the maw of Fafnir

Messaging bears about porridge is a complicated affair.

Someone once told me that I have a love/hate relationship with everything in my life. The more I think about it, the more I think that they're right. And then I get angry at myself for being that way. I wonder if it's not just love/hate, but a series of diametrically opposed feelings. Too much looking back, not enough looking forward. I think I just want it all. On a silver platter. Handed to me by hot naked men. There should probably be hand-peeled grapes somewhere too. This paragraph ended up in a different place than I intended.

Today is brought to you by the number two.

Count the fishies! One fish, two fish... Two fish, ah ah ah. Saturn and Neptune are all that's left of the United Federation of Planets And Two Outliers. I wish I could say they were Pluto and Alpha Centauri, but alas, the luck did not hold. But that is okay. At least two survived the Russian roulette that was my tank for a while.

Count the number of hours past midnight Inga slept! One hour, two hours... Two hours, ah ah ah. Why the hell was I up at two? Because I'd gone to bed at nine, and I had work to do. So I watched Harry Potter 1 + 2 and reviewed lotsa websites for 3.5 hours before coming into work. Happily, the energy has held. Perhaps due to the fact that my lunch was literally 15 minutes long, most of which was waiting in line. This implies Many Things Are Afoot.

Today is also brought to you by the letter C.

This Saturday was painting a Condo. Or at least the trim around the doorframes. There was also Chipotle sauce and Chicken mole burritos. Sunday was going to the City to eat Chinese food -- dim sum -- with Chopsticks. I got to take the Caltrain and discovered the local Coffee shop near the millbrae Caltrain stop. So, there was also a bookstore shop and I read several Chapters of two books before deciding to buy them and a CD. One book was on Cars. I used a pair of Coupons, so it didn't Cost as much as it would have. Then I went grocery shopping and bought Chicken and Cheese and Ciabatta bread and Cherry yogurt. Then I went home and ate an ice Cream sandwich.

Today is further brought you by the number 13.25, which is the number of hours that I have worked today.

And on that note, I'm out to go rampage like any CG Fang dragon would. With dignity, honor, and a fearsome treasure lust. Rawr.

Thing I'm happy about: My warm warm bed made me very happy. Until I had to get out of it and come to work.
Thing I'm less happy about: The solid block of purple from 10:30am til 5pm indicating a whole day just full of meetings! Also, that 1am meeting. And the fact that I made a nice cup of tea, only to spill 75% of it all over my desk and watch the other 25% of it leak out through the seams. Damn cheap paper cups.
Thing I'm working on: maintaining my sense of humor. Trying to get the data to demonstrate what I need it to demonstrate. The usual.

Thing I am happy about: today's been sort of a non-day. I haven't really done much, don't really plan on doing much, and generally feel like I might have accomplished more had I stayed in bed.
Thing I am less happy about: Again, with the non-day, I'm not really unhappy about anything either.
Thing I'm working on: doing work. Yeah, yeah, I'll get to it eventually. :P

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9gW6yQZyx5w

Working in New York is always odd. I wear heels and dress pants and nice sweaters, and get up half an hour earlier than I would normally just so I can look prettier/my hair can dry. This is kind of different than my rolling out of bed, taking a shower, throwing on a pair of jeans and whatever tshirt I happen to grab from my closet, grabbing a jacket and running out of my door. I'm not sure which one I prefer more. On the one hand, additional sleep; on the other, putting on some dressy clothes makes that whole work-life division that much clearer. I stay more focused.

In any case! New York, as always, is awesome. I'm still in love with this city, and the office here is very nice. I got to hang out with some of the engineers and that was particularly joyous. Also, my hotel room is very large, has a nice kitchen, and decent water pressure. If I could kick the last vestiges of this cold, I'd be really happy.

Thing I'm happy about: It's supposed to be warm and sunny here today.
Thing I'm less happy about: OMG, stupid cold. I sound like a sniffly five year old.
Thing I'm working on: Remembering to set up meetings with all those people I should really set up meetings with.

I got to see Daniel last night! And sing karaoke really really badly off-key! And drink turquoise drinks! It was a lot more fun than I thought it would be.

I'm wearing a ridiculously awesome outfit right now -- popart graphic top with grey, black and red circles on a field of white, dress pants, an awesome white half-trench, and my new shoes (patent leather mary janes). it's kind of an odd outfit for me, but it looks good if you had no idea that this wasn't the kind of thing that i often (ever) wear.

Thing I'm happy about: my three hour meeting at 9am this morning during which i was helpful and productive!
Thing I'm less happy about: it's been a good day. Shockingly, I have little to be less happy about. Maybe that I oversteamed my milk in that last latte. Or that my feet hurt a little from these shoes.
Thing I'm working on: getting through the next hour of work.

I am sick. Or rather, my throat hurts and my muscles ache. I know exactly where I caught it from too, and that's an amusing story in and of itself. It's actually not that amusing, so I won't bore you with the details.

Work continues apace. My ability to do said work continues less avidly.

Drama sucks. Anyone who says differently is either lying or a sociopath. I believe I am acquiring a long list of neutral locations down in the Penninsula and up in the city. These locations will come in helpful when I need to have awkward conversations.

