Ring ring ring ring ring
My God, I hate telephones.
I miss my office.


_{I have written better haiku, but that was pretty much my day while filling in at the counter during registration. :)}

For anyone who actually uses this to keep track of me since I suck at writing real letters and only seem to manage a newsletter once a year now... Or possibly just for me as a kind of diary.

Work is alternating between crazy and there. Registration started today, so we're getting the busloads of people and enough paperwork to overrun a landfill. We are also shorthanded because there's been some real tragedy in our office. One person fell and broke some ribs (he's still been coming in half days), one person fell and broke an elbow (she's still coming in to work), one person is out having surgery this week, one is in and out because her daughter and her husband are going through medical issues, another lost her brother, and of course there's my coworker who's house burnt down the other week (she's back at work). Anyway, since we are at least one person and occasionally three people down, periodically I've been having to work the counter instead of my job. I am glad to help, but it does seriously impact my job and it's hard! OMG the phone never stops ringing and there *is* such a thing as a stupid question. :)

July 5th/Sunday was my godson's baptism! He did great. There was a reception after the mass, so I got to reunite with my friend's family - some of whom I hadn't seen since her wedding. I've known them since 9th grade, and I have lots of happy memories around their dining room table. :)

July 9th/Thursday was a coworker's 30th birthday. They "Over The Hilled" her office, several of us baked brownies (her favorite), and we all dressed in black. Other than the brownies, she was *not* happy.Then we had a power outage for 4 hours, so we got to just sit around in the darkness and chat. At one point I jumped in Karyn's office, yelled "I've had nothing to eat today but 3 brownies", did a Sugar Rush jig in the doorway, and ran away. Another time Carolina was singing a birthday song about Karyn and the moon with accompanying elaborate hand motions, but Karyn wouldn't come out of her office, so after every line Carolina would pause and yell at her "Hey, I'm singing to you here!" Finally, at the end of the song Karyn suddenly burst from her office in a single jump, landing like a gymnist, and yelled, "It's Karyn!" After work we went out for drinks, except I was driving so I had yellowfin tuna sushimi. Karyn is possibly my favoritest person on the planet because she makes the best faces and says outrageous and silly things. I want to be her when I grow up. Except she's younger than me.

July 10th/Friday was Dad's birthday. I've been spending Fridays with my parents anyway, but John took off work a little early so we could watch some British stuff together then have dinner at Logan's. (Dad's choice.) Then we walked around some stores for a while to burn calories. It was a lot more fun than this sounds. :)

July 11/Saturday. Despite the sad reasons, we got to spend Saturday with our beloved Soberchef. Continued prayers for her family and that's all I'm saying about that. We also met up with Joe and Zinger at Zaxby's and played some neat games. Despite the groans, I liked Martinis and Men. It was goofy, but I loved the artwork and the idea of matchmaking. I was impressed with R-Eco's competitive recycling. I didn't win the game, but I did better than I expected. My favorite was Tichu, but that may be because I had Joe for a partner and he rocks that game. I really want to play it again, so long as I'm not playing with (or against) anyone aggressively competitive and preferably with someone like Joe who makes outrageous bets and flamboyant moves. Zinger promised we could partner next time, so I'm looking forward to that. :)

Okay, end update.

Oh - and GI Joe actually looks *good*.

I want these shoes; I want these shoes; I want these shoes. Felicia Day posted a link on Twitter for a D&D shoe design competition. I don't know if these shoes actually exist, but I want them.



http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=125447261604&h=KXJSv&u=RxsG-&ref=mf

I wish the guy with the price gun on the Progressive commercial had managed to sneak in a lisp and the word "wobots" at some point.

Also, I really really want to make a robot quilt. I've been looking for robot fabrics. Target has a kids set by a company called Circo, but it only comes in Twin or Full or something that will not fit our bed. Anyways, Monkeys and I fell in love, and we want to try to replicate it somehow.

This is a kind of neat overlap moment. Yesterday I dedicated a Rosary to Beth's mother at the hospital, my mother's safe traveling to AL, and John's mom's soul. It was Saturday so, I said the joyful mysteries (the annunciation of the birth of Jesus, the visitation of a pregnant Elizabeth by the pregnant Mary, the birth of Jesus, the presentation of Jesus at the Temple, and the finding of Jesus at the temple) which as you can see have a great focus on motherhood. I didn't think about that when I started, so it felt really right to have all the mother moments.

On a bad note, I didn't go to church today. I thought I was sick, but I think I probably could have made it, so I pretty much suck.

