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2006.12.31

Well, day two of not being able to get to sleep past six am has resulted in being sick. I'm sure the several days before of not getting to sleep before three or four didn't help. Yay.

I never get tired of watching Micah play. Many cats play, of course, but Micah is unique in my experience of continuing, well past kittenhood, to be able to completely entertain himself without the help of another cat, a human, or catnip. His particular love are round, springy things, like milk gallon rings, or hairbands, but anything he can get his claws into to fling will work, for that's what he does, for up to an hour at a time on occasion: he flings his toy into the air, and launches himself after his target. He flips stuff amazingly far sometimes; ten feet across the room is not unusual, or four feet up in the air, with a grey kittymissle in hot pursuit. He lost his current favorite toy, a hairband with a scrap of ribbon knotted around it, the other day, and spent two days in a funk, meowing in frustration in the office, trying to reach in to where the silly thing was lodged, but somehow he managed to retrieve it today, and has been racing and tumbling all over the living room in utter delight ever since. Is anything more cheering than a cat gleefully somersaulting on the floor? I think not.

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2006.12.29

I'm not quite sure what to do with myself. After a slow start, I got myself to run errands and then tidy up and vacuum the entire house. But now it's almost 6pm, I'm worn out, it's dark outside, and I'm at loose ends. Loose ends are very bad things lately, as I tend to start worrying over (and over, and over) the damn knot in my head. Imagination is awful when stressed; I alternately delight and depress myself until I'm so wound up I just start crying. Whee.

After two hours spent trying to sleep, utterly in vain, I give up, okay, I give up! If I could stop thinking about this long enough to sleep, that'd be nice. Fucking A. I guess the kittens get the bed to themselves tonight, as I'm relagated to the couch and the lullaby charms of fucking Modern Marvels. ARGH.

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2006.12.28

I can't decide whether I'm more full of glee about my imminent redesktoping of my life, or about having gotten the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD for Christmas. On the one hand, a new computer is p-IMP, but on the other, my childhood has been restored to me. Priceless!

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2006.12.27

Christmas was good, but ever since (and truly, since before), I've had a broken record playing in my head, causing great mental distress and awful insomnia. Is it any wonder I turned up sick today?

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2006.12.24

Home from the Christmas Eve service at Mom's church. Normally, I rather enjoy going, as it's usually a pleasure to listen to the choir and to sing carols. This year, however, bluntly, the music sucked. We discussed it with Mama in the car on the way home, and she agreed: every single song was either bad in the first place or done too slow. It was like a night full of Christmas dirges. Ugh!

At least the rest of the day was quite nice, including many presents exchanged and much good food eaten. May tomorrow be just as good.

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2006.12.23

Why, hello productivity! Other than the part where I generated some smoke stains above my fireplace (whoops), today was extremely productive around the house. And around the Web, as I finally got around to creating the movie companion to the book database, and did some general improving and cleaning up of various code bits. And it's only 10pm!

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2006.12.22

Given that I'd planned on going home early anyway, I took the fact that I overslept until about 11 am to be a sign, and started my Christmas vacation a day early. A full week to do nothing other than hang out and avoid my family! Perhaps clean my house...

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2006.12.20

Jim and I got together for dinner and drinks tonight. It was the first time we'd talked to each other in person (or even over the phone) since the day we parted ways as I removed the last of my belongings from the house we shared, almost exactly two years ago. Our meeting was many things, mostly great things, but I started crying in the car on the way home and haven't stopped. Sitting on the couch and wailing.

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2006.12.17

I try very hard to not write about my Kingdom of Loathing gaming obsession of the last several months (I'm not sure why, exactly, as it's not as if anyone has any less frame of reference for such talk compared to anything else I blather about). I simply cannot resist, however, for tonight, while absentmindedly working towards a trophy, I suddenly noticed that the monster I was fighting was... animated. Animated monster avatars are reserved for final bosses and ultrarare adventures, and I beat the game this pass several days ago. Ultrarare adventure, and ultrarare item drop, 4TW! Wooooooo!

If I weren't such a collector-hoarder, I could sell this thing in game for a price that's oh, about 55 million times the price of an averagely useful item. So full of glee right now! Jeff got an ultrarare when he was playing, and gave it to me when he quit, but this one I got all by my ownself (preen).

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2006.12.15

Sigh. I headed towards work today to pick up my laptop to bring it home, totally forgetting until I was most of the way up and around the lake that A) I wouldn't be able to get in, even remotely, to most of the machines that have data I need and that B) I wouldn't be able to get into the damn buildings in the first place. I hope the power's back on in Redmond tomorrow... I need to have not missed this full day of work this week, of all weeks. At least there's been no more than a 30-minute power blip at my house, full in the middle of last night when not a creature cared, not even a mouse.

