the bouleverse

lemming...

2004-01-08T00:03:00.000-06:00

so yeah. while i really really love blogger, it's starting to feel a bit like holding out for icq did when everyone was switching over. while i do enjoy fighting windmills in my spare time, i've got another blogger blog that i may revive when i need to show off.

in the meantime, all the gooey whiney stuff is moving here. but i'll keep this up until i figure out a good place to display the old blogroll... i kinda like it and stuff.

world saved from near disaster!

2003-12-31T08:06:00.000-06:00

the neighbors are throwing a party! so never mind, i don't have to!

i think i might be throwing a new year's eve party...

2003-12-30T22:02:00.000-06:00

yeah. prob'ly small and full of procrastinators who didn't think to put together plans earlier... but feel free to show up at my doorstep, byob. if i'm not throwing the party, somebody else had better be doing so! i'm going to go grab some beer and the ingredients for mom's chili-cheese dip tonight... please don't make me get drunk and fat alone!

hot water!

2003-12-29T21:53:00.000-06:00

the news is all good tonight... when i stopped by the apartment offices this morning to pay rent, the mention of not having enough hot water was greeted not with rolling eyes but with an "oh, we'll have a maintenance person stop by and turn the heater up." presto. no more boiling water every time i want a decent bath. must remember not to whine about the uselessness of it all until i ask next time.

and, even better news, i finally got to talk to le boyfriend tonight. not for long, and over a din of screaming nephews, but it's far more satisfying than the sad little answering machine message i got saturday when i finally quit waiting by the phone and went out to the reunion thingy. (going out=guarantee that phone will ring, it will be the desired party, and my trusty cell phone will have turned itself off.) reunioning was fun... lots of good folks there. i feel a bit fish-out-of-water in good intellectual discussions these days, and even worse when the subjects turn techno-geeky, but hey. it's still entertaining, even if i'm not as much of a know-it-all as i used to be...

the phone rang...

2003-12-26T21:38:00.000-06:00

and induced one of the quickest series of mood-swings i've had in a while.

first was the super-happy-floating anticipation.

then, at first voice, i realized it was not the boyfriend, but the parents. crash. not that parents aren't nifty and fantastic beings, but i had just waved goodbye to mine this morning.

it all equilibriumed out to nice-to-talk-to-you-again pleasantness within milliseconds... but it brings ponderings. i'm really pitiful. not the please-feel-sorry-for-me variety, the i-currently-disgust-myself variety. this is the first time since may we've been more than a day and a half without talking... and here we are at three days. not that he doesn't have a mighty fine excuse, being three time zones and many degrees of latitude away... but i miss him. it's making me super-whiny and unfit for the presence of others, which tends to turn into an evil downward spiral of isolation. while i like that i miss him -- the emotional attachment is solid evidence that i'm not relationshipped by mere inertia, though i think i knew that -- i abhor the mental image it summons, the still-frame waiting-decaying by the phone.

i'm feeling prone to hyphenating-lots-of-words-to-make-them-unified tonight. i should really quit before it gets any further out of hand.

happy boxing day!

2003-12-26T20:54:00.000-06:00

i don't think my parents meant to celebrate boxing day.

but as my income's still on the smallish end of the spectrum, i naturally classify myself as a boxing day beneficiary.

this morning, i made off with my parents' genuine 1970s electric fondue pot (and matching forks) and their probably-also-originating-in-the-1970s-but-classic-and-snazzy SLR camera. i have my doubts that they ever used the fondue equipment, and they're much more fascinated with digital cameras than manual-focus ones just at the moment...

but i'm thrilled! now, if i can just obtain some of the raclette cheese that got me thinking fondue in the first place, i've also got a bottle of this year's beaujolais nouveau, which is kick-ass compared to other recent years'... instant wine and cheese party? anybody up for acting snobby-sophisticated and having a good snack some evening? (or just snacking to a good movie. or something like that.)

and i've always had a point-and-click kind of camera... and always secretly wished i could be a real photographer, an artiste if you will, having control over at least some of the aspects other than what's in the window... and now i can at least put the blame solidly on lack of talent rather than never having had access to the tools of the trade!

lahdidahdidah...

2003-12-26T16:11:00.000-06:00

they based the number of people needed to work today on the number of calls that came in last year, when the day after xmas wasn't a friday.

usually, i can handle about 10 calls an hour all by myself. all day long, we've had 8 people handling 10 calls an hour. i finished all my backlogged work hours ago, and i've even done most of the piddling stuff they make up for us to do when there's no meaningful task. i've read about as many movie reviews and news articles as i can handle, and the corporate computing code won't let me access the nytimes crossword puzzle.

thus, my major plan for the last hour until i get to leave is to whine. starting here.

well, ok, so that plan's utterly boring too. maybe i'll give in and quit trying to look professional and busy. after all, there is a book stashed in my bag. and i'm in a remote enough cubicle that i could hide it before anyone sneaks up on me...

i'll be home for xmas...

