Salmon, Bananas, and Sushi...Oh My & About that Job Thing...

With rain on the horizon, Andy and I trekked out to into the sea of people that were "ready to rumble..." or, er, whatever you do at a Soap Box Derby.

Red Bull is hosting a series of Soap Box Derbies, it seems, and didn't realize where they were; that is the only way to explain it when the announcer was getting the crowd ready for the races, pumping them up to cheer for anything and everything. Only, well, this is Fremont, and so when he asked if there were any NASCAR fans in the crowd? I'll not say you could hear a pin drop, but the roars and the hollerings and the cheers of the previous minutes were, um, missing. Hadn't he just been going on and on and on about how soap box derbies were all about people and gravity power? Hadn't he realized how excited the crowd of PNWers were to be a part of a NON-dinosaur burning exercise?

Then they started the actual NASCAR race car and people were even quieter. Of course that may have something to do with the tremendous roaring of the car itself. The car powered down the course and did it's thing, as fast as a NASCAR race car will; pretty much making any of the "human/gravity" contestants look slow and sloppy in comparison. WAY TO GO RED BULL...

Does "know your audience" ring a bell?

But you all want pictures, so here are the few shots, in no particular order, that we got in before running away as the water started falling out of the sky. "Sugar melts, honey!"

There was a very decent-sized crowd there, this really and truly is only the "starting line" crowd. The course ran for .5 mile down the hill and the place was packed. Yet another reason for me to leave earlier than later. People in that quantity make me nervous.
What you see, way back there is the starting ramp. The first test of the soap box machines was to TURN A CORNER. It was quite a way to weed out a number of vehicles.

Speaking of such:
"Captain Running Man" lost his soap box on said turn. That didn't deter him from finishing the course. The problem I have with this purple-wonder is that all I can hear in my head is "Captain Caaaave Maaaaan!" The powers of television, people, are stronger than anyone ever imagined.

Speaking of TV, or maybe just my twisted childhood...each team had to do a "skit" and take off to their own theme music...case in point, there was an A-Team, and yes, they shook their money-makers to the A-Team theme. These guys? I totally thought they would do something to that "Abba Dabba Dabba" song a la "Laverne and Shirley." Alas, they did not:Monkey Power!

Here's where you could tell that the sponsors were a little out of touch with the PNW. They actually thought it was above and beyond weird that someone should make their vehicle look like a Salmon. In fact, this guy got the lowest score of the day! I wish I was kidding...A bit odd that the Salmon is going down hill as it's that time of year when they're desperately trying to go upstream...ah well, we all have some odd balls in every community.

What derby with a Salmon vehicle not be complete with a Salmon Roe vehicle?

YUM!

And that's all she wrote for me. I was hungry, tired, cold, and then the skies started opening up. Umbrella-less like a good Seattle-ite, I was ready to go get lunch somewhere warm and dry. I know! How silly I am!

So this was a great way for me to start my last unemployed weekend.

Yep. I took it.

I already gave my reasons to a number of individuals, but now I'll tell the world, cuz yeah, I know you're all interested in my boring life...

It came down to that whole "changing careers"/experience/ability/coolness problem/wall I've been running into since I hung up my teaching hat. If I was in it for the money, I probably wouldn't have gone into teaching in the first place, duh!

So the more I interviewed and spoke with people, the more I resolved that whatever I want to do with my life right now should pay the bills and not make my neck and back ache or turn my hair gray. That kind of job is not going to have me rolling in money.

The goal is to be in a business that doesn't make me cringe at the way it is negatively affecting the world, as well as doesn't make me want to cry cuz I have to go and deal with my coworkers that don't think I'm cool enough to be in their presence every day. (You get to see and experience a whole lot as a temp, lemme tell ya.)

I was kinda shocked that I found both of the positives in one place. I'm literally starting at the bottom of the totem pole again, but the beauty of that is, of course there is nowhere to go but up. (Which is why this position was actually more attractive than the higher paying one...why go from one pigeon-hole career to another???)

I start Monday, but will be transitioning out of my department and into the current one over a two week time period. I actually get to train the new temp! Yes, I am weirded out, but hello benefits and vacation time...sure, I won't actually be able to afford to go anywhere, but that's not really the point, or something. My mom said it in a way I was happy hearing, but um, it gets lost in translation.

A Call for Votes

Yarn-A-Go-Go chica, Rachel, needs everyone's help. She entered a competition back in August, wherein you send in a manuscript and chapters you've written get voted on all American Idol style.

Chapter 1 came and went, and Rachel was able to move on to the second round.

Now she's at Chapter 2 and is in 4th place. Please go to her page and read all about it. Hopefully you will go on to register with Gather and give her a 10, cuz the winners of this round get their manuscript read by a real publishing company!

I did it, registered, voted, then a few days later made sure I declined Gather's daily mailings. Use your "junk mail" email address if you are wary or lazy like me and aren't going to bother with the "settings" of your account until you realize they will indeed send you your daily Gather and something about orange juice.

Whatever, go, register, and please give Rachel a 10!

And tomorrow I'll post about jobs and soap box derbies.

Tired, but I Can't Sleep

They've offered me a job. The lesser paying of the two I applied for.

Now I have to figure out if I can afford to take it. Back when I applied for it, this was not an issue. One new-and-improved root canal/"bling" crown later, I'm feeling rather poor and stretched to my monetary limits.

But it's a real job. Bennies. It's been years since I had those! Though I will lose my doctor...I can't afford to do the PPO thing. I have to check on my dentist. Lord help me if he's not on the list, I will cry.

Vacation time! Though as I told my mom, great! I'll have time off, but not be able to afford to go anywhere! And my do I love my mom, she said something like, "So you stay home! You can sort though your junk and really clean up!" Ah mamacita, my "junk" lives in her storage room...she was channeling the pit that was my childhood bedroom I think. Messy I will always be, but not so much the pack rat I used to be.

I make more as a temp., technically. But as I never actually accepted the fact that I got a raise a little while ago (to help with the aforementioned bling/lessen the stretched out feeling), I really won't miss it, much. I really liked seeing the fatter checks I guess.

What is it that is keeping me waffling here...

The job is not as hard as what I've been up to these last few weeks. WAAAAY fewer responsibilities, more of a chance that I'll learn a new trade. I really should just go for it. The guilt is that I start on Monday. What about my huge to-do list?

I've been told I should just be selfish and damn them all. I need to sleep on it.

Ah, I think I know...it's that feeling of first tendrils of a root maybe? Yep, that may be it. I've been transitory for so long that this is kinda scary. Next thing you know I'll have lived in a place for 2 xmases in a row or something...

And how many times can I reknit the crown of a hat without going bonkers??? 3rd try is the charm, please?

Because of My Wide Readership...

So Purrrl-Plexed (I love the name of her blog) is holding a contest for her friend Nikki.
Part of it involves linking to her page AFTER voting for Nikki's kids book illustration. Link on and vote for Nikki!

She's hoping someone with a strong "readership" will come along and spread the word. As we all know, I, um, don't resemble that remark, but hey, worth the try.

The link to the book site: abcbookcompetition Go to the 3rd book competition, it should be the biggest link.

The book: "What's Wrong With Mud?"

If you link and blog about the competition, and vote, let Purrl-Plexed know and you too can be entered into the yarn raffle.

How Many Licks Does it Take to get to the Center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?

That's the best way to describe the feeling I'm having regarding how many times I can rip Noro Kureyon yarn before it's in no condition to be used for knitting a hat or any other knit-purposes.

Non-felted knitting purposes at least, cuz nothing gets tossed in Tactlesslandia if I can help it.

At least, not when it is yarn and I am poor and the dollar is sinking so low that soon I'll be out of that whole "affording new yarn" market and will, as the Yarn Harlot described in her talk a couple Friday's back, be in my own little yarn apocalypse, with only the current yarn I have on-hand as the only yarn I'll ever have, knitting something, getting to the point where you are almost done, then taking that end and pulling it all apart and winding it all back into a ball only to knit something new and almost finish it, pull the needles out and, yeah, there's that end again....unraveling it all into a pile on my lap and winding it back into a ball as my Autistic cousin would, no matter how much new yarn I bought her...

Aaauuuummmm. I think I may need a wee bit of a break here.

It's 10 p.m. on a Sunday night and I have absolutely nothing to show for the 10+ hours of knitting I've done since Friday night. Why so much couch time?

