Dragon's Journal

Catching Up

And on the 7th day, she rested...

Okay... well not really... Today is catchup day. Catch up on email, catch up on sleep, catch up on school work so that I'm not falling behind. This means that your favorite black dragon has to crank out 5 essays before she goes to bed today. Not only that, I need to get my notebook together for class.

I am firmly convinced that the office supplies needed to get through school just MIGHT be the thing that kills me. You see, we have to put together formal notebooks. This means that everything has to be typed, encased in page protectors and packaged in a nice white 4" D-ring notebook. Each notebook is reportedly going to have about 300 pages and I hear report that we have to make up at least 5 of these. Result, Adrianne has to spend a fortune on office supplies.

There goes what's left of the money from the stock options I just got rid of....

But I'm having fun. It sounds like I'm not, to hear me talk but mostly it's just because I'm tired throughout the week. I like the activity. As of Saturday, I was managing to finish all the dishes I was given to make. No problem. And I'm just having fun with it. And it's nice too, in a way because the entire outside world, life and all the bullshit just fades away.

I don't get it...

I don't understand it... By the time I got out of class last night, I was WIRED. I mean, I felt great! I felt better than I have in a LONG time. I was sore in all the right places from being on my feet for several hours and I LOVED it.

And now... I'm back here at work and I can barely keep my eyes open. I've tried just keeping one eye closed and resting while I type this but all that does is make me want to go back to sleep. And it doesn't help that Aunt Flo's been slowly creeping up on me this month.

But last night was SO cool! We made a gorgeous chicken stock and learned several knife cuts, which I really need to work on... I have issues with squaring carrots.

Okay... back to work now...

BTW:

I'm a Heretic!





Which Enemy of the Christian Church Are You?

A(nother) Robert and Tim Creation

Perks of Cooking School

So there are definate perks to being enrolled in cooking school... the most important one being free food. The other classes have brought us food every night for the past two weeks. And now they've officially decided to feed us a meal (well, at least part of a meal) every night... I think it's just because we're such a small class...

But it's so weird though... in a cool way... they bring us at least 2 plates of stuff every night. And then there was Tuesday night when I walked out of class to get a drink and was promplty handed a bowl of shrimp in a like chili/garlic sauce. I'm having no problems with this!!

Of course, my diet may be shot to hell by the time this year is up...

::sigh:: Work... don't want to work no more....

I'm not really tired today... Last night was the first night this week that I've actually been able to get some sleep though... It's kinda weird how I seem to be better able to sleep on the futon in my office than in my bedroom... I even vaguely remember dreaming last night... not enough to be able to write it down... but it was definately weird... and it had this strange (but cool) Tron feel to it... A definate departure from my usual dreams of hanging out with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters...

No, but it's not really that I'm tired today... I just feel so lethargic. Like the energy's been drained out of me... Which isn't unusual for this place lately. I'm just tired of work. I don't want to work. Working sucks. I just want to get through this year and get out of here... so that I don't HAVE to work anymore... No, I don't consider cooking work. Cooking is art, not work. It's one of the most basic creative outlets... I mean... everyone's gotta eat...

::Double sigh:: is it three yet?

Journal Drama

So just because I shouldn't be using my copy of Dreamweaver at work, doesn't mean I should be come lazy... at least not where this journal is concerned.

I set up with Live Journal about a month ago so that I could read the journals of my friends on LJ and with the way my schedule has been lately, I've been debating whether or not to use LJ as a second journal for when I can't update on versemix, or whether to just post stuff to LJ and then copy it into my journal later...

However, either one of these ideas would not only cause more work on my part (something I'm trying to avoid since I don't have any time as it is) but I have a feeling that it will also generate lots of confusion among the 1/2 dozen or so voyuers who peruse my journal regularly...

So here's the next best thing! I type up my journal at work, email it to myself and then post it in the brief time that I'm actually home and relatively conscious...

So now that all of this self debating crap is out of the way, on to the important stuff!!

School! Now that I can expound on this a little bit, I can say that school is actually pretty kick ass right now. It's been a week and already I'm having midterms for my first 2 classes. It's also helping that my class is really small. The evening/weekend class is less popular, so there's only 9 people in my class, as opposed to 30 or 40... Although with the way about 1/2 the class blabbers, it's a wonder anything gets done with even the few.

Now don't get me wrong... the class is cool, the people are actually nice. They just bitch a lot. One of the girls is completely paranoid about failing. Another one wants to put everything to a vote and I hate to tell her that our instructors have the final say in things... she'll learn soon enough anyway. I'm actually going to start sitting over with the guy who transfered in from the afternoon class... He's at least a little more serious about being there... but not to the point where he's obsessing about what his grades are going to be. Me, personally, I'm not too worried. All the Sanitation, Food Science and Food History stuff is really easy. I figure I'll worry about the hard shit when it actually gets hard...

Went to the Costa Mesa Scotish festival on Sunday - a great way to celebrate the end of my first week in school... Picked up a walking stick, a whip, a cat of nine tales and a small sword... along with some new CD's and other things... I think I managed to spend just over $100 this time around... and I didn't get sunburned, so there's 2 pluses to the weekend. Tempest kick ass, as usual and their two new members are really cute. Didn't get to see the Tinkers play, although I spent a great deal of time watching Wayne ::drool::... I also, somehow managed to be away from our camp during Bad Haggis's set. :(

And now it's back to work... for the 30 minutes that remains of my shift... I SO don't feel like working though....

Summing up the week

I'm going to make this quick because it's late, I'm tired, and I need sleep...

Birthday: Cool. Met Viggo Morgtensen (sp?). Got his autographic... DIDN'T get my picture taken... He's a really nice guy... much drooling afterwards... And I've already been verbally flogged for not mentioning this earlier...

Birthday party: Very mellow. Not a whole lot of people showed. Didn't get too drunk. Mischa and Evil Panda and R gave me this gorgeous dragon bong.

Dinner with Family: Dead. Family on prozac or something. They liked the food though. Mom did dishes, which was cool. Aunt gave me pretty seahorse handtowels which will probably never be seen in any home I choose to live in.

Sunday: Spent 5 hours with parents doing laundry. Went home and got high.

Monday: Started school. Place is cool. Teachers are cool. Best of all free food.

Rest of week: Been dead tired from working 6-3 then schooling 5:30-10:30.

Today: Got the money from my stock options. WOOHOO!! Sent off payments to people I owe money to... Still poor.

Whackiness

The CS department at it's whackiest...

Okay, not really... I've been listening to Anime music for the past two weeks now. Bird-Dog brought the Wighead the Sponge Bob soundtrack. Everyone's running around and flipping out about the company's stock prices (this is a good thing).

I'm going to kill a certain member of the department who waited until after I left yesterday to go ask SOMEONE ELSE if they could go home when I explicitly told said person they couldn't go home sick.

The Slacker's been in meetings all day... I've been up to my ears in refunds...

Is it Thursday yet?

Finally, a few things...

First: If I ever have kids, remind me to move out of the Valley.

Second: Will someone PLEASE email this idiot and tell him to get a brain?

Bored...

Bored... Can't work any more.... want to go home and sleep...

On a more positive note, I went and spent 1/2 of my bonus money (well.... the 1/2 that was left after the government took 1/2) at Hot Topic. I'm now sporting a bitchin spike necklace.

Getting together with Lils and The Red-Head for an early dinner before going to see Rhinocerous at GCC. This promises to be interesting. I worked with the director on a twisted little play called The Prophets. The plays this guy directs usually turn out to be pretty weird. But I'm not too sure about all the audience rearranging that is rumored to occur tonight....

Quickie

This'll be a quicky because I have to get back to work, but this really is a good way to warm up my fingers... Considering how horrendously I've been typing this morning...

Lots of good news to report...

In case I haven't mentioned it before, Spider-man kicks major ass!!! I'm going to try and go see it again before I write my review though.

I have my ticket to the first showing of Star Wars at the Burbank 6 on Thursday... (Happy Birthday to me)!!

I got a raise!! Finally!!! After almost two years of nuthin'. Goes into effect next pay check. Hopefully, this means that I won't have to scrape together funds for parking when I start school in a week.

I have a cable modem!!!!!! Earthlink's dial up service has been sucking serious ass for the last few months. But now it only takes 5 minutes to download 200 messages... as opposed to 2 hours...

