Good. Happy.

Miscommunications were cleared up and hashed out, and hugs were offered and given.

When there's no one around to distract us, we get geeking like there's no tomorrow, and trains of thought go haywire. We'd probably be dangerous if we communicated more regularly.

Alignment (from last night)

The blender is chaotic neutral!

School

Headed over to LF's school to check on stuff. He is, in fact, registered, and votania won't have to go through all that hassle again. We have teacher's name, class size (17), class materials, and a map with the location circled.

Yay!

No one has to waste time. In fact, the only required material is the backpack...

Yay!

Today I got a chance to fight the good fight for literacy and give product feedback about a proposed product name that was just too... too... yaaagh. Not only was it too cute, but it was misspelled to be too cute.

I don't find that at all good when spending my money is concerned.

Contact, hypnosis

Didn't get in touch with him yesterday. That's all right, as I've hit a comfort-point with being in contact with him. If I talk to him at length almost every day for over a week, skipping a few days here and there does not distress me. This is as it should be.

I like it when I have to explain certain things to people, because that helps me understand it better myself. Last night, I explained to marxdarx the fact that when I get off the phone with Darkside, I'm either bouncy and way too happy, or I'm very quiet, with a whole lot of undirected emotional energy lurking just below the surface. I'm also very suggestible, as if I were coming slowly out of hypnosis.

marxdarx said this sounded dangerous. I said that it was, and would be very dangerous with anyone but Darkside.

Darkside is taking me, slowly but surely, with my active cooperation, from being someone who unhealthily depends on someone, anyone, trustworthy or no, to being independant and ass-kicking. As an interim stage, I depend on him, as he is trustworthy. But he's kicking my ass into being able to stand on my own. This is a plan I agree with, though it was entered relatively unconsciously.

Part of it, paradoxically, is learning the ability to ask for help when I need it. When I don't, things get so bad that I require help in a way that cannot be refused by anyone ethical/sane. When I do ask for help before it's non-critical, there's a choice whether to help me or not, a valid choice, and it's ethically better for me, as I'm not forcing anyone to help me by giving them the unfelicitous choice of being a good human being and helping me or being a rat bastard and ignoring my pain and not helping me.

It's a long, slow, hard thing to be doing, but I'm a lot happier with myself now.


Back to the hypnosis, though. After I come out of a conversation with him, I'm very quiet and suggestible, much of the time. It's a side effect, rather like how you should be very careful around azi when they're coming off kat.

*smirk* LF vs. Homework: SCORE!

Little Fayoumis put his toys away with a minimum of crabbiness (he thought he was entitled to leave them out all over the floor; I said nay, he grumped) and sat down to do his work.

The strategy of making sure he knows where the lines go (solid on top, solid on bottom, dotted in middle) has been working well for him getting things in the right place. Finally convinced him that he does not have to go back with the eraser and get everything just so -- he'll be fine.

Am feeling guilty that I focused so much on getting things right in the distant past, because now we have to train him out of obsessing over that, and train him into getting things done.

He was having issues with itching again (I am convinced it's psychosomatic, given he doesn't do that at other times) and I told him what he could do that has seemed to be working -- try scratching, then write a letter, then if it's still itchy, try scratching again, and if that doesn't work, write another letter, then try scratching again...

It looks bizarre as all get-out, but it gets him writing and not stalling. Well, it is, a little, but it's in short bursts between writing efforts, and it has him quickly going back to the task at hand, which is what's desired. He can wiggle about all he wants as long as he gets the job done. I'm not about to torture him by forcing him to remain absolutely still while working. Stillness can come later. It's all about doing the work, now.

He was wiggly and not too thrilled with it at first, and told me that he was getting tired of doing it (after one line and a half), but I told him that he needed to learn how to sit and work on stuff for school, because he would be doing that at school, and he needed to practice that so he would be able to do it in school and would not get in trouble for not being able to do that. I told him I wanted him to make his day at school every day! He accepted that as a very good reason to be learning how to sit still. Then I told him I knew he could sit still and do stuff for a long time, because he could do that with video games! He just had to learn how to focus on the writing like he did on the video games!

That, he got. You can tell when he gets something, because he begins calling out other applications of the same principle. "Like I focus on chess!" he yelled gleefully, and listed off several more. "Exactly. Now, focus on your writing," I told him.

