Look, it's butt art!

I noticed the Porta Greek up the street has a new sign and will probably be sticking around. I've noticed that bar spot go through a few businesses since I've moved in here.

The first was a bar called The Drink which had one of my favorite logos for their sign. The word 'drink' was in a lowercase sans-serif font with the stems of the 'd' and the 'k' going up high to make the outline of a glass with ice cubes. It was simple and perfect. When they got bought the new owners added an 's' to the end, which threw off the balance, before changing the name altogether.

They played music on weekend nights. I can't say if it was good music because all that mattered at the time is that I couldn't go in and find out. I was always bothered by the 'You are not allowed to cross this line' aspect of being under 21, even though I didn't want to do anything beyond crossing the line.

The Northwest Harvest logo looks like a Fred Griffen class project.

Selina's tempted me to go to the Wet Spot tonight even though this was supposed to be a sleep night.

stari: but i got an offer!
minxie: tell him to meet you at the grind
me: who?
minxie: the one that offered
me: it's not a him
minxie: ok, her
minxie: if you tell me it's not a her I don't want to know what it is

bikepoet: oh good.. your computer isn't set on auto-eep
me: i need auto-eep!

It makes sense why a company that appears so normal and conservative hardly gives me a second look anymore. Dave declared the company slogan to be, 'We're all here because we're not all there.'

Remembering some Spanish from that class Selina and I took in art school ('you want to eat the fried cheese') would have been useful, if only for eating lunch at Taco del Mar. A couple guys who work there greet me in Spanish and started trying to reteach me the basics.

My problem with languages is that I took four years of French in high school, but have forgotten all but a few words. Then I took a quarter of Spanish at the Art Institue and of course have forgotten all but a few words. So while I'll recognize something said in one, I'll want to respond with missing words from the other.

It makes me think of how I'm learning PHP after speaking fluent Javascript, but programming languages are so similar once you know one, it's more like moving to a different part of the country and learning the local slang.

Paul seems to have lost something since going on vacation—he hasn't said bad things (or things at all) about my clothes since coming back.

Tom, on the other hand, wanted to make sure I wasn't missing out over the last two weeks and makes sure to say "Those shoes with that skirt!?" every day.

I have Shannon's head in my lap and all is good...

jragonz: They're watching you write code?
Styrdyst: yes they are
jragonz: You appear to have mastered the balance between geek and a social life.
jragonz: It's frightening.

The comments are back up! According to the site they weren't supposed to be working again until next week, but of course once I start working on my own script, there they go. Since I don't have my laptop at work now, I actually started coding on a piece of paper.

I always have such trouble picking out birthday cards for people. First, cards seem to jump immediately from kid's cards to joke about aging. Then what's left is always too sappy, too 'for a wonderful friend' and of course I don't want to imply that anyone isn't a wonderful friend, but it just comes out all weird in the wrong circumstances. I don't even know the proper level of sappiness I'm allowed with Andrew, let alone other random people.

Thought of the day: Is encountering an extremely pregnant woman in the condom isle bad luck?

Today was one year that I've been doing data entry. I think I'll celebrate by applying for some more jobs...

I installed my printer and it's possessed! This really doesn't surprise me though—I'm sure it's holding the ghost of a dead dot-com.

I like the name of the book, All Families are Psychotic, and the book seems to fit its name so far. It's a total soap opera so far, a good book, but definitely a soap opera. For some reason in this one, when I have to stop reading in the middle of a chapter, I feel like I'm leaving the characters perpetually suspended in whatever activity they were last doing.

When I read the book on Gypsies I can smell the incense from Robert's store.

The comments seem to be down nonstop now. It looks like I'm going to have to start working on getting that old script working again.

If reincarnation exists, I never want to come back as a living creature under Izzy's care.

Bush's idea to prevent forest fires? Let's cut all the trees down. I bet he believes in dinosaurs living with people too.

This site's history of dinosaurs is trying to prove that they lived at the same time as people, and were referenced as dragons.

The comments seem to be working on and off... I'm sure it's frustrating on both ends. One of these days I'm going to be able to write all of my own scripts and do all of my own hosting.

After my doctor's appointment there was of course no point in going back to work for the 20 or so minutes I'd be there, so walked up Capital Hill and ended up stopping in Toys in Babeland. I felt like I was living up to my 'Bad Kitty' shirt by 'toy' shopping when I was supposed to be at work. Along with two battery powered toys (one a vibrating bath sponge, the other a weird looking G-spot toy) I picked up a book by Jay Wiseman, Tricks to Please a Woman

I consider most of these "101 tips to..." books either common sense or just plain bad, but as I was flipping through this one, every single 'trick' I read had me thinking "That's good! That one's right! Yes, exactly!"