There was something else, but I can't remember......

Oh! The Slacker and I worked out our differences. It's really not as bad as I thought it was Wednesday... I just have to moderate my goofing off a bit more... Since I'm so highly visible out here in the front of the row, next to the door.

And now it's back to work. The Slacker brought us Krispie Kreams!!!

Executive Order from Esowolf!

So, I'm not allowed to be depressed anymore, by executive order of Esowolf... So here's me... not depressed... well, mostly not depressed. I'm not quite sure if PMS depression counts.

But I'm trying to ignore that, Esowolf!!

::Sigh:: Watching Buffy this season isn't helping in this area, unfortunately... By about December, I came to the realization that I am very much identifying with Buffy this season... except for the whole death and resurrection thing... and the violent sex thing, which still looks like a lot of fun. I guess it's the whole growing up thing. Accepting responsibility. Realizing that I'm the one responsible for stuff now... which you'd THINK I'd have figured out right now.

I have to stop thinking of my life as a TV show though, as Esowolf pointed out, I'm starting to sound like someone else we know... and sounding like that particular someone isn't a good thing... Although at least I'm comparing my life to a relatively good TV show and not some stupid sitcom.

Is it possible to have a mid-mid-life crisis? I think that's what I'm having. I have no direction, although I'm trying to find one. I have no drive, although I want to be driven to do something. I have no ambitions... with the occasional desire to take over the world... I'm just here, ya know? Floating in a sea of mediocrity and funk.

It's funny, when Esowolf asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I honestly had to think about it for a while. I still, honestly don't know what I want. A million dollars would be nice, but that's not going to happen anytime soon... unless someone's willing to hand me a winning lottery ticket... any volunteers?

In the end, I ended up telling her that what I really want is a lot of good Kharma thrown my way. I'm tired of this funk. I'm tired of the rut. I'm tired of having to claw my out of it, that's for damn sure, even though it IS my mess. As much as I don't want to admit it, I'm lonely, but not lonely enough to share living space again (unless it's a very large house that will fit all my crap and still have room to spare).

What I really want, I guess is for someone to take care of all this everyday life crap for me for a while, while I go off and try to figure out what the hell I'm doing. And while they're at it, if they can figure out away to untangle the two or three thought patterns in my head into Human, Dwarf and Dragon, that would be great because I'm certainly not making any headway.

Although, if Esowolf's right (and she probably is) a lot of THAT is the fault of my human side. Yeah, I keep blaming the dragon, but that might be simply because she doesn't seem protest all that much about taking the blame. If only I could go back in time and figure out when exactly it was that I started shutting down the parts of my mind that could make sense of this whole thing... If only I could figure out what I've blocked from my memory.

Macy's corrected

So... Got the whole Macy's thing straightened out... The good news is that my account wasn't canceled because of a late payment in December...

The bad news is that because of said late payment, the credit limit on my account was set to $0. So, when I went to attempt to use my card last Saturday, they had to run a credit check on the account to reestablish the limit and, since my credit is less than stellar at this point in time, they canceled the account.

Sucky? Definately. Needless to say, I won't be shopping at Macy's for quite a while.

But that's okay.... I'm not too worried about it. I need one less credit card anyway...

In other news, Monday night I rectified the issue of my having 2 1/2 inches of brown roots showing and a very faded dye job. Went to Pavillions Monday afternoon to pick up some film. Walked out with pictures and a bottle of hair dye. I now look like I set my head on fire (it's that red right now). It's actually not too bad.... Actually, it's about the color I've been trying to get my hair.... and it looks infinately better than when Peanut stuck her head in a bowl of Orange Kool-Aid last month.

The Slacker decided that it was my turn to take a 1/2 day off this Friday. This works out perfectly for me becuase there's a 12:15 showing of Spider-Man in Burbank. Yippiee!! I took the time on my lunch hour to order my ticket and I've been showing it off shamelessly for the last hour.

Star Wars tickets aren't on sale yet. I know, I know, it's probably a smart idea to avoid theatres like the plague until Attack of the Clones has been out for more than a month, but considering that the movie opens on my birthday and considering the fact that I'll have the day off, it sounds like a good idea.

Star Wars has managed to drop several notches on my list of all-time favorite movies (thank you such films as The Matrix and Lord of the Rings), but it will always have a special place in my heart... if nothing else, it's a really sick way of reminding me exactly how old I am. After all, Star Wars opened 9 days after I was born and we're celebrating our 1/4 century together this year...

Yes, I know, I'm sick and need help...

Asthma and Macy's Issues

So... When all other medicinal remedies fail... brake out the inhaler...

It's so easy for me to forget that I have asthma because it's hardly ever a problem... Unless you put me in a room with cats, cigarette smoke and very little ventilation... But now that I've been pretty much sick for 2 weeks straight and hacking up a lung whenever possible, it's time to remember such things, since I'm tired of sounding like I've been smoking a pack a day for 50 years.

This really sucks to because I have to go and rip Macy's a new asshole when I get home.

Get this... I go into Macy's Saturday to pick up a shirt. I get to the checkout stand and I'm told that my card has been suspended. The woman at the counter calls to find out what the problem is, hands me the phone and the woman on the other end proceeds to tell me that my card has been closed due a late payment I sent in December....

Okay... first of all... WHAT THE FUCK?!?!

That was my reaction anyway. The kicker is that from what I was told, (if this is even a valid reason for closing my account) they didn't even bother closing my account in December. They waited until Saturday, when I was ready to use my card to mark the account closed. There was no balance owed on the card. In fact, i received a statement last month informing me I had a 30 cent credit on the account.

This has got to be the lamest thing I've ever heard. So... before I actively begin boycotting Macy's, I'm going to give them a chance today to explain themselves.

Party Summary

So the party turned out to be just a few of us chillin' in my living room to 80's music, but is was cool. I managed to go all 4:20 without getting stoned, which feels sacriligious in a way... But I've discovered that I make really good screwdrivers. It's so much fun when you can't taste the alcohol... But my tolerance was way low last night because I found myself drunk after just one.

But I'm not hung over, so that's good.

Now I just need to sit back and wait for all these versions of Apotheosis to download...

Bored again...

::Best Evil Willow impersonation::

Bored now...

Esowolf and a bunch of people are supposed to be coming over for a gypsy/ren faire party tonight... Problem is... they're not here yet. So now I'm sitting here bored and downloading software updates....

Yup... Definately bored...

My parents have found out about my financial problems... One of my creditors actually called THEM looking for me... This is not how I would have them finding out about my shit... Actually, I would have prefered that they didn't find out at all, but the shit's hit the fan and to tell the truth, they're actually not giving me too much shit about it.

It's weird, it seems like they are finally getting it that they can't go hanging every little thing I do over my head because all it's going to do is push me away.

It's just weird though... but in a good way...

I also told them about my plans to go back to school. They keep bugging me about how much someone in the cooking industry makes on average. I told them the truth: I didn't ask. Of course I didn't tell them that I don't particularly care about that at the moment.... I also didn't tell them that my new goal in life is to become a tavern wench, but hey... They can't know everything, right?

BTW: Happy 4:20, ya'll!!!

Dragons sleep... a LOT

Gods, I'm tired. And the coffee seems to have made me even more so.

I'm trying to train my body to be able to survive on 6 hours of sleep. You would THINK that this would be easy... YOU however, would not be part dragon. Dragons sleep. They sleep a LOT. 8 - 10 hours of sleep at night has been my minimum for as long as I can remember. But that is not to be...

I finally realized yesterday that I had sold my Palm Pilot for $100... See how that works out? I needed $100, I got $100... Which means that I will be calling that school to set up an appointment as soon as I get home.

So what's the problem now? Well the realization of what my days are going to be like for the next 15 months, when I start class is finally hitting me. Work 6 - 3, School 3:30 - 10. I would consider this completely insane if I hadn't already done this before... Of course this time it's technically easier because I only have one job (the weekend one doesn't count for much other than the fact that it sucks away all my free time) this time around, not three or four...

15 months of this...

Well... The tarot readings I did a few months ago, did mention a trial by fire... I can only hope that this is it.

Here's My Sign...

Just to proove that even I have my moments of idiocy, I'd just like to inform all of my loyal readers that I just spent 1/2 an hour leaving voice messages for customers with my headset set to mute.

