I became a proselytizer for Strangers in Paradise on Saturday and dedicated the first GN that Trip, Chrisber and Marith brought me in 99 to the cause and gave it to Mary Anne to get her hooked too.
So what'd you think, Mary Anne? :)
I have read 159 books this year, an average of 3 a week, which is a whole book more a week than my stated goal. Pretty cool. :)
Did I mention we have a 19 pound turkey? Shaun's work gave him a turkey, and he thought it was a 12 pound turkey, and we never looked, and yesterday we took it out to thaw to cook it tomorrow, and it was a NINETEEN pound turkey. That is a LOT of turkey.
Ahem. That was apropos of nothing. Um. I seem to not be typing in this window, so I think I'll post this and worry about writing more later. :)
Michael Greyeyes is the guy I'd like to see play Dominic. He's SIX TWO! *slobber*
I have just roasted a couple of marshmallows over a candle flame. This is actually more difficult than it looks. Furthermore, *gaaaaack*, talk about SWEET. I got four and toasted two and that was MORE than enough. *staggers around in sugar shock*
Skipping some of the Christmas updating stuff for the moment, I now pause to say that last night our friend Mary Anne, who is doing a whirlwind Christmas-time tour of Alaska sort of thing, deigned to fit us into her busy schedule so long as we agreed to feed her, so she and another friend of ours, Dean, came over for a few hours and we had a good talk. That was plenty much big fun; it'd been, gawd, five years since I'd seen Dean, and -- four? -- since I'd seen Mary Anne. So Ted cooked spaghetti and we had chocolate fondue for dessert (ooooh, my, that was yummy. A rare treat, that'll have to be! Ooof!) and it was really pretty great.
Years ago, Dean made me a wolfs'-head necklace, based on Bearclaw's necklace (I can't link to any of this stuff because 1. my digital camera isn't hooked up to this computer so I haven't uploaded any photos and 2. elfquest.com is down until Tuesday sometime) and mentioned that he's not sure if he's going to be in town this year to do the Renne Faire (he might be off climbing Denali, sheesh), and he was thinking of doing a pin of some kind for the Crooked Toad Tavern, which is, er, the on-site pub (with that name, I bet you could figure that out), and so he sorta hoped maybe I could think about doing a drawing or two, 'cause he says once he's got a nice clean drawing on paper, rendering it in 3-D is really easy for him, but the drawing part is really hard for him. So I think I'll make up some drawings and see if he likes any of them. :)
And Mary Anne *laugh* wants us to get Legion done just so she can say, as if it's of no particular import, "Oh, my friend Catie, who is writing and producing a tv series ..." *giggle* I have great friends. *laugh*
Der checkerbooker ist balanced now. To my vast irritation, apparently the new company that owns CHI has not got direct deposit set up, or I haven't done the paperwork, or something; I'm not *aware* of needing to do any more paperwork, but ... Sigh.
It was an excellent Christmas for poetry! I bought myself The Essential Rilke, and the parental units gave Deirdre and me both copies of The Best American Poems, or something very close to that, and to my bemusement, I opened it up to about the fourth page of Song of Myself, which Dad and I had been discussing the day before. God, what a grand poem that is. It must be read aloud; it's nothing, read silently, but aloud, it -- well, it sings. And Ted got a book of swords that's really quite cool, with all kinds of information about blades and hilts and just *stuff* about swords.
Deirdre and Gavin gave Ted and me a game called Cranium, and after we got done with presents and with visiting (Kathy and Ken and Grandma came over) and dinner, we played Cranium, which the girls (me, Deirdre and Mom) won, and it's really a pretty fun game. You have to do a variety of things to advance: mimic actors, hum songs, guess phrases, spell words (both forwards and backwards), and lots of other things. So that was lots of fun, and afterwards we played Spoons, which is the most violent card game I know of, short of an actual gunfight at a poker game.
For those who don't know it: put 1 spoon fewer than you have players on the table in a circle with the bowls facing out. Shuffle two (or more) decks of cards together. Deal out 5 cards to each player. The dealer takes the cards that aren't dealt out, looks at the first one, and either keeps it and passes on one of his own cards, or passes it on. The next person does the same; the idea is to do it as quickly as possible. The goal is to get 4 of a kind while holding no more than 5 cards in your hand, and then to snatch a spoon. Everyone else must leap for a spoon after the first one has been taken. The person who doesn't get one gets an 'S', and so on until someone has 'SPOONS', and then the game is over.
