amethystmoon

some splash guard thing on the bottom of my car decided to come halfway off today on rt. 2. The front part mind you, so not only was it dragging, but in a direction such that it could catch on stuff and cause damage. So I pulled over and mostly reattached it with zip-ties. Which I'm thankful I had because the bungee cord hooks were too wide for the bolt holes (getting a set of standard wire-hook bungees this weekend). Apparently damage to that piece of plastic (or sometimes it's metal) is common when a car's been towed. Lovely. Something else crappy happened today too, but I don't even remember it anymore. Let me never again predict anvils falling on my head because things are going too good.

hungry and exhausted. seems to be a pretty constant state right now. I just tried looking at apartment listings online... I have no energy for it right now.

I totally thought today was Wednesday. I thought I had another day til Donna's wake.

"Oh. on a random note, the video store that I go to installed tanning beds in the back, so now its a video/tanning store."

"How is it you are heading west?"
"Well, we kinda look to the north, then real sudden-like, turn to the left"

Bed.

--end transmission--

15 minutes, and I've got what amounts to beef stew. Would've been 5 had I planned it, rather than realizing what I was doing as I went along.

Potato: microwave for 5 minutes - wet, but doesn't need to be in water
carrots: microwave in water for 2-3 minutes (caution boiling water is hot... oops. Burned fingers)
leftover steak tips: microwave for 1.5 minutes
cut it all up, throw it in a bowl or on a deep plate, toss ripped spinach over it
Pour over top:
gravy: melt 1T butter and whisk in about as much flour (this ia making a rue). Add 1c or so of water (helps if it's already hot) and a cube of beef bulion. Add garlic, salt, pepper, worcestershire sauce, and that "gravy master" stuff as available and to taste.

I cook and clean when I don't know what else to do. The bedroom's next.

I just spent the last half hour going through "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", in .txt format, adding a carriage return between each stanza, replacing every incorrect dash with a correct em dash, and cringing whenever I came across a word that should have funky capitalization and font or should be right-aligned, because the way we're doing these, we can't format that correctly.

At least now I've read some of a classic-they-never-made-us-read-in-school.

"If by 'cool' you mean something that doesn't work right, then, uhum, yeah... guilty as charged"

me:"Can you message me when you've got a free minute?"
boss: *looks at clock* "Uh, yeah... that's probably not gonna happen"

They more amuse me than sound cool on their own.
I've gotta come up with a good word for what I do n making demos. It's not quite animation, nor is it video editing per se. It's kinda like putting together slide presentations, but not so much that either, and it's time based. Anyway, good day because I got to do that. Now back to meticulously fixing ebooks. Why must mathematical symbols be such a bloody pain?

It's funny cuz Dave is both the warrior (one of my geek-knights in not so shining armor that walked me home through the Hobart riots) and Evil Incarnate (evil Dave). It's also funny that he and themoch, people I hardly ever talk to now, are both on here twice.

Ok, bed, for real.

the K key is now defunct. Damn I need a new keyboard... (# of keys now missing: 4)

The more it snows, the more I wish I were a teacher. Sigh. I like it, I just don't want to have to drive and get to work in it...

Finally home. Arisia was fun. Saw many fun people. I am exhausted and my feet hurt. My car got towed, but it wasn't too bad, and I thus recieved it cleaned off and shoveled out. Getting home was interesting with all the hills, but I made it. Just had to back up to a flatter area a few times to regain some momentum to get up them. Checked work email, found something saying yes we are working tomorrow. Blah. This working thing is complete shit. Teacher's hours look perpetually better and better. Maybe I'll find out about taking that certification test...

So, I have this friend from high school, Dan, whom I actually haven't seen in, oh, at least two years. I talked to a mutual friend, Julius, recently, who informed me I work mere blocks from Dan's apartment. Mind you, since working in Boston, I've run into at least 3 people I haven't seen since high school on Newbury St. So, I got Dan's number from Julius, and gave him a call last week. He called me back today. Guess where he lives? Across the alley from where I work. Like, you know how you'd string together tin cans and make a telephone when you were kids? Yeah, we could do that between his apartment and my office. And he gets home from classes around when I leave work. And yet we haven't run into eachother. Personally, I find that to be insane. So we're gonna remedy that at some point. (When he called, I did that annoying thing where I chatted with him on my cell phone on the T. I'm sorry to the other terribly grumpy gloomy looking commuters whom I may have irritated in doing so. But at least I wasn't warming up my voice or practicing for an audition or whatever-the-fuck all the way from Newton Center to gods-know-where this morning. [I'm actually not annoyed by either; she was pretty good, and I don't see how a cell conversation is rude when a real one is not]).

