Life's goal?

I've been home sick today, and during the brief periods of consciousness, I've been catching up on The Devil's Panties. And I ran across this.

Life's goal? Life has a goal? There are things I want to do in my life. There are even some without which I may feel less than complete, or like I've failed in my duty. Not that I don't have goals. Just that there's no one thing that life leads to, no single thing I'm holding out for. After all, isn't life . . .

. . . a journey?

Quote of the Day

"You know the phrase 'hostile work environment'? I think poisonous scorpions count."

--my boss

Quote of the Week

"What happened to beauty before age?"
"Age kicked beauty's ass."

--from Blood Ties

Somebody hates me.

Somehow, throughout this, I maintain absolute certainty that I'm supposed to marry RogueHistorian. But I'm really not sure I'm supposed to do it in May.

The wedding has moved. Again. Back to May 17th. If we can get it again. Why? Let me see if I can get the salient facts in sequence.

• RH's brother, when we were inquiring as to alternate dates for this fiasco, somehow failed to inform us that he'll pretty much be working on his senior project 24/7 for the entire month before reading week. And here we thought we only had to worry about screwing up his presentation. Dammit, how'm I supposed to problem solve if people won't give me all the parameters?
  
• RH's parents and brother want to take a gamble that the graduation ceremony itself will be at the same time it's been for the past couple years (this won't be actually be announced until August) and plan to drive directly from there to the airport to stumble off a plane in Tucson Saturday night, and attend a fairly late wedding rehearsal.
  
• To me, this sounds like a recipe for disaster. It's a timeline so tight it's begging something to go wrong. But my mother (who is my reality check) believes that if something does go wrong and they can't make the rehearsal, they may make the rehearsal dinner, and the world won't end if they miss either. She also thinks we can find some large enough lighted space for the rehearsal, because it will probably be dark by then. I'm not sure I want a rehearsal dinner at this point. It's going to be closer to bedtime than dinnertime and if things are going so badly that we're missing people, I doubt I'm going to feel like eating. Though I suppose I shouldn't spoil it for everyone else. Our people flying in from out of town have to eat, somehow.
  
• If, in August, we find out that the graduation will actually be on Saturday, we'll use the courtyard at my parents' church as a fall-back venue. Depending on how much money we lose in terms of deposit on our venue. I'm not quite sure how this works, since changing the venue doesn't change the date. I don't think my brother can make the 18th (fly back Monday, wash clothes and pack Tuesday, drive to Rites on Wednesday? Seriously pushing it). If we wait two weeks, till the 31st, it's already likely to be hot even at 10AM.
  
• If, in August, we suddenly need to book some other venue, most of our fair-weather options will probably be booked already. Which means we'll probably end up being married in an air-conditioned box. Maybe we can find a box that's less box-like.
  
• We're going to have the ceremony at 6:30 PM and keep the reception in the Temple of Music and Art Courtyard, which we'd discussed for the 3rd, and possibly rent or borrow fans in case it's unusually warm that day. It should be pleasant after the sun sets.

I should feel better. We have a plan. I don't. I feel like vomiting. Why?

• We can't guarantee a block of hotel rooms until August, so I don't know if people are going to be able to find rooms (the U of A's graduation is the 17th).
  
• We can't book a caterer until August.
  
• We can't book the honeymoon until August.
  
• We can't book the band until August.
  
• (We can't book anything else, either, but these are all supposed to be booked in this timeframe).
  
• And most of all, at this point, I just don't feel like this is it. I don't feel like it's going to work. I feel like we're waiting for the other shoe to drop. October keeps coming up. Not from anybody who knows me. In my hindbrain. From women who work in bridal shops, who go to write down our wedding date and ask, "When in October?" It's like this whole disaster just exudes an ending in October. And I do not want to wait five extra months to marry RH because RH's brother is a mechanical engineer!

We'll ask the venue about changing the date back on Monday, when the guy who handles these things gets back from vacation. I'm supposed to make up a list of questions for the venue. I'll do it. It's the rational thing to do. But I can't summon any enthusiasm for it. This afternoon, I was so excited thinking about luminarias and hanging lanterns to obscure a sign and gosh, maybe ordering the bits and pieces which are supposed to come together into a cake topper. Technically, there's no reason I can't. I just don't want to, because I'm convinced it's all going to fall apart at the next reasonable opportunity.

I bought myself a serving of low-calorie chocolate cake to celebrate. And now I don't feel like celebrating. I feel positively ill.

I can't ride this roller coaster too many more times. If everything falls apart again when we till RH's brother okay, it's the 17th, we may just have to get married on a cruise ship. Abducted by aliens. Whatever. Because I don't know that I'm going to have the heart to plan a wedding in a box on nine months' notice.