In my family, playing Spoons is a survival of the fittest game. We have been known to fling ourselves bodily across the table, wrestling each other to the ground for a spoon. In fact, a few Christmases ago (apparently Spoons is another Tradition) Deirdre and I did exactly that. One of us knocked a spoon across the table and to the floor. I literally bellyflopped myself across the table, reaching for the spoon, while Deirdre flung herself across Dad's lap and we both desperately snatched for the spoon. Deirdre got it; I, with tears in my eyes from laughing so hard, proclaimed, "I was *WEAK*!", which has now become a family by-line when a spoon is missed.
During one round on Tuesday, I accidentally grabbed two spoons, and while trying to let go of one of them, Ted knocked another spoon into Dad's lap, and lunged for it, causing Dad to all but shriek and flinch backwards; Deirdre stood up and tried to sit back in her chair, but it had fallen over backwards and the poor honey whacked her funny bone on the chair leg, causing her to cry, but even through the tears, she snuffled, "I was *weak*!"
We played two games, at the end of which we were hoarse from shouting and laughing, and everybody was bruised or gouged, and we'd left all sorts of scars in the soft pine table, and finally, exhausted, we wound down and read and talked a bit and then everybody staggered off to bed.
Oh, at dinner, we were talking about the weird things that my family did, and I'd almost snarfed once, and just as I was taking a sip of milk, Mom said, "Once your father said to me, "Good night, light," and it made me laugh, which made me spit milk across the table, which made everyone laugh very, very hard. *helpless laughter* I like my family so much. :)
Christmas day was really pretty laid back. We got up around 9, wrapped presents, ate orange rolls for breakfast--
--ok, see, my family has Traditions. These Traditions are set by us doing something once and then saying the next year, "We ALWAYS do X!" After a while, it becomes true. One of these Traditions is having pizza on Christmas Eve, which we started doing when I was about 14, I think, although possibly it was many years before that. This year we did not have pizza on Christmas Eve, although Mom said she thought about it *several* times. However, since she had no idea when anybody was coming back from shopping/collecting Grandma/etc, she thought she'd just make dinner. And potato soup is very fine, so I have no objections to breaking Tradition for once.
So Christmas morning we had orange rolls, and I had to ask, because while I *suspected* it was a Tradition, I couldn't actually remember for sure. So I said, "Do we always have orange rolls for Christmas breakfast?" And Mom stared at me in horror and said, "We ALWAYS have orange rolls! It's *Tradition*!" Well, I thought it was, but it's hard to be sure. :)
So after our Traditional Orange Rolls, we sat around reading or something and waiting for Deirdre and Gavin to get back from southern Washington where they'd spent Christmas morning with Gavin's family. We didn't get around to opening Christmas presents until about one, in other words, making it the most relaxed Christmas in the history of our family. And despite the fact that we'd had to bring gifts or buy them there, there was quite a lot of loot. Among the highlights were a HUGE book on mammals that Gavin received (apparently Ted and I had missed an extended conversation about marsupials, before we arrived, and the book was to help Gavin learn all about marsupials so next time he saw the family he could explain them in detail. Instead we all sat around and pored over the book and learned about marsupials and many other very strange and interesting animals.) and Deirdre's red hat, which was a duplicate of one she lost a few months ago and was very very sad about losing. There were books of poetry and calendars and oh, crap, I still haven't balanced the checkbook. More later.
Ok, I spent most of the afternoon working on Christmas photos, so I didn't do any more catchup writings. I'll do more this weekend. Or Monday. :)
So after our very pleasant time in Longview, we drove back up to Seattle, and drove right to where we were supposed to be, then thought it wasn't where we were supposed to be, drove around some more, decided it *was* where we were supposed to be, drove back, found out we didn't know what apartment # we were in, drove away again, called, found out it was the one we'd been standing in front of, and drove BACK again, finally arriving safely. Sheesh.
We hung out for a while and talked with Mom and Gavin and Deirdre and Lizzie (Gavin's sister) and then we went to Bellevue Square, which is a very large mall, to finish our Christmas shopping, which we did in an expedient 50 minutes, leaving us with 20 minutes before the mall closed forever. Or at least until the 26th. We were very proud of ourselves. :)
We went looking for a present for Aunt Mabel and Grandma, and I wanted to get them some kind of jewelry with pearls, because they were born in June, so we went to look for some kind of pretty (and identical) necklaces, but I was also concerned about the clasps, because they're 85 years old, and I wanted to get them something that they'd be able to do and undo! So we found a very pretty necklace indeed, but the clasp was just impossible, so we looked some more and found matching pearl bracelets with sensible clasps--
--excuse me, moment of complete distraction. My Elfin name is:
Adusulë (root name, suitable for feminine and masculine); another masculine version is Adusulëion; more feminine versions are Adusulëiel, Adusulëien, or Adusulëwen
for 'Catherine Eileen Murphy', or
Carfalas (Carfalasion(m), Carfalasiel, Carfalasien and Carfalaswen(f))
for Catherine Murphy.
