More bugs showed up, of course. Not /too/ many, but enough. Sigh. And it's so much more fun to work on the Gambit site than on work....
I had a From Light to Darkness dream last night. Now, for those of you who don't know what FLtD is, let me summarize by saying it's a LARP (live-action role-play) game that COMPLETELY sucks the brains of the players. It plays about every 6 weeks or so, and renders everyone involved into mindless FLtD drones. Apparently it's pretty fun.
But I don't play it! And yet, and yet, I had a DREAM about it! About Flit and Sarah's characters. It was a very brief dream, in which Flit's character was a sort of ingenue, with a propensity for purchasing things whimsically, and Sarah's character was more or less her protectorate, and it was VERY DISTRESSING. I am SCARRED. AUGH. :)
Man. I meant to balance the checkbook, pay the bills, and do some scans for House of Cards tonight.
Well, at least I balanced the checkbook and paid the bills. Now I think I'll go take the dog for a walk and collapse in a pit of exhaustion....
A Healthy Me, the site I've been working on pretty much sleeplessly for the last 2.5 weeks, is in a very rapid QA stage right now. I was pretty confident when I announced yesterday that it was ready for QA that there were going to be relatively few bugs, because I've been working my ass off trying to cover all of them before it went to QA.
So far, 7 bugs have been reported. 3 of them weren't for me. 2 of them were 'change this copy' or 'move this module' rather than actual bugs. 2 of them were actually bugs. Tiny ones.
If these are all the bugs there prove to be, I'm going to be *so* *smug*. So *very* smug.
This morning my web counter broke 20K visitors to the site. That's pretty cool. I mean, the counter's been up since 1995 or something, so it's not like I've been overwhelmed with visitors over the last seven years, and I'm sure a lot of them are spiders (although I'm not quite clear on how that works in regards to counter hits), but still, it's cool! :)
I went to my drawing class last night. It was ... all right. I think I'm going to have to see, at the end, whether I've actually learned anything or not. On the other hand, at least I did drawings for the better part of three hours, so there's nothing bad about *that*. And the model is very pretty.
The teacher, Tessa, did not go around helping people. No suggestions as to how to improve things. I don't know if this is because it was the first class and she didn't want to scare first-time artists off, or if she doesn't work that way, and if she doesn't work that way, I don't see how anybody's really going to learn anything.
Well, okay, no: I don't see how _I'm_ going to learn anything. I know the basics (sure, right, drawing a head as two intersecting ovals works great ... if you can draw two intersecting ovals of the SAME SIZE reliably, which I can't ... and if you can bear in mind that they're not really going to be of the same size most of the time because mostly you're not drawing a model in profile and if you have to guess at how foreshortened one of the ovals should be, this is not really very different from skipping the ovals at all ... particularly if you already know where on a head a person's ears go. Anyway.); what I need to work on is proportions and foreshortening. Well. We'll see. *shrug*
Okay, I have worked and worked and worked and worked today, and I think that with one exception which I've asked somebody else about, that the whole site is rebuilt and redone and reeverything and that I am done. I hope so. I think I've found all the bugs (yeah, right, but I can hope) and I think I never want to see this site again. Blah. Blah! BLAH!
Tonight is the first drawing class, and I'm not exactly nervous but at the moment I'm _so_ braindead and mostly only want to lie on the couch drooling and watch Buffy. But I will go to class instead. And I'll come home and watch Buffy and lie on the couch and drool, and then maybe I'll go to bed.
*So* *braindead*.
I look longingly at House of Cards. I must not work on it today. Too much other stuff to do.
Siiiiiigh.
People on Too ought to tell me to drink some water, when they read my page today. Other people could email me, or something. :)
Probably if I had swum this morning, I would be far more awake than I am right now. On the other hand, I'd also probably be even more dehydrated, which isn't such a great thing. Anyway, I decided in favor of sleeping some more, which meant I got almost 9 hours of sleep but I was up by 8 anyway, which is not a bad thing.
I had some really peculiar dreams in the 90 minutes between Ted getting up and me getting up, though. Among the weirdest was a dream that Lucy had given birth to a baby chicken, which Zilli then ate. Icky.
I *must* remember to go over to my parents' and water the plants this afternoon. I remembered yesterday, but not on the way home from swimming, so the plants were not watered. Bad Catie.
I was going to say something else, but I forgot what, so a ferret said that I was going to talk about how cool ferrets are and how people should bring them more ice cream, because they've eaten all their ice cream. That's not what I was going to say, but I like to oblige ferrets.
What I was going to say was, my poor husband commented after I swam that I smelled nice, and I was like, "Yah! Chlorine!" and he was like, um, no, your shampoo...
Well, it's not my FAULT! Chlorine smells good! It's, like, raar! Yum! Good! Raar! And Ted said, "April (someone he was engaged to once) was a swimmer, too. Swimmers are *weird*." And I'm all like, "But, but! Chlorine GOOD! Raar!" He said he thinks the human brain is pretty weird that it can be convinced that rat poison is an aphrodisiac. :)
But it makes sense! It does! Humans are very olfactory-oriented, even if they don't know it! Swimming is exercise! Exercise is good! Swimming smells like chlorine! Chlorine is good! Sex is good! Chlorine is sexy! *Really*!
Um. Right. I'm gonna be over here in the corner, sniffing at the other swimmers and pretending that we're the normal ones. :)
Two more minutes! I just needed two more minutes!
I went to the pool tonight, and after leaving early enough to be really early, traffic was very slow and I didn't get in the water until about 5:37.
If I'd been in by 5:35, I could have done 4000 yards. Instead, I only managed 3900, and I hauled *ass* through a 1000 yard sprint; did it in about 17 minutes. Ok, that's not *really* hauling ass, but it was pretty good. And it was my last 1000, so that's even better. And then I did another 150 and I just needed TWO MORE MINUTES. But they were yelling, "Everybody out!" and taking down the lane lines, so I couldn't do my last hundred. Wah.
God, it was a good swim, though. I hit the water in the zone, pretty much, and was like, "We do not need oxygen like you puny earth creatures! Bwahahahah! We laugh in the face of puny earth creatures! We scoff at the need for oxygen!" for the whole swim.
TWO MORE MINUTES, man. Just TWO MORE MINUTES.
It struck me that I could swim for a measly hour in the morning and swim at night and get an easy 5K yards in a day. That'd rock. I'm going to try to get up and swim tomorrow morning, 'cause tomorrow evening is the first drawing class, and I won't be able to gym. So that's the plan.
I must go to bed early tonight to accomplish this, though.
Ted made a *really* good pot roast and potatoes and carrots for dinner. *drool* Yum. (Thank you, Melissa, for the carrots. (Melissa had Too Many Carrots, when we went over for dinner yesterday, and asked if we wanted to bring some home. We said, "Sure!" and she stealthily began to stuff, and I do mean stuff, carrots into ziplock bags. Ted noticed after she'd completely filled two bags (sandwich-sized, fortunately, and not quart-sized!) and said, "Uh, that's enough, Melissa!" And she looked *very* disappointed at having been caught. *laugh* She gave us almost half the carrots she had! But she'd hoped to give us more. *giggles*))
swam: 3900 yards
It's amazing how stylesheets work so much better when you don't fuck up the call-line. I've been trying to figure out for over a week why this site I was working on wasn't reading the stylesheets right, and finally I see that it's got an extra / in front of the call-line. Sigh. Amazingly, it works now. Which means all I have to do is go through the stylesheets and fix the colors and the site will be about 95% done.