I am fighting a bug. Andy came back from visiting his family in Cali with "gifts!" By Friday he was bed-ridden and sure enough, come yesterday afternoon I was napping in between reading, knitting and napping, as my body said, "Uh-uh, uh-uh, no way" to anything that involved such things as getting up, living life, eating, you know, silly things like that.

I think I'm winning. I'll know for sure by tomorrow after work. If I caught whatever bubonic plague Andy brought with him, I'll be running a fever by then. I usually shrug these bugs off like yesterday's pestilences, but I think I'm a little overworked and underhealthy right now. Something about working those 9 hour days. As much as I love the overtime pay, I think I'd rather have my health, silly rabbit that I am.

On a completely different train of thought, I had my last dental appointment for a bit, the final crown placing, as well as a cleaning.

HURRAY GENETICS!

Hate me all you want, I am proof positive that tartar does not build up on everyone. (Thanks dad!) 2 years since my last cleaning and I am not a candidate for a "deep clean." Nor did she have to scrape for two years' worth of build-up. Though I did finally get the last of my braces cement taken off my teeth...19 years later.

Yeah, we were all kinda surprised that all my other hygienists just kinda never said anything or went so far as to ask about my braces and stuff. Though, benefit of the doubt and all, maybe it takes a couple decades for the cement to show itself? Could be. I wouldn't know, as a society we don't really go around asking people about their teeth, braces, and decades old stains that might be cement, and stuff, right?

Okay, so all you crown people...how long before I get used to having a tooth again? I think it's because it's been over 4 months and some gum surgery since I had a full-on tooth back there, but I can "feel" it. I'm going to give my gums more time to heal, but I'm not supposed to feel anything there, right? I mean, I push down and it is sore! My jaw, that is. But just in that spot. I'm supposed to let my dentist know if it feels "weird." Does that qualify?

Okay, I need to go see if the latest cast-on and style works for the Noro. And yes, I do have that tootsie pop commercial stuck in my head. Would you like it? I aim to please.

"The world may never know."

I Miss Tahoe, and Moss Landing, and Hilo, and...

So I've been asked to gather some references...yes, things are getting kinda official.

I was kinda caught off guard!

No really! See, I've been so caught up filling-in for so many people that it didn't dawn on me that things were still happening in the "getting a real job" world. So all of a sudden I had to remember where my list of "peeps who have nothing but good things to say about me" was. And make sure their information was still up-to-date!

Finding the list was easy. Striking out was easy too.

Lord knows I have moved more times in the last decade than anyone else I know, except maybe Andy who seems to be competing with me. But email? I've kept one email the same since...ummm well, 1996 when my undergrad email was taken away and my grad school email was too temporary for me to feel like I could give it to employers. I've added other addresses over the last decade +1. So now-a-days it's my "junk mail" catch-all. Not spam, no, these are the "weekly flier" kind of emails. The coupons and ads and all that bother that comes from signing up to places where your "log in" isn't your email. Or you know, the email address you use for complaint letters to store managers and such. And of course, for people to always be able to find me.

I was getting kinda nervous after my second "Mail Delivery Subsystems" response. It hadn't been that long since the last time I used my list, after all. But I persevered and dug deep into the bowels of my 3000+ emails hoping for a trail to follow.

Boy did I fall into the nostalgia pit. I really must learn to delete emails. There were quick snippets from a co-teacher in Moss Landing, awful humor from Tahoe, rants and complaints from my students in Hilo, letters from my mom when I was in Mexico. I'm amazed at all the stuff I've been able to keep.

Then I really flipped...I have 4 in-boxes worth of stuff that I still have, by pure chance. I have lost more to hard drive failure than I really care to think about, but as all these emails are web-based, it's all still there (for now, knock on wood, salt over shoulder, touch iron, etc. and so forth).

So yeah, I think I've found everyone, again. The down-side is that I'm weirding out about the job situation now. Looking back at all the places I've been and all the people I've met...I want to go back so badly. I want to slip back into that life and those friends...and yet...I know I'm not that same person anymore, similar, yes, but not the same.

At the same time that I want to go into the way-back machine, I want to stop living in the past and really look at where I am in the here and now. Which sounds so very grown up of me, doesn't it? So very progressive and stuff? Almost grounded? Yeah, I'm not fooling myself, either. This is probably why I DON'T delete any of those emails...aside from being rather useful when I have to track someone down? I'm far too susceptible to the "what would have happened ifs."

Big sigh....

Losing It...

My nerves are fried. Frayed? Whatever. I can tell because I have a letter to write:
***
Dear Fish Guy at Ballard Market,

There is a term in the retail world that they never taught you. What for? I am obviously a dime a dozen customer, and this neighborhood and the quality of the food in this store gives you the leisure of having the "one-horse-town" kind of feeling in this little city of Seattle.

YET, never, not even once in my real one-horse-town experiences have I ever had anyone treat me the way you did today at 6:05 p.m. this evening.

I was the woman standing there listening to you explain crab cake cooking to the lady with the tiny package of I'm not sure what. Fish of some sort, I suppose. I was the one who, when I asked for 1/2 a pound of the salmon right in front of me, the very piece you were adjusting to look nicer, yes that one, you said, "Ummm, for that amount we have the pre-wrapped self-serve fish in the cooler over there, and you pointed, as if I was not aware that there was a section of fish that lived on Styrofoam and cellophane. As if maybe I was new to your store and did not know the secret rule that you must order a certain amount of fish in order to make it worth your while. (There isn't one by the way.)

Did you even look at me? Did you even see that I was pointing to a particular fish? One I'd been eying as you explained your crab cake secrets to that woman there? No, you didn't. I know you didn't because instead of following your finger to the pre-cut fish that weren't even the same kind as that behind the fancy glass of yours? I was looking right at you. Dumbfounded.

You didn't once look at me and realize that maybe you'd made a mistake and I knew perfectly well that there were plastic covered Cohos over yonder that people had been sorting through all day. That maybe I was pointing at a particular piece for a reason? That maybe the customer is always right and you should shut up and cut 1/2 a pound for her? No, instead you looked over to the guy behind me and began taking his order for 1 pound of whatever it was he wanted, I didn't hear, I'd stopped listening. Was this really happening?

So I walked over to the pre-cut fish. Verified that no, these were not the salmon I was looking for, and stepped back to double check. It's always good to double-check. You were gone, off going above and beyond for some other customer that probably asked for 5 pounds of something. You then saw me standing there and it was confirmed that you didn't give a rat's ass who your customers were because you asked again, "How can I help you?" Cuz you didn't even realize it was still me. 1/2 pound of fish girl.

"I doubt you can help me, seeing as you didn't want to earlier," I said. And your reaction? Was it one of, "Oh no I've offended her somehow I need to find out how?" Was it, "Oh god, she's gonna tell the boss I pissed her off?" Or even, "I don't know who this lady thinks she is, but I'll get rid of her by giving her what she wants?" No. Not as such. Instead you blatantly deny your actions! "I didn't do that! I was just telling you where you could get fish in that amount, ma'am."

And maybe I should have kept my mouth shut as I was shaking my head, but hi, I'm me, "That's not the fish I wanted, and that's not really the point." I could have said more, but that's when you're friends ran up to you and started talking about the mussels they had/wanted/etc. and I was once again a forgotten bother.

That's about the time, Fish Guy, that I walked away and put back everything I'd had in my basket. You guys obviously don't need my money.

I hope the mussels you got are rotten and they give you a wretched case of explosive diarrhea. Not to mention I hope a fish scale embeds itself so deep under a fingernail that it causes you pain and anguish and that nail falls off for calling me ma'am in that tone, you ass.

Sincerely Yours,

1/2 lb. Salmon Girl

***
Aaaahh... That feels so very much better! Blog ranting is so much more the "new Yoga" than anything else I've heard.

Where did the Weekend Go?

Right, so it's Monday morning already...whaah I dona wanna go to school!

I mean, um, work? Sheesh, I guess it really is that bad.

Friday they almost had me, but I escaped! Buahahaha! I was so happy to be free and have just enough time to dash home and change then head for the bookstore/Harlot affair that I totally forgot I had not dug out my fisher price camera. Andy had been so good at lending me his camera that I have totally lost track of my 1.3 mini-pixel-no-good-for-indoor-shots camera since my most recent move. (Did you all know cell phones cameras have better cameras than this thing?) And Andy is in California right now, with his camera. Right. Well. Ummm... so no pictures.

