As scheduled, quite a bit of #cupcake ducked out from their desks around 5:30-ish on Tuesday. With a nominal effort at stealth, we assembled around the fire pit. I saw radius out looking for me on my way over, and showed him how to operate the fire in the fire pit. Rain had been collecting in the seats, so we brushed them off.

One of the reasons the gathering was more urgent than it might have been is that radius is headed back to his alternate universe home Down Under, perhaps this month but definitely by the beginning of next year. He'll be back around, as he's still Working Here, just ... working from there. So we are getting our cupcakery in while we have the chance.

Assembled included me, radius, the guy in the office next door to radius (a new #cupcake arrival), Purple, the scruffy gay Canadian guy from the UK whose office has the unnecessarily gendered bananas, the Dean and his younger kid, and eventually Mr. Tux. There was chocolate. There were marshmallows. There were graham crackers and Danish butter cookies. There was better chocolate. There were roasting forks. There were very valiant attempts at avoiding making any sort of obscene joke that the kid would pick up on when the marshmallow slid down the shaft of the hot dog sized roasting fork in a trail of white goo, and the subsequent introduction of the scruffy gay Canadian guy from the UK to his first s'more ever. Not everyone was careful to check the seats before sitting down, and the scruffy gay Canadian guy from the UK (he really needs a nickname, and I should check to see whether he's already been assigned one) got "wet bum". Happily, there was fire to help with that.

We gossiped. We told scary stories. A ... lot of them were dev or ops flavored. (Hushed ominous voice: "... and he thought he had a viable backup." *gasps*)

One of the guys had been thinking it would be too cold, and how would we keep warm? It turns out, fire is pretty good at that. I was wrapped up in two jackets and an ankle-length cloak, which also helped.

Dark chocolate salted caramel Ghirardelli squares are *fabulous* in s'mores. The almond toffee kind are also great. To Purple's dismay, the dark chocolate mint cream kind were not so great in that combination.

Purple had offered to give radius a lift home, and the scruffy gay Canadian guy from the UK got a lift as far East as Purple was going. We collected in Purple's office for a little more (warmer) gossip. Someone had a wardrobe malfunction -- the scruffy gay Canadian guy from the UK had forgotten his belt, and it turns out that when that happens, his zipper becomes migratory. We talked about the logistics of the Internet of Things (In Your Trousers), and whether a self-zipping fly was practical (no), and how you'd do a fly status monitoring thingy. Plus exploits.

We trooped out to the parking lot. I told radius and the s.g.C.g.f.t.UK about that time that my high school's academic decathlon team did (and then did not) get disqualified from the state competition (yet again), the Hotel Windows Are High Up edition, after the discussion about how many birds it would take to poop on a smartcar to total it. (A lot.) Purple had already heard that story. heh.

One of the little signposts by which I judge the world is the presence and/or nature of the customary goodnight hug. Typically this is not an event observed by co-workers. There have been times when the presence of observers has bent both of us in the direction of this not being a moment that ought to be presented for misinterpretation. This was not that kind of evening. After a fleeting side-hug (that friend to awkward teenagers everywhere) we were all on our merry ways.

• Sat, 15:21: Yesterday I told the Angry Tattooed Man his code name. He laughed & went off to a meeting about how people shouldn't vape at him indoors.
• Sat, 15:22: RT @doloresonthedot: S/o to the person on my street who got catcalled with "shake it baby" who just bellowed in response "NOT SHAKING THIS …
• Sat, 15:57: RT @elisabethepps: I wanna see police depts proudly post stats showing no excessive force. no profiling. no dead civilians. Then I'll lead …
• Sat, 16:02: Reading Unspoken. Howling with laughter now but I know I will cry later. #LynburnLegacy
• Sat, 16:10: RT @samkalidi: Homophobes: Children deserve a mother and a father Homophobes: *disown their LGBT children so they have neither*
• Sat, 21:39: I ship Angela/Holly so hard. #LynburnLegacy Unspoken
• Sat, 23:26: Well. That's what you get with a soulbond, belike. #LynburnLegacy Unspoken
• Sat, 23:28: RT @BoingBoing: Texas gentleman shot by bullet that ricocheted off armadillo http://t.co/Px4tE5F8A6 http://t.co/NZzKHCEUvv
• Sat, 23:38: RT @seananmcguire: For those objecting to my candy corn on basis of it's August: get Christmas off Halloween's lawn and we'll go back to Se…
• Sat, 23:46: RT @MeetAnimals: A cat and a lowercase cat http://t.co/4lcJZxdq5a

( Read more... )

Sunday was not a great day in the department of menstruation. Specifically, it all decided to come out at a great rate. After I got to sleep from the whole electrical fire, I had to get up and ditch blood regularly. Sunday was a quiet day. Then I went to bed early and was more or less asleep for thirteen hours.

