Enginerdiness

So... how's this for weird? I was outside this afternoon in the "smoke shack" taking a break. I don't smoke, but it's got benches and it's in a shady breezeway, and it's covered in case of rain, so it's the ideal spot to sit and take a break. I could NOT stare at my monitor for another second lest I tear out my hairs by their tender roots. So, I'm out in the smoke shack and one of the smokers comes out to have a cigarette. She and I get to talking, and she starts telling me how my potential is being wasted in my current job and I should think about looking for a better position closer to Dallas. How am I supposed to tell her that I have a phone interview tomorrow for just that purpose? Anyway, I thought that was weird. The good news is, I have an phone interview tomorrow! I just got the e-mail setting it up today, although I had a rumor of it from an anonymous source two days ago. Anyway, I think it would be a good company to work for, so I'm very keen to find out more about the specifics of the positions.

As for my weekend, it was great. I played softball with my work team on Friday night, and we WON! We've lost two games so far, and this last brings our record to 2-1. Yea! I played pretty well, I fielded a couple of balls that came to me off the bat and I caught a couple at second to get the runner out. I had a really hard time with the pitcher, though. He had a weird pitch that had a lot of "hang time" and a really quick vertical drop over the plate. I don't want to sound like sour grapes, or anything, but it was a bit much for a slow-pitch, co-ed, 4th-tier league, in my opinion. That said, the pitcher himself was no peach. By the end of the game all his own teammates wanted to string him up by his toenails from the field lights, so I guess he's got bigger issues than whether he's putting too much heat or spin on his underhand pitch. I generally do pretty well at the plate, and I'm sort of what you'd describe as a "giant amazon", so I can usually smack the ball pretty far. Okay, I'm what I would describe as a giant amazon. Maybe you'd use another term, something like: Jolly Green Giant's Wife. I dunno. Point is, I was endowed by my maker with some really long limbs, which give me a really good moment arm for rotational motion, which in turn translates to a high linear acceleration rate when I transfer that rotational momentum... oy. Enginerdiness overcame me. I hit the ball hard. K?

Saturday I went on a motorcycle ride out to Hico, Texas with my friend Rose and her motorcycle club. That was a fun trip! The sun was warm, but not too hot, and the breeze was cool, but not too cold. The wind was pretty strong but nobody got blown off their bikes, and all the bikes stayed on the road, so I guess it wasn't that bad. We met up with a motorcycle club from Austin at a restaurant there in Hico, and I had fried pickles for lunch. Okay, I had something else, too, but it wasn't very memorable. The thing that WAS memorable was that I had fried pickles. yum!

Sunday was Scarborough Faire. I got my hairs braided, and they looked like this: That's an arrangement called a "Star Crown", if I recall correctly. Anyway, I had a good time at the fair. We saw several shows, some juggling, some bawdy tavern wenches, Ded Bob, and The Mud Show. Highlights: the tavern wenches, Iris & Rose (Wild & Thorny) sang a song about circumcision in honor of their Jewish patrons, since it was Easter. That didn't make any sense to me, either. I think it was just an excuse to sing about circumcision.

Anyway... at the Ded Bob Sho (which I highly recommend) I noticed that Bob had a new dummy. Ded Bob is not your run-of-the-mill ventriloquist show. In this show, the puppetteer is silent and wears a bag over his head while the dummy does all the talking. In fact, since the puppetteer wears a bag over his head, he might not even be a ventriloquist at all. Anyway, the puppetteer used to be named Smudge, and I would swear that this year Ded Bob was calling him Pudge. That's not the good part, though. The good part is that I got to be BobZombie #1!!! If you've ever seen the show, I'm the one who is shy, petite, and virginal and who ends up hopping mad. (You're welcome.) I think one of my friends took pictures. If so, I'll see if I can get a copy.

Finally, we saw The Mud Show. This was very different from before, when it was titled "The Sturdy Mud-Eating Beggars". I guess the beggars have eaten enough mud that they were able to retire, because I didn't recognize any of the players from my first several years of fair attendance. The new show features a lot more splashing in the mud (picture the first few rows of the Shamu show at SeaWorld), and a lot fewer potty humor moments. That aside, it's still good, dirty fun. The show was a re-enactment of the epic saga Beowulf, and I highly recommend it. Look at your bench before you sit down, though, and note that if there is any mud on it, you WILL become dirty at some point in the show if you sit in that spot.

