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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My Really Busy Saturday

On Saturday I started out at Eviljob, fielding stupid non-urgent training questions, then I had to leave early to go to Job 2, where we were running a linguistics study...then it was back to Eviljob, where Harry was with a manual trap, trying to catch the Little Broken Tiger. We did not catch LBT, but Harry did close the trap on Mr King of The Parking Lot here:



This picture does not do this majesticable baby justice -- he is HUGE. And yes, I know 'majesticable' is not a word, but if it were, KotPL would be it; he is downright *regal*. In the trap, I had to make bird noises to get him to look over at me, 'cos he was giving me the Silent Treatment.

No, seriously; he turned his back to me, and refused to look at me. After smacking his head but good on the manual trap (see pic), he settled down and refused to interact. We are not worthy of his attention. I seriously think that he is Head Kitty In Charge; I have not trapped a cat yet that had such *attitude*!

So on Monday, King of the Parking Lot will have an attitude adjustment; I tried preparing him for it by explaining that Life is not all about who has the most ladyfriends, the most kids, or the biggest balls. He responded by igging me -- turned his back on me, and everything.

Hmmph.

I also want to get him an antibiotic shot and some Revolution for his ear mites; he has a bad case of ear mites, I think.

And these traps are AMAZING! They can be used either manually or automatically, and they are just probably damn close to the best traps I have ever seen! They close in the blink of an eye -- faster, even --and are super-easy to operate. If the cat walks in, the door can be closed before the cat is even to the back where the food is (if it is being manually-operated), and the door is down too fast for the cat to even turn around! If it is being automatically-operated, there is no way in hell the cat can make it to the door from the trip-plate before it closes unless it can teleport, or something. I asked Melissa in this rescue group to get the purchasing info for me, 'cos they are hand-made by Some Guy. I think Melissa said that they are $50 for the manual and $75 for the manual/automatic, but I will have to check. It sounds like a lot, but they really are that awesome -- once that front door is down, it is DOWN, and they have a back door that locks that food/water/litter can be put through, and they are also big enough to use as recovery cages. One of the guys that does rescue showed me how to take sticks and put them through the cage wires to keep the cat at one end so that the food/water/litter can be safely changed, so these things are total one-stop-shopping cages; you can trap, speuter, recover, and release all from the same trap, and they clean up with just a hose.

I finally got home around eleven...after getting up at five; no wonder I am tired all the time. I have finals to finish writing (and take myself...oh, the injustice!), but when I got home, I *had* to watch Charm School. I am hoping Saaphyri wins; she is *so* cute! Seriously--look! It's fiffy-fourf an' Crenshaw:



Butsoanyway.

I have to make up a PowerPoint presentation and work out how I am going to get KotPL down to be speutered since I am going to be at work, so...laterz.

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Bwaah! I am in MA, and am swamped with work.

Here’s the deal:

I phoned around and a lady from the RG came out to Eviljob and helped me try to net the cat for almost two hours. It is not the tuxedo I thought was injured, it is one of the tigers that were not supposed to be let off at Eviljob after the large speuter day we did. We could not net it, and I finally *had* to leave, so the other lady put out a trap.

To make a long story short, she ended up trapping (I think) Blacktoe. That is a sort-of yay.

I had to fly out; with the coming storm I was sweating leaving period, and hanging around pit I was sure for a while that I was not going to get to bos, but I did.

Butsoanyway.

So Chrissy went out on Sunday and then again today; she did not see the cat on Sunday, but managed to trap four more, one of which was already neutered and one of which sme jackass guy accidentally released at RG’s speuter clinic.

Just fucking shoot me.

Chrissy and two other people will be trying again tomorrow to get the tiny tiger with the broken paw; this time they are going to try to gang up on it with nets like Pat and I did Saturday evening. That almost worked – if only I had been able to start sooner, or had not had to leave, or had more day light, or something.

Everything is ok, but I am all hormonal. That is why I am being so fucking psycho. And I am tired. Very, very tired. I spent all morning thinking about the broken tiger, the lost orange cat (of course Chrissy had to phone me and leave that message, so that I could come back from break teary-eyed, like the psychotic batshit girl that I am), and being generally lonely and miserable. It is this weather – this kind of weather is always my Final Straw.

Ok…g’night.

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Change the way you comb your hair and watch what you walk under...

