"And God said to Noah, 'There's gonna be a floody floody . . . '"

It's a trifle damp here at the moment. It took me three tries to get to work this morning--the first two routes were crossed by a wash and a creek. The former looked shallow, but the cop car sitting by it was an indication that this was not actually the case. The second . . . I don't care if you drive a monster truck, you wouldn't have driven through this. This is actually the first time I've run into this kind of thing, because our new offices are in a part of town I didn't know well enough to simply re-route when it rains.

Oh, and the Rillito River is topping its banks in some places.

"Propel, propel, propel your craft
Gently down the liquid solution
Ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically
Existance is but an illusion."

(TTTO "Row, Row, Row Your Boat")

Quote of the Week

"People who dream of justice are so apt to be disappointed . . . "

--Dr. Kelden Amadiro, in The Robots Of Dawn, by Isaac Asimov

More bizare injuries.

All I did was crack my knee into my desk. We have all done this, at work. In fact, I have probably done it less often than anyone else in my department: only three times in about a year and a half. Unfortunately, when I did it on Monday, I did it with some force, and I immediately had a feeling that it was bad. I went home and iced it.

It was still bad the following morning, but I had to drive around Phoenix all day. The following day, I sheepishly told my boss that I had technically been injured at work. We were required to fill out paperwork for Worman's Comp, and when he had to fill out "What could you do to prevent this kind of thing from recurring?" he looked at me and said, "Get a smarter employee?"

"That, or a wider desk," I answered.

I spent almost four hours in the Workman's Comp clinic. They were that backed up. But, much to my amazement, the doctor who saw me did not seem to be one of those with the investors' collective hand so far up her butt you could see her mouth moving. She looked at me knee and poked at it, and asked questions, and finally decided she wanted to x-ray it. I was shocked.

I was more shocked at the results of the x-rays. Mind you, she wants a radiologist to double-check her on this, it's that bizare. No, she doesn't think I broke it. She said I contused the bones. I was surprised--I'd have thought that the kneecap weas close enough to the surface that even if it was contused, I'd be seeing a hell of a lot more bruising coming up by now.

But no, it gets better. Seems I jammed the kneecap into the bones beneath it with so much force that those bones are the ones with the contusions.

So I've gone from having the most bizare injury of the department (dog bite in the line of duty) to having the two most bizare injuries. I believe someone has gone so far as to label me accident-prone. Which is funny, because I don't think I've ever had a work-related injury before in my life.

Incidentally, the chiropractor agrees about having jammed the kneecap. It's much easier to walk now that he's helped me get it back in place (and damn, does that hurt, btw). We'll probably have to nudge it again a couple more times in the next week or two, but having all the bones sliding correctly will definitely make the surrounding muscles happier.

Needless to say, rest and elevation are on the menu for this weekend.

Oh, wow.

gabefinder showed me this. Best with the music, and I don't know that I'd try it over a dial-up connection.

Edit: My roommate informs me that it's part of Childrin R Skary.

Quote of the Week

"It is well to remember that the entire population of the universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."

--Alexia Talan

I love being the monkey in the middle . . .

You scored as Paganism. Your beliefs are most closely aligned with those of paganism, Wicca, or a similar earth-based religion. You may also follow a Native American religion. Buddhism 63% Paganism 63% Hinduism 63% Islam 50% Satanism 50% Judaism 42% Christianity 38% agnosticism 33% atheism 25% Which religion is the right one for you? (new version) created with QuizFarm.com

This amused me. Probably moreso because somebody in my boyfriend's blog accused him of hating America because he mentioned the name of a Hawai'ian goddess in a post about rain (or lack of same), without seeming to notice the lack of any rational connection between the two.

So, about the quiz--and the three-way tie with a tie-breaker. I felt the test to be rather Judeo-Christian-centric. But it did ask some insightful questions. The wording on them just tended to be rather either/or. I do wonder how the author was defining Satanism, since there are a number of sects that might define themselves this as Satanist, on various occasions, and they tend to be rather drastically different.

Hersheys!

Okay, this is really sad, but here it is. I want one of these. I had a couple of candy bars this spring while I was having a meltdown and started playing the silly "points" game. Now, I'm trying to get my stress levels under control and re-lose the weight I gained while on vacation, but the stupid little teddy bear is really cute. I have 12 points and I need 20. So, if you happen to be eating any of these candy bars and aren't using the codes yourself, would you save them for me?

It would, of course, be easier to go out and buy myself yet another stuffed animal I don't really need. *wrygrin*

Some People

Something Positive is occasionally very, very therapeutic.

Stupidly addictive.

So, I found another time-waster. Check out Meez.com sometime when you want to lose a couple hours.

Guess I missed the break-up.

Gosh, I had no idea Barbie and Ken broke up. Ken, of course, had different point of view. But he's changed his tune and now he wants to get back together with her.

What does Barbie think? I guess we should read her diary. And while we're looking at her secret crushes, will someone please tell me how dumb the bitch has to be that she's still in school after 45 years? Good grief, Jem may have had a thousand break-ups and make-ups, but she graduated, she took over her father's company, she starred in a rock band, and she did charity work--all at the same time!

On the flip side, she never could fit into Barbie's clothes.

Speaking of which, Barbie has her own web page. Look carefully--she's always been shaped like she should fall over forward, but get a load of the way they've got her legs rendered, here. She ought to collapse at the knee!