At lunch, I came to the gentle realization that one of the reasons that I had been so nervous about telling Darkside that [birthname] is not really one that I answer to anymore, is because I was not allowed to have preferences of my own around Shawn. Purple saw the dawning horror on my face and said many sweetly vicious things that prompted me to smile mistily and press paired fingers against his sleeve. norabombay mentioned, later, that a name change is a significant thing that comes with a nonzero chance of friends and family rejecting it, even people who ought to be close and ought to know better. But yeah, Shawn's shadow looms longer than previously thought.

lb saw a familiar face on campus, in the company of a recruiter.

My phone's battery has been not great. Alas.

The Stage Manager left me a donation toward my candy dish.

Today was one of those days where it seemed like all I did was talk with helpdesk. I also tried to do beta on some helpdesk stuff, but not all of the pieces were in order. Then I tried to put some stuff in the wiki, only to find that the wiki was broken. So I had to call helpdesk again.

The white sour balls may be possibly pear-flavored, Purple said.

He'd come in late enough to have a parking spot of opportunity. Mine was further down the same row, at the other end. We chatted for a while. My eyeshadow included some glitter, which had been catching the light and reflecting off my glasses, causing slight distraction. This was not a light source Purple would have guessed. He hugged me gently but thoroughly and we split. Tomorrow night is the deadline for some papers that have to be graded. He has a couple left.

I did get a good chat in with Nora, through the commute and into the grocery store. Then I came home and started laundry and cooked dinner and read some internet.

I started the day infeliciously, by sleeping over a meeting with a number of researchteam and an external vendor. However, by all reports it involved less signal than noise, and there are many further questions. I shall bang on it until candy falls out.

Another group contacted me for an internal pilot with another external vendor. I will also bang on that one until candy falls out. There was much cynicism in #VirtualH, with very little spilling over to #cupcake.

Vampire Teeth Dev, the officemate of Lennon Glasses Guy, rather charmingly seems to think I possess more knowledge about the actual whereabouts of Purple than the average guy at the lunch table. It is possible. This time, I had no extra knowledge, just I knew Purple's car was in the parking lot and he'd sent out the lunch ping, but I hadn't seen him yet. He'd gotten collared by someone else with a problem right after sending the lunch ping, was what had happened.

I spent the bulk of the afternoon screaming into wikis on a small number of topics:

* What is going on with the researchteam's SaaS thing?
* What is going on with the upcoming conference?
* Maps.

Mid-afternoon, a large selection of #cupcake descended upon my cube, and met Researcher Haystack. They then swept me off to the Milkshake Dungeon. I have been careful to get things which don't have lactose, which helps things. Purple discovered to his dismay that "heat this up a bit" for the blueberry danish involved a microwave. lb got a cheese danish with "one degenerate blueberry". I got a picture.

Teenage girls have a reputation for giggling. I have been a teenage girl. I believe that it is safe to say that a group of grown techdudes (give or take) watching/narrating/explaining/listening to a clip from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Party can rival that.

My teammate Rocky, the 11+ -year man, has taken to setting whatever cup he happens to be holding on the corner of the further team table when he heads into the bathroom. This is a sensible habit. The problem comes in when he forgets he had been carrying a cup once he emerges. This is not actually a problem when it's a work-cup or a compostable one, but when it's a special cup, there's always the unfortunate chance that someone walking by might pick it up. (I don't know of anyone who would be asshole enough to take a clearly personal cup, but sometimes it's a swag cup and people do sometimes divest themselves of same, so it's not always clear.) This time it was a swag cup from a particular event, and I knew he wouldn't want to lose it. I also didn't feel quite like picking it up and trotting it over to his office. So I grabbed the blue tape.

Shortly after that, I was drawn out of my wiki-whacking trance by the sound of giggling, and an iPhone.

