In which I describe one of my many neurosis: the one where I’m some kind of anti-social biatch.

I’m such a Libra.

I have some kind of internal device – yes, very much like a scale, thank you – which constantly weighs my external perception of others’ happiness against my internal comfort level. If the people on the outside appear to be more comfortable than I am uncomfortable on the inside, I just go with the flow.

I assume that people say and do what they want (even though apparently I don’t, myself) and I spend way too much time doing what I think my S.O. wants until one day I wake up and hate his guts because I didn’t get my own needs met.

Lately, I spend virtually all of my non-work time with Teh BF, doing essentially nothing, because he seems to want to hang out more than I don’t want to.

It’s a non-issue, really, until I spend some unscheduled time alone (like I did last Tuesday night, when Teh BF was home sick) and suddenly realize that I can’t remember the last time I spent some unscheduled time alone.

Tuesday night I was home from work by 7:15. It was still full daylight out. I sat on the porch and read for awhile (!!!), and then I went upstairs into my newly rearranged room (!!!) and hung out with my dog and watched five episodes of 30 Rock on Hulu (!!!) and started a knitting project (!!!).

It was ineffably awesome.

My schedule has turned into one in which I spend 40 hours a week at work, sleep and bathe at home, and spend the rest of my time with Teh BF. We either go out and drink or we go to his place and watch TV. I don’t get my laundry done, or pluck my eyebrows, or clean my room or knit or build that website AmmZon needs or clean the bathroom or hand-wash my delicates or vacuum, and I’m perpetually behind on all the little things people need to get done in their lives.

I spend a bunch of time with Teh BF because that’s what we’re in the habit of doing. Whether we want to or not.

Continue reading It's not you, it's me. →

In which a list format shall suffice.

1. I’ve decided to see Amma in Dallas this year.

I chose Dallas on NLW’s recommendation because I’ve never been to Dallas, and the programs are allegedly smaller and more intimate than those in Chicago. Don’t want to go to Iowa and be divided; when we go there it will be specifically to hang in Fairfield and see everybody.

2. I do not have hamthrax.

…YET.

The aporkalypse/baconic plague/epigdemic won’t actually get here until the migrant workers show up for spring planting, so if you love me you should send me gifts NOW as my time left on earth is undoubtedly quite short!

3. Got laid! Quite fantastically well, thank you.

OMG. You have no idea. I’m so spoiled.

4. I have three in-progress swaps going with people I’ve met on Flickr.

I’m trading an Argus, a tele lens, and two rolls of film for a Polaroid SX-70 and two C4 lenses. I’m making a pair of slippers in return for a custom bag and some random surprise stuff. And I’m sending cheese to Japan in exchange for moar bento stuff.

VERY exciting!

5. Goblinbox still gets massive traffic, but hardly anyone ever comments any more.

I’ve been waiting to post because I was hoping I’d get more than one comment on my last post. (Thank you, Shenry.) Does this mean my content’s as boring as I think it is?

Don’t answer that.

Maybe I should have another surgery or get divorced again or something. How about a car wreck? Suggestions? Shall I describe what Teh BF can do with his left hand?

6. I love payday.

I was down to fewer than ten bucks when my check arrived. I have no idea what I spent all my money on, but it couldn’t be classic cameras and classic camera accessories or film or developing so don’t even bring it up.

7. This chilly, crappy weather has me afraid that we’re going to go straight from 50 degrees to 110 degrees overnight, and that the summer will be unbearable.

The whole point of living here – besides the awesome Mexican food, of course – is the mild weather. I want my money back!

8. Being 40 sucks.

It doesn’t matter what I do, I’m just getting thicker Every. Single. Goddamned. Day. I look like I’m three months along and I have BACK FAT, and I’m actually consciously NOT overeating and I’m walking to work every single day.

Diet and exercise my ass: they mean Nazi self-discipline. I’m sick of being pudgy, yeah, but not enough to deny myself everything I enjoy. This is exactly what Cosmo was talking about.

