Cast of Characters (partially updated)

People you're likely to see me mention in these LJ entries! Whee! I give everyone a nickname, because I don't want to call them by their actual names, both in case they're not comfortable with that, and for plausible deniability and so my co-workers won't find themselves on Google if they're looking. If they don't have LJs, or if I wouldn't think that they'd need to find themselves here, I make up a name for them.

Really Close People:

Darkside: My best friend in the entire universe. We met in 2000 in college and have been close ever since. I have been madly in love with him since his idiot classmate triggered off an ill-advised love spell in my direction. After I recovered from that, I realized that I did have a genuine attraction for him, and he gained my trust. I've started courting him with all the enthusiasm and intensity of Miles Vorkosigan in pursuit of Ekaterin Vorvayne Vorsoisson.

The Redhead, aka hcolleen: My most excellent roommate! She is one of my writer-ladies, and when she needed to move, I had living room space.

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Co-Workers:

Snarky Lady: One of my fellow supervisors at work, the head of the training department. She was a monitor when I came in, and has been progressing upward since. She is Geekier than I, and we're working together on the database project at the moment. Despite how we may sound to an outsider passing the room to hear us yelling at each other, we get along famously, it's just that we're a little overexcited.

Management: She doesn't quite run the building, but she does run Field and a whole lot of things behind the scenes. I'm reporting directly to her for the duration of the database. Before that, the duration of the disk entry project. She loves my sense of humor, and doesn't like incompetence. She has Dilbert, Animaniacs, random silliness all over her office.

My Team:

Grandma Cinderella: The manager of my team. She's my direct supervisor. She has children and grandchildren, single and preferring it that way. She's tired and cranky and smokes like a chimney and we love her.

Ponytail Dave: The next-seniormost phone-goon-pulled-to-supervise on my team, the senior supervisor in my absence from the team. He is utterly hot, has thick black hair usually pulled back in a ponytail, and has random family business over the border that calls him away every now and then.

Sweetheart Supervisor: Actually, she's a bit brusque around the edges. She shares her candy with people.

Homie G Jr.: I swear, he could be Homie G a few years younger. Except he's got a kid on the way.

Wednesday, summed up

Writers group tonight was fun, as usual. The red carved pieces go in the center of the home, and at the southeast corner. Which is not actually under my pillow; it is in, on, under, or over the makeshift plastic shelves on my nightstand.

I read this piece tonight. I modified it as shown in the comments. It went over powerfully. I'm not really used to that. I'm more used to LJ, where things like than can pass without commentary. I guess I've been honing my writing here more than I've realized. I also realized that I get lazy on LJ, and don't provide the context that is needed for things like that on the first round. But if I'm writing for group, or editing to fit group, I have to polish it up and give context so someone coming on their first night wouldn't be lost.

I am going to continue re-doing the whole cast of characters. If there's anyone I happen to miss, or anyone who you'd like to know more about, let me know. I'm not going to be focusing so much on LJ people this time around, unless those LJ people are people I happen to mention on a regular basis. LJ people tend to have their own bio, and I'd be more focusing on the angle of my connection to them.

I went and logged a half-hour on the funkystairstepper Tuesday night before bed. (Well, Wednesday morning.) I did the same tonight. I'd been slacking, so this is an encouraging development. Also, the fact that the room is again left open at all hours is very much helping my motivation. I got most of the way through a very thin trashy romance novel while taking my little walk, and finished it up while soaking my feet in the bathtub. If I can just keep in this habit, I will increase my general endurance, which can only do good things for my health.

I have a high school experience to write up, perhaps for writers group, perhaps just for me, perhaps for here, or perhaps for somewhere else. This one is going to hurt coming out, because it hurt going in, and it's not the sort of thing that a writer gets over easily. That means that it needs to be written up and shared. I was reading someone's fic, and one of the quotes in the sidebar is the one about the ease of writing -- go over to the typewriter and open a vein. And that one hit home. This LJ is too tame to be the sort of edgy writing that my peers were delighted with when I was in high school. It was disturbingly honest.

Links!
Nasty financial aspects to the Patriot Act.

Commentary on Mark Foley, asshat chickenhawk former congresscreature. Notable points: "ephebephile" is the proper term for full adults who are attracted to adolescents. Not "pedophile". It's still creepy, but it's a different situation than going after a child. Contains excellent points about teenage sexuality and laws that see little difference between a child of elementary school age who does not know or care about sexuality, and a "child" of sixteen who is potentially quite happily boinking other teenagers of the same age. My dear readers, when I was fifteen I was intimately familiar with the state "so horny it hurts", and had been quite happily coming to terms with my own sexuality for at least five years. Would it have been good for me to take up with someone vastly older than I was? Probably very much not, and I can't say how I would have reacted if anyone had tried that with me. But don't ever mistake pedophilia and ephebephilia for each other. And yet another reason to keep a strict eye on the news: Bill O'Reilly called Foley a Democrat. Not just once, but repeatedly. O RLY. Smooth move there.

Vodka-smuggling pipeline shut down. Literally -- a buried pipeline piping home-made vodka over the border into Latvia. Ingenious. And so illegal.
Evidently revmischa's presentation was meant as a joke. Perhaps he was who Brad meant by evil co-workers? ;)
Extreme airbags. Except boobies.
Why I should not read Bash.org while sipping water. Indeed, this demonstrates why I should not read it aloud to my roommate. I did not quite fall over laughing, but it was a near thing. It was prevented mostly by the fact that my bed is behind my computer chair. (Can't touch this?)

Noise pollution.

There is something chirping outside.

hcolleen and I are just about ready to go down there and punch whatever it is in the chirper.

Unfortunately, as it sounds mechanical, we'd probably hurt ourselves.

(no subject)

*snerk* Stupid columnist.

nanowrimo:
Last year:
Welcome to the Workplace:
A thinly disguised workplace. A thinly disguised heroine. A thinly disguised cast of supporting characters. A thinly disguised excuse for a plot. A whole lot of crackfic.

This year:
Circle of Fire
Geekboys. Witches. Intrigue. Romance. Daemonology gone horribly wrong.


To US Military Personnel, from Making Light, on the topic of illegal orders, and the Geneva Convention. Be righteous, be honorable, be brave. It takes blind anger and instinct to defend oneself against immediate attack. It takes loyalty and courage to place oneself between one's own and one's own's enemies. It takes true honor to stand against one's own to preserve what you know in your heart to be right.

My weapon is words. That's how I fight. What's the process for sending care packages overseas for Any Soldier? That commentary on illegal orders, with a personal note, could perhaps serve as a reminder that over here, we do still care. The US wants to have the moral high ground. The US can therefore not afford to authorize torture. Remember, it's "you're too honorable to do that", not "don't do that -- shame on those who do".