Monkeys and I are watching Eureka on Hulu; it's such a wonderful show. :) We also watched two awesome episodes of Bones - one with Stewy and one at a convention. I'm also cross stitching again, finally.
And I made two stupid icons. One is from scratch and the gears one is a logo I stole from some company.

The Retromodern's husband posted this to his Facebook. United really did break his guitar, and as they did nothing to help him in regards to their damages he decided to write songs as revenge. The video is hysterical. I love props on sticks more than anything else on the planet. (Slight exaggeration, but I love props on sticks.)

More pictures from my NY trip - horses, giant tree trunks, octogenarians I want to be like when I grow up, my uncle's museum, ice cream, ice cream, fish and chips and ice cream, somewhat successful force perspective, and stores you really shouldn't visit ever.

( More New York Pictures behind the cut )

Meanwhile I'm trying to decide if I like the new Ms Marple. Haven't decided yet. She looks a bit too much like Florence Henderson to me, and while that shouldn't affect my judgement I keep picturing the Brady Bunch and it's taking me out of the story. Watching this, I want toast and I want tea. I want tea and toast.

I finished Sex, Drugs, Einstein, & Elves by Clifford A. Pickover. It is probably one of the weirdest books I've ever read. I liked parts of it - anything dealing with wordplay, vocabulary, and Proust. ( But there are large chunks of the book I'm not sure about. )

My favorite portion of the book, on page 63 he talks about the Oulipo, a group of writers and mathematicians who play with constrained writing. He gave Mike Keith's version of The Raven encoded as pi. Each word in the poem corresponds to a digit, going to the first 740 decimals.

3.1415926535897932384626433832795?288419716

Poe, E.
"Near a Raven"
Midnights so dreary, tired and weary.
Silently pondering volumes extolling all by-now obsolete lore.
During my rather long nap -- the weirdest tap!
An ominous vibrating sound disturbing my chamber's antedoor.
"This," I whispered quietly, "I ignore."

Also, as I was searching for pi's numbers I found this really cool website that just sings pi.

And, yes, it was sheer laziness of me to try to google pi as opposed to counting the numbers in each of the words of the poem. I am lazy. What of it?

The whole presentation was wonderful. Some awsometastic person has posted all of it; this clip is part 10 of 10 as you can see. Anyway, this clip contains my favorite portion of the presentation. He fields a question asking as you are the current "face of science" for this generation, who is your favorite of the previous faces of science: Sagan, Burke, Clarke, etc. His story about Carl Sagan made me cry. I wanted to marry Sagan when I was five. :)

Start around 3:30 for the question and his beautiful response.




Through some lucky turn of chance, I timed returning home just in time to catch him on Book TV. :)

Wishing all my fellow Americans out there a Happy Independence Day!

Today I have watched almost all of the History Channel's show Revolution. I confess I am stunned and ashamed by how little I knew about the war, but I am even more awed by the cost of the birth of our nation and the brave men who fought/led the soldiers in battle. I would like to watch these series all over again.

I am so disappointed in humans right now.

My friend just had a house fire. It completely destroyed the kitchen, dining room, and living room. Smoke damage ruined all but one of the bedrooms. One of her cats was killed, but thankfully her children were at their grandmothers and she/husband were at work. As with *any* fire, the fire marshal has to come to do an investigation to see how it started. She is dealing with soooooo much right now. I always thought fires were horrible, but I had no idea the impact. Your clothes are gone, you have to borrow or replace some in order to have something to wear tomorrow. Your medications are burned up, so you have to refill prescriptions. Cancel the utilities, find a place to sleep tonight, find a place to rent, work with the insurance adjusters, reassure your children, on and on and on. And it takes money. And you've lost stuff you care about. And you feel lost. And it's only been four days.

As with any fire, there was an article the newspaper about it. Now with online papers, people can make comments. Most of the comments are about meeting at her place while bringing hotdogs, bringing marshmallows, and making s'mores. Some of those comments triggered general conversations between commenters about the hickness of our city. If that's not awful enough, one person make a comment implying they needed to do a thorough investigation because they know the family that lived there, implying my friend would do it herself. She is one of the best, nicest, most honest, most trustworthy, most sensitive, kindest, hardest working person I have ever met. That comment destroyed her possibly as much as the fire; she called us to ask if that's what people were saying about her. I wanted her to understand that there are horrible people out there, trolls who live to harm others, and that whoever left that comment probably doesn't even know her but is just trying to start a flame war. Flame.

There was not one sympathetic comment.

Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian friends! And to all fans of Canada. :)

I made some more icons. I wanted one for our 4th of July. I'm so indecisive.





I also made a bunch of icecream icons, but haven't uploaded them yet because I'm still too busy drooling.