The fact is/was that I had only enough adrenaline to actually get me to the bookstore. I headed straight for Lake Forest Park/Third Place Books, do not pass go, do not collect $200, and absolutely do not tear apart the apartment to find the crappy camera. Once there I dragged my feet straight to the coffee slingers; with a short mocha in hand, slumped down in the last chair in the last row (all else was pretty damned full) and sat and listened and sipped until all was well with my energy level.

I actually do not own a copy of the latest Harlot book. So there'd be no signing line for me. Instead, after the listening, which was rather funny, I spent the next couple hours looking at all the new new and new old (they sell used books) stuff on the shelves. I picked up three books for the price of one new one (well, one of those fancy soft-covers, not a mass media print or anything):

Mexico and Peru - Myths & Legends

Fantastic Alice--This is "fan" fiction by science fiction authors about Lewis Carrol's Alice. I think it'll go nicely with my very tee-tiny collection of Alice books...I've got "souvenir" Alice books in Spanish and Italian.

And a cool covered version of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.

I usually don't buy books unless they are screaming at me to take them home...these definitely were. I almost got out of there for under $12. Then, right by the cash register? In their display of latest used book acquisitions...the latest Jasper Fforde novel stared right at me. USED. Hardcover. Impulse buy. Totally. I'll regret it later when I can't sell it. But right now? MINE!

So I spent the weekend finishing up my Philip Pullman re-reading of His Dark Materials series, and have PLENTY to keep me entertained in the reading department for a while. Ah escapist literature...

Can She Make It, Folks?

There is a light at the end of this tunnel!  Or is it a carrot at the end of the stick?

 

Stephanie Perl McPhee is going to be at Third Place Books tonight.  I know I don't need to advertise for this lady, I'm advertising the bookstore itself, really.

 

I love Third Place Books, the one in Lake Forest Park (I haven't been to the one on Ravenna yet).  Back when I could put holds on books in the King County Library System?*   I used to list  what I wanted by walking the shelves of Third Place and then going downstairs to the library and placing my order!  Cuz I am both poor AND cheap :).  And did I mention there is a library DOWNSTAIRS from the bookstore?  That's what I call convenient.

 

Since we moved way way way down closer to "the action" I don't get to Third Place Books very much at all now.  It's my treat for going to my dentist (he's just next door).  Except tonight?  There is a reason to leave work at a reasonable hour!  (We're talking over three hours of overtime this week, people.)  My brain was just about jelly last night and I don't really feel like a repeat performance.  So, we'll see.

 

Anyone else going?

 

*Long story, I ranted about this some time ago, basically I live in the Seattle Library System, but my nearest library was in the King County System, it didn't used to matter...but then money had to be saved so King county cut off it's biggest reciprocal privilege--putting things on hold.  No ILL, no ebooks, no Rosetta Stone, no nothing except being able to check out a book that was on the shelf.

"Not A Problem..."

I must remember to stop saying that.

 

You know it's bad, but really really bad, when you go to post a job on an online newspaper site that you've gotten really really good at using, and you nearly break down and cry when you see they've "upgraded" and all of your posts look like poopie.  As that wonderful tour guide that MJ and I had in Rome would say, "Willow!  Willow!  We must learn to bend with the winds and the currents!"

 

Deep breaths help too. 

 

I have miles of html to post before I sleep...but just wanted to check in and say I've still got my nose above water.  Sure, I'm standing on my tippie-toes, but really, I have not gotten to my 34th year of being alive without knowing when enough is enough.  Let them tremble before the stomping down of my foot!  Cuz it's come down twice already.  Yes, I even used my teacher voice.  It was not a friendly encounter and I didn't mean it to be.  And scowling at the monitor as people walk past wondering if they can dump more things into my inbox?  It works wonders.

 

At least, maybe, I've discovered yet another super power I posses.  I CAN be two people at once, no problem (that was last week).  Three people?  Well, we'll see what I look like at the end of the week.  Overtime has been approved, lists have been written, les'see just how much I can really accomplish!  Without cracking that is.

FO: A New Hat for Andy

So on one of our many walks into (or maybe out of, memory is such an iffy thing with me lately) Fremont, Andy mentioned that the hat I'd made him a couple years ago (here's a picture, I warn you it is scary-big and up close) this one, maybe needed some re-blocking or some-such magic as it didn't want to fit over his ears anymore. I didn't take a pre-re-blocked picture, but yeah, his lobes were poking out.

He said he didn't mind it much as he was tending to wear the brim folded up anyway, mostly to annoy Tim. Especially if they were out drinking. He kinda liked that "above the ear" style so much he wanted a new hat. Thus:

The I'm Not a Yarmulke, Really! Hat

I thought blue would set off his eyes some.
And the other random colors cuz one color would bore me so. I really like the way the colors pooled, or flashed or whatever you want to call it. It's like he has a wave or flames on the side of his head, tee hee.
The Pattern: Handmaiden Modified Half-Dome from Fey's blog.
Yes, of course I messed with it, can't leave well enough alone...as well as maybe followed the bits he crossed out...like having Andy try it on and realize it wasn't gonna fit so I had to rip back and make it deeper. Fun times, there, oh yeah, party, party, party. It was also a wee different gauge, and maybe the needles were not the same as called for, but it worked out. And of course I'm stalling here...ummmm...urg, can't find it so....

The Yarn: Right, that pesky ball-band thing...it is officially hiding from me. I think it's Mountain Colors Bearfoot in Lupine. Yes, I used sock yarn. It's super warm though, what with the mohair and all.

Needles: US 2s. It didn't take nearly as long as you think it would. I'm thinking mostly because US2s seem so much bigger than the US1s and 0s I use for socks. There's that pesky perspective again.

I'll verify the yarn if I ever find that ball-band. I don't know if I can happily knit with mohair though, even as little as this one has (15%), it does tend to find it's way up my nose and down my throat. I'm just glad I'm not allergic, I guess. That would have sucked so very much.

Hats are a nice break from socks as they don't require partners either. Yes, I have tons of yarn left over from this half-dome, but my friend Lev has solved that little dilemma. No, he does not want a matching hat. But he'd love a mis-matched pair of socks! He never matches his socks, it's a pet peeve of his to wear matching socks, actually. So I'm digging through my left-overs and am currently making him his first sock from the yarn left-over from Andy's first hat! If that works, and enough time and mohair has gotten out of my system, I'll cast on to complete his non-pair with this one!

Human Nature?

Sometimes I think I should have taken more sociology courses in college.  Maybe a few psychology classes might have helped me in my day to day observations of people.  I know what I see and hear from my awesome seating arrangement at work (in a closet across from the kitchenette) has given me a window into human nature that I really wish I could close sometimes.

 

Did you know most people will speak at full volume while washing dishes or hands, thinking their voice doesn't carry over the water?  And even though there has been someone in this closet for YEARS now, they seem shocked when you slide your door closed so you can conduct your telephone conversation/testing/one of the millions of things you have to do before 3:00 p.m. on a Friday.  Yet if you speak too loudly by their desks, these same voices make rather impatient noises giving you not-so-subtle hints that maybe you shouldn't be speaking so loud ABOUT WORK, near them.

 

If some small thing changes, I get to hear 50 different exclamations of the same shock and surprise, to no one!  Hello?  The room is empty!  Who is it you are talking to?  Yourself?  Cuz me?  If I am sitting across the way, with my door half closed and haven't even seen you, and maybe have my ear buds in?  I'm so not paying attention to your exclamation of shock, awe and surprise about the treats someone has left for our floor, the mess someone has left for us all to find, the new fridge, or (and especially so) the disappearance of the water cooler!

 

And speaking about that water cooler? The sign is on the fridge.  ON. THE. FRIDGE. PEOPLE!  Opening the fridge to look for the water cooler is not even a sensible option if the SIGN?  Did I already mention it is ON! THE! FRIDGE!  Practice literacy!  It's amazing what wonderful things you will learn!  Like maybe the location of the water cooler?

 

But, really, can someone tell me why everyone keeps opening the fridge door to look for the missing water cooler?  I need to understood that little action.  I once had a housemate that would open the freezer every once in a while hoping to find that the ice cream fairy had left him a half-gallon of his favorite ice cream.  He was also the one who let me into the secret that guys will channel-surf with the hopes that they will see skin, girl skin preferably in his case, naked people even better.

 

Humans are weird.

It's Not Just Me...