Which is good, because it's supposed to launch Thursday and there's been no QA yet. Glurp.
Lucy is being *bad* today. She's gotten into one fight with Annie and has been hissing and spitting and growling and being a *bitch*. Bad, bad cat. :(
Annie, on the other hand, is eating, so I'm vurry glad about that. Poor little doggie.
Well! Sunday we went over to Melissa and Pat's for a very good lunch which lasted from 1pm til 5:45pm. :) And talked and ate and played with their cat and ate some more and it was lots of fun! (The cat photos are here, Melissa.)
Then I came home and fussed with the Gambit site some more and Ted went to a movie and goodness, that's not a very exciting weekend update, is it? That's okay, you'll have to cope with it, because I'm hungry and I need to walk the dog.
It SNOWED! Like four inches last night. *beam*
It's really very annoying to be competent at something and to have someone on hand all the time who is /good/, to your competency. Salieri to Mozart. Er, to take it to an overblown level.
My friend Kent has a really, really good eye for web design. I have a decent eye for it. I'm working on House of Cards, the Gambit site I was threatening to put up, and Kent looked at it, and to my delight, really liked the basic design.
Then he got picky about the nav bar location and structure, and made some suggestions, and as soon as I'd done it, I could clearly see that /that/ was a superior way to design the page. It's a question, as he said, of trapped negative ('white') space. What he suggested frees up some of that white space, making the design superior.
I swear this wouldn't be so irritating and frustrating if it weren't for the fact that I really can see, immediately, why what he suggests is better than what I did. I mean, I'm not upset or anything; it's just aggravating to have it happen time and again. I /take/ his suggestions, because, well, he's better at this than I am, and I know it. But jeez, argh!
A while ago I was frustrated by something similar, and I think now that it's actually the same thing. An ability to see that which is better than what I do, and to be unable to take the step to getting there myself.
Now I have to go figure out why the December month archive thing isn't working.
I finished reading the Gambit comic book series. It was actually pretty decent, overall. They finally explained some stuff, which was good, and they did sufficient Cool Stuff with Gambit's powers over the course of the story that I'm tempted to bring the comics along to California to make Sarah read them ... except reading is all anti-social, and there will be lots of socializing to do. :)
Small successes: I managed to get signed up for the beginning drawing class. First class is Tuesday night.
Oh yeah! I remember what the thing I couldn't remember was!
You remember that little milk-drinking problem I mentioned a few days ago? We bought milk on Wednesday night. A gallon.
24 hours later it was gone.
Fortunately, Shaun *also* bought milk. :)
Well, suck. The scanner has no compatible software for Windows fucking ME. Mutter. Curse. Swear.
I was going to say something else entirely, too, and I remembered it while I was crawling around under the computer desks, but hell if I can remember what it is now....
More slobbery Gambit pictures, and the story is actually turning out kind of interesting, so a win all around. Perhaps I'll do some scanning in a few minutes here. Or maybe I'll try to do some real work.
Annie is eating. Yay!
I stopped by Burger King and got the Rogue figurine! And bank statements (which I didn't get at Burger King), so I can balance the damned checkbook. Only several days after I meant to...
ooooh. it appears that there is a free usb port on this computer, which means i can hook the printer up to this comp... no, the scanner ... up to this compute, which will make scanning gambit stuff iasier, 'cuz the other compute has a flaky screen. sorry for tyops; i'm stitting on teh floor typogn this.
right. back in a minute to see if the computer can detect the new hardware or if this was all for naught.
swam: 3500 yards
Yay, Annie is eating! She doesn't eat very much when her people aren't around, but it seems I'm a good enough substitute. Yay! *happiness*
I have found a totally drool-worthy drawing of Gambit in Gambit #2, which makes the entire series purchase worthwhile, in my warped little mind. :) Although every time I see a new sexy drawing of the Cajun, I want to switch out the main graphic on the page. I'm so lame. :)
I had a small accident this evening. This was similar to a Bookstore Accident, except it was a Comic Shop Accident. Since comics are cheaper than books, it requires fewer of them to have an Accident with.
I was *restrained*! *Really*! I only bought *half* the complete Gambit comic book seires that was available! (I put the other half on hold til next week.) But really! How am I to do a Gambit images site if I don't have the Gambit comics? It's not my fault! It was a Sign From Dog!
Speaking of dogs, I should bring Annie for a walk before I go to bed.
Really, there were only 25 issues, and there are about 36 out, so it wasn't the *whole* series, and I only bought 14 of them today! Um. Right. *big eyes* It's not my fault. Honest. O.O
went to: yoga
ate: too many cookies
There was an extremely huge debate today about education in America, and I'm not going to go into it, but it made me sit down and write out this idea that I would like very much to do.
I would like to issue a challenge to the government to double the education budget every year for at least eight years.
I would like to see a checks and balances system instated within the education system to make sure the money isn't all going to administration but is being used to build new schools, hire more teachers at non-insulting salaries, and improve classrooms.
I would like this project to take place over the course of a minimum of a decade, at the end of which I would like a study to take a look at the education system, comparatively.
I would like this to be a grass-roots campaign, a challenge to the government asking them if they've got the balls to do it. I would like the people who have expressed frustration over the current education to stand up together and throw the idea in the government's teeth, and demand that it happen.
I may be forced to become a lobbyist.
Trip is SO COOL! Trip is BEST! Trip sent me Die Upon A Kiss, the next Benjamin January book by Barbara Hambly, in HARDCOVER! *BEAM*! Trip is SO COOL! *BEAM*!!! *happy dance, happy dance*!!!
So my parents have gone off to Ireland with my uncle Packy (lucky bastards all!) and we're dog-sitting Annie, my parents' dog. Annie is a sensitive soul, and gets vurry vurry upset when her people leave, so they brought her over early last night so they could pack.
Lucy is very annoyed.
Lucy is, in fact, sitting in a High Spot in the computer room, glaring at the dog. :)
Who doesn't mind at all. Annie likes cats. :)
The thing about dog-sitting is that the cats like the dog food better than they like the cat food. For Lucy, this isn't a problem. For Zilli, who is, as his breeder described, "the result of four generations of American inbreeding," this is more of a problem. He's delicate. With a capital D. And his wee little bowels get upset when he gets rich or fatty food into his diet.
Like, oh, dog food.
So the dog food is down here in the computer room where I can see it. The cats have been skulking around it all morning. The dog has been ignoring it (she doesn't eat a lot when her people aren't here, although I'm one of her people, so hopefully she'll be okay). I must be Constantly Vigilant, though!
In other news, I am the Master of CSS. Woot! *beam*
Tired. Sick. Well, not so sick, but I had an ooky tummy last night that kept me up til 3am, and I had a 12 hour headache. The headache has been dispelled by the miracle of modern medicine (yay ibuprofin) and the tummy is ... well, less glorky, but I'm tired out and I took the goddamned day off work, so there. And thus far I have actually not worked, which is pretty remarkable for me. I think I might go poke around in the kitchen and find some food now.
It is colder'n'a witch's tit outside. Brrr.
Shaun actually brought the books home for himself. Egocentric little shit, aren't I?