Is it the weekend yet?

Light Cycles

1/2 an hour left and dammit, I'm bored. I'm sick of email. The mountain of refund requests to sign can wait until tomorrow. I've already spent way too much time playing with my Tron Light Cycle.

The day's going by way too fast today. Hmm... I could actually be getting used to this new 6-3 schedule... It's the waking up part that I need to work on. The boss keeps making comments about how much more work I'm able to get done. Actually, I'm doing the same amount of work. I just have less people bugging me about what I do the rest of the day.... hehehehe...

Beef Stew...

NOTE TO SELF: If you're going to make beef stew on a whim... start in the morning..

I went to the store last night to get apples and cereal. That was the plan. I got there an found myself buying carrots, potatoes, onions, and 3 pounds of beef. This was SO not a planned thing. I just had this idea that I could make beef stew... sans recipe. Got home, flipped on my copy of Hedwig, cut up all my veggies (the onions made me cry during Midnight Radio), dumped everything in my crock pot, then proceeded to go watch Coyote Ugly (good movie, BTW). 9:30 rolls around and the stew's still not done. By this time, I remember that a crock pot is for slow cooking, so I grabbed a few slices of bread, a pear, ate and went to bed.

Once again I found myself paranoid about leaving something going without me and on top of that, I was unable to sleep until 1am this morning. ::shrug:: The stew turned out great! Good thing too, since I spent 10 bucks on ingredients. But I now have lunch and dinner for a while. YAY!!

Oscar traffic

Getting out of Hollywood actually wasn't as bad as it could have been tonight. The truth is, there IS no good way to get out of Hollywood, if you're headed for the Valley.

The Wighead called up at 4:30 to warn us about bumper to bumper traffic on Laurel Canyon. Ended up taking the Canyon anyway, since Laurel Canyon's always slow between 3 & 6 pm and there was no WAY I was getting back to the 101 tonight, what with Hollywood being covered in red carpet and all.

Yes, the Oscars are nigh, 2... 3 more days and all this silliness will be over with until next year.... Only next year I'm taking the fucking train to work, dammit.

Well, I've finally gotten around to some new updates... More like, I've finally gotten around to updating Collected Whatever... I'm not sure what frightens me more, the contents of my CD collection, or the fact that I was actually able to find some of it over the last couple years.

The job hunt is going poorly... Granted, I've only turned in two applications so far, but I'm working on it slowly. I have a restaurant or two I'm looking into this weekend. Not to mention, all the bars at City Walk. As soon as the Oscar madness is over with, I'm going to take my lunch hour to go apply at the new night club across the street.

Bed now...

SHRUBBERY!!!

They've brought out the shrubbery!! Where are the Knights of Ni when I need them?

Oscarmania, Big Shots, Spirit Committies and Quizzes

Oscar mania is coming to a head downstairs. Hollywood Blvd's been blocked off since last night and they are laying a red carpet over the ENTIRE street. yay...

Me and the rest of my co-workers spent a good 1/2 hour staring down at the instanity this morning. Mostly we were making fun of this gigantic Oscar statue in a truck. It LOOKED like he was in a coffin, I shit you not. Even funnier was this cloth drapped over where his mouth should be. So not only was Oscar dead and in a casket, he was GAGGED!!!

They've been bringing in flowers since yesterday... Isn't it a bit early for that part? How do they expect all that greenery to not wilt in the heat outside? I fail to get the non-logic here...

Yesterday was odd... this guy in my department (we'll call him the Big Shot) spent the entire day walking around with a bike helmet on. It was so fucking funny. He looked like that character from SNL with the harness who can't have any sugar. Big Shot's turning into such an asshole. I used to find him funny, but more and more I just can't stand to be around him anymore. I don't know if it's because he's so full of himself or if it's because he's so busy being CS's contact to the executives that he can't do his fucking job or if he's so involved with our brand spanking new spirit committee to do his fucking job or if it's just my annoyance of having to listen to him go on and on about his personal life from 2 fucking rows away!!!

It's really starting to grate.

There's another irony... a "Spirit" committe. You know? I like the idea, but the more they do, the more it's like their trying to make us feel better about being miserable. Shit don't work around here. People don't fix the shit. Customers yell at us because we can't fix the shit. And yet we're supposed to be happy about working here... right..... Well happy to be working is one thing, but I'd rather see all the money they're pouring into this "Spirit" committee go to better uses... Like raises, or bonuses, or FIXING OUR BROKEN SHIT!!!

Whatever... Here's some more quizes...

Find out which LifeSaver you are.

You're the lego Skeleton! Boo! You're the maliciously evil and gangly lego skeleton! You have a dark personality and prefer to be left alone most of the time. You may even be a rebel with lots of tatoos and body piercings. You tend to scare people when you walk by.

Take the "What Lego character are you?" test! by ctbx

Take the What
Explosive am I? quiz by PhoenixSpirit001

That's better...

I need to sleep in my office more often. I feel SO much better. No alarm clocks, a great sunrise over the building next door... Of course I woke up at 6:30... ew... I really have to start working nights.

Well... with any luck, UPS won't botch up the delivery of my bartending supplies and I can get down to finishing my course.

It sounds strange to me it really does, but I WANT to do this. I feels like another part of my life that's been missing for too long. And what the hell? I like mixing chemicals... I love to cook. Maybe that's my next step, to take a cullinary arts course... Avandal, the domestic. It sounds WAY too weird.

Delayed Hangover...

Talk about your delayed reactions. My hangover from last night kicked in around one o'cloc this afternoon. Not bad, all things considered.

The Wiffleball Champ won a party up at City Walk, meaning time for a bunch of us to get drunk off our asses for very little money. My tollerance must have been up last night because I managed to put away 4 beers, a watermelon martini, 4 shots (one was blue, one was red, one was green and one was white), a jello shot in this cool syringe and most of an adios mutha fucker that Mischa couldn't finish. Not bad for 7 hours of drinking.

By the time 1 am rolled around, I was sober enough to get Wiffleball Champ and myself to our respective abodes safely. I even managed to, somehow move all my blankets from The Chair to my bedroom before I crashed for the night.

... It's a good thing I don't do this every night.

Reading Therapy

I don't want tomorrow to be Monday. I want time to stop for a while and let me enjoy myself. Like that's going to happen. Oh well... Just make the best of what I have to work with, I guess.

Problem is that I can't tell if I'm working too hard or not hard enough. Am I running away from something or trying to catch up to it? Am I trying to hard or not trying hard enough... Am I even trying at all?

This book I'm reading is helping me a bit. It's called Book of Shadows. Esowolf recommended it to a bunch of us. It's about a woman struggling to find a spiritual life in today's world.... I guess I kind of identify with the author on some level. Like her, I came from a family that didn't concentrate on the spiritual. Like her, I'm trying to find my place in the world without letting the everyday crap of the world get to me. Like her, I'm trying to maintain this spark of creativity within. And it's not easy when you walk into work every day, knowing that there will be 20 calls on hold, hundreds of things to do and thousands of questions to answer that I've already answered a million times before.

Heh... Instead of wasting all this time at work, not caring about what I do, I'd rather be up in Wildwood, enjoying the outdoors. I'd rather be walking along Scripps Beach in San Diego. I'd rather be dancing at Faire or a bar or a club. But I guess that's my challenge. To find something that will help me hold onto the few shreds of sanity I have left. Something that will help me restore some of my faith in this world.

See... Esowolf's brother has this theory that 98% of the world is stupid... Apparantly this was a rather generous calculation because a percentage higher would have meant that only two members of his graduating class had any intelligence.

The theory has merit. Certainly, if we were to judge by the events of the present, all the sheep of the world do seem to be blindly herding us towards death and distruction.

Now me... I subscribe to this theory... especially when I'm in a bad mood. But I've made some modifications to it. See... MY theory is that only 2% of humanity actually gets it. Now what "it" is, I couldn't begin to tell you. It could be Karma, it could be the laws of the Universe, it could be Godess power. It's really too simple to explain. But whatever "it" is, only 2% of humans get it. But see... Esowolf's brother's theory is too pessimistic for me. Because it basically says that someone's either intelligent or stupid. I don't think that way

The optimist in me believes that at least another 8% of humanity has the potential to get it. It might be as high as 10%... Still not very promising, but that's, at most, 12% of the population that I have any hope for.