Last bit: my dog got sick over the weekend. I would complain about how distraught I am over this, but really, she's a lot worse off than I am. She had the 'squirts' for three days, and has been on a rice diet since Sunday as a result. She had a much better day today, but she had to wake me up in the middle of the night a couple of times to get her outside. As unpleasant as that is, I far prefer it to her letting me sleep and then waking to find she's squirted on the floor. Yeah. ugh. Enough of that.

Those are all my thoughts for now. I'll say something profound about the job interview when it's over with.

power outages

I had a really great post mostly done yesterday when the power went out. Apparently, we're in the midst of some rolling outages due to an unexpected wave of heat that has everyone turning on their air conditioners.

Bleh.

Kindly direct your attention to my new subtitle. Enginerdiness is my new favorite word.

I'll try to get back to the old lost post as soon as I can.

just a quick note...

i'm alive, but i'm tired. i'm going to bed!

i have new fish, i still need to put up a picture or a video of them... i'll try to do that. i took some video of them, but it's not very exciting, frankly. i have a very small, very primitive webcam with a very narrow focus band, so basically i just point it at the fishtank and hope that the little goobers swim into focus. :)

i nearly got sent to victoria this week to do some research, but that was delayed at the last minute. just as well, neither of my parents were home, so i'd have been hanging out in their back yard waiting for the cleaning lady to come over with her key and let me in! wow, that would suck. so, hopefully i'll get to go next week.

if you haven't seen it yet, Willie Nelson did a gay cowboy song and video. the video was shot partly at the gay country bar here in dallas, the roundup. so go here to see it!

is it friday yet? well, it will be in fifteen minutes, so now i REALLY need to get off to bed.

"Name that Tune" meme -- ANSWERS!

Random quiz swiped from Trilia.net and crossposted to myspace

Rules for me:
1. Go to iTunes/iPod, set to shuffle.
2. Write down the first line of each of the next twenty songs.
3. If they are embarrassing, you still have to write them down. Sorry.
4. Any song where the title is the first line of the song must be excluded.
5. Only one song per artist.

Rules for you, dear readers:
1. NO GOOGLING (with a silent ", bitch!"). This must come out of your own brain. It’s on the honor code.
2. Leave your guesses as to which songs are represented above. They’ll be crossed out as people get them right. Guess song title. Album and artist are bonus, but not necessary for a correct score.
3. There may or may not be prizes, depending on how generous I’m feeling.
4. I’m not tagging anyone, but if you decide to play this game in your own blog, please let me know so I can play!

1. Darling I can see the clouds around you, and in your heart I know a sorrow grows. becca got this one! "Til A Tear Becomes A Rose" by Keith Whitley (also recorded by John Prine).


2. Hope. Everybody needs hope. Somebody's Out There Watching - The Kinleys


3. A hundred days have made me older since the last time that I saw your pretty face. joker2 got this one! Here Without You - 3 Doors Down


4. I was nothing but a lonely boy looking for something new. This fell under the "embarrassing songs" rule: All Revved Up With No Place To Go - Meatloaf


5. Everybody sings a different kind of song. Made For Loving You - Doug Stone


6. Well I'm a travelin' man, don't tie me down Give Back My Heart (You Fickle Redneck Woman) - Lyle Lovett


7. When you wake in the morning its always there. An obscure Celtic number I didn't expect anyone to guess: You Saw His Eyes - Mary McLaughlin


8. I search your profile for a translation. My friend K guessed that this one was the Ani tune, saying it was the only lyric "angsty" enough: Overlap - Ani DiFranco


9. We must hide our love, its beauty to enfold in our eyes.Rose got this one: My Secret Wish - Club69


10. Ice age, heat wave, can't complain. The World At Large - Modest Mouse


11. Every night, I'm lyin' in bed, holdin' you close in my dream. artist by rose "The Eagles". title by anonymous "Best of My Love"


12. On two bicycles, On a hillside desolate, Could nature make a man of me yet? This Charming Man - Death Cab For Cutie


13. Well mamma told me when I was three, Lord, the street'll never get you nowhere. Step That Step - Sawyer Brown


14. Paint the town, take a bow, thank everybody. Then The Morning Comes - SmashMouth


15. He believes in the family unit, the union of man and wife. He Wants To Get Married - Reba McEntire


16. She's an angel, and I ain't. Lord knows she deserves a saint. A little surprised nobody got this: Her Only Bad Habit Is Me - George Strait


17. Comb your hair and paint and powder. You act proud and I'll act prouder. A Classic! Settin' The Woods On Fire - Hank Williams, Sr.


