Ergh, what a day.

I know it's the kind of day where I shoulda stayed in bed when my body is screaming at me two hours into the shift.

I had a sixteen year old flirting at me.

If I'd had the energy to get my paper out during the five hours I was there, I would have taken better notes.

Old Lady Monitor told me a horror story from her past on the phones where some joker tried to tell her how to spell the name of said joker's sister: "C, l, i, t, o, r, i, s." Uh-huh.

Just another day being a survey goon.

Five hours should not feel like ten hours.

Brief reminder about IMing me, rant and guidelines to follow:

Random people IMing me who haven't gotten the clue last time I didn't want to talk to them annoy me.

Spelling (correct) is key to my remaining not pissed off. Native speakers of English have no excuse. Non-native speakers of English often have more precisely correct English than native speakers; if one is a non-native speaker of English and knows one's command of the language is poor, a simple mention of this in the header of one's remarks will turn a snarling bitchy Lunatic into a polite and informative Lunatic (as the number of languages I speak and write with any degree of fluency I can count on my tongue, and I have great respect for those who have mastered a second language to any degree of being able to communicate in it).

Getting hurt and defensive if I don't respond is not a way to make me want to talk with you, again, ever.

Getting hurt, defensive, and huffy if I indicate my unwillingness to converse is not a way to make me want to continue the conversation.

Incentive to Move

wibbble, you would have no point of reference for this, but --

-- the next time you and E are trying to convince me to move to Scotland, remind me that the highlands resemble Alaska, complete with fireweed.

Cleaning, and other dangerous beasts

I'd been thinking about my bed situation (I have the morphing bed of DOOM, I swear; elance has seen it in at least two different configurations; I should really get the camera up and running so I can document all the phases it goes through) and I'd wanted some new happy fluffy beddish things, like mattresses. (The old ones had gone bye-bye, see...)

Ta-da! Recycle area mattress and box thingy.

Now. My bed, onions, networks, cakes, and ogres all have something in common. All of these things have layers. As wrestled into construction last night (bottom up):
Box thingy
Cushions from the defunct megacouches
Mattress
futon mattress
Assorted bedding/pillows

It's scary.

Of course, since my roommates are having bed trouble, I donated the futon to them to put on top of their old mattress, so the mattress can interface with the scary and bad metal frame of the bottom bunk, and the futon can interface with their backs. I hope it works; I also hope that I'll be able to sleep on my own bed as it is.

I vacuumed the living room a bit. There is a guy here from Preferred Multi Service (the contractor this apartment complex uses for stuff like the a/c problems -- and it's a bonus that their initials have amusing effect ...) working on the A/C. Yesterday Sis discovered that the A/C's perpetual leak was not only dripping out the unit, but traveling through the ductwork and drizzling down the walls, causing the paint to puff out and the sheetrock to start disintegrating. So the PMS guy is here.

I'm pulling things out of my closet. I've been moving useless things off my altar. People give me magical junk, or I accumulate it, and it clogs things up, probably both physically and spiritually.

So. Cleaning.

It's my day off, so I get to do these things...

Freewill of the Week

Gemini Horoscope for week of September 2, 2004
http://www.freewillastrology.com/horoscopes/gemini.html
Historians estimate that at least 25 percent of all the gold ever mined lies at the bottom of the oceans, stuck inside ships that have sunk. Similarly, Jungian psychologists believe that in the depths of our psyches, there are great treasures moldering away, unclaimed by our conscious egos. For you Geminis, this September is the diving season - the time when you're most likely to be successful if you descend into the murky abyss and try to retrieve those lost riches.

And I'm cleaning the altar and the closet, trying to see what's there, writing random stuff...

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Cancer Horoscope for week of September 2, 2004
http://www.freewillastrology.com/horoscopes/cancer.html
The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft has been flying around the planet Saturn recently. Reporting on its explorations, a story in USA Today had the headline, "Saturn Offers More Mystery, Less Certainty." I photocopied it and sent it to my astrological colleagues, many of whom suffer from a misguided certainty about Saturn's meaning. They dogmatically insist it's a harbinger of contraction and limitation--an oppressive tyrant sucking the fun out of life. But my research suggests the real story is more complex. Saturn can actually be a benevolent guide that pushes you to be more true to yourself. It helps you shed mediocre pleasures and trivial goals that distract you from your high-priority dreams. It forces you to be ruthlessly honest about what's most important to you. I wanted you to know these fun facts, Cancerian, since the ringed planet is in your sign, and will remain there, nudging you to develop the discipline that leads to more freedom, until July, 2005.

