azurelunatic

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So, what a year.

* (2015) Learned I was losing my beloved administrative assistant/Yelling as a Service job, due to Silly Valley contract shenanigans.
* Mourned this loss...
* ... until I learned that my entire second department was being downsized and offshored. Then I got mad.
* Read the riot act about same to the CEO, in front of a whole-company meeting.
* Worked to hang on to some of the important friendships I had made over the course of my four years.
* Helped run a conference!
* Learned that someone I knew in my youth had gone on to do something that they really oughtn't to have done, and dealt with that information the best way I knew how.
* Presented at Open Source Bridge.
* Got up the nerve to declare myself to the person I'd been low-key flirting with since the last Open Source Bridge.
* Was kissed by this person. (Kissed them back.)
* Didn't do anything super dumb.
* Started the sort of heavy-duty communication that a very intimate but complicated relationship is going to need, just in the off chance one developed.
* ... Ooops.
* Helping my friend (and, later, dearest primary partner) begin the long, painful, and difficult process of Dealing With All The Things.
* Hysterectomy. (Plus tubes, ovaries, and bonus lymph nodes.)
* Cancer.
* Made things actually official with my primary partner, much to the relief of everyone following the saga.
* Radiation.
* Recovery.
* Fuck my sleep schedule.
* Declared my feelings to someone else, also with a not-terrible outcome. :)
* Started making tentative plans for relocation.
* Fishmummed, and saw my baby girl for winter break! #nobodydied #homefortheholidays

This was not a quiet year for me.

Compared to this time last year, I'm cancer-free. I'm in a relationship that is like a substantial external battery of capability and cope, and we seem to be mutually supportive and both still a little codswalloped over our good luck.

A lot of things about 2016 have sucked, but getting my uterus out, getting together with my partner, getting my partner pointed in the direction of freedom, and starting a very interesting conversation with a certain former co-worker -- all of those were good.

So the beginning of the new year is where you sum up the old year! Clearly this has taken a while, as it was started near the beginning of January, and has only been posted in February.

My resolutions have changed over the past year, at least a bit. I have a new external monitor for my laptop, as the old one died. I have a new laptop also. They're similar in size. I swapped out my flaky Android for a new one, and have a tablet also. (A tablet whose protective case I just broke today by dropping it. That's what protective cases are for.) At work, I have a second monitor, which I have set up portrait-style (technically set up on the last day of 2013, but after last year's resolutions entry).

That thing I'm doing with the Fitbit is working out all right for me physically, ( Read more... )

The energy and wakefulness improvements have persisted. I'm generally working a near-full-time schedule these days, and I might even be conscious on the weekends. Treating my various mood-and-sleep horrorterrors as a Vitamin D deficiency has been surprisingly effective, but I can't actually allow that to slip, even if I'm fine right now. It did slip at several points throughout the year.

I am still contemplating moving apartment, though somewhat more actively at this point. The process is not cheap, which is what derailed me last year. At work, we moved building. That process was generally more irritating and prolonged than I'd imagined it could be. I did, however, manage to fit a (small) couch into an 8'x8' cube.

There have been important changes to my team at work -- both my Overlady and my director have left, for vastly different reasons. My manager is now my acting director.

Through sheer volume (loudness and quantity) of support requests, I managed to get swapped between email systems at work early. I have also made a (loud) name for myself in the department of the new helpdesk software. I seem to have collected a couple co-workers who genuinely enjoy the things I write, even/especially when I'm peeved and armed for bear. Work has started to use a new helpdesk tool. I have become one of the people who other people recognize in connection to asking for changes on the new helpdesk tool.

I knew Purple before 2014, but 2014 was definitely the year he was established as an important part of my life. We have become hugging friends who occasionally do group dinners. (Put that way, it sounds so very matter-of-fact and small. It feels like my weekday is incomplete without lunch at his table, my afternoon is very quiet without the occasional ping back and forth, and the frequent parking lot conversations in the evening are often the highlight of my day. We talk about things which have been bothering us. We suggest hilarious stories the other should tell during conversations with new people. It's great.)

#cupcake has also gained prominence, not that it was un-important before.

I tried crossposting from Tumblr to my real journal on DW, but that ultimately turned out to be more of a pain than I felt it was worth. I have been doing better about writing down what I'm actually doing than some while ago. Yay energy.