9. My dentist is too expensive.

I need to go in for prophy again – my mouth is like a coral reef, swear to God – but I still owe the bastard five or six hundred bucks. So I’m not going. Which will only hurt me in the long run, but I go every three months and can’t get it paid off before my next appointment so the balance keeps growing.

Plus I have some soft spots on a molar that apparently need to be filled before they turn into cavities and they nag me about that.

Any locals have a CHEAP dentist?

I totally would get my teeth bleached if I could afford it. Is that vain?

10. In spite of reassurances, I still feel shaky about my job security.

Customer and incoming call counts are dropping weekly. I know enough about business in general to be certain there’s no way the company I work for is bringing in enough to pay its bills.

I’d go into detail, but a couple members of management read my blog and follow my tweets, so they know absolutely everything I ever say about work (which is why I say nothing that isn’t utterly innocuous). The general manager actually IMed me one day after reading a post I’d written to tell me that my job wasn’t actually in any immediate danger, which was really sweet, but I can still do basic math.

This week, we were told that we’re only on the phones on average of two hours a day, and that we need to be documenting what we’re doing the rest of the time. A list of free time activities were provided by my department head, but hello? I already do all of those things and there still isn’t enough work (because yes, I’m that overachieving bitch of an employee you hate who does more than strictly necessary and still has time to surf half the entire ‘net every day).

My hope is that when air conditioning season arrives my work load will return to normal, but I ain’t holding my breath. The load has been dropping smoothly since I started here eighteen months ago, as evidenced by my schedule: I was hired to close, so when I started I worked 12-9. Less than a year later they moved me to an 11-8 schedule because there weren’t enough calls, and just this week I’ve been moved again, this time t 10-7. Last night I took maybe three calls from six to seven. Hello, recession!

It’s not like this is a ‘real’ job, in the sense that I don’t make any money, don’t have a title, manage no one, and am basically being a lazy toad so I don’t have to get up early, shave my legs, or wear uncomfortable shoes. You’d think by now I’d have a career but noo-o-o-o: I decided to get married and drop to part-time so I could WASH SOME GUY’S FUCKING SOCKS and like an idiot I never got any certifications back when someone else would probably have paid for them, so the odds of my ever becoming an Internet engineer again are, like, zip… especially here. (This company isn’t an ISP, it’s a reseller. The “vault” here is basically empty.)

The point being that if I wanted to do a lateral transfer, I might as well just stay here until the business either fails or doesn’t and quit fucking worrying about it.

In which I cover four topics of interest only to myself.

Topic the first is: TEH SECKS.

Teh BF’s work schedule was changed about a month ago. Instead of having to be at work at different times each day (he used to start at 10, 10, 11, 11, and then 9 each week), now he gets to show up at the same time – nine AM – all 5 days. It’s probably much easier on him to have a regular schedule.

The bummer is that we only sleep over one night a week now, instead of three or sometimes four. So the nookie schedule? Is suffering.

I just wanted to bitch about that a little. Waah!

Topic the second is: WERK.

In the eighteen months I’ve worked here, I’ve sat in five different places. (The office contains about as many cubic feet as a semi trailer, so there’s really no good reason to be moving around quite so much other than it makes us all feel like we’ve done something tangible, a useful sensation when all you do is push pixels all day.) Monday morning when I rolled in, management stood about four feet from my desk with one of the sales staffers and discussed how best to make him comfortable… in my space!

WTF! I had to wait for a guy to QUIT before I got that space! I was at the end of a hall and had my Christmas lights up and my very own lamp (I bought it myself) and my dog’s blanket and it was awesome, and then right out of the gate on a Monday morning they go and give it to a sales dude?!?!

Talk about being smokin’ pissed off! But valiantly, I adjusted. And quickly, without cursing or quitting!

