Earning the Big Bucks

Work is so much fun, good *gods*.

Not.

After working eight hour shifts, six hours or less is mighty appealing. I only worked five and a half hours today. Less, if you count in the fact that we got a half-hour break, and also that I wasn't in my booth 100% of the time -- the company's policy that we always have a glass of water in our booths means that they can't sanely regulate water breaks, nor bathroom breaks -- and even less if you count, as I tend to, the time actually spent doing a survey as "non-work." Furthermore, they had me down as one of the fill-in-the-blanks workers who hangs out in the break room until the supervisors see how many people have bailed today, and then we get assigned to jobs as needed. They call us "wallflowers" because we sit around and wait until we're asked to dance...

Major unhappiness of the day -- two high school-sounding girls (the same two who'd been comparing notes in the bathroom about the one girl's nasty new streaked hair, which was supposed to have been blond but turned out orange instead) were gossiping up a storm behind me. I couldn't hear the guy on the other end of the phone, and I asked them to keep it down (politely) and when I turned back to the phone the guy had hung up.

A rather good day, overall.

High points --

--they put me on "Brand Equity," a rather long survey (30-45 minutes) about modern electronic communication methods, and providers of such services. I love this survey, even though the vast majority of my cow-orkers hate it.

--I got to eat dinner with Motley, a woman about my dad's age with a delightfully horrendous sense of humor. We talked about world events, dogs, cats, pinball cats, the psychoactive effects of her getting the flu and therefore being unable to keep her meds down, Pestilence, and other subjects of general interest. We usually tend to freak out the lunchroom when we do this. She's got a friend who wants to have the phrase "If found, drop in nearest mailbox" tattooed on the bottom of his foot in the Elder Futhark runes, in case he ever ends up in a morgue. This is one of her more normal friends.

--I came up with a brilliant idea that may or may not be put into practice. ( Blah blah blah. I babble. )

Insights

Turns out that when I was discussing a certain phenomenon that I'd been noticing since I was at least 15, definitely earlier, with ras_sinister, it sparked some thoughts, and I repeated those thoughts to Sis, who proceeded to listen very intently for several minutes, and then started shuffling madly through her Book Of The Moment (The Magician) and started reading passages back to me, the passages she'd just been reading, that touched on the same subject.

I am to be careful to not destroy any worlds.

Shoes

Sis is hard on her work shoes, incredibly so. She wore out a pair of Doc Marten's in six months (the sort with the year guarantee) just by wearing them at work doing the normal things she does.

I had my mother send me my toughest pair of hiking boots, inherited from a former college roommate who didn't want them anymore (one eyelet was broken off) and Sis managed to demolish them in a scant four months. They've got duct tape soles now, and I looked at that and I said, "Nope, you're not wearing those."

She's got my black steel toed sneakers to beat the hell out of now, the shoes I got for work in the bakery when my old blue and white sneakers got thrashed. I love those shoes, and they saved my toes more than once, countless times, when I was a cashier -- shoppers at Sam's Club, running their carts right into my toes -- thank the gods for steel toed sneakers.

Sis expects to beat the hell out of them in a week, just like she expected to beat the hell out of the hiking boots in a week -- I expect they'll last just long enough for us to save up money for a decent pair of shoes for her.

Falsehoods of Omission

I just lied to Darkside.

"I get these hyperactive moments. If I know what triggers them, I can usually fight them off."

Technically true, only in that it's "usually" that I can fight the hyperactivity off.

Darkside leaned back in his chair just a few moments ago, and in doing so, presented me with a lovely mental picture of what lay under his clothing. I sat still for about a minute, but then the energy build-up got too great, and I had to run out of the room and walk very quickly about the halls for a minute or so until I was safe enough to sit back down next to him again.

I knew full well what had triggered it. Until he's ready to hear it, courtesy demands that I refrain from shoving my emotions in his face.

Working Out

Sis had noted, the night before last, that I had been losing weight, and that I would really attract a lot of attention if I wore tank tops, due to the size of my breasts. I told Sis that the only male attention I really wanted to attract would be that of Darkside, Dave-in-Germany (gods bless, dear, wherever you are now...), and Adam. I commented yesterday morning to Darkside that Sis was trying to get me to wear tank tops, but that I thought it wasn't such a great idea. I gestured down at my body, which is still far from my personal ideal. Darkside made some short, almost throwaway, comment about me and a gym. I doubt he remembers he said anything.

Last night found me working out in the apartment complex's weight room, a place I had not visited since the intitial tour around the complex when we first moved in.

When I get buff, I'm gonna kick his ass. I don't do too bad a job of it already, so this should be fun.