Also - how great was So You Think You Can Dance tonight? I love that show, I love the judges, I love the host, I love the performers, and I love the fact it inspires me to dance. Not just to want to dance, but to actually dance.

Monday two of our IT crew worked very hard to set up my computer and our phone guy had to actually get on the floor and left my desk with his back so that I could pull the wires out from underneath the furniture. He said the movers always seem to put things on the wires. The ladies setting up my computer/printer equally struggled with the issues brought out by the furniture. Lots of printer pinging was involved. Throughout the process they were upbeat, cheerful, and fun to talk with. At some point I promised them an Ode in their honor.

I sent them this: I looked up Odes to see their form, and they are very long. Not that you wouldn’t deserve the effort, of course; I just don’t have the talent to write one! So this my promised Ode from when you were setting up my printer/computer/phone, except that it’s not an Ode to the Fabulous Ladies and Gents of IT… It’s an Owed to the Fabulous Ladies and Gents of IT.

Owed to the Fabulous Ladies and Gents of IT

My computer’s dead! It doesn’t work!! Oh wait, I accidently unplugged it.
My printer’s jammed; it ate my receipt. I guess I shouldn’t have tugged it.
I opened a file! My email’s out. What virus? Can you debug it?

So patiently you take our calls – confused, garbled, and frantic.
And walk us through a maze of clicks without being pedantic
Or breaking down from our ineptness and tossing us in the Atlantic…

I owe you cookies, I owe you cake, I owe you whipped cream and cherry
(Although possibly you’d prefer Margaritas or a Bloody Mary)
So Thank you once, thank you twice, thank you 11110100001001000000 (<--binary!)

One of them wrote back that I made her day! :) :) :)

TheRetroModern's husband posted this to his FACEBOOK and it really made me giggle. :) I had a huge crush on Burt Ward as a small child, and I believe Raven has a crush on Adam West....

I'm actually not sure if this is Burt Ward, however. It must be, but for some reason something seems off.

I have a cat in my lap.

I want to go eat dinner, but I have a cat in my lap.

She's pretty zonked out right now.

I have other things I need to do tonight after I eat dinner, but there's a cat in my lap.

Also, I need to go to the bathroom, but there's a cat in my lap, and I'm stuck here.

I poked her and nothing happened. Not even a twitch.

Huh.

This morning we woke up to ants crawling around one corner of our kitchen. Probably coming in to look for water considering how dry it has been lately. We're going to call our bug guy about it tomorrow. For now we have been blocking their entrance with wasp spray to slow their entry. Plus, we finally got a bunch of rain, so I'm hoping they will lose interest.

Yesterday Walmart was giving out ice cream and I resisted. (I know, I am not supposed to go shopping on a Sunday, but I needed cleaning supplies for my office for today, and as Walmart is on the way home from church I couldn't resist.) I have to lose at least another three pounds to get back to what I was before the NY trip and give myself a buffer for this weekend's cookout. I LOVE ICE CREAM. We're going to make ice cream and lemonade for the forth.

I HAVE SO MUCH WORK PILED UP. Ack! Today I got my office about 80% set up. I still have to clean my windows, vacuum, and do some dusting. Monkeys is going to help me hang some of my pictures. Also, I still have about four little boxes to unpack, but they are full of decorations and older notes/work items I need to go through to see if they can be burned or destroyed. Basically it's stuff that can go on the back burner while I catch up on the stuff that came in while I was gone. Speaking of that stuff - I made a dent in it today. I think I got about a third of it done, maybe more. But I put off the hardest stuff (the education applications) in favor of the easier stuff (project management and nursing applications and grade changes). It all has to get done, and usually I favor the education applicants, so I'm not feeling guilty about putting them last this time. Looming in the distance is a major BSE letter project, but I'm not even going to think about it until I get through this. I'm more optimistic and less nautious, at least.

Excited about the 4th of July! Excited about getting some work done on the house this weekend (I hope). Excited about becoming a god mother this Sunday!!

Please pray in whatever form you choose and send positive energy and thoughts for my friend, neighbor, and coworker who has had a personal tragedy today. It certainly made me realize that worrying about my office is not how I should spend my time as there are waaaaaaay more important things to worry about.

Today I am sad for no good reason.

I think I'm afraid of going back to work tomorrow. I'm not sure what my office will look like - they were moving my desk and computer while I was gone. I don't have a key to it yet, so I couldn't go in early this weekend to work on unboxing and setting everything up. I am usually among the first to get to work, but w/o a key there's no point; I'll need to wait on whoever has the new keys. I know there will be four days worth of work built up while I was gone, but I cannot get started on that until I've unpacked and set up my office. Today I bought loads of cleaning supplies because it is DUSTY and grimy in there - I cannot start unpacking until I've done some scrubbing, which is a further delay. I'm not sure how long that will take, so I don't know how big a dent I can make in my "real" job tomorrow. I always feel really uneasy when I have unfinished work. so the delay in getting started on paperwork is already bothering me. Plus, I don't even know if my furniture has been moved; if not that's an even bigger delay.