--and so we bought them the bracelets, and Mabel even commented when they opened them that they were the sorts of clasps that old fingers could handle! So I was very pleased. :) Anyway, while we were there looking for the bracelets we also found a pretty delicate little sapphire and diamond set that had (manmade) sapphires and diamonds and so now I have sapphire stud earrings and a *beautiful* little necklace that goes with it and a very delicate pretty little ring that doesn't actually fit on any of my fingers at the moment, but it's still lovely, and aren't I *spoiled*?
Having accomplished the vast task of shopping -- a chess game for Gavin, a calendar for Mom (her real present is here, as is Deirdre's, which we have to send to her), a couple of travel books for Dad -- we scurried back home and were treated to potato soup, yum. Wow. I'm hungry, she realized suddenly. Maybe I'll call this part done and -- oh, no, Ted is going to arrive here with lunch in a bit, so I'll wait til then to post this.
Grandma came over for dinner, and while I forget how the topic came up, I ended up telling her about Legion and about the exciting and potentially mind-bogglingly exciting developments there (for those of you at home who are keeping track, Nichole, the agent, is working with Sarah on Sarah's screenplay for at least the rest of 2001, and will be looking at Legion in January, so that part is on hold for now, but keep your fingers crossed and hold your breath and think positive thoughts for Sarah!!) and Grandma got *quite* excited about the whole thing and crossed her fingers for us (literally) and said she didn't know how I could possibly not think about it every waking moment. *laugh* So that was pretty neat. :)
And we all talked and had a lot of fun and hung out for the rest of the evening.
It was really a very nice week. We flew down to WA -- well, actually, we flew to Oregon, because we couldn't get a direct flight to Seattle -- and the very tall, good-looking blond guy I'd seen in the Anchorage and then Portland and then Seattle airports proved to indeed be Curtis McCubbins, with whom I went to high school. He was reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and was on his way back to Utah, where he was still going to college (he graduated from high school a year after me) and he said his sister Mary who was in my class is still in Kenai, and that was about the sum total of our conversation. But it was kind of fun. *laugh* I'd kept looking and looking at him, and we ended up next to each other on the escalators at Seatac, and he grinned and I said, "Ah, so that *is* you," and yah. :)
We rented a car and drove to our hotel and fell down for about five hours -- I *hate* redeye flights, guh. Got up again, found food, came back to the hotel room, where I finished reading one book, although I can't remember what, and read another VERY quickly and then I collapsed of exhaustion at 8:30 and slept for another 12 hours, which still wasn't enough.
The next morning we got up and went to Longview, where Ted's Grandma and Aunt Millie live, and spent the next few days there in a quietly pleasant stupor. I went to bed REALLY early again, while Ted stayed up til 1am talking to Millie. Unsurprisingly, I got up earlier than he did the next day. :) We read a lot (one of those grand 5 books in 1 day days for me) and drove around Longview a bit and on Sunday we went down to Portland, which is spitting distance from Longview, and something terrible happened.
We went to Powells, see, and before we went in, we set a budget of $250.
Two hours later, we emerged, having only spent $180. How COULD we?! We're ashamed and embarrassed. And one of those books was a GIFT and it cost $20, so we'd only spent A HUNDRED AND SIXTY on ourselves. Isn't that just *awful*? Talk about a Bookstore Accident!
On the other hand, Ted did get a bunch of the Sharpes novels, and I got a copy of the Canterbury Tales in old English (which made Ted's head hurt) and a bunch of mystery novels and a few SF books (The Zap Gun, which I've never read), and two Heinlein books I thought I didn't have (it turned out I had one of them, when I got back home, but I didn't have the other, so hey, 50% isn't bad, right?) and Ted got at least one aikido book and yah. It was good. :) Plus we got, er, $300 worth of bookstore gift certificates/bookstore credit and some actual books from my sister and parents, so all in all, I'd call it a very successful Christmas, bookwise. :)
AND we went to Fellowship of the Rings, and against all expectations I really thought it was magnificent, and Ted didn't like it much at all. We determined that the problem is that he's read the books far, far too many times: he literally has them memorized, and so even though he knew it wasn't going to be verbatim, it kept bugging him when it wasn't. The more he thought about it, the more he liked it, so we're going to go see it again and we'll see if he likes it better. :)
I, on the other hand, really enjoyed it a lot. :) Ok, I'm posting this now and will write more about other things in a bit. Right now my legs are numb from the cat sitting in my lap....
Okay, I'm outta here. Off to Seattle until the 27th. Well, effectively til the 28th. Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, all that stuff, to everybody; I don't know if I'll be doing any updating over the next week, so, well, if not, I'll tell everybody all about everything on the 28th. Bai!
