(warning: particularly old content) I don't ask for it to make sense RSS feed

2007.07.29

(giggling) We decided to play 1000 Blank Cards tonight (specifically, running off of the Riff variation). There were many cards full of win, but I was particularly fond, by player, of...

  • Seth's "The Pope's Secret Propeller Hat"
    Remove any "bad" card from play: distinction of most used card, spawned the ability to riffle through the discard pile for a card, as well as a propeller-mimic card
  • Jeff's "Globothermonuclear War"
    All players get -500 pts unless they have Matthew Broderick in play: War Games was on in the background, so we all wished we'd thought of this one first; this card also spawned at least three Matthew Broderick cards that I remember
  • My "Trogdor... ish"
    Burninate any card out of play: favorite me-generated "art" *cough* *cough*, and every time someone used it, they felt compelled to sing TROGDOOOOOOORRRRR... I think I won the game right there
  • Kyle's "The Moon"
    +750 pts and you are now a werewolf: the number of supernatural effects and countereffects this single brainwave caused were boggling

Particularly in conjunction with an afternoon of D&D, a garlic/rosemary infused pork roast + roasted potatoes, and beer, a ridiculous card game really tied the weekend together.

I'll have to gather up some good cards and bring them to a scanner... and come up with some Big Lebowski cards next time.

Think

2007.07.28

Third Harry Potter movie is still the best one. But I was entertained, and there were a few previews that made me stamp my feet excitedly, so I'm chalking the evening as a win.

I like days that I can chalk stuff as wins.

Think

2007.07.27

I love unnecessary bells... and Demetri Martin.

Many people were met this evening. It was good, even the repeated arguments with the resident strong personality. But I think that I talked myself out over the hours, leaving me with nothing other than a vague memory of some very important things I thought earlier... but now that I consider, they're probably all NDAified. So, um, never mind!

Think

2007.07.24

So sleepy, so sleepy I am! And wonder of wonders, I think I'll be able to sleep!

I can just tell you wanted to know.

Think

2007.07.22

Working at a gigantic software corporation has now measurably eroded my personality.

For years and years, since the first time I took the Meyers-Briggs personality test in high school, I tested completely consistently as an INFJ. No matter the flavor of the test that I took, no matter my mood when I took it, I saw a good decade of precise INFJ-ness, a comforting stable constant in the whirlwind of my chaotic inner life. I was always INFJ-me, after all.

But over the last year and a half, I've taken a form of the test a few times for team building at work, or because I was bored and the internet bid me click a bunch of radio buttons, and the results have shaken me. I'm always I-to-the-max, always J-nearly-to-the-limit, but my N/S and F/T scores vary wildly, apparently shifting with mood, recent experiences, current line of thought, and for all I know, what I ate for dinner. ISTJ, INTJ, INFJ, ISFJ, all seem to come and go, ebb and wane, mercurial as all fucking get out.

This turn of events scares the crap out of me. What is having "a real job" doing to me?!?

Think   1 Thought

James @ 2007-07-24 07:28:40pm

Look at what you posted on 7/16 and then look at what you posted on 7/17. Definate case of ups vs. downs. The ups and downs can begin to affect you if you let it. Jobs can do that... I kno... it sucks. I once had this old lady nag me all the time at work. It really got to me, I thought that I was always just messing up... Until I realized that she wasnt always right and/or she usually just made a big deal over nothing. And now it doesnt bother me at all. So again I think it's a case of ups vs. downs affecting you and giving you those more random of results. Hope this insight helps!

Hide thought

2007.07.20

The last couple days of the week were infinitely better than the first couple days of the week, largely due to getting to drink a lot of beer and vent with with people. Hooray! And tonight I went to see Brandon play with Western Star, which was full of country awesomeness. A good end to the week, even if every even possibly eligible boy thought I was Brandon's girlfriend.

Think

2007.07.17

(upset)

Today was awful, and I need a hug. There's a situation afoot at work, and I feel so powerless and frustrated. It's a classic case of two sides trying to reach agreement on something, but they happen to employ two different vocabularies; only one side seems aware of the problem at all, can't seem to catch themselves before repeatedly saying XYZ only to have the other side hear ABC, and every attempt to explain what was really meant gets met with more freaking out rather than an attempt to understand.

If there's one thing I really can't handle, it's trying to collaborate on something when the other party just digs in and riffs on endless variations of "We're right, you're wrong, you don't know what you're talking about," no matter what.

I don't think I have ever hated my job more than I do right now.

And I think we can all agree that that's pretty damn lame.

Think

2007.07.16

Oog. 13+ hour day at work. Admittedly, it didn't start until nearly noon, what with the whole being up retardedly late with respect to the kitten on the roof thing, but still. Long day. But I got so much done! Including stepping on a friend's toes, which was upsetting, but... SO MUCH DONE.