When the receptionist wants to know exactly how I'm supposed to be three people at once next week?  I can finally justify my worry.  I am about to sound like a cocky SOB, but really now, this is where I would like to be less competent.  Where I want to be a flake of the utmost proportions.  Where people think my name and then shake their heads wondering why oh why did the temp agency send "her."

 

Cuz I am fearing losing my shit next week.  I keep telling myself it's just a temp gig, what do I care?  Except these same people just interviewed me yesterday for a position NOT in this department.  I maybe was too honest when I said I'd love to move into their department because numbers don't have this tendency to yell at me for them not having passed their tests, or call me to tell me they can't make such and such day and can I reschedule, while other numbers are dropping more and more into my inbox so that I can barely make it to the door of my closet.  But maybe I didn't use those words specifically.  But maybe close.  Cuz by yesterday afternoon as I waded through two peoples' worth of work, I was wondering how exactly I'd gotten into this mess?

 

Aaaauuuum.

 

Something Random, or LA LA LA Gonna Ignore it and Think of Something Else:

When I took my afternoon break I had some odd-ball thoughts in my head.  The one I could not shake is the artwork theme of this building.  The focus really is shown in the art.  It's very beautiful and very striking and yet I started to wonder if some of the pieces were made by the artisan to fool the tourists.  Cuz if someone came into my village and was looking for aboriginal-style/old-world/full-of-culture art pieces?  I could totally see me making up something to make fun of the tourists.  Isn't that just awful?

 

I'm also the kind of person to go and ask someone who knows Kanji and will not lie to me, exactly what the characters on this or that piece of crockery mean?  Cuz the store owner might have said, "Oh, this one is 'prosperity' and this one 'happiness'" but in reality it means "FOOLED YOU!" or "Got yer money, biatch!"

 

Yes, I did indeed make a knitting bag with Asian symbols all over it.  I have not a doubt in my mind that somewhere in all the characters something in the style of, "I am a big poo head" is spelled out.  I have reached "jadedness" in epic proportions here. 

Scheduling Breaks

I get it now...maybe...that whole "recess" and "lunchtime" and if you were unlucky enough to have a school day extend through 3 p.m., an "afternoon break."

 

Those bells and super scheduled days are exactly what I need to keep myself from working through such magically restful things as breaks.

 

Is that why my mom loved working at a school?  They took their daily break at 11:10 a.m.  That was the time 3rd period began....I think...but no matter what part of the school they were in, they could hear the bells.  Maybe that's why I was so enamored of the striking ship's clock?  You could figure out what time it was then as well and whether or not your watch-shift had begun or was about to end.  And my long-ago lost Casio digital watch with all the different timers, alarms, and stopwatches (possibly 2 or 3 of each).  I knew exactly how late I'd be to classes and how long I had until my work day was over...I'm not at all motivated to schedule in breaks via Outlook or any thing so goofy, get...but I may be getting there.

 

I have a number of posts I meant to put up a while ago...there's a hat to show off, an award I've been given, I just found out I won a contest!  But neither the time nor the motivation has been with me since my last entry/rant.  If I were not on a break right now, I'd add that I need to get back to those folks, but that would be talking about work, and we're on a break right now.  Did I mention break?

 

I am two people this week.  Maybe more like 1.75.  Next week, I'll be 2.5.  I will need to highly schedule myself so I don't go insane with work, cuz yesterday?  I put in 10 hours, and it still wasn't quite enough.  Yup, those bells seem like such a good idea right now.

If You Really Feel the Need to Anger Me...

...Just call me a liar.

I had no idea, either.

 

So part of my job is all about putting up online advertising of the open positions.  HTML and I are good buddies by this point.  So are online credit card transactions.  Having played on the Accounting team, I know all about turning in my receipts promptly and not making anyone have to wait for back-up information, that is just plain rude and frustrating for the A/P person.

 

Low and behold I get a copy of the statement and on it is a charge no one can reconcile.  It's for an ad.  One I never placed, costing over $1,000 for a position we'd already advertised with a certain company.  Hoo boy.

 

So I call the company and speak with their support personnel, I'll call him D, and I wanted to wring his neck.  He never raised his voice, go D!  But I too can easily use a perfectly cordial tone to tell you what a piece-of-crap, poor excuse for a human being I think you are.  I'm rather good at it, so is D.

 

He did not believe me when I said I had not placed that ad.  He did not believe that someone else at this company had not placed that ad.  Someone here had to have done it, and his finger kept pointing in my direction.  He said it was highly unlikely that the ad generated itself.  One big problem, D.  At the time this ad went up?  I was at my Periodontist's office.  If we're talking east coast time?  I was in the middle of setting someone up in the testing room, where they would have been at my computer testing, not maliciously posting ads for a job they weren't even testing for!  And hi, I have been the ONLY PERSON placing ads for the last three months.  But I said I'd look into it.

 

It would have been fine if he'd left it at that.  All I'd have to do is go track down everyone's whereabouts at the day and time the ad was posted.  No biggie, we're not that big.  What made me lose it was the fact that he said I had to have done it.  Who else would have the credit card information?  Who else would have a vested interest in posting the job?  How many different ways could I say I did not do it for you to believe me?  I understand that it seems highly unlikely that an ad would spontaneously generate on their site.  I mean, how would it get paid for?  Oh, I come to find out, actually the credit card information is already saved in our account?  So someone simply had to log in? Hmm, interesting, ass wipe, give me to your bloody manager!  I mean, that's nice, D.  Can I speak with someone who can help me?

 

All he had to do was pass me on.  Really.  But before he did, he had to open his mouth again, saying, "you know this looks bad for you.  You guys asked for this job to be updated and didn't do anything with this other job that is the exact same posting, but really short."  Short, you see, because they charge us by the word.  So ALL of our ads are short.  THIS ONE?  $1,000+ worth of words.  And as I'd posted the short one?  And as it was the only active ad, so I thought?  When I was told something had to be updated, yup, I updated the last job posted on my job list...the one I didn't put up.  So I definitely could have caught it then, but I didn't.  The wonder of their site is that you can update all sorts of information without ever looking at the text of the ad.  Which is what happened.  For a reason I couldn't fathom at the time, the candidates were sending things to an incorrect email address.

 

But I digress.  Basically D said it looked rather suspicious that we were only concerned about the $1,000 posting.  I agreed, but as it was supposed to be the ONLY ad that was up on their site, why would I be concerned about any of the other ones?  Maybe he was just thinking out loud?  I dunno, but I blew up at him.  What?  Me lose my cool?  You're kidding!

 

I told him that if he kept accusing me of lying and saying I didn't have a chance in the world with his manager, we'd have a bigger problem here than he realized.  I never swore, and for that I was oh so happy.  But if I wasn't yelling, I wouldn't be me.  I pulled out some 50 cent words...and that's when he got all ghetto on me.  Really.  He totally pulled the race card on my messican ass.  But I kept the rabid latina in check.  Like I said, he never raised his voice, and I never swore, but if there wasn't a whole slew of hate going back and forth on that phone line, I dunno what I'd call it.

 

---

 

I've since spoken to the manager.  And M?  He's the manager for a reason.  He may not cancel the charge, but people, never once did he say he did not believe it possible for an ad to be placed without my permission or knowledge. (Callin' me dumb there, D?)  Never once did he say that it had to be me.  Never once did he say, "how would it look that you are calling us now, after the post has expired." (Hi, we just got the bill, D.)  Never once did he say we were playing them.  Sure, he could be thinking it all, but thinking and saying are two very different things. 

 

Nothing's been settled, but aaaauuuuummmm, the way to placate me after you've called me a liar?  Tell me you at least can see my side of the story, and mean it.  Benefit of the doubt, it's a magical thing.

It's Nice Feeling Wanted

So I was feeling rather poor on about Tuesday.
No, not poorly, just poor.
As in: not enough money for groceries, poor.
See, I finally tallied up the financial catastrophe that is my mouth.

urgh.

Simply put, I could no longer afford to temp at my current gig. See, I have an emergency medical fund. I have always kept one, but never really needed it as I was either still the responsibility of my parents, or actually insured. The first time I dipped into it I was living in Mexico, and well, $10 doctor visits, $80 cavity fillings...not a big dent.

Hello the United States of America.

I'm pretty much cleaning out the account after today, my second to last (finally) visit to the dentist. This would be stage 1 of the "Crown Fitting." I'm going in all calm and collected though. Which was not me on Tuesday.

