Day, more of

Morning, school, retrieving LF, and all that.

Very quiet afternoon. He had a turkey to cut out. Sometime, like maybe tomorrow, I'm going to sit him down with the spelling words that he bombed on the practice, and have him practice writing them correctly. He also needs some work with the letter 'k'.

Made supper, with the Village People blasting. (LF has a fondness for "YMCA", which I must admit that I share.) Supper was a fascinating concoction of potatoes, overprocessed turkey, and cheddar cheese with assorted spices. Oh, and the mushrooms. It took too long to cook. Next time, I'm tossing it in the oven for an hour or so before throwing it in the frying pan for the cheese sauce stuff. Good, though.

LF went to bed quietly and without fuss, further demonstrating my vague idea that it's a good idea to not get him wound up by playing loudly with him just before bedtime. Granted that it's fun, but it doesn't get him in bed with a minimum of yelling.

Finished up re-reading Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones. I recommended that to Irving today in class. He's the LDS guy who reads Harry Potter. Yes, there is such a creature. The Websense category "Traditional Religions" is also blocked at DeVry. Sadly, I keep confusing Diana Wynne Jones and Patricia C. Wrede, and also Patricia C. Wrede, Robin McKinley, and Patricia McKillip. I blame the similarity in names and writing styles for my confusion amongst that last group.

Started re-reading lmbujold's Memory again. Cat snuggled up for the first few chapters. Then I kicked her out so I could take some personal time.

The laundry situation is becoming dire. Fortunately, votania has the day off tomorrow. Thank gods.

Cat 2 is back in my room. Cat 1 was wreaking loud havoc with a spool of thread outside in the living room. My fury knew very few bounds: I picked up the thread and yelled at him.

Now is bedtime. We'll see about that interview, even though the clothes are reaching critical (ie, all dirty).

Secret Code

I have figured out the Secret Code: "I'm crashing now" means, really, that you're going to be up for the next hour doing all the stuff that you need to do before bedtime really hits.

Snaking a meme that theferrett started... High-pressure contestant go BOOM!

theferrett challenged us to name the questions (and answers) that we went boom on in any high-stakes competition we'd flubbed. He suggested a spelling bee. I didn't get high enough in any spelling bee to remember what word I'd bonked out on, but I do remember...

...the Geography Bee.

This was one of those national contests. There were quite a few, when I was a kid. It was a sneaky way to get kids to learn stuff, so they could spout it back under pressure. I did well on the MathCounts thing, or at least well enough.

But the one that's forever emblazoned on my mind is the geography bee.

I was in the 4th grade. I'd beat out the rest of my class and the rest of my grade. The other final contestants were 6th graders. I was the only 4th grader who'd made it to the top 10. If I won this, I'd compete against other schools in the district as the representative of my school. My class was cheering for me. I was up in front of the entire school, including my little sister swallowtayle. I was one of the top 3. I'd beat out all but two of the other students, and I'd never even had the US Geography class that we were supposed to have had in the 3rd grade. I was psyched, I was buzzing, I was on...

Name the two countries on either side of the Strait of Gibraltar.

The country on the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar from Morocco is Spain. Spain. How could I remember Morocco but not Spain, I ask you? Because I'd been reading King of the Wind, and the country the horse had come from was Morocco, and they'd had to sail across the blasted strait.

Since I didn't get both countries, I was out.

Naomi's conked out...

So...

Real Sheep

Not, NOT work-safe, but text-wise.

Howling rooster

votania's mousepad just howled (it's a wolf mousepad), and I realized suddenly how much I miss our old rooster Cello.

He was a lovely bird, tall and black-feathered and shining and ever-so-dumb. But he tried hard, which is really all one can require of a rooster, and his birdy heart was in the right place. (I am in a position to judge the relative intelligence of chickens, and Cello was a lovely featherbrain, but not an idiot. He had common sense, but no guile.)

He learned how to crow from the dog yard next door. All of our other roosters had fine melodious crows (okay, some of the Old English banty roosters were a little screechy), but Cello sounded like he was a dog howling. He was very proud of himself, though. He was best friends with swallowtayle's rooster Larkspur, and when Lark disappeared, he really didn't know what to do with himself.

