Guaranteed to Offend Somebody

I adopted a cute lil' ninja fetus from Fetusmart! Hooray fetus!

(Mostly because I like the introduction on their web page. So click and read. I am amused.)

Geeks taking over the world!

I used the word "kludgy" in conversation tonight, and had to define it to Cat. Then I had to stop and think where I'd learned it, and how it's very definitely an east coast thing. Then I got curious and looked it up in the dictionary. Sure enough, there's the noun, and sure enough, it really is a geek word: kludge.


In other news, my boss today decided that our computer problems are all splugs. He has invented this word, and it explains everything:

Stupid
People,
Lazy
Users, and
Gremlins

Blerk

I am feeling way too befuddled by the sinking of New Orleans to write much coherantly. Much less the Sunday hiking adventure that I'm running behind on writing up. And so, in the absence of my blithering, I give you: Sexy Underwear!



(You can't see it at this resolution, but they say "Sexy" over and over all around the waistband).

Expired!

There was fair-game soda in the fridge at work today. I took one sip of Diet Caffiene-free Coke and went, "Faugh! What's wrong with this?"

Expiration date on the bottom of the can: March 15, 04.

I'd always wondered why there were expiration dates on the bottoms of soda cans. I did not know that diet coke could actually go bad.

Excuse me, now I have to go find something to rinse my mouth out with.

On a lighter note . . .

Pete and I went out on something that could be traditionally termed a "date" this weekend. It went really well. We had dinner and went to Laffs Comedy Caffe. Laffs is usually a good time--they generally do three comedians in ascending stages: somebody local who's kind of starting out, somebody who's well into the stand-up circuit, and then the headliner. Two out of the three were really good. The headliner in particular amused me because some of his act crossed the anglo/latino boundary in both directions, and there was enough Spanish thrown in that there probably aren't too many places you could perform this particular routine and everybody would get it.

I feel all stupid and girly. We held hands during the show. I am absurdly tickled by this.

I'm still amazed by our ability to have conversations that hit on anything and everything. I think we ranged from computer upgrades all the way to the significance of the fish hook as a symbol among some of the Pacific islanders.

Pete drove down from Phoenix, and it's a damn long drive back at 11:30 at night, so I'd offered crash space. We got home after the show and just sat on the couch being cuddly for awhile. I don't believe I've had this experience before. It bounced off a memory, a journey I wrote up in my LJ. Being held with someone else in the arms of the Mother of All Worlds. It was kind of like that. Really comfortable.

Toxic

I read some projections of the unexpected side-effects of massinve flooding along the Mississippi River in Walter Jon Williams' The Rift a few years back. It's really quite creepy to see the same thing in realtime on cnn.com.

HS Reunion, Part II

Saturday night of the reunion was less surreal. By this point, everyone recognized everyone else, and we sat down and had a very impressive dinner together. I sat with Sharon and her husband, Kendra, Drew and his girlfriend, and Megan and her husband. And we had a chance to just talk, instead of playing catch-up.

At the end of dinner, they turned the music up way too loud and played mostly crap, so everyone went outside. This inspired the DJ to turn it up louder. Finally, a group of women started requesting songs that had been popular when we were in high school, so we got about half an hour of something that was actually worth dancing to. I danced in 4" stiletto heels. This was good for a kick, since in high school, you never caught me in a skirt and I didn't dance at all.

Eventually, we all got bored, and most of us went to a local steakhouse for the unofficial "after-party." More talk. In Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams, the main character thinks something to the effect that growing up means putting away the knives and feigning ignorance of the damage they've caused. It's true. Everyone was very pleasant; including people of the same stripe that once stole my books and hid them under other desks, put gum on my locker, tied it shut, etc. I actually had a remarkably good time.

And now for the cause of all the hold-up on this post: pictures!



Annoyingly enough, this one came out kind of goofy-looking. But you can see the dress quite well. I got lots of compliments on the dress, such that I decided I have to find more excuses to wear it before I shrink out of it. Unfortunately, you can't see the shoes, but that's life.