Tracie asked, not unreasonably, why I called it a nav bar when it didn't navigate anywhere, and Mary Anne wanted to know why she couldn't see any new elements. Um, well, I call it a nav bar because it's graphics on the lefthand side of the page, and my brain thinks that's where nav bars belong, even if it's not really actually a nav bar. And Mary Anne probably couldn't see the new elements because she was probably looking at the actual nav bar, not the lefthand sidebar graphics.
Either that or you're having caching problems, Mary Anne. Try shift-reload. :)
I didn't get anything done at all that I intended to today, not even going to the gym. That, because I was cold and tired, and really wanted to read a lot more than I wanted to go to the gym, but I didn't get to the post office or balance the checkbook or order anything (okay, I can do that now, true enough) or anything. Ted says that when he's back from martial arts we can at least go to the PO and send Geni's box of books which has been languishing for MONTHS.
On the other hand, I *was* weak in the face of temptation.
Shaun seems to have sneakily brought some books home for me. :) The other day we were talking about Katherine Kurtz's Deryni books -- I own the Camber books but never got the Deryni trilogy -- and this afternoon I finished reading my Anne Perry novel and was looking around for something else to read, and my eyes lighted on the Camber books, and after a moment or two I realized that High Deryni, Deryni Rising and Deryni Checkmate had suddenly and mysteriously appeared on the shelf (along with King Kelson's Bride, which I have also not read). So when Shaun comes home I'll have to make big eyes at him and hug him a lot. :)
We went to _A Beautiful Mind_ today, and wow, it was good. Really good. Go see it. Now.
There we go. Fifth (and sixth) elements up on the nav bar. That, I think, is enough. I shall have to swap them out in the future if I feel I need something new. :)
Rogue to Ruin is officially up and running on my subdomain. Now I am very tempted to create a similiar images site for Gambit ... :)
Chipper Kit! Who is now going to go find out what it takes to upgrade from the standard hosting plan at 100megs to the, um, advanced plan. Just in case I decide I /do/ want to do the Gambit site. :)
Thinks to do tomorrow:
1. Sign up: for art class (woot! yay! beginning drawing class! happiness! Even if it *does* meet on Tuesday nights, which means tape-delayed Buffy! Wah! But that's okay. I can live with these small sacrifices.)
2. Mail: Geni's books, Deirdre's present, Ted's parents' presents, Janne's presents
3. Order: Ted's other birthday gifts, now that it's been determined I can't find them in town
4. Drop by: Burger King and get the Rogue toy
5. Balance: the checkbook. Ok, it's not fun, but it's necessary.
6. Go: to the gym! I didn't work out at all this weekend, and I ate LOTS today. oof!
Check back tomorrow for more exciting updates! See if Kit has accomplished her tasks! *toots a horn*
Ted cut off his hair! Aii!!! It's --
-- actually, it looks very good. It's only marginally different than it was when we got married -- I'll get a photo tomorrow or later tonight and post it -- and it's possible I like him better with short hair. Or maybe I just like being able to see his face. :) But I like it, and he seems to like it, so all is well! (Trip said, "Kit is contagious!" Hee hee hee.)
We spent the entire day cooking, it seems like. Ted made dinner, the name of which I can't spell, but it was very yummy, and I made a German chocolate cake which was also very yummy, and ate entirely too much (oof!), and Ted got Tron and Queen's Greatest Hits V. 1 & 2 and a gift certificate to Bosco's (the comic shop) and to Border's, and tomorrow we're going to go get him a set of golf clubs, 'cause, well, he likes golfing and he thought that might be a nifty present. And there's a couple other things I'm going to get him, too. :)
Some fool has drunk an entire gallon of milk in the last 48 hours. Or most of it, anyway.
I can't help it! I *like* milk. I looooooooove milk. And I drink *lots* of it. When I went away for college and came back at Christmas break, Mom discovered that by myself, I drank as much milk as the other four people in the house combined. :) She bought twice as much milk while I was home as she had when I wasn't. :)
Anyway, so we went and bought milk late Wednesday night, and by late last night there was enough left to put on a bowl of cereal. Some fool has a drinking problem!
My stupid back hurts. In the shoulder, not the lower back, but it still hurts. Sigh.
swam: 2000 yards
rode: 2 miles
lifted: upper & lower body weights
UAA's machine weights are really awful. :P
My father keeps misdialing my phone number. Apparently at 345-2112 there is someone who sounds a great deal like me.
Dad called me up, then accidentally called this other woman up, then called me up again. He said to me, in a silly voice, "Is this the person to whom I am speaking?" and I denied it, and he said, still in the silly voice, "I just called that other woman and asked her that same question. She said she didn't know." Dad said, "Well, perhaps I will call someone else, and see if they know," and she said, "Okay..."
The poor, poor woman. *laugh*
Once, I accepted a collect call on Mother's Day from somebody else's mother, because Dad was in Seattle and someone called up and said there was a collect call from Mom (my mom was at home) and I figured it was just Dad being silly. The woman on the other end was very confused. :)
Then there was the time that Dad was supposed to pick Deirdre and me up from the movies, and he was VERY late, and FINALLY he showed up, and he said, "Well, it was such a nice evening that I thought I'd ride my bike to come pick you up, and it wasn't until I got two blocks from the movie theatre that I realized that wouldn't work!"
Deirdre and I said, "DAAAAAD," in disgust, but it never occurred to us not to believe him. However, it turned out he'd actually gotten caught up in watching some tv show, and he simply left the house late. :)
My father is very very silly. :)
Of course, it's my Mom who claims not to be silly and who one cold day in Kenai went walking into the bank all stiff-legged and wobbling back and forth from one leg to the other as she walked, because she was pretending her knees were frozen stiff, and it wasn't until she got up to the teller who looked at her very peculiarly that it occurred to her that perhaps that was a *little* strange. *helpless giggles*
And a couple of days ago I was putting something on the mantle in the living room, and I turned around and caught Ted doing a silly little dance for absolutely no reason at all. He was very chagrined to have been caught. *more laughter* I have such a *great* family. *laugh* *laugh*
One time Deirdre and I were horsing around, and I gave her a big old hug and we fell over against the wall, in such a fashion that our entire body weights were resting on Deirdre's elbow, against the wall, but we were overbalanced in such a way that we simply couldn't get *out* of the position. We looked like a couple of drunks hanging on to each other and the wall for balance. Dad had to tilt us back into stability. *more giggles*
This seems to be one of those entries where Ted said, "If you don't have anything to say, post that you don't have anything to say!"
I don't think I have anything to say. :)
Well, no, not true! We launched the revision of Blueprint for Health last night, which isn't going to mean a damned thing to anybody but me, but it's the culmination of 3 months of work and the first assigned project to my new employee, so I'm very happy with it! Hooray!
Despite whinging briefly, I went swimming tonight, and had a very, very excellent swim. My jaw is still achy, but it wasn't an issue in swimming as I thought it might be.
swam: 3800 yards
music: Billy Joel, Greatest Hits V.3
I did something painful to my jaw yesterday evening. I think it's less painful now, at least slightly, but yawning hurts, and I keep yawning.
Actually, for somebody who was up til 1am I'm not all that yawny. She said, and yawned. *yawn* OW. Goddamn it. What kind of doctor does one go to for a jaw problem? It's in the hinge that it hurts. This is going to make swimming a bother.