It would appear that the majority of my friends are either on a crazy spontaneous road trip to DC, or setting up Arisia. Aw, I feel left out :p (kidding. I'm highly, highly amused. Mostly by the road trip, and because I've been *trying* to volunteer, but with how little people from Arisia have been getting back in touch with me or keeping me informed, who knows if I will at all. You could've had another volunteer tonight, but no. Instead I'm doing laundry so I have things to wear at Arisia. Which is just as well. I don't think Naked Care would go over too well with the Park Plaza folks.). One thing I do feel a tiny tad left out about though, is Dan mentioned a party at his place tonight on the phone, but didn't invite me. Hrm. But, just a tad, because like I said, I haven't seen him in years. It could be incredibly awkward if he did.

A driving lesson, for Bostonites: when turning your wheel greater than just enough to avoid something in the road (eg: to turn at an intersection, into your driveway, switch lanes, or to park), it is customary to use your "turn signal," also known as a "directional" or "blinker." These are pretty little blinking lights which indicate to others on the road (both drivers and pedestrians, and even bikers) where you intend to go. To utilize this nifty device, merely flick the bar that juts out to the left of your steering column: up for right, down for left. If you are not using your turn signal simply because you are not from around here and have no idea where you are going, this is ok, as you are generally driving rediculously slowly and erradically, thus already indicating to other drivers that you are insane and should be avoided.

Another tip, for those with Mack trucks: it is unkind, bad karma, and potentially hazardous to multiple persons' health and your career to run other, smaller vehicles off the road or out of their lane just because you can, or you're impatient. Don't fucking do it.

And finally:

Dear Mr. Waltham Police Officer,

I may be mistaken, but I do believe it is customary (and legally necessary), when speeding on the wrong side of the road towards a busy intersection, at which you are taking a left turn at a red light, to use your siren as well as those pretty (albeit seisure-inducing) flashing lights.

These driving safety messages kindly brought to you by the Greater Boston Annoyed Drivers Association (and the Pirate Kitty Death Squad).

I woke up this morning thinking "I swear I was wearing a shirt when I went to bed..."
The shirt lay crumpled on the floor at the foot of my bed.
I have no recollection of how it got there.

Official plans, just so people know:

My schedule: I'm arriving at the Park Plaza hotel at around 5:30pm Friday, and working tech and possibly Nero stuff for the weekend. I'm probably doing the Nero-run LARP on Sunday, and/or the Sunday Sundae Social. I think I'm also doing strike/load out. And I'm going to the dance. Those are my only definite plans at the moment.

Room situation: Tashari, Mercutio, Alex Jackson, Stephanie, most likely Mink, and I are sharing a room. Stating this serves a few purposes: letting you all know that you can find us all in one place, letting you know we won't really have any extra crash space, and letting them all know they're rooming together (because some of them don't at present :p).

Now, on to making or fixing things which I want to wear there...

I was in a kinda cruddy mood, for no good reason. It just developed since getting home from work (my day prior to that was fine, including walking all the way to the Fenway T stop after work for the sake of figuring out how and for getting a good walk since it was nice out). So, in my cruddy mood, I begrudgingly put away all my laundry and sorted through some papers, because I may as well do chores if I'm not in a mood to enjoy anything.

So, I have a stack of things which need ironing, including a lot of nice new stuff I got for Christmas and have yet to wear due to needing to be ironed. So, I figured I'd tackle that chore too.

I took my iron all the way to the kitchen to fill it, because it doesn't fit under the bathroom sink. I let it heat up and steam out, because I've had bad luck with white mineral deposits working their way out onto my clothes. Then I took it to the kitchen and filled it again, to use this time. Now, since I don't have much space or a real ironing board, I was using one of those little table-top ones, and had it propped on my (rather slanted) futon. This required kneeling to iron. Overall, this process is awkward and annoying. Anyway, I started trying to iron nice creases down the front of a pair of trousers. I began to get very frustrated that they didn't seem to be taking very well. then I realized it's "easy care" fabric, designed to not wrinkle much. Ugh. (Which, incidentally, means you can't iron seams into it very well, but it does in fact hold some creases from washing). I then put the iron down on the floor to hang the pants and get a new garment to iron. The iron then fell over, landing every so slightly and briefly ont he edge of a plastic grocery bag.

Now I wait for the iron to cool completely so I can try to peel the bag off.

Simple tasks always end up like this with me. Sigh. Want my own place... it makes so many things easier and less painful when I have all my stuff at my disposal, and arranged ideally for my own purposes. Arrrrg.