2003-12-22T19:13:00.000-06:00

and the day before that. and the day before that. matter o' fact, as soon as i get off work this evening, i'm heading for the folks' place. i have to be back in time for work friday, which cuts out a pretty perfect-sized sojourn -- longer than a weekend, yet not so long that we're likely to start sniping at each other.

in other news, i have nothing to do yet for new year's eve. i have to work until seven that day, so i can't run off to an exotic location, at least not one more than three or four hours away. the boyfriend will be voyaging back from alaska that night, so demanding that he entertain me is out. but i have new year's day off, so i can be as hungover and unawake as i like. i'd throw a party, but i'm not sure if there are enough still-planless people around to make even my modest apartment feel full and festive. so is anyone up for, say, going out and merrymaking?

so maybe i'm a southerner after all...

2003-12-19T21:02:00.000-06:00

yeah. getting home, first i almost fell flat on my face in the parking lot. then, things are going fine 'til i get off at the exit... the ramp is icy, and my car goes sliding back and forth all over the place. thank goodness it's a one-lane deal. i'm super-duper glad i've done a teensy bit of skiing before, as it makes the slippery out-of-control stuff a little less scary. but dammit, i always snow-plowed to stop. and my car won't do that.

yeah. so no heading east. bitter disappointment. but at least i don't have to drive anymore.

it's snowing, no one's dragging me out of my warm, fuzzy slippers tonight...

2003-12-19T00:13:00.000-06:00

but it turned out to be a good idea last night. now that carboni mentions it. (see comments below.) the fuzzy-slippers inertia finally succumbed to the prospect of free beer and the chance to wish a friend happy b-day.... and now i've met the two guys i pass on the way to the coke machine just about every day at work... one of whom it turns out is married to a former classmate from french lit... plus i got to watch the vastly entertaining antics of that guy, who i hope is still gainfully employed today, and meet some of the rest of matt's crew from out of town... and we all know about the towel trick now, though not exactly why it's a "trick"... and i threatened people with my six-foot-eight boyfriend, despite the fact that he's kinda a non-violent sort ... and i didn't even wind up with a hangover or fall down the creepy basement stairs or get hit by a dart. good times. all in all, it almost makes me want to be an extravert again.

but i still like my fuzzy slippers.

oh, and to whomever it was that asked. now that i'm not at all drunk, i remember quite clearly how to say "drunk" in french. the nice, proper term is "bourree." but i was trying to think of "soul." (please imagine the proper accents. i am far too lazy right now.) of course, the easy way is "j'ai trop bu."

does being a rational adult mean i have to root against snow?

2003-12-18T17:47:00.000-06:00

especially when it's likely to destroy my weekend plans and make it hard to get to work tomorrow? and when all the kids are out of school anyway, so i can't even claim vicarious liberation?

i'm really trying not to hope that the temperature will go ahead and drop those two little tiny degrees. but i think i'm losing. the anti-rational-adult majority in my head really, really wants to smack the rational adult in the nose with a snowball...

wearing non-waterproof mascara...

2003-12-10T23:41:00.000-06:00

is just asking for it. it will end up all over my face. 100% guaranteed.

it's a little funny, though. i didn't really start bawling until everything was more or less ok again. i wonder if everyone started blubbering at the end of the cuban missile crisis. hooray for glastnost.

i think we finally established that casablanca really fucking sucks when confused with real life... and i think i might be moving soon. like february soon. end of my six-month lease soon. now if i can just put together the guts to inform my boss...

r.i.p. nathaniel h.

2003-12-10T23:21:00.000-06:00

"for sale: baby shoes, never used." - ernest hemingway

it's not so much your death that's devastating to me - after all, i'm only a 3rd-degree acquaintance, we never met, and it wasn't a long enough life for you to invest much in it. it's the dashing of that tiny little spark, of the hoping without hope, so carefully maintained for months on end that gets me. miracles like that ought to happen.

my self-image seems to be enlarging at an alarming rate...

2003-12-09T01:11:00.000-06:00

within two weeks, i've gone from thinking of myself as a squabbling nation at the brink of civil war to a small planet being slammed around by gravitational forces...

now today, i'm just egotistical enough to be a universe. the red shift's recently turned blue, the implosion is gradually, glacially picking up speed. things are colliding, it's a bit disturbing, but it might thaw into a singularity, then into sparkly fireworks and fresh, new dust. despite the general disbelief in that which can't be seen, omega's greater than one. i'm getting denser - the worn-out fabric is re-forming, new patterns every second.

he fears he's holding me back, but no. because out was getting too cold, too big. maybe he facilitated the turning point, helped some of the dark matter recognize its own existence... maybe he was coincidentally nearby... it doesn't matter, really. i want to explore this direction, to see what happens when i condense.