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2006.12.14

Goddamnit. Why do you have to be so cute? And smell so good. Fuck me.

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2006.12.13

Jan asked me tonight if I'd teach her international tech comm class while she's on sabbatical next winter. It was mostly (at least partially?) in jest, but it was an interesting thing to think about, regardless. I'm not a huge fan of teaching classes (I'm a good mentor for one or two people at a time, but get a group beyond that and I tend to flail), but the chance to inject some of my enthusiasm about my work into a crop of grad students is tempting. For make no mistake, for all that I'm not a huge fan of my company overall, I am incredibly passionate about my particular corner of it, and about the importance of my industry. I can and will talk people's ears off about it even without getting something in return... getting to do it for money or experience or a line item on a resume would be some very sweet whipped topping.

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2006.12.12

I haven't been posty. In fact, I haven't been Internety very much from home lately in general. I'm not sure if it's because I've reached the fabled point where I work so much with computers that I don't want to deal with them at home, or because I've recognized that being on the computer aggravates my insomnia a thousand times, or what. The upshot is that I've been avoiding my computer like the... well, if not the plague, then at least the common cold. I'm curious whether this will be a long term shift.

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2006.12.09

I had fun at a party, real fun, fun talking to people and all that jazz, for the first time in a really long while. But oh goodness did it make me miss working at the UW. All my favorite old co-workers were there, and while it was nice to talk and trade hugs, I'm despondent that I won't be able to grump at them on Monday morning and go out to the Ave for lunch with them that noon. I enjoy many aspects of my MS job, but dizamn, team morale is not one of them. The UW folks were a family, a crew of friends who ate, drank, and laughed together... and I'm the dumbass daughter who moved away.

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2006.12.07

Casino Royale was just as entertaining on run #2 (Mike hadn't seen it). And hot damn do I ever want Bond in a way I haven't since teenage obsession with Sean Connery!

Also swung by work afterwards and the secret Christmas decorator(s) (I know who it/they are, bwahahaha) had hit my office and put up lights. I'd been hoping and hoping that I'd get lights (S is the only other one that's gotten them) instead of wrapping paper or bows or somesuch on my door... I adore Christmas lights with unreasonable passion. The fact that my landlords had lights already wrapped around my fence when I moved in totally has made my day ever since I plugged them in last week.

~Twinkle twinkle~

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2006.12.06

Two days alone and the kittens went on a destructive rampage. They seem to be fine for one night, but I think from now on if I'm going to be out two nights I'm going to have The Fool stop by and entertain them or somesuch.

Watched the first two episodes of Twin Peaks for the first time today. I found a quote somewhere online that stated "I think the dream sequence was the strangest six minutes of TV America has ever seen." I'm inclined to agree, but I was more distracted by the fact that the dwarf was Samson from Carnivale and remembering that I never watched season two of that show. To the Netflix queue!

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2006.12.04

I completely adore the current series of Mac commercials with the hip cute Mac and the dorky cute PC. My absolute favorite one? The one that runs something like this:

Therapist: Mac, is there something you'd to say to PC?
Mac: PC, you're a whiz with numbers, and you dress like a gentleman.

I could listen to that commercial over and over, laughing every single time. It's right up there with the Geico "free pie and chips" one.

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2006.12.03

My favorite thing about the day after drinking is that I get so much done! I get more motivated to clean, run errands, do yardwork, etc., on such days than on any other. It's such a useful side effect!

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2006.12.02

Found something to get slightly dressy in, made Jeff shave the mustache-experiment, and headed out to the division Christmas party. If only I had more time to hang out with Julia... she's one of my favorite people to gab and gossip with in the world. Had fun drinking and watching the people: the hot guy in the full Scottish getup, the guy with the braided Mohawk, the guy in the gold smoking jacket, the girl whose breasts were a nanosecond from bursting out, S in his slick gangster tuxedo. All in all, an excellent night once I identified the heavy-pouring bartender. I've been in need of some drinking. I think I should get some more in this week.

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2006.12.01

It's not as if I haven't had anything to say this week... I've had plenty, in fact, the sort of things that not only I could write ("I ate toast") but that I really should write. Things I want to remember, or develop further than they've got in my own brain. But the insomnia has continued to a horrific degree, and along with it has grown an intense difficulty with non-targeted creative thought. And even targeted creativity has only been succeeding in the arena of work problems to be solved.

I'm missing my brain intensely.

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