( Read more... )

Madam Standards was trying to power through some stuff today. I poked my head around the corner of her office mid-afternoon; she was In The Writing Zone, but did want to chat later. I poked back just after five-ish, when she was so far into the zone she didn't seem to register me appearing at all. I went to get my own coffee refill, and grabbed a bonus mug with hot water, three bags of tea (mint, Earl Grey, and passionfruit, so at least one was bound to be reasonable), a couple packets of sweetener, a stirring stick, and one of the little cheeses. I slid it onto her desk and let her get back to it.

"How did you know?"

It's mint, apparently. I made a note.

Purple was working on stuff, and I was walloping at my inbox, so we stayed fairly late. Eventually the need for dinner became an issue. We did stop to chat. It was a lovely warm-compared-to-places-which-are-not-California (and not uncomfortably chilly for California) night under the waning moon with the soft song of at least three owls (two mostly in tune, one contrasting), backed up by at least three leafblowers, punctuated by bursts of police siren echoing back through the parking lot.

I learned that one joking term for the thing where two police cars pull up side-by-side into the cutouts of canyon-walled divided highways and roll down their windows to chat, is "cop-ulation". *groan*

The hug bonked my nose (gently but startlingly) with Purple's shoulder, which wound up silly.

I was tired and hungry, and now I'm mostly just tired. Nora's been sick. I'm cooking up some bacon, some for now and some for later. It smells good.

One of the great things about fictional multiverses is that sometimes, their universe is your universe, and if you want to do a thing which would ordinarily be a crossover or AU, it might even fit into the canon without altering the world in which they are, merely altering the universe they happen to be in.

Thus it was that I explained my fabulous hat to morbane (Sophie Hatter would whisper "fabulous trainwreck" to this collision between an Easter bonnet and a Pride parade) and we started plotting a thing where Sophie Hatter winds up in a Pride parade. Howell Jenkins is from Wales. Certainly a village in Wales might have itself an organization which might try to throw a Pride parade. Heh. Heh. Heh.


It's almost always a quieter day than it might otherwise be if Purple is out of the office. I wasn't entirely sure I felt like locating team members for lunch, even though when I have lunch with them I generally enjoy the process. So I tiptoed upstairs in the building off thattaway and joined lb's lunch table.

Beldorion was in the middle of some long-winded story or other which wound up being about knowing some guy who had been heavily involved in like doubleclick or something. One of the people I know less well at this particular lunch table started asking, well, don't you admire him?

Beldorion did not admire this guy. ( Read more... )


So there I was in IRC. The guy who had built the main IRC bot left the company some time ago, and someone else built a new one and then there was a funky data center migration issue (nobody knows what VM the thing was on originally, so after the migration, no one knows what server the thing went onto nor enough of the VM name to find it again, and if it belonged to an alumnus it may have been deleted) so the Lumberjack (a friend to #cupcake currently working out of a home office in Japan, who was recently talking about his need to build something or split a bunch of wood lying around) is re-setting-up a copy of the first guy's bot.

One of the features of the bot is financial market prices. You say ".stock GOOG" and it gives you Google's stock. This is about how that went:

Lumberjack: .stock AAPL
arewethereyet_bot: [ERROR 259 at LINE 57465534511 / NO ACCESS WITHOUT STANDARD FCP/1 20/GM.]
devpan_snarker: lol
( Read more... )


I take it as a distinct item of success that I declared that I wanted a particular dish with a side of fresh cucumber pickle salad and then went right ahead and did that thing. All that needed preparing was the cucumber, but this time I had the energy to do it and get the other groceries put away promptly (not just the cold stuff) and that was dinner. So often I want a thing, but then the energy expended to get it makes preparing it immediately impossible, and then I eat something else so I get the energy, and then I don't want that anymore at the next meal opportunity. So yay me for energy.


Tomorrow, the Party Commandant starts the plotting process for the team conference, at least, the part where we're having meetings. The wheel turns, and ages come and pass.

BPAL 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.

Today was my erstwhile Overlady's last day. She's leaving into what I might describe as a once-in-a-career opportunity. The office will be different without her.

I'd joined Purple's table for lunch as per usual. My Overlady came in and joined us as the last of Purple's crew were leaving, so it was just the three of us. The cafeteria quiets down after the rush has peaked.

There were a few last little administrative details. There will be another collection of them tomorrow, things I couldn't entirely face today. We hugged a slightly misty goodbye -- though it is a small valley, and there will be social things -- and I got the cards handed off or in the interoffice mail, all but the last one for the guy who's on-campus but in another building.

