Friday, I went to work and did paperwork. Then I came home and tried to get my computer in order. I was getting tired, but eventually went out in order to accomplish some shopping. This happened in the company of gameboyguy13 and myrrhianna. There was assorted silliness. Polka-dotted umbrellas, the color pink, insane and purple, blowing on glass containers, pipecleaners so the cat poop would sparkle, holding shirts up against JD to see how they would look on him (he likes fun shirts, with flowers or fruit; we are leaning towards plaids); the thought of Nibiki vs. an exploding ball, lots of joking about soda and camera memory cards (don't ask), and the complete lack of steakums. I will dance around and look as if I am losing my balance when I get tired and silly.

Saturday involved sleeping in, then being a rather not productive zombie (but a clean one!) by poking at the computer and taking a nice shower. I called Darkside. He had to study, so there was not much phone-time, but a whole lot of giggling and bad puns happened. That's sort of inevitable when we talk to each other. meacu1pa's party followed, and it was good.

We came somewhat unfashionably late. Parking was horrendous, as advertised. We eventually found spots; myrrhianna was given a phone number by the guy vacating the spot. This was a *pear* moment. There was dinner. There was swimming pool. There was insanity. In attendance: meacu1pa and the "hand"-yman; rhea_windrider and husband; danielle_faye and husband; gameboyguy13, myrrhianna, easalle, trystan_laryssa, a cameo appearance from hcolleen, quantum_gazebo and midnightfae, and ... am I leaving anyone out? Oh, two of meacu1pa's friends who I don't know, who left around 7-ish.

There was sculpture. There were games. There was gossip. There was insanity. I may remember the ASL for "blowjob" in the morning; I may not. (It's very similar to the sign for "attack", which similarity evidently livened up a lecture on WWI that the "hand"-yman was translating.) Fun was had by all. JD crept up behind me in the pool and used a pool noodle held between the legs to poke me in the behind, and announced "Surprise! Buttsecks!" This meme got spread throughout the whole pool. We completely overflowed the hot tub; there had to have been a dozen people in a very small hot tub. I throw waterfight-toys like a girl. The Legend of AK-47 Guy was spread to the quantum_gazebo/midnightfae direction. It turns out that the "hand"-yman runs an Amber game.

We eventually all wound up playing Cranium. (Well, those of us remaining, minus the "hand"-yman.) rhea_windrider, her husband, and easalle formed one team; gameboyguy13, trystan_laryssa, and I formed another, and meacu1pa, midnightfae, and quantum_gazebo formed the third. The "hand"-yman occupied a couch and made sarcastic commentary. My lack of pop culture showed through in places. The most notable one was when I was supposed to act like a character. How the HELL was I supposed to act like The Fonz when I had never so much as seen the source show, much less read up on the characters? In desperation, I pulled the only bit of knowledge I had about the show out of the archives of my brain. "Look! A shark!" I said, and then took a leap. Amazingly, it worked! Immediately! My team knew exactly what I meant. I only knew the reference because I'd been reading up on the history of the phrase "jump the shark" way back when; if it had been a less iconic thing that hadn't worked its way into pop culture as a whole, I never would have managed to portray that character at all.

I wound up going home with the fruits of my adventures in sculpting. The red sculpture is still intact; the blue and green ones are not.

We do have to plot a coherent plan about the Return of gameboyguy13 to California.

I forgot my purse as we were screeching out the door. Thus, I was on a read-only trip to Fry's Electronics while the roomie got a new keyboard. She covered dinner and fuel, thankfully, as she pointed out that we did not have enough time to stop in and get it on the way to the group. Yay for roommates! Yay for not getting stopped while driving with the license nicely and securely at home right by the door where I won't forget it!

"Hell's Angel", the story with Mary and Nick, is coming out in little bits and blops. Not much, but enough to keep itself going. Over time, I may build up an actual story.

Group was sparse tonight. ConGames is coming up, so trystan_laryssa was out. There was lots of time for reading and general BSing.

Dinner was much fun. It gets more and more surreal to explain Darkside to new people who don't know him or the associated story.

There was this nifty guy hanging about with the SCA people, and he wound up having a BS session with the remaining writers for a while. I am reasonably certain that our Captain will capture all needed contact information.

Oh dear. The new woman? The one with the NOLA novel? Stomped out. She and M have not been getting along at all. We wound up going around in a circle. She wound up at the end of the circle. trystan_laryssa showed up tonight, hooray! Unfortunately, she fell right before this woman in the reading order. The woman did not double-check with her to see if she had anything. Doom and gloom ensued when M asked trystan_laryssa what she had to read. She did have something.

