( Oh, novel notes, how you entertain us. Not entirely SFW diagrams. )

"The most difficult part of my trip was figuring out whether I could carry cheese on an aircraft." -- kilarneyblarney, 8/20?/2008
"She's bought $30 worth of fermented cow."

( Cheese on a plane sketch from dinner. )

"I don't care if my gay men are straight or not." -- rhea_windrider

11/5/2008
"Can I have the split pea without the ham?" -- kilarneyblarney, joking, but channeling M.

Sublingual tea: hcolleen cannot drink hot water straight out of the pot and brew the tea it in her mouth.)

Bad translation: "I'm defrosting it now" -- from Armitage III, about an encrypted file

Man: "Give me an example of something I did feminine."
Woman: "Your aura."
(from the Gay Denny's, 2008 11 25; she was mad because he hadn't been being straight with her. Or something.)

Things Shuttleslayer May No Longer Do In RP
Anything from the Book of Vile Darkness
GM
The Sith version of Riverdance
Have my World of Darkness characters do anime jumps (this was the Shuttleslayer incident)
Play Alucard (besides, he's too powerful to be fun to play, so what's the point)

...corn. (Writers group got pranked.) And condoms. (Requires having been there.)

Birthday messages have been popping in; thanks, guys! I heard from my best friend from elementary school too -- we share a birthday, which was the thing that brought us together in elementary school.

I have mostly been unpacking and generally cleaning up, but I did finish reading Stardust.

Went to writers group. A good time was had by all. Attending: Guest lacey, regulars myrrhianna, hcolleen, meacu1pa, rhea_windrider, chailifesong, and azurelunatic. M called and left a birthday voicemail message. azwriter is still out of state for her grandmother's funeral.

Dinner with writers group (though meacu1pa had to duck out before dinner) was happy. rhea_windrider got an onion ring shaped like a "No" symbol. chailifesong made a sundae happen at me. ♥ There was general happiness, but (happily) no restaurant singing. (If Clayton had still been there, there would have been, but that is because we adore him like all adoring. But he is now at another restaurant that's not BFE for him.)

When chailifesong and I headed for the bathroom, we noticed that there was a guy in there cleaning. This was mildly startling, more so for her than for me. So (since we are writers) we started thinking up things that would be more startling. I eventually came up with something alarmingly slapstick, and she said that I had to get it written for next week. Now, it was a scenario that would fit nicely into cuttingrmfloor, since it's really too slapstick for any of my other universes, but it required Beatrice to be gimped up enough to not be able to use a normal stall. Beatrice is fit in general, and not particularly fragile, so this would have to be the result of something accidental, probably a busted-up ankle or something. This required backstory on her busted-up ankle, because these things do not just happen in a vacuum. Inevitably, Ben is involved. And duct tape. I began pondering it on the way to our after-dinner socialization.

So there I was, sitting with lacey in Applebee's, waiting for elyssa, stevieg (and luminairex), scribbling and giggling. Diagrams were necessary, to detail the involvement of the duct tape. (Theatre people are crazy, for the record.) A mudslide was involved, but that did not noticeably change any plot point.

The cuttingrmfloor universe is on crack.

Post-dinner drinks and munchies and gossip was also delightful. The move is excellent for social purposes, as there is now a whole lot of stuff that is midway between us and agreeable to everyone.

And I still have another day or so without work!

Hi, loud gaming group on Wednesday nights. Thanks for TELLING US we're too loud. Oh, wait...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkJdEFf_Qg4 -- Baby Got Back.

Let's see. Writers group was fun. Read a very short poem. Dinner featured puns and me attempting to get out of the busboy's way, resulting in me meeting the wall with too much enthusiasm. Work is excellent; need to get my post count up. Work did breakfast this morning -- just Picard, Mr. Out, and me. The rest of the team has taken to calling Kirk and Picard by their nicknames, as when the sup wasn't there, I asked who was the acting lead using the nicknames, and it stuck.

Breakfast was peaceful -- lots of gossip and good humor, but no riots.

One of these days I am going to have the spare time to do a road trip for an LJ party. Today was not one of them.

lacey will be coming at the beginning of June. Have applied for time off.

If someone has ideas, they get sent to suggestions. We take them there, with one or two exceptions: if it's appeared before, or with lengthy digressions. Or with naughty userpics, to make bad impressions.