I think sometimes that THAT'S the challenge the Universe has set for me: To maintain my optimism... no matter what Murphy decides to throw at me.

Uh huh...

Wow... A day of hell ends on a happy note. Nothing work related.... Not really. Just having to explain what Elves are to this cute guy in IS. It's so nice to be wanted for expertise (such as it is) in a field OTHER than customer service,

Actually, it's kind of nice to watch someone find there way into the fantasy genre. It's kind of cool. It's like they start to realize why I'm trying to leave all this reality crap behind and escape to my fantasy world.

Okay... so it's better when he's a cute guy asking the questions...

Thoughts on Bartending...

Wow... second week of German class. Mom and I are taking a six week German course. (It was her idea and SHE'S paying for it)

It's fun though. And a lot of it is coming back to me as I sit in class... Of course it helps that our instructor picked me as the designated board writer. I finally find a person who's writing is worse than mine and what happens? I get to write stuff on a white board. It was weird at first, but I find that I'm remembering more than I thought I did this way.

Now all I have to do is remember to do my homework.

In other news, last week, I make an executive decision: I'm going to take a bartending class!! Mixing chemicals was always my favorite part of chemistry. And well... If I can't make stuff that blows up, mixing drinkables is just as good (and sometimes just as pretty).

Oh I don't expect to get a job doing it right away, and it would probably only be part time for a while... All though every time I think about it, I can't help picturing the look on my parents' faces when I tell them that I'm quitting my current job to tend bar... AH... the picture in my mind is sooooooo inspiring......

Hair cuts and fiction philosophy

I'm trying to get used to the new length of my hair... Oh don't panic, it's not THAT short and I didn't actually do it all at once.

See... a little before Christmas, I was brushing my hair one day and realized that I had a good two inches (at least) of broken, split-end mess. The result? Two inches of bad hair fall into the trash. No one, of course notices because my hair's so frizzy it's always a good deal shorter than it should be. Unfortuantely, that didn't get rid of the problem.

So this morning... or I should say later this morning... after fighting through another rat's nest of hair, I got really annoyed and offed another 2 1/2 inches, making my hair just more than shoulder length... in other words, WAY too short. Oh well, it needed to be done and it's not like my hair falls in my face any more now than it did yesterday.

You know? I'm actually very low maintainence, for a female... Except when it comes to my hair. I've sold my soul to Garden Botanika all for the sake of my hair. Now if I could just get it permantently straightened out.

Hmm... Finally finished Two Towers yesterday. And I was PLANNING on starting Return of the King at work today, but my mind just wasn't on reading. And that's strange because I've been longing to loose myself in Middle Earth, Krynn, Underhill, Pern, any place that isn't this world; this human world where all I am is normal and ordinary. You ever start to wonder if we're all just characters in a story that's being written by and read by beings with extrodinary talents?

Think about it... WE read comic books, fantasy novels, watch shows about people with these awesome powers because we, ourselves don't have those kinds of abilities. I mean WE don't have these great powers so we have to read about people who do... So, what if there's this race of beings who have natural magic abilities and these abilities are so common place among their society that they have to read and/or hear stories about beings (us) who have to get along in a world where those kinds of powers don't exist?

...Why do I suddenly feel like Tamahome? Like I'm just some character in a book that exists only for the entertainment value of some other race of beings? ...You know? That really doesn't make me feel any better...

Insomniac

Why am I still up? Oh.. yeah... Insomnia and mild pain drove me out of bed two hours ago... Oh, it's nothing serious... at least nothing several hours with a massus shouldn't be able to fix.

It turns out that my right shoulder is a bit of a mess. I have a knot the size of a golf ball sitting just above my shoulder blade and a few other knots running down my shoulder. Ironicly enough, the place that's in the most pain is right where I generally think one of my wings would be if they ever grew in... oh wait... I'm not actually a dragon... even though I actually am a lot of the time... If that makes any sense.

Gods! I need to relax!! I can't seem to remember when the last time I did that was. Even when I'm having fun, there's always this tension in me, like I'm never actually letting my guard down... Sometimes I think I'm just shivering because I'm cold, but everything in me is just wound so tightly.... I'd just like to be able to let go once in a while.

So... spent the last two hours watching disk 6 of Ceres. My Anime addiction strikes again. Heh... and THIS ONE'S Esowolf's fault for once... I don't know, for some reason I'm really drawn to this story. Maybe it's the idea that Ceres was imprisoned in this world against her will... I think some part of me identifies with that.... Or maybe it's just the dragon who's trapped here... I'm never quite sure. It's hard to tell sometimes when we're the same person and when we're acting as separate consciousnesses sharing this body....

Maybe I'm just crazy... Oh wait... that was established long ago...

Spent the rest of the time flipping stations. Caught Sabastian Bach hosting a show on VH1... Damn, he's still gorgeous. I still remember having a mad crush on him when I was twelve.

::Yawn:: maybe I should go back to bed....

Jack me in...

Okay... I've figured out what my problem is... I need to find a way to download my brain onto a computer. That aught to fix everything. See... If I transfer all of these thoughts to a computer, I can sort them out, file them in some sort of order and maybe I'll find a way to organize things like all the story ideas that are floating around in my head.

See this is the problem: All the stuff in my head makes so much sense while it's still IN my head. But as soon as I try to say it or write it down, it all goes to hell. So why not a direct transfer from my brain to a computer? It makes so much sense!! Oh who am I kidding... I think I've seen the Matrix one too many times. ::sigh::

Dragons, Drugs and Ow...

The three tylonol I just took must be working. My headache's slowly taking its leave. Good for it.

Last night was fun... Started out intending to watch Wolf... Ended up watching Witchblade instead. Made dinner, ate dinner, left the dishes in the sink and retired to the living room for a night of wine and tv... Note to self: you can't drink a whole bottle of red wine in one night, by yourself.

Gods though... I really need to find a way to slow down my thoughts the way depressants do WITHOUT taking anything. That, I've decided is my main problem. I really do have too many thoughts. I have too many thoughts and they fly through my mind with such speed that I can't even decifer them most of the time.... I think this is one of the reasons I can't take stimulants for very long (another reason to stay away from caffine... yay me): they just make everything worse. It's like trying to speed up everything else in order to attempt to catch up to something that's still going way too fast.

So every once in a while, I just have this need to slow everything down so I can make sense of it. Alcohol helps. Actually, most drugs I've taken that are depressants help. They slow everything, includeing my thoughts down to a speed where I can sort them out. Problem is 1. I know it's not going to last, 2. I know I'm using a drug to do this so it's not real and 3. I come to find out that my thoughts are really too strange for me to deal with some of the time.

Now, you're probably thinking that I'm an addict... nah... I'm not really. For one thing I know that a state of drunkenness, high, whatever isn't real because it wasn't caused by something I had to take to get that way. In a way, I operate in an out of site, out of mind level. I don't see the stuff around, so I don't use it. I know where it is. I know how to get to it. But I just don't. Weird, huh?

But yeah... last night was fun... In my state of drunkenness, I came up with the brilliant idea to tell this dragon in my mind off... Well, I didn't actually tell her off... well I did, in a way... all I really told her was to stop fucking around and tell me what she needs me for. Who knows... maybe it worked. Then again, maybe I've just fucked myself. I guess well have to see, won't we.

See the problem is that I keep getting this sense of urgency from her, but I don't know why and she hasn't really ever explained it... at least not in a way I've ever understood. So she starts getting frantic. Then I do. And we just sort of fuel each other's panic a lot of times. Now if I knew why she was panicing...

Mr. Procrastination...

Mister Procrastination is playing around with me again... Instead of working on the next assignment for the writing course I'm taking, I'm skulking about in here...

::sigh:: Just a few more hours until I have to be at the comic book store. My real job needs to give me a raise soon... I want my weekends back. :(

But oh well... at least it gives me something to do with myself for a few hours.

I think I've figured out what I'd really like to happen: What I want is for someone to pay my bills for... a year. Pay all my bills and send me on a very long vacation, where I'm under orders to not come back until I've been to at least 5 countries I've never been to before. That sounds like it would be wonderful...

Oh... BTW: My review of Lord of the Rings is up now...

Problems with Little Geek...