(i wish i could connect this all to concrete reality. but it hooks more to the parts of reality with the consistencies of jello and fog, kinestetic senses that link to vague sets of data, and it's awfully hard to keep them immobile.)

so my mother tells me...

2003-12-07T20:49:00.000-06:00

that my little cousin john ran his car into a moose the other day. the family's apparently eating it. yeeps.

smash...

2003-12-04T23:42:00.000-06:00

i've been in a destructive mood lately. good destructive. shiva destructive. five-year-old building block walls just for the delight of slamming the toy dump truck into them and watching pieces fly every which way destructive.

i just reformatted my hard drive. it makes me happy.

and in a mildly related side note, merci beaucoup to anna for pointing out the location of gaim for windows.

the warehouse above which i work tried to burn down...

2003-12-03T23:08:00.000-06:00

again. i don't think it's true pyromania, as it seems to choose rainy, icky days when a fire doesn't have a chance. it just likes to torture us, to make us work late to catch up for time missed. a guy with a camera casually strolled in from the nearby wooded area, so expect reports that we've been incinerated from the local press.

how many mes does it take to change a light bulb?

2003-12-01T21:00:00.000-06:00

my kitchen is now much brighter. and i have this new paranoia that the light fixture is going to suddenly fall on my head when i'm washing dishes. ah, bliss, one more reason to avoid housework! or explain odd work absences, i suppose.

i turned in my paper. i no longer really care what grade it gets. this makes me giddy.

please ignore me while i rant and rave at the author of the book i'm still slogging through...

2003-11-29T13:24:00.000-06:00

i know i have my pet words.

but i solemnly swear... if i come across a phrase describing vichy france as acting "prophylactically" one more time, i'm going to scream and possibly throw a book at a wall. professor jackson, you mentioned the whole allegorical use of sexual terminology - france being given female attributes and germany masculine ones - used by contemporaries to describe france's defeat a few dozen times already. i get the joke. i got it about twenty repetitions ago. really, i'm not being prudish, just bored. perhaps it's just a tic. perhaps using "prophylactic" in its other senses is more common in england or historical circles in general and not really meant as an attempt at humour. at this point, though, i'm beyond caring. cultural sensitivity be damned, i'm just shrieking and slinging.

thank you, that is all.

thanksgiving was without major mishap...

2003-11-28T20:09:00.000-06:00

nobody ended up in the hospital from potato-peeling while taking blood-thinning medication. nobody strangled me for eating most of the devilled eggs all by myself. no one yelled or fought. no one had a nervous breakdown. the reheated turkey was a little cold and one of the cats grabbed a piece, but no one really cared. no airplanes crashed into the house, no blizzards stranded us all together for long enough to forget the whole loving family idea. no one got food poisoning, no one got trampled in the day-after-thanksgiving shopping rush.

"thanks for nothing!" screeches the little smart-aleck mole in my head, peeking out then quickly ducking -- a veteran of the old arcade game, rightly expecting to be thwacked by a hammer at any millisecond. but i really am pretty durn grateful...

i even made some small progress in the arena of familial relations -- a rare occurrence, and thus to be celebrated. les parents just called to be amused and touched -- on my way out, i finally delivered dad's b-day card (only 7 months late) and mom's mother's day card. i bought them around the right times, then failed to buy stamps until after i'd moved twice and lost them. one day last week, i finally decided that still-unpacked boxes weren't really my decor of choice and voila. just in time for postage-free delivery.

and now, back to that "reading everything i need to read before writing the paper that must get written tomorrow" thing...

my family's preemptively eating the leftovers before i can even get home tonight!

2003-11-26T17:16:00.000-06:00

it's a rational move - grandma and her best friend are leaving friday morning, so mom went ahead and cooked up the turkey today to let everyone enjoy it together longer. and i have no doubt that i'll still get more than my fair share.

but i still feel entitled to at least pretend to be offended...

happy thanksgiving, everyone!

(p.s. oh yeah, i'm not working thanksgiving after all. someone volunteered more quickly; when that person offered to give me the day, i didn't re-volunteer. i have a big paper to write. and 600 or so pages to read before i write it. and a grandma to see. and i'm still being super-optimistic and hoping i can work in getting to see the boyfriend too. some stuff's more important than holiday pay or superstitions about negative anniversaries.)

by the time i walked out the door this morning...

2003-11-24T20:16:00.000-06:00

i was still wondering whether to bother with a coat.

then i realized it was snowing.

i know i'm supposed to be studying...