And I reminded him to keep working, and keep working, and keep working, every time it looked like he was starting to think about slacking -- while I was washing dishes, so I was not only present, but busy and not hovering -- and he got it done in less than an hour.

After a while, he stopped fooling around, and started really focusing on getting the work done, and he zipped through it. He'd call out, "Good!" at the end of a line, and I'd come over and verify that it was good, and show him how to do the next letters, where the top line went, where the bottom line went, and where the middle line went. Y was the trickiest of this set; the small y has the dangling tail below the line, which makes for some confusion amongst small fayoumi unless the precise spacing is pointed out. And I pointed it out, and he did it. He's historically had troubles with making the capital letters and the small letters the same size, but the lined paper, with guide lines drawn on the example letters, seems to be doing the trick.

Today was a much better day all told, as no drama got passed along to me. Yay!

LF's school

It looks like one of his friends from last year will be in class with him. Yay! There's this other kid, Eli, who from the sounds of things, is a hell of a brat, and rude to boot, who's also going to be in there. Worry, worry, worry.

There are only 17 kids in the class (so far; I expect others to be added when they register) so it should be a teaching job for the teacher, not a zookeeping job.

Walking to his school from my school doesn't take particularly long. This will be useful, votania's schedule has gone all mutant on us yet again. *makes a backcountry sign against muties* She's still got Mondays off, as I've got that one looooong lab in the afternoon, and Yakky's got class then too, but once LF starts school Monday, I'll be able to pick him up Tuesday after Lit and before DBA, and Wednesday after Lit and go home, and Thursday after Lit and we can hang out for the hour before DBA. I'm sure we'll find something fun/entertaining to do. He can probably get an early start on his homework; I'll start packing along school supplies for him in my backpack so's he can do his homework in the middle of my DBA class. And then Friday, Marx will be home and can retrieve him at the appropriate time.

I want to be a good parent and get involved with school stuff, but I don't know if I'll have time. I'm some worried about the Thursdays, as I have Web labs due that day, but I'm sure I'll find some way to manage.

Household stuff...

Had LF do his homework
Did dishes.
Started scrubbing blender base all shiny
Put ring for LF on chain and put it on his table
Put my laundry into the laundry basket instead of all over the floor
Scooped cat boxes (the litter from Sam's is the kind that even if you let it sit in there for a couple days, it doesn't get horrible and it still leaves you with a nice fresh batch of litter once you scoop all the clumps out)
Swept catbox area
Took out trash (from main basket, and my two; must get living room and their room next)
Checked off tasks on the whiteboard
Put away laundry from last iteration
Put pillowcases on pillows
Took out trash from their room
Moved stack of binders/papers from Help Desk to a stack on the floor
Finished scrubbing blender base all shiny
Gave LF dinner (stew, now with more ketchup)

Cool LJ thing...

Send LJ a postcard!

I may just go ahead and give them a photo of me, too. Whee!

Subtle warning signs that should have told me BJ was a cockhead:

When BJ claimed to know more about telephones than I did, that should have warned me.

We'd just moved to AZ, and we were trying to get things organized. Somehow, there was shuffling about of telephones. There were two phone lines in that house, and it was the standard RJ-11 jacks and cords -- and then my one funky single-pair cord.

Now, I've worked with telephones for a long, long time. When I was five or so (I think), FatherSir brought home an old rotary phone; this was just after the switchover from pulse to tone in our area. swallowtayle and I got to dissect it. We didn't do much with it except take it apart, but I took it apart and drew incredibly detailed (for my age) pictures of the inner workings on the three-sheet carbon papers FatherSir had thoughtfully given us. I recall that doing this was an accomplishment that was made much of.

Later, I got to handle most of the phone-organizing in the house, running lines here and there, as FatherSir hadn't wired the house very well for telephone. And I got to troubleshoot the installation of my own second line (when it became apparent that one phone line for two adults, two teenagers, and a computer was just not cutting it, especially as the adults had activities, organizations, and bands, and the teens had activities and friends). It seemed that FatherSir had never hooked up the second pair of wires to the main jack in the bathroom, and I was the one who pointed out that it was pretty pointless to have the phone plugged in if the signal wasn't even getting there; it was working just fine from the main box at the shop, thanks much. So I knew which pair the signal for a secondary line went on, and I knew that you only needed one pair for a line.