Today went *wonderfully*. Not simply wonderfully, it went fantabulously well. There is a three-party system that oversees a lot of what we do; they were all there (in a representational sense), and they were muchly pleased.

And there was much rejoicing.

Yay.

Let me take a moment (‘cos I may not have one later!) to explain why Chrissy was trapping cats in a dirndl on Saturday night: Chrissy is German, and there was a Trachtenfest (probably horribly misspelt) at the German-American Club. For me Chrissy did without beer – but she did make with the dirndl-action, not that I can blame her; some dirndls are cute!

Not that I knew what they were called before Saturday, either; before then, I just thought they were a different type of corset. :-) I do not get out much, as one may have already surmised.

And I did get a phone call from the Trap-A-Cat Rescue group lady type person as I was driving home; she said that it was probably just fine to release some of the females last night, that often if the area is safe and the speuterers are pinched for space, they will hold females for only twenty-four hours. So ok. I am just sad a little bit that I did not get to say good-bye to the little black cat that looked so much like Squooshable. It is because I am a sap like that.

Next hurdle is a presentation on Monday, and then a minor undertaking, and then a trip mid-April. And then more crap. And then more.

And I have to take a new hair-style.

No, rilly – I do. If I want to keep it long, that is. My current style does not come off well with my…ummm…current audience at Job II. I have already toned-down the eye makeup, and I was well in-check today, but I perceived a difference in attitude after our mid-morning break, when I came back with my hair pinned up chignon-like. Most of the people there were (and are usually) of a type to (I think) expect my hair to be up or cut short. So I need to come up with something.

I want to go back to dyeing my hair black most all the time, but that does not appear to be an option on the horizon for a little longer…like after I am permanently hired somewhere. Or something.

I am *SO* amazed at having free time this evening; I have so much to say, and cannot remember half of it now!

Let’s see…

Nope, nothing.

Maybe I will remember it all later; I still have to finish my poker post saga, anywayz.

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As I was looking for St Ives...

This is my nominee for Funniest Wikipedia Entry EVER.

As I Was Going To St. Ives

I stumbled on it whilst in class looking for St Ives' Hair Repair, and I swear -- I could *hear* John Cleese reading it.

Butsoanyway.

Dinner last night was same as ever, I am still not finished with that writing crap, and I am having my routine all disrupted, and I'm angry. The pitifully few aspects of my life which I can form into a routine are, in my mind, inviolate. Or should be. For this semester, I spend my Mondays being worked into a philosophical froth, and my Tuesdays in a never-ending seminar with my HoD trying to regain my bearings.

And I pick up some luscious crab chowder and have it in class, too.

Now true: this is one drawback to dual-programming it, which I am to a large extent. The running joke in my (main) field is that when I am done, I'll have enough letters to make a whole new name. But I look forward to decompressing on Tuesdays, because this semester I have worked it where (class-wise) I am doing one program on Monday, another on Tuesday, and the rest of the week on this third thing that actually ends up being Job 2, but I'm not going to go explaining how that works out, 'cos it's not that simple. Job 2 is a real job, but I get credit for it in a roundabout way.

Butsoanyway.

So tomorrow I am LOSING my cool seminar so that I can help make a film-like thing at Job 2 that illustrates how cool we are. That's neat, sure. But I will REALLY miss being in seminar, especially cos today was so damned stupid that i could just spit. I mentioned my unrepentant Phenomenologist (actually, I think I originally called him a Holist, but I can't help but be honest) in the Husserl - slash - My Little Pony sense.

No, I really cannot be serious one bleeding minute longer than I absolutely must. Cope.

Well, doesn't this all just drive me up a tree. Keeping my big mouth shut is one of the hardest things I have ever done. Bwaah. Today we were harping without end on behaviours that *I* attribute (bearing in mind that I am not a Behaviourist) to chaining and That Other Thing, Occam's Razor being what it is and all. Simple explanations will suffice, as long as they both describe and predict the behaviour reliably. No need to get fancy.

Well, it would seem that some people *like* fancy.