2003-11-23T20:50:00.000-06:00

but there's a nytimes article on marketing "difficult" movies. i feel their pain. ever since i sobbed myself into incoherence after viewing lost in translation, which really isn't all that dark and really is one of the best films i've seen all year... how many times have we had the conversation?

"let's go see X."
"i want to see it too. but are you sure you'll be ok? it looks pretty depressing."

at which point i go into my standard lecture on movie-induced empathetic grief being very, very different and generally far less hysterical except when it happens to tap into my personal set of shitty malaise. and after all, if i can't face a movie, how in the hell am i ever going to work up the nerve to face reality?

but d., bless his heart, is still pretty leery of accidentally hitting the "fall-apart" button. can't say i blame him... the latest solution is sunday double-features, throwing a comedy in after anything expected to be bleak. last weekend, for example, sylvia looked a tad suspicious. so we saw it back-to-back with the station agent. both good movies...

but yeah. back to the article. it's increased my desire to see 21 grams, if that's possible. the director's fantastic. (see amores perros for reference.) betcha that one never makes it to this town...

my neighbor just mowed his lawn...

2003-11-22T13:26:00.000-06:00

yes, it's sunny, but it's NOVEMBER! late november, at that. in a non-tropical area of the northern hemisphere.

this soooo violates my father's moral principles.

protesters seize parliament in georgia

2003-11-22T12:28:00.000-06:00

were you thinking what i was thinking upon first reading that headline? despite the fact the u.s. states customarily have congresses? too bad the truth's not as funny as my original mental image...

i don't tolerate being alone as well as i used to...

2003-11-22T10:54:00.000-06:00

once upon a time, i was really good at it. being alone was an escape from a society where i felt like a freak. at mock trial last weekend, i went into nervous wreck mode - one of my teammates described it as "deer in headlights." once, that was a near-daily occurrence - any time i had to speak to one of the millions who intimidated me. alone, i could read, think, whatever... but more importantly, not deal with anyone.

i don't miss that time. but i wonder how in the hell i went from that to who i am now. last night was my first friday night all alone in quite a while... as long as the week's in progress, there's enough that "has" to be done to keep my mind occupied. the trick is not to let it slip below the surface too much, to let it notice that it's lonely and unhappy and pretty fucking sure that it doesn't have any important function whatsoever.

d., who is working today and thus not here until tonight, called while i was on my way home from work yesterday to say he prob'ly wouldn't be calling later after all... taking away the one anticipated contact with other humans to structure the evening around... and thus started the slide. i should've checked around, found someone up for socializing... but that would've been too direct, and i hadn't yet given up hope that i could talk myself into studying as planned...

insurgency isn't really the right word, but i like it. somehow, it conveys the rebellion, the discontent... but it also has the feel of anxiously contained motion, of "not surging", of being trapped. l'etat, c'est moi, and the anarchists were having a field day. i've occasionally called such moods "suicidally depressed", but it's not really accurate - the compulsion is not physical harm, but complete discontinuity. killing oneself is just the easiest and messiest option. running off to afghanistan would work equally well and frankly sounds far more entertaining.

but rationally - and the government sends its best diplomat out on the porch to make some announcements - i know the revolution has to wait. i want to finish my current classes. i'd like to wait until my lease runs out. and then, the fact of changing something, of going somewhere, will probably be enough - total disconnects are too difficult and overdramatic. so in a classic effort at wearing out the energy of the battling factions, i walked. i know it's textbook risky to be a female pedestrian after dark, but i've never had any problems. 34 blocks, 17th to the square and back, with a little chai and bookstore browsing at the center... the armed coup slowly melted into peaceful protest... he called after all... i told him to dump me for being a nutcase... he didn't, and next thing you know, i'm rambling about tea again...

and, er, i really ought to study now - like i meant to last night - instead of writing paragraph upon paragraph about non-events... yeah, definitely a nutcase...

remember the smokey tea i didn't like so much?

2003-11-22T00:45:00.000-06:00

well, i serendipitously discovered this week that it's fantastic if your nose is sufficiently clogged to prevent smelling anything.

but i still like stash's fusion tea better. and their spiced chai.

while i'm rambling about my groceries... i spent most of my quarterly bonus on toilet paper. well, and some kleenexes and a new toothbrush. but it's much funnier when it's just toilet paper.

i was hoping to get some maple syrup too. but wal-mart doesn't carry maple syrup, and temp employees get bonuses in the form of a gift card to wal-mart. alas. so i went to kroger's. artificially flavored corn syrup is one of those things like pulpless orange juice. while i might consume it at ihop now and then, i refuse to buy it on purpose. so yeah, consider yourself warned. if you want fake syrup at my place, bring your own.

embarrassing but true...