So, originally I started reading Wapsi Square unpon Tash's suggestion, because the main character was a large-breasted woman who works at a museum, and there were lots of comics related to artsy, museum-y, and finding-bras-that-work type themes. But more recently, it's begun to take a really intriguing supernatural twist that I didn't so much expect from it's humble beginings. It is officially cool, and you should go read it. The great thing is, it's a 4-panel strip, 5-day-a-week comic that maintains some semblance of plot and doesn't drag the plot out to a boring or hard to follow point (coughMegaTokyocough). It's much more in the vein of a newspaper syndicated strip than a webcomic, I guess. Anyhow, it works and I like it.

Saturday went to a lovely little dinner party at Sarah's, and dragged Kevin kicking and screaming (ok, not quite. He came of his own free will and was too far into his moping to kick or scream), and we both had fun. Being there was really nice, seeing Sarah and going over her house a lot are the only things I miss about being in Fitchburg all the time. Justin and Bethany brought their girls, and they're absolutely adorable. I played horsies with Colleen, it was cute.

Sunday I made hummus and maple cookies, and Steph came over and we hung out. Which was also really nice.

Today I asked my boss what the possibility would be of me having a position after the internship is over and she said most likely, and I said so I won't start looking for a job, and she said "please don't!". Which made me happy.

I'm looking at an apartment tomorrow, in my price range, near Central square, with cathedral ceilings and skylights, where I'd be moving in with a lesbian couple who like Buffy, one of whom makes furniture and does fine woodworking for a living, and who have a cat (or two?). Which I'm trying to not get too excited about yet, but sounds really cool.

And presently, Alex Jackson is driving here so we can get food and watch a movie.

And Arisia is in a couple weeks.







Obviously an anvil is going to fall out of the sky on my head pretty soon.

While the competing with pixels was never game-related, this is all too familiar. Ah, geek boys.

but must finish some things before bed. Ugh. But I will feel infinitely better for having finished them.

It was a *long* weekend, and involved way too much time in cars. A long week, really. Monday I hung out with Steve, updated my resume, looked for jobs and apartments, and then drove to Fitchburg to see Ocean's Twelve with Sarah and Adrian (no work, due to snow).

Tuesday after work I was supposed to see an apartment and didn't because I spent an hour or so trying to find it and determined it was not close enough to the T anyway, and then hung out with Steve.

Wednesday I went out to dinner with Sarah and Adrian after work because it turned out they were in Bostonish. Because my car was still parked at Steve's, I hung out with him again briefly.

Thursday I was at work for TWELVE fucking hours working on something that had to get done that day, which we had only started that morning, which I was doing pretty much on my own without some necessarry specs about the project, and using a program to do it that I'd learned how to use completely the day before. Then I drove to Fitchburg. Got there around midnight-thirty, and then went out for a drink with Kevin.

Friday I exchanged a bunch of stuff I got for Christmas at the mall with my mom. Shopping with her was really nice. And I pretty much have a whole new wardrobe. Then I was going to go to Amherst with Kevin, but his car broke and we sat in it for over an hour waiting for AAA. Then we drove my car to Newton for Katie's party. I drove back to Waltham and slept in my own bed that night.

Saturday I had to drive Kevin back to Leominster because of his car problems, so I picked him up, we had breakfast at Steve's with peoples, then I drove him to Leominster. Then I drove back to Waltham again. And *then* I drove all over the Greater Boston Area, including a good deal of in downtown Boston, in a 2 hour attempt to find Tashari's place. And all because an exit was mislabeled. Well, that's how it all started. Then there was Boston's lack of labeling things well. Finally got there and watched movies, and the night ended badly and I slept crappilly, waking once from a pretty bad nightmare.

Today I came back to Waltham, stuck around here for maybe an hour or two, then went to a gaming session I just got home from (in which there was a whole lot more stat-making, stat-verifying, and useless bickering than actual gaming).

I didn't realize until I wrote all that out how thoroughly exhausting and busy this week was, how needlessly so, and how much driving was really done. No wonder all I want to do is go to bed. I'm trying to keep next weekend low-key. And trying to not have to drive back to Fitchburg or Amherst. I really need some me-time, to read and chill and work on some projects. And *not* drive.

Oh yeah, I finally have my new car, all fixed. Oh. Right. But with a rejection sticker. Dammit, I'll probably have to drive it back to Fitchburg next weekend to get the inspection done. Arg.

I'm presently learnng about polynomials for work. And really, for no good reason. Oi.

conclusion from reading friends' and friends of friends' LJ memey quizy things: people miss other people a lot, but no one thinks they're missed very much.

other conclusion from said: I do stupid things with my time. Le-fucking-sigh.