Whatever. I'm just staying quiet, and really don't give a rat's ass whether Otho and Ingmar make it to the museum, or not. I hope they get lost, jumped by a street gang, rolled, and sold into slavery. Both of them. I hope they end up on a boat to Taiwan for the NAMBLA convention. Otho and Ingmar can kiss my heinie. It is frustrating to not be able to make clear the difference between a thought experiment and an actual experiment, and it's even more frustrating when one is in a room full of people who don't understand why one is frustrated. And it is *most* frustrating when people think they are being clever by perverting thought experiments to quell a legitimate objection, like bringing up the possibility that a hypothetical dog running through a hypothetical forest might stop to take a nap, or some shit. That crap really pisses me off. Bwaah. What if Otho had a lobotomy?!? Wha...wha...we're talking about something that DOES NOT EXIST, probably would not actually occur, and was only brought up for illustrative purposes, as a canned situation! What if Otho had three dicks and a llama named Tyrone? Huh? What then?

Oh, I've learnt my lesson; this semester, I am staying quiet.

Booop.


Oh, wait--I'm not done. It's *also* frustrating for someone to not acknowledge that a reflex is not the same as 'hard-wiring', and then attempt to refute an event that illustrates hard-wiring by listing off why this event isn't a reflex.

Bwaah!

Why am I doing this? I know. That's the obvious question. There really is a point and purpose, I am just whining about the steps *to* that point and purpose. That's all. Humour me; I'm harmless. And I find cool free things. :-)

So now let's go back to whining about how I have to wake up in just a bit and go miss my favourite seminar (it's really hard to tell which I'll miss most -- the class, or the crab chowder), and be all unhappy. Well, unhappy-ish; I do get to get stuff accomplished, and hand out with my boss who is cool and intelligent, and all that jazz. But I don't get to vent this week. That's my point.

And then I have to go out with Mummers tomorrow night, which means that I will miss trivia (yet another hallowed tradition shot to hell). And Valentine's Day is coming up, which means that the Holiday Season is over.

Yep, over.

There is no justice.

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The more things change, the more they stay the same...

Ideally, this will be a quick post, ‘cos I have a few things to finish, then I have to start thinking about sleep.

I think I had a good day. It’s rare when that happens, which is why I am uncertain. :-D

One of the things that I had to do today was go pay homage to my HoD, to ask for an exception to one thing, and permission for another, and etc, etc.; he said yes to everything (!!!), and that was in spite of the fact that I had been stalking him (and my advisor) outside of a department meeting that turned quite ugly. Thank god no one decided to take their shit out on me. I hate it when that happens, because I have had such a hard time getting everyone in one place over the past two terms that I was finally left with no alternative then to bribe one of the girls in the office, who phoned me to tell me that Everyone would be at this meeting, and give me the time and place. I just parked my ass outside the room around the corner and read for two hours (all the time tuning out the occasional voice-raising so that I didn’t process anything I was hearing—that’s none of my business), and when I heard them breaking up (HoD has a very distinctive accent), I rounded the corner and did a ‘fancy meeting *you* here!’ schtick.

Oh, whatever—we all know that I am going to Hell already.

Butsoanyway.

So I left my advisor trying to apologise to another prof whom I love (I *so* do not want to know what that was all about), and went to speak with HoD, which is a scary thing. It wasn’t a bad talk, really. He gave me everything I was requesting (we’ll see if my mouth is writing checks my ass can’t cash, as it were, later) with one small exception, and I have a feeling that one thing may be unimportant later. I *think* he paid me a compliment at one point (he is hard to read) when he told me to always be honest, because everything rests on one’s reputation, and without a descent reputation, others will not extend themselves for you (said as he was extending himself). Anyone who knows me will attest to the fact that I am scrupulously honest (with the exception of the occasional Social White Lie), so I’ll take his comment as a compliment where he is acknowledging that fact, thank you very much.

So, with the exception of a little bit of paperwork and making it through a few classes, I am thisclose to being done. Gah. I’m frightened!

In Other News, I believe that I am getting sick again—a return of the jungle rot that landed me on Ketek. My ears are back clogged up, my throat hurts again, I have a headache, and I’m coughing and sneezing. If I sit on it like I did before, it will become a lower respiratory infection, too—I have around a week-ish before I am back with the wheezing and railing cough. So I have made an appointment with an ENT, but I think that I have discovered the source of my ills. Though I don’t want to tell the ENT what it is, ‘cos he’ll probably yell at me.

Ummm…that would be kissing Rhett Butler, ‘cos he likes to lie in his litter box.