2003-11-22T00:33:00.000-06:00

my biggest sense of accomplishment this week? finally burning out one of those huge-ass four-wick candles you can get for $5 at wal-mart. watching it melt toward its final collapse was ever-so-much more enthralling than studying for my history exam. at last, i get to start burning the new chocolate-mint-scented candle i bought! (nope, no issues with multiple simultaneous candle-burning, but i needed to free up the candle-plate-thingy first.)

so famous entertainers really do help change laws...

2003-11-19T14:46:00.000-06:00

forget the campaigns to save the whales. apparently michael jackson's go-round last time spurred california into dropping the cooperative witness requirement in child molestation cases. and now we wait to hear - will they get him this time? i wonder if the cal state leg had a groovy nickname for the bill... yay for celebrity influence!

synchronicity strikes again...

2003-11-19T08:29:00.000-06:00

two days after hearing in class exactly why japan has the right to tell us to shove it we ever have the gall to ask them to send troops into battle, the ny times publishes an article about the japanese troops heading for iraq. if any of them end up dead, it'll be japan's first troop casualties since wwii.

women's business suits, anyone?

2003-11-13T18:27:00.000-06:00

i know most of you, being male and/or non-corporate-dronesque, could care less.

but j.c. penny's has most of their women's business suits on sale for about half price.

which just happens to fall neatly for me, as i need a black one to look lawyerish tomorrow. i ended up paying $35 for a jacket with both a skirt and pants. which might be a waste if for mock trial alone, but hey. everyone needs an interview suit. especially those who are strongly tempted to quit their jobs and flee soon.

now all i need are some sensible yet not-too-sensible shoes...

publicly clearing up some mental confusion....

2003-11-09T17:30:00.000-06:00

"carabao"

vs.

"cariboo" (um, i mean "caribou," as per shafi's correction...)

i'm reading ghost soldiers for my wwii class. it's about the bataan death march and the mission to rescue the p.o.w.s remaining when the u.s. made it back to the philippines. the uncontrollable mental image of cute little deer-like things wallowing in mud was getting distracting... i knew it was a different word, but i didn't know what to picture so my mind just kept subbing in the thing with the same consonants. hurrah for the google image search!

i'm sorry, but a body part leaked all over your package, so fed-ex brought it back to us...

2003-11-09T16:03:00.000-06:00

perhaps i'm evil, but this is going to be my new excuse for all turn-around shipments i see anywhere in the mid-west this week. muahahahaha!

i have a coat. it's lovely.

2003-11-09T16:00:00.000-06:00

i didn't find the lawyer-esque clothes i was looking for yesterday. black women's suits must be out. or maybe i was just looking in the wrong places.

but i did wander into the burlington coat factory. and could not manage to wander back out without a black warm and fuzzy wool peacoat. a touch more expensive than the wool longcoat i got at goodwill last year for $10, but feh. being a corporate drone should have some recompenses. i just don't like my ski jacket all that well unless it's raining or i'm skiing. it tends to clash with scarves.

to insure or to not insure?

2003-11-07T17:40:00.000-06:00

i finally got the little post card in the mail yesterday saying i'm eligible for my temp company's benefits now.

but i don't think i'll sign up.

they're expensive, and there's no plan that covers just the oh-my-god-i-just-fell-off-a-cliff-and-need-hopitalization-for-ten-years stuff. like, i've prob'ly spent $300 (or rather, i would've if i'd been uninsured...) total on doctors and prescription drugs in the last year... and a chunk of that was just because the infirmary's cough syrup tasted better than kroger's when the zoo was going through the plague, so i made repeat trips; the rest was pure routine to exploit my dad's insurance before it ran out. it'd take about $2000 a year to get enough insurance to not have to pay that.

i'm not much of a gambler, so methinks i'd rather pay for whatever actually happens instead of what could happen...

i know, i know, i'm a tree-hugging pacifist dirty hippie socialist, but...

2003-11-05T22:23:00.000-06:00

is the bush administration still invincible? if this stuff turns out to be for real, at least a couple nations ought to be severely pissed at them -- us and the iraqis. if a couple extra minutes of barking could've gotten similar results to biting without all the dead people... and if they knew it and failed to seize openly-offered opportunities... maybe they have a good excuse... but if...

it's hard to get me truly angry. senseless pissiness or amused intellectual opposition, sure, but not mind-numbing ire. i'm reserving the trembling with rage until the story's confirmed a few times and had a chance to be explained away. but if....

i love tea...

