In which it’s not just an old John Cougar song, it’s totally a sincere goddamn declaration of devotion.
I have fallen in love with the math geek who does this comic:
His name is Randall. His degree’s in physics and he did robot stuff at NASA for awhile. I’ve read his strips off and on… all kinds of clever folk link to him (and /. got him last year for his map of the Internet strip) so I knew about him. Continue reading This Time I Think I'm Really In Love
In which I show you what my reading has taught me.
1. catenary
2. Planck’s constant
3. belletrist
4. plethysmograph
5. haptics
In which the weather outside is frightful.
No one has called (or emailed) to offer me a job today. This makes me sad.
It’s been snowing since yesterday. We have a winter storm watch in effect until six o’clock. I swept off the porch and it’s cold and shitty out. My friend Snow needs a ride to the Amtrak station in Ottumwa, but we’ve got near blizzard conditions out there and I think I don’t want to be driving around in the dark in that shit. I’ve been texting with him since nine this morning.
In other news, my mom gave me a gift certificate for Patternworks for Xmas and I’m trying to figure out what to buy with it, but their site is broken. Bah.
In which I do something specifically because he told me to. He’s such a bossy kitten.
I made chili today for the First Annual Blogger Chili Blog Off! (which was actually last Saturday, but punctuality is not really my strong suit).
I more or less used this recipe, except today I used three kinds of beans (kidney, black, Navy); I left out the bullion because that’s just stupid; and I used defrosted, pureed tomatoes from AmmZon’s garden rather than canned tomatoes.
With cheese and sour cream and Saltines, it was really delicious. A pot of vegetarian chili in the kitchen is a beautiful thing, peeps!
On a different tip, this guy seems to be a total freak, and utterly deserving of the title Person No One Ever, Ever Wants To Work For, Ever. (Thanks to my bro for the link.)
In other news, who in the holy fuck decided that it was a good idea to stage the fucking Grammys in a fucking basketball stadium? Because, I don’t know, but maybe an event DEVOTED ENTIRELY TO MUSIC should maybe be held in a venue that DOESN’T SOUND LIKE IT’S AT THE BOTTOM OF A GODDAMNED WELL?!??!
In which I’m warm clear through.
This afternoon, I went grocery shopping with AmmZon and we bought a shit ton of food. We even bought ice cream, now that there’s a new fridge in the kitchen that actually keeps frozen food frozen.
Then we walked up the street to Raybo’s house, took off our clothes, and went into her sauna. We sat in there until sweat was dripping off of us, talking and doing oil-less abhyanga and being warm. I could feel my hands, feet, and finally spine relax. It was the first time I’d been warm all the way through since winter got here. We steamed ourselves out once by pouring too much water onto the stones. Raybo said she was glad we’d invited ourselves, because she never uses the sauna unless she has guests over.
We got out after half an hour or so, rinsed off in turns in the shower, dressed, and went out into the house. We even went out on the porch and it felt like October, not February, because we were so warm.
Then we went back in for another half hour, took another round of rinses through the shower, and sat on the couch for a glass of wine. IT. WAS. WONDERFUL. I was all warm, and my skin is so soft now!
In which I had an even better interview today!
Today I interviewed here. There were two half-hour skills tests; Excel and Word. (I aced ’em both.) Then an hour-long interview in a conference room. The HR woman showed me detailed job descriptions for two positions and I want both of them, but the second one — a data-crunching job — appealed to me most. I think. Hard to tell in advance.
A two-hour interview!
Not only did I get the impression that I’d really like it there, but I really, really, really need to get hired ASAP. I have less than a hundred dollars to my name.
This poverty shit SUCKS. I have a friend waiting for me at the bar, but I don’t think I should spend even $3 on a drink at this point, so I’ll probably stay home.
Bambú — a band made up of old friends, many who are back in town specifically to do this gig — is playing the Old Armory tomorrow night, but cover is $12 and I’ll probably be feeling too poor and miserly to pay it. There’s a mardi gras party at the Dead Cock tomorrow night too, and people are even gonna dress up for it. I might go to that, at least, and hope that people buy me drinks.
Right now my roommates are out playing pool and having Friday night drinks. Hell, everyone I know is out having Friday night drinks. I have less than $3 in my wallet. I have three great interviews under my belt from the past week, but no offers.
I. Need. A. Job. *sigh*
In which I enjoyed the Superbowl more than I ever have before. (Well, except for that one time years ago when I watched it on coke, that is.)
NLW called me up last week to invite herself over for Superbowl Sunday, because her house was going to be invaded by penis people. I discussed the idea with AmmZon, who was totally into it, and so yesterday we had a little gyno gathering.