So my aunt Deborah is an attorney. Mom emailed her and told her about my little set-to with my company, and asked if she and my uncle Hughie had had to submit proof of marriage to the state so Deborah could get on Hughie's benefits, because they had different last names, too. (As Image said: Of course my spouse and I have different last names. We have different parents.") This was Deborah's response:
Well, I think that's bullshit. As a matter of law, you can take any name you want to, so long as there is no intent to deceive. So, an unmarried couple might -- for very otherworldly reasons -- want to take the same name. I do think Catie has a point; you can have the same name and not be married; you can have different names and be married. All or none. To answer the first
question, yes, we did have to provide a marriage certificate [. . .] But I think this is a requirement whether the name is the same or not.
Not that I *intend* to sue, but it's nice to know an actual attorney agrees that they're full of shit.
The covers were *very* heavy this morning, and there were many dreams, some of which were just plain bizarre and others of which were quite nightmarish. 'Peter Wingfield is about 30, bleached blonde, working in a Walgreens in San Jose and pregnant' fell under 'bizarre' and 'I am driving a car which has a steering wheel at a 90 degree right angle from the windshield and which is going faster and faster no matter how hard I press the brakes' falls under 'nightmarish'.
My parents have just been disabusing Deirdre and me of any notions we had that we were getting away with reading in bed as children. I'd actually been disabused of the notion a few years ago, but am being further disabused now, by Dad saying that he only knew we were doing it when Mom sent him downstairs to fling the doors open and shout, "AH HAH!" which even now makes me cringe in embarrassment and humiliation at getting caught. I didn't know Mom *sent* him, sheesh. :)
Deirdre, however, is being freshly disabused, evidently. :)
So this made me tell my friends online this story: my family did this really really silly thing when Deirdre and I were kids. We got into this tradition of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance before going to bed. Or rather, after we were *in* bed. Deirdre's and my rooms were across from each other, and Dad would stand between them, and POINT at one of us or at himself and we would say one word from the pledge and then the next POINT would say the next word and sometimes he'd point at you SEVERAL times and you'd get to say SEVERAL words, and sometimes he'd POINT at himself and forget that he was actually supposed to say something, and he'd go, "OH!" and then say his word, and somehow it got 'round to us saying, "And justice for Paul," at the end, which was justice for Paul um I've forgotten his last name now who was a friend of ours and a politician who one day suddenly turned coat and went to work for British Petroleum, which, when he called my Uncle Packy, who was one of his best friends, to tell him, caused Packy to say, "Whore," in disgust and hang up the phone, and Paul called back and said, "Fuck you!" and hung up in return, and if I recall correctly we stopped saying "justice for Paul" after that.
:)
From HR:
She just needs to understand that if we provide the carrier her spouse's name and then something were to turn up later down the road and she falsified her application, then that is subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination.
To HR:
With regards to Denise's response: _Anyone_ who falsifies an insurance claim is subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination. Whether my last name is the same as my spouse's is entirely irrelevant to that fact.
I don't think Denise is understanding the basis of my complaint. I understand that they are concerned with insurance fraud. I don't object to having to provide proof of marriage. I understand that they are providing me with a service and that in good faith I should be willing to provide them with proof that I'm not trying to defraud them. That isn't inherently an objectionable situation.
What I do object to is having to provide proof of marriage _because my last name is different from my spouse's_. It is my understanding that married couples who share the same last name are not requested to provide proof of marriage.
This is a discriminatory policy, and that is what I object to. The implication is that a married couple with the same last name is inherently more trustworthy than a married couple with different last names.
I'm genuinely not trying to be difficult on this issue. It's merely that I feel very strongly about it, and I believe that it's a policy that should be reconsidered. I'm sure that APCS doesn't intend discrimination, and there is a comparatively simple solution; all that needs to be done is require proof of marriage from anyone claiming to be married.
If this doesn't work, next time I'll use even *smaller* words. Grr.
DELETE DELETE DELETE!
Ahahah. I have just deleted over 150 messages from my work inbox. That is very satisfying. DELETE DELETE DELETE!
My poor QA guy keeps saying, "shit!" about things today. Vincent *very* rarely swears. He must be having a hell of a day. We've got quarterly releases to...night? Or tomorrow night. But yeah. Poor Vincent.
Email from HR this morning:
You can let her know that we ask this of all employees who are adding dependents with different last names whether it be children or spouse's. Because our policies do not allow anything but a spouse, we are permitted to request information. If we don't do it, then the carrier will to make sure they aren't insuring an ineligible dependent. So therefore, we do it so the employee doesn't have to work directly with the carrier.