I'm reminding myself right now of how much I always hated chat support. I've been trying to talk to Gateway for the last hour. My first attempt was FINE!! But for some god awful reason, everyother chat session I've had tonight has consisted of the rep talking, me TRYING to talk back and them hanging up with me because nothing I SAY posts to the chat! Well... it's acutally working right now.

The bad news? Little Geek has to go to Irwin TX to get fixed. The good news is that Little Geek is less than a year old, so she should be under warrenty still. However, it looks like I'll have to call their CS line............ Now I know what calling CS entails... I WORK in CS. I'm not very hopeful here, but who knows... I may be surprised.

But then again, with a glass of wine under my belt, I may not care.

BTW: it's been officially decided that I'm acutally 1/2 dwarf and 1/2 human and that the dragon I keep talking about is acutally just a crearture who is trying to speak through the human in me... I'm not really sure how I feel about all this right now. Partially because I'm tipsy at the moment.

Hell... in the mood I'm in right now, I've considered switching to something stronger than alcohol... but, sady... I have things to do tonight before Mercury goes into retrograde, so I'm afraid I must sober. Darn.

However... I can say with great drunken joy that Esowolf was wrong... I'm NOT Gimli!!!

Eowyn If I were a character in The Lord of the Rings, I would be Eowyn, Woman of Rohan, niece of King Theoden and sister of Eomer. In the movie, I am played by Miranda Otto. Who would you be? Zovakware Lord of the Rings Test with Perseus Web Survey Software

Ahh....

Okay! So I guess it's pretty safe to say that I am one fucked up individual. Oh well... Everyone's got their issues, right? Anyway, it felt good to get all of that off of my chest.

In the meantime, let's see what's happened so far...

Went to see Lord of the Rings for the second time Friday night... Review is still pending.

Saturday... went to see the Finians (sp?) play at O'Brien's with Esowolf, the Peanut and Mommy (Esowolf's Mom).

Sunday... My parents FINALLY brought over the tables I pulled out of storage at my grandmother's place. Cooked dinner and watched The Neverending Story in surround sound....

Ah... life is good....

I'm just fucked up...

You know? I really shouldn't have to subject everyone who reads this to my wallowing in self pity. It tends to make people (at least people I know) worry about me.

My friends have suggested that I look into putting all of this on Live Journal or Blogger, and I've considered it... mostly for the fact that something like LJ allows you to post entries that are only available to a select few readers. But I don't know, I kind of like keeping my journal in-house. And besides, I think the real reason I started this is because if I post it here, it's posted, it's public and I can't hide from it.

Oh I've gone back and read through the things I've written in the last 5 months. And I'm beginning to realize just how screwed up I am. Heh... I'm my own private psychotherapist for a mere $270 a year.

I do think I'm wrong about one thing I said last night: I don't have a fear of success... not really... I just don't consider myself much good at anything... Okay where there are times when yes, I let my ego run rampant and I think I'm the shit. But those moments are far between. I don't know, maybe...

The truth is I just don't know. I know that I'm capable of doing something. I know that there are things I can do in a shorter amount of time than others, but I don't really consider that being good at something. I was merely asked to do a job and that's it.

I don't know... maybe it has something to do with my childhood. I know there was a period of several years when nothing I did was good enough for Mom... and if I thought I was good at something, she always admonished me for bragging about it. Maybe some of that rubbed off on me. But that's just a theory.

I got a present!!

On a lighter note though... I found this in my mail box this morning. A gift from Esowolf:

Random stuff...

Okay so I ended up sitting in front of Little Geek at the store Sunday, but at least I got a few more graphic sets made! My copy of Photoshop is freaking out on me, but maybe if I fight with it enough it will behave

Ah! Warmness.... Okay not quite warm enough yet, but this room is bigger than my bedroom so I'm at least content with the idea that I can sit here and type and not have to worry about my fingers freezing off from the cold. I love my apartment, really, but this place has practically NO insulating. I'm guessing that it's somewhere around 60 degrees outside right now and the rest of my apartment is probably only a little bit warmer than that... Although I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. I walk out of this room and I start to freeze.

In my effort to be cheap, I've tried going without breaking out my little electronic heater. I thought I could just pile on the blankets and I would be fine... I gave up on that idea Monday night after I nearly got frost bite from walking across my kitchen floor. Of course this hits me with a new problem: One room in my place is warm. One room in my place is comfortable. And warm = good sleeping for this dragon. I've managed to sleep through my alarm every morning this week, already and then I just don't want to get out of bed because I know that the moment I step out of my bedroom, I will freeze. You know those Garfield shorts where he doesn't want to get out of bed because the floor's too cold? I go from warm room to cold hallway to freezing bathroom tile... NOT fun.

This also brings - I just found out - a new complication: Dad called this evening to tell me that Biography tonight was on Anne Rice. Stupid me, I mention how freezing it is in my apartment and an hour later I have Mom pounding down my door because she's worried about me. Now... admittedly, this is actually the FIRST time this has happened. And I can only assume that it's because I'm living alone now because when I mentioned how freezing my place was last year, while Mischa and Evil Panda were still in residence, I didn't have parental units rushing over to see if I was okay.... For the hundredth time, I just don't get it.

So in other news, I'm beginning to remind myself why I never actually wanted to be in charge... Being in charge of 3... well 6 kinda... and being in charge of billing issues means more work for me. I should have known this, of course, but I guess that part of my brain was turned off at the time. Oh I still do the same stuff I was doing before: Cancellations, billing questions, refunds, clearing out mail queues everyone's forgotten about because I can clear them out in a day... by myself... But on top of that, I have supervisor escalations to deal with, policies to update, people to train, accounting to deal with and the list goes on...

You know it's funny.... The Wiffleball Champ keeps going on about how I've subcontracted a bunch of monkeys to help me do my work... Well... now I'm starting to think that it might be a good idea. I'll let the monkeys sign the refund requests and take them over to accounting. Now I just have to find the monkeys...

One of these days I'll learn to not volunteer...

So there's a downside to having a couch again: I'm spending more time on it watching TV. This is a bad thing. I get myself absorbed in television and it's all over. I can't get anything productive done. I might as well become a fat and lazy blob. Oh well... going into work tonight will at least make me feel like I'm actually doing something... even though there's going to be NOTHING to do. We're down to 500 emails and I'm not about to leave the rest of the department with nothing to do.

I volunteered to work this weekend. Which isn't a bad thing except when you toss in the consideration that my place of employment is on Hollywood Blvd. See there's this little matter of the Hollywood Christmas Parade that's kinda going to throw a monkey wrench into any plans of getting to and from work this weekend: They start closing off the streets Saturday morning at 12:01 am. Did I mention that I was working swing shift all weekend?

Oh well... I need the money. At least if I'm working Thursday, Friday and Saturday, I won't be around for the actual event. I will be hiding... at home... hopefully sitting in front of Little Geek, in my chair.

Oh, before I forget, Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Go pig out!

Hangovers...

Ugh... my head feels like it's about to crack open. I hope this is just a delayed reaction to the party Friday night. Friday a bunch of us went to the Beauty Bar for Mischa's b-day. Cool place! Martini's and manicures for $10.00. No problem. Had 3 martini's, didn't get my nails done and just had fun... Although I think Mischa and the Wighead are trying to set me up with one of the guys from work and from where I sit, it ain't gonna happen.

I mean, it's not that I don't appreciate the thought... I just have this thing about dating the people I work with. There's always a chance that if things don't work, things will get weird in the work place (like they're not weird enough already) and I'd actually like to keep my job... until a better one comes along or I become filthy rich.

Gah! I can't stare at the screen any longer. Good night all!

Question 2 Answered...

Okay... so the answer to question number 2 (who is boss of me) is a resounding "I am a boss!" That's right! Promotion time!!! Unfortunatly, it doesn't come with an increase in pay but that's because I'm already making what all the other leads make... so this is okay.

Who knows... my 2 year anniversary is coming up. Maybe they'll give me an early Christmas present.

So with my new position (Billing Lead) comes new responsibilities, obviously... I don't quite know what they are yet because well... the people in charge never actually got around to making up job discriptions for the department leads. That is all about to change, or so I hear.