My friend Melissa called me last night! We're going to have a late lunch next Sunday. The 27th, not the 20th. The 20th is Ted's birthday, and we have plans. Yay!
I have huge whacking amounts of work to do, so I'm going to go get some food and get to work.
Popcorn and orange juice. Better. Yum.
Of course, now I have popcorn kernel skins stuck in my teeth.
Tired. Hungry. Too much work to do. *mutter* Boy, does taking a nap sound appealing. Not a good idea, but an appealing one. Splah. Maybe I'll go try to find a little something to eat. And I should drink some water. A lot of water, actually; I haven't been drinking enough today.
It is Flit's fault that I've just spent an hour fussing with my reading page. This is only fair, since apparently it's my fault that Flit has begun a reading page of her own. :)
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAAAAAH AAAAAAAAAAH AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
So a few days ago I emailed Tony and Mary (ok, actually I emailed Mary, because I don't think Tony actually does email, but nevermind that) to say that I was going to be in LA on the 9th with some friends, and would they like to join us for lunch, and also that Sarah and I had been working on this tv series script when Ted and I met Tony and Mary at The Yale and that Ted had said, afterwards, that we Must Write a part for Tony into it, and so Sarah and I looked at the characters and one of them who had just sort of been there came absolutely to life with a past and present and future and motivations and everything when we thought of Tony in the role, and now the script was done and I was going to send it to Tony's agent, since he gave me his agent's card, and Mary just wrote back to say that agents didn't generally send scripts on to talent unless the project already had funding and they were doing casting, but that I was welcome to send a copy of the script directly to Tony!
(I can't believe that entire paragraph was one sentence.)
AAAAAAAAAAAH! *AAAAAAAH* EHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE!
So I'm going to, um, do that. *big huge eyes* *Wow*!
Oh, and they can't come to lunch, 'cause Mary's going to be competing in Utah for a ... riding/shooting event, I've forgotten the name, that weekend, and Tony's in pre-production meetings for a new Palpable Hits Production, this one on the Magic Circle. COOL! Er, cool for them, but not cool that they can't make lunch. You know what I mean. *laugh* ANYWAY. Happy days!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA. *laugh*
Ok, I feel I have now done my bit for King and Geekdom, or something. I found a perfectly awesome Rogue graphics site a month or two ago, and now that I've got mizkit.com all set up on 100megs, I emailed the (girl?; she uses the name Tenshiblue, and I associate Tenshi with Angie, so I'm assuming it's a girl. Could be wrong, though.) running the site and offered her some space on mizkit.com, since I can set up subdomains lickity-split, and because, well. No pop-up adds, and stuff. To my great delight, she emailed back and said she'd take any space I could spare, so I set up roguetoruin.mizkit.com (at which there is presently nothing, at least as of this posting). I feel quite happy and smug about all this. :)
I did a very lazy swim tonight, but at least I did swim. Kudos to me. :)
swam: 2000 yards
There's a posting further down where I whined about the bitterness of getting on the scale, and to my great surprise, Stella who used to play at Maddock and whom I haven't spoken with in a coon's age, posted a comment to tell me to take heart.
It's amazing how much that helped. Not that commentary from the people I'm in contact with regularly doesn't, but to get surprise-support from unexpected quarters -- well, it was just really neat. And it made me extra-glad I'd gone to the gym last night. :)
*laugh*!
|
I am fiercely protective of my friends and loved ones, and unforgiving of any who would hurt them. Speed and foresight are my strengths, at the cost of a little clumsiness. I'm most comfortable with a few friends, but sometimes particularly enjoy spending time in larger groups. What Pre-1985 Video Game Character Are You? |
The cool thing about this is that the quiz lets you choose more than one answer, or no answers, rather than insisting you take one of several either appropriate or entirely inappropriate answers. Hee hee hee!
I gymmed! Yay me!
did: a dance warmup
biked: 7 miles
lifted: free weights
walked: 3 laps around the ice rink
My arms are very wibbly. And I must say, I think little of UAA's weight room. They have 3 small rooms, one of machines which are virtually all leg stuff and sized for men anyway, one cardio with bikes, cross-country ski machines, and treadmills, and one free weight room. I think they used to be raquetball courts. They're about that size, and they can be looked in upon from the watching level of the gym, like raquetball courts. There are enough free weights, but not enough benches or free-weight machines: no leg press, for example.
It took quite a while for me to get up the nerve to go in to the free weight room -- actually, it took a while for me to get up the nerve to go into the weight room at all, because from the one door into the place, you can see the poorly-equipped machine room, and the handful of guys who are using it. This inspires better people than me to edge away nervously. However, in finding the dance studio, I also found the overlook into the other gym rooms, so I learned there was more than one room, and there were girls in the middle room (the cardio room) so I took heart and after I did a dance warmup, I bravely went into the weight room and did seven miles on one of the stationary bikes.
And I *sweated*, and it was *great*. The thing that kind of sucks about swimming is that you don't notice you're sweating. You get hot and red-faced (if you're me, anyway) but you can't actually tell you'r *sweating*, so there's that part missing from the workout. The part where sweat is pouring off your bright red face in an utterly unattractive manner. (Hey, it's important to me. Go get your own kinks.) So biking and sweating like a little piggy-wig was great.
But during the entire twenty minutes or so that I biked, not a single female went into the free weights room.
I *hate* that. I mean, it's *nerve-wracking*, you know? And because my nerves were wracked, I went back into the machine weight room and looked around and determined that yep, those machines sucked a lot, and if I wanted to do an upper body workout, I was going to *have* to go into the free weight room. With all those BOYS.
It's not that I don't like boys. It's that they're a lot stronger than me, especially when I'm as pudgy and unmuscular as I am right now, and I feel INCREDIBLY LAME doing bench press with just the bar (which weighs like 40 pounds or something by itself; it's not like it's actually an insignificant weight, but still) or doing bicep curls/tricep extensions with 10 pound weights, when all these guys around me are using 75 pound dumbbells and benching -- okay, I didn't actually notice what anybody was benching. But you get the point. I get all competitive and that's SO dumb. Also, men will not make eye contact with me in the free weight room. This really compounds the feeling of being an alien creature who Does Not Belong. I really don't like it. Mutter.
Although there was one guy, as I was just telling Sarah, a black guy with pale blue eyes, in his forties, who smiled and made eye contact with me, so kudos for him.
Anyway, I didn't permit my overabundance of testosterone to run amok and injure me, so I did pretty good today. I did bench press and bicep curls and tricep extensions and shoulder press and ... a couple other things which have already escaped my little tiny memory. A butterfly press.
So yah. Pretty good workout. Plenty of sweating involved. I think I may swim on Tuesday-Thursday-Sunday, weight lift on MF, go to yoga on Wednesday and dance class on Saturday. And then I will fall right over dead, probably. :)
Now I suspect all them fucking little endorphins are going to keep me up til one in the morning. Fucking little endorphins. :)
Woot! There is a beginning adult tap class from 2-3pm on Saturdays at the, uh. I've forgotten already. Dance Spectrum School of Dance, which is out on East 68th, out in the middle of nowhere. $55/month, and a $15 registration fee. Woot! I'm way beyond beginning, but it's still a dance class, so I think I'll try to take it. Woot! *happy wriggle*
See, I made the error, on Sunday, of weighing myself, even though I knew it would be a mistake. A week is not long enough to make any real difference in one's weight, particularly since muscle weighs more than fat and if any magic transformation is going on, it's the magic transformation of muscle starting to build so that there will be more muscle to burn the plentiful layers of fat. This is good, but it certainly doesn't make a person weigh any less.
