If I run out of candy I'm giving out pickled ginger.

I picked up some candy on sale on my way home, just in case there's trick-or-treaters, but knowing full well that was only a pretext to buy candy for myself. It's a good thing I did however, since candy beggers were banging on my door right after I got out of the shower. I was half-dressed and rushing to get my top on in time to answer the door. I'm sure this apartment already has a reputation with the condos behind us, if anyone looks in the window with our casual nakedness, but I certainly don't need one with the parents.

The November bus passes are purple! This makes me happy.

Walking to lunch I accidentally made eye contact with a man as I passed by. "Do you want to look at some art?" he asked. I know I'm not as assertive as I should be, which gets me trapped in the occasional conversation with someone trying to sell me something or other, though to some extent I like to call it 'being polite'. However he caught my attention with art, and a glimpse of pretty colors... Flower fairies, his wife paints them. Of course they're for sale, he didn't need to tell me that part. $20, I find out, three for $50, more than I can manage on an impulse buy. "You can make an offer, $15 or $10. I've got a two year-old and a fourteen year-old at home. A dollar's a dollar." I bought the Pointsetta for $10, and it will go on my wall.

It's too bad I don't carry my business cards anymore. I asked him if they have a web site—not yet, not until they're published. I could've turned this into a networking opportunity as well.

Kermit, the company president, came up to me to tell me he's glad I'm not in jail.

Let me back up a bit... I got another jury summons a while back, wanting me to go to Kent again. I'd be much more open to jury duty if they'd realize where I live and send me downtown, not to the other end of a two hour bus ride at an obscenely early time in the morning. Anyway, I learned from last time who to go to for the magical form letter to get excused.

Kermit explained to me today though, that he found out from talking to various judges and lawyers that sending in the letter puts you back on the list for next time. Half the people who get summoned just ignore it, he said, and they have no way of tracking it. So he took the liberty of ignoring it for me—my conscious doesn't allow me to ignore my own summons but it has nothing against someone doing it for me, which is when he said he's glad they didn't throw me in jail or anything.

I went over to the bakery next to work and an old man held the door saying, "You first Elvira." Elvira? That's the farthest from my costume. Even without a side-by-side comparison, no black hair, no black clothes, no cleavage...

On the other hand this might be a sign that I succeeded in the 'goth without wearing black' look since she was probably his only point of reference.

For the last two years I've been the only person to dress up at work for Halloween. I wasn't going to stop tradition now, but I wasn't going to put much effort into a costume until I found out that other people are dressing up too. And other people did! Still, I know Halloween is my day when I'm walking into work and overhear, "We have to see what Rebecca dressed as."

The Scary One's elaborate witch costume led to the inevitable "too bad she didn't' dress up" comments. Mean, but I suppose everyone was thinking it. Paul asked why I wasn't wearing my costume tonight—I had to tell him that if I take away the tierra it's everyday club wear. I've decided that Halloween is especially a good excuse to wear club clothes to work.

When you're running for your bus first thing Halloween morning, dressed like a princess, which would be less conspicuous under your coat if you weren't wearing the tierra, and everyone around you looks perfectly normal because it's still 7:00 on a Friday morning, you can't help wondering just a little if you've got the right day.

My pumice stone is ergonomic.

Some days my writing feels more forced than others. I don't know how apparent it is on the other side of the screen but this is one of those days. I think it's from not having time to write things down as I think of them, trying to type it out later from a couple word note without the feeling of the moment. Even this post I was thinking of in the shower.

It amuses me to see what people associate with me at work, what they choose to mention to me or ask me about. The Scary One asked me if I have black nail polish, which she wants to borrow for her witch costume.

I realize that NaNoWriMo is coming up very soon, this weekend in fact. It doesn't look like I'll be participating this year. I cannot justify in any way putting my life on hold for a month to write a novel right now.

Walker has been reading the complete happy-clicker archives, and pointing out any random bits of code that are misbehaving at the same time. It's like having my very own QA person!

I made it to work early yesterday, which is a good thing because it means I can make sure I get my share of the morning orders, instead of the droppings Karla leaves for me. She retaliated today though and I came in to one order left for me. It's my punishment for things not going her way.

Speaking of old jokes, engrish.com is an old link, but I was looking at the Engrish from Other Countries page tonight and actually laughed so hard my eyes were watering.

It looks like the badger song got its own web site. I don't know if someone's ripping it off or if the Weebl guy did it himself but I'm much too tired to look it up now.

Karla threw another temper tantrum at work today. I'm starting to think she's the one that needs to be on mood stabiizers, not me. Meanwhile all I can do is tell myself she's acting childish and insane and ignore the situation the best I can, the way you do with a child, but I hate that my hands start shaking in spite of myself. (more)

The Scary One was showing off pictures of her house decorated for Halloween. Finally I see the giant inflatable spider she has on her roof, that I've heard her going on about for weeks. Spider drama. It looked impressive but at the same time I had to keep myself from laughing out loud at the appropriateness of the witch costume she plans.

It amazes me how out of date jokes and pictures that go around work are while they still manage to make the rounds. Things I see through email or a web link, years ago, go around work on paper. I saw this pumpkin picture last year around this time, and today it was stuck inside some of my paperwork.

The newspaper headlines are talking about a windstorm and people at work are talking about the power outage last night. I feel rather out of it since I don't remember anything out of the ordinary last night.