My mother helped me put curlers in my hair. You can see the effect a little better in this shot. It took us about two hours to do all the hair, and with two rollers in each lock, we ran out. We had to start undoing the ends of the first ones to finish rolling the last part. It was worth it, though. I ended up with this kind of waterfall of messy curls. And while I did feel somewhat like a poodle, the effect was very impressive.



And this is Kendra. (We got the shoes on this one). Purple is now and always has been just amazing on her.

They passed out the memory books at the beginning of the night, so we had some time to read them before the dinner actually started. I may just have had the most commented-upon bio in the whole book. People I knew, people I barely remembered, and spouses of people I went to high school with kept coming up to me and telling me how great and how funny it was. I commented back to one guy I went to elementary school with that if he was going to take the time to read it, I figured it should at least be amusing. I feel vaguely like I've accomplished something.

And I'm told the 20th will be better, if I'm in town for that.

Quote of the Week

"Take weird, add 220 volts, stir with steel fork, cook in napalm furnace for eight million years, distill to fine paste, and spread thinly over toast. It won’t quite be freakola, but her friends will find it hauntingly familiar . . . "

--Redfang (Internet Relay Chat)

The IT Files

Heard in the IT Department: "Keep your underwear on!"

It's worse than PacMan, it's worse than Tetris . . .

Okay, somebody asked me what Dance Dance Revolution is. It's a video game with a stupidly simple premise and amazingly complex execution. A series of arrows indicating which of four arrows (forward, back, left, and right) you step on run down your scream in time with a song. You step on them in sequence, being scored on how many you get right and how perfectly on the beat you are.

It's like Tetris for your feet. It's every bit as stupidly addictive, but burns more calories. Sadly, it would probably be my favored form of aerobic recreation if my downstairs neighbor didn't object. (Not that I blame her).

A tradition of Daqueri DDR was begun when my friend Crystal came to visit Durango for a weekend. She and I were both just learning the game, getting our butts kicked by Nina. We discovered that she played worse as she drank, and I played better. Stress much? Who, me?

P.S. - If you don't know what PacMan is, you're probably not old enough to be reading this blog.

I think I want to go here someday . . .

http://www.thelostsea.com/home.htm

The spelunking tour sounds awesome. Anybody want to help me make up a group of 12?

The IT Files

Heard in the IT Department: "What, you don't think Geico's gecko is geeko suave?"

What I Did on My Mini-Vacation

Durango was great. Spent three days doing nothing, just sleeping and hanging out with Scott and Nina and watching movies. We walked around downtown a bunch, so I could see all the new businesses and a couple new holes in the ground where they're building everything up to the height of the Strater Hotel and putting stupidly high pricetags on both the business and residential spaces. We almost went white water rafting (Nina's never been, before), but kind of got mugged by a thunderstorm and a nap, so it didn't work out. Oh, and we played Dance Dance Revolution for about two hours. Overall, a really nice little vacation.

Anybody got an oar?

I just braved the walk to the main office suite in search of caffiene. Got stopped on the way by this guy named Noah. Nice enough guy, just looking for directions, but let me tell you, when he rolled down the driver's side window on his boat . . . phew! It smelled like a zoo in there.


It's been coming for awhile. Now it's starting to look like this may really be a flood year (we get significant flooding every 10 years or so, and the last was 1993, so we're due). They expect the Santa Cruz River to overflow its banks in a couple spots today, based on the morning rains. It was raining when I rolled out of bed at 4:30 AM to unplug my computer. It's still coming down pretty good right this minute.

I was looking for pictures, but I can't find any, so you'll have to settle for impressive stories and a flood warning:

http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/metro/89898.php
http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/metro/89888.php
http://www.kvoa.com/global/weatheralerts.asp?CountyID=cid18427

[Edit: Water crested at 12.09 feet, fourth highest flow recorded (record-keeping began in 1915). I don't have an update on whether that put the Santa Cruz over its banks. I did find some pictures: http://community.azstarnet.com/slideshows/flash/index.php?id=318.]