Long story short, they let me keep my desk instead of making me take one of those cool-looking but useless microwave carts, and did NOT put me under the skylight and did NOT put me where any old walk-in customer can make eye contact with me. (Reception? Doesn’t, most of the time. If you’re sitting where people can see you, you end up having to deal with walk-ins yourself because they give you these piteous “I’ve been standing here for six minutes I just need to make my payment and I’m on my lunch hour and can you please help me?” looks and what are you going to do? Ignore a real live human being making puppy eyes at you? No. You’re gonna go do someone else’s job and hope there’s a good damned reason for it.)

“You can’t fix stupid!”

Anyway! All four support technicians are now in a cute little enclosure together where no one can bother us and we can actually communicate with one another.

Our official tech area whiteboard says, “You can’t fix stupid!” Which is so true, because you totally can’t.

I like it a lot, actually. It’s pretty awesome to be in a tech department instead of in the middle of a sales department. I hate sales.

(Honestly, I would really like to be able to go RIGHT THE HELL OFF on work, but since half the office reads the ‘box I can’t. Which sucks, because bitching about work is really one of the main reasons to have a blog in the first place. If I could only tell you. Srsly. OMG. The hysterically funny posts I could write… this place is a total sit-com. They’d get me fired, but at least you’d get to pee your pants first.)

Topic the third is: TEH WEEKEND!

Tomorrow evening, on my brother’s patio, we’re having a BBQ. True story!

It will be held in honor of both James’ new apartment (he’s been there a month) and KJ’s birthday (which was last weekend). KJ’s gonna cook FODA on his grill, and Lannie and I are somehow going to produce a cake and some side dishes and get the patio swept and the table clean enough to serve food off of. [Yeah, so it’s a prepositional phrase. Whatever.]

I’ve invited everyone I know in the area, which is about twelve people (half of which I’m related to. I need to make more friends). Come on by!

And tomorrow morning I’m gonna give Bindu her first bath in two years. She’s going to HATE it.

Topic the fourth is: …Um, I can’t think of one now.

I’m blogging in between calls at work, and all my work tools went down for 20 minutes due to a server crash (the admin had to abandon his Friday evening and go swap drives around in the data center vault) so I was a little frazzled there for a bit. Now I’ve come back and totally forgotten what I was going to write. I’m sure it wasn’t that interesting anyway.

In lieu of real content, I’ll tell you this: if you read the Temeraire series, be it known that there’s another one out called Empire of Ivory. I’ve got it on my iPod right now! Yay!

Have a fantastically lovely weekend, my babies! I hope the weather is lovely for you, wherever you are.

In which there were three boxes on my desk when I rolled into work this morning!

Today was eBay day. It looked like this:

I received two Argus Rangefinder C3 cameras, one made in 1941 and the other in 1962 (they ended up averaging about $11 apiece):

And an entire lot of hard-to-find flash bulbs from an estate sale for a screaming deal:

A damn good day, all in all. I would finish up with something like, “And now I’m going to spend all weekend shooting actual film!,” but I can’t because I don’t have any actual film. Plus one or both of The Bricks will have to be cleaned and tuned before I can actually shoot anything with it. The 1962 Argus is in overall great shape, but the range finder is too filthy to actually see anything through. The 1941 has cleaner optics but everything else is tight and the body probably leaks light. And I ordered the wrong film for my Polaroid, so I can’t even pop a bunch of flash bulbs!

In which I get my hair done! (On a Sunday! Because my stylist was working overtime since she’s going on vacation next week!)

For Christmas, Teh BF gave me a gift certificate with my hair stylist. I was all excited about it because not only is it an awesome gift for a boy to just think up all on his own (and he actually had to go in there and buy it, which to my mind is totally fucking amazing since I’ve never in my life dated anyone who could actually pull something like that off all by himself) but I thought it would actually help me get back in before I had two inches of roots.

Well, it didn’t. I’ve been meaning to call and make an appointment for about four weeks, and didn’t get around to it until Friday when I just could not stand the color of my hair for one more minute. She rushed me in because she knew how long it’s been and didn’t want me to wait until she got back from Hawaii and when I went in yesterday, it had been three and a half months since the last time I’d gotten my hair done. I had hella roots which is, as you know, quite unattractive.