I whipped out the timer (I'd been timing turns for everybody) and started timing her explanation of the backstory. The NOLA novel lady started packing up her stuff and went to leave.

"It worked," she muttered to M as she went out the door.

Cue rant from M about the woman's infantile attitude. Note the assenting silence from the bulk of the group; trystan_laryssa was boggled at being thrust into the very uncomfortable situation.

Happiness with the whole equinox thing! Yay!

I woke up around eleven-something-ish and did things online. Then I went and gave the plasma. Doing that always invigorates me, because it's doing something good and I get Random Expendable Budget that goes toward writing nights out with the girls, laundry, groceries, fuel, and generally some left over to be completely random with. Like the pastry-oid breakfast for work on Sunday. Dad got paid enough to do impulsive gestures like that on a grander scale (see: "Seismic Salad"), and while I can't do that, I can definitely show the love with bagels, doughnuts, muffins, and Danish.

(I've said it before and I'll likely say it again, but one thing Dad is really good at is figuring out what people really want, and making it happen. Not necessarily their deepest dreams, and he doesn't cheat at cross-ball, but when he can arrange something simple that would bring joy to someone's life, he does.)

I've been reading The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test while giving plasma for the last couple weeks, because that's the best chance I have to read un-interrupted. It's a fascinating book. I'm sure it was a profoundly weird era to have lived through.

Construction on the Phoenix Metro light rail is intense, especially in the three-mile zig-zag from Bethany Home and 19th Ave down to Camelback, over to Central, and down to Indian School. I love the concept, especially given that I use public transit so much, but I have mixed feelings about driving through all the construction. But it's so exciting to see it in progress!

I wound up in Target. I found a GE telephone headset for a reasonable price. I took a look at the rubber wrist strap jump drives, but I was a good girl. I eyed one of the inexpensive guitars longingly (again), but I was still -- a good girl. I was profoundly shocked and amused to see a $20 cellphone that takes prepaid cards. I guess I've been out of touch with the cellphone market, because the last time I saw disposable cellphones they were in something cyberpunk and then hot girls were walking out of convenience store fabricators. Granted, the $20 cellphone was dinky and played like a really cheap calculator on the display model.

But.
This is science fiction. It was science fiction in 2000. This is 2006. Granted, that was a near-future type story, but it was a 20-years-from-now near-future type story. That's a quarter of the time.

The new headset feels like a work headset, except the microphone seems to be nicer, and the plug doesn't quite fit into the jack just right. And the work headsets have a conventional telephone receiver plug, RJ-11, rather than the teenytiny ones that are measured by inches or centimeters or whatever.

Came home to find that I'd somehow managed to whack the espresso machine on, and it doesn't have a safety cutoff switch. Nothing was on fire, but the box of chocolate covered espresso beans that had been parked on top of it had grown slumped and internally sticky. I switched it off and hoped for the best. I fear it's ruined forever. It has a profound smell of overheated equipment about it. I'm just glad nothing caught on fire.

Then I wound up going over to visit trystan_laryssa and her new computer. Her computer is an Acer, just like Allegra. Well, a couple generations removed from Allegra. It was nice to have brand recognition. Her computer has a 10-key pad. So. Jealous.

Fruits Basket, yay.

Taking trystan_laryssa to school after we wake up -- the matriarch of the household usually does the rides, but as she's got another engagement this morning, she's out of the running, and I'm in.

So, I sleep.

Via dduane: Fuzzy Logic error messages.

Because of going gaga over trapezzoid's music, I wound up on Tindeck. Weird stuff there. The song "Pi" (the tasty remix that's going around with video, evidently) is very good listening, but listens better with the first 43 seconds lopped off. iLove my iTunes. (Related: the iHop, a portable pancake server. Uses Blackberry technology.Users tend to wind up with bluetooth. Blame dustraven.)

Hand is feeling much better, ditto with arm. All that's left now is the rather extensive bruising that's going to develop thanks to the merry whack I fetched the hand. That can be worked around.

Wound up hanging out with dustraven and trystan_laryssa this evening. Dropped on by, had fun. dustraven evidently absolutely loves Lemon Demon. Hee, hee. iHop IHOP was followed by short Lemon Demon marathon (jumbo shrimp?) and then Star Wars animations. (Where is a Darkside when a girl needs him most? Fixing a computer, that's where. Or sleeping. Silly man. ;)

Had very late and surreal conversation about the nasal stage with trystan_laryssa in the process of leaving. We were both late-night-giddy, and this led weird places. I wound up telling her the Saga of the Work Air Freshener Bricks, complete with the latest developments.