So now I'm whiny and sort of morpish because I haven't succeeded in creating a Miraculous Transformation inside of a week, nevermind that I KNOW it doesn't work that way. So I feel like a lump and it seems like there's no point in going to the gym to swim and ...
... talk about a never-ending cycle. Whine.
I took a photo of myself this morning for no particular reason. I need to get some real lens-cleaner so that my digital camera stops taking photos in soft focus. :P
AUGH. Janne got laid off this morning. AUGH. :(
*gasp* My booklist has *failed* me! I read Signal to Noise and A Signal Shattered (by Eric Nylund) this afternoon; the latter, I'd intended to read, but when I picked it up, it turned out to be the sequel to the former, and I only very, very vaguely recalled the former, so I went to re-read the former. And I was telling Sarah how awful and turrible this was (poor me, *forced* to reread books!) and I went to look to see how long ago it had been since I'd read StN--
--and it WASN'T ON MY BOOKLIST! I thought, well, I must've read it more than 4 years ago, then, 'cause I started keeping my booklist in April 1998. Only then I went and looked up the printing date, and it was printed in paperback in June 1999.
But I HADN'T WRITTEN IT DOWN!
I seem to recall having bought it in California--ah!
I *did* buy it in California, in June of 1999. I remember now: that was when Sarah and Den and Ted and I went to Sword Spectacular and Disneyland. And it got read on the plane, either on that trip or the next month when I flew down to California for Starling's housewarming, which accounts for it not being on the list; I have a harder time keeping track of what I read on airplanes.
God alone knows why I remember where and when I bought it. Sheesh. Talk about a useless eidetic memory. Anyway, the list has failed me! But Sarah says I should put the title down in the time period I believe it was read in, so I think I shall do that. :)
Doh! I posted and forgot to write down my yards swum. Doh! Like I said, it was a lazy swim, but I did do a timed 500, which I did in 8:35, 10 seconds off Friday's swim, so I'm reasonably pleased with that. I'm aiming for 8 minutes. And then, y'know, seven after that, but let's get to 8, first.
swam: 2000 yards
I actually managed to go swimming this morning, thanks mostly to Ted, who said, at 9:20, "Are you going swimming?" So I got up and went swimming. It wasn't a very *enthusiastic* swim, but at least I went. And then we went shopping and bought yet another bookcase, and I came home and cleaned the bedroom.
This is a monumental task. It's also not quite finished, but it's a lot better than it was. There are now 2 more bookcases up there than there were, and 2 more dresser-drawer things, the latter of which are not full and the former of which are. The floor has, thank god, finally been vacuumed. The bed is made. The laundry is ... well, stuffed in the closet where it can't be seen, anyway. The bathroom is clean. The ... I guess that's everything, 'cause my brain has shorted out on what else I might've done.
After swimming, shopping, and cleaning, I made chocolate chip cookies, and ate more than I can count. Which is probably like eight, but it was too many. Doh. :)
And then I read a couple of books. All in all, it was not a lazy Sunday afternoon!
Well, Alaska Dance Theatre was very very disappointing. There was no one at the counter, and only a not-particularly-well-put-together schedule under plexiglass on the counter and no copies for people to take, and there are very few classes for adults at all and none of them are tap classes.
The fuckers.
So I'll look in the Yellow Pages and call some places on Monday. There are a number of ballroom places (I'm actually looking in the Yellow Pages right now) and at least two or three studio sorts of places and at least one Irish dance school. One of them ought to turn something worthwhile up.
We went to Iron Monkey, which, to my relief, had subtitles, not dubs, hooray! And it was quite enjoyable. Except the $2 theatre has become the $3 theatre! I'm dismayed! Well, ok, it's still at least $2 cheaper than going to even a matinee at one of the regular theatres (plus, locally owned!) but still. Hmph. :) Er, anyway, I liked the movie quite a bit.
Then we came home and I watched A Fish Called Wanda, and parts of The Fifth Element. I did no exercise today. Actually, I would have decided to go to the gym and swim this afternoon, except we drove around and looked at houses we couldn't possibly afford to buy, which -- ok, would have more appeal if we could in fact afford to buy them, but you get your jollies where you can.
I did, however, stop and buy some 10lb weights so I can do a liddle bit of weightlifting at home. And I bought some Bro-Darts (finally) so I could start putting them on our hardback books so the covers don't get (more) thrashed. I even covered eight or so books, and then I smashed my head on one of the kitchen cabinet corners and lost my temper and didn't do any more. But hey, small accomplishments, right?
Dad's going to Ireland with Mom! Yaaay! I'm very glad of that; Mom really, really wanted Dad to go with her.
I have done some (quite a lot, actually, but there's so much to do it's hard to see how much I've done) re-arranging and fixing of lower pages so that they, for example, are all (for some ever-increasing value of 'all') PHP-template based (the nav bar, I have just discovered, is inexplicably buggered in Netscape 4; I've used tables, for crying out loud, so I don't know what its major malfunction is, but I wish it'd get over it); I've done quite a bit of arranging on the photos pages (again with the there's so much to do; practically all of the broken thumbnails ought to click through to an actual photograph, though, for what that's worth) and, um, I did laundry today. Pretty busy day, for a Saturday!
And I've just remembered the, uh, fifth element, sorry, excuse me, not my fault, that I wanted to put on my navbar, so I'm going to go look for a graphic now and perhaps I'll find one and add it before I go to bed.
Oh yeah, and I had applesauce for a dessert tonight instead of the lone Ghiradelli chocolate bar that's left. Aren't you proud of me? :)
Ok, I have sent Ted off to martial arts and I'm not going to go to the gym today. I'm just *all* worn out. I haven't been sleeping very well this week, which is a right bother and contrary to all the evidence that says, "Exercising will make you sleep better!" I'm certainly very *tired*, but I think all them little endorphins are fucking up my sleep schedule. So today, there will be no gym. :)
I'm going to go by Alaska Dance Theatre this afternoon, though, and see if there's a jazz or tap class at a reasonably convienent time that isn't taught by a doofus who can't count music (the last classes I tried taking there were taught by a doofus who couldn't count music, so she'd say things like, "It doesn't really *matter* what beat you do this on ... " and that's WRONG. It DOES matter. It matters if you want people to be doing things together, and it matters if you want people to be doing things asynchronously and -- it *matters*, God damn it! -- but she doesn't teach there anymore) and if there is I will take one or two dance classes. I think I would like to take a tap class more than a jazz class, at least this spring. I feel too fat and clumsy to take jazz right now.
I have been drinking *great* *large* *huge* amounts of water. Consequently during the 2.5 hours of Armageddon last night I had to pee three times, which is really pretty annoying. What's also annoying is that having been drinking great huge large amounts of water for the past few days, my body is feeling really dried out and tacky and nasty if I don't drink equal amounts to the previous day's amount.
So 'scuze me while I go refill my water glass. :)
So I watched Armageddon last night, which is the first time since Sept. 11th that I've watched a disaster movie.