Quote of the Week

"Friends are together when they are separated, they are rich when they are poor, strong when they are weak, and--a thing even harder to explain--they live on after they have died."

--Cicero

It's been too long since I did a quz . . .

Not a very good quiz, but it amused me:


You are Joscelin. It is not so much your valor and
prowess in battle that sets you apart from all
other men as it is your commitment to your
honor. Handsome, grim, serious, passionate,
you know when to set down your ideals to serve
the greater good.


Kushiel's Quiz
brought to you by Quizilla

HS Reunion, pending

Saturday of the high school reunion was actually fun, contrary to expectations. I'm sorry I've been stalling on writing about it. I do finally have the pictures, now, but I'm going out of town this weekend and won't have time to pare them down to blog-size until early next week.

Traffic Patternless

Last night, driving to my parents' new house to do laundry, I was very annoyed to discover that at 7PM, I was still picking my way through rush-hour traffic. I mean, I know I live in a city, but this is ridiculous.

Then, I managed to forget that the intersection of 4th Avenue, Broadway, and Congress is the single clusterfuck in the entire downtown area that I do my best to route around. It's okay going through it from the east, but from the west or south, it's pretty damn creepy. So of course, that's where I needed to be. I should have taken Stone to Broadway and came at it from the east, but I managed to overshoot stone and spent ten minutes picking my way through side streets and up and down one-ways to actually reach the new house.

It really is a beautiful house. So this is what a mumblety-mumble dollar home looks like.

On the way home, there was a cross-road puddle of water on Stone. I can't even call it a wash, since it was barely flowing (if at all). But the guy in the truck in front of me freaked out and slowed down to five miles an hour.

I'm sorry, I yelled at him. He had six times the clearance he needed and it wasn't even flowing. What the hell? All I can assume is that he was afraid of hydroplaning because he's never done it. Whereas, driving a small car, I've learned the dynamics of hyroplaning quite thoroughly. When you've got a small wash flowing through a dip in the road and you're in a small car, you don't hit the brakes. You keep your speed constant, aim straight ahead, and let Sir Isaac Newton get you to the other side. It's the best way to cross the water.

If you slow down, one of two things may happen. One is, you just run out of momentum in the middle of the wash and you're suddenly grabbing for traction. The other, even worse, is that if you were doing the five-mile-an-hour crawl and don't have any momentum to start with . . . you may swamp the car. Because you just don't have the ground clearance to deal with that kind of situation.

Grr.

This morning, I sat at a stoplight behind a big, white Hummer. The license plate holder said, "I'm not spoiled, just loved." The plate read, "4 HER."

What ever happened to giving jewelry?

It's those darn redheads . . .

I discovered a very peculiar thing on Saturday: I have eyelashes.

I discovered this as I was messing around with mascara. I've been trying to learn makeup, lately. At the ripe old age of 28. Lipstick made me notice I needed to do something with my eyes. Eyeliner helped, but something was still missing. I decided maybe it was mascara, and I was right.

I always assumed I had no eyelashes to speak of. Then I put mascara on them. It turns out, I have hella long eyelashes, they're just so light even I couldn't see them. Once I painted them, I realized that they actually run into my glasses on a regular basis. (Fortunately, I bought the waterproof mascara, so it didn't leave dirty spots on my glasses. I just made a note not to shove them quite so high up my nose). When I expressed this to my mother, she noted that I got everything about the redhead complexion but the actual red hair (mine comes out of a box), including the nearly-invisible eyelashes.

I started to put a little mascara on the bottom lashes and had to take it off again. With one coat on the top lashes, my eyes go from wow to heart-stopping. When I tried to paint the bottom lashes, the effect was positively obscene. Somewhere between porn slut and Tammy Faye Baker.

Monday Morning Laugh

Initial issue, courtesy of Jeremy, my PC Repair counterpart in the Phoenix area:

"It's running win98se, P3, 192 MB ram, 20 GB drive.