On top of all this, I also get to be in charge of 4 people... well technically it's 9 right now because my new partner in crime works swing and won't be around during the day (but that too will change in the near future). I'm kinda on the iffy where this is concerned. Two of the people under me are cool. They know their shit and the get their jobs done. The other two... well... let's just say that one's a hypocondriac-wimp-and-a-half who has a bad habit of leaving work early anytime she has a slight headache. And the other spends all her time yaking with the managers, the people around her and obsessing over the possiblity that she might lose her job (something she wouldn't have to worry about if she actually DID her job). If those two aren't careful, they're going to find themselves faced with the Mega Bitch.

I'm not going to get too hasty with that though... I still don't know how much power I actually have.

And now I have to eat.

Cleaning...

Never let it be said that I have nothing to do when I'm on vacation. So far this week has turned out rather productive. My apartment is slowly getting cleaned. I've rearranged some of my furnature. I HAVE A NEW COUCH!!! You have no idea how wonderful it is to lay out on your couch and watch DVD's until you've spent 3 weeks sitting on the floor. My ass is thanking me right now.

There's SPACE!! Ye gods is there space!

In my estimate... this place looks good enough for a party.. And, by coincidence I happen to be throwing one tomorrow! Yay me!

And now I'm off to help Mischa hunt down a costume piece. If cleaning goes well, I may be back.

Back to "normal"

Wow... was that some serious PMSing or what? Yes.... I got an unexpected visit from my favorite aunt last night, which explains why I've been turning into a basket case of late. Fun, huh?

I hate when that happens. PMS = unnecessary stressing for this black dragon. And I mean I stress about everything from work to money to what I'm eating for dinner. Believe me, it's not fun...

So, in the end, I'm still poor, there's still weirdness at work that I can't really talk about, I still don't know exactly what I want to do with my life... but at least I'm not stressing too much about it... tonight, anyway. Of course the arrival of my new Atlanta Cutlery catalog doesn't help me with issue number 1. ::GASP!:: The Scorpion King's sword is for sale on the back! I hate being poor...

Insanity as a form of Job Security...

I think I'm probably the only person I know who can claim insanity as a form of job security. That's right, I'm home after another night of filling in for FUBAR on the graveyard shift. Not that I mind... well okay I mind in the sense that it's truly sad that I have nothing better to do with my time than work. I mind in the sense that I've been working my ass off with pretty much nothing to show for it. I mean let's face it: no one's been throwing any monitary awards my way for the ungodly amount of email I've been processing for the last 3 months.

Heh... Chief Iron Fist doesn't like it when I call myself an email monkey, but that's basically what I am. Since we've been hiring temps at work, once in a while I get to do what I'm actually supposed to be doing, which is training the new blood and knowing a whole bunch of otherwise useless crap. Occasionally, I'll get ambitious and consider the possibility of cross-training in another department (I acutally volunteered to cross-train in our QA department - the only one to volunteer, I might add - but that was right before we got really busy again, so they trashed the whole idea)... I mean hell! we're almost down to where we can answer email the second they come in so who am I to hog them all when other people should be doing some of the work.

Bitter? Nah... I'm not bitter about the fact that even when I DON'T feel like working I still manage to do more than twice the work of most people in my department. I'm not bitter about how much several of my co-workers bitch, moan and complain about the amount of work they're required to do, don't do and then bitch and moan and complain MORE when one of the supervisors yell at them for it. Oh no, I'm not bitter at all... ::queues the sarcasm::

I really think I need to find another line of work. Dealing with this much stupidity everyday... it's not a good thing.

In other news, it has come to pass that your favorite dragon has returned to work at the comic book store where she spent a great deal of her time (and continues to spend a great deal of money) not too long ago. I know I swore that I'd never work retail again, but... I don't know... I've never really considerd working at a comic book store a real job. And with the lack of OT, raises and bonuses being offered/given out, I could use the extra cash too since I just now realized that I saddled myself with not one but TWO of those magazine subscription services (you know the kind where you pay through the nose for two or three years so that you can receive stacks of a dozen or so dead trees a month) back in June and since I aparantly can't cancel them, they're demanding their money... loudly. To quote Dangerous Beauty, "Poverty... always puts me in a bad mood."

Yeah... the next year or so are going to be tight... more working my ass off, more money going down the drain, and less time... Kinda makes me wonder to whom I have to sell my soul in order to get even a little extra dough thrown my way. But then I doubt anyone would buy anyway. Hell! I've tried selling some of my stuff and failed miserably!

::Sigh::

Now if only I could find a non-job that will pay the bills...

Out of email...

A good thing has happened at work: we have almost no email left! But this is also a bad thing because it means that overtime will be going away very soon. Yes... that's right, I'll soon have to go back to spending my days at work actually doing my job rather than having to play email monkey. It also means that I'll have to find more ways to spend my time, since I can't spend it at work (I'm heart broken, really). It also means that I'm going to have to find other ways of earning extra cash. I still have bills to pay, you know. Of course, if anyone is willing to help me out, you can always donate to the cause. But I'll think about that tomorrow. Right now, I need sleep. Nite, nite!

I FEEL BETTER!!!

Nothing like a good soak in the desert heat to make everything feel better. Of course, I'm a little sunburnt, I managed to stay sober all weekend, but hey! It was still fun. Esowolf, Peanut and I tore through 3 or 4 of the bigger casinos on the strip. I managed to win a whole 2 bucks... But the most important and fun part was the road. I can't tell you how bad I needed a road trip. Going up, I got to do what my mom always thinks is a bad idea and drive solo (she thinks I'm going to turn into a hermit.... like that's a BAD thing...). Then, on the way back we took the scenic route as a caravan, over Hoover Dam and through a good chunk of my childhood. That I got to see my lake and my river on the way back just made everything all that much better.

Of course there were the downsides of driving home at night... like the 10 or so vehicles who tried to drive me off the road because doing 80 wasn't fast enough for them. Is it just me or are semi trucks NOT supposed to be driven as if they were sports cars? It's actually rather disturbing to find out that you're being talegated by one of those things.

VEGAS BABY!!!

Tonight several members of my department are beginning a mass exodus to Loss Wages and I'm going along for the fun. That's right, kids, this dragon's skippin' town for the weekend. EarthShadow's been itching for a road trip and so have I. Four hours there... a whole weekend of partying and four hours back. There are the rumors that... given recent events... the town is dead and everything's really cheap. All things considered, who am I to not take advantage of the situation... especially when we've been planning this for 4 months...

So off I go to the wilds of Nevada and the desert that I miss dearly. Expect a full report upon my return... assuming I remember anything that happens...

One down... 3 to go...

Ah! There's nothing like the feeling of relaxing after you've accomplished something wonderful…

Okay… So it's not wonderful in the sense that the universe will shift and turn aright, but I wasn't going for earth shattering wonderfulness.

I'm speaking of course of the shear giddiness I'm feeling right now at having one room in my apartment completely finished! …Well, not completely finished… Evil Panda still has some of his crap in the upper cabinets; both he and Mischa still have clothing in the closet; but that is all something I can live with. The for the second shocking weekend in a row, I have opted to forego the over time at work (though the gods know I need the money) and work on the betterment of my apartment.

Last weekend saw the installation of the bookshelves Dad made. As far as creating things out of wood, my dad's a genius. There are now boxes stacked and honeycombed over the east wall of the room and they are almost all filled with books! YES! To my amazement, I would appear to have a genuine library along one wall of my apartment. Of course Mom, was shocked at the sheer quantity of literature I owned and even had the audacity to suggest that I SELL some of them!! ::sigh::

Last weekend also saw my utter depression over finding out that my beloved writing chair was broken. :( This would be the futon chair I'd spent the last week sleeping on… just for the sake of sleeping somewhere different. Dad took one look at the crossbar which had snapped in half and pronounced it a "shitty piece of wood" and something that was completely fixable.

So come THIS weekend, my chair is fixed, selves have been installed over the top rows of boxes, my alter (a genuine alter and not one made up of comic book boxes) has been set up, posters and pictures are hung and I am even minus one couch!! I just love how some things just tend to work out! Now if only money matters would work more in my favor… grrr…

Continuing on the apartment front - we move on to my karmic good deeds of the month. Namely, the living room furnature I'm donating to the Salvation Army tomorrow. Tomorrow a small desk, a chair and some clothing will be donated to those in need. My old couch was going to go with them, but I ended up donating it to the Wighead's brother. Either way, I can hope that this gains me some karma points since I'm planning on cashing a lot of them in when I go to Vegas next week. With any luck, maybe I'll win at least enough to pay the registration on EarthShadow in November.