I also feel a little sick. I didn't eat right today, and I drank too much coffee. I did make a better approximation of that Caramel Turtle drink - but I drank waaaaaaaaay too much of it and feel sick to my stomach. Or maybe it's nerves.

I wish I had something happy to post. I did impress Monkeys with a Maurice Moss impression today. That was cool. :)

When I was a little girl one of my favorite Atari 2600 games was Adventure. However, the "dragons" terrified me, and whenever they appeared on the screen I would scream. My mother had to take over the game for me and escape their clutches. I think once I even cried from fear. Later, in my teens I loved Nintendo's Super Mario Brothers - except for the mushroom jumping. TERRIFIED. If I fell off a 'shroom I would scream. I scream a lot. You can ask my friends. Anyway, the point is that I get waaaaaaaay to attached to characters in games. I cannot seem to separate myself from the avatar. So if Mario fell to his death, I thought *I* was falling to my death. If my little cube was being chased by a dragon, I felt like *I* was being chased by a dragon.

Now I've over on Facebook playing an incredibly stupid Vampire game and a Pirate game. I am trying to save up blood to buy some vampire trait so that I can advance to the next stage but people keep fighting me and stealing my blood. Likewise, over on Pirates people keep stealing my treasure which is stopping me from building my tariff station. I'm not as upset about the Pirates thing, because I make a lot of treasure, but that blood is difficult to come by. Plus, it kind of sucks losing over and over. It's seriously hurting my feelings! I really need to stop playing these games for my own sanity. Then again, I am hoping playing will break me of these attachment issues. It really is a miserable personality flaw.

I am a TERRIBLE pirate, by the way. I never attack anyone. I did at first, but when I did I would attack once, and if I won I would pick a different target. So seeing that the same person has attacked me five times in a row strikes me as awful and enrages me. You don't kick someone when they are down!! Except, I suppose if you are a pirate or a vampire you do. (Again I reiterate, me = really bad pirate. *grin*) Now I have completely given up on attacking. I just click the plunder button to build up treasure so I can buy islands and build tree houses. :)





Adventure icons works in process. I want to make a moving one that says "going on an adventure" or something, but I'm too tired. Also, today I'm vaguely depressed.

I'm having trouble picking which one I like best.





Also, my husband looks a lot like Cardinal Fang. Plus, he has fangs. I swear. So I wanted an icon to use for him.

Earlier today I was typing on Facebook while wearing 4 pounds worth of wrist weights. Now I'm sitting here in tap shoes typing instead of tapping. I'm so tired! I just don't have the energy to do anything. I feel as though I would fall instantly asleep if my head were to rest against anything.

I have managed to get all my trip laundry finished and folded. I just need to actually put it in drawers. I also cooked our lunch and did dishes. That's something, I suppose.

We ate out pretty much every day up there. We had ice cream four of the eight days. We also had fudge (Alex Bay has two fudge shops) and cookies and scones and muffins and brownies (the Busy Corner Cafe has loads of sweets). We met some aunts/uncles at Pizza Hut. Another set of relatives had a massive and amazing cookout for Alissa's high school graduation. Oh - and then there's the legendary buffet in Troutville, VA called Country Cookin' - possibly my favorite restaurant in the universe. ::wistful sigh:: Did I mention the Caramel Turtle coffee drink at Busy Corner? Half coffee, half hot chocolate, real caramel sundae topping, and probably loads of cream that's covered in whipped topping and chocolate. It's fantastic. I had three over the course of our stay there. The last one I split with Monkeys, at least. I gained six pounds from the trip. I'm actually surprised it wasn't more - but I also made sure to go out walking every day, to take the stairs instead of the elevators most trips, and to just walk the stairs as exercise some evenings. Monkeys ate everything that I ate plus a little more (I at least split some of my meals with my mom), yet he seems to have lost weight from the trip. That's not fair!

I attempted a low-calorie version of the Caramel Turtle Coffee today, and it wasn't too bad. I got some sugar-free hot chocolate, some caramel flavored coffee, and some sugar-free coffee syrup. If I had added some fat-free whipped cream on top with some more sugarfree cocoa sprinkled on the cream it probably would have been 90% perfect. So my goal is to get some sugar-free caramel sundae topping and whipped cream before my next attempt. I must succeed!!