He was a tall rooster, as he was a Black Langshan; he was a bit taller than our very large fire extinguisher, a little over knee-height on my father. His feet were huge and half-covered in feathers. He stomped when he walked, louder than my father, who is a large man.

XiaoGong Ji was our first Black Langshan rooster, and will always be our favorite, but Cello was special too.

Linkage

The Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow: http://www.style.org/unladenswallow/

Thanksgiving, how we love it and some of our families: http://www.livejournal.com/community/metaquotes/472237.html

Why it's a good idea to prick your baked potatoes: http://www.livejournal.com/users/silmarian/143678.html

Post from on paper, old (from November 25)

4:17 p Went well, I think. Waited, filled out app, much waiting. A guy not half so spiffiliy dressed came in to interview for same position. I got there first, so this should prove educational. The other guy looked like more of a people person. I have some small experience, however.

Waiting for bus to go to plasma place. I can at least start scraping together the fundage for daycare.

May take Big Bro (ralmathon) up on his general nepotism-is-a-virtue-when-used-correctly thing and see if I can't get a job at the Eckert here on 16th stree & Camelback where he was planning on transferring to.

4:26 p. Still waiting on bus. Losing professional polish fast. Will not be good @ maintaining professional polish (that's the look in that rather frozen userpic of mine) on job. Unless I revive Alys. My fellow fans in lmbujold know where that name comes from!

Oh. The computer cable job is $7.00/hour, which is over the minimum I would need to keep LF in daycare. I've sussed his daycare costs out to be just over $50/week, and I would be making twice that much, and I could work as late as they wanted on Friday.

4:35 My mind has been trained to work in 9-minute intervals by my snooze button. The snooze button has the alarm sound every 9 minutes, and I use it to keep me on track in the mornings. Alarm go off, hit snooze, eat breakfast & surf web, and so on, until it's time to actually leave.

It works remarkably well. I should write a thing on time management for the procrastinator. I'm so messy, I have to be organized.

4:40 The army called for me last night. It was me, so I told him 'not interested' politely. Marah has the snark.

Marah, the bitter, grand high keeper of the Lunatic's snark. I like titles, as long as they're meaningful.

Oughtn't the bus to have come by now?

Ah. Bus at stoplight, immediately I wrote that.


6:51 Waiting by plasma place. Nice & cool. Little Fayoumis asked me where my jacket was today. Heh, heh. Said jacket is still in California. Will return to retrieve it at some point.

Daddy Daycare was the movie of the day. I like that movie. Thought I would. Who'd have guessed that I'd have converted to full-fledged parent (or stepparent) by the age of 23? Getting 'em when they're already half-grown is cheating, and gives the illusion of greater experience. [Little Fayoumis] can barely remember when before I was there.

He still remembers [Darkside], though.


6:58 Bus.

Thanksgiving. Boy, what fun. Wish Mama & FatherSir could be here.

I'm all spiffy. Black skirt, mid-calf. White shirt. Impeccable makeup. A random at the plasma place asked me questions about it and told me I was pretty. Nice-enough guy, as far as all senses went. Long black hair, a little taller than me, Native American, good vibes, pleasant voice, nice handshake. A little too flirty, though, and my dance card would be relatively full, and furthermore I prefer to date among friends. That would make me very, very picky.

I actually understood a few words in what the kid who only spoke Klingon was saying.

I think I'm over the worst of that depression. Fortunately for me, I've been making incredible progress in what I consider depression.

I've also been noticing that it's even more difficult for me to be around people who are in a bad mental space. Part of me is afraid I'll be sucked back in; part of me is frustrated that they haven't found their way out and it feels like nothing I do is helping.

One of the constants in my life is that I form deep, trusting, and temporary friendships. Usually they'd be friendships of convenience, where I was the only one who had the time, would listen, wouldn't judge.

Mind? What's that?

I was going to post the post about Cello this morning. I was going to post the post about going out for that job interview this afternoon.

Call it brain damage or something, but I was confident in either case that I had ... until I looked at my journal from school, and until I looked at Semagic and found the mangled beginnings of the post that I didn't wind up posting, because it was time-sensitive.

So, yeah.