Business as usual...

::Yawn:: Finally, I've gotten a decent night's sleep! Let me tell you, this dragon hasn't had the best of nights the past few days...

So... back to work... back to the routine... back to everything...

Today turned out to be back to business as usual. I just got home and lit a whole bunch of candles: 4 on my porch, one in my kitchen and one sitting here next to me and BigGeek. Tonight I'm going to forget that there are terrorists still out here... Tonight, I'm going to ignore lunatic, bigotted bastards like Pat Robetson and Jerry Falwell, who should be taken out and beaten for their comments regarding today's tragedy... Tonight... will be spent alone with my thoughts...

But if you want to see something truly inspiring, go here.

Disasters and Furnature...

Ah!! Nothing like world disasters and unscheduled furnature deliveries to fuck up one's day.

It would appear that I am now suffering from... an over population of couches in my apartment. I've had a futon couch on lay-a-way for the past 8 months, I sent in the final payment... almost 3 weeks ago. Now I'm normally not one to complain about something arriving on the early side... but when you're told to expect delivery of something within 4 - 6 weeks of your final payment... and then you PLAN the rearrangement of your apartment around that 4 - 6 week time frame, having it show up early just throws a big ole monkey wrench in the works.

This is one of those days when I wish that EarthShadow was a truck and not a Jetta... But she's not and the three large boxes the UPS guy and I carried up to my bedroom would NOT have fit in her trunk. So I called in one of the floating holidays I've been wracking up and stayed home.

Not that today was a TOTAL waste of time... I got some more of my clothes put away, Mom and I stacked one of my IKEA direct cabinets last night and bolted it to the wall, so I spent about 1/2 an hour filling that up... and then I did something extrodinary and hooked my cable back up again. Ah! the sounds of television filling my living room again!! I spent the last hour before the UPS guy got here flipping back and forth between the news and Star Trek III.

I had planed on going into work if he got here by 1pm... he got here 20 minutes ago so it looks like this dragon's staying home today.

I'll probably go back and watch the news some more later... while I'm trying to figure out who I know who can use a couch...

As far as yesterday's events go, I'm still numb... the shock is mostly gone. I'm still not surprised. I sensed that something big was going to happen... I just didn't realize it would be this soon. I don't think it's over either... whoever they are, they've hit the east coast... there's no reason to think that they won't hit the west coast.

Mom and Dad think that we'll get these fuckers and that will be that... I'm not that optimistic... whoever they are, there are more of them, and they're going to wait until things have calmed before they strike again.

BTW: if any of you happen to see a black dragon trolling around at night... that's just me on patrol. Not that I'll expect to remember anything come morning...

Rearranging the house...

Damn earthquake! Now look at this mess I have to clean up!

...Oh... wait... I made the mess. Isn't re-arranging rooms fun? With my roommates moved out, I have all this room now! Problem is that I have so much crap that I'm basically forced to work on one room at a time, so things are going just a tiny bit slower than I'd like. I'm also waiting on some bookshelves that my dad is building for me. But those should be here next week. That gives me just enough time to clear out the living room and get rid of my old couch before the new couch gets here.

I love working on time tables. The problem is that I'm not exactly sure what the time table is right now. There are times when this dragon forgets that she's stuck in a human's body and it throws my whole sense of time out of whack....

Heh... Saturday was fun... Mom and I spent two hours washing down the walls in this room and discovered that we really didn't need to paint in here. Which, again, fits into this weird time table of mine somehow...

Mom seemed mystified though at the idea that the shelves Dad's building will be mostly for books. She actually suggested that I hold a book sale and get rid of my older books! Now I ask you: what's the point of building a library if you're not going to keep your books? Whatever... I no longer even try to understand Mom logic.

Opps...

Okay, so "later today" turned in to the next day... The original plan was to work until sometime around 11 last night. That of course was all tossed down the crapper when my friend FUBAR (esentially our graveyard crew) called to inform us that he might not be in for his shift... on account of his needing a new car very, very badly.

So... in one of my many moments of insanity, I volunteered to fill in... It's actually rather sad when you realize that you have nothing better to do than be at work.

So... after 16 hours of cancellations and playing with my Neopets, and about 3 hours of sleep... I'm amazed that I'm as coherent as I am right now....

Maybe I should go back to sleep...

Overachiever here...

Wow... today was like the first day in days that I've been able to get through over 300 emails in a shift... Yes it's sad, I know. I'm actually proud of the reputation I have built myself for being able to wade through more email than the average CS'er... I did all that and I still managed to play around with my Neopets all day.

Hey... don't knock it! It's a great way to waste time... that and my friend the Wighead is the one responsible for this addiction... grrr....

Let's see... was there anything else of note today? Not really... unless my being points away from level 9 in Battlemail Joust counts....

Miss me?

Miss me? Yeah... I know... where's the commitment huh? Mostly given to work, sorry to say. Been working some long, hard hours, I have. Fortunately, the new schedule allows me to sleep in somewhat. If nothing else, I get the luxury of just laying in bed and staring at the ceiling for a while.

But it's been a busy week... mom was over this weekend helping me clean the carpet in my new room. New room, you ask? If you've read the bio section, you'll know that I used to have a couple of roommates. Well... they've since moved out and I now have the entire 2-bedroom place all to myself. The idea was to turn the spare room into an office. Seems to have worked so far... Problem was that the room after my roomies moved out was a disaster.. this is where all the gatherings would go on, you see...

The result? A good month or so of being berated by my parents for living less than livable conditions - living in squallor wasn't exactly said, but well implied. All that, of course cullminating in a good six hours spent with my mom continuing along said trail of thought. Not that I should complain all that much... I mean she's the one who ended up doing all the work... but really for all the shit I had to put up with this weekend I could have just hired someone to do the damn cleaning.

But that is all over... my parents are coming back in two weeks to slap on a thin coat of paint, install some bookshelves and that should be that! In the mean time, my office is starting to actually look like an office. Network's all set up, stereo in one corner, alter in another... all sorts of fun stuff. I even got to do something I've been wanting to do for the past five months - I slept in here. (I plan on having an apartment where I can crash out in any room of the house... I'm almost there.)

In other news, I was recalled to active trainer duty this week when my department took on four new temps to help with the work load. The steadily increasing volume of email needs to be dealt with and in a hurry. Not to mention that I still have 2500 cancellations to schlog through.

OH! And finally... in a moment of cheep amusement, most of my apartment was overjoyed to find out that a customer of ours managed to fall asleep after being on hold for only 10 minutes! To this customer, I say thanks for a good 5 minutes of fun... and I'd get some rest if I were you.

::Yawn:: Late... must sleep...

Ugh.....

Okay, so 10 am turned in to something closer to 9 am. I've decided that I'm either a closet work-aholic or just a very sick individual because when I can't think of anything else to do, I go to work. Disgusting isn't it? Oh well, at least I end up getting paid for my time this way. It's really sad that with as much as I hate money, I end up going to the place where I earn money when I'm bored

Wrestling sucked last night. Not even The Rock could liven up the show. Not to mention they wasted at least 1/2 an hour on midget abuse and the 1/2 of stalker guy DDP that made want to run for the hills. They're taking the creep factor just a little bit too far there. ::sigh:: On the other hand... I've been introduced to the wonder that is Samurai Jack. Now THIS is some funny shit! I mean this one guy (and he's not American, Evil Panda) single handedly defeats hoards of robots, dodges arrows blind-folded, and just spends a good 1/2 hour kicking some serious ass.

I just discovered a strange ring-shaped bruise on my middle toe. Coincidentally, it's about the size of my toe ring and a very pale shade of green. Ouch.

CANCEL!! ISSUE CREDIT!!!

Ahh... the joys of meanial labor... I speak of the millions of cancellations I have been assigned to do...