18. If the night turned cold, and the stars looked down. opiate got the artist, Eric Clapton, although my version is by Sting. Title (anonymous) is "It's Probably Me". Bitter, anonymous?


19. I'm on a mission, I made my decision Geek Stink Breath - Green Day


20. We were all wounded in some domestic war. Enough Of Me - Melissa Etheridge

alright. i'll post correct answers as they come in.

My music taste is really more varied than the list would indicate, but it was a random sample of 20 from my library of several thousand tunes. So I guess the sample wasn't large enough to be representative... How did I do a whole list with no Jimmy Buffett on it?!?!?

South Dakota Abortion Ban...

I'm not a fan of abortion (who is, really?) but I am a fan of a woman having access to a legal, safe medical procedure that she, her doctor, and her faith all agree are the right one for her. I never, ever, ever want to read about a poor, desperate kid dying from the complications she suffered after a botched illegal abortion. I also want that kid to have clean, safe birth control available and education about her reproductive options, so she never has to face down a decision like abortion vs. adoption vs. single motherhood at 14, but that's a whole other blog.

Searching...

Song lyrics that resonated with me today:

Breathe deeply and hold on tight
Chase away the anger in my heart
I just can’t go back down that twisted road again
I’ll fall back down, I’ll lose my soul
There’s nothing left here of my heart to break

From "Searching" by Ciao Bella

haven't you always wanted a monkey?

Your Final Quiz Score: 32 right out of a possible 60
The Monkey's Final Score: 17 right out of 60

Well done, you have sent the monkey to his defeat. Your score is unquestionably higher, and thus the lowly monkey has been proven once again to be humankind's intellectual inferior. Good work, however your score does leave room for improvement. We should like to see the human dominate even more completely!

You scored in the 76th percentile.
(76% of quiz takers scored worse than you)

Geography Your score: 8 Monkey's score: 4 -- Quite a sufficient job.	History Your score: 6 Monkey's score: 5 -- You might have done better.
Science/Technology Your score: 9 Monkey's score: 6 -- Good enough I suppose.	Random Trivia Your score: 9 Monkey's score: 2 -- A handy defeat of the monkey.

Link: Monkey Challenge Trivia Quiz

DINOSAURS!!!

I went to Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose, Texas this weekend. What a fun trip!

In Glen Rose, we stopped at a restaurant called Grannie's right off the old town square that was owned by a sweet -- well... a grannie-looking woman. She reminded me very much of my beloved, late, great-grandmother ("Grandmaw") in her dress with giant flower-print, matching neck-scarf, and Sunday shoes! She was within an inch of being as tall as i am, which means that for her day and time, she was GI-NORMOUS!!!! The food was delightful, Texas farm-food. If you ever find yourself in Glen Rose, stop off at Grannie's and eat. Yum! Well worth it.

The whole point of the trip was to get out to Dinosaur State Park and see the fossilized dinosaur footprints. I know that looks like "just a shadow" but the shadow in the middle is the footprint. The park was super-cool, and it afforded me the opportunity to take off my boots and wade barefooted in the water, as you can see. It's one of my favorite things to do in warm weather! Here I was searching for the footprints on a shallow ledge in the water. There were some kids on the ledge with me, trying to catch minnows in a butterfly net. They were way more interested in the fish than in the dinosaur footprints! Shortly after that picture was taken, I found a footprint, and turned to holler back at my friends about my discovery. That's when I discovered I was being photographed. In this last picture, I'm standing with one of my feet (my whole giant foot-long foot) inside the smallest toe-imprint of this fossil. All the fossils were three-toed, and some were much bigger than others. If we'd 'done' the park in the reverse order, where we went to the second set of footprints first, and the first set last, i would definitely have been swimming in my undies at the first set. It was a WARM day. As it was, the second location was too busy, too shallow, and too full of chitlins for me to strip down and swim. The first location was perfect, but we hadn't been out in the heat long enough to make me think of swimming. If I ever go back, I'll dress differently and be prepared to take a dip!