On Tuesday I went into the office of my "boss" (technically boss, she signs my time-sheet, but my agency pays me) and asked how long they really needed me. It's not that I want to leave, but I really really need something that will help me fill up my medical coffer once again. With or without insurance, this is a necessity for me. This gig? Not doing it for me. Every cent is pretty well accounted for at the end of the month.

Well, they need me. She wants me there at least until the end of the year. So she asked what the bottom dollar amount that I needed so I would stay, and I told her. Just a couple of dollars more an hour and I could start not living paycheck to paycheck (or mortgage payment to mortgage payment on my doctors' vacation condos...), and start actually saving again. She said she'd get back to me by the end of the day.

An hour later she had word, and the word was good. Actually the word was awesome! My raise is much more than expected. I'm still the least paid person in the place, but now there is hope!

Then yesterday....and now I'll jinx it, so please good thoughts my way...then yesterday I got some awesome news from one of the recruiters...who was actually not too happy to give it to me. I've scored an interview. But the recruiter doesn't want me to leave my current department. I really don't want to leave either, but the position I've been asked to interview in, is not in their department. A real job prospect.

We spent most of the time with him telling me why I should stay in my current spot. I swear it almost got down to, "They won't love you as much as we do!" So very sweet.

And so, on this Thursday morning of an overwhelming week, I share this with you.

Wish me luck that there are no more unpleasant surprises at ye olde' tooth pullers, cuz I can't afford them anymore.

A Testament to My Accuracy

So, I just found out that there is a "POWER" button on my keyboard here at work.

To clarify, no, my keyboard does not have a power switch, this is an actual "kill power" to the computer.  You know, you press it and BAM, no juice.  "Monitor will power down in 5 seconds."  It does not ask if you want to shut down the system or anything, it just makes everything go dark.  It's right next to the SLEEP and WAKE buttons.

 

I've been here almost three months and my fingers never found their way to that part of the keyboard, until today.  Today when I was in the middle of a rather long email.  A work related email!  Even better, a work related email that was being written on Outlook which, I come to fine, has NO AUTO SAVE function.

 

As I stated above, it must be a testament to my accuracy that it took almost three months for me to accidentally find that button, just above the silly "Print Screen" button that I'd been aiming for. 

 

URGH.

 

 

 

URGH! - or - Don't You Hate It When?

I've been working with peoples in the east coast all day; racing against their time to get everything in on time/before "closing."

 

So I didn't take a lunch break until just a little bit ago, safe in the knowledge I'd finally gotten to a good stopping point, happy I'd gotten everything done before closing...ahhhh.  Completely swallowed up in the thought that the day is just about over...Then I look at the clock...Is it really only just after 3 p.m.?!?  Do I really have another hour+ to go?!? (Thanks to my busting ass earlier in the week I get to leave early today, woo to the hoo!)

 

URGH!  Or maybe Meep.  I am so very tired.  I've expended all the energy I can!  It's nap time, damnit!

