karol has put nothing into writing with me, so I have nothing as 'proof') and making a formal complaint with it, but Kate did not want to cause problems. I let it drop, 'cos I do understand where she is coming from; if Karol was not made to leave, things could be quite uncomfortable. But I did vow to stay as far away from Karol as possible.

So after lunch I returned to my basement, and checked my work email; during the time Kate and I had been away, a few people had had an email back-and-forth, and Karol had participated; I was on the phone to Kate in two seconds, 'cos Karol had emailed – to the ENTIRE FACILITY – some crap totally unrelated to the discussion about how he wishes he could have a woman living with him at the present time because such an arrangement carries with it its own 'unique benefits' (nudge, nudge), or somesuch. It was a very crude attempt to put feelers out to see if there were any interested females, basically. UGH!! On top of which, this is taking place AT WORK. On a *monitored* email list.

I phoned Kate and told her about the email, and that I think Karol is having a meltdown. Or that he was totally batshit to begin with, and it is about to explode. We both decided that we will talk to our manager on Monday, because this is getting scary. And now I have to go and meet Mummers for dinner; Meg may be joining us, but I am not optimistic because she was at a tournament yesterday, and I am not sure she is back yet. Just me and Mommy...this will be fun. :-)

So how was your week?

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bare, with slippery patches...

So I went out to see my father for Father's Day.  Saturday I took off Eviljob early, had lunch with Meg, Baby Bat, and Amelia, then Meg and I went to get pedicures and figure out what in the hell we were getting for our father.  We had decided on tickets to a show in a town halfway between ours and his and started driving out there, then changed our minds three hours into the trip and stopped at a mall and picked out two documentary DVD sets instead (one about WW II, and the other about North American travel), since we were not sure that he would like the show in the first place.  I think Meg and I really both just wanted to hang out together.  I had originally planned to get a CD of Schumann-Heink for him back when I was planning this to be a Just Me Thing, but I actually think the DVDs went over better; he loves documentaries of all kinds -- particularly those on war and travel -- even more than he loves Schumann-Heink, and he already has a pretty fair reproduction of her better remaining pieces. 

We got back in about 11pm, and today drove all the way back to our father's.  We had a good visit, he loved the DVDs, and my brother phoned when we were there to wish our father a happy Father's Day, and I wished him the same, congratulated him, and promised to make time to see him (and famille) when he deigns to drop by.  My dingbat brother cannot come before July -- Bastille Day to be exact -- because he was just made a Major...like day before yesterday; I would have liked to have gone, but just could not right now.  Maybe when he makes it to Lv 4.  Regardless, he has vacation coming up, and he is heading this way.  I guess that is good. 

Butsoanyway.

So I basically lost this weekend as far as working on all the crap I have coming up at Job II, but eh.  There is just too much to do there.  Seriously.  I learnt one program in days (a horrible one that shares a name with an equally stupid form of English), only to find that it will do nothing that we need (no video...as if it were some unreasonably peculiar request to want video, or something; they have a beta version that does video, but they themselves do not recommend it for actual work at this point...sigh), and so I now have to throw myself into another one in addition to putting together a talk for Tuesday on something completely different.  Although I love what I am doing in a really broad sense, I do not like the day-to-day hustle and hassle; we are attempting to build up something that is not common in our industry, and eventually that will be very beneficial for everyone, but right now I am having to do a lot of pointless running around because what we need as far as hardware and software support is largely non-existent.  One large part of my duties is to basically so a lot of inserting Tab A into Slot B to see if we can get what we want that way and a lot of times, the answer is no. 

Sigh.

I have an early-morning meeting tomorrow, and it is another pointless one.  I think they like to sit in meetings cos they are lonely, or something.  It sure is not to accomplish anything, because we never do.  Especially these early-morning ones.  If they think I am going to be doing my post-doc here, they are Truly Batshit.  Sigh. 

g'night.

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Workin' in a coal mine...

Argh.  I have been trying to get a spare minute to rest for almost a week.  I am slowly getting better; I think it would go faster if I could just sleep for an entire day like I want to, but it does not look as if that is going to happen.  I changed my hours around at Eviljob, and so now all day, every day, in-between my two jobs and school stuff, I am going from seven in the morning until nine at night (well, actually more, if you count the time it takes me to get up, showered, dressed, get there, and etc...).  Thank god this will only last for a few months. 

Job II is just one huge thing due after another; we are on a constant time crunch, and there is a lot of 'hurry up and wait' going on.  One moment it is urgent that I write something, then next I have to get equipment up and running, and then next I am having to do something else...and it is all Urgent.  It just really gets tiring and over-stimulating after a while.  For me, that occurred around September of last year.  Pfft.  Burn-out.  Big time. 

I am supposed to be working on Job II stuff right now, but I am taking a break; I am afraid to try to engage anyone I work with in idle conversation, 'cos I always end up knee-deep in some weird conversation, or we end up discussing something so bizarrely superficial that I wonder how I got into it in the first place. 

Augh...  I am being summoned.  Later. 

I'm alive.