Okay.. not that many.. but that sense of accomplishment at having finished filling out my second stack of 101 refund request is fairly well deminished by the fact that I know I have a good 3000 more to get through. 2 1/2 more hours to go and I highly doubt I'll get out of July by the end of today... but that's what tomorrow's for right. At least I'll get to sleep in tomorrow. I managed to convince my manager, Chief Iron-Fist, that the increased temperature in my apartment was detrimental to my mental and physical health and that we should experiment in moving my hours to a later shift... of course if it results in her getting bombarded by even more questions, I'll be back to my old schedule... but even a few days in a 10 - 7 slot is a grand prospect. Well, it's not like I have to worry about job security... Chief Iron-Fist has already made it VERY clear that she'll kill me if I even think of leaving here.

Oh... don't worry... she won't actually kill me... She may hurt me a lot. JUST KIDDING!! I don't call her Chief Iron-Fist because she's hard to work with. I actually love her to death. She actually earned the title of "Iron-Fist" after she clobbered some annoying mosher at a concert some months ago.

Again, I'm in here to avoid the heat. The scary thing is that I actually LIKE working weekends... No one's here... no one bugs me... no one cares if I walk around the office bare-foot.... Heck! The weekend crew even thinks it's funny that I've been drinking out of a pitcher full of ice water for the past 6 hours!

AH! But it sounds like the copier has finished my latest stack of refund forms! Back to the grind for this dragon...

LIFT OFF!!!

Houston! We have lift off! Thanks to the valiant efforts of Cool NOC guy #4, BigGeek and LittleGeek are finally talking to each other! Cool NOC #4 confirmed my thoery that I'm not completely inept at installing hardware (this being my first time and all) and has the distinct honor of being one of the few to accuse me of not playing with my toys hard enough. Apparantly in my efforts to NOT BREAK my brand-new-$100 piece of equipment, I failed to get my network card propperly jammed into place.

But now that that's over, I no longer have to worry about the possibility of losing information due to a melt down of LittleGeek... Okay... I'll still worry about it, but not as much... Unlike the majority of customers I deal with, I am not of the mind that my computers are completely infalible. So thanks go out to Cool NOC Guy #4! If you ever read this, you'll know who you are. Your copy of Snowcraft will be available shortly.

In other news: Yesterday, I completed my first ever eBay sale... I won't say it was a screaming success... I managed to sell my entire collection of JLA comics for about what issue #1 is worth. To make matters worse, I failed to take into account that shipping to Canada would cost more than shipping within the country. The results? About $20.00 of the sale went to paying the remainder of the shipping costs... On the upside, what was left over went to the two brand new little-black-fans which are happily circulating air through various rooms in my apartment right now. So now I sit in slightly cooler air and say "Here's to knowing what I'm doing next time and refusing to ship out of the country unless really necessary."

Did I say daily?

So much for "daily," eh?

So they took down the gates across the street... Gates? Heh... Tuesday morning, at about 10:30, Nicholas Cage's signature, hand prints and foot prints were immortalized in cement in front of the Mann Chinese..Crowds of people flocked and gathered behind crowd control gates on the OTHER side of the street to witness this historic event.

Now, I don't have a problem with Nicholas Cage... I actually like some of Nicholas Cage's work. But PEOPLE! He's an actor. That's what he's being paid to do! Are your lives so uninteresting that you need to hang around outside long after everyone of importance has left and the techs are striking? I was more excited about meeting Dumbo when I was 6.

Well, I don't begrudge the masses their need to watch someone seemingly more important than they are get recognized for their work. The real problem I have is the aftermath. After everything was taken apart and everyone had left, they set up four of those crowd baracades around the newly imprinted cement slab. Crowds of people gathered around these gates to do what? Watch cement dry. Is that like some kind of step up from watching paint dry? I actually pitied the security guard they had out there all week. He was hired to guard nothing more or less important than drying cement, I mean, when you think about it, how sad is it to be hired to guard wet cement?

Bleah... it's late and my mind is fuzzy...

Time for Plan B...

I should have known better. Netgear's help pages aren't very helpful. On to plan B. Well, I am doing the OT thing this weekend.

I've spent the last few hours putting all of this together. And now I'm experimenting with frames and fighting with Dreamweaver. Frames are a bitch, they weren't kidding about that. But I think I'm getting the hang of it now.... I hope...

But true to my word, I found a picture of that building I was talking about....

Well... here we are...

Thursday's a bad day. It would seem like a bad day to start any kind of venture. Why you ask? Well, maybe I've read a bit too much Douglas Adams, but I firmly believe that the world is going to end on a Thursday. Work today sucked.

Let me describe work… I work in Hollywood. I work on Hollywood Blvd. I work for an Internet company (which shall remain nameless - I may bitch and moan about my job but I'd like to keep it and except for the customers and a few resident morons, I actually do like it there) on Hollywood Blvd. Now let me digress just a bit. There are a few things you should know about Hollywood. Hollywood; Hollywood Blvd, to be exact is one of the most dangerous places in the world. Not because of muggers, thieves, prostitutes, etc… because of the tourists! There is nothing in the world that is more dangerous than walking along, minding your own business, then WHAM!! You run right smack into some idiot who's just stopped to stare at the sidewalk.

Even worse… the building I work in is right across the street from the Mann Chinese Theater. You know what that means, don't you? Premiere Night Hell! That's right… every once in a while they'll block off my section of the Blvd and crowds will gather in the hopes of seeing stars walk down a red carpet in the middle of the street. Most of them don't even care that the chances of actually getting in to SEE the damn movie are slim to nil, even if you do have one of those nifty little passes that will let you get in if you're early enough.

Oh! And then there's that lovely new theatre they're building across the street. It's supposed to be the new home of the academy awards (I've already declared that I refuse to work Oscar Night). From what I hear, there have already been complaints that the place is too small. There are doubts that the Oscars will be held there more than once in the structure's life. Not to mention that a 1/3 of the complex is ugly as hell. They have this strange fascination with elephants. I mean it was okay when it was just the two statues on top of the building, but now there this blue and white elephant mosaic facing Highland Blvd with strange patches of blue over the doorways, which in no way match any other part of the color scheme they were going for. If that weren't enough, there's this one part of the building that's strangely phallic. If I had a scanner or a digital camera, I'd take a pic of it, but I don't so I'll have to find some other means of displaying this wonder.

But I've digressed enough… work sucked today. It started out good, but as the day wore on, I slowly began to feel like crap. Maybe it's over work; maybe I've just got what one of my managers went home with yesterday. I don't know. By about ten this morning I'd been instructed to start up on cancels again. I say again because that's what I was assigned to a few months ago. Well, now we're almost a month behind so I'm back to them. In my need to be as lazy as possible and still get as much work done as possible, I grabbed a giant slice of pizza from down the street, printed out a hundred refund forms and set to work. By one, I'd done just over 50 (a very slow start for me) and I felt like shit, so I begged illness and went home at 1:30 to sleep.

At least that's what I intended. All those great plans gone to waste. I got home, turned on the A/C but sleep just wasn't going to happen. So needing something constructive to do, I took a little trip to Radio Shack, picked up the one Ethernet cable I was missing to set up the little network I've been trying to construct and set to work attempting to install a network card and get my computers networked together. Yes, I did say computers. I have two: Big Geek - my desktop computer - and Little Geek - my laptop - (if you don't know the reference I strongly suggest running out to the nearest video store and grabbing a copy of The Abyss, you poor misguided thing).

Well, Little Geek, of course, came with it's own little network card… a grand thing for it to have since I noticed a bit too late that it was without a floppy drive. BIG Geek, my desktop of 2 years now, did not have a network card until about a month ago when I went out and purchased both it and the network hub to go with it.

Well, apparently, my installation of said piece of hardware did not go as planned. The little shit just doesn't want to connect itself. But then the damn installation instructions aren't very descriptive. They fail to mention where exactly this little three-pronged connector is supposed to go. Well, after an hour of fooling around with it, I've decided that I either need to make a visit to the Netgear web site or lug my computer into work this weekend for one of the NOC guys to look at.

But, in the meantime, I've been sitting here, typing away on Little Geek, hoping, as always that lightning doesn't strike and erase every bit of information on this computer. Not that I expect lightning to strike right now… its a billion degrees outside. It would be even more insanely hot in here if my little window A/C weren't going. I rarely turn it on but the prospect of sleeping in an oven didn't appeal to me. With any luck today will mean just a minor spike in my next energy bill.

::sigh:: As much as I love hot, desert-like weather, I'm seriously contemplating moving to Canada right now.