Hmm.

Things on fire

The PMS guy is using his torch to fix things. I set up a chair near my door for the Little Fayoumis to sit in and watch things. Instead, he wanted to play in my room (which I hadn't set up for kid-rampaging). I had to tell him that I had not invited him in to play, I had invited him to sit in the chair there and watch.

Maybe now the blasted chiller unit will stop leaking.

It's not technically an air conditioner. It's got a water hookup to its mothership unit, and they have it running hot or cold depending on the season. It's cooling the apartment, but in doing so, it drips something nasty (and what it drips is pretty nasty too). From what I can see of the exposed guts, it looks like two squirrelcage blowers (FatherSir's technical term -- not sure if that's the industry standard name) and some mysterious guts.

It'll take a while, but it'll get fixed. Eventually.

I offered to dig up another bucket for the guy, should he need one. He didn't, but he appreciated the thought.

I know how to stay out of the way, see.

Rental cars, universe-smack

ralmathon's car was put out of commission for a while a little bit ago. He'd rented a car for the interim, to get to work and all that. Today his car was fixed and ready to pick up, so he asked me to help him out...

We drove there. I drove the rental car back here. He picked up his car and drove it home. Now he's just picked up the rental car and is taking it back to the rental place.

That's the bare bones of the matter. Why, then, am I feeling so gobsmacked? Because Eris, that bitch, has just walloped me a good one across the face.

First of all, I am a divination major. Of all the things I do, divination's one of the things I do best, deepest, sharpest. Sometimes I scry by license plate. ralmathon's car was rented from the rental place just down the street, so I see it in the parking lot all the time. Sometimes its license plate smacks me about the head with a divination, or, more accurately, gives me warning that something scrambled is about to happen.

Something scrambled happened.

We were driving along, listening to the classic rock station, I was asking questions for stuff to put in the book, and thinking about how very comfortable this was, and then Eris slapped me.

Now I think I'll go run headfirst into a few walls.

(no subject)

"You are not allowed to scratch the little woman!" -- the Little Fayoumis to ralmathon about me.

Love language testing results

http://www.greaterquest.com/LoveLanguages.asp

Score Love Language
7 Words of Affirmation
9 Quality Time
2 Receiving of Gifts
1 Acts of Service
11 Physical Touch


( Their commentary on interpretation... )

Not that much of this is a surprise. I can't live without being touched, pretty much.

I'm glad the testing mechanism didn't confuse (too much) the expression/intake, because those can be wildly different. I express caring by giving gifts -- more thoughtful than expensive, though I've been known to go a little overboard on expense rather than settle for a less appropriate item. This is more so than I take in caring by getting gifts -- when I get gifts and they express an utter lack of understanding what I would appreciate from someone who is supposed to be close to me, I would rather not have gotten a gift than have gotten a thoughtless or useless gift.

(unfinished, unsent letter to congressman)

2004 Sept 01
Dear Congressman Shadegg,

The tone of your letter in response to my feedback on the proposed Constitutional amendment in "defense" of marriage erroneously assumes that I am opposed to same-sex marriage.

I have gladly accepted and have been prepared to honor the idea of a marriage between any couple willing to commit themselves to each other as long as I have comprehended what marriage was. This includes a marriage between members of the same sex.

As the devoted "aunt" and full-time guardian of an eight-year-old child, I can tell you from personal experience that it is love, time, attention, devotion, and serious commitment that are required to raise a happy, healthy, and morally upstanding child. The mere perpetuation of the species requires a man and a woman, but in no way requires the social and financial contract that is marriage.

If you truly wish to defend marriage, look to the divorce rate. Why deny same-sex couples the possibility of boosting the sacred institution that 43 to 50%^* of opposite-sex married couples are fleeing? Marriage is a powerful commitment that should not be entered into lightly, and no one realizes that more powerfully than the same-sex couples who are denied it.

I do agree that children need to be raised in a stable household and taught right from wrong. I am happy to report that our household started out with a broke single mother and a broke college student and a toddler in 2001, and now features nearly a 100% rise in income, reliable --

* statistics courtesy of www.divorcereform.org

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(Letter goes on to next page at this point; next page is somewhere missing)