At the entrance to the park, they have two giant fiberglass statues. One is a Tyrannosaurus Rex, the other is a Brontosaurus (now with it's name changed to Apatosaurus!). Those are probably the two most famous and recognizable dinosaurs around, and at the time the park was built they were suspected of leaving the tracks there. More research has shown that those two dinos didn't even live within 50 million years of each other, so they couldn't have laid tracks in the same strata. Brontosaurus (Big Thunder Lizard) has had his name changed to Apatosaurus (Deceptive Lizard) because, apparently, there's a lot of stuff about him that fooled early paleontologists. T. Rex (Tyrant King Lizard) is still the good old, terrifying T. Rex of my childhood. Anyway, they had these fiberglass statues, so they left them up because they're neato-looking and provide a great photo opportunity for the tourists. They now have signs near them stating clearly that these guys did not stomp around the park, but they're mascots so they get to stay. Here I am with my friend and the T. Rex.

Because I'm a nerd, I dug around until I found a website that explained which dinosaurs did actually leave tracks at the park. Here's what I found.

What Kinds of Tracks are Found in the Park?

The fossilized tracks in the Paluxy belong to two main types: many are three-toed, sharp-clawed prints made by two-legged meat-eating dinosaurs called theropods. Most of these prints (which are typically 15 to 25 inches long) are thought to have been made by Acrocanthosaurus, a 20-30 foot long carnosaur whose bones have been found in nearby areas. Others tracks in the Paluxy are even larger footprints (some over a yard long) made by huge, four-legged, long-necked plant-eating dinosaurs known as sauropods, or informally, "brontosaurs." The rear prints somewhat resemble giant bear tracks with large claws angling rearward, while the front prints are more round and elephant-like, with less distinct, peg-like toes. Sauropod tracks were unknown to science until discovered in Glen Rose in the 1930's. The most likely trackmaker candidate for the sauropod tracks is a dinosaur named Pleurocoelus, which was 30 to 50 feet long.

ALARM!!!!

My friend sent me this link. She thinks I need help waking up in the morning. Anyone who's ever had to deal with me before my first cup of coffee concurs, of course. Including me. Her favorites are 10, 6, and 1. Mine are 10, 9, 2, and 1. The only problem with 2 is that it requires one person to be awake to get the other person up. It's obviously not going to work for me. But if I ever get to have kids, my kids are going to HATE the grenade. Muahahahahahahahaha!

a monday meme

rather than saying any of the entirely-too-deep things that are in my head today, i've decided to post a meme! i know you're utterly surprised to hear that i'd rather deflect the topic than talk about my inner workings, but try to contain your shock. now, muster up some curiosity and do the meme! this, you may note, requires you to comment...

Ask me a question about EACH of the following:
- Friends
- Sex
- Music
- Religion
- Love
- Blogging
Then post this in your blog and see what questions you get asked!

Yea, Vermont!!!

This afternoon the Vermont state House of Representatives passed H865, which would add gender identity as a protected class to the state anti-discrimination laws. The bill now moves to the state Senate for consideration.

NCTE congratulates the Vermont TransAction Coalition, as well as RU12, SafeSpace, Outright Vermont and the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force for their diligent work. Transgender Vermonters also should be thankful for Representative Bill Lippert, who has shepherded the bill through the state house.

The passage of the bill came on a voice vote, though the yes votes clearly outnumbered the neas. According to NCTE Executive Director Mara Keisling, "When NCTE helped with training and strategy around this bill last year in Montpelier, it was apparent the folks in Vermont were committed to getting this law on the books as soon as possible."

If passed by the Senate and signed by the Governor, H865 would make Vermont the eighth state to have explicitly legislated anti-discrimination protections for transgender people. Washington state passed their law earlier this year.

NCTE Congratulates all of the advocates in Vermont for their hard work on this legislation.

National Center for Transgender Equality

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
email: ncte@nctequality.org
phone: 202-903-0112
web: http://www.nctequality.org

whine...

i'd like to whine loudly and childishly about the fact that i cut the tip of my pinky finger at lunch on my cheese slicer and now it hurts to type. grr.

oh, i might be hooked...

I went on a ride last night on the back of my friend's motorcycle. At one point on the way home, she asked if I was comfortable leaning forward as I was. She joked that I was probably warmer that way, using her to break the wind, but in the summer I'd be leaning back to catch the wind and cool off.

At the next stop light I said, "In the summer I won't be leaning back, I'll be *THERE*." I pointed to our right and behind us just a bit. She turned around to look quizzically at where I was pointing, as I finished, "on the next bike over."