 

~~~

 

In other news?  Andy and I watched The Fifth Element last night.  It made me smile so very often, pointing out too many "borrowed" things from other sci-fi/fantasy movies: Obi-wan's robe, Princess Leia's hair, Devo hats, Stargate-esque uniforms, a replicant..."Leon" was one of the main army guys, fan-tastic!  And Baron Muchausen was the general guy that tries to blow up the "pure concentrated evil!"

 

I told Andy that this is what the future would have looked like if the 80s had won.  After reading the "wiki" entry it seems I should amend that to say it's what the future WILL look like if the French win.  I totally thought it was an American "shoot em up" film, but it's not!  Just like those saucy frenchies to cast a guy 20 years older than his leading lady!  Big ba-da-boom!

 

Okay, this whole stay awake by typing and trying to keep working isn't working...must go try something else...

Happy Friday!

A Case of Video Killing the Radio Star?

Do you all remember when PBS first came out with that Civil War program where like it was all letters from soldiers and stuff?Remember the first time we were given a peak at the handwriting? The length, breath, and depth of the content? Did you think, my god, why don't people write that way anymore?

Well, I do,

and did,

and by gum, it really made me feel like we'd lost something.

I mean, I guess we were still writing letters, though, not really Corresponding anymore. That, as my high school history teacher once said, really was an art form. There were topics you could and should write about, and those that were to be avoided like the plague. Kinda like writing school papers, or having work conversations, maybe? How is the weather and all that noise?

Besides, we had "evolved," we were TELEPHONE people.

Who needed to sit at a writing desk and write and rewrite and edit and begin again and maybe one more time, with feeling! That's what the phone was for. Hours and hours blabbing to friends and confidants, or crank calling our enemies. No "Dear John" letters, instead, you could break up with your beau "live" if not in person. No more "angry" letters to your folks or complaint letters to companies, just get on the phone and torment them during business hours! Or something.

It was like having them right next door! And best of all, they could tell how you were feeling just by the sound of your voice.

Then came the internet. Why call when you can shoot off an email? Who needs grammar? Just write how you talk! What a concept! "Chat" live if you want to relay a message right now. Only, and therein lays a sleeping dragon that's been waking up recently, words on paper, written stylistically, grammatically correct or incorrect, if not done perfectly, or at least the way the "professionals" do it and geared toward a very specific audience? They will leave the reader lacking.

Just like you never know just how you look through other peoples' eyes, you really won't know just how you "sound" or "read" to others until after the reactions come in.


The thing about a written work is that it's a two way street. The writer really really really wants to convey particular information, a specific message, and maybe a certain feeling. It's the reader's job to take in the symbols on the page (written or electronic) and transform them into meaning. What that meaning ends up being depends a whole bloody lot on how your reader is doing that day: hungry? depressed? elated? tired? caffeinated? angry? You name it, it alters what you, the writer, have written.


So, say when reading a blog or an email or anything, if you are not the intended victim---I mean reader? You are going to take it in a way very different from the original intention. At the same time, if you, the writer, are so in your "moment" in your "groove" in your "in it" that you are not taking the uninitiated reader into consideration? It will be like gobbledy-gook.


Why or why is this all swirling in my brain?

Couple reasons.


There is the personal one that keeps scratching at me deep down. The one that says it's all my fault that I can't keep in touch with the people who I thought were close to me because we just can't/don't/won't communicate well anymore. Because something that was written in a card, an email, a letter, a text message, etc., was taken so far in the "wrong" way that ties were severed. How many people have come and gone from others' lives because of a mis-written word? The mind boggles.


And then there is the funnier work-related stuff that makes me want to bang my head against the wall until it makes more sense. This one I can go on about a little more as the previous reason still kinda smarts. I think I'm running into brick walls about the written word with certain folks because they honestly aren't used to using this "email" technology stuff and only have an email address because it's expected to be on their resume...or something.

I've completely given up using electronic means to communicate with many people to save both the head and heartache involved with the complexity of simply turning on a computer. Others I don't even pick up the telephone for, they need to be face to face, or still things will go terribly. Horrifically funny, yes, but terribly.


Then of course there is that aspect that, having been an English teacher makes me cringe...some people can't string more than a couple letters together to begin with. Let us not torture them or ourselves with anything written, because god almighty made people to be accountants and scientists and techies and NOT English teachers for a reason! These people are wonderful at what they do! It just might not have anything at all to do with the English Language. And if they read your email and are boggled because you use such things as humor or sarcasm, lord help us all.

Questions? Comments? I'd love to read them.

Hit With the Stupid Stick

How is it that water falling out of the sky causes people to do the most asinine things?

Call me silly, but, the rules of the universe do not cease when drops of water fall on your head, or your car, or, by golly, the pavement.

So sweatshirt man, crossing AGAINST the lights at morning rush hour? Not the most Einsteinian of manuevers there, genius boy. That would be why everyone, including the HUGE bus bearing down on your ass, was honking at you.

It is not the time for you either, raincoat man, with hood up and all, to run blindly across the street because you cannot walk to the crosswalk like everyone else!

I used to love to ride the wooden roller-coaster at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk in weather like this. The tracks would be super wet and the coaster would go much faster. Sometimes the momentum was so much that we would slam into the cars in front of us as the braking mechanism would be sopping and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

I keep that in mind as I'm driving on the sloppy wet roads and find myself in the live version of a frogger-esque video game where the frogs have all gone deaf and blind and pretty suicidal to get out of the eeek, rain.

"But I'm getting wet!"

Right, sugar melts and all.

I'm an equal opportunity disser, so I'm including the dumb ass in the blue pickup truck that decided I was going too slow and tailgating me wasn't enough; slamming his hand on the horn as he passed me made it so much better. Cuz, you know huge non-draining puddles on the road are not cause for him or anyone to drive more carefully, or even slowly (we've already discussed my gramma driving abilities). His zigging and zagging, and ultimately sliding into a car as I crept by at my snail's pace, that made me feel sooooo much better, really.

And I'd have honked, but well, I own a Toyota, and hearing the little meep meep from me wasn't going to alleviate anything.

I really really really miss riding the bus on days like this.

There Be Knitting!

ETA: Of Course, as soon as I put up some knitting content "Bloglines" considers me invisible...hmmm coincidence? Technology is so fun...What do you all use to keep track of posted blogs?

Remember when I said I was working on a gift for mom's day? Like back before I went to Italy and stuff? Wow, four months ago?!?

Then I came back from Italy and I mentioned I'd worked steadfastly on at least one of the two pairs of socks I'd cast on (one for bus work, one for "just before bed") and had even finished ONE sock of the pair?

Then life happened, I guess. And I got a temp gig where I don't commute on good ol' #304 and actually have to drive there as it takes five times as long if did walk/bus/walk/bus it. Add to that the fact that I don't take hour-long lunches so I can come home at a reasonable hour...and my knitting time has all but disappeared. So it shocked me when I actually finished these:
Horcrux Socks
Whose link I am trying to find, but #1 I found the original "sport weight" pattern eons ago and #2 the fingering weight version, which I used, is protected behind a yahoo sock group that I actually joined JUST to get THIS ONE pattern. Okay, here (left hand side, last one under her "Free Patterns") is the one for the bigger weight yarn, at least.

My mom tells me she got her package, yes I finally got her gift together: socks, holy water from the Vatican, a rosary, chocolates (for the grandkids more than for her...I just know it), body lotion, and...the hardest part of the whole gift conglomeration, really, some "box" bras. Really.

I don't know how we got into this conversation, I'm still a bit mesmerized by the whole thing...but one thing led to the other and she mentioned that now that she doesn't get out at much as she used to, certain "non-essential"/not available at costco items have gone by the wayside. Including her favorite "come-in-a-box" bras. So silly me, I said, "I'll get you some."

Did you all know most department stores in the Seattle area no longer carry such "boxed" items? They have gone the way of the Dodo bird, apparently. After walking for miles and miles from one department store to another, I finally found them at good old reliable "Ya Si Pennies" as my mom calls it. 1/2 off, as they were culling their store supply as well. I bought them out of her size. Best not to take chances, I've learned.

See, they've already "retired" my favorite body lotion at Bath & Body Works, they keep changing the ingredients to my favorite shampoos, let's not even talk about what all they've done to my favorite toilet paper...TMI, I know, but it all boils down to the fact that sometimes it is a good thing to horde, cuz the next time you go to find the product of your dreams it will be NEW! and IMPROVED! Now with Flavor! Or, more likely, just plain NO LONGER AVAILABLE.

Have I really lived so long that I'm noticing such things...there I go channeling again, "Back in my day..."

What was I saying? Knitheimers, I swear.

So the sock details:
Needles: US2 to begin, 4 US1s and 1 US 0. Yes, you did not read that incorrectly. Somewhere in Sicily I noticed one of the needles seemed awfully skinny...I was way past the gusset by that point and it was a "What the hell" moment, so I soldiered on and made #2 the same way.

My ADD was appeased when I found the exact matching spot to have identical socks. The sock yarn...Sockotta, color 618 lot 901. The biggest laugh? The yarn is made in Italy, but bought on clearance in the US...such is life.

I still actually need to find out if they fit my mom. What with the special needle configuration and the cottony aspect (45%) I wasn't all that sure. The colors did not bleed much and for that I was so very thankful.

Okay, bedtime.

“Safe” Roads - Or - Why I am Such a Paranoid Driver

Or

Another post sans pictures and also not about knitting

 

I am probably one of the few people that are not 250 years old in their profile.  Why lie?   I was six years old at the start of the 80s.  As with the ten thousand other innovations that came about in that decade, the onslaught of syndication and "re-run hell" changed my world.   How else could we see every single episode of the Love Boat?  How about Gilligan's Island, anyone?   Well, one that I just loved to watch, more for the opening credits than anything else?  CHiPs No really.

 

