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Like hieroglyphics, let me be specific:
Dec. 4th, 2014 03:10 amBPAL of the morning: Blueberry Picking. There was a whiff of blueberry while wet, but the rest I couldn't quite identify. Not particularly high throw or long-lasting.
Got to work earlier than usual, to the surprise of everyone, including me. There was a lull in the rain when I set out. It gusted at me on the way to the coffee shop on the corner. It let up and was a bit sunny when I got out of the car. It spat rain in my face from several directions, little sharp cold droplets, not so much needles as tiny, cold stones. I used my coffee cup to shield my headset.
This was rain to confuse smart windshield wipers (apparently they make those nowadays, lb says; his new car has them, and they're a little off the speed he'd choose, but close) and mine are not smart. It flickered between gusts with droplets that already seemed to be flying flat and horizontal when they pancaked against the window, so fast I couldn't tell the edge of one from the next except as they rippled and then flew off in advance of the wipers, to just the hazing of drizzle, more of a fog, kicked up by the tires of the other cars.
Things feel slightly different at work, and in a good way. People are back from their Thanksgiving trips, and Sparkles is always high-energy, even when she's quiet. I feel like I'm getting more done.
There were some Twitter-related shenanigans -- well, actually, they were email-related shenanigans. Polka-Dot Researcher wanted the keys to the Twitter account. ( Read more... )
The guy two cubes down who is short and wears a lot of plaid and has a really wicked sense of humor was back at work, sounding slightly miserable. I gave him the overly hostile tissue box and the nickname of Sneezy. Every time he sees that box of tissues it cheers him up. Later, I got a new box for my cube and, as is now traditional, put a face to it. I'm not sure what emotion it's conveying, but it's definitely an emotion.
Helldesk shenanigans continue apace. Conspired with Mr. Zune briefly. Then lb came to retrieve me for a trip to the milkshake dungeon. We talked about the state of the helldesk as well.
There was a guest speaker. Due to the rain, it was rather more poorly attended than it might otherwise have been. I saw my friend Murraya (she of the overgrown mint and cat pics) sitting near the front to one side and settled down in her row. Purple joined us soon after. He and I were sort of unfamiliar but interested. Murraya was one of the people for whom this speaker had been invited.
This time, the backstage passes were envelopes taped under the chairs, with buttons inside. Since the rest of the row was empty except for Murraya, one of her presumed-teammates, me, and Purple, Purple looked under the other chairs at his end of the row. He found an envelope. Glee! In the general rustling and confusion, he told me quietly that he was giving it to Murraya, because she would clearly appreciate it so much more. And yes indeed. Yes.
The talk was delightful as usual. Mr. Sub-tle picks his guests well. There was the expected audience Q&A at the end, and Murraya got the mic second. With her heart and her eyes brimming over, she told Lynda Carter exactly how much it had meant to her to have someone like her available as a role model while she was growing up, and she owed her career as an engineer to the strength she found within herself thanks to that.
This was clearly the best question by far, but the other questions were decent.
Purple and I walked back together. Elementary school children are little shits. If you're shooting an alligator, make sure it's not a concrete statue at some point in the process. Purple had left his jacket on the chair between us. I headed back to my desk, and he ran back to retrieve his jacket.
Fishie's procrastination has been productive and has resulted in very viable progress on the other three essays that she's not procrastinating from. I remain proud of Fishie.
My second fishgrandbaby is on the way. I will be a double fishnan. (Not from Fishie, from a different, and somewhat older Fish.)
In the end, I only had to discard three of the creepy cookies. That's a fair go, from the plateful. I really liked the frosting, and will have to do it again.
In the department of white-people-gotta-talk-about-their-biases, Purple and I chatted about some stuff. Not like supermegaterrible, but biases and reactions and fears and some of the sorts of things people who are trying to be good and not act on their prejudices kind of don't always talk about. I don't really have anything smart or well-thought-through to say about that, because it was just us pinging thoughts back and forth while I went through and cleared old day-logs for their to-do lists, and he worked on code. Nothing super special except it's letting a little fresh air into the dank places that could use some cleaning, and cleaning generally goes a little easier when it's not just one.
Purple walked me out. It wasn't raining at that point, so we chatted in the parking lot. Apropos of that one story*, there was that time that his monosyllabic extrovert friend started dating, and warned his new girlfriend that he was clingy. She said it was fine. Two days later, it developed that for that level of clingy, no, it wasn't.