This machine has had a very long history of having people install spyware on it, screw up the drives (it's about to get cd-rom drive #3) and other sundry issues with it locking up. It's also had non-company software installed on it, and it probably needs to be wiped and have a fresh image put on it."

My boss's response:

" . . . I have been wondering about this - do you think spyware steals RAM (slowly) and that is why the 192? And where does it go, and . . . Yeah, if this cannot go above 192, then what?"

Jeremy answered the question, to which I responded:

"That's better than my explanation: I thought that maybe the Magenta Fairy waved her wand over the RAM. The RAM then grew little legs and began to do the Time Warp. Eventually, the spyware got annoyed by the constant drinking and carousing anad bopped it on the head with Ded Bob's bonker. This resulted in the death of a few chips, but the remainder of the stick would remain intact, which doesn't spell good things for *next* weekend, especially since functional computer technology is seldom over 21 years old. Damn jailbait chipsets."

Quote of the Week

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work."

--Thomas A. Edison

HS Reunion, part I

Friday night: mixer. The word "surreal" was used a lot.

At least I wasn't bored. It took me awhile to get the hang of identifying people just from the face, when the body and hair have changed. The men in particular were difficult for me, because a large-ish number of them had lost some or all of their hair. This hadn't even occured to me, simply because for some oddball reason, most of the men I know still have their hair.

One boy I remember from elementary school had shaved his head. Nobody recognized him. He was having great fun running around the mixer clapping his hand over his nametag and making people guess before finally taking pity on them.

About half the people who showed last night had very definitely grown up, in a way that has nothing to do with real jobs or marriages or children. About a third . . . really hadn't. Fortunately, mostly I could either hear them coming or spot them standing in their sullen little groups and avoid both types. The remainder, I wasn't sure about.

Nobody was nasty. There was a lot of awkwardness, and a lot of "catch me up on ten years in two minutes." I was surprised to realize that so many people remembered me as a writer, above and beyond anything else. Telling them I'd become a computer geek was . . . something else. The writing's been so up and down. Currently, I'm in one of those phases where I'm disgusted with the whole process, but it'll pass.

A lot of just what you'd expect: People in jobs you'd never have guessed, marriages that ended in divorce, dropping out of college and going back later. But there were a number of people--mostly ones I'd hung around with in high school, funny thing about that--who were first marriage, fairly recent, no children or children just recently. Some of us waited and are now very happy that we did.

I think we got all the "what are you doing, where do you live, what's the last ten years been like" out of the way last night. Kendra and I left after about two and a half hours--some people had already gone, and she was in heels she's not used to. I'm curious what will happen tonight. Maybe it's time to tell all those high school stories that were fairly entertaining but I couldn't tell anyone at the time: Speech & Debate trips, the Tuna Boat and the fire engine, Matt Johnson realizing I wasn't the good little girl I came off as, cutting pep assemblies to hide in the Yearbook classroom.

Kendra determined, after the first night, that she needs to wear something killer tonight. I'm in agreement. Mind you, I approve of killer outfits in general, but beyond that . . . I'm no longer worried about being overdressed. If I am, fuck it. Last night was sundresses and shirts and shorts all in ghastly Hawaiian prints. Tonight is the night to leave a lasting impression.

And I want to be the gracious, witty, redheaded knock-out.

And I quote . . .

My brother, Wyldwoods, runs a quote of the day list. He has for as long as I've known him. It started out with just friends of his on the list, but now he's constantly surprised by the number of people on the list who he as no idea who they are or how they got there. Some days, the quote is good for a laugh. Some days, it's thoughtful or interesting enough that I end up adding it to my own quotes file.

While he's on vacation for the next ten days or so, he asked if I'd like to send out the quote of the day. I'm so unreasonably tickled by this. :)

Face

from my brother's photo journal

Playing Catch-Up

I'm healthy again. That's a start.