2003-11-05T08:21:00.000-06:00

but i don't really like lapsang souchong tea very much. i happened to see an unfamiliar twinings box and had to try it... it's very... smokey. i'll prob'ly end up drinking it all eventually since i'm running out of lady grey and "spiced chai" and constant comment and all the other teas i prefer, but if anyone out there would like to try, say, a tea-bag or half a box to see if it suits you better than it does me, i'll be delighted to share.

freakin' socialists...

2003-11-05T08:12:00.000-06:00

i haven't read enough to get the details of how it works, and don't feel sufficiently inspired to grab my larousse de poche for additional deciphering, but it looks like the french are giving up one holiday a year to fund care of the old and handicapped. prob'ly pentecost monday, although they're considering letting every company decide for itself.

groovy. we don't have nearly as much vacation to spare, but i wonder if a similar plan could help fix social security... or hell, fixing iraq and afghanistan would be a good start...

i should be dead!

2003-11-04T23:16:00.000-06:00

we had a stress management course at work today. i almost didn't sign up due to the cheesy business pop-psych connotation my head automatically gives things with suchlike titles. but then i realized that i would be turning down a free hour off the phones. and hours off the phones are normally good.

i'm glad i went. i didn't really learn anything new - the basic message was to attack whatever's stressing you out and do something about it and in the mean time avoid killing anyone unjustifiably and quit sweating small stuff. it still didn't address my big problem - getting caught up in the little stuff, then suddenly zooming way too far out until all the meanings and such fall apart. you know, the basic existential mambo. but the guy was a pretty good story-teller. and, more importantly, now i feel vindicated.

there was a little worksheet to grade the level of stressful changes you're having to react to lately. 50 points for a wedding, 20 every time you move residences, etc. a total score of 200 is fairly stressy. 300's getting into the range of possibly detrimental to one's health.

350. i knew graduating from college was a bad idea. to look at it from the bright side, though: when i should be eaten alive by deadly ulcers, occasional attacks of depressiveness and lashing out against the least deserving souls are still pretty crappy methods of coping... but they at least feel more likely to have a psychologically explicable cause. not pure and simple out-of-the-blue insanity. a scary proportion of the inner voices were voting "crazy" lately... some of them are coming around, at least to "undecided."

not much on psychological indicator tests, but what the hell, for the moment i'll take the sugar pills.

so i'm not doing so well at this laundry thing...

2003-11-02T23:26:00.000-06:00

after a nice, lazy weekend, i'm currently talking myself out of doing my laundry yet again. after all, i still have plenty of white mismatched socks that no one will notice. yeah.

i finally gave in and got a book-on-tape for the drive home. i always swore i wouldn't. but i simply can't stand the inconstant radio reception long enough to attempt npr, and almost everything else bores me these days. it's douglas coupland's miss wyoming. so far so good...

happy halloween!

2003-10-31T08:01:00.000-06:00

party tonight!!! at my former roommates'! whee!

(i was going to head east. but then we figured out that they were heading out before i could possibly get there, thus creating a potential logistical nightmare. and i was sad to miss yet another party anyway. missing a night of le boyfriend's company is a bit upsetting when i look at the schedule for the next month -- lots of stuff intruding on weekends... but i suppose i shall live. and party! and stumble home to vomit in the privacy of my own home!)

i'm a freak!

2003-10-30T08:00:00.000-06:00

the corporation knows we're stressed. the corporation brings in a massage therapist to give us each a 15 minute session.

while i know i'm usually adverse to back or neck massages, i figured, hey, a few minutes of freedom from the phones, licensed professional, everyone else is going on and on about the heavenly relaxation, it'll be fine.

and today, my back hurts like hell.

i'm working thanksgiving....

2003-10-29T20:44:00.000-06:00

i don't really mind -- thanksgivings with my family tend to be a little traumatic. the last one i tried was three years ago... i sort of had a nervous breakdown. not that it was my family's fault, mind you... but i think all of us are a little superstitious about doing it again. thus no protest when i mentioned i had the opportunity to work and would be short of money for the month if i didn't.

my mind's started equating money not to material goods, but to future freedom. the current job's quickly becoming "indentured servitude." but how much does it take to get out?

maybe i should just quit and take my chances with debt and another ambition/job hunt... i keep randomly busting out crying without any good reason, which usually indicates that i'm doing pretty well at lying to myself that things are alright as they are. the only even semi-logical culprit i can think of is the job. then again, maybe it's just your run-of-the-mill existential angst. or spoiled brat-ism. because all in all, the job's not bad. it's just... a job. not a vocation. not that i've really got one to try to turn into a profession. and three years after realizing that i loathed my "vocation", the lack of one's still stinging. crumble crumble crumble.

ragas rock...