AmmZon, NLW, Baby Girl, Raybo, La-la and I gathered in the late afternoon for football (read: Prince and commercials), cocktails (vodka & lemonade), and food: tuna ‘n’ noodle casserole, vegetarian chili, frozen pizza, a variety of munchies, and salad.
And cocktails. Did I mention the delicious cocktails? Cocktails!
It was so wonderful to have a living room fulla bitches, knitting and chatting and drinking and munching and making snide comments about all that spandexed ass on the telly. I had so much fun! I knitted AmmZon some mittens, and had two bowls of chili.
Prince was good. The mix sounded like shit on our television, and I wondered if it was being broadcast in surround sound or if they’d blown some equipment in the rain. I loved the reflective stripes on the dancing marching band people as they boogied around in the dark and the rain. Those annoying, black-clad dancing bitches occluding half the shots of Prince pissed me off, though. Their outfits! What the fuck!
In which there’s a request — from Shigeki — for a recipe. I’m so happy to oblige!
Broccoli-Cheddar Soup
2 T. butter
1/2 onion, finely diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 small carrot, finely diced
1 T. all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. dried dill
1/2 tsp. dried basil
1 whole clove
1 bay leaf
4 c. water, hot Continue reading Broccoli-Cheddar Soup
In which I cook Indian, freak the fuck OUT — omg! you have no idea! DUDES! — on a virtual world, and talk about the perils of knitting. In the process I manage to put a rather astonishing number of links into a single entry. (Mouse over ’em for snap-ups!)
This morning (and I use ‘morning’ loosely here; you should cleverly interpret it to mean ‘early afternoonish’), I got up and immediately cooked a feast!
Chana masala. Egg curry. Long-grain Basmati rice. Papadums. Yogurt, chutney. So good! OMFG, so good. We all ate heartily.
Then I got back on the laptop and booted into Second Life. (I was up until five-thirty this morning wandering around in there.) It’s so, so fun. I want to move to San Francisco and work at Linden Labs, like, toute suite, swear to God. And I don’t even like living in SF!
This world, this Second Life, it’s everything sci-fi ever taught me to want! It’s virtual. It’s wonderful. It’s a/the progenitor of the metaverse, and that’s HOT. Sweden is building an embassy there. You can fly in there! How did I not know about this until now? Has my entire head been up my arse since 2003? It’s practically better than knitting!
Oh, and on the subject of knitting, I’ve divided my sweater for the front and back around the armholes. This means I’m actually lurking up on being halfway done with it! Yay!
The bad news is that the bamboo circulars I bought (from Knit Picks, along with the yarn and pattern), which were supposed to be size 10, are not in fact size 10 at all — they’re more like 9.75s. This means I have to knit the entire sweater with them, including the collar and the arms (which will be a pain in the arse), or my gauge will change noticeably. Luckily the circulars in question are long enough that I can use the magic loop method, but it still kinda pisses me off. I guess it’s taught me to use my needle gauge to check new needles for accuracy of size upon purchase, at least. Pah.
In other news, I submitted a resume to Robert Half Technology last week — for a tech position they’d listed on Monster.com as “Web Administrator’s Dream Job” — and they called me back and left a message Friday night! I’ll be calling them first thing Monday morning.
I suppose moving to Cedar Rapids wouldn’t be too terribly bad; it’s only an hour and a quarter from Fairfield so I could still come see my friends on weekends, and it’s almost practically a city (by Iowa standards, at least) so if I lived there I might could find myself a working band and have access to quasi-decent restaurants!
In which there’s some good news… for once.
We don’t have to move! AmmZon’s mother has offered to sell her the house, and at a remarkably reasonable price. AmmZon is considering it, and in the meanwhile: we’re not evicted! Yay! I can stay here until I get a job and an apartment!
My previous employer — the one that laid me off last June — is hiring again. I sent in my resume today. Maybe they’ll hire me back. (I think I’ll go in tomorrow and sit on the HR person’s desk… for like an hour. Or three. Maybe she’ll hire me just to get me to leave her the hell alone.)
On the knitting front, I finished my first gray gauntlet and have started the second one. The fabric is much firmer made of the superwash wool sock yarn I used, and I really like the way this one fits and feels. The one I made out of the bamboo yarn has in barely twenty minutes of wear lost its shape and is beginning to pill up, so clearly that particular yarn is too delicate for a hard-wearing application like gloves. (I’ll probably make the second bamboo one anyway, and give them away, and use the remaining bamboo yarn for something low-impact, like a scarf.)
In other news, I’m downloading Bee Gees dance remixes from Limewire, because, um — well, for no good reason at all, really — and one thing that drives me utterly, incoherently apeshit is mislabeled tracks! Who are these fucking idiots who can’t tell the Bee Gees from Chicago? Or Rick James from Hot Chocolate? Or Hall & Oates from Player? Or Barry White from Marvin Gaye?! WHAT THE FLYING FUCK, people!