The high school reunion is this weekend. I'm going up to my mommy's house to do laundry Saturday afternoon, and she'll help me with the hot rollers, assuming I can still borrow them. And at the very least, I'll get pictures of me all dolled up. I'm hoping to borrow my dad's camera for that night of the reunion, too, but we'll see. Enough people hounded me for pictures of the dress and shoes and what not that I figured I'd better make arrangements. :)

I've really got to budget for a digital camera sometime in the next few months. I keep wanting to take pictures of sunsets and flooding and things and share them. Plus, I could do things like take pictures when we go to Rocky. I was very pleased with what I wore last Saturday, but Kendra was the star of the show, as she wore the Amazing Red Vinyl Dress. I swear, this dress has attained a legendary status of its own and will go down in history for causing traffic accidents. And she's drop-dead gorgeous in red.

Yes, there's been flooding. No, I haven't washed away. It's just a condition of Tucson during a good monsoon season. You learn to note the places usually-dry washes cross roads and parking lots and avoid those routes, because they end up with several feet of water flowing through them. The 6th Avenue underpass filled to within about eighteen inches of the bridge over its top on Sunday. One of the local news stations got some very impressive footage.

My apartment is on top of a hill. I'm not worried. I know the routes to my parents' house that have bridges. Though now they'll be moving, and I'll have to learn all-new routes. But there are fewer un-bridged washes downtown, where they're going. The bigger danger is that some of the old streets double as drainage ditches.

I have got to get a camera. :)

Monday Morning Laugh

My mommy sent me this:

NEW ELEMENT FOUND

A major research institution has recently announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element has been named "Governmentium". Governmentium has one neutron 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 11 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton like particles called peons. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Governmentium causes one reaction to take over four days to complete, when it would normally take less than a second.

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 4 years; it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as "Critical Morass". When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes "Administratium" - an element which radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.

New Pic for Blog Thumbnail

I love the smell of butane in the springtime . . .

All my dry clothes smell like lighter fluid.

Actually we first noticed the scent about ten minutes after I started the dryer today. (We=me and my parents. I do laundry at their house). At first, we were panicking, trying to figure out if something was leaking. We knew it wasn't natural gas, but it didn't smell like the wax my dad had been using on the furniture today, either. After racking our brains for half an hour and opening the windows to air out the house, I finally did a Google search.

Turns out, certain oil-based stains/waxes/etc. put fumes into the air that are harmless; however, when they go into the dryer intake and start to get cooked, they smell very distinctly like lighter fluid. The good news is, it's not harmful and the effect will go away when the wax/stain is dry. The bad news is, the smell does indeed get into the clothes.

I ran the dryer on the cool air setting for about half an hour after the heat cycled finished, on the recommendation of this web page. Well . . . it's better than it could be. But my clean laundry still smells like it's ready for a bonfire. I have everything strewn out around my room in hopes that it'll air out a little.

Quote of the Week

"So we’re not waiting for the Third Invasion?"
"We are the Third Invasion."

--Ender (Andrew) Wiggen; Colonel Graff, in Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card

On Porn

I like porn, in theory. I'm generally a fan of whatever gets you hot. But in practice, I usually go in more for the written word than for pictures. A camera shoved up in somebody's crotch is not what gets me hot. Though sometimes bondage pix violate this rule--it depends, mostly, on the faces. On whether I believe them or not.

And yet, I have just found this really great porn--excuse me, erotica--site: Only Paper Dolls. It's not really about people's naughty bits, though they're in there. The photography is beautiful. Anyone who's seen my art collection will have figured out that I'm in love with the human form. This is the first porn site I've been to that cozies up to my personal aesthetic.

Go check it out. Oh, this site's both guys and girls, just so you're not surprised. The freebies are mixed in together, but the paid site's organized by model so you don't see anything you didn't mean to. ;)

Sorry So Quiet . . .

. . . I'm sick. I wanted to share this with you, though: http://www.deviantart.com/view/21100994/.

Feeling Fourteen

There is one thing in the world guaranteed to make me feel fourteen years old again faster than anything else:

Boys.

On April 1 of this year, someone played an April Fool's joke on . . . well, me, among other people. Without going into great detail, I was livid at the time, but I should thank him in the long run. It forced me to a point where I had to stop and evaluate how I'm spending my time, and I realized that my life was never going to end up as I wanted it if I didn't reprioritize.