So, I'm going home tonight to toy with my budget and figure out if I can afford a bike.

a friday meme

by the look of things, this migrated from somebody's myspace... oh, the contagion!

1. You have 10 bucks at a gas station, what do you get?
$5 in gas, a GIANT dr pepper, and a bag of 3d jalapeno cheddar doritos

2. If you had to be reincarnated as some sort of sea dwelling creature, what would you be?
no doubt, i'd be a hammerhead shark. they are the coolest looking things out there.

3. Who's your favorite redhead?
reneenee! except her hair's not red anymore. still, she's my favorite. amythest is a close second.

4. What do you order when you're at a pancake house?
crepes, whenever possible.

5. Last book you read?
working on robert jordan's latest. Knife Of Dreams

6. Have you made out with anyone on your friend's list?
yes, i have.

7. Describe your favorite pair of underwear:
a pair of boxers with spongebob on one leg and "talk nerdy to me" in large print on the other.

8. Describe the last time you were injured:
i got a papercut severe enough to require a band-aid on tuesday. i'll count that.

9. Of all your friends, who would you want to be stuck in the middle of a jungle with?
rose or brody or both. the jungle would be sorry it had tried to eat us by the time we got out.

10. Are there any odd things that make you feel uncomfortable?
when people have those surgeries where they put pins in to hold the bones in place and then those are attached outside their skin to some kind of traction thingie. it gives me a chillshiver right to my toenailhair every damn time i see that.

11. Tell me an embarrassing story from your high school years:
walking down the hall, i sneezed and my retainer flew out of my mouth, landed and slid across the floor. eep!

12. What is the wallpaper on your cell phone?
a random sunny color pattern in warm tones that reminds me it won't be graywinter for FREAKIN ever.

13. Soda?
don't you mean "coke"? i drink dr pepper flavored coke most of the time.

14. Flavor of pudding?
vanilla.

15. What type of shirt are you wearing?
long-sleeved black t-shirt with the freebird's world burrito logo superimposed on a picture of the earth taken from space.

16. Prescription medication?:
none for me, thanks.

18. How many people are on your friends list?
this only makes sense if it's posted on a livejournal or myspace blog.

19. How many people on your list do you know in real life?
this only makes sense if it's posted on a livejournal or myspace blog.

20. What are you listening to right now?
babble from down the hall

21. Most recent movie you watched?
The Woodsman with kevin bacon

22. Name 3 things you have on you at all times:
my hair, my hands, and my feet. everything else is mutable.

23. Would you rather give or receive a foot massage?
can we trade? i'd just as soon have either, so long as it involves skin contact.

24. Name a teacher you had the hots for:
can't say i ever have had a teacher crush. none of mine were remotely hot, aesthetically speaking.

25. What is a saying that you use a lot?
"that's a riot!"

26. How many people on your friends list are exes?
this only makes sense if it's posted on a livejournal or myspace blog.

27. What is your favorite part of the chicken?
any part i don't have to eat.

28. What's your favorite town?
whichever one i'm going to next! i love me some road trippin'...

29. Favorite kind of cake?
yellow mix cake with chocolate frosting. it's a childhood thing. (becca, joy, do y'all remember those microwave cakes? where you had to make the cake pan out of the box?)

30. What's the first word that comes to mind right now?
gumbo

31. When was the last time you saw your mom in person?
about three weeks ago she was up here visiting and i drove over to my sister's house to have dinner with them.

32. What makes you feel like puking?
ummm... the flu virus? botulisms? i don't generally barf outside of actual medical illness.

34. What did you have for dinner LAST NIGHT?
veggie patch pizza at applebee's

35. How long have you been at your current job?
almost 9 months

36. Is Tom on your friends list?
i think this meme must have traveled over from myspace. tom is the default friend on myspace the way frank the goat is on livejournal. and, yes, tom and frank are both on my lists.

37. What's the last thing you said out loud?
be a good girl, see you later. (to my dog, molly)

38. Look to your right, what do you see?
my cell phone, highlighters, engineer's scale, and stapler.

39. Who is the last person you spent over $100.00 on?
i sponsored a song for a local musician named kathy corbin who really needs to get a cd recorded and out there for sale. i hope the project is successful.