I feel like I caught up with a couple weeks' worth of work items, all in one 7 hour push starting around the time everyone else left the office.

Days like that are worth 13 hours of my time.

Think

2007.07.15

Details are in about my living situation. Lease will be renewed for 9 months, for a very slight increase in rent. After that...

The Fool and I have hatched a plan.

Assuming that he can find a job (more below), he and I will be buying a place together. We'll start looking around January, most likely. We figure it's a perfect way for us to both buy a house without having to settle for places that we don't really like or are way out in the boonies. Plus, keeping everything in the family has several bonuses. Us both (and Jenya) living there means we've got some specific requirements about the layout (and the number of bathrooms, heh), but we think we can make this work. I'm excited.

Of course, this plan is entirely dependent on Bryce finding a job. Without an extra income, if I want to buy a place, I'm stuck in a condo or in BFE, or both. This situation stresses me out slightly, but we've had a few talks and it seems the road is clear. He has two months to find himself a job he really wants, that he'll be passionate about, that pays him well and sets him on a good career track, the sort of job that I, as his older sister, really want him to get. If in two months, however, he hasn't found that job, he is to go directly for the sort of tech job that he could get in a snap, the sort of job that will give him enough of an income to help pay for a house, but frankly, a job that will bore him and be a waste of his brain. As his sister, I'm going to be pretty distraught if he can't find the right job soon enough, but as someone planning on buying a house with him, he needs to get a damn job.

I've told him several times now that he needs to get off his ass and treat finding a job like, well, his job, but now I've got a vested stake in this whole thing. I'm trying to decide how hard I'm going to go to bat for him; I spent some time today hunting up jobs for him, but I worry about him resting easy thinking his older sis is gonna take care of him (as I've always done, sigh), and not putting in his own hat. Grr.

If only I knew people in the right industry! His dream is working in aerospace (space elevators, specifically), but he's also interested in firmware, electronics, and a variety of other scientific areas... particularly if they end up having aerospace or aviation applications. He graduated in June with dual BS degrees in Physics and Geophysics. He's a ridiculously smart cookie with strong technical aptitude and experience. Why god why do I only know people in software development or systems analyst jobs? He could totally do a variety of work at a software company, and would be a bitchin' systems admin or analyst, but damnit, it's such a waste of his dreams. Bother.

It is becoming quite clear that one of the major barriers to me getting to bed at a reasonable time is the pair of cats that I call my children. Tonight's debacle? I realized at about 1:30 am that Aggie, who had about thirty minutes before been happily playing with bugs on the porch, had treed herself on the roof. Apparently that time in October didn't teach her any lessons. Well, I take that back, because apparently she learned to not come to the two parts of the roof I can vaguely reach, no matter how much I plead. Even the shed, you see, is just tall enough at one of the lower points of the roof that I can reach up, stand on my toes, and put my field of vision across the roof. It's not like I can actually get up or anything. Having not learned my lesson, and bought a goddamn ladder, I spent the next two hours alternating between trying to get her to come to an edge I could (kinda) reach, and giving up, going inside, and hoping she'd find her way down, but in her defense, I've gotten a little more familiar with my house since October, and I've come to decide that if I were a cat, I would indeed find it pretty easy to get up on the roof, but pretty damn difficult to get down, so those inside breaks were mostly for me to have a chance to not be craned at some weird angle on some monumentally unstable footing. But at 3:30 am, I stood on a chair, resting against the fence, wincing as I watched Aggie jump on top of the chimmney, and I resigned myself to just letting her try to find her own way down as I slept, and if she couldn't, figuring something else out on the morrow.

Just then, a car drove by, slowed, and parked a few houses down. A young couple got out, stretching as if they'd been cooped up for a while. I figured, hey, what the hell, opened the gate, and went to ask a pair of complete strangers at 3:30 am if they had a ladder.

Kelly and her boyfriend were very very sweet to a strange girl with an odd request in the middle of the night, and did indeed have a ladder. I promised to return it in the morning, trooped back across the street, spent a few minutes judging the best place to set it up, and braced myself to climb. You see, I have no problem with heights, in general, and I've got no problem with climbing, in general. But climbing up wavery things that my brain tells me are going to collapse any minute? That scares the shit out of me, and for some reason ladders are just about the scariest of the scary in that realm of things. Particularly at 3:30 fucking am in the morning. I found myself glad, again, that I'd put my cell phone in my pocket when I set out earlier to alternately climb up to the roof of the shed at one end of the house, and climb on a chair on top of a table at the other; thank god, I thought, that as long as I don't totally conk out when I fall, I should be able to call 911.