Don't book any plane tickets yet, okay?

Cross your fingers for me

After a whole lot of trying to find alternate wedding venues, RogueHistorian just had a sudden windfall. He found out what all his GA hours will be during sping semester, and the ten hours he expected to be grading will, in fact, be spent vetting paperwork for the Parks service.

So no grading over the weekend of 5/3/08. What's more, he found a detailed academic schedule which indicates that while ASU graduation is 5/10, finals are actually 5/1-5/7/08. He won't have final exams, he'll have final papers, which he can turn in in advance or make other appropriate arrangements for. A call to the registrar's office confirmed that, while the dates are always subject to change, in practice, they never have. At this point, they've been approved by the Board of Directors and nothing short of a natural disaster or other catastrophe is likely to change them.

Which means that we can actually get married the weekend of 5/3/08! Now we just have to make sure we can get the venue for this date instead of the 17th. Wish me luck!

He finally noticed.

Today, my boss finally noticed the prank. I brought him a cheesey "Moose Crossing" sign from Alaska, and it lives in his interior office window. But it's on a cheap suction cup, so it keeps falling down. We had a discussion about this and decided that the problems moose and squirrel are symbiotes, and the brain really lives in the squirrel, so that must be why the moose keeps falling down.

So at a certain point, I just had to aqcuire a picture of Rocky the Flying Squirrel and tape it to the moose sign. That that window is presently cornered between two tables, one of which is surrounded by rolling chairs. Thus the belly-crawling into the gap.

It took him till today to notice. And he was duly amused.

I'm sorry, blue M&M's still look like Smurf turds.

Rare blue lobster avoids the cooker

Things best left un-asked

I did not have this conversation. But I had to share it.

And it's (un)official.

I no longer know when or where I'm getting married.

Just that I am not waiting until October 2008.

*insert Mission Impossible theme here*

Note to self: When trying to belly-crawl under the conference table in the boss's office to arrange a prank, don't have the cell phone clipped to the hip pocket.

Corollary: If recovering from a cold, have the cough drops handier. It's hard work.

ASU, CSU, WTF?

So, about nine months ago, ASU changed the amount of time RogueHistorian is in grad school by a semester, thus making us choose a wedding date later than we'd intended. Now, CSU's calendar on their nice, official web page suddenly lists a 2008 graduation date that is not what we'd been told it would be. May 16th and 17th, 2008.

RH's brother is graduating next year, which is why we originally picked 5/17/07--it was the week between his graduation and Rites of Spring. Now we're suddenly trying to find out what the real graduation date is, so we know if we have to move things again because of somebody's damn school.

The mercy is, we haven't put down money on the venue, yet, and we hadn't quite done the contract to guarantee a block of rooms. We can make this a week earlier right now, venue permitting, if that's the best solution. But not for too much longer.

Quote of the Week

"I . . . negotiated the sale of an '06 Toyota Tacoma access-cab white pickup. That's right, gang; I now am officially a truck chick. His name is Jack, and if you don't think I look good getting out of a truck, you don't know Jack."

--RuthE.

Seven Random Things About Me

Lookee, it's meme time:

1. I remember having my throat slit. Twice.

2. One of my front teeth is not completely real.

3. I can't pick a single favorite book, favorite movie, or favorite song.

4. I was seven years old when I had that first, shattering moment of understanding that I could die.

5. I have always felt inexplicably guilty for not being fluent in Spanish.

6. My sister and I have argued over who inherits our mother's 1970's, avacado-green iron. (I lost).

7. I'm a computer geek, and yet, I could not successfully make my own PlayStation 2 work--I had to get my roommate to fix it for me.

Rites tidbits

Jane said, "Aren't you glad you're not a poor mundane?" And she's right. There are things that just don't happen to people who only ever live in the mundane world, that I wouldn't be without for anything.

Hanging out with the Vikings, we had a private performance of the Celtic harp. Several songs of exquisite beauty, for no better reason than because the Viking king's lady had asked it.

Down at the lakefront, we had a private fire performance--fire-spinning and fire-breathing, by a woman who said her mother was a dragon and her father was a bear. She wasn't too sure how the logistics of that worked, but somehow, she came out a fire maiden. The grace and skill of her as she danced within flying flame was indescribable.

Even the laughing, dirty, naked children were something you just don't see in the day to day world anymore. Nowadays, nobody knows what to do with nakedness, and gods forbid something might be real enough to get you dirty. It's so much better to have kids stay inside and play video games, slack-jawed, with glazed expressions. So much safer, right? Naked and dirty and laughing is the way kids are supposed to be. In the arms of my pagan community, I feel like not everyone is afraid to really live, after all.