I held it together pretty well until Purple hugged me goodnight, at which point I got all squeaky and started leaking a bit. He comforted me and we talked shit about Shawn, as talking shit about Shawn is a pastime which often cheers me up. He is a good Purple. ( Read more... )

Morning did not treat me particularly well. My throat and my nose got into an argument, and I lost. The resulting coughing spree had me questioning my relationship with oxygen for a few hours. I was droopy, quiet, and woeful over lunch (and I opted for lunch with Purple's gang, rather than the invited speaker event, which sounded interesting but I was exhausted). The hot peppers in the dish weren't the best help. I did quiet organizey things in and around my inbox for a while, and printed some labels for my Overlady's section of the move.

Designer Sparkles had some things to say about transparency; she breezed by my cube and mentioned that I should go and like a thing on not!Facebook. Purple had been bothered by the same topic the night before. I slung some links around.

I wasn't feeling up to seeing what turtle goings-on there were. When Purple came over to retrieve me, there was a bit of a crowd inside, and enough rain outside that neither of us felt quite like that. We found a corner inside. I was still quieter than usual. Various people wandered by, including a few teammates, a friend on another team, and some guy I don't know in the slightest but I've seen him around so his face is familiar. That guy stopped and told me that I'd asked the best question the other day. I told him what had inspired me -- my dad had got access to a variable speed card reader, and you never tell a [Lunatic] "You can't possibly break that." NEVER. (It didn't actually break, but it did react alarmingly.)

We were heading back upstairs to get back to work when Purple got sidetracked in the kitchen. Come to find out, R and the Other Guy were there. So we spent another enjoyable while chatting. This included some disturbing Van Gogh-related imagery, and the revelation that yes, the girls in Frozen are technically Disney princesses, but princesses who on occasion feel gassy. Also, "the other guy who worked on The Book of Mormon" is a distinct selling point. Purple did say random things which resulted in me variously brandishing my cane at him. During one of those moments, there was a ducking and oopsing from behind us: I had nearly clipped Mr. Zune's managey-type person with my cane by accident. He'd come in search of the fussball players, who were already long gone. He ducked back out again. R's phone was on the dregs of its battery, but I had a chargey-box in my purse.

And then we did go back upstairs and get back to work. Though I did ask after the state of the facial hair. I'd been noticing that it's on about a three-day cycle. Apparently that cycle is anywhere from three days to two weeks, depending on morning meetings and other circumstances. So there's no actual plan to revert to the evil-alternate-universe version of himself in progress.

Purple stopped by my cube later. I was stuffing stuff in boxes. My "Caution: Bees" sign came up. It is a sign that belongs on the top of a box. Purple suggested that the ideal contents for a box which would contain this would be vibrators. This won him the boon of being the best [name] for a short span.

I pulled some of the gloves out of the glove-box to put in the emergency kit, prior to putting the glove-box in the moving box, and Purple's attention was drawn. He suggested that the box of gloves be displayed next to some other items to allow the proximity to cause alarm. I realized just the item, and brandished my bottle of lotion. That caused Purple to display antic delight. He then went yes-and, suggesting the bottle of caramel syrup alongside, for further confusion.

Somewhat after that interlude, one of the moving guys popped his face in my cube and evidenced surprise that there was someone working that late. He'd been coming to borrow a highlighter. I retrieved one; he was thinking not one of the fancy ones, one of the standard ones. So I dug up one of those. Everything on my desk is moving around and nothing is where it's supposed to be. It's very distressing.

On my way to go ditch a cup in the kitchen or something, Purple waved me over and showed me, among other things, Ze Frank's "Fitting In Cardboard", a short little film. After it was over, I looked at him and smiled, blinking my eyes slowly. Then I had to explain that no, it was just that I didn't really have words for the thing that I had just watched (which was good). And we also watched a red hot nickel ball slide through a giant gummy bear.

Purple had been meaning (for several days) to email his former officemate about the ownership of a phone that had been left in a moving box in the office. Since I'd been hearing same for several days, this time I loomed over him until he opened the window and started composing the email. Then I headed off to stuff some further things in boxes.

When Purple and I hugged goodnight, his hair was in the wrong place, so I got a faceful of it. This resulted in a little bit of tipping over (him) and spluttering (me). "Well, it's not wet, so that's a good sign," he said, after the part where I explained that it tried to go up my nose.

So then I had to tell the story of how Darkside first accidentally got fingers up my nose, and then wiped them on my shirt. (Purple would have done the same.)