* Image: m/f couple lying in a bed facing away from each other, both looking slightly distressed, with text below.
( Text. )
(Now, that is a relationship with spectacularly broken communication. It is not an example of the inherent and unbridgeable differences between men and women, it is an example of someone who has really doubled down on the no shop talk in the relationship concept, and someone else who is really super at worst-case scenarios.)
Particularly nice contented moments in a friendship include the "so this is what I was talking about at my end of the table at lunch today (while we were sitting next to each other)" conversation before splitting off to head home. The conversation on my end of the table involved how terribly awkward it would be to pocket dial someone and then have them overhear you talking shit about them. (Apropos of having recently pocket-dialed Purple.) Which resulted in me in fact telling Purple the two worst things I've said about him behind his back. Which were, for the record, that he's sometimes a bit of an asshole but I prefer it to the kind of asshole Figment could sometimes be, and then a brief tour of what I think of as "the Libertarian cycle" -- although it can probably be applied to other ideologies, but Libertarian is particularly prone to it due to Smart Kid Logic -- there are ideas that seem like a great idea until you see how they actually work in the real world. Though I couldn't exactly pin my finger on any specifics, and he does do a bit of ranting about things that he knows don't actually work entirely that way.
I'm getting the idea that I've simultaneously mellowed (my opinions of others, including friends, used to be rather sharper) and also that I seem to have lucked into a really kind of fantastic group of people about whom I don't actually foster a little burning resentment here and there.
It's getting easier and easier for Purple and me to go down the same mental track and wind up at the same station with the same music playing. This time it was The Bloodhound Gang's "Bad Touch", and we arrived simultaneously at the same part of the chorus. We were amused.
When we hugged goodnight, I leaned my left ear against his shoulder. He pulled me in tighter, and my headset beeped informationally at me. "Ack!" I said, or some similar statement. At least there was no one in the headset's memory to ... hug-dial? Is that even a thing?
(Mr. Antisocial Butterfly was quite loyal about the idea that someone might not consider Purple the best $NAME. Purple will always be the best $NAME to him. Purple is a very, very, very good $NAME. I'm just very cautious about the idea of letting a newcomer take the title, what with the existing competition.)
We hugged again, and this time we were both a little more careful and gentle.
The rain started up again on my way home. We need it.
Got to work earlier than usual, to the surprise of everyone, including me. There was a lull in the rain when I set out. It gusted at me on the way to the coffee shop on the corner. It let up and was a bit sunny when I got out of the car. It spat rain in my face from several directions, little sharp cold droplets, not so much needles as tiny, cold stones. I used my coffee cup to shield my headset.
This was rain to confuse smart windshield wipers (apparently they make those nowadays, lb says; his new car has them, and they're a little off the speed he'd choose, but close) and mine are not smart. It flickered between gusts with droplets that already seemed to be flying flat and horizontal when they pancaked against the window, so fast I couldn't tell the edge of one from the next except as they rippled and then flew off in advance of the wipers, to just the hazing of drizzle, more of a fog, kicked up by the tires of the other cars.
Things feel slightly different at work, and in a good way. People are back from their Thanksgiving trips, and Sparkles is always high-energy, even when she's quiet. I feel like I'm getting more done.
There were some Twitter-related shenanigans -- well, actually, they were email-related shenanigans. Polka-Dot Researcher wanted the keys to the Twitter account. ( Read more... )
The guy two cubes down who is short and wears a lot of plaid and has a really wicked sense of humor was back at work, sounding slightly miserable. I gave him the overly hostile tissue box and the nickname of Sneezy. Every time he sees that box of tissues it cheers him up. Later, I got a new box for my cube and, as is now traditional, put a face to it. I'm not sure what emotion it's conveying, but it's definitely an emotion.
Helldesk shenanigans continue apace. Conspired with Mr. Zune briefly. Then lb came to retrieve me for a trip to the milkshake dungeon. We talked about the state of the helldesk as well.
There was a guest speaker. Due to the rain, it was rather more poorly attended than it might otherwise have been. I saw my friend Murraya (she of the overgrown mint and cat pics) sitting near the front to one side and settled down in her row. Purple joined us soon after. He and I were sort of unfamiliar but interested. Murraya was one of the people for whom this speaker had been invited.