I joined eHarmony.

Work with me now, I know this is a jump. After crash-landing back in Tucson again, I searched long and hard for singles groups and discovered that if you're not Christian, Jewish, or over 45, there really aren't any. Computer personals and "speed dating" seem to have replaced them, and if you don't like that, well, there's always bars. I'm at a point in my life where people who want to meet their mates go back to church to find someone nice, not a bar. Catch is, I've been trying to meet a nice pagan boy.

I've looked at a couple of the internet matching services in the past, and never quite jumped on board. Hell, mostly I filled out the little biographies and personality tests because I was bored. Call it cheap entertainment. So about a year before this, I'd done the eHarmony one. And while I wasn't quite ready to pay the price tag associated with using their service, I did read the personality profile they created of me. It was . . . pretty scary-accurate. So when I decided to give this thing a try, eHarmony is where I went.

I've exchanged small communications with a few people, and found a couple scary ones. I also found Pete. A nice pagan boy. We keep finding all these odd little things we have in common. It's a strange experience, but not entirely unfamiliar, to be instantly comfortable around someone. We can talk on the phone for hours, and we've discovered we can talk in person for hours, too.

And he's as into that as I am. I've gone on first "dates" where the guy wanted to go out to a movie, and I just didn't get it. What do I learn about you if we're both watching a movie? When I asked Pete what time he wanted to meet last weekend, he basically said, "Well, we managed to kill two hours pretty well last time. Why don't we try for three?" So we had lunch and wandered around the mall and played mini-golf and just . . . talked.

I met my sister, later, for dress-shopping. She told me I had this silly little smile on my face.

My parents have begun asking questions about him. I mentioned this to Pete, and he said yeah, he'd been getting some of those kinds of questions, too. It was kind of neat to realize that maybe he talks about me, the same way I talk about him.

I feel pretty fourteen again. But in a really good way.

Nominating Myself for the Asshole Award

The problem with being on the ball 98.5% of the time is that the remaining 1.5% makes you feel really stupid.

I've been getting all ready for the high school reunion, and wondering if the red pumps I ordered will arrive in time. And as I observed this to Kendra, she wondered how I'd had them shipped, that they might not arrive in time. Because the high school reunion isn't this weekend. It's next weekend.

This isn't anything horrible in the grand scheme of things. It still doesn’t conflict with anything, though it will be a very full weekend. I was just so sure that it was the weekend of the 6th/7th, when instead it's the weekend of the 13th/14th. I don't know where I got the other date, but I've had it wrong in my mental list for months, now. I don't even have a piece of paper and a badly penciled notation calendar notation to blame.

No harm done, I just have to return the electric rollers I borrowed, and I feel really dumb.

Size 16 and Looking My Age

. . . or not.

Yes, I am wearing the size 16 jeans. The ones that fit before my gall bladder really kicked hard last year. They don't fit quite the way I want them to, yet, but they do fit, and the seat of the size 18 jeans had begun to take on a life of its own.

Yesterday I desperately needed to do laundry, so I put on a size L denim mini-dress (that will also look better in five pounds or so) and ran up to my parents' house to wash clothes. (Our laundry room is one of the few things about these apartments that could be improved). I stopped to run some errands on the way, including buying earings to go with the dress for the high school reunion.

I got hit on by the kid at the earing kiosk. He cozied right up to me, helpful as all get-out. What was I looking for? Oh, it had to match a dress--what was the occasion? High school reunion? (He did a visible double-take). Really? How long? Ten years? Wow, he was only out of his for a year . . .

I got hit on by the nineteen-year-old kid at the earing kiosk. This is actually really good for your self-esteem in a week when you're attending your ten year high school reunion.

So, yes, I have a dress now. It's not at all what I was expecting, and it's just a little funky, and yet somehow, it's perfect. Which, really, describes me fairly well, when you think about it.

I splurged and ordered red pumps to go with it. Priority Mail should have them here by Saturday. Cross your fingers for me. :)