Quote of the Week

"I like sex. I don't usually let something as inconsequental as gender get in the way of a good fuck."

--Morningstar, in Fallen Host

Because I needed a dose of humor right now :)

A list my boyfriend wrote.

I hate this.

My nephew-the-freak is considering doing something Really Profoundly Stupid. (If you've been reading this journal for awhile, you'll realize just how bad this has to be to beat his usual cut of Stupid Shit). I made all the right noises, and after I got off the phone with him, I called up his other honorary auntie needing a second opinion. On whether to try and kill this plan in his current home state, or the one he's planning on traveling to.

My preference was to call the police once he arrives. Because he needs psych services. And I think the only way he's going to get them shoved down his throat is through the criminal justice system. I'm not sure it'll help at this point, but I'm damn sure nothing short of it will.

The other auntie disagreed. She thought I should contact his older brother--the one who just got emancipated minor status. Because he could get ahold of the grandparents and stop it before it gets that far. When I suggested this was not the best thing for the younger brother, she made me realize that no . . . it's the best thing for the older one. Because the younger is becoming a sinking ship, and we don't want the older to go down with it.

We have officially hit the point where we have cut our losses are just trying to help one of them. I hate this. But I don't disagree with it.

The other auntie has a cough, and as we closed the conversation, I told her not to die of the plague. And if she did, to hunt down the boys' mother and bitch-slap her. She was a good person, but she was a drama-magnet and did this victim posturing that I see in the younger boy, now. She ran through a string of deadbeat boyfriends. These kids never had consistent parenting. Hell, the way she told it, she left one of them because she found out he was molesting the boys when they were small. It's been obvious the younger had psych problems since the first time I met him, at the tender age of three or four, and she never managed to get him help. I love her, but this kid never had a chance, and some if it is her fault.

The other auntie was only too happy to agree.

I just love 65-hour weeks.

A certain pair of resource requests at work today.

"I have a plan."

Ever notice how people who have a good plan almost never say "I have a plan?" They say "What if we try this . . . ?" or "Let's go about it this way . . . " or begin in some other fashion making concrete strides toward vanquishing the enemy, finding the object of the quest, or otherwise accomplishing a goal.

No, when somebody says, "I have a plan," it's usually secret code for "I'm about to do something stupid."

Or maybe I'm just being a cynical writer today.

It would all be so much easier if you'd just do it *my* way . . . ;)

Benevolent Leader

Take the Quiz

Somebody has too much time on their hands.

http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/05/lego_crossbow.html

4th of July Thoughts

Fireworks are great, but from my aparment, they're not nearly as compelling as the lighting storm to the north.

The local radio station doing "Skindependence Day" bothers me. Not so much because of the party itself. More because they're hawking it as "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of . . . . BOOBIES!"

Very few people seem acquainted with the lyrics to "Born in the USA," or it wouldn't get this much playtime on this day of the year.

Generations

I had a bizarre and confounding moment on Saturday. I realized that Pete and I don't consider ourselves part of the same generation. This is amusing, because I'm only a bit more than three years older than him.

I don't think I've posted Journey's Theory of Generations before. I don't really feel that generations are defined by years. I feel that they're defined by events. My mother tells me that everyone of my grandmother's generation remembers where they were on VE day. Everyone in my mother's generation remembers where they were when JFK was assassinated. Everyone in "Generation X" remembers where they were when the Challenger exploded.

I was in my gifted class, which means it was a Thursday. Our teacher had been very excited about the first teacher going into space. And she had to come in and tell us that the space shuttle had exploded, and everyone had died. I remember how visibly upset she was. I'm not sure I had ever seen an adult quite that visibly upset, before. I was . . . eight? Nine? But I was aware. It was like the world ended, in a little way.

Having had that level of awareness that early means that I remember and identify with so much of what makes up "children of the 80s." That's how I define myeslf. That's where I identify, despite being technically "too young."

For awhile after I developed this theory, I wondered what event would define the next generation. When someone flew an airplane into the World Trade Center, I knew, and was not comforted.

Pete mentioned it in very much this context, as the kind of event that will define "our" generation. That everyone will know where they were. And I disagreed, but only because I thought it would define the next generation . . . and kind of snapped my mouth shut in mid-sentence. Because while our ages are very close, and he was a very precocious boy, five is just a little too early to have been really impacted by this thing that impacted me. We straddle an odd kind of cusp, between us.

Quote of the Week

"It takes a commanding presence to make you not see a seven-foot-tall, mostly blue demi-god."

--from A Stroke of Midnight, by Laurell K. Hamilton

True Love

I think I'm in love with Alaska. I was particularly taken with Ketchikan, Skagway, and Anchorage, but I'm told that I needed to see more of Sitka (that was the day that the floor started to roll under me when I was on dry land--I was a little out of it).

I have pictures of glaciers and whales and bald eagles to share as soon as I've cropped and resized them. (Seven megapixels is wonderful for capturing detail, but boy do I need to resize them before I upload anything).

Glaciers really are blue. The Tongass rainforst is beautiful. I went ziplining and whale watching. Saw a really funny comedy show in Anchorage; I'll try to tell more about that later. And I bought a plush purple moose. With sparkly horns. It amuses me greatly.