I really really needed a "white flowers and MURDER" perfume for work today. The J-Horror BPAL from synecdochic worked wonders today.

I woke up substantially before my alarm, and decided to say fuck it and get out of bed around 8:30 (only a half-hour early). Then I took a leisurely drive to work, chatting with Nora the whole way (well, post-coffee).

My Overlady popped over to see what was the matter, that I was in at the normal beginning of the engineering day. I explained. Her 12:00 was with someone I have dearly missed; I suggested some choice snippets to mention. Basically no sooner did she pop off to her own office than lb and the angry man with all the tattoos showed up. My cube was a distracting cave of wonders, but we went over the sortable chart of grouses (the wiki page with the timeline of the helldesk software, the sortable wikitable with requested improvements, the R&D end-user profile, and the picture of the ruffed grouse) and made a few edits and priority confirmations before marching off to the meeting itself. Beldorion was not in the office today, and Gramp had a conflicting meeting.

The meeting was on the ass-end of campus, in perhaps literally the furthest building from where lb sits: definitely the horizontally furthest, although there is a diagonal building which may have a little greater actual distance. Some people were at no pains to be friendly to engineering-land. We got there a minute after by my watch, while the people already in the room were giving it a few more minutes to see who else would be there and get the webex started.

I was correct in yesterday's assertion that today's meeting was unmissable. I believe I am recalling my manager verbatim when I relate that her instructions to me were: "Give 'em hell."

In the room: the aforementioned incomprehensible twerp, the highly placed dev running the demo, someone sitting quietly and shutting up, Too Much Eyeliner Lady (somewhere highly placed in local ownership of the helldesk software, but a consummate buck-passer), someone from IT, and then the engineering-land contingent. We were, in order: the Desert Islander, very chill; the Angry Tattooed Man, angry; lb, stern; Azz, by turns stern and earnestly, specifically, functionally constructive. Engineering-land contingent got printouts of the wiki page for reference. lb and I took notes (him every now and then on his phone, me with pen and paper).

The engineering contingent post-mortem lasted the twenty minutes back to engineering-land, with further follow-up to follow at some point I am sure.

Lunch was with Purple, and pleasant. He has an ambitious project to spearhead with the knowledge and blessing of his manager.

Wednesday is the day when the cafeteria does their hump day takeout program: place your order before early afternoon, and you too can take home a corporate cafeteria quality meal at takeout prices. It looked decent, so I ordered.

My Overlady came back from her 12:00 with many bits of information. She perched on my couch and shared the intelligence from this meeting. Oh, my.

My computer's been in need of a reboot for a bit, so I was chipping away at getting the things done that I needed to get done before that point. Eventually it hit mid-evening. I pinged Purple and (after flailing at sithjawa a bit) mentioned the concept of dinner, and did he want any. Which he did. We opted for my cube this time. I have a guest couch! He said he'd be over in a bit, and to feel free to start without him (always a dangerous statement from an engineer). I was just separating the plates when he arrived. It's nice to have guests in my cube! I began to tell him some of the highlight from my Overlady's 12:00.

I heard Designer Sparkles coming out of an office. "There's nobody here at this hour!" she said. "No," my Overlady agreed, "except maybe Azure." Designer Sparkles wandered out of the office in search of places more like home. And as my Overlady came around the corner, there I was! With a Purple in my cube.

Then followed a delightful conversation wherein my Overlady shared intelligence from her 12:00 with Purple, we compared some experiences raising hell in school, and all in all a great time was had. My Overlady headed off in search of her own dinner, and we finished ours. Then Purple went back to his desk, and I had the joy of a very crashed computer in need of some Windows updates. My next task: install Notepad++, because I do much better about autosaving in that than in Windows Notepad. (Which I just typed as Nopetad.)

Parking lot conversation was largely fishbrick. Also puddinghandle, toiletjello, blenderpoop, shortsheet, notebolt, and other mostly theoretical forms of mayhem. To be clear: very few of these are actually good ideas to do! Puddinghandle: mix up some very, very chocolatey chocolate pudding. Put a roll of toilet paper on top of someone's car, to catch their attention. Spread the pudding under the door handle. Toiletjello: this is a Shawn stunt. Mix clear gelatin with the boiling water. Pour into the cold water of the toilet bowls at school. (This works best in a cold climate.) Allow enough time to set before the students come in. Shawn was disappointed in the janitors in that they did not think of the hot water (add more hot water, perhaps from the coffee pot, to dissolve the jello safely) and instead removed it by hand. (Purple: "That would be an unforgettable parfait.") Blenderpoop: targeting the Insufferable Smoothie person, either by actually doing it (ideally with multiple DNA sources) or just leaving a note with a crude depiction of a stick figure pooping in their blender. Shortsheet: this is the classic prank. Notebolt: leave a few spare bolts on somebody's desk with a note saying something like "I think you'll need these." The bolts are not actually from anything they own, but they spend some time looking fruitlessly. (Sort of like releasing the five pigs, numbered 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, into a sufficiently large building.)

Beardwatch 2014: still on.

At the end of the day, I still smell faintly of white flowers, although less like murder.

Today was variously busy. I tried to get a jump on my inbox before the QUILTBAG meeting started, but that took more time than I thought, and so did the lunch line. So I was running late. Alas. But there were people there! Doing stuff! I need to check my calendar for May.