No, I did not have a crush on Ponch, (hee hee, paunch?) or John.  I thought one was too sleazy and the other?   Well, too white, actually (hi, I am a Mexican-American born and raised in East Los Angeles and blond-blue-eyed John was such the anomaly before I hit high school that he kinda looked, well, alien.)   Where was I? Right, the opening credits.  They actually showed a stretch of freeway that every single member of my nuclear family had come to know far too well.   It was mostly THE 10 (SoCal upbringing) as it meets up with yet not quite touches THE110 and maybe THE 101…it's been a while since I've driven those roads.

 

So in my "World According to CHiPs" eyes: THERE IS DANGER EVERYWHERE!  I learned many things as I'm sure many of us did:

• Do not distract the driver by having kids climbing back and forth among the front and back bench seats.
• Do not carry jugs of gasoline in station wagons as the fumes will escape and make you sleepy.
• Wheels will fall off your car at the drop of a hat! (Which did happen to a friend of mine.)
• The people around you do not know how to drive! (Hi, look around you.)
• Or are "manipulating heavy machinery" under prescription medication that is keeping them from driving safely.
• Or are high.
• Or have stolen the car and are trying to get away, FAST.
• Or are angry and ready to lash out at you (which actually did become reality, now didn't it???!!!???)
• Airplanes/helicopters will land on the freeway at least once a season.
• Brakes fail, ALL THE TIME (this actually did happen to me in a parking lot while in college…eep.)
• If you drop something as you are driving it will inevitably end up propped underneath the break pedal and you will not be able to slow down or stop, thus causing a huge accident.

 

Does all this explain why I drive like a grandma?  I am pretty much the first to admit it.   Let's face it, the premise of that show had me seeing everything that could possibly go wrong with your vehicle/other people's vehicles and how horrible it could all become.  So does it shock you to know that I don't exactly like being behind the wheel?

 

Right.  Well, this morning I was thinking about "Smart" ROADS as opposed to smart cars (oxymoron waiting to happen) and how they would do wonders for keeping all those aforementioned "scary things" from mostly happening.

 

Since I was about 8 or so I had this, "wouldn't it be great" thought of having cars fit into "slots" in the "roads" or main highways that would be moving instead of the cars.   People wouldn't be weaving into and out of your lane like the fellow who tried to "become one" with my car this morning.  No accident, remember, I'm already thinking everyone around me is on drugs, suffering from fumes, or simply cannot drive while watching for planes and their need to land on my street, so I was able to slow down to let him practice his um, stunt driving or whatnot.

 

It had been my thought, um 25 years ago, that the little roads leading up to the main arteries could be your usual "free for all" and let the drivers actually, well, drive.   The older I get though, the more I think that maybe roads should be more like a Disney/roller-coaster/tracked things that don't let the drivers do anything but only kinda steer.  

 

I've gone from becoming my mom to channeling my grandfather, I think.  "Those dang auto-mobiles!   What's wrong with your own two feet!  Or a horse!  Back in my day…"

 

Knitting soon, promise.

Filed Under: Reasons I Should Own a Working Camera

This morning's commute:

• The older guy dressed in a three-piece suit, leading his wee little doggie with a VERY LARGE bag of dog poo.
• The well-dressed young woman carrying a caulking gun, caulk in place and ready to go.
• "Fanatic for exercise" gal that looks like she was hit with the "logo" gun who jogged around and around and around the light post while waiting for the light to change--she was making me dizzy.
• TOO MANY PEOPLE trying their hardest to break the World Record for how many people can fit on a # 26 bus.
• The fellow so intent on dialing a number on his cell phone that he walked right into the bus stop.

Did I mention my commute is only 2.5 miles long?

 

Happy Tuesday

Alergic to a Cat I've Never Even Met

So Tim has a new cat. Well, actually Tim has 2 new cats. I have met one of them and he and I actually seem to be okay in the same room. Nary a sniffle nor an itch, nor a break-out of anything hive-like on my hand where he batted at it while we were playing with a car key in the wee bit of time we've spent together. I have yet to actually pet him, though, so he really still is mostly an unknown quantity, really.

Tim's newest cat though, the one I have not met yet? He (or she, I don't even know) and I might have some issues.

Andy was hanging out over at Tim's yesterday, and came home with the new cat's "proteins" on him (or so one of the recruiters tells me) and said "proteins," which I'd like to call "essence of new cat," got on my right arm and I started braking out in hives! Evil, nasty, hives! Hives that ended up on my left hand that was examining the arm, then my chin when I was contemplating the arm, and pretty much anywhere that I touched before the "essence of new cat" dissolved into the ether and/or I went, "OH SHIT you were playing with the cats!" And realized the horror of it all.

What's truly terrible in this instance is that Andy actually washed his hands and showered before he got near me. Really! It was his picking up his "essence" covered clothes to throw them in the hamper that must have done it. That's all I can deduce at any rate, and the repercussions are frightening, to say the least.

This Getting Older Stuff, Sucks

I've never been the most graceful, just ask my mom. I think I may have gotten my first bump or bruise in the crib at the hospital. I know I got my first scar-maker at 3 months.

It never phased me, really. You live, you live with the bumps, right?

I know many of you are shaking your heads wondering how I've survived this long without accidentally beheading myself or something. Shear luck, I guess. Speed in healing as well. In these, um, middle years (or if it were cave-man times we could say "gramma years" people only lived until like 35 right?), I am losing both the luck and the speed...and that is just sucking so very hard.

When push comes to shove, I fall down, hard. I tripped over my own two feet, and maybe one of those concrete parking space dividers, just the other day. I guess the throbbing in my legs and hand were to distract me from my silly backache, or something. (Something like, say, my body trying to kill itself and missed, again, or something.)

And that backache! Hello! I am 33 years old. Why is my back spasming out? I think it's all connected to my hip. Thanks, Andy, for putting the silly Them Bones song in my head after I mentioned it to you...grrr. Seriously though, I feel like my luck ran out hard when I was run off the road that day so long ago when I was on my bicycle heading to my lawyer's office to sign some silly papers. I fell HARD and damaged my hip and wrist. It's been two and a half years. The wrist is weak but doing fine, the hip? She doesn't work all that great, especially lately.

Lately the Hip has made herself known. I am not the most svelte of heavenly creatures, but the um "junk" in my "trunk" never really bothered me. Thanks to my lack of mobility immediately after the accident, I quickly gained too much weight...at least 20 lbs.--scary thought/post for another day. Along with the weight, I have gained an extra "hand-hold" around that damaged hip area. It looks and feels just wrong. It always has. Lately, my theory at any rate, is that it's messing with my muscles in every which way possible. It affects the way I walk, climb stairs, sleep...what a bitch. I want to believe it's still healing, but at a geriatric snail's pace.

I can't but think of how it would have been different if I were in my early 20s and such a thing had ALMOST happened--that luck thing. See, I rode my bike all over Santa Cruz and left many dents in car doors with my Dock Martins when they tried to force me off the road. It was, as scary as it seems now, second nature to jump onto and off of sidewalks and bounce off cars as I made my way to Capitola, CA to get home from UCSC or home from the bookstore in years following. There were a couple of tumbles, but I was invincible! Clumsy, yes, always, but invincible!

I really miss those days. Especially when I'm sitting here on what seems like the "Group W" bench wondering how many Advil I can take and not kill my liver so I can still function at work today...urgh.

These Dreams....

So I've dreamt of loose teeth, stray dogs, and having to put together a sailboat.

I think they are stemming from my tweaked back. Oh yes, I am an old woman. I tweaked my back on Saturday while sorting laundry, I think. I'm not really sure when or how it happened, only that damn, it hurts! It's like having cramps just up above my right kidney. Not a happy camper.

And it's Monday and I need to get going and I just have so little motivation. I think I need a vacation.

Ah well.

Feliz Cumplea~nos, Mami!

Present? Right. Nope, not as such...but I did call and let her know there was one and it will arrive shortly. Just have to get on the ball about it. Why is that so very hard to do?

Just Can't Focus

My mom's birthday is about to sneak up on me. Yes, even though I know exactly what day it is and have known for months!

I have to get my act together and send off the gift I've been fixing up since April. Will it happen? Quien sabe.

I'm having a horrible morning. It's nothing anyone is doing to me, I think it's all inside. A combination "too many things in my head" + friends visiting + working all day + not enough sleep, is giving me a pounding headache and an upset stomach. That last bit I just noticed a couple minutes ago as I sat down at my desk for the first time this morning. I feel all woozy/bad coffee stomach. Sour stomach? I'm not all that good at describing it.

The only positive thing I've found out thus far is that if I can find someone else to monitor them, I won't have to work a 10-hour day today! See, I scheduled candidate for an early testing appointment, so I was in far too early this morning. Well, sometime yesterday after I'd left, someone (not me) scheduled a late late late-almost-early-evening candidate for me today! Happily, somebody, though I don' t know who, else can monitor the LAST test of the day.

I swear, I saw it on my calendar and I just about cried. I'm sinking down a hole today. It's a slippery slope. I'm tired, cranky, and just want to go home and go to bed. I don't get this way very often at all and it's bothering me. The worst part is that unless everyone is out of the house doing whatever touristy thing they've planned today, I still wouldn't get any peace and quiet even if I was home.

I'm dwelling very deeply and darkly in the negative right now...

I Saw'r It!

Finally. (Sound off button in top right-hand corner.)
IN IMAX 3-D!!
Which was a joke. They might as well have said, "in SMELL-O-VISION!"

The opening scenes and about 20 minutes near the end does not, in my opinion, justify calling it 3-D. Not when you are part of the generation that got to watch JAWS 3-D!

Right, yes, fancier glasses (with RFID chips so you don't snag them) than when I was 8, but I'd happily go cross-eyed with the red/blue cardboard shades---that you got to keep as souvenirs, mind--if the ENTIRE MOVIE was the as-promised-but-not-delivered 3-D. Seeing as I was probably one of the only people there old enough to "remember when" 3-D movies were full-length, we went to a Friday night 10 PM showing, I kept my mouth quiet.

So the movie...(If you're waiting for the video, I'll let you know when to stop reading.)