40. Who's your favorite villain?
Maleficent from disney's sleeping beauty

41. What's the last piece of clothing you borrowed ?
a pair of socks.

42. What's the last piece of clothing you bought?
Ka-Pow! boxers from Gap when i went shopping with brody this weekend. actually, he paid for them, so i owe him some bux... i forgot my wallet when we went to the mall. perhaps the fact that this did not surprise or dismay either of us, when it was revealed, will help reinforce the literal truth of my answer to number 22.

43. What phrase makes you laugh no matter where, when or how?
i don't think such a magic phrase exists.

45. What does your last text message say?
Realistically, in any relationship you're going to get your feelings hurt by something. Is it worth putting up with this in exchange for the good stuff?

Brody Brings the Ice

So, this weekend was the second time my friend, Brody, has visited me in Fort Worth. This is also the second time that Fort Worth has completely iced over, necessitating the use of sand trucks and ice scrapers for and among the populace. Coincidence? I think not.

We managed to have fun, anyway. We tried to trek across the metroplex to visit Ikea in Frisco on Saturday. However, just as we reached downtown Fort Worth on the freeway, we were halted by a wall of vehicles coming to the most rapid halts they could manage on the slick roads. There was a sand truck turned perpendicular to the flow of traffic and there were an array of flashy-wirly lights in the thick of things. Ordinarily, I'd be completely thrown by the combination of whirly and flashy things, but I managed to avert my eyes long enough to make an exit off the freeway before we were enmeshed in the traffic snarl. We had a minor adventure on our exit because it involved some unsanded bridges and some Texans who don't understand that the appropriate approach to such things is neither your accelerator nor your brake, and that a 2-second following distance is insufficient when the driving surface is ICE. Seriously, dudes, the Tundra in front of us was turned sideways relative to the direction of his movement and i think he might have bounced off the barrier wall more than once.

So, we ended up staying home, making stew and chili con queso, and watching movies. A great time! I must say that the movie Ray, while it is a terrific story and was very well made, is LOOOOOOONNNNNNGGGGGGGG. Longer than is comfortable to sit still for, really. We inadvertently watched the "Extended Version" which probably only added 10 minutes, at most, to the film. I was up and down several times while watching the film to stir the stew and let Molly out to potty (aside: if your dog can't hold it through the movie, the movie is DEFINITELY too long) and I still felt a little stir-crazy and chairbound when it ended.

The other film we watched was The Woodsman. It was intense. It deals with the struggle of a convicted pedophile (who apparently got off on smelling little girls' hair) to reintegrate into society. It's hard to find housing, hard to find a job, hard to find friends. In the end, the character finds redemption, but it's uncertain up until the very last moment whether he will or not. According to Brody, it's a very realistic portrayal of the sex offenders' struggle to be "normal". Some other areas of the film (like the love story and the family reconciliation story) suffer, just because the movie can't be long enough to treat everything with the same depth. All in all, intense, but worth watching.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, my fish survived me leaving them while I was in Austin last weekend. The weekend feeder tablet did the trick, apparently, because there were no floating fish skeletons waiting for me when I returned. We're into the third week of tank cycling now, and I'm researching other fish I can keep. I was really keen on one kind called the Black Molly, for the obvious and cheesy reason that it goes with my dog, Molly, a black lab. However, they have a water temperature incompatibility with the Zebra Danios I've got in the tank right now, so I think I'm going to look at keeping tetras. They come in a number of shiny color variations which I think would be fun, and they're supposedly not too hard to keep alive. This is good! The only thing I worry about is that if I get a bunch of them, I'll become mesmerized by their shiny flashiness every time I walk past the tank...

DAILY RANDOM!

names obscured to protect the supremely innocent, and the merely moderately innocent. you can decide which of us you think is which.