I have new glasses. Not just one pair of new glasses, but a prescription and a Zenni Optical habit that keeps on giving. So there are spares. I have started sewing more (mostly representing new nightengowns), and continue my habit of making, and then wearing to work, really wacky hats.

This was both the year of my first professional conference in my profession, and the year of my first speaking engagement. I went to Open Source Bridge and spoke there (and met

zarhooie in person for the first time!). I also submitted my first patch to the Dreamwidth project. And went to a Maker Faire. And met Brent Spiner, Robert Picardo, and LeVar Burton.

Fishie has been sent safely off to college. My aunt's household has two dogs again: she's got a guide dog puppy to raise, and the poodle has survived a mouth tumor, although a chunk of his jaw and one fang are now missing. My sister announced and then ended a serious relationship. My mother is enjoying her iPad. My father is enjoying his iPad and also his new pacemaker, and has decided to install wifi for the iPads.

I have been using indigo to make my hair more blue. From 2015, I can safely say that 1995's sudden longing for blue hair, and 1999's first greenish attempt were harbingers of a lifelong decision about hair color, and not a passing fancy.

Mostly I have been too busy with work to think (other than attempting to write up my wacky life) but I have had time for a few creative efforts. One of the side effects of all the work put into this year's Halloween costume (a loon) is the use of unorthodox compound words, often with

sithjawa: loonmillinery, loonmeasuring, loonpills, loonunit. I also played in the Bad Bang, which was delightful.

My home state allows same-sex marriage now. This is not a thing that I thought would happen before I got married. In 1995, when I got same-sex engaged, I didn't really think about legality. But I was one of the three people in my high school out as not straight: the lesbian, the gay guy, and me.

2014 was very busy, but trending in a vaguely good direction for me. I hope more good things for 2015.

( various work stuff )

Lunch was good: I sat down with the Renaissance Man and someone who may have been his former teammate, yet another guy with the same freaking name. (Darkside, upon receiving my wailings on this topic, made some historically-themed jokes at my expense.) Shortly Mr. Zune joined us, and the four of us made quite the jolly half-hour of it. Topics included The Aristocrats, piano comedy as a genre and its brightest stars (which is not a topic the gentlemen had really intended to become experts in, but it turns out if you're into standup and music, you're going to hear of Tom Leher), what-if, the Renaissance Man's status as the Good Twin (his evil twin moved to Alaska), the incredulous powers of my eyebrow to extract increasingly defensive explanations from the relatively morally upright party, my manager's long-suffering patience with the wacky hijinks of myself and others (no, really, I'm not the only loose screw in my department), the requisitioning of odd office supplies via Office Depot, the blanket prohibition on noisy and projectile toys as gifts for all conference attendees, the loophole that didn't prevent noisy toys as committee/manager/helper gifts (I had a few slide whistles), the unlikelihood of getting chainsaws via Office Depot, how helpdesk is basically unflappable, and how if one person walked in to Helpdesk and asked for a chainsaw they'd think he was weird, and if two people do it, they'd think they was friends, and if three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in to the helpdesk and asking for a chainsaw, and they may think it's a movement.

And all of us chainsaw-lovers belong on the Group W Bench.

From that point, someone, someone who was definitely not me, and was probably one of the #cupcake crew, suggested a team-building exercise where half the people get cans of air, and half the people get little horn-shaped bits of plastic, and you have to build team by finding one person with the other part, and then you're teammates. Later I elaborated on the concept such as each horn would blow at a different pitch, and you'd have to organize yourselves by tone, sort of an air horn version of a handbell choir. I found the idea hysterical.

My Overlady was not impressed by this genius idea, and told me that I wasn't allowed to play poker. ( Read more... )

Again with the new -- in the coming year, my resolutions for home are:

1366x768
+
1960x1080

This past year, I kept the same (frustrating) laptop, but swapped out my old and dying external monitor for a new one.

I'm not sure offhand what my work resolution is, but it's likely to change as well -- my Overlady has cast an eye upon the situation and declared that when she's got two monitors and is using zero, and I have one monitor and am using it, perhaps some hardware should be shifted within the department. And I am inclined to agree.

Less snarkily, I intend to continue with my current self-driven, fitbit-monitored program of rehabilitation, and see where it takes me.