To my surprise, it was actually somewhat less fun to watch meteors coming down and thrashing NYC than it had been previously. And I remember thinking, when I watched it in the theatre the first time, "*Wow*, that looks real!", particularly when the top of the Empire State Building crashes to the earth and there are billowing clouds of dust and people running and screaming.
And I thought, like so many other people did, "Wow, that looks like a disaster movie," when the WTC came down.
Except last night, watching Armageddon, I thought, "That doesn't look real at all," because I'd seen what it really looks like when a skyscraper collapses to the ground. And seeing the WTC with the top corner knocked off and smoking in the movie was sort of . . .
I hadn't thought it would affect me.
Against the odds, I swam this evening (I'd been going waaah! some more, and I'd thought perhaps if Ted didn't go to his martial arts class I wouldn't go swimming, but suddenly I decided to) and had a fairly decent swim. I was sharing a lane most of the time, which always takes it down a notch -- well, not always, but it did in this case -- but I still did a timed 500 and came in at 8:45, which is pretty good, given the shape I'm in. Then I did 3 100s on 2 minutes, at 1:30, 1:40 and 1:43 respectively; had I done two more, I probably would have been riding 2 minutes exactly pretty hard on the last one, but since the final 500 was supposed to be my warmdown, I did a hard 50 backstroke (45 seconds; shoulda done better than that, but oh well) and then did a really lazy 150 to actually warm down. Overall, a pretty good swim. I think I'll go to the gym and weight lift tomorrow. 2 days in a row of swimming is seeming like enough, at least at the moment.
swam: 3000 yards
Ok, this is sort of fun. When I get hungry, I'm supposed to tell Sarah to eat something, because she's out of the habit of eating (has been as long as I've known her) and she needs to eat to get her metabolism going so she can lose weight, and *my* hunger reflex isn't broken, so I'm hungry and I've sent her to get food to eat. *laugh*
And *I* got an apple instead of a brownie. I'm proud of myself!
How cool! Deirdre, who can do things like this (and this and this and this), is apparently being a model at MacWorld. They're doing touch-screen drawing classes, and Deirdre is the Woman form. There's apparently a Man, too, but she's never met him. :) Modelling for SIXTY THOUSAND PEOPLE!
She said she wore a unitard the first day and it crawled right up her butt. Modelling for SIXTY THOUSAND PEOPLE. Ooop. :)
The thing I hate about paying bills is that when I'm done, there's no money left. :) However, it seems that my new pay schedule is on opposite weeks from Ted's, which means there's money every week, which may make the whole thing seem a little less like lurching horribly from paycheck to paycheck. Hey, I take what I can get. :)
I had a *great* swim tonight. I did about 3200 yards, and I could have done another thousand if there'd been time. Furthermore, I did my last 500 in under 9 minutes, which is hardly competition time, of course, but I noticed in the first fifty of it that I was kind of fucking around, so I scolded myself and put some heart into it, and it was fantastic. If I keep adding 500 yards a day, though, I'm going to have to start swimming in the mornings, when there's a 2 hour block of time, instead of in the evenings, when there's only 90 minutes. Or, well, as Ted said, I'll have to swim faster. :)
*God*, but I love swimming. You get in the zone and it's like you're flying. Your muscles are warm and don't need that pesky oxygen stuff, and every stroke is a great stretch, and it just feels so *good*. My lungs feel all clear and capable and my muscles are a good kind of sore and loose and relaxed all at once, and *yeah*. Why don't I do this *always*? Mmm, I just feel so good! *wriggle wriggle*! Oh, and I must be imagining it, because, like, only 4 days of exercise, but my cheekbones look have looked thinner to me the last couple of days. *dancie dance*!
swam: 3250 yards
feeling: awesome
Apparently these are my D&D stats:
Str: 6
Int: 12
Wis: 16
Dex: 13
Con: 11
Chr: 17
Huh.
Okay, so every afternoon I start going, "Waaaah, I don't *wanna* go swimming, waaah!" But it's not really that I don't want to swim, it's that I don't want to get off my lazy ass and get to the pool. It's not working out that's hard, it's getting to the damned gym!
However, this morning I received a *totally* random email from somebody who didn't know my name or how she'd gotten to my page, but she said she understood the whole love/hate relationship with swimming thing, and told me to keep up the good work, so that's rather inspirational.
Of course, I still don't want to get my lazy ass to the pool. :)
But! If I don't, I will never lose 5 pounds before Jamesing! And, okay, five pounds isn't really enough to make a difference in my figure before Jamesing, but it'd be a start. And if we do a Legion reading at the end of March, then that'd be 5x3, which would be 15 pounds! And that *would* be enough to make a difference! I hope, anyway. And it'd be a third of the way to my weight loss goal, and my corset! :)
So. Swimming tonight. :)
I just looked at my backissues page for the first time since I started using a blogger, and it made me go EEE! 'cause there were aaaaaaaaaallllllllllllll these entry-titles listed, and it was scary! So I fixed it. :) And now the old journal stuff is linked in there too, whew. :) All is well!
Well, ok, all is well except I'm not working on work and I have a lot of work to do, and I have a bunch a bunch a bunch of pages I still need to switch over into the php layout so I can actually change the WHOLE SITE (um, except the blog stuff) with one swell foop. But I MUST NOT DO THAT TODAY.
I work now.
And having done yoga yesterday, I'm sore. Ted, the bastard, isn't. :) Actually, I'm not crippled or anything, just a bit sore. It was a nice workout.
So, the new design: no, the sidebar graphics aren't links, they're just decoration. Oddly, I hadn't even thought about that being confusing, which is unusual for me. I just wanted something over there. :) I will blame all those other web designers (as Trip said) for making it an assumption that they must be links. :) I made the yin-yang, so I'm sort of absurdly proud of it. (It's not I couldn't have found a billion clipart yin-yangs to steal off the net, but, well, I didn't, and so I like it.)
The corset is to remind myself about the corset I want to buy when I weigh 150 pounds. And that other symbol -- the one that isn't a Sassy Lady (which you should recognize by now anyway) is a Gemini symbol that I made 'cause I couldn't find one I liked. The faces in it are from my Virgo drawing, actually, just ... photoshopped and clipped and given a little Gemini twins sign between them. I like *it*, too, so there!
I actually intended to put a couple more symbols on the graphics bar there, but by the time I'd finished what I had, I couldn't remember what my other ideas were, so I didn't. :)
The colors, I dunno. I hadn't done a greeny-teal page before, and orange sets it off well. Trip thinks it's easier to read, so that's a good thing. The mizkit.com font is, um. Inkburrow, which I probably got off a free fonts site somewhere.
Hopefully Janne will no longer feel the urge to bite people when she leaves comments on my page. :)
Went to yoga tonight! Yay!
I enjoyed the class a lot. I expect I'll be sore, tomorrow. I don't know if Ted enjoyed it as much as I did, but I noticed a few times that he was surprisingly graceful.
I'm thinking of going to Play It Again Sports and getting some 10 pound weights to do weight lifting workouts at home with. This is ... I mean, I prefer going to the gym, but I'm going to the gym and swimming right now and I haven't got it together enough to go to the gym more than once a day; hell, going once a day is a new and unusual event for me, but I'd like to do some weight lifting, too. The other thing I'd kind of want is a bench, but I don't know where I'd *put* it. The living room seems awfully... exposed. :)
OTOH, it's not like I don't have the house to myself most days of the week for at least several hours a day.