Aggie came right up when I poked my head over the edge of the roof (I'm pretty sure by this time she thought the whole roof thing was pretty fucking old... or maybe that's just wishful thinking), and I was able to grab her by the scruff of her neck and put her on my shoulder—just as the gutter, which one hand was resting on, shifted and groaned. It was probably just a loose nail going looser, but it spooked Aggie and I had to quickly shift her down to the ledge around the house before she clawed the crap out of me. Of course, with her freedom to actually frolic restored after something like three hours on the roof, Aggie did the cat version of a little jig and gamboled across the patio and through the fence to the street.

(banging head against wall) WHY GOD WHY?!? I JUST WANT TO GO TO SLEEP!

Thankfully, a mere ten minutes later, I was able to corral her in a neighbor's backyard, and hauled her little ass directly home. And now she's sulking!

AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH.

I'm buying a fucking ladder tomorrow.

Think   1 Thought

2007.07.13

Damn it all to hell.

Sleepy after booze and burgers with Jeff, I curled up on my couch to drift away to the flicker of the TV. I couldn't resist the lure of NCIS, however, and sleepiness faded; I figured, hey, might as well watch some more of my week's worth of stored up crime dramas. I chose poorly. Cold Case nearly always upsets me, so after that, I figured I'd watch some Without a Trace, which, if I'd thought it through, upsets me about 50% of the time. I should have quit with the first episode (which was happy!), but, irked that Tivo had chopped off the last minute of (happy!) summing up of the ep, I decided I'd watch another one.

Unfairly suspected person. Rampant injustice and discrimination. The good guy gets shot by a sniper, just as the misunderstanding is resolved. The girlfriend throws herself on him, screaming.

So now it's 3:30 am on a Friday night, and I'm in tears with my cats again. What the goddamn fuck. Last week, it was PMS, and this week, it's DMS. Two weeks out of every month lately, I'm a fucking emotional trainwreck!

Stupid stupid STUPID hormones. I hate you.

Assholes.

And here, I'll do the honors for you. Man, could I just shut up about the insomnia? How about I talk about some toast? Or I could just stop writing. Save us all some wasted boring time.

Think

2007.07.12

I live! Thank the maker. I'm trying like hell to get to bed at a reasonable time, so if you're a cat person, or just like cat mockery, and you need something to read, go check out this collection of obnoxious games with which to torment your cat. So comprehensive! Living in a place with hardwood floors, I'm a particular fan of "kitty bowling," or "slide the kitty" as it's known around these parts.

Well, my goal of going to bed "early" (read: approximately 1:30 am) was blown by the children deciding there was no way in hell they were coming home before we all went on a rambling hour-long jaunt around the neighborhood. Now, normally, I love taking walks with my cats, but damnit, I was tired, and my patience waned at about the 30 minute mark. And then, while Aggie came into the house as docile as you please, Micah was startled by a passing bus and darted off into the underbrush. Usually the sibling who comes when called, he's been AWOL for the last half hour, and I'm THIS CLOSE > < to saying, "Fuck it, he's staying outside tonight," and be damned my usually adamant refusal to let them spend the night out.

So frustrating, to have a rare night where I felt sleepy at something approximating a reasonable hour be the one that my cats most insist on enjoying the summer. Last night they both came home around 11:30 and fell asleep on the floor! Argh.

Now, it's 3:20 am and I'm not at all dozy. Micah gets one more call out the door, and the twenty minutes or so I will try to spend winding back down to sleep, before he's completely out his nightly cuddle. Brat.

3:43 am edit: he came right up when I called out the door. He's still a brat.

Think

2007.07.11

All I ask is that I wake up in the morning, having not been slain through voodoo magic in the night. Also, no hangover would be nice. But I'll take still alive.

Think   2 Thoughts

2007.07.10

What a wildly bipolar day. But let's focus on the positives! I hear that's good for my stress level or something.

I misread my bus connection this morning, and found myself at the east end of U Village at 8:56 am with no connection coming until 9:37. After examining several options (including calling Jeff and making him look at tripplanner for me... I am such a poster child for NEEDS A GODDAMN SMARTPHONE), I simply walked down Montlake to 520. It was a lovely morning, before the full heat hit, and I can't say I've had a better 20 minutes before 10 am in quite the extended indefinite time period. I had coffee to sip, music to listen to, dappled shade to wander in and out of, and the entire stream of Montlake traffic to mock as I passed car after car on foot. And I only ended up being 10 minutes late my first meeting (had I gone for more convoluted transportation options, it would have been more like 30 minutes). Given how often I seem to be 5-10 minutes late to meetings in general, I count this morning as a win. Also, the no fewer than 10 cute geek boys to check out on the particular 545 I caught was appreciated. Thanks, universe!

