"She won't go insane, not ever."

Woke up before my alarm, feeling reasonably well-rested, and having had first-thing-after-midnight communications to/from some of the very important people in my life. Had a brownie for breakfast, and while virtuously restarting my computer, I got a fair ways in to Archer's Goon. (Good stuff.)

I pulled in to work just after someone else pulled out, so I got a parking space that wasn't too horribly far away. The burrito line was very short, and the burrito was very delicious. I had lunch with Purple's gang; Purple's mood today seemed cheerful enough, if slightly frazzled around the edges. (This was an improvement; there's imminent vacation.) He's going with a few people to see Mr. Zune's thing tomorrow.

I like to celebrate holidays via seasonally appropriate treats. I swapped out my star-shaped candy dish with a heart-shaped one, and filled it with sour cherry balls, with a heaping heap of those little conversation hearts on top.

Before I could get settled in properly on the transcription, something seemed weird with the email shares, and I poked things and realized what had to be going on. I recruited Purple into the troubleshooting. I walked him through sharing his calendar to generate another notification, and discovered that the little problem was weirder than I thought.

It was the troubleshooting equivalent of a great big satin-covered heart-shaped box of chocolates, given to me by work, on our anniversary. I have been with Virtual Hammer for two years today, and I'm still just as much in love. (If more inclined to pound things with hammers, virtual or otherwise.)

There was transcription. There was inbox-wrangling. There were many things. ( Read more... )

It was a perfectly lovely valentine's day. Tomorrow we celebrate 2014's first Feast Day of St. Mark; there are several. I'll see if I can wake up early enough to do some errands, maybe pop in to work to make sure to set up the soft token correctly, give Darkside a call, and then take in some G&S.


And, via jld:

"" (Watch on YouTube)

My tweets

• Fri, 14:06: RT @PGE_Denny: Cupid can safely fly near @PGE4Me power lines, but Mylar balloon hearts will break every time they meet an energized line. V…
• Fri, 15:23: Enlisted Purple's help debugging. It was worse UI than I had imagined.
• Fri, 16:54: DW entry: (And then when the sour cherries are big enough...) http://t.co/Wy9TRhn2kV
• Fri, 17:15: Rum and the lash are iffy for work. Sodomy is right out. #unlessyouhavethatkindofworkplace #sexworkisworktoo
• Sat, 00:03: My fitbit #Fitstats for 2/14/2014: 5,716 steps and 2.5 miles traveled. http://t.co/gFMrr7HEB6
• Sat, 01:03: RT @beerops: Roses are red Violets are blue Nagios is red OH FUCK THE SITE'S DOWN
• Sat, 02:15: RT @westendproducer: Salvador Dalek. #dear http://t.co/nNz9T93zTf
• Sat, 02:17: RT @m_wall: I post this every yr, but it's worth it: Roses are red, But can also be blue, If, at great speed, They come towards you. #phy…
• Sat, 04:33: .@twitter New app wants me to follow the two people in my inbox I loathe most. Thanks but no thanks.

"We're very wide awake, the moon and I!"

So, last time I updated, I had plans for Saturday. Here's how that worked out:

I stayed up way too late getting things set up with the new phone. I woke up in about time to leave and get there on time, so that's just what I did. I had a bit of a time finding parking, and I would have been happy getting there earlier.

I saw one of the guys outside, and we were shortly joined by the lady who is all up in the ladies-in-tech stuff, and another dude and his girlfriend, who is visiting from the UK. There was various chatter. Apparently the one of the guys (the one whose name is confusingly close to Purple's) had met two of my teammates at the company conference/retreat; from the physical descriptions, it turned out to be another one of the over-abundance (the one with the chickens) and my manager. The weather was ever so slightly warm and windy and grey with the sun just barely visible through the clouds. It was perfect.

There was no sign of Purple, so we eventually went in -- to find that Purple had saved a block of prime seats, and was wondering where we had been. Good ol' Purple. This was a situation that text messages could possibly have solved. (Later, he and R. exchanged numbers before dinner to prevent a recurrence.)