Thing I am happy about: Meeting new people who seem cool, talking with them, and discovering that they are, in fact, cool.
Thing I am less happy about: Being sick and still needing to be at work because I have Important Meetings.
Thing I am working on: stifling jealousy when I have no right to be jealous. This is much harder than I would have suspected.

i have my bag. luckily, my halloween socks arrived undamaged.

i had a fantastic dinner last night where my food was artistically arranged and the combination of flavors in a specific fish dish could be considered orgasmic, even if you aren't really a food person. no, seriously, i was rendered speechless by how good it tasted. and i'm picky.

i'm beginning to feel overwhelmed by work, but think that maybe i can handle it if i just click my heels together and wish it to be done.

the good fairies did not come and clean my apartment last night while i was sleeping. i guess i didn't leave them enough cookies.

It's almost Friday. It's almost Friday. It's almost Friday. Do you think that if I keep repeating this to myself, I will be more able to deal with the fact that it's not Friday yet? It's almost Friday. So close, I can get the barest taste of it, filtering through the day like sunshine through San Francisco fog. (It has to be San Franciscan - that's the only reliable place to see fog and sunshine, after all.)

On a whim, I bought tickets to go see Air in San Francisco last night with a female coworker of mine. The fact that she's female is important, if only because it attests to my continued attempts to find more cool girls to hang out with. The show was fantastic, but I ended up walking all over San Francisco in 3" boots, which wouldn't have been so bad had I not done the exact same thing in Mountain View only the night before. In any case, my feet are a little achy, but honestly, I think this is more due to the fact that I don't walk much any more (there's not a huge university campus that I'm trying to cross multiple times every day for class) than the boots themselves. These boots are Boots of Awesomeness +2 at least. Even if they don't improve my awesomeness, they are awesome enough in their own right.

I was going to segue into something witty here, but all I can keep thinking is that it's almost Friday and more immediately, it's almost time for me to go home. See, I'm crazy, and I often come in ridiculously early and leave relatively late. I'm only allowed to work 40-45 hours a week, which means that by the end of the week (in our case, Thursday, since Friday is apparently the start of the week according to Kronos), I have too many hours, so I have to take off early. Thus, my coming in at 945 (due to various things like Alex and I both sleeping through our alarms and us therefore catching the 825am shuttle instead of the 730 shuttle) does not actually preclude me from leaving at 430 in the afternoon.

Firefox is a bloated piece of software and nothing that I use on a regular basis is coded for IE. It's really annoying when I'm trying to read my email and can't do it because FF is memoryhogging my computer. No matter, I will persevere.

In other news, this (ZOMG NOT SAFE FOR WORK) is weird. This is also weird (although it's mostly safe for work). This is what I get to look at at work, when I'm looking at new trends in advertising.

And finally, since I should probably pay attention to the irrelevant-to-me-meeting I'm in, does anyone (aside from the person I got the link from) know much about this mod for Half-Life?

Bah. It's almost Friday. (It occurs to me that I should perhaps be wishing for the weekend, but Friday night is kind of also the weekend and Friday is donut day, so I'm going to get me some awesome donuts tomorrow. Also, tomorrow will be spent writing performance reviews and not doing any other work, so it's kind of like a non-work day anyway.) And I need to purchase a copy of Legend.

Today is 11 September 2007. There was much less fuss about today than I figured there would be, but I think Google exists more in a bubble than Stanford did. We're a little less on the dorm-sensationalist side, and perhaps there's not that much going on today anyway. It's not even on the first page of Google news, and is apparently being used as a centerpiece of political campaigns. I'm not sure I'm okay with that, even if it is the American way. http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=&q=9%2F11&btnG=Search+News

For you gun-toting libertarians out there, here's an interesting (unabashedly pro-gun) article about how gun control laws work in Switzerland. http://www.guncite.com/swissgun-kopel.html I'm amused perhaps more because Switzerland is such a neutral country.

Other things, like how to deal with a coworker who has achieved an interest in another coworker, have also crossed my mind and seem to be generally affecting my ability to concentrate because every few hours a conversation comes up and I have to respond to it. well no, I don't have to, but it's fun and is kind of what I enjoy doing anyway. People are my favorite thing in the whole wide world.

I can't decide whether I should tell coworker B that coworker A is interested in him. I wish I were subtler, or could learn the fine art of asking questions without implications or dancing without implying nymphomania. I just really like club dancing with cute boys (and girls). On the other hand, I do spend much of my time browsing sex stores and porn sites (at least while at work), so I'm not real shy talking about the subject.

henryseg will be in town starting Thursday. Should be entertaining at the very least. He's out this way for a Second Life thing. I'm sort of jealous at how together his life is, but I'm kind of working on mine too...

Also, I seem to be acquiring large amounts of redheads. This is kind of odd, since up until the last few months, I don't think I knew anyone with red hair, really... And then I dated Graeme, and now there's my redheaded coworker, my redheaded engineer, the other redhead engineer, the redhead from Saudi... So odd.

Vaguely missing Saudi and the compound now - maybe I'll get Middle Eastern food tomorrow...

( To end... )