And speaking of unattractive, this is what it looks like when you’re getting your hair highlighted and your eyebrows dyed all at the same time:

Eeek!

I actually scheduled my next appointment right then and there, though, so I’ll be back in time to just get a touch-up rather than an entire expensive foil. I feel like a genius.

You can see my awesome eyebrows here, if you’re so inclined.

In which I totally got some this weekend. Yum.

Saturday night we went out to the P ‘n’ E for dinner and drinks. We sat in the bar. Right before we were served our dinners, a dude walked up to the bar and ordered a double 151 and orange juice. The bartender – also our waitress – brought our food out a couple of minutes later. She sat next to me for a moment and whispered, “That dude? Is like walking liver failure! A double one-fifty-one? Am I even supposed to serve that?”

She went back to work. Not long after, the dude stood up and headed for the head. He got the hallway door open and then proceeded to fall down. Twice. Several kind and concerned patrons helped him to a table, where he nodded out for awhile.

The whole vibe was weird. People were trying to be helpful, but you never know. Was the dude shitfaced when he got there? Having a heart attack? Narcoleptic? Diabetic? What! You just don’t know, so the bar tender called an ambulance.

The EMTs checked the guy’s blood pressure and left. Apparently there were tracks on his arms, so maybe he’d just hit before walking in, and had failed to make it to the john before his nod came on. Who knows. All I know is that the whole episode made me unusually uncomfortable for some reason, and as soon as we were finished eating, we left.

Back at Teh BF’s house, we cuddled into the couch watched one of the best! episodes! of Doctor Who! of ALL TIME! (The penultimate episode of the fourth season rules, IMO. Everybody’s in it.)

When we went to bed, I got mercilessly ravished, for a really long time. Which will teach me to shave… more often. (Heh.)

Sunday I slept in in peace, then a cup of coffee was placed on the bedside table and I got a back rub. (True story. Man spoils me absolutely rotten.) Later we ran errands, stopping at Walmart and the Asia Oriental store for HABA and bento stuff, with a brief interlude at Ti Kalli – one restaurant that hasn’t closed this month – for lunch.

I absolutely love Mexican food, and I love being back in a town where there’s tons of it.

Then we watched the Super Bowl. I read the #superbowl hashtag on Twitter throughout the entire game – it was sort of like being at a huge online party, and it was a laff riot to boot. (I nearly fell off the couch when everyone started freaking out about Bruce teabagging the camera man, OMFG. So funny.)

After the game I got Teh BF take me to the grocery store for veggies, and then he dropped me off at home. I rescued my laundry from the basement, packed my lunch, and went to bed a little past midnight.

I so did not want to get up this morning. It was a really rough wake up for me, so I comforted myself with an awesome veggie omelet and a big mug of tea. Feeling better after that, I went to take a shower… and ran out of fucking hot water before I could condition my hair! GAH! (The side apartment shares the water heater with the house proper and there’s currently a couple with two kids stuffed in that tiny 1-bedroom over there.) (Come to think of it, I ran out of hot water last Monday morning, too, so apparently they both shower on Monday mornings.) Running out of hot water pisses me off, but it was ultimately good for me in the sense that I was ready with enough time to walk to work this morning instead of driving my brother’s truck.

I know, I know. This entry wasn’t worth the time it took to write it; I just wanted to gloat about the AWESOME NOOKIE, that’s all. Can you blame me?

In which white Christmases are neato, but my feet are cold.

This being-snowed-in crap is starting to get a little old.

They sent us home from work early on Thursday. Friday, I worked from the front room and never even got properly dressed. Saturday night I actually left the house for the first time in 48 hours – went out with Teh BF and my bro for a few hours – but Sunday I was home all day. (G’ma threw a little party Sunday evening though; it was really fun.) Now it’s Monday and I’m working from the front room again, and the phones are dead. I think I’ve taken four calls in 45 minutes.

At least I’m getting some knitting done.