( Read more... )

"Most awkward orgy ever."

Title: Dogfire
Author: azurelunatic
Length: ~2600 words
Universe: Cracked Phoenix spinoff (original)
Content Advisory: College kids being idiots with dogs, booze, and smoking (humor). First-person present tense.
Notes: This was not originally intended to hook up with an existing universe, until I realized that it did. The hookup is not apparent in this piece. It has been reworked from the 1998 original version.

---

I'm on the phone with Chris when the dog catches fire.



( It's a quiet Friday evening in my dorm room. )

( Further Notes )

brimtoast requested a bedtime story tonight in chat. The Green Plastic Bucket story sounded so innocent, and she wanted to discover the hidden mischief! So!


Once upon a time (in 1996), my then-best-friend That Idiot Shawn went from staying with his mother in Alaska to staying with his father (and stepmother, and three half-brothers) in Colorado.

Shawn was the oldest, at 16. All of his half-brothers were younger, ranging from middle school to elementary school to preschool.

One day, Shawn's father, stepmother, oldest half-brother, and youngest half-brother all went somewhere, leaving Shawn home to keep an eye on his middle half-brother, who had a summer reading assignment of some sort. Shawn's middle half-brother was not all about the reading, but Shawn banished him to the living room until such time as the reading was done.

This left Shawn on the phone with me (I believe in the kitchen). I was having a lovely lazy summer afternoon and was enjoying my talk with him.

"I have a green plastic bucket!" Shawn said. I did not doubt this. He had a good number of things around, and sometimes chose to amuse himself with them. "Listen to this sound it makes!" he said.

I heard a tik tik tik noise. Shawn's voice sounded hollow all of a sudden, also. Echoing!

I was not a dumb girl. I concluded that the bucket was now on his head! I told him of my conclusions! He was surprised that I could hear this! The bucket was, in fact, on his head.

( Oh, Shawn. )

Once upon a time in high school, I had this best friend.

( Brazen stupidity of the genius IQ type involving electrical weaponry, do-it-yourself-ish-ness, and the public school system. )

In high school, I had this idiot best friend Shawn. Last night, I talked to him voice-to-voice for the first time in about six years. (Six years ago, he stopped by my workplace to shop for a new hard drive with a friend and his daughter; we chatted briefly. Then I left town and we stopped speaking; we started IMing and e-mailing every now and then a few years back.)

He moved back into town within the past month, and he e-mailed me his number. (nilo, he's not of your generation nor is his daughter old enough to be in elementary school quite yet; no need to worry.) We talked.

He's finding it difficult to get a job, because of drug tests. (He's still smoking every substance known to man and then some.) He related his current tale of woe: ( cunning plans and grossness. )

Only Shawn. *sigh* Only Shawn.

Last night at work, votania cheered up a lady who was having a grumpy day by telling her the tale of Oscar the Iguana and That Idiot Shawn.

Shawn was going to his dad's house for the summer, and was bringing his pet iguana Oscar (a very new pet) and didn't want Oscar to be riding down with the luggage, because hello, iguana, cold-blooded, need good climate control.

So he stuck Oscar in an empty duffel bag and decided to carry him on the plane. Like, in his lap or something.

So he went through Security with Oscar in the duffel bag, and told them, you know, to not put it through the X-Ray machine, as he was an iguana, see? The security checkpoint people being much less vigilant in those days, unlike the guards from the youth of Miles who would have disintegrated the iguana on the spot and then sifted through its remains for bombs, bugs, and the like, let Shawn, and the iguana, pass through.

Shawn got on the plane and got settled down, and then the plane was boarded by some people who did not look like they had much of a sense of humor, and they told Shawn that no, his iguana did not belong on the airplane with the passengers. In vain, Shawn argued that the iguana would be very good and would stay inside his bag. The officials said no, that he would have to check Oscar or leave him behind.

Shawn's mother, who fortunately hadn't departed the airport, was called into the negotiations, and wound up taking Oscar home with her for the summer.

Once upon a time, I had a high school best friend. His current online nickname is Fuzzy Modem, and he hangs out at this spacebattles board a lot.

One day, he and I were on the phone. This happened a lot. He got hungry, and decided to make himself something to eat. Mindful of the past debacle with a can of beans, I made sure that he'd cooked it correctly (open can, put in frying pan).

He walked into the living room with the pan of beans and sat down at the table to eat it.

Somewhere in there, he stood at the door for a long time, calling the dog in. He was barefoot.

He ate until he was full, and then reflected that his feet were cold. He noticed that the substantial leftovers from his lunch were warm, even hot.

The only logical thing to do was, of course, stick his feet in the pan of beans to warm them up. Not surprisingly, it worked.

We chatted for a while. He mentioned how nice and warm the beans were between his toes. He noticed that they were growing cold, and decided it was probably a good time to get his feet out of the beans and go into the kitchen and... shit.

His feet were all covered with beans. He was sitting in the carpeted living room.

He decided to take care of things. He called the dog. When she finally wandered over, sled-dog ears perking at him, he pointed her to his bean-covered feet and ordered her to lick. She gave his feet a few swipes with her tongue, which made him giggle at the tickling, but she found the beans not interesting, and wandered off about her own business.

He eventually crawled into the kitchen, washed his feet off, and retrieved the pan of beans, now with footprints. He seriously considered finishing it off. Disgusted, I hung up on him.