Violence as humor

Yesterday morning Darkside saw that I was acting morose and hit me over the head a couple times to cheer me up.

It worked.

This morning, we had a small skirmish or three over various bad puns and bad jokes. Darkside "hit me over the head with a nine iron" (smacked me very hard with his hand, he says that this "nine iron" is a type of golf club?) and then bonked me variously while in the computer lab, kicking my butt at several points. (His ass is not vulnerable where he is sitting now, or he'd be so kicked.)

All's Fair.

Walked Darkside out to his car to pick up his books for Networking class. It was nearly time for class when we got back to the room (he'd been smacking me with the Linux book) but instead of sitting down at his desk like a good little fayoumis, he came back to the door to chat with me.

"Don't you have class?" I asked him, the same thing he asks me when I hang around too long with him right before the bell's about to ring.

"Of course I do," he said. "What about you?"

"I'm not a class 4 laser," I said, "because I don't set fire to things. I'm not a class 3 laser, because you can look at me without hurting your eyes."

Darkside took my head in his hands and began examining it for markings. "Ah," he said. "You're crazy! Says so right here!"

As he turned around to go back to class, his ass was just such a tempting target... so of course I kicked it.

He turned, punched. Light blow, of course. Friendly. Hit me in the breast, right square on the nipple.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to hit there. I was aiming right..." he punched at my stomach "...here."

"All's-fair-in-love-and-war," I said.

I smiled at him and left.

Many of his punches at me today have been hitting that general area, but that was the first time he noticed.

The High-Speed Connection

Why are there so many noises my modem makes when I am going on line
The net is intriguing, but always eludes me,
I always get bumped offline
I have been told but refuse to believe it
That dial-up’s the best thing for me
Someday I’ll get it, the high-speed connection, the laptop, the modem, and me.
Who said that 56k was the absolute limit
For transmission across a phone line
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it,
And some think this may be fine
What’s so beguiling that keeps us redialing
And what do we think we might see?
Someday I’ll get it, the high-speed connection
The laptop, the modem, and me.
All of us phoning at once
The collision is going to be tragic...
When it is late at night, and you’re downloading
Have you been kicked offline
By some bloody moron who’s got the wrong number?
The rage is so hard to confine
I’ve been there too many times to ignore it
And someday then I’ll fin’lly see
Someday I’ll get it, the high-speed connection
The laptop, the modem, and me.

Please a T-3 line for me, oh....
La laa la la laa dee daa doo...

Lyrics by Joan [] (azurelunatic), shamelessly filked from Kermit the Frog's "The Rainbow Connection"

What I should have said...

...when Darkside hit me straight in the bull's eye...

"Aren't you going to kiss it and make it all better?"

Waiting by the phone

*sigh*

Sucks. Just sucks.

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...what happened...

the plan: at four, after his class was over, Adam was going to come over to my place to hang out and stuff. We would do this until walking time to school from 6, when I had to be there for my class, and Adam had to be there to be picked up by his ride.

Approximate timeline:

3:50 -- Azz anticipates that Adam will be starting over at any time.
4:00 -- Sis returns from work with Nephew. Azz agrees to watch Nephew while Sis goes and gets groceries for dinner; Azz and Adam can wait for their fun until Sis returns.
4:30 -- Sis returns. Azz begins wondering where Adam is; has his lab run late? Is he all right?
5:05 -- Adam finally pages Azz via Yahoo Instant Messenger and wants to know if she's mad at him for being so late. Azz requests that he get his butt over there now, there's still time for them to hang out.
5:18 -- Azz wonders if Adam is on his way; he hasn't shown up at her doorstep yet. Azz is unhappy.
5:35 -- Adam is evidently not on his way. He wants to know can Azz show up at school instead.
5:40 -- Azz, having finished crying finally, and washed her face, is ready to leave for class.
5:49 -- Azz has finished helping Sis with the pizza.
5:53 -- Azz has had a few more words with Adam via Y!IM and hopes that he will meet her at her classroom before class starts.
6:01 -- Azz arrives in classroom as teacher finishes handing out quizzes from last class period. No sign of Adam.
6:05 -- Test on Chapter 7 in Visual Basic textbook begins.
6:07 -- Adam shows up at door of classroom and catches Azz's eye. Azz's return look is not pleased.
6:40 -- Azz finishes test and goes to computer lab to blow off steam.

Update A

Adam and I had a few long conversations. Nothing like that is happening between us again; communication is the key. Glad I have such a wonderful friend/fling. It's all good. There will be much in the way of kissage tomorrow.

Update B:

The scheduled breaking of the system at work did not happen: they could not get the system up and running in order to break.

Ha-ha, as Nelson would say.

I still got an hour and a half of extra work.