Rhett Butler likes to kiss—I didn’t teach him to do it, either; just like Squooshable, Rhett likes to kiss your chin, mouth, and nose. Maybe it’s a genetic thing with them, or maybe Mehitabel teaches her babies to kiss on the mouth; I don’t know. But they both like doing it, it means a lot to them (it’s a bonding thing), only Rhett likes to roll around (and often sleep) in his litter box, and Squooshable doesn’t. Before Squoosh, I had never met a cat who actually tried to kiss in the mouth/nose/chin area. It’s kinda cute, provided you don’t have any freaky hang-ups about cat spit. And although I don’t, I can totally understand if someone else does. Meg has a BIG freaky hang-up about cat spit, and thinks I am gross. But growing up, I used to get in trouble all the time for kissing cats (on their fur) and other stuff. I’m a kissy kind of person; Meg (and the rest of my family) isn’t. :-) To each his own.

But the point is that I have to come up with an alternative to letting Rhett kiss me on the mouth, at least until he stops rolling around in his litter box.

Oh, quit saying ‘eeewww!’; I can hear you. ;-)

Speaking of Rhett Butler, he’s blue. Cookie says that is because he is too stoopid to be a right colour for a cat. But seriously—he’s a silver-blue colour. And his nose is not black, orange, or pink—it’s *blue*. I have some swatches from Glidden (one of my mini-projects in the next few months is going to be painting a few things around the house), and Rhett’s nose is the same colour as one of the blue swatches! It’s a kind of blue-black, ‘true navy’ kind of blue…but it’s still blue. A blue nose. Weird.

Cookie: He’s SO STOOPID…I don’t know how much more of this I can take! He’s not even the right colour for a cat! Gaahd!

Rhett: MAAAH!

I had thought that I might have to bail out of Eviljob this semester, but it looks like I might be able to hang on for a few more months, though I have resolved to cut the string at the first sign of trouble or schedule conflict. This wouldn’t be too bad in that it would be a decent enough excuse to back down this dating-thing thing I wandered into. If nothing else, I am going to beg off as being too busy and let that be it, which isn’t too far from the truth. I mean, I probably could make time, but if Something Horrid happens (like failing Quals), I would be kicking myself. Literally.

In addition, I had a weird and complex kind of revelation over Break; I was watching Foul Play (I just *adore* Goldie Hawn), and realised that Mr Guy has a lot of the same characteristics as Stanley Tibbets. Which isn’t a major revelation, but is in the sense that, well… Take for example something like kissing under the mistletoe; when someone launches that at you, one assumes that it’s a heartfelt and/or cute thing, not just a normal, run-of-the-mill dopey, ‘I’m looking for an excuse to snog you’ thing. And that leads me to wonder where exactly that line is. I mean, where is the difference in wanting your Someone to have some cool experience, and doing the turning on the rotating bed and dropping the disco ball? That’s a hard one to call, and I am not sure I really feel like figuring it out. Motivation plays a part, but…who in the hell knows another’s true motivation(s)? And then there is the issue of how important it is that it is you…I mean, would it be the same were you anyone else? Or…

I am eventually going to have to put serious thought on this, but I just don’t feel like it right now; I have a headache. My neck is also massively stiff, and it hurts. Whine.

Butsoanyway.

I also found out today that my one journical that was being co-authored into the ground was rejected, and I couldn’t be happier, frankly—this gives me total justification for going around my co-authors and either re-writing it myself, or branching off on my own and writing my own prequel that would better establish what in the crap I had originally meant before I had so many opinionated cooks helping out with my broth. When I read the email this morning, I was a little upset, then I realised that I’m not upset at all; I have nothing else that I can use as a ‘see, I told you so’. It is things like this that really emphasise to me that I work better *alone*, or at least in very small groups.

Well, on some things.

So that becomes one *additional* task for this semester. Yay. This is going to be a rough year, but *damn* will it be worth it when it’s over. Oh, yeah. :-)

I think.

I am watching House of the Dead 2 as I am working (I started off just doing a short post, then ended up multi-tasking), and lord, it is god-awful. :-) I love it. Maybe next they’ll let Mrs Griffith’s grade six gifted class make part three. Christ. Or Rhett Butler. MAAAH!

And I have to really wrap things up. More kvetching about journicals later. :-)

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Oh, me so sleepy! Me typing long time...

Ok, so I did face-time at Eviljob, and left early to go put together (or help put together, really) some stuff for our EIGHT-HOUR LONG Pleez Give Us Money meeting on Monday. I--for once in my young life--did not have to do this all alone, 'cos my New, Improved Job 2 comes with a post-FuD, to whom I directly report, and she is AWESOME.