I am sorry. I am really, really sorry for not having updated earlier,
but Thursday was exhausting. My biopsy was normal--no cancer. The cyst
removal sucked ass, however. Even though he injected my cervix with
some numbing crap (let us not even think about what that felt like), i
guess some parts were not numb or something, because it hurt like
HELL. Seriously. I was crying like a baby, screaming like a bitch, and
offering to name names of Fellow Travellers. Gah. You know those huge
spreader-things for one's rib cage during open-heart surgeries? Well,
that infernal company makes speculums, too. My vajayjay was NOT meant
to do that, thank you very much! I asked him at one point to hurry the
hell up, 'cos i could hear the seashore--and that's just WRONG. And
even though he had warned me that i had to stay still, when he hit
shit that hurt, i jumped before i could stop myself, so L'Orchidee has
one burn on her wall, and then i jumped again when his nurse hit me
with the suction thingy, and i got another burn on my labia
minora...in addition to the normally-burned crap on my cervix. My dr
was really apologetic, and even said this went much less smoothly than
most of the other procedures he has done, which is, i guess, code for
'after you, i am thinking of becoming a shepherd'. But the cyst on my
cervix is now GONE, and good riddance; it was about the size of a
large grape, and it fricking HURT. No nerves up there, my ASS...or
maybe i am a freak. Who knows. I have always had no problem feeling
things Up There, and never really believed that crap about less
nerves, anyway. Sigh. But the bottom line is that i am fine. I still
have the ovarian cyst on Millicent, so we'll see what happens there.
Sigh. More later.

Eek. Hold me.

Happy Khachaturian's birthday! 

Speaking of which, I went to Amazon to treat myself and replace one of my Khachaturian cds, and saw this:

Do not ever do this.

Or this.

I hate fake Cyrillic, 'cos I am the moron who will sit there and try to sound it out; my programming makes it so that I start sounding out the word if I do not immediately recognise it.  Then I have a problem code-switching (which I do a lot of the time anyway -- just this sentence, I started typing 'c-o-u-n-d', and if I am rushing, I will type 'h' for 'n' *every* single time; in my brain, H *looks* like it makes the 'N' sound, and the capital letters on the keyboard just make it worse sometimes.  Those are my two biggest problems -- s- and n- sounds).  And so here the letter they are using for A is actually a D (in common script), so I got as far as (in English) KNDSND... (which is nonsensical, but when sounded out sounds as if they were trying to spell 'Knudsen', or something...can you tell that I listen to way too much Prairie Home Companion?).  And don't even get me started on the i kratkoe abuse going on up there (turned around and stuck with F to make 'number' look cool, or whatever).  So tell those fake-Cyrillickers where they can shove their Yed Octaver.  Sheesh. 

And Borat can do it 'cos it is meant to be funny.

And Toys Я Us is not doing it...don't go overboard, now. 

Oh, look:  I'm not alone!  I was trying to double-check to see if my memory was serving me well for the Red October bullshit, and found this entry.

Butsoanyway.  I ended up buying this non-offencive one instead. 

Tomorrow I have the nabothian cyst on my cervix removed...yippee.  And I get the results of the biopsy officially.  Fun.

Romeo is ok.  Dr Vet put him back on cyprohepadine (which I am probably misspelling here), and he is eating.  Everyone else is fine.  I have three huge projects on me from Job 2, and one at Eviljob.  This has to end...it simply *has* to.

Someone come organise my life for me, ok?

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Another weekend gone...

Oh, lord...I have so much crap to get done for Job 2 and school that it seems huge right now. I did not get everything that I had wanted to do completed this weekend, and I will have to start the morning off with getting Romeo to the vet for his IV fluids, but also because he has vomited twice over the weekend, and is not really eating.  Sigh. 

And I have got to get some sleep soon.  Seriously.  Though I did get my car cleaned out today, and that was a huge accomplishment.  Augh.  I made Harry come over and help, and he put some wax stuff on it that looks great -- some Ice Wax, or something like that.  I know it sounds indulgent to have taken about four hours and spent it all on my car, but I have not cleaned out my fricking car in like, six months.  Anyway, so I did that.  I tried to get some reading done, but had such a hard time focussing that I finally just gave up.  Anyway, I am off to bed.  Yay.

Another week ends...

I have been working the whole week, and i feel as if i have
accomplished nothing. This is all at Job 2, though; Eviljob is the
same as always. Harry has managed to keep his new job, and i am just
thrilled shitless over that. I have not had time to explain yet, but
since i am sure it will come up before i get a chance to actually
explain it, Harry's new job is at Eviljob. I helped him to get an
entry-level position which, should he manage to keep it, would give
him a pretty decent salary, and excellent benefits. I have my fingers
crossed. Sigh. I am taking the night off to sit home and watch Shaun
of the Dead and feel icky because i think i ate something bad, or
maybe have a stomach flu, i don't know. Romeo is ok, but he is in a
bad mood today for some reason; he was wandering around and grumping.
I put him up so that he could be alone--he likes to be left alone
sometimes, so that he can just sit and then go to sleep. I think the
younger cats make him nervous, and he likes to go somewhere where they
aren't. When he was younger, he would jump up to the very top of my
highest bookshelf and take Alone Time there, or he would jump up to
about the third shelf of the linen closet (when i would leave it open,
in every place we have lived), go to the very back, and wedge himself
between the towels and the wall, or pull a stack of towels down and
sleep on them. So i figure that a few hours to sleep might make him
less edgy, cos he can't see well to begin with, and he has a hard time
relaxing sometimes because he is on the look out for sneak attacks
from Squoosh, Rhett, or Cookie. I am getting tired myself, so i guess
it is time for bed.