The program had an admonishment in the form of some items on the little list, against messily sneaking food in. I was charmed.

We all got ourselves situated. Stuff commenced. ("And remember, never throw M&Ms in the orchestra pit," I said very quietly to Purple.) I never seem to know what to do with my cane in theatre-like places. I don't want it to fall over or whatever, but I also don't have a great way to secure it other than the wristband. Ah well. I did not clobber anyone with it, nor did it go clattering over, so that was all right.

Mr. Zune was not wearing glasses, and was wearing eyebrows, so he looked a little odd onstage. (Mr. Zune is usually incredibly blond, but has dyed his hair for the role. The eyebrows were later observed to be painted on.)

I particularly enjoyed the physical comedy. Ko-Ko and the giant axe were amazing. As is customary, local references were slipped in here and there. "As some day it may happen" in particular was nearly all localized, to great and hysterical effect. "A more humane Mikado" had a little more of the original left, but was also greatly localized, with a huge laugh at the fate of the student who bombs out of Stanford and is doomed to study at Cal. The schoolgirls were very rowdy, which I approved of. One of the bits involved Peep-Bo taking a pair of floral scissors to a bouquet. ("It does seem to take the top off it, you know.") I think the carnation that actually fell into the orchestra pit was unintentional, but it was unintentional to very good effect.

There was an intermission. The bathroom in the theatre developed a substantial queue, so many other folks and I had the idea to try an adjacent building; I was one of the lucky ones to think of it earlier rather than later.

After it was all over, and Mr. Zune and his girlfriend were duly congratulated on the roles they played (and without his glasses, we were all blurs, but at length he recognized some of the blurs as more familiar than others), and various people pitched the idea of dinner. So dinner there was.

We wandered in the direction of our cars. Phone number exchanging between R. and Purple resulted in Purple flashing around his little flip-phone, and various Star Trek references from Purple. I complained that the references were about the wrong captain, so Purple ultimately busted forth with an extensive Captain Kirk style monologue, with Shatnerian timing, that nearly made me actually fall over laughing.

I had trouble finding a parking spot particularly close to the dinner place, but there were other spots somewhat further away. I arrived just on the point where R. was asking Purple where I was. I'm not sure whether Purple has my phone number in his phone, come to think of it...

Discretion prohibits me from recapping the entire dinner conversation. There were highlights:

Purple saying some of the most amazing things and then ducking
Me obligingly swatting at Purple
The appropriate deployment of that Oscar Wilde quote
R. dipping shrimp into the chili oil, and then seeing if they would light on fire with the candle
Me, insisting that she repeat the shrimp trick again so I could get a picture
The waitress, observing the shrimp shenanigans and removing all our candles
Me fondly telling Purple "But you're the *right* kind of terrible." (I've told him, more than once, that sometimes I just look at him with those eyebrows to see what he'll say next.)
Dessert (oh, dessert, the sort of chocolate that drives people to lick bowls, or would, if they weren't ergonomically inconvenient for the tongue)
The description of the term/concept "Silicon Valley ATM", where all of you go out to eat and then you put the whole thing on your card and everyone else gives you cash for their shares

We probably could/should have moved some of the wrap-up hilarity to the non-smoking bits of the lounge area, but hindsight. Eventually we did head in our separate directions, after hugs all around from that one guy's girlfriend. I'd parked a ways off; Purple kindly walked me to my car. He was still feeling a little guilty for not saving quite enough seats. (he'd saved four, there were six of us: dude's visiting girlfriend hadn't been on the email chain, and neither had I; he'd assumed that I would have been on the email chain, and that given my history of sleeping through entire weekends despite my best intentions, that I fully intended to show up but was likely to sleep through it. I was amused.) Hugs.

Then I called Nora on my way home. She was putting finishing touches on her magnum opus. Hooray!

Safeway's St. Mark's Day offerings were not satisfactory to me. I came home, chatted a bit with the babyfish, and put in a bit of time on the bouncy-ball watching Community, since even with the relatively not-close parking, I didn't hit my step count naturally. I've been enjoying the effects of increased stamina, and would like to continue that trend.