My response:
I understand why they're making the request they're making. I understand that in order to put Ted on my policy I will have to produce some sort of documentation proving that I'm married to him. I don't happen to have a copy of my marriage certificate available; like I said, I do have some nice wedding photos. What precisely are we considering 'proof', here?
My objection is that I believe this to be discriminatory. From what I'm reading here, I'm understanding that if, hypothetically, I were to add my brother to my insurance and list him as my spouse, that unless and until I filed a claim in his name, it would be assumed that I was telling the truth, and that he was my spouse, because he has the same last name as I do. My understanding is that because my husband has a different last name than I do, I am assumed to be telling a falsehood, and therefore must prove that I am indeed married to him.
I don't believe the fact that this is being requested of other people whose children or spouses who have different last names makes it right. It is merely discriminatory. Non-discriminatory procedure would be requiring proof of marriage from all employees who claim to be married.
I'm not at all sure the hypothetical brother situation is going to do anything but confuse and annoy them, but by *God* I can't let this lie. I seriously feel I'm being discriminated against. I *get* that I'm going to have to provide the documentation, but I'm going to do everything I bloody well can to get the policy changed. It's *wrong*.
A couple of good articles on Salon, one about terrorist attacks and another about Afghani women and culture.
Man, I'm *still* pissed off, when I re-read my last entry. *Man*. How *dare* they?
Hissing, spitting Kit. *Really* pissed off.
This afternoon I got an email from my HR department which read:
Catherine has a different last name than her spouse - Ted Lee. Can you obtain something confirming that they are married before we add him as the dependent in the system?
Hello? What century is this? What world are we living in? Since when is the *same last name* an absolute for a married couple? I wrote back, asked if married couples with the same last name had to submit proof of marriage, and while I was at it, asked a couple of my married coworkers if they'd been asked to prove they were married. HR wrote back and said no, married couples with the same last name did not have to submit proof of marriage, and the coworkers had not been asked.
So while I was trying to rein in my temper enough to email HR back and tell them I did not have a fax machine, but I could email them some nice pictures of my wedding if they wanted, my boss, who was one of the married couples I asked, went and talked to HR and told them that I wasn't very happy, and I then got this:
[I have sent the higher-up HR person] an email about the request she made. She will get back to me tomorrow and I will pass her email onto you. I am sure this is just standard procedure for them.
To which I responded:
I imagine it probably is standard procedure, but I feel quite strongly that it's a discriminatory procedure.
Sharing or not sharing the same last name is hardly a signifier of marriage in today's world. I feel that if I, as a married woman who retained her maiden name, am expected to prove that I am married to a man with a different last name, that it is only reasonable that married couples who have the same last names should also be expected to submit proof of marriage. If married couples who share the same last name are trusted to be telling the truth, I see no reason why married couples who do not share the same last name should not be trusted in the same way.
And there we stand. Tomorrow there will be more news. *Wow* I'm pissy about this.
I have a lap full of Lucy. She was on the stairs going, "MAAAH!" pathetically, and I looked at her and said, "Well, come here," and she came running over, and anklerubbed, and now she's taken over my lap.
Cup of water #6 now working its way through my system. Rapidly.
Yesterday we had successful shopping. I got an ice-cream maker, which I've wanted for ages, and we got a table with a lamp for the stupid dark corner of our living room, so now there can be READING in there, and Ted got the gaming material he wanted for Christmas, and a Nightcrawler bust that's really quite nice, and we failed the fondue-set roll, because Habitat and its pretentious prices made Ted grumpy, so we'll try somewhere else for one. AND we did food shopping, which we desperately needed to do, and ... that's enough. :)
God, I'm good. Wait, did I say that once already? That's okay, I don't mind if I did. God, I'm good!
Further things accomplished:
1: warm fuzzies put into laundry to remove cat fur from them so they can be worn without sneezing fits.
2: New photos of cats put up. This is mostly Starling's fault. Honest. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
3: New Kithair. (Compare to last December. And to March 2001.)
4: An additional 2 glasses of water consumed. This behavior causes one to have to pee a lot. (There are no links in this one. You don't need to see a picture of me peeing. o.O )
5: Photos of my cousin Kerry and her boyfriend put up.
6: There is no 6. Haven't I done enough so far today?
(Hi, Aunt Kathy! See? A website. :) )
*God*, I'm good. This morning I have showered, dressed, drunk 2 of the recommended 8 glasses of water a day, eaten breakfast, put a table lamp together, and I'm *still* at work 45 minutes earlier than I got to work all last week!
There was an utter, complete, and total failure to go to Liz's party tonight. Instead, we discovered that I'd gotten a Christmas bonus, and in a fit of excitement, we went Christmas shopping. :) We have now procured a present for my Mom, for my sister, for my Dad, and for Ted's Dad, although that happened prior to bonus-discovery. Oh. And, uh, we bought a cat tree for the cats. o.o But they seem to like it! They're being very silly and cute! (Okay, our cats are SPOILED ROTTEN. What's your point?)