2003-10-29T07:33:00.000-06:00

by some small act of providence, i made it out of class in time last night to spur-of-the-moment go see atulkumar upadhye, an indian violinist visiting from the university of pune. very cool.

first, i ran into several friends, always a plus.

then the music itself was fascinating. in a lot of ways, it was similar to a long jam session... apparently ragas are 95% improv. to make it possible to do all the slides and such required by hindustani classical music, mr. upadhye sits cross-legged on the floor and braces the head on his foot. which makes what looks to me like a really awkward hand position.

i think he really liked our acoustics in wattenbarger.

a few minutes after the concert, i told someone that listening made me feel like my stomach was unfolding. strange, but it made sense at the time...

and, um, i never knew that all the sounds that come out of a tabla are from one instrument.

i can't remember who won the battle of the coral sea...

2003-10-29T00:03:00.000-06:00

but i now know indelibly that the british lancasters -- their most-used heavy bombers -- had toilets. and according to jim davies in a leap in the dark, anyone who dared take the "elsan challenge" during the battle of berlin was "worthy of any decoration which his majesty's government would be prepared to confer." unplug from all the systems, plug on an oxygen bottle, crawl all the way back to the fuselage in the bitter cold and dark, remove two pairs of gloves, fumble with electric trousers and reinforced underwear... basically, no one bothered, but the provision was a nice gesture.

these flights often went seven and eight hours. i usually give in and crawl over the drunk sleeping guy in the aisle seat by halfway through a transatlantic flight....

meanwhile in france...

2003-10-26T19:52:00.000-06:00

they've just convicted a 27-year old woman for snapping and suffocating her seven-year old daughter with a piece of knitting yarn. said that she felt incapable of providing the girl a decent life. and to think i was trying to switch and read something other than wwii history to cheer myself up for a bit...

i get morbid when i read the news...

2003-10-26T19:48:00.000-06:00

i don't know if the court made the right decision in the terry schiavo case - i have nowhere near the medical knowledge to assess the chances of recovery for someone in this state, although i think i'd prefer that someone administer quick poison if i were permanently vegetative... it evades both the cruelty of forcing loved ones to watch you starve and the cruelty of enlisting them as full-time caretakers. (as long as i'm more or less brain-dead, i'm not too concerned with the fate of my body. donation to science is fine by me.) one of the things i don't see mentioned is where the funds are coming from - as one of the uninsured, i'm a bit preoccupied with this sort of thing. is insurance paying for schiavo to stay alive? or charity dollars? is it worth it? how much has been spent on lawyer's fees to argue over her future? what could have been done with that money instead? it's depressing.

i wonder how much it costs to draw up a living will...

living dangerously...

2003-10-26T16:26:00.000-06:00

it's cold. it's rainy. i refuse to go outside. i want to light lots of candles and curl up with hot tea and a book for the rest of the afternoon. but i need to do laundry.

for once, it's not underwear i'm out of. it's socks.

will they fire me if i don't wear socks until thursday?

i don't really miss all the canadian questions, but...

2003-10-26T16:08:00.000-06:00

all's forgiven. i had a great time at the costume ball, then came home having gotten over my little snit. maybe i've just been in a fighting mood lately... hell, i've been coming up with reasons to defend partial-birth abortion for the sake of provoking people.

today, we got an updated version of trivial pursuit - version 6. sure i was losing, but what really upsets me: they eliminated the literature category! and screwed up the colors on all the rest! so now green, which used to be one of my favorites in the aspiring physicist days, leads to instantaneous doom. grrr!

mental script spinning out of control...

2003-10-24T02:27:00.000-05:00

the more i think about it, the more reprehensible the idea seems in my cloudy little brain: going, for the sake of staying on the good side of a person in a position to help get one more commission money, to a movie that one doesn't particularly wish to see with a married guy and two female co-workers to make sure married dude doesn't get in trouble with the wife. (not that there's actually any affair to cover up or anything.) i compared it earlier on the phone to the morality of sleeping one's way to the top, and i regret that - it was going too far. at least i didn't mention nazis. but i think i would've calmed down a lot more quickly if the excuse were just "wanting to go out with the ultra-cool nice co-workers for once" -- i could prob'ly accept that, much as i usually manage to cede to d&d time. methinks i have severe, severe issues with brown-nosing...

note to self: do a better job informing others how to avoid pushing the "instant transformation to royal bitch" button. is it a sign of insanity to be vastly super-over-reacting, know it, and yet continue helplessly?

on the plus side, i have all but the major component of my costume now. think i'm going to go do a test run on the hair and makeup before i go to bed, then pray i wake up in time to go grab the major component when stores open in the morning...

i finally got an idea for a costume...

2003-10-24T00:59:00.000-05:00

and now i must shut up about it. and assemble it. whee!

happy diwali!