I finally had my appointment with the hand specialist today—not carpal tunnel it turns out, but RSI and I have weak wrists. I'm being sent to therapy for it, next month. I didn't think until I was walking out, 'But this doesn't do a thing about the fact that I'm in pain at work...'

I was stuck last night between wanting really good peach pie and not wanting to deal with people this week. I went, and literally snuck out a bit later... luckily if anyone noticed, they haven't said. I was sorta caught as I was leaving the building when more people were coming so I held the door open. While one was calling up on the intercom, the other calls over, "A cat let us in, a black velvet cat."

I've been staring at the Blogger window off and on for a good part of the evening, just trying to get yesterday's posts written, yet alone today's. I've given up and at least decided to just write in today's voice rather than trying to recreate yesterday.

Despite feeling really unsocial last night, going to the beach burn and being around people turned out to be a really good thing to do last night.

There's an old woman I occasionally see at my bus stop who carries a purple cane. Whenever I see her I imagine that'll be me as an old woman, at least as far as the purple.

Work stress is making me want to go hide as usual, which isn't looking good this week. Tonight is the beach burn at Golden Gardens. Tomorrow is Return of Pie Night. Friday Kirsten's planning a costuming party, and Saturday is a bondage party with Selina in Bremerton.

I was afraid I was going to run out of books to read by the end of the week, so I let myself go into Borders and walked out with two more: All Families are Psychotic and ...And a Hard Rain Fell. I've already made a good dent in The Rom, Walking in the Path of Gypsies which I picked up from Robert's store.

Shannon sent me this link for LifeGem yesterday, though I missed my chance to be first in posting it by waiting until today.

What is a LifeGem?
A LifeGem is a certified, high quality diamond created from the carbon of your loved one as a memorial to their unique and wonderful life.

Roberta brought back Good Canadian Drugs [Tylenol with Codeine] and shared because I've always been afraid to try bringing them back myself. I wanted an emergency stash for bad cramps, especially now that I'm going off the pill and I don't know how my body's going to end up reacting. Last night my hands were hurting so much my emergency drugs tempted me.

I also told myself that if I still hurt that much in the morning I wouldn't be going in to work, but I was, and I did anyway...

Hate my job. Extreme pain. Etc. Etc. Etc.

No more laptop at work—I was pretty much told if I'm going to have hand problems, I'm not allowed to have it. There goes the last thing that was keeping my sanity at that job.

I have to remember to take showers before Roberta gets home from work, because otherwise the water always does the freezing-to-burning thing. I think she has some weird water voodoo.

I hate my job... another day of constant pain.

Earthlink company picnic: It's amazing what people will do for free drinks.

Andrew says I'm lucky to never have heard of the chicken dance.

I like unnatural blue things.

I suppose this could be considered the first "good" thing to come out of the bad economy. Andrew and I went to a hardware sale of a former web company that's going out of business. I replaced my dead monitor with a new 19" for $100. I got a cheap printer too, though I haven't hooked it up to make sure it works yet.

We missed the Jell-O wrestling last night, but we still saw naked fire dancing, "vixen school-girl hopscotch", and almost-naked man Twister.

Andrew and I were in Target earlier and saw a Twister game with kids on the front of the box. We just can't think of that as a kid's game.

Thanks to compound interest you can invest in time travel for on $10. Not a bad deal, really...

I can hear the explosions from the Tall Ships right out my window.

I think it's funny that the spell checker has a problem with me not hyphenating 'email' but knows the word 'Jell-O'.

Danielle's big leaving Seattle party, "The Universe According to Danielle" is tonight. I have Jell-O in the fridge per her request that everyone bring a made box of Jell-O for the Jell-O wrestling. I've made two boxes in fact, so I could drink the warm Cherry Jell-O which makes a wonderful warm winter drink.

I had no idea it was illegal. Woman Faces Prison For Selling Dirty Underwear.

I didn't get the Online Metals job, but I seem to be on their mailing list.

With thousands of products ready to choose from, we're your fastest, most convenient source for industrial metals in America. Just POINT-CLICK-METAL.

More weirdness this morning: I got an ICQ authorization request from an old net-friend who tends to disappear for very long periods of time. He wasn't very stable when I knew him (though I guess neither of us were, funny how many friendships develop over that kind of thing) so the first time he disappeared for long enough I would have honestly believed he was dead.

I got an email from Jake this morning saying that Wil Wheaton is reading his weblog. Something is not right with the world when Jake posts as Wil Wheaton on my site and the actual one posts on his.

I cut my hair with the intention of getting it healthy again. Now the torture is going to be not allowing myself to dye it again for a few months at least.

Need help picking out a condom size? http://www.sizehimup.co.uk/

It looks like we've all gotten a bit younger now. Turkmen leader redefines youth and age. I haven't even left 'adolescence' for 'youth'.

