A day!

Got up at the regular time, if a bit early. Prepared for work. When I arrived, it transpired that I was not actually on the schedule. I checked in with the office; the office noticed that I was scheduled in five shifts, not four. An executive decision was made, and I was de-scheduled for Saturday.

It was a beautiful day out, and I didn't feel like going back home, so I walked to the bus stop and caught the next bus in the general direction of the mall. I counted out pennies, nickels, and dimes for fare, all of it beforehand so I could just feed it in to the coin slot without pausing to count each one in. (I usefully spend more pennies that way.) I got a bus card for the month, because it's so much easier for me to get one and not worry about how many bus trips I'm taking rather than have to worry about where I'm going, when I'm going there, how long I'm staying, and if I have enough money that day to get back.

I strolled through the mall to the library. The mall was nearly deserted. I took this as an invitation to break out A Scholar of Magic, which I hadn't yet finished. Reading and walking at the same time can be hazardous, but not so much if one has good peripheral vision, which I tend to. This time I was not accosted by a stranger selling magazines with a dodgy ploy. I encountered another woman walking with book in the slanted parking lot to the northeast of the mall. She was coming back from the library with her new book. We hailed each other with good humor, as it's a small and exclusive club who can walk and read, and a smaller one that will, especially in public.

I wound up checking out Thud!.

On my way back home, I was very tempted to drop everything and go for a serious Explore on the bus system, armed with the bus card, but reality in the form of the writers group intruded. I was thinking about just packing up and going out, but it takes me a while to figure out what I'm doing with all the windows I have open, and I was disappointingly slow in getting out.

The Red Line at 5 was crowded and scary. I am not good with claustrophobia. The 17 felt like it arrived late, and was not quite as crowded. I finished up the book with great satisfaction. Perhaps I'll head out early tomorrow and return it to the library before work, getting some extra walking in.

Writers' group was small but lively. I actually had pieces to read this time (the beginnings of the War piece in the beta filter, and the betrayal piece posted publicly), then wound up editing Necromancer's Prayer with half my mind while listening to hcolleen read some of her latest. I'm a sucker for long seductions, and this was a delight. (Hee. And we get to hear these things before she releases them, ha ha!)

hcolleen's birthday. What shall we do? I'm really willing to avoid the Willow House at this point, just on General Principle. (Smoky, really really bad Poetry Night, and the assorted bit of dodgy company. Lots of great company, but enough Dodgy Company resonances to give me the jitters. That one guy who was totally macking on J, the ex-Army or whatever guy... I don't really have any desire whatsoever to run into him again. Ever.)

We wound up at the usual place and had a delightful wacked-out conversation. Must remember to link hcolleen to that one story about Scully vs. the Lone Gunmen.

Starting to plot for Renfaire excursions. I had a most delightful image of a party attending Renfaire consisting of: figment0, hcolleen, kilarneyblarney, M, dustraven, trystan_laryssa, their ex-roommate, his wife, and the kids, Darkside, and me.

Wound up calling trystan_laryssa, getting off the bus at her stop, and hanging out with her for a while. That was fun. I had too much chocolate in the house, and left some with them. (If one changes one's eating-of-chocolate habits and does not change one's buying-of-chocolate habits, chaos ensues.)


Since I have Saturday off, I may well take advantage of the bus system, head out in the general direction of Mesa, and deliver a certain gift I have for a certain best friend. *grin* It would certainly net me my walking time for the day.

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Cleaned out my closet a little. I have upgraded my wardrobe considerably. The old stuff never gets worn & is lower quality.

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The sun is bright enough for me to need to hide. I should stick the sun screen in my purse.

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I have a project from management. I am using my 1337 technical skills here.

I are geek. Watch me defrag.

Oo la la, aren't we all geeky now.

I got told at work that Management needed to see me in the back. (Ph34r.)

First, my proposal about a program to make my job easier on the system went over really well. In my two-week vacation, there was stuff going on with IT, and I got to meet one of the back-room fellows, and I got to see the beta release of something that was created based upon my suggestion.

I suggested it. Someone else built it. I'm so very geekily high right now. And I'm sure I'm much easier to code for than other people might be, because I can understand the limitations of the system and understand trade-off. And oh, this will save us so, so very much time. I made some naive suggestions based on the fact that I don't know the underpinnings of the system too well, and I don't know the business plan too well either, but the main functionality (compare scheduled-in vs. logged-in, sort by last name or sort by booth number) is present and accounted for. (Or, at least, will be after the dude goes back and adds in logged-in-but-not-scheduled and adds in sort-by-booth-number.)

So I am gleeful on that account.

The second reason Management needed to see me in the back? Management had "a little project" for me. (Ph34r. Seriously.) This one utilized my massive amount of IT training ... in feeding floppies into the machine to extract a backup off of nearly-obsolete media.

5 hours later, the brain was dead from dull, but I had processed about 80 floppies.