My timing was crappy (considering the hour), but norabombay and I took five minutes to get a bit caught up. She's got stuff in the morning, but maybe she'll be around during the evening.

I'm starting to lose track of my days again! I think.

Saturday: there was sleep. Also Mythbustery things on TV. I took apart the loveseat in order that I might have a little more room to pack. I later measured my cube: I would have to exert some creativity in making things work. So that was Saturday.


Tay is in town! You know, my sole biological sibling, despite the various family I have since adopted off the internet. She has moved to be with her partner, who has so far taken some pains to meet The Family properly, and seems a decent and polite young* man.

We-all had dinner with Guide Dog Aunt on ... Sunday? I think?

Tay plans to take her young man up to Alaska to meet the parents at some point in the not so distant future, because he is important to her and should get to meet the entire family.

Guide Dog Aunt shared some juicy family gossip involving some of the cousins from one of the other tentacles of the family. It seems that one of the ways to get Dr. Aunt Mrs. Uncle Davy to reverse her position on whether a particular young lady is good enough for one of her stepsons is for said stepson to knock said young lady up; to get her in the family way. Dr. Aunt Mrs. Uncle Davy is apparently now advocating marriage, and quickly, as strenuously as she was previously suggesting that this young lady was perhaps a lower bar than the cousin in question should be aspiring to.

I hope said cousin and his partner hold each other in the deepest of respect, trust, affection, and support as they enter this new time in their lives. They're going to need it.


* I'm bad at guessing ages; I'd say he's somewhere over 25 and under 45.


Most of Monday was a blur due to typing up notes from Researcher Under the Radar's** Friday meeting. I drove to work on Monday.

There was a lot of blur on Tuesday, partly due to putting together a nice little presentation for Researcher Under the Radar on his monthly meeting, the one that eats most of my Second Thursdays. The other part involved how various events are suddenly starting to happen again, kicking all the stuff into high gear. I took the train, having managed to get myself a nice commuter pass. I like the train. I don't especially like traveling during peak hours. I'm hoping to find a way to avoid that in my future. I managed to get some spectacular user error, and took the wrong train -- one that didn't stop in Millbrae, and then I didn't realize that the subsequent stop was post-Millbrae, and then expressed all the way to SF. Woops. At which point I had an hour before the return train, which I occupied with a sandwich and yelling at programs -- this time on behalf of Random People From The Internet, rather than myself or my team.


** The artist formerly known as my Junior Researcher is getting a new alias, due to him rather spectacularly no longer being the least in seniority. And he likes to drive fast, and I like quite a bit of the music of Abney Park. The current juniormost researcher may be Researcher Sweatervest or something. Watch me throw names around until one sticks.


norabombay and I started yelling at each other in the comments of her A/B/O primer, which will never not be a source of amusement and delight to me. ( gross canine biology applied to a/b/o ) I <> Nora, or maybe I <3< her -- either way, expect hilariously fond yelling and maybe hatesex if I can find the harness. (In a regular week, I swear to fuck we spend like at least five hours on the phone, modulo schedules. We know each other's wallet names and make a point to hang out every time we're local. We've known each other since like '97.)


Today (Wednesday) I took the train, again. No user error, but I think maybe off-peak for evening is a definite plan.

There was a lot of whacking around spreadsheets for planning for some upcoming festivities. I now have a price comparison spreadsheet for pizzas. I'm really pleased with it! Pizza is one of those weird things to compare across providers, because the offers are not horribly standardized. ( Read more... )

Sometimes in the busy swirl of All The Things, you need to enforce a moment to contemplate the ephemeral nature of that which is, and consciously let go of things that you have been carrying around with you but that you do not need. Sometimes in order to make that happen, you have to set up a calendar appointment so you don't get interrupted, and go outside and immerse yourself in natural elements, like sky and wind and earth and trees and fire. At these times, contemplating concrete ways that your life has recently changed or improved might be helpful, to figure out some feelings or cognitive strategies that once were useful, but have since passed into irrelevance.

Assume hilarity with the Renaissance Man as a constant, and you'll probably be correct. I am rediscovering all sorts of delightful anecdotes. Consider Mommie Alice's run-in with a poorly placed concrete pillar. Consider Mommie Alice and the pixy stick. (Right, it was Joshling who uttered the fateful words.)

Finally got the chance to call the BFF tonight. Hilarity with him is also a constant, but more polestar than compass. ( Read more... )