I also had the most spectacularly happy making meeting with my manager that I may have ever had since she became my manager. The short version is that my management loooooouuuuuuurrrrrrrvvvves me. Yay!

There were many other bits and pieces of goodery, but I'm filing the two above into the permament good memories bin.

And did I really not even garble out some lame version of "ugh. tired." the last couple days? I'm sure it was so missed.

Think

2007.07.08

I guess I was too busy having a nice quiet day yesterday to actually post the entry saying so into live /tht/. I'm sure you were all devastated.

Just as quiet and good a Sunday as Saturday, if a few hours longer. I spent most of they day bumming through the transit system or walking through the U-District and Capitol Hill, and it was an excellent sunny afternoon to do so. I was stymied in my effort to find new hair thingies, but I got my hair cut, and isn't that a fair trade? I mean, c'mon. They both have to do with hair. It's obvious, Robert.

Despite my lovely days, full of sunshine and sleep and getting many things done (finally vacuumed the house, after weeks of dawdling), I am ready as all get out for this weekend to be over. I've not had a more substantial verbal conversation than idle small talk with the guy who cut my hair since... sometime early Friday afternoon. Micah and I have had some very deep chats, but it's just not the same.

When vacuuming today, I made a discovery. A long lost cat toy, the tiny silver tinsel ball, cousin to the Green Ball of yore. I thought not much of it when I unearthed it; it had been gone so long that I'd forgotten its power, and so I shunted it to the bottom of the cat tree with the rest of the few toys that have survived to keep the cats company in their second year. Micah had fled the vacuum, to be retrieved only at the end of the evening, when I hunted him up out of the backyard. Not five minutes after he made it inside, I was standing in the kitchen, prepping coffee for the morning, when I heard a dreadful rumpus from the living room. I stuck my head in to see him diving and skidding five feet across the hardwood in hot pursuit of the ball... he ran right into the wall, chomped down on the toy, flung it several feet across the room, and dove back after it.

I've been watching him, entranced, for nearly 10 minutes. There's few things as joyous to watch as a cat in play; how thankful I am to end my day on such a note.

Think

2007.07.07

Beautiful, quiet, short Saturday. Fell asleep all sad pants around 2:30 and let myself sleep until I woke up, which was approximately 14 hours later. Almost two full nights of sleep! Glorious. I feel so much better.

If only it weren't so beastly hot, I'd do all that cleaning work that I've been meaning to do, but cleaning the tub will have to suffice.

Think

2007.07.06

I was at work today until nearly 1 am, not because I had that much work to do, but because I genuinely had nothing more entertaining to do on a Friday night than to pave and reinstall my dev system. And then, even though I know I've been maudlin all week, I come home and watch something guaranteed to make me cry. So here I am, at 2 am on a Friday night, bawling my eyes out with only my cats for company.

Classy, Jen, real classy. Way to go there.

Think

2007.07.05

Operation If-I-Can't-Get-To-Bed-Before-1-Maybe-I-Can-At-Least-Get-To-Bed-Before-3 commences... now.

My day was short and I was drunk for several hours of it. I really gots nothing.

Never mind, after looking at my logs for the day, I do gots something. In particular, the fact that someone searching the string "strange japanese porn cut up girls in suitcase" got someone to /tht/. I BOGGLE. This time. Any time after now, I'll be expecting it! And I shall laugh and laugh.

Think

2007.07.04

Transformers rocked my inner 12-year-old boy's socks off. And I'm fucking exhausted.

Think   3 Thoughts

2007.07.02

Well, let the angst and stress begin. What should have been a routine matter (renewing my lease) turned instead into an ulcer: landlords want to up the rent. And they want to sell the house. I'll likely get a 6 month renewal on my lease, and then be on month to month until they boot me to sell. ARGH. The thing is, if I could afford it, I'd buy this place in a heartbeat. If only I'd had a couple more years of saving up before this happened... sigh.

So likeliest is that I'll be looking for a new place in 6 months or so. I hate moving. And I better be able to find a place I like as well as this one, or I'm going to be making with the very cranky face.

Think

2007.07.01

Well, once again it's somewhere past 3:00 am, once again that same blasted spambot has forced me to waggle my finger in its face (gnauga, please!), and once again I'm telling the uncaring internet about how insomniac I am. Two of those things relate to each other; the third just annoys the crap out of me. Well, really, I suppose all three of them do the annoying the crap out of at least somebody part.

And now that I screwed June out of having its own month all month, I think I'll finally do a date roll. WHEE! That way this annoying, annoying entry can stand highlighted among all the many many more interesting years of /tht/, where instead of writing something semi-cogent or partially amusing about the fact that I'm tired, I just wrote "I'm tired."

Think   1 Thought