And Ted had a damned clever idea for Legion, so all is good with the world!
Ok, now I'm vastly amused. Sarah said that at a workshop she went to, someone said that a person's favorite fairy tale as a child tended to greatly influence their writing later in life. And I write Beauty and the Beast stories all the time. *laugh* Sarah didn't know BatB was my favorite fairy tale, but she was *really* not surprised by it.
Nor was I terribly surprised to hear that Sarah's favorite is The Little Mermaid (the original, not the Disney version). That's pretty funny. :)
So she asked me what my favorite 3 fairy tales were, in that case, and out of traditional fairy tales, I'd have to say BatB, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White & Rose Red (which is another transformation story). If you step a little outside of the bounds of "traditional fairy tale", my list would have to be Beauty and the Beast, Tam Lin (which isn't exactly a fairy tale), and the other story that leapt to mind is one from my book of retold (or possibly wholly invented) fairy tales, Enchanted Tales, called _The Wounded Lion_, and it's another BatB transformation sort of story (shepherdess finds an injured lion, braves helping him, learns he's a prince, goes through a quest of increasingly difficult tasks to save him).
Now I shall put on my Predictable Hat. :)
This morning, at a quarter to ten, the doorbell rang, and delivered Christmas presents! Woot! There were foodthings and flannel jammies and an electric griddle and a HUNDRED DOLLAR GIFT CERTIFICATE TO WALDENBOOKS from Ted's parents, and glitter-filled cards from Angie and *ooooh* a Lawrence Yep version of Beauty and the Beast called The Dragon Prince, and another Beauty and the Beast book by ... I'll have to go look. Called Beast, and it's about the Beast before Beauty met him, and I'm so jazzed! They are very excellent presents!
(Beauty and the Beast, you see, is my very favorite of all the fairy tales. Has been since I was a kid. Angie thought these were an appropriately Kit-themed Christmas present, and she was very right! *wriggle wriggle wriggle*!)
And and and! I will go get my hairs cut in a few hours, and and and then we will go spend our gift certificate and and and then we will go to a Christmas party, and and and other good stuff too! Yeah! Yeah!
O.O
There was lunching with Lizards and Jais today! We went to the Bear Tooth and had burrito things, and *wow* does Liz look fantastic. She's down to her high school weight and seems really happy. Yay! So it was a lot of fun. *beam*
And tomorrow night her family is having a Christmas party to which we are invited and should go!
Oh, I forgot to mention the weirdly alarming dream I had this morning wherein ... well, it was complicated, but one of the particularly weird bits was that I seemed to be having a love child with Miss Parker, from The Pretender. Later she turned into Buffy, but we still had a two year old girl child. It was extremely bizarre.
I also dreamed that my cousin Rory was terribly swamped and that I swam out to rescue him, which made me feel like I should email him when I woke up, so I did, and indeed, finals at law school end next week, and he says, "Your dream is my nightmare. I am swamped with work."
I also dreamed about my Uncle Hughie, who died in March. He was sad. It's the first time I've ever dreamed about one of my dead friends or relatives and they've been sad. I think he missed us. I don't think he was ready to die.
Well, Anthem launched (you don't have to go look, it's not very exciting. pretty, though), against all odds. My coworker Barbara (whose page I would like to if I knew where/if it existed (I suppose I could ask her, couldn't I?) (ah, here we go: spideyblue.com, although Babs says it's a mess)) is to be vastly commended, for she did the whole damned site in under three weeks, bug fixes and all.
I think I'm going to lunch today with Jai and maybe Liz. That'll be nice. :)
I wish I knew what the hell was going on with my email. It's -- sure, now that I've said that, it appears that the mizkit@mizkit.com address is working pretty well, and it appeared that kit@mizkit.com was also getting to me. Nevermind. o.O
anyway! My eskimo.com address is going away as of Saturday! Do not use it anymore! Email me at mizkit.com! Thank you, and goodnight!
My first usenet post:
From: fscem1@acad3.alaska.edu
Subject: ElfQuest
Newsgroup: rec.arts.comics
Date: 1991-03-11 23:18:05 PST
I just went through the entire list of titles in the rec.comic thinger, and from that, I must assume there are no other screaming ElfQuest fans running around. I'm not a big comic reader, although I pick them up sometimes - ElfQuest is my downfall. Is there anyone else out there who's with me????
I cringe, or something. :) There are simply some things that should not be recorded for posterity. :)
It is very frustrating to be unable to create what your insides want you to create.