Really, it is about what anyone can expect an 800+page book to be rendered into without having a Part I & II. It was far less disjointed than say, the second movie. I think it's a bad plan to read the book before you see the movie though because, like the annoying girl that sat next to me, you will be tempted to tell your friend with the broken feet EVERY SINGLE DEVIATION FROM THE NOVEL until the older lady sitting next to you elbows you accidentally, and when you drop your 3-d glasses in her lap, lets them fall to the floor and maybe steps on them before "accidentally" kicking them somewhere far away from her, ahem.

I come away from these last 3 films now with the same disappointment, though. I miss Richard Harris. Andy put it best--yes, he doesn't "get" the whole HP phenomena/cult, yet he will procure me a needed book, and go with me to the movies...kinda like a crack dealer or something:
Dumbledore looks like a young man playing an old man, and failing.
Kinda like in the movie version of Return of the King at the near end when EVERYONE (including the audience) is crying their eyes out and Bilbo is seen walking next to Gandalf as they are about to board the Elf boat off to the Grey Havens? The fellow is a bit overenthusiastic for a 130 year-old hobbit, or however old he was. It was a freaky transition from the old hobbling Bilbo of just seconds before. Maybe I'm the only one who noticed because everyone else was crying so hard?

Michael Gambon's entrances where he's plowing into a scene these last two movies...and he does PLOW, not strut, not amble, makes him seem like he's too young to be Albus. After all, the fact that Dummbly-dore was already a teacher when Tom Riddle went to Hogwarts 55 years prior, puts him at about a good 80 years young! I know a few 80 year olds, and as spritely as they can be? They have never PLOWED into a room like they're going so fast they will crash against the opposite wall. Well, maybe if they were wearing those new roller-sneakers. There were times when I thought he was skidding to a stop, so fast was his need to jump into a scene. Again, maybe it was the fact that I was watching Gambon on a screen 6 stories high, that his portrayal jumped out at me all wrong?

Though I can't blame anyone else of the same weird mannerisms. I mean, Alan Rickman's Snape has been funky/twitchy/melodramatic from the get go: Remember HP1 when he just about RUNS into his classroom--for the billowing robe effect--to introduce himself to his students for the very first time? (I was so tempted to do that back in my school-marmy days...Never did find the right cloak to pull it off in, though. I mean, you try that effect with muggle clothes and you just look plain silly.)

(Okay, from this point on there might be some spoilage about bits and pieces that differ from book to movie.)

It is rather odd to have the "wrong" people saying the "wrong" lines, at the oddest times...and a few of those "shortcuts" have now, actually, changed the story line ENTIRELY, for me at least. Hello? Can we say MIRROR, or um lack there of.

Did anyone catch the goat in the Boar's Head? OMG ROTFL! Or, rather, I would have been if I hadn't been at the last showing of the night with the dirt of the ages at our feet. But that was some great foreshadowing there.

Then there was Imelda Staunton's portrayal of Dolores Umbridge, wow. Pure concentrated evil brought to life. Someone has to mention it, and it might as well be me...okay, that scene where she's sitting on her throne while the kids are in detention? I mean I was almost squirming with the IMAX sound of all those kids getting hurt/hurting themselves, but um, was that an orgasm she was having? That was so very wrong on so many levels, and EVIL!

Paralleling that evil--Beatrix LeStrange. I didn't have "insane" in my descriptors of her, but I really should have. My only disappointment is that we didn't get to see more of her. I mean, within the first 3 minutes of her appearance in the books, you simply want to rip her throat out. You don't get that feeling in the film. She comes across as weak, though, and again, that bugs and makes me feel like the whole HP storyline has been altered. Cuz really, how will it look in times to come when the final (#7) showdown happens? A crazy, weak, stupid, though sexy looking Bea is not who I pictured AT ALL.

Okay, I'll stop now, lest I say too much.

Overall, yeah, the movie is "meh" compared to the one in my head...but nonetheless, entertaining on a number of sadomasochistic levels.

So, um, how many Umbridge pink cardigans with the plastic bow buttons will we be seeing this fall, hmmm? Have you all picked out your yarn yet?

No Really, Italy

I ran across this picture tonight and I had to try to figure out when I ended up in England... I love the fact that when you travel any and all thoughts you had in your head of what a place is "supposed" to be like get blown off into the um fog.

I'm at a loss for the name of the place...on the Island of Sicily...where the dracula castle was...starts with a "C" maybe?

Anyhow... this picture best describes how I felt this morning going in to work. I could have sworn I was back on the Big Island. It is so very humid and balmy and kinda that muggy feeling when the trade winds have stopped blowing before they took all the clouds away...

Maybe that's why I sneezed the other morning? Just the one time? Cuz my body thought there must be VOG around somewhere?

I dunno...

These are my 10:30 PM thoughts after my first almost full day back at work. I ducked out 1/2 hour early...72 hour recovery period? HA...Well, I am almost better...but it's that "almost" that changes everything when you are on the "having sneezed" side of the recovery window.

I'm not making sense. I am exhausted and to bed go I afore I make much more fun of myself.

Update: Sunday...

On Not Being Dead Yet:

My mouth HURTS!

I wrote to the wonderful people I've been working with and described my status as feeling like a half chipmunk who's gathering nuts in one cheek and has just fallen out of her tree. (Under the wonderful influence of Vicodine, my savior.)

That was a few days ago and I had hoped to feel better by now.

Then...

This morning?...

I sneezed.

THE PAIN!

I did not cry, can you believe? Even after that tell-tale iron taste was in my mouth. By mid morning I was back to square one...yes, including the swelling. Urgh. At least there's no infection! Small recompense, but there's that.

I can't really afford to take more time off, so tomorrow I'm packing my ice packs and heading in to work, just call me chipmunk face!


On The Book That Shall Not be Named?
Andy traveled through the mugginess that has infected Seattle to bring it back to my sickbed. I tried to tell him the fog and muck was a by-product from Dementoid-breeding, but he just looked at me funny...I did say he never read the books.

Almost as soon as I opened the book, the skies opened up for a torrential shower, in July! I know, I know, I live in the land of rain and moss, but July? It's like God was crying his eyes out about the last book, I swear :). Anything to mess with the people who feel this book was written by Satan's sex slave, or whatever.

So here's the thing...no, no spoilers here, just a comment about the whole experience: It is just so odd to me... It's like I had to read it NOW NOW NOW! Finish it, finish it quickly! Like pulling off a band aid or something. Andy didn't believe me when I told him I'd finished it this morning (I didn't get it until yesterday after noon). Almost 800 pages, whoosh!

I'm going to re-read it now, slowly, like a normal person. Laugh at the little things, finding the grammatical nuances, think about how I'd have written a particular paragraph, or sentence, or word...you know, the usual thing I do with books. Doesn't everyone? I did share with you the fact that I was a literature major of the "deconstruction" era?

Lemme tell ya that it makes for absolutely poor training to go out and teach middle/high school literature. Possibly why if I ever teach again it will be English as a Second Language - period! Cuz you are never tempted to get into a philosophical debate about Mary Shelly's use of a particular word on a particular page when it's all about learning the language in the first place.

Right, where was I? Oh yeah, I'm off to go take some pain pills and dwell on page 92 or something.

Kismet? or a Random Thursday...

• Ever since I was lucky enough to score a super cheap little journal at the Pottery Barn (no link, it was on clearance) in which to scribble my wildly vivid dreams in, I've had the same dream over and over and over again:
  
  
  Me, lying in bed, writing out the dream I just had, and as I write, the dream vanishes.
  
  
  So when I wake up for real? I can't remember anything except my dreaming of me writing down my dreams. I know, I know, it's been established just how close to insanity I tread.
  
  
• It's a couple hours, little less, before I go under the knife. Nervous is a word that pops into my head, "totally freaked out" is the going phrase. I guess that's what the Valium is for. Better living through Chemistry!
  
  
• It's MJs Birthday today!
  

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MJ!

• I am a sucker for nostalgia it seems. I'm part of an email list for a band I can never see live, seeing as they stick to venues in LA la land...but here, for the first time UTuBE wins my heart like no other. My favorite song by Windows to Sky (shall I pull a "hollyweird" and say I "knew them when"? I did say nostalgia, Ladies, gentlemen, "The Wall King":

I Got Nothin'

No, I have not seen the new Harry Potter flick, yet. So please please please don't spoil it for me :). Cuz it's not like I'm not rereading book #6 or anything right now...not like I haven't read #5 a couple/three times by now...I'm waiting patiently for it not to be sold out at my local iMax theatre. 3-D baybee, tha's what I'm talkin' 'bout. --Who said that? Sybil?

Nope, I don't have plans on any midnight unveiling of the latest book either...I hope to be deep in the throes of Vicodine at the time, actually, as on Thursday at my-god-too-early I will be having the much anticipated "lengthening" of my #18 molar. Yes, that's the nice way of saying they are going to take lots of evil looking sharp implements of destruction and cut away at my jaw! EEP!

I DO, however, have my name down at a tee-tiny local bookshop for the book that shall not be named. He'll have it on Saturday, and unless a miracle of modern capitalism occurs, I'll not get it at the whatever % discount all the big chains are offering, and I don't actually mind. See, I kinda want this guy to make as much money as he can so that he can continue to be the tee-tiny local bookstore in the area. Call me silly... Andy has said that if I am still too traumatized by the surgery, he'll pop on down and get the book for me.

Worry not, dear friends, he won't even be tempted to read it before me, he hateses the books. Nobody's perfect :).

I have a toe to graft, which takes far longer than knitting an actual sock, doesn't it? So soon I'll have another knitted item to brag about like the good little-old lady I'm becoming. Until then, I leave you with to watch some Onion. (My favorite bit is when he talks about Nigeria and their lost economy...and if you haven't been blessed by an email from Nigeria and monies that need an American bank account, I can send you one from my collection.

You See One Pantheon, You've Seen Them All

So the problem with working all day long at a computer...and mean really working, not taking breaks and foraying into the BBC, Digg, GoogleReader, etc, and et al, is that fulfilling your promise to your XMIL that you will gather together all the pictures from your trip and make it into something nice for her? Is difficult to say the least.

One picture at a time, right? Eventually it will happen. I have to keep telling this to myself.

This picture was me getting all artsy at the Pantheon. I love that hole up there...

One of the tour guides, I'm gonna guess Donato, told us that when it snowed in Rome a few years back, people nearly trampled over one another to get to the Pantheon just so they could see the snow come in through the "eye of god" ... um, or is it the column of light... I am far too unmotivated to do the research myself, so I leave that for you. You know, something to do instead of the work you're supposed to be doing :).

Happy Friday!