I've been seriously considering cutting all my hair off. Sometimes I think my hair is so damaged it'd be easier to get rid of it all and start over, but the issue is finding a haircut that would look good on me, not require any extra effort because I wouldn't bother, and not be awkward to grow back long. Anyway I realized I could lose a good chunk of hair without actually going 'short' so I decided to compromise with that instead. Now my hair feels all *perky*.

Andrew and I let Izzy's ferret out to bounce around the apartment last night, which led me to wonder what would happen if you gave a ferret drugs. Then I realized, ferrets are already on drugs. I think their brains produce them naturally.

The floppy drive on my laptop seems to be dead, making it harder to update this thing since I can't write at work and take it home. And since these things always go at once, on the same day my monitor died for good (I'm using Andrew's spare for the moment) and the laptop screen is still doing bad things.

I wore my poofy pants to work today, but it almost didn't seem worth it without having Paul there to tell me how horrible my fashion sense is.

I love my city but I guess not everyone does...

Andrew: hopefully you're not going to leave me over my font choice

Andrew took me to my first Ren Faire yesterday. It's a small one he says, but they have big pickles, and that's all that matters to me.

Over the weekend I've acquired:

Slinky purple pants for my Mad Hatter costume
Black silk pants with Chinese patterns
Bellydance style poofy pants!

I didn't get the job.

I've convinced Andrew that we should go to Disney World if we don't make it to Japan instead next year!

Usually I wake up from a dream and think about how weird/surreal/disturbing it was. I woke up after dream where Izzy compared me to Cinnamon Toast Crunch and thought, 'yeah, that sounds like something Izzy would say.'

I'm going to go crazy waiting to find out if I've got the Online Metals job. I'm afraid that not hearing anything usually translates to "you didn't get the job and we just haven't gotten around to telling you."

I Minxie I: ::shrug:: after learning that izzy rides the bus I doubt anything qualifies as tmi now

I used to abuse ellipses—now I abuse em-dashes.

I want a peanut butter & jelly sandwich.

Tom even called Online Metals for me at work today to put in a good word for me!

Here is the news all at once.

I had my doctor appointment—carpal tunnel. I have a wrist brace to wear, especially at night, and I'm supposed to take three Advil, three times a day for a week for the anti-inflammatory effect. Jason tells me I'm supposed to be drinking a ton of extra water with the pills if I don't want liver damage. My mind wants to keep changing things around to say that Jason's making me drink lots of water.

But all the Advil doesn't actually make it stop hurting. It's not the pain that gets to me so much as the constantness of it. I can usually deal with pain by knowing that I'm just being too stubborn to take anything for it.

Work's response has been a photocopied page of proper posture diagrams and stretching exercises that sent pain back up my arm and shoulder. People have been telling me I need to fill out paperwork and claim this as a work-related injury. I asked around and found out that should have been at the doctor's. I made another appointment for friday.

The craziest part started last Friday. I went to Online Metals' web site for a comparison of what a metal web site should look like. I emailed them through their web form basically saying, "I want to be your Web Goddess." I got a response saying they didn't have any openings for Web Goddesses, and there could only be one Data Jedi, but they did have some other jobs advertised that perhaps I could combine.

I just had my interview and I want this job. I'd be doing half office work, half sales, and get to learn about and play with the web site. As much of an oxymoron this is now, I'd be working for a stable dot-com. I could handle staying in the metals industry for that, plus I get to play with shiny things.

Please send me good job karma!

I've just figured out my real motivation in losing weight—doctor's scales.

Finally, I get to take incriminating pictures of Selina instead of the other way around.

My doctor's appointment is early tomorrow in Issaquah. After I find out what's wrong with me, Andrew's taking me for donuts to make it all better.

"A lot of our movies have "sex party" in the title. It was only a few months ago that I realized that this is because a lot of porn renters don't know what "orgy" means." – from a well-written journal by a women who works in a porn store.

I seem to be a lesbian—according to the finger rule. If your pointer finger is longer than your ring finger you are a lesbian, says the rule.

I didn't reach the wanting to kill someone until much later today, after pulling the paper out of the paper instead of it ripping off properly for the third time. It's the fact that my entire job function is causing me to be in pain and new jobs certainly aren't laying around waiting to be picked up.

I had a great feminist moment today.

As I've mentioned, I've been reading the book Woman: An Intimate Geography. I was reading over lunch in a little Teriyaki place where they always have a TV playing daytime game shows. It was background noise to my book, but I heard a commercial start out,

Dad: <name> sure is down about missing the game.
Mom: She sure is

*She*? I perked up and watched. The basic plot of the commercial seemed to be that the daughter was missing the baseball game in person so the father made Ballpark Hot Dogs to make the TV game watching experience seem more authentic for the family. It was such a small little thing, but it's progress.

People seem to really like the image of me as a feral cat.