Group last night was awesome, and I do not regret the four hours of sleep. (I woke up early and started working.) Got a little more hacked on Angel's story (this is absolutely NOT a Jossverse thing) and sithjawa says it tastes like near-future science fiction. Our meacu1pa will be leaving us! But hey, full ride. Dinner was chaos, as Our Waiter was out again.

Prevailed upon one of the gaming-ladies to be outright rude to something creepy that had gained her personal details, and cut any and all contact off cold with it. Realized that I class "rude" and "uncivil" in separate categories. "Uncivil" would be offering him personal insults and profanity. "Rude" is not observing the social proprieties, telling him that his presence is distinctly unwelcome, not giving him excuses, and not giving him any polite temporizing that leads to chinks in one's armor. And telling him that there was to be no more contact and then standing him up for lunch.

I have a bit of a post coming up on the twin roles of ye olde friendslock and ye olde 'friends only' comment settings.

Have established that I can type perfectly while falling asleep. Unfortunately, this does not mean that I type sensibly. Took naptime instead of lunch. Also took Dew after naptime. Both helped.

Wrote one of my rants while on lunch break. This one was on the topic of "I write because..." and went on from there. Went to group a bit early; hooray traffic being good. Everyone was keyed up, in anticipation of possible interference from the center. No one from the center showed up, though. We were discussing stuff and plans to head over to the new location; I wound up getting a map printed out. As I returned, one of the occasional ladies came in with me. There is probably nothing wrong with her at all, but she nevertheless gives off to me a vibe that says "If you involve me in anything like your life, my problems and I will invade and not go away unless forcibly ejected." It was uncomfortable to talk about concrete plans and the ideological breakdown of what the center needs and what the group needs in front of someone who's very much an outsider to the group mojo.

I wound up reading my rant, and the group decided that it needed to be left for the center. So we wound up doing just that. There was a ceremonial signing of the poem-thing; I wrote a brief explanation about the group needing the creative safe space that has absolute creative freedom, the center needing creative safe space that had no profanity, no sex, and reasonably few triggers, and these two needs being absolutely incompatible. We signed it. We departed. I've been saying all day that it's ripe for an exodus, but I drew the line at plagues.

It would have been a faster exit, except M and her schedule are wacky so she tracked down a Center Higher-Up Person and explained her personal grievance. That sort of hampered the swish-out. But in the end, all went well. We wound up at the new place after a few wrong turns. The space is friendly and inviting, though somewhat dark. I ceremonially lit the tea light in the middle of the table, and we got down to business.

We will have to hack out a group charter or something.

Dinner was good. I produced sparkling cider that was almost cold enough, and eventually did get it open, though the first cap nearly hit our excellent waiter and the second cap went flying as well. Note to self: bring bottle opener.

There was ice cream. To prove a point, I licked whipped cream off M's finger. I wasn't paying too much attention at the time, given that I was busy licking and focusing on the technical skill of it, but she seemed to be enjoying herself immensely. I wonz.

We still do need to rename the group.

Now, I shall go be asleep.

Another one. I'm a little more traumatized by this one. It wasn't really slowly building; it was out of the blue. This woman said that we were the rudest group of individuals we'd ever encountered, and we were all doing our typing and crafts and stuff while people were reading, and we all had to be heard but we couldn't care less about the stuff from the rest of us.

I'm fairly sure that this was directly related to me saying that we had 9 minutes without time for chatter in between. And we were pretty good about doing that, but see above on giving feedback (not much).

Everyone who remained is fine. We got off to a slow start in part due to surveys and a grab bag of clothing.

I got to work in a fashion that was not entirely timely, there being an hour or two in the morning where I was waffling back and forth between "I think I can make it through work" and "I need to stay home and rest for I am ill." Fortunately for everyone, I managed to get to work around 11:30am, and was pleased to note that all had not actually disintegrated in my absence. I started in on the left-over paperwork, and spent the bulk of the afternoon working on training K-Bone on the paperwork.

K-Bone is a quick study, ( Read more... )

---

When Snarky Lady came in, I heard about what went down with one of the newly hired phone goons on Friday night. This particular fellow had been trimming his fingernails while in his booth (this is a call center, doing consumer research surveys), and had managed to get the fingernail trimmings all over, for like a ten-foot radius around his booth. The supervisor spoke with him about this, and told him in no uncertain terms that this was to be Cleaned Up Now.

If a phone goon is doing something other than interviewing, they have to tell their workstation what it is that they are doing that they are not working. There are any number of different contingencies programmed in (consultation with supervisor, several different flavors of computer-badness, sample (numbers we call) badness, power outage (to be assigned after the fact), scheduled break, training session, and so forth). This phone goon was told that he must put his computer on non-paid break to clean up his mess.