This time, the backstage passes were envelopes taped under the chairs, with buttons inside. Since the rest of the row was empty except for Murraya, one of her presumed-teammates, me, and Purple, Purple looked under the other chairs at his end of the row. He found an envelope. Glee! In the general rustling and confusion, he told me quietly that he was giving it to Murraya, because she would clearly appreciate it so much more. And yes indeed. Yes.
The talk was delightful as usual. Mr. Sub-tle picks his guests well. There was the expected audience Q&A at the end, and Murraya got the mic second. With her heart and her eyes brimming over, she told Lynda Carter exactly how much it had meant to her to have someone like her available as a role model while she was growing up, and she owed her career as an engineer to the strength she found within herself thanks to that.
This was clearly the best question by far, but the other questions were decent.
Purple and I walked back together. Elementary school children are little shits. If you're shooting an alligator, make sure it's not a concrete statue at some point in the process. Purple had left his jacket on the chair between us. I headed back to my desk, and he ran back to retrieve his jacket.
Fishie's procrastination has been productive and has resulted in very viable progress on the other three essays that she's not procrastinating from. I remain proud of Fishie.
My second fishgrandbaby is on the way. I will be a double fishnan. (Not from Fishie, from a different, and somewhat older Fish.)
In the end, I only had to discard three of the creepy cookies. That's a fair go, from the plateful. I really liked the frosting, and will have to do it again.
In the department of white-people-gotta-talk-about-their-biases, Purple and I chatted about some stuff. Not like supermegaterrible, but biases and reactions and fears and some of the sorts of things people who are trying to be good and not act on their prejudices kind of don't always talk about. I don't really have anything smart or well-thought-through to say about that, because it was just us pinging thoughts back and forth while I went through and cleared old day-logs for their to-do lists, and he worked on code. Nothing super special except it's letting a little fresh air into the dank places that could use some cleaning, and cleaning generally goes a little easier when it's not just one.
Purple walked me out. It wasn't raining at that point, so we chatted in the parking lot. Apropos of that one story*, there was that time that his monosyllabic extrovert friend started dating, and warned his new girlfriend that he was clingy. She said it was fine. Two days later, it developed that for that level of clingy, no, it wasn't.
* Image: m/f couple lying in a bed facing away from each other, both looking slightly distressed, with text below.
( Text. )
(Now, that is a relationship with spectacularly broken communication. It is not an example of the inherent and unbridgeable differences between men and women, it is an example of someone who has really doubled down on the no shop talk in the relationship concept, and someone else who is really super at worst-case scenarios.)
Particularly nice contented moments in a friendship include the "so this is what I was talking about at my end of the table at lunch today (while we were sitting next to each other)" conversation before splitting off to head home. The conversation on my end of the table involved how terribly awkward it would be to pocket dial someone and then have them overhear you talking shit about them. (Apropos of having recently pocket-dialed Purple.) Which resulted in me in fact telling Purple the two worst things I've said about him behind his back. Which were, for the record, that he's sometimes a bit of an asshole but I prefer it to the kind of asshole Figment could sometimes be, and then a brief tour of what I think of as "the Libertarian cycle" -- although it can probably be applied to other ideologies, but Libertarian is particularly prone to it due to Smart Kid Logic -- there are ideas that seem like a great idea until you see how they actually work in the real world. Though I couldn't exactly pin my finger on any specifics, and he does do a bit of ranting about things that he knows don't actually work entirely that way.
I'm getting the idea that I've simultaneously mellowed (my opinions of others, including friends, used to be rather sharper) and also that I seem to have lucked into a really kind of fantastic group of people about whom I don't actually foster a little burning resentment here and there.
It's getting easier and easier for Purple and me to go down the same mental track and wind up at the same station with the same music playing. This time it was The Bloodhound Gang's "Bad Touch", and we arrived simultaneously at the same part of the chorus. We were amused.
When we hugged goodnight, I leaned my left ear against his shoulder. He pulled me in tighter, and my headset beeped informationally at me. "Ack!" I said, or some similar statement. At least there was no one in the headset's memory to ... hug-dial? Is that even a thing?
(Mr. Antisocial Butterfly was quite loyal about the idea that someone might not consider Purple the best $NAME. Purple will always be the best $NAME to him. Purple is a very, very, very good $NAME. I'm just very cautious about the idea of letting a newcomer take the title, what with the existing competition.)
We hugged again, and this time we were both a little more careful and gentle.
The rain started up again on my way home. We need it.