Anyway, 10# weights aren't that much, but I suspect myself of great wussiness at the moment, so they're probably about what I could handle. Besides, I could always buy more later.
SLEEPY.
Tired, tired Kitling this morning. This swimming thing, expenditure of energy. Tires a person right out.
Not even enough brain to write anything, apparently. Heh. :)
Mom's going to Ireland! In two weeks, for two weeks, with her brother Packy! Lucky Mom!
All I really objected to was the leap from me not particularly minding to the fact that Quidditch scoring makes no sense to ". . . the best way to put it is that if Kit were to write SF, she would not write hard SF." What the one has to do with the other seems to me to be up there with what my last name has to do with my husband's for insurance purposes.
I will grant you that I'm not wildly *inclined* to write hard SF, but then, neither is anybody else in this . . . discussion.
Read Image's post for a non-vitriolic explanation of what I'm talking about. Or don't. Don't is probably better for your sanity.
Gawd, I think I've already spent about 10 hours this week in meetings, and it's only Tuesday afternoon.
Actually, it's more like five, but still. Sheesh.
Trip and my cousin Kerry reminded me yesterday to call the Irish Consulate in San Francisco, which I didn't do yesterday, but I did today, and I left a message for Lisa Whyte (however her last name is spelled) asking what the status of the citizenship paperwork was, since it's been 3 months since I last talked to her and she'd said it would be "a few weeks' then.
And the answer was, nothing's changed, but she called me back within five minutes, which surprised me enormously. That's the first time I've heard back from the consulate in less than 24 hours. :) I ought to email them, actually, and ask if there's something specific I ought to be doing now to obtain our passports, or if we have to wait on the paperwork that's being done before we do that. Or if, in fact, the paperwork that's being done is the passport paperwork, which Mom thinks it is.
Ok, now all I have to do is call Childreach and tell them my credit card number is okay to keep using. Stupid me screwed up the .. well, it wasn't entirely my fault. Anyway, the bank account was empty last time they tried charging my bank card. Feh. Anyway, so I have to call them. And they're on the East Coast, so I need to do it pretty soon. Only I'm in a meeting now. Bblblblblb.
If being thirsty is a sign that your body is beginning to be dehydrated, does that mean being hungry is a sign that your body is beginning to starve?
Hm. That doesn't seem like a good thought process to follow if I want to lose weight. Nevermind! Carry on! Nothing to see here! Move along!
Speaking of which, man, am I thirsty.
My strawberry jam seems to have failed to set up properly. It's more like ... very thick strawberry syrup.
Damn.
This is the second time I've failed to make a successful batch of jam. I have blueberries upstairs which will be sacrificed to the third attempt. If it doesn't work, I'm going to be quite upset. I've never failed to master the art of cooking something three times in a row. :P
Actually, I usually succeed the first time out. How vexing.
Success! I have finished the things that the cable modem dying this afternoon prevented me from doing at work today, so I feel like a slightly useful thing. Yay!
*AND* I believe my strawberry jam has set up! Hooray! *dancie dancie dance*!
How *sleepy* I am. Soon there will be bed-going. But first I'm going to finish listening to Moulin Rouge. For the third time in a row. :)
I meant to do this on Saturday, but, well, no net.
weight: 194 pounds
swam: 1750 yards
Today:
swam: 2300 yards
ate: a brownie immediately afterwards. doh.
I made a yin-yang!
In Photoshop. Everybody keeps asking me, "Out of what?" Ok, so it's not *very* exciting, but I was happy with it.
I should go swimming now. Splish splash.
Strawberry jam all over the cat! Now why would the kids do something like that?
Well, the cable modem went down, and so I went upstairs and made strawberry jam, and, well, we'll see if it turns out. The good news is that the 3 jars that were actually full sealed properly. The fourth one, which wasn't quite full, didn't, but that's pretty much to be expected. Now, well, we wait 12 hours and see if it set up! *hopehopehope*!
It's SSSSNOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWING!
Well, my 9am meeting for which I purposefully got up early has been cancelled. However, this means I can bail from work before 4, since I got to work before 8, and this means I should have time to make a batch of jam before swimming, and I should ALSO have time to make a batch of jam AFTER swimming. There wil be ALL the jam!
Trip is so cool! Jessica, of whom I speak in the next entry, was looking for a series of books which I hadn't read, but I gave her one-line summary on Too, and Trip said, "Um, the Crossroads books by Nick O'Donohoe?" and I emailed her with the titles and lo! Those were indeed the books she wanted! Trip is so cool!
My net crapped out on Friday and more or less stayed crapped out through the weekend, so it's been a very slow weekend for updates. :)
Friday, while my net was hanging in the wind, I sort of wandered around and looked for something to read. Now, with the 40 or something new books that I acquired over Christmas, you would think that this wouldn't be difficult to accomplish. I mean, forty books, right?
So of course I ended up re-reading the Mordant's Need books, because I wanted something old and familiar and good. And that was very satisfying, actually. Then I did read a new book, but the re-read was a definite plus in my world.
I have no recollection of doing anything else on Friday. It actually took two days to read the Donaldson books, but nevermind that. On Saturday, I got up and went swimming at 10, so that was a good thing, and then we went over to Eric and Jessica's to make up characters for the home-grown game that Eric's designed.
It's too bad for Eric that he hadn't gotten as far as looking at Champions before he designed his game, because he has home-grown Champions. I mean, it's really unquestionably Champions. In a fantasy-world setting with all sorts of races he made up himself. I'm playing a Fkorshon, or something like that, which is a shapechanging shark person. My character is 8'3" and weighs 572 pounds in human form, and 14 feet long and 1150 pounds or something like that in shark form.
Fkorshon are very philosophical and thoughtful peoples. They can afford to be; they're the top of the food chain. They tend to get hired as mediators and ambassadors. They can shapechange any part of their body to any degree between human (elvish, really, Eric says) and shark, and they like to eat seafood. :)
My character is a con artist with a 'gift magic' of domination. :) Her name is Rekka (in honor of my long-dead Go-Back; besides, 'Rekka' sounds like a nicely toothy name that a shark would have) and she's apparently also a compulsive gambler: I won 2 of the other characters in a bet, and owe the 3rd one's master $20K from a bet I lost. I think this should be pretty entertaining.
EIGHT FEET TALL! Oh, and she's covered with tattoos. Sharks have no hair, y'know? Rekka thinks tattoos are very interesting. :)
Anyway, that took up several hours of Saturday, so I didn't finish reading A Man Rides Through until 1:30 in the morning, and then I slept in too late and didn't swim yesterday morning, which would've been okay except I thought the afternoon swim was from 4:30-5:30 and it was actually from 4-5, so I didn't get to swim at all yesterday. :(
I did, however, make a shepherd's pie and brownies and get everything ready to make jam. I'd been going to make some jam, too, but my tummy got blorty and I went to bed very early instead. And now I have net, but I can't dial in to work, which could be a problem. :/
Remind me on Monday to call the Irish Embassy and find out what the story with the citizenship paperwork is.