This was evidently grounds for objection. This guy did not think that he should have to go to non-paid break to clean up the mess that he had made. The justification he made for his reasoning: "But when I was cutting my nails, it was on company time...!"

The supervisor sent him the fuck home.

---

smmc was out with the creeping crud: the plague-monkeys have infected her. Alas! So we did not pick her up for group.

Group was very small and quiet at first. myrrhianna and kilarneyblarney were there when we got there; there was also one new woman with very thick glasses. I got That Feeling that I get when there is one of those high-maintenance New People there -- not only is this not one of the group, which is a little awkward getting a new person to be part of it, but it's also someone that no one knows, and someone who is setting off little psychic alarm bells. Then two more new people came in.

myrrhianna's stuck plot, but she failed to grasp the "I am picking which province from the list that I have here" that M was telling her until I rephrased it more bluntly.

I was only at 50% voice and maybe 75% energy, so I was very much not up to projecting the usual level of energy at the group to try and get n00bs to tune in. No one seemed to have any of that going on until M showed up, and we were so glad that she did. M later said that there was this feeling of ... something ... as she walked into the room -- the n00bs were all on one side, we were all on the other, and she almost thought she had the wrong room, it felt so much not like us. After she got there, things did go more smoothly. But hcolleen didn't even finish her ten minutes out. She had over 4 minutes to go, and she's not usually one to quit reading when uncomfortable. Or, rather, it takes a lot to make her uncomfortable in group.

One of the other new women is a poet, though she sounded on the spot and rather flaky when reading her poem. Her imagery was sound, though, and she and M had a rousing discussion about Octavia Butler. (Another name for my must-read list, it seems.) She might be someone to return. She was the one who made a pretzel shape from yarn for a visual aid.

The third woman was a younger woman who was mostly sitting there hiding and not saying much. I asked her directly if she had anything to share, and she did -- it was a very cute piece about the inner monologue of a cat. She read too soft and too fast, but was more present than she'd been for 90% of the rest of the time. She's got the makings of something, I think, if she actually wants to participate.

The thick-glasses woman asked if we meet every night. GOOD GOD NO.

All the newbies de-convened themselves slightly after 7:30, when the center book says we're scheduled to let out. Normally we invite new people to stay until actual group end, not just theoretical group end. This time, there was no such drive. Immediately they were out of range, it was decided that I needed to go have a word in the right ear to figure out how to avoid seriously massive mismatches with the group.

The problem, at heart, is that people are looking for a basic writing class, to teach them how to write, or a journaling class, or a therapy/support group that is based around writing (rather than a group that is for the support of writers), and they are not finding that with us. We are writers with a good grasp of the writing process, coming together to share tips and tricks, and share brief excerpts for constructive criticism. People are recommending us to random women coming in to the center as all of the things that we are not, and o gods they need to stop that.

It may be that the group's focus is not something that fits in the center, although I hope we can stay. The new description is going in the catalog for the next release; I already turned that in to the woman at the desk from the last time there was a difficulty with the group and what we were not. I don't teach writing. I am not a writing teacher. I am not even a teacher. This is not a "how to get published" workshop. This is not a workshop for polishing your writing. This does not teach you how to write if you do not already know. This is a little_details sort of thing, not an English 101 sort of thing. This is for hanging out and getting ragged on if you were going to write but didn't, or getting encouraged if you got into a slump and thought everything sucked.

The lady in charge of some things is going to call me and get back with me tomorrow afternoon, and I'm going to air the issues. Something's got to happen, or craziness will occur.

E-mailed to my co-writer:
Your beta wanted to know why the villagers were rising up against Ambrosius at that point in time. I think I have an answer. Wouldn't you be a little annoyed at the guy who has explosions and toxic waste?

GIP: RTFM n00b. Nibiki the demon-kitty (sooo cute!) and my scratches, retouched by hcolleen. The answer to myrrhianna's obvious question: "Why did you pick her up the second time?" is "Because occasionally, I r vry smrt."

I read the poem to the group. Enthusiastic response. It actually did follow the 5 pages of angst that hcolleen read. We were done way early. There was a new person who had poetry to follow mine. And all was good.

Darkside showed up in my dreams; I found myself answering questions with enthusiasm, and showing off to cadhla, who was mightily impressed that she had been an example, and excited and amused about my general happiness. There was something about a campus, and a play? but most of that vanished in the happy lazy waking-up.