The air freshener that I sniffed was not put securely back up on the corner of the near corner stall, and fell to the floor. The following morning, I espied no air freshener on the floor in that place, but a heretofore unseen air freshener brick sitting in or near the delivery slot of the tampon/pad machine. (This is clearly the same brick, just moved some.) I fear it's giving the tampons and pads a not-so-fresh scent.

It's like a game of find-the-air-freshener. I wonder if someone should start taping them places with the thick clear tape. Just to see what would happen.

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.

• Take one shaky Lunatic, and add dodgy paperwork. See Lunatic stress. Ask Lunatic to do something with the dodgy paperwork. See Lunatic melt down and start crying, becoming incapable of any sort of coherent thought.


• Add an 11-5 shift, and several people who weren't seated due to some oversight on the part of the office. Have a last-minute swap of personnel called in by a grandboss. Have one of the personnel in question and another interested party grumble about it.


• Tech fun -- setting up my elder clone's e-mail on a computer resulted in things not looking right with her inbox. Argh? Grr.


• People coming in hostile, late, and reeking of marijuana.


• People coming in chronically late and out of dress code.


• Payday weekend means I get to hand out paychecks too.


• Phone ringing off the hook.


• Frosted Christ-Cakes Kid quit for school, but came in to get his last paycheck. It was fortunate that he did, because right about then his ex-girlfriend (who works there) started having a bad asthma attack. Her inhaler did not seem to dent it. Between her call to someone to come pick her up and waiting for them to call back, it got bad enough she wanted us to call emergency. So I did. Frosted Christ-Cakes Kid got her wheeled out of the area on one of the office chairs to an office by the entrance to wait for the paramedics.


• The interim, of course, is studded with joyful happenings such as more paperwork and the like.


• A woman had a wheel bust on her chair. Yay incident reports. Stressy College Chick had to write one up over that.


• Turned out that the girl with the asthma attack had an asthma attack first, then a panic attack on top of it. Ow.


• Chaos on the hours chart; I either had the right number of people coming in at the wrong times, and no clue where it came from, or too many people, but the right times. Not happiness for anyone, anywhere. All attempts to track it down failed. I eventually went with a reality check and fudged it, which is the appropriate thing to do when it burns more supervisor-hours than the discrepancy.


• Didn't get done with my hours until after break. Postponed my break for this.


• By the time I took my break, almost all the phone goons had left.


• Good Figments should not ever sneak up behind their Lunatics and tap them on the shoulder. No matter how plaid they are. For they will come within yea much of a punch in the nose, and if the Lunatic rolls sanity check in time, she'll be left dealing with the hormone spike.

After all that cleared up, the day improved. But I was dreadfully behind on the paperwork. I usually get out of there about an hour and a half after the last phone goons are out, or sooner if it's an early shift and I have most of my evening tasks out of the way. The Rules Lawyer Monitor has resigned her monitor post; she's a mere phone goon at the moment. The blessed woman stayed and did the ENTIRE cleanup list. I was ready to hug her.

As I told figment0, this was a day that cake could not make better. He nearly earned frosting up the nose for annoying me (by speaking, essentially); this wasn't because he's inherently annoying, but because he's safe enough to drop the professional front in front of, but not a bondmate, and so not attuned to the chaos that is me.

It got better, after everyone left. Stressy College Chick Supervisor chills me out, and I think I help her chill out too. I've always wanted to send an intra-office e-mail with "Alarums and Excursions" in the subject line, and now I have. (Well, not always, but if I'd thought about it, yeah.)

Today ruled.

When I got there, trystan_laryssa and hcolleen were already there. I had come up with a writing prompt for hcolleen to write on the board ("Everything was backwards"), and there was a lot of happy fun talking about stuff in general before getting down to business. We had another new person today. I still can't remember hcolleen's friend's name, the one who's very defensive about her writing.

Constance McNeill tackled me in the shower last night. Constance is a new character who just came out of fucking nowhere, and she already has quirks. The writing prompt actually provided me with a viable way of introducing her. I am collecting characters. This is a good thing.

We went around the room and shared stuff. Fun was had by all. trystan_laryssa wound up actually figuring out how to start off some project that she'd been planning to do.

The last hurrah at Cafe Fiat was excellent. The food was good as per the usual, and there was actual chocolate cheesecake -- on the last day we'll be meeting there, figures! trystan_laryssa and I shared the last piece of Double Chocolate and a piece of chocolate swirl.

M wound up tailoring writing challenges to the individual. I am to write a mundane heterosexual affair without dialogue. I may fudge the requirements a little and include some "She gasped loudly, then yowled his name so loudly the neighbors started pounding on the walls" and so forth, but no actual conversation, no actual ... well, the lead-in may well have to have meaningful dialogue so that I can stand to write it and I'll know what the characters are actually doing besides fucking with great glee and abandon. It is horribly difficult for me to write romance that does not include the supernatural, because I write what I know. And I do not do a good job of having romance that does not include the supernatural.