I'm very good with words. I'm passable with drawing. I'm bearable with web design. I was good enough at photography to get both a scholarship and a professional job for it (although the linked stuff is nothing but snapshots and I don't consider it to be Real Photography).
So why does it make my chest hurt with frustration when I look at Powazek.com or NoahGrey.com or JimFormation? (And why are virtually all the sites I admire designed by men?) Maybe it's not the design. Maybe it's the content. Maybe they're doing something I want to be doing. Maybe this is related to the Web Design Weight Loss Plan. Maybe my tiny little brain thinks that if I could come up with the Perfect Design, I would suddenly have the content and projects and photographs that I envy at other sites.
Well, okay, I'm not lacking in content. It's the projects (Fray, SF Stories, Photo.net). And the photographs. These are people I want to be like (even if Trip thinks the Fray is pretentious. He's probably right. I'm not sure that's the point, though. I think the point is that one way or another I find these sorts of people to be inspiring, but then I flail uselessly and fail to be inspired in any sort of *useful* direction).
I dunno. Maybe I need to work more extensively on On Your Left, which is currently malingering, as is every OTHER thing I should be working on. Including my novel.
In other words, get my head out of my ass and actively work on my stuff instead of making a lot of excuses. *wry look*
Yesterday I got sucked into Wil Wheaton's website, which he actually maintains himself. I didn't get sucked in for very long, because GreyMatter, which he'd been using to power his journal (and which I am now using) exploded sometime in the last ... while, and so there were't any obvious archives for me to go have my brain sucked out by. However, it was still really pretty entertaining. He's a geek. He's cute. I always liked him. *laugh* And I've learned from his disaster -- I'll try very hard to remember to make monthly backups of the site, just in case GreyMatter goes splat for me, too.
Speaking of which, Sarah is working on setting her page up as a GreyMatter page, too. Hee hee hee.
Last night I finished reading the Dalemark Quartet by Diana Wynne Jones, and now I despair of ever being able to write anything that's even vaguely worthwhile. Overall the books are worth reading individually; as a series, you must go read them Right Now. Man. I really liked them. Wah!
I would like to thank all of my very silly friends who have reminded me to back up my mail and other files from eskimo before Saturday. I have now done this. STOP REMINDING ME!
o.o
Okay, that didn't suck. I just got email from Ri-Sean Miller, who is one of the other people listed at classmates.com that I'd like to be in touch with besides Jim, so, okay, that didn't suck. :) Anybody else wanna email me? :)
Oop. I was supposed to mention, for the benefit of any family members that read this page (Hi, Kerry!) that Deirdre is getting married next summer, on or about the 21st of June, and people ought to plan to come to the wedding. :)
Sigh. I hate that SimpleMU* uses ^w to switch windows, when ^w closes most programs down. I meant to alt-tab from my IE window to my SimpleMU* window, and instead I ^w'd and closed down a five paragraph entry in my webpage. Ok, this is one big huge flag-waving plus for writing webpages in a telnet window instead of a browser/windows program. Sigh.
I had been saying "ew" before, but it's lost all its meaning now. Several ews. Which do not make a herd of sheep. Ew #1 was that I went upstairs and got a sand pear for breakfast, took a bite, and discovered the sand pears had fermented. This is a good reason to only buy one or two sand pears at a time: they seem less formidable that way, and are more likely to be eaten. I will remember this, in the future.
Ew #2 was that stinkybutt Zilli let out a really horribly stinky fart. Stinky stinky kitty.
Ew #3 was thwarted when I ran upstairs to discover that Ted had in fact remembered to put the chicken into the fridge last night, so that it has not thawed into rottenness this morning. Thank goodness. Or thank Ted, I suppose, more accurately.
Other Objects of Note: Jai (who should make her LJ page public so I can link her name in here when I mention her) called and said our friend Liz was going to -- actually, she called to tell me my email was bouncing, but once we got past that she said we should go to lunch on Friday and said that we should try to get our friend Liz to go with us, 'cause she'll be in town. Woot! Real Human Socialization! (Not that Ted and Shaun aren't human, but you know what I mean.)
Also, I'm really fed up with listening to the radio. It's just like listening to a CD over and over and over again, only with commercials. But I have apparently been too uninspired to put CDs in. Although it occurs to me that I have a ton of classical, and that might be the right speed.
*zums upstairs*
Okay, "a ton" apparently really means "two CDs that I can find that are actually in their cases where they belong", but still, it's better than the radio or any of the other stuff I had down here.