Dad and I went out for coffee this morning (resulting in me being very awake and bouncy today, even if I only had hot chocolate, not coffee per se) and talked about On Your Left a bit. I believe I'm going to do it as a fundraiser for the Boys and Girls Club of America (and the Boys and Girls Club of Canada, as well, since I'll be doing 2000 miles of my ride /through/ Canada) rather than Make A Wish, because the Boys and Girls Club has the potential to reach a much, much broader base of children than Make A Wish.
Also, Dad pointed out that I was doing things really very much the hard way when it came to my calendar for OYL; really, I don't *need* a nifty interactive calendar. I just ... want one. But I must get in gear, so for the time being I'll put up an HTML calendar, and call it good. :)
Off I go to work on that!
There is discussion of going down to the Bay Area at the end of March and collecting people together to do a reading of Legion. That would SO ROCK! Lance has even made noises about the idea of coming out from the East Coast to participate. Image actively wanted to know if he could be part of it. We bet Angie and Christie might want be in it, and Harold, and Starling would make a brilliant Rachel and and and!
It'd be COOL!
We could probably do the reading at my sister's house, which has a vurry large living room and a built-in audience, and plus there's just room for audience people in general, and and and!
It'd be COOL!
Unsurprisingly, on the Alice in Wonderland test, i'm the Cheshire Cat:
You're the epitome of insane. Either you're very smart, or you're too damn stupid. The world is your playground, and everything -- and everyone -- in it is a toy for you to play with. People should be scared of you, but because you're so affable, they aren't. Tough for them.
Well. I was just incredibly rude to a student loan collector person who called and who was then both polite and helpful. Don't I feel like an asshole. They're apparently finally putting together a remittance program for people like us who have gotten horribly behind in their payments so the balance is written up as current, and they'll put us on the list to be included in the program.
Sigh.
Oop. I had a little bookstore accident. I went in looking for an Anne Perry book, and they didn't have it, so I ended up with three Ian Rankin books and a ... book by somebody else. And oh, yeah: a book of ice cream recipes. Now, this was all at the used bookstore and it was all on credit and we still have over $200 worth of credit, so it was hardly an accident at all!
I've just caused all my friends to edge away from me nervously by admitting to liking Britney Spears.
I am CONSPIRED against! Conspired against by ANGIE and EMILY and SARAH and by my VERY OWN HUSBAND!
I can't put it better than they did, though:
Sarah: See, we've received advance notice that there will be a large gathering in the south of the state known as California, sometime early in February.
Emily: And, there's word that there will be music and dancing and good food.
Angie: and i've heard something about this strange white-haired boy, though that probably doesn't mean anything to you.
Sarah: And seeing how there is only ONE (1) SuperKit who could figure out who this strange white-haired boy might be, we at the Agency have decided that it's imperative that she travel south from the land of snow and ice and investigate first-hand.
Emily: But, knowing that she is loyal to her duties in the land of snow and ice, we determined that it would not be a simple matter of telling her of this investigative opportunity. There would need to be more ... incentive.
Angie: so the agency members rifled their pockets and hatched dire plots, involving satellite agencies, to determine the best way to have the best agent check out the situation.
Sarah: It wasn't easy, we can guarantee you that! Several of our agents barely escaped with their lives. They're telling harrowing stories in the debriefing. But, we've come to a satisfactory conclusion.
Angie: your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to climb aboard a 12:40am flight on february the 8th, 2002, and journey to sacramento, california. there, you will meet with local agents, and travel to the wilds of los angeles. there is a time limit on this mission, in that you must return to your own land on february the 11th, at 1:15pm. this message will turn into glitter in five seconds.
And *TED* told them when I should come and go, apparently. *flails around* I am CONSPIRED against!
I have awfully good friends. And an even better husband, who lets me go flitting off to far ends of the earth. Boy, do I owe him something nice.
Oh, for pity's sake, my HR is at it again. Well, okay, it's payroll, this time.
Back around the 7th, I thought I got a Christmas bonus. Well, I didn't. What I got was 6 or 7 months worth of California state taxes.
Except they paid me too much. By like $500.
So this paycheck they gave me $500 less.
Only they deposited 3.5x that '$500 less' amount into my checking account.
And then they sent me an extra $1800 paycheck.
And now they want $3100 back.
Fortunately, the $1800 turns out to be Extremely Close to my vacation payout (off by like $15), and so instead of cutting me another check for my vacation payout, they're writing that $1800 down as vacation pay. Since I thought that was my paycheck in the first place, I never wrote any other deposits down, so there's this $4400 in the checking account that I didn't know about. $1300 of that is the reduced paycheck that's the result of them screwing up the back taxes paycheck earlier in December. The rest of it has to go back to my employers.
*I* think that if they screwed up, they should just give me the extra money.
The good news, however, is that they don't want any money that's already been spent back. I was pretty worried for a few minutes there. Gaaaah. *GAAAAH*.
I am not having a good back morning. In fact, I'm having pain. I dunno if this is from sleeping poorly or if there's a larger issue, but I don't like it at all. :P I need to get my portly ass to the gym and lose some weight. Ow.
Wow, what a very pleasant evening. Ted cooked the ridiculous 19 pound turkey, and stuffing (two sorts, his mom's and my mom's) and greenbean casserole and corn on the cob and mashed potatoes, and we had 8 people over for dinner, and we ate ourselves silly. And I got to talk to *girls*! Three of them! One was Mom, whom I often talk to, but two were NEW girls! Robin, who looks and sounds remarkably like Tamago, and Jessica, who doesn't. :)
They both cross-country ski, apparently, so Jessica and I were discussing going ski-shopping this weekend, to at least price them and see if it might be feasible to buy some and she wants to lose weight but doesn't gym because she hasn't got a workout partner (gosh, THAT sounds familiar) and so we discussed possibly becoming workout partners. Woot!
And, and, oh! Ted says he'll go to yoga with me on Wednesdays, 'cause he's trying to get his muscles to loosen up -- all those martial arts classes are keeping him vurry tense -- so that makes me all happy. *wriggle*!
Anyway, back to dinner. There was an appalling amount of food, and a goodly bit of it got eaten, and OH, the ice cream balls and chocolate fondue turned out *awfully* well, oh my gosh. *falls right over* Yum. Yum yum YUM. And we still have half a turkey left. *laugh* I should put the wishbone somewhere the cats can't get to it overnight.
Speaking of which, Zilli is sleeping on my feet. Isn't he disgustingly cute? The cats charmed the guests (which is what pets and small children are for) and we ate and ate and ate and all was very well. The books were admired extensively, too. *laugh* And oh, I lent Jessica the 3 Jenny Jones books I haven't gotten around to re-reading yet, so don't let me forget that. :)
Does anybody remember a National Geographic article about Vancouver, sometime in the late 80s, in which there was featured a photograph and a blurb about an aquarium which had live mermaids, costumed girls who got air through air hoses and stayed underwater for quite some time? I'm pretty sure it was the late 80s, though it could've been the early 90s, and I *think* it was Vancouver and National Geographic, but I can't find the photo anywhere. Help?
Happy New Year!
Man, I woke up late this morning to the heavenly smells of turkey roasting and stuffing cooking and *wow* does it smell good in this here house.
2002, for heaven's sake. How did that happen? (I know, I know, the regular progression of numbers and seasons one after the other, but you know that's not what I mean.) I need to put a new calendar up. I need to eat breakfast, too. Hm. Maybe I'll go do that. Happy New Year!