I licked someone's nipple. I'm not even sure who it was attached to. It was covered in whipped cream and ten inches from my nose. It seemed like the thing to do.

There were afternoons spent lounging in the sun, listening to pick-up music and watching people hula-hoop. And yes, I am so glad I'm not a poor mundane.

fecal matter occurreth

I had a definite stressful incident at work yesterday. We've had a series of short-notice, "oh my gosh it's dire" requests from someone in the company who is setting up a new program. We've bent over backward to meet them, but she keeps failing to ask for what she really wants or tell us enough about what she's doing that we can ask the right questions and figure it out. The latest two assumptions are that, when she requested a computer for this project, it would be able to play DVDs and come with speakers sufficient to project sound to a room thus-and-such size. No one doing a similar program uses any of these technologies, so go figure, we didn't ask. And yet, we are told she accuses us of giving her a "piece of junk." Aside from the fact that I do have junk in the field, and therefore, know it when I see it, she seems to have an exaggerated idea of what is standard when you work in social services.

In an attempt to put in a last-minute fix, we were unable to make an external DVD player work on the computer (amount of RAM is the suspect) and did not test the sound. My boss and I spent an hour and a half yesterday writing up this series of interactions for *his* boss, so that there will be appropriate ammunition if/when the complaints come rolling in. During the course of this, we discovered that we had not tested the sound. This constitutes, from his point of view, not having clean hands, so we set about fixing it.

Here's where it gets fun. I had to call up my Phoenix tech--the one who hadn't tested the sound when he was working on the DVD drive, earlier--at the end of his day and send him back to that site to test sound and set up speakers. He was not happy, and asked if it had to happen. I said yes. I got a call from him twenty minutes later ranting that this didn't have to happen till Monday, sound worked fine by the internal speaker wasn't powerful enough, and now that we had "your butts covered," was there anything else he should do? Because he'd had plans to visit his father-in-law in the hospital/rest home right after work.

I asked why he didn't tell me. I'm not unaware of the situation--I've re-arranged other things this week to try and make his schedule less onerous because he's dealing with this wrenching situation. He replied that I'd said it had to happen. And I had this moment where, I swear, I think I was channeling my boss. I told him he'd made the choice to take this action I said had to happen without telling me he had a conflict.

I wasn't standing behind him with a shotgun forcing him to go check the sound. I don't read minds. He put me in a position where if his father-in-law passed during those minutes he was late because he was checking the sound, the responsibility for his not being there would have been laid at my doorstep. I resent that. I also resent the statement about "your butts covered." Since when does completing the assignment we've been given constitute butt-covering, and why is it "your" butts instead of "our" butts?

I spent most of last night crying, wanting to vomit, and sleeping. Because I am thin-skinned enough that people ranting at me cuts. It really hurts. Never mind that I couldn't have made any different choices than I did based on the information I had. Never mind that I wrote a follow-up e-mail, so he'd have it when he was cooler-headed, just reminding him that there's this thing called Real Life that takes precedence outside of work, and I want him to tell me when I'm causing a conflict with Real Life, because Real Life wins. Jobs are replaceable, and I don't want him to go someplace else because he's upset over a situation I didn't know was there, and so couldn't avoid.

By today, I've managed to work myself into a quiet but fair anger, which I think is probably a healthier response. Let's face it, crying over it is my choice. It's a reaction I have not put the effort into changing, because I feel that it would take making other changes in the way I act and react which aren't worth it. But I really resent having been placed in this position in the first place, and it's starting to show.

It's just the shitty end to a shitty week. I've been sick, the doctor covering for my doctor didn't strike me as understanding the situation, I've had grumpy people breathing down my neck, I've worked a lot of hours over because certain things just had to get done, I don't get to see my fiancee because we're both under the weather, and now this. Could next week be better? Sure. Gods, I hope so. But that doesn't change the way I feel right now

Positive Wedding Stuff

Well, I'm back from Rites, and I'll post stuff about that by bits and pieces in both journals. But for now, I had to share the wedding news.

We finally have the date confirmed with the venue! The wedding will be March 17, 2008 at about 6PM. We still have some details to iron out, but the date, at least, is set.

And I think I have found a solution to the burgundy flowers issue. There are burgundy orchids. They cost an arm and a leg and I'm having a hard time finding them except in bulk, but I have found some darn spiffy silk ones if a better option for fresh doesn't turn up.

Oh, and I think Amy solved the issue I was having with keeping my bridesmaids from looking like bookends.

I'm sick, I hurt, and work still sucks, but today, life feels good. :)