Jai (see, another instance where I could link your name in!) says I have to tell this story:
I kept mentioning, while I was doing 6 Degrees, that nobody had any idea how old I was, right? Well, I don't think I ever got around to writing about the last of those up. After the last show, a bunch of us went over to the Bear's Tooth to have some dinner and drinks. During dinner, Susan (who played Ouisa, the female lead) and Danny (who played Geoffrey, the (white) South African), said to me, "So, are you the senior member of the Harvard Club?" (All the kids in the play are going to Harvard.) I laughed and said that I was indeed the senior member of the Harvard Club; Danny wanted to know if I was a fifth-year senior? I said, "No, more like a graduate student," which caused them to ask how old I was. "Twenty-eight," I replied, and Susan flung her hands up and fell back and said, "No! You must get carded *all* the time!"
I do maintain that something else she said is partially responsible for the whole assumption I must be about 22: I was cast as a 'kid'. I was cast to be just out of high school, first year of college. As Susan said, "Well, Ann (the director) said you were a kid, I just believed her! You all look like kids to me anyway." So, yeah: people see what they expect to see.
Still, it's fun. :)
I have GOT to start getting up earlier. This is stupid. *mutter* Um. And that's all I have to say. I had a thought in my head earlier that I was going to extend into a page update, but apparently the thought disappeared somewhere between getting out of bed and getting to the computer. It's all those stairs, I tell you.
Laptops & ribs & salad, oh my!
Ted's work has been periodically getting rid of laptops as they've been upgrading, and he's collected a couple of them, one for himself, and today, one for my mom, so she can bring it to the National Archives with her own self and do genealogical research on it. So we went over this evening to bring her the laptop, and she was very pleased! Yay! And she fed us bbq pork ribs and potato salad. *Yum*.
I am deeply annoyed with classmates.com, which wants my credit card number in exchange for any useful information. Like, Jim Smith's email address. Die, capitalistic scum-sucking pig-fnckers!
There's an article over at BBC about an archaeologists's look at Silicon Valley. She wrote a book. Anyway, at the end of the article, she comments that five hundred years from now, with no other information, that an archaeologist might see piles of computer chips, and consider them to be offerings to the Venture Capital Gods.
Which reminded me of Mt. Rushmore. Ted and I went and saw it a few years ago, and my reaction to it IRL was the same as it had been when I'd seen photos: a thousand years from now, they're going to say, "And here are the gods of our forefathers' primitive society."
I mentioned this to my father once, and we then had a big discussion about whether English would still be in use a thousand years from now, or whether people would be able to read our peculiar little word-signs. He said they would. I said that's what the ancient Egpytians thought.
She muttered, and looked about grouchily.
The good news is the journal stuff is working. The bad news is the email stuff is seriously not working. It turns out that 1) I can't set up the shell account to have email to/from kit@mizkit.com through it, which is irritating, but nothing like as irritating as the fact that kit@mizkit.com email seems to still be going to eskimo.com, and the email I'm sending to/from my (argh) pop account just seems to be going in circles. Which is bad, 'cause I need to get this resolved by, um. Saturday, 'cause the eskimo account goes away on Sunday. Bad bad bad.
Plus there is work to do. Lots of big fat work. And augh. Google has now got archives from Usenet dating back to 1981, and Dwan has reminded me of my old usenet name (Storyteller) and lo, she is right, and there are usenet postings with that name. Eeee. Run. Run in fear. Or at least hide and make real big eyes. O.O
YAAAAAAAAAY! We have achieved victory over the Greysoft/Greymatter template system! It isn't quite perfect, but it's pretty close, and it allows me to do comments and apparently will permit me to do full-month archives, so I believe my backissues setup is mostly safe ... although I'm going to need to do something about the actual placement of files, because otherwise I'll end up with hundreds of thousands of files living in my backissues directory, which I don't actually want.
This is probably not how I was supposed to be spending my work day. Heh.
In other good news, Ted tested for and successfully gained his first belt in Shoshinryu, one of the martial arts he's studying, on Saturday. Yay Ted!
Well, frell. I guess this is going to have to do. I can't swing the look I want, but I think that using the spelt-out DECEMBER 10, 2001 thing makes it look a little better than having the 12.10.01. Helps the balance some, or something. There are some other things that seem bearable (Noah Grey's setup is nice), but I think doing it would require something of a redesign of my page... again. *crossed eyes*
The cats are sleeping with their arms all around each other. They're so cute it's disgusting. Speaking of which, I took some photos I need to upload (one of them if of the cats).
Okay, posting this now and seeing if I can make the comments feature work. I dunno why it's not working. And it's the whole POINT. sulk.
Bother, said Pooh, this isn't working quite how I wanted it to.
Actually, it's working pretty beautifully, except I can't figure out how to make the date/timestamp/entry spacing look Just Like it does on my non-blogger page, and, well, I *like* my format. Darn it. o.o
this is a test of the emergency weblogging system. this is only a test. if this was real, it'd be on the front page. *blink*