I think that Constance is going to be the one having the affair.

trystan_laryssa explained tabletop gaming to azwriter. Something tells me that azwriter is going to jump in wholeheartedly and do her darnedest to raise her girls as Good Little Gamers. Pocky was also explained. There was joking with subtext, pickles, and whipped cream. All normal good clean fun. trystan_laryssa was not freaked out by us being wild and crazy, because that's what normally happens around our friends...

There was much bus-giggling. trystan_laryssa and I snarked at a particular asshat driver. She wanted to remember my spur-of-the-moment comment, which was something to the effect of: "Who ripped off your dick and replaced it with a stick of pocky?"

I wound up dropping by her place for half an hour or so before catching one of the last buses home. Loren was there. Good filking fun was had by all.

Work happened. Beauty, from the upcoming NaNoWriMo 2005, is getting very insistent in my head. She's not quite sure who she is yet, but her story needs to be told. She doesn't even have a name yet. I refuse to allow her to gank rosalynde's.

I was on the phones. I got surveys. I was not sitting next to Figment, alas. I was sitting next to one of the Dowager Empresses of the workplace, a stately woman whose hair usually matches her outfit. I am amazed that I am picking up a reputation for being uniformly sweet and polite and nice on the phones. (I think I mentioned that I got my semiannual review the other day? The Alternate Lead Monitor took me into the back room last Friday and told me that I rock hardcore, and to keep up the good work. At this point, I'm probably more critical of my own performance on the phones than the rest of the monitoring staff is.) The Dowager Empress of Colorful Hair wanted to know if I was really as nice in person as I sound on the phones.

Any batch of new hires means new people to get to know, to screen in and screen out. Part of the process is seeing who's going to wind up in The Crowd. From a recent batch of trainees seem to have emerged two students of the Art Institute in Animation (one graduated, one current) who have been spending breaks with Figment and therefore me as well. I was going to do the simple thing and call the guy (about my age-ish, graduated) the Animator, and the girl (eighteen or nineteen, current student) the Animatrix, but then I recalled a certain cult movie and assorted animated spinoffs, and decided that for confusion's sake, I should probably not bestow that nickname upon the girl. The guy may well wind up being the Animator, and the girl may wind up being the Acolyte.

The Acolyte's alarm bird clock has been acting possessed, so I wound up bringing in my old (still functional) emergency back-up alarm clock (the one that the Little Fayoumis infamously wondered "Is that [Darkside]'s alarm clock?" about) for her to have. It was brand new in 1994, and not all the buttons work anymore, and it eats tapes, but at least it isn't possessed. My tower shelf doesn't have a clock anymore, but at least this way it'll be in use.

Benadryl sends me loopier than a very loopy thing, but at least it helps put a dent in the allergies. And there are bad, bad, bad allergies going around. Rain in the Arizona early spring makes the Arizona late spring unbreathable.

In other news, work is having overtime, hiring a bunch of n00bs, and having 10 hour shifts on Saturdays. (easalle -- I'm working late on the 30th, so I won't be able to make it. Argh.) This will prove to be interesting. dustraven and trystan_laryssa's roommate and GM for the superheroes game is working there now. Insanity shall commence, and shall run screaming in the other direction, because work is going to be post-sane, or knurd, or something like that. There will be far too much caffeine, far too little coherent thought, and far too many supervisors pulling a twelve-hour shift or longer than that.

...Heck, after pulling a few supervisor shifts on the 10 hour phone goon shifts (which translates to a 12+ shift for supervisory staff) I should be able to pull a double-shift Sunday as a phone goon (13 hours, 1/2 hour of which is between shifts) no problem.

Bad day: work was hell, and I wound up leaving early. My brain was not there. Guess who forgot feminine products this morning? Guess who needed feminine products this morning? Hellooo Bitchy Witchy Week.

Good day: after I pulled my brain back together somewhat, enough to be semi-functional (after an hour talk with Darkside), took the *(*&(*(#@$*((* painkillers (cramps are absolutely no fun), I wound up going grocery shopping with trystan_laryssa, who was taking a very grouchy and gimpy Loren. Loren on her own has a formidable grouch-potential. Ill and injured Loren needs a SWAT team. Despite the grouch-factor, there was a lot of silliness and assorted other fun.

After that, we wound back up at trystan_laryssa and dustraven's. Figment was there. Figment gives backrubs and doesn't set off my perimeter alerts even when I'm having a really bad day. That was good.

Two different people at work have now asked if Figment and I are brother and sister. trystan_laryssa told us that today too. Odd.