I can't even remember BJ's line of bullshit, but I knew it was bullshit, because I'd supervised phone activities for so long. I kept trying to tell him, but he kept brushing me off, because he knew more about this stuff than I did, even though it was evident to me that he was wrong, and furthermore, if he'd been right, then his way would have been working.

He was a cockhead, pure and simple.

Landmarks

Today officially marks the first time I've been publicly admonished by a guy I have the hots for and I did not wind up feeling horrible for the next short to long while.

Professor Sandstrom made an aside comment to me at the beginning of class about something regarding my homework, something I'd been doing that I was not to continue doing, phrased in a way that would have, in the past, made me lower my head for fear tears would escape, and leave me feeling miserable until something acted on me to cheer me up.

Not so, this time.

I blushed, I know I did. I felt it red in my face. But there wasn't even a hint of tearyness, just a cool calculation about logins and whether or not I should offer him an LJ code.

Go, me.

Why Professor Sandstrom Rocks

I sent Prof. Sandstrom this link some time ago. He brought out the network cables today, and I mentioned it to him again. He'd gotten the link, and was furthermore going to get one for his brother, who is not only a network admin, but will be getting married in the near future.

Professor Sandstrom rocks. Furthermore, he has the balls to admit to the class that yes, he'd rather be gaming all day too.

shammash's tail

People visiting for the first time are always startled by shammash's tail.

Moshie was a stray. votania heard something crying, and saw a tiny striped kitten in a patch of sunlight when she was headed to the bank next door. She came back, and he was still there, still crying. So she scooped him up and brought him home.

He was mostly healthy, if a bit young to be on his own, except for his tail. His tail was about half the length it should have been, and crooked at the end, sticking up straight with a lump at the end like a short club. The end was healed, but the bones inside form a question-mark shape, his tail going up straight, making a right-angle turn, and then another one, so the very tip of his truncated tail points down at the floor when he points his tail up.

We still don't know how it happened, but he freaks out when the door is open and he sees a car drive past.

Other than that, he was a very healthy cat-boy until the ear thing.

Don't mess with his tail. He's a very laid-back cat, and doesn't get upset about much of anything. He suffers small children kindly, with the random well-deserved warning nip. He keeps his claws sheathed but for traction. He howls while getting a bath, but is more interested in getting away, and getting away fast, than hurting anyone. Even when his ear was nastily abscessed and I had to puncture and drain it daily, he still was very patient, even with a good half-inch of steel in his ear being poked around. But if you touch the end of his tail too roughly, he will bite. Still.

Maybe someday when it's in the budget, he could have surgery to remove those nasty bits of cracked and bent bone, like my mother had to have for her smashed and splintered finger some years after the accident.

Thngs that go bump n the late evenng

As you can probably tell from my spellng 'm wrtng ths from the actual eypad of my laptop versus the external eyboard that do nearly all of my typng from.

Why?

Because just had to update wth the results of my stuff-shufflng so far. n short bloced access to my worng eyboard and possbly broe my VCR.

( for those such as Az who are probably already wncng at the spellng )

We'll see what happens when plug t n...

Well, *joy*. (Not.)

It seems that the eject mechanism is not working correctly. This would likely be a problem, as Little Fayoumis's tape of Mulan is in there.

I had VCR 101 in electronics class... in high school. That was five years ago. Damn straight I don't remember much about it...

Here goes not very much (but not quite nothing).

Wow. I hope it still works...

The Mulan tape was wedged in there somehow. I got it out. I hope the thing didn't get damaged...

I now have the top off the VCR, and it plugged in, so I can see what's going on inside. Is this the electronics-geek version of having the side panel off your tower with the thing running?

I have this little plastic piece that I don't know what is.

---

The default testing tape is now the dollar store Sailor Moon episode. The Mulan tape came out just fine (we hope); the problem inside has to do with the tape holding/accepting/ejecting mechanism, which is busted in a non-evident way. The plastic piece looks to have broken off, which bodes ill for future use of the thing.

*sigh*

Grump.

Ghaaaa... Scout Walker Kama Sutra

http://www.churchofthegrey.com/atst/index.htm

Link via marxdarx, who seems intent on ruining my innocent little mind.

No human or animal nudity is depicted. Text is not work-safe.