2003-10-23T11:43:00.000-05:00

i just happened to notice that today's the first of five days all our facilities in india are shut down for diwali. and i'm totally pro-celebrating all holidays, whether they're ours or not...

to costume or not to costume?

2003-10-23T07:36:00.000-05:00

ok, originally i was thinking that we would come to the costume ball this friday night. then, since he doesn't like to dance and since i hadn't thought of a good costume, i thought perhaps not. now, looks like i'm coming to the costume ball. because his boss is "making" him go to the movies, so he won't be in this neck of the woods until the thing's almost over. and if i don't go, i'm sure i'll spend the evening home alone sulking and hating myself for being resentful - the quality of getting easily upset over being dropped a priority has always driven me up the wall in my mother, and i always end up wanting to rip myself to shreds to remove the layer of me that's unreasonably furious. and the desire to rip oneself to shreds tends to end up in fun stuff like hysterical crying that goes on and on until everyone else wants to rip you to shreds too. hopefully i can get over that before tomorrow night, get a ticket, figure out a simple costume, and go bask in the presence of all the friends i don't get to see much these days. and maybe, just maybe, even dance!

so yeah. please kick me if you see me tomorrow night and i'm being moody!

black non-waterproof mascara...

2003-10-22T00:16:00.000-05:00

not recommended while reading a book about a bomber crew shot down during wwii. (ok, so i end up teary whether i'm reading about the bombers or the people getting bombed. i admit it... i don't like wars. perhaps this class was a poor choice on my part...) but wings of morning by thomas childers makes me want to be a historian. childers, nephew of one of the crew members, put it together from letters and records and on-site research... then wrote it out in a nice novelistic format. i read most of the last half this evening. good stuff.

more music with which to drive off annoying neighbors...

2003-10-20T22:51:00.000-05:00

(quick caveat - i don't even pretend that my taste in music's for everyone. no, alas, that illusion was shattered when i tried showing off my favorite serbian rock album once upon a time...)

so manu chao's proxima estacion esperanza is one of my current favorite cds. it's got a playful reggae-salsa-mariachi-flavoured sound with an overlay of sampling, and what i can understand of the lyrics is clever and socially-aware. what i can understand being the english, most of the french, and patches of the spanish.

i finally decided that if i'm going to sing along all the time, i'd best figure out what the lyrics mean.

so i sat down with my spanish-english dictionary, all ready to go to work.

and, um, most of the stuff i don't understand's not spanish. it's portuguese and arabic.

while i feel much better about my spanish comprehension skills... aren't you supposed to notice when someone changes languages?

it's too early...

2003-10-20T09:04:00.000-05:00

the drive back from knoxville is really pretty just as the fog is burning off.

about six o'clock yesterday evening, i suddenly decided i didn't really care so much to go home yet. so i didn't.

maybe if i click my heels three times...

2003-10-17T17:13:00.000-05:00

and close my eyes and repeat to myself, "thank goodness it's friday, thank goodness it's friday," all the orders and the phone and the general and the witch and everything else will evaporate and i'll find myself safely on the interstate heading east...

ok, i checked. nope, still two hours to go.

i got good laughs, though, by muttering that we should use "prevention of psychological damage" as the primary excuse on the sheet where we normally account for any excessive time spent not taking calls. at least the whole department is in this together...

positive thinking, feh...

2003-10-17T01:02:00.000-05:00

pretending that it's getting better only goes so far. especially when it's not and it's beyond your control. maintaining illusions boils immense amounts of energy.

my corner of customer assistance has declared itself negativity central. and we're loving it -- it's unleashed the freedom to laugh at the inanity of our current position. oh, you didn't get your products? the third attempted reshipment, eh? well, let me put in another order with overnight freight prepaid, and be sure to give us a call tomorrow when it doesn't show up...

cynical amusement is bitter, but it's a hell of a lot better than suppressed frustration...

i've heard him say it before...

2003-10-16T08:21:00.000-05:00

but i like it when thomas friedman puts together pithy little statements that my brain can challenge and toss around all day. like this one: "We have stopped exporting hope, the most important commodity America has. We now export only fear, so we end up importing everyone else's fears right back." he's talking about how nice it might be if cheney and bush would shut up about terrorism, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction now and then. i wish friedman would run for president....

i didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, you can't prove anything!

2003-10-16T00:48:00.000-05:00

this shall henceforth be the official vent for all my audience-sensitive material. (well, and probably the over-abundance of random musings too...)

remember how those old british novels used to talk about villages?

my name's k____, my boyfriend is d___, i live in c____ and work at f____. and despite lots and lots of coincidences, you can't (without significant trouble, anyway) prove i wrote this or find it by searching for me. muahahaha!

ok, so the format's no classic coding... but it still took me long enough to set this up that i'm too tired to rant now that i have a place. g'night!