Her: something happened last night that I wanted to share with you...because I believe you would appreciate it--and my horror of the situation
Me: go ahead. i woke up this morning and saw i'd missed a text from you...
Her: I went to the gas station by my house to pick up a cup of ice on my way to the library last night. I had to write a fucking paper
Her: While walking from the freezer to the checkout.....I got "Ms. So-and-So"-d
Me: oh, no!
Me: a student?
Her: yes
Her: I wanted to crawl under the shelves
Her: Jeez, what if I had been buying beer or condoms?
Me: well, then the student would have been forced to go back to his/her insulated little life and cry to his/her friends about how s/he saw the TA buying beer or condoms and how it'd scarred him/her for life.
Me: you'd probably do the same thing... plus probably turning 10 shades of red.
Her: oh, sure...make fun
Me: :) ok, i will.
Her: it was a girl, by the way
Her: to save you from the gender games you have to play with the pronouns
Me: thanks.
Me: you've never had to go to a pharmacy and have a family friend instruct you on how to de-worm yourself, have you?
Her: um...no
Me: then i've got you beat on the "embarrassed at the register" game. hands down.
Me: unless you have something better than being caught by a student while buying ice...
Her: no, that's pretty much it
Me: ok.
Her: my kung-fu is weak and bows to your superior embarrassing moment.
Me: thank you.
Me: i'd been in mexico on a class project. in spite of everyone's best efforts at handwashing, drinking bottled water, and careful food prep, etc... some of us ended up with worms.
Her: I wasn't going to ask

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!

the greatest little love-bugs ever would like to wish all my readers a happy valentine's day. they sure made my day, i hope they make yours! hugs and kisses!!!

ROAD TRIPPIN!!!!

yee-hippity-haw!!! i LOVE road trips!

I'm going to Austin tonight with a few friends... Deena, Teal, Reneenee, and Rose. We'll be going to see my friend Brody and his peeps at the Kings N Things drag show. And from there, the weekend is wide open! We're going to try to make it out to The Oasis for some awesome food and a gorgeous sunset, and maybe see Melissa Ferrick out at the Flamingo Cantina on Saturday.

yea! (did i cram enough links into that paragraph for you?)

And now, I shall bop off to do the HappyRoadTripDance!!! and attempt to get something productive done at work with what's left of my afternoon.

Oh, and I fed my fish... a big weekend rock that sits at the bottom of the tank and supposedly releases Spirulina and krill, or some such nonsense. We'll see. If they're alive when I get home, I'll be thrilled.

Oh, yeah... I finally got some fish for my tank. I got 6 zebra danios to cycle the filter with. This is what they look like:

I Tried.

I tried to pour my light into your darkness, to fill it up, to lift you and light you and show you your own light. You were a crystal cave that my spark could awaken to fiery color, to dazzle.

I didn't have enough light. Your darkness needed every spark I had, needed more the more I gave. I wanted so much to give, I would have died to give it all to you, and
YOU.
WOULD.
HAVE.
TAKEN.
ALL.

You couldn't let me go out for more light. You relied so much on me, you didn't have your own to give.
You wouldn't let me refill myself, and so I could never fill you.

We both went dark.

I tried.

I tried.

When I was cold, alone in complete darkness, underground, when no light was left in me -- you asked more even then. I was dead. My eyes were dead, my heart was a rock. It wasn't numb. It had never felt, forgot living and warmth and the light. How could you ask for more from me then? Where was I to get it? I didn't even remember what the light looked like.

Knowing I couldn't give you what you needed... it broke me.

For you, for my beloved, if I had it to give, if I'd had to scrape it out of my own heart with my own dying hand and leave myself a weeping wound to get it,
I.
WOULD.
HAVE.
GIVEN.
ALL.

HOW COULD YOU ASK ME TO DO THAT?

I used to shine.

I used to glow.

I remember it now, although I didn't then.

I used to light a hundred souls who returned that light, reflected and strengthened. I always had enough for myself, for everyone who wanted any, for everyone who needed, for friends and lovers and family and beloved. Always some reflected and some didn't, but there was always enough.

You took it all. You took from wanters, needers, myself, friends, family, everyone. Your dark swallowed me until no reflections came back to me. Enclosed, I tried to pour my remaining light into you. I tried to make you glow, so we could shine on each other. I was a gambler trying to recover a lifetime of savings with her last chip. I wanted to see the crystal cave lit from inside, to see you sparkle and shine and give back to me what I gave to you.

I tried.

I tried.

I tried.

And now,
for taking from me so carelessly,
for asking more from me than I had to give,
for swallowing me up,
for taking from me all I had,
for using me,
i hate you.

always know it's time...

I always know it's time for a little time off when I start thinking fondly of my days in the food service industry. To be fair, I was never your hairnetted burger-flipper, I was a tie-clad hostess at a nice, sit-down restaurant. Still, whenever I find myself at my desk and daydreaming fondly of those times and calculating whether I could pay my bills on that salary, I know I need a break.

So, guess who needs a break today?