I have recently seen general improvements in energy and wakefulness, and I intend to bring some of my increased resources to bear on work. I find when I'm working flat-out but have the energy to do so, this has good knock-on effects to the rest of my life (versus when I don't, and then it's bad).

I should also follow up with that likely-looking apartment complex, because the rent here isn't getting any cheaper.

I'd been anticipating having a quiet evening at home with my friends inside the computer. Instead, I wound up over at

trystan_laryssa and

dustraven's, with their old roommate (who I'm sure I used to have a nickname for) and his wife and their kids, and

figment0 besides.

I brought pomegranates and butterbeer, in the cream soda and buttershots assemble-it-yourself form. We played Harry Potter Scene It, then Apples to Apples. There was great hilarity over the latter, especially after the last remaining awake kid conked out. I won "clean" with "girl scouts" (judge:

dustraven) and "dirty" with "car bomb" (judge:

figment0) but failed to bag "fuzzy" with "cheesecake" (the sort that's been left at the back of the refrigerator too long, and what was I supposed to play, Canada, Death Valley, or Israel?). The rest of the group voted that

trystan_laryssa and I had to be separated, as we were getting too high a percentage of each other's apples.

[Poll #643557]
Is it customary to decide that the green apples that a person holds are a description of them? Our crew tonight seemed to find it customary to break out into song at pseudo-random intervals, like when someone said "dead" (we went through bits of "Dead Man's Party" and then TMBG's "Dead" the second time it came up) or when Bangkok got discussed (not much between despair and ecstasy). We did that last year too, however, not playing that game, so I think it's just the group. At some point I'd like to play the game in reverse, with green apples dealt out and red apples as the challenge. We'd run out of apples more quickly that way, but still fun for all.

Midnight was a bit of a scramble, as we were rather all in game. Champagne was poured. The guys got the TV on at 6 seconds until midnight, and I wound up clinking my cellphone against glasses (I'd been looking at the time on it). I demonstrated my Secret Weapon about hanging around with smokers when we went outside: incense. The dude gave me a light. After

dustraven and

trystan_laryssa had their New Year's Kiss, I snagged a little bit of a smooch from her.

figment0 got a peck on the cheek. Someone was letting off fireworks, people were banging on pots and pans, and someone touched off something that went fucking BOOM in rather a scary bit of noise, such that half the people present thought it had been gunfire until physical evidence in the form of we'd seen light over the trees and intervening buildings pointed out that it had to have been a far-too-large firework going off far too low, because muzzle flash is evidently neither that bright nor that high. The kid slept through it all.

The requisite car alarms were set off. It's not a fireworks display until someone's car alarm goes off; the more car alarms the better the fireworks. Is "car alarms" an Apples to Apples card? If it's not, it should be a write-in.

After we were done outside, we went back inside and finished up the game.

trystan_laryssa won; she'd wound up with the best of a number of bad rounds and reached ten first.

figment0 dropped me off home. I was staggering and weaving by that point: the energy was wearing off and the booze was wearing on. Two glasses of butterbeer and a fifth of a small glass of champagne doesn't sound like a lot, but it is if you're me, which I am; it also is on that much of not supper. Heck, it was rather a lot of not breakfast and not lunch either, because I was running out to the store to get carrots for breakfast (at 6 pm) when I called

trystan_laryssa, and then I wound up chatting a little, not eating breakfast, and closing down the computer and leaving. Horror of horrors: I think I Forgot to Eat Real Food. And given that I was off visiting Guide Dog Aunt, who cooks better than I do and keeps Actual Food on hand, I may well be among the few who lost weight over the holiday season.

How do you get pomegranate out of a cat? I have pomegranate on my fingers. I sent pomegranate home with the girls. I don't think the cats got into the pomegranate. I cleared dishes out from the clean dish washer into the cupboards and then from the sink into the dirty dish washer.

I want to try out the rubber ice mold that I think will work for chocolate. Someday soon.

Current Mood: drunk
Current Music: my mental iTunes on 2-second scraps of absolute chaos

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Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺

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2016 in review
2014 in review
Like a handbell choir, for airhorns.
New Year's Resolutions
Happy New Year to me, happy New Year tooo me!

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Entries tagged with new year's

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2016 in review

2014 in review

Like a handbell choir, for airhorns.

New Year's Resolutions

Happy New Year to me, happy New Year tooo me!