Like, finally, right?

She is just cool to the coolthiest power--really knows her stuff, and doesn't fake it when she doesn't. I really *hate* it when people fake it, 'cos you never know after that whether they are for real, or talking out of their ass--you have to double-check everything they say or do. She listens well, reflects on things, and is just damn close to everything I want to be when I grow up. :-) Plus she really handled a HORRIBLE issue at Job 2 really quietly and well--enough that *I* didn't totally understand all that was going on until afterwards, but she fixed it. And she doesn't pawn stuff off on people, either--she is very hard-working, and if anything she is like me in that she takes on *way* too much. But I figured that, like me, it's because she's accustomed to people fucking things up, not showing up, and so forth--so I have been on a mission to gain her trust, and I think that (after four long months), that I have managed to do so, at least a little bit.

Provided I don't fuck anything up on Monday, that is.

I'm going to have to think up a name for her, 'cos I have a raging girl-crush on her. She assigned specific parts for me to handle in the early morning part of what is essentially a mini-seminar, and I finished those...so she is putting together the rest, and we will do a run-through tomorrow. And what kills me is that I offered 3,718,281,828.46 times to do more, and she declined. In the Old Job 2, I would have gotten the request to slap together something late Friday afternoon (because advance notice would have been spoiling me too much), and then been left to my own devices as to how that was going to happen. Shit...in the Old Job 2, I might not have been told about the meeting until Sunday evening, 'cos everyone 'forgot' to tell me.

I love my new job.

So I am taking a [gasp!] break. Yes--a break. An actual period of time in which I am going to put a pizza in the oven, dose Meg's cat, dose Romeo (his nightly Theo-Dur), dose myself (I'm sick and on Augmentin and Flonase, by the way), rub Squoosh's neck, and pickle my brain with television as I eat. :-) In other words, do nothing. A BREAK. Beauty!

...then I am going to get back here and come up with additional stuff to try to help flesh out some of her stuff, because I am a control freak, and I am sucking up, and I want to be helpful, and I have an Inner Stage Manager who is still not totally cool with letting someone else do all this, and I like and respect her as a person, and would even go over and rub her feet if I thought that would be the least bit useful right now. Plus, I don't transition well between helper and helpee. Does it show? *I* am the helper. Like, always. God ordained it or something, I think.

No, rilly.

Plus, I don't want her to feel like I do all the god damned time, 'cos she's like, Xena, Warrior Princess, or something.

Ok: pizza and drugs! Yay.

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Variety is the proposition; modern is out-of-date...hit it!

:-)

So tomorrow has to be an industrial-strength work day, as does Monday—it looks like, despite my attempts at explaining that quality does not occur overnight, I will get nothing more…augh. My deadline is Thursday, and it is a non-negotiable deadline since it is basically a submission that goes to a group that gives final ok, and then it goes off to be completely finalised, so…it’s out of my hands; like it or not, I have tomorrow and Monday, and not much else, because I have *other* things I have to accomplish this week.

Today I spent out-of-doors, which was kind of nice, only it was because I had to do a training evaluation where I didn’t have a choice in the matter. It was cold enough today to be sure, but I still took way too much sun, I think—my face feels as if I did, at least. Go figure.

It wasn’t really bad, it was just very …new. I have never done this kind of evaluation before, and so I really had to focus and do a lot of that paying attention thing that I deplore. ;-) This was a good opportunity though, and I am really, really grateful that I was asked, because even though it is so different, it is also going to be (eventually) a really good skill set to have.

I was nervous, but thankfully my mentor on this one is just fucking awesome beyond words, and was really fantastic about giving me enough freedom to let me walk around and test out my wings as it were, but not enough rope to hang myself (to go and mix a metaphor for no real reason). Not many people are actually good teachers, so when I run across one, I just appreciate it all the more. And above all that, we were 'doing' an awesome group; it was really egoless work, and I absolutely adored it. I am looking forward to having to do it again, though other than briefly on Monday evening, I don't know right now when I will see our evaluatees again (which is a shame also 'cos I absolutely *loved* having an excuse to watch one of them. Sigh. I am *so* going to Hell, hmmm?). It all depends upon how what we did today shapes up.

I guess I will have to either give up on providing detail or do it later, because I am just *exhausted*, and I have to get some sleep right at the moment.

So later…

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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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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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