Words you don't want to hear said with concern:

stoichiometry

In any case, I told the security guard that I smelled gas by the meat coolers, Belovedest told someone in the front end, and I called the (somewhat exasperated with me, evidently) non-emergency line. If they don't do anything about it, that's now their problem.

I screwed up some perfectly good soup tonight, but it's at least edible to me. I had two bowls.

I started from this recipe for bean and bacon soup but lost the plot a bit. Mostly by letting it run too dry and letting the layer at the bottom scorch.

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Unfortunately I'm probably the only one who will consider it food due to the scorching, but that's okay. I have two bowls in the freezer and one for tomorrow, and some leftover bacon pieces.

I intend to try again eventually.

We're home safely, and the car is with our dude. It was only smoking a little at that point.

The afternoon started with a planned IKEA run for lingonberry jam.

In between that, we had the temperature light, a radiator fluid moment, the oil light twice, a long cold wait for our dude, and a shorter, warmer wait. Also the frantic dash from the exit to his place.

And then the trip back to retrieve my iPod and drop off the keys. Oops. And get food. I had breakfast and not much after that.

I stopped counting the small anxiety attacks. It turns out that under a certain level and on baseline meds, I can bring it under control by psyching myself into doing the "I need to be calm for my daughter" bit. (She was not there.)

When Belovedest and I say we're the playthings of Chaos...

Also She-Ra is great. We watched two episodes while waiting.

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.

Thursday was Thanksgiving, and I have an entry coming about that.

Friday, mostly I slept. I did, however, sew snaps on a certain crocheting project and a certain rainbow hat, to the utter brain-breaking and giggling awe of certain bits of the internet. I have an entry coming about that as well.

Saturday, there was also a lot of sleep, and I didn't try to win NaNo at the last minute. I'm feeling as if I should be disappointed with myself, but also wondering if there's something Wrong With Me. Not Trying on that level is a warning sign to me.

Today, I woke up with an ouchy foot, napped some more, woke up less ouchy, and then prepared for Fruitcake! I wound up going to five different stores -- Costco, Trader Joe's, Safeway, the market next to Safeway, and then D Town -- for the bits and bobs. I will in fact have dried fruits out the wazoo for the next while, given that I wanted a sufficient diversity but go larger bits.

I dropped by my aunt's anyway, even though it was probably Too Late For Fruitcake by that time, and came in for a cuppa and a gossip.


In the continuing saga of the firepit at work, I am keeping a running tally of the tech dudes I have observed picking up rocks from the firepit to see if they're hot. The firepit is a great wide metal bowl with a gas-fire mechanism in the middle. The firepit is filled with lava rocks and chunks of colorful glass, concealing most of the mechanism save for the ignition bit in the center. So the middle of the pit is full of flame and is hot. The further away from the fire you get, the cooler everything is, until you reach the edge, which is only slightly above ambient temperature, and that's if the thing has been on. Therefore various tech dudes have been reaching in to parts of the fire pit that are not on fire, and picking up rocks to see if they're hot.

The tally has reached four so far. Five if you count the following moment with Mr. Zune:

Something from within the fire pit cracked loudly.
"What just hit me?" asked Mr. Zune, reaching for the shard that had bounced off a colleague and then bounced off him.
"Ow that's hot!" exclaimed Mr. Zune, dropping the shard like the proverbial hot potato. "THE ROCK HIT ME FIRST, OKAY?"

(Mr. Zune is, in fact, the guy for whom the "nor overly clever" rule was put in place.)

Subsequent discussion with The Renaissance Man and lb on how to actually reproduce the fire pit spitting hot rock at bystanders involved two guys with slingshots, one on the nearby grassy knoll and the other on a further-away balcony. The idea would be to fire a rock in to the pit, and have another bounce out in the correct direction, billiards style.

My co-workers are brilliant, though perhaps not always practical. (The actual delivery of the idea in person involves some tricky timing when actually stating the phrase "grassy knoll", ideally involving a mouthful of liquid.)


My aunt pointed out that 1/3 of a cup of rum really wasn't enough for a proper batch of fruitcake, and that fruitcakes in her experience involved some soaking. Which made the 1.75l bottle of Captain Morgan look less like overkill, and more like 3/4 empty, after I stuffed the raisins, and the dried apples, and half the pineapple, not to mention apricots and some blueberries and some cherries and just a sprinkling of pecans into a large jug and then emptied some of the good Captain all over them. So now my raisins are ruminating. My aunt and I will be mixing stuff up on Friday after work. Whee!

• Fri, 17:22: Hooray outdoor warmfulness. #grammarabuse http://t.co/eO1E4i5Wlh
• Fri, 17:48: Co-workers picking up rocks from fire pit with bare hands to see if they are hot. #siliconvalley
• Fri, 17:54: RT @anatsuno: /o\ RT @Jenny_Trout: Just saw a "DIY food lifehack" on pinterest. Guys? That's called a RECIPE. That's all. JUST A RECIPE.
• Fri, 23:01: "When you stick something in a hole don’t you finger it?" - Azz… My wonderful, terrible friend Azz… (via... http://t.co/nEPJRL0sm6
• Fri, 23:07: Tumblr favorite: http://t.co/HmbJg7cl87 (from ogredrew)
• Fri, 23:39: Due to my youth in Alaska, tonight I uttered the phrase "Goes together like babies and fire" to @tweetatdrew.
• Fri, 23:42: RT @oakandsage: I swear gas station card machines are designed by sadists with a thing for making UI-oriented people cry bitter tears
• Sat, 00:02: My fitbit #Fitstats for 11/15/2013: 4,740 steps and 2 miles traveled. http://t.co/gFMrr7HEB6
• Sat, 00:57: Hulking out over an M&M anachronism. TAN ONES WHEN?!?!?
• Sat, 01:52: I have a grudge against "All Summer Long" because I like "Werewolves of London" & I'm disappointed every time it's not that.

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November 1: commence active writing on Cracked Phoenix Book 3: Venus Smash, because this is (inter)National Novel-Writing Month, and that is what we do. It being an even-numbered year, pattern-matching says odds are good. Extra incentive for win: 50% off Scrivener for Windows once it's out. Ooo.


(November 2-24: A not insignificant amount of writing, but a not insignificant amount of slacking, recovering, job searching, and having a social life. Excessive drinking of coffee. Discovery that shiny new netbook randomly reboots itself, and not because Windows is being an assclown. Growing instability of the venerable and tied-together-with-string desk chair. Budget crisis brought on by not being a motherfucking adult, mostly in the form of excessive drinking of coffee. Irritated shoving-of-bucket under sink to deal with suspected leak.)


( The last few days of November were busy and exciting. Nothing actually blew up except on MythBusters. )

( BLAM. )

( And on to the post-NaNo stressmonkey bits. )


So, uh. Busy couple days. Draft's not finished, but 50k is; enough's done so it'll get finished, when I'm not so dragged out. My hair looks fine. I can bake again if I want to. I'm glad I survived.