If I had thought of it sooner I could've used this as an excuse to not have any updates for yesterday. Oh, and solar flares. Definitely the solar flares' fault.

Another example of the pure randomness of music in my head. This morning it was the Mickey Mouse Club theme song.

Days like yesterday I have to appreciate the invention of modern medicine. Granted, in the days before modern medicine I would not be exposed to excessive caffeine, hormones in milk and meat, and so many other impurities in our environment that mess up the body, but I consider it a worthy trade off to have the Internet and job possibilities beyond teacher and homemaker.

I woke up at 5am with cramps and couldn't find my Advil. According to my doctor I'm allowed to take 4 – 6 at a time and the important thing is to cut them off as soon as possible. I ended up taking the one Advil left in my old bottle and four Tylenol with codeine and going back to bed. It did the job at least.

Total drug count yesterday: 7 Advil, 4 Tylenol with codeine, 3 lithium, 2 minocycline (rosacea drug)

I know we all want Bush out of office... how about Satan for President?

I spent a lot of time playing with the Gender Genie, which the LiveJournal Gender Tool was based off of. Happy-clicker always comes up male, but when I put in pages from my web journal it came up female. Something seems incredibly appropriate and typical about that, but it's interesting since it's all from the same person.

This one actually gives the lists of keywords it's using to make the determination. Feminine keywords, 'like', 'but', 'because', are pretty expected. Masculine keywords include the word 'the'. 'The', the most commonly used word in the English language. You can't write without using the word 'the'. This seems like saying "Cooking is feminine but eating is masculine." Masculine is the norm and feminine is the deviation.

It looks like I'm going to get over the death flu just in time to get my period and deal with cramps. (Yay, cramps!)

"Only the cool kids get Ebola." – Andrew.

I finally got around to putting all my Cure MP3s on my computer and I'm happy to finally have access to so many perky sounding depressing songs. I have perky music and depressing music, but you can't beat having both in the same song.

I finally got around to running the LiveJournal Gender Tool on both my LiveJournal and the RSS feed of happy-clicker (accessible through LiveJournal). Both of them come out male, 52% masculine and 69% masculine.

Another question of semantics: If you make a bunch of food but don't eat any, putting it all in the fridge for later, is it still considered leftovers? Does it matter whether you intended to eat it at the time?

My mom lost another cat this week, Buck, the "soft one" (orange, super-soft fur.) It seems to be a bad time for cats there lately, with Stubby only recently and two more within the year. My mom's lost a lot of cats in a short amount of time, and not necessarily in the order I would have expected. I guess cats are like people that way—some go old, some go young, and some in-between.

I think everyone close to me knows about my stick person obsession. Actually I've always had a fascination with iconic signs and symbols in general—I can remember looking at the road signs on the back of a road atlas while on a trip as a little kid. I think that's why I was drawn to graphic design before I even knew what the term actually meant (lucky for me I was right.) So this is making me make happy squealy noises—the AIGA has made their complete set of 50 passenger/pedestrian symbols available for download, in GIF and EPS (scalable) format!

* squeal *

My petticoat for my Halloween costume is in the mail! I'm a little nervous about buying it online without being able to see it on first, but I have no idea where in Seattle to find a black bridal petticoat, and while it would be fun to simultaneously scare Andrew by making him take me to bridal shops, and the salespeople by looking for black, not so much on a deadline.

This is scary but Paul told me I have a sexy voice when I'm sick.

So one of the annoying parts about a cold is that wanting to sneeze feeling but not being able to. So wouldn't you know it, one of the only times I manage a real sneeze in the last two days is while I'm on the phone with the credit department at work.

I don't remember if I've mentioned my company idea before. It's not a company I necessarily want to run, but want to see exist. This company would review logos, slogans, advertisements, generally anything that's released to the public and let the businesses who create them know how they can be misinterpreted.

Thanks to Julz I can't look at the Aamzon.com logo without thinking 'the Amazon penis'. The Doubletree Hotel logo looks like the lesbian symbol. There was the Metamucil commercial comparing their product to Old Faithful in an unfortunate way. Jeremy or Andrew pointed out in Toys 'R' Us that the script used on Nerds Rope candy made it look like "Nerds Rape". And now, someone needs to tell the Nordstrom window display designers that the piece of glass art in one of their windows looks like a giant phallic bedpan.

I know I should feel dirty for this but... I picked up an AOL CD that was on the ground because it had aliens on it.

I actually woke up feeling a little better this morning, which is surprising considering how bad I felt the times I woke up in the night. If a couple hours of sleep didn't help, which seemed unlikely, I was afraid I'd have to call in sick again.

My landlady's not going to be happy about this (she left a note a while back about conserving water) but I just flushed a spider down the toilet. There's something too boogy-man-under-the-bed's-gonna-bite-me feeling about just leaving a spider floating in the toilet, with all those legs. Besides, it feels disrespectful to pee on a spider.

With the superstition about opening an umbrella indoors—does that apply to the act of opening an umbrella or the matter of having one open inside? If you need to leave your umbrella open to dry but mistakenly closed it, do you need to go outside to reopen it?

The rule of crosswalk buttons: If you push the crossing signal button multiple times, which I know everyone does even if it doesn't make sense, you have to hit it an odd number of times because an even number will cancel each other out.

Caught my bus outside of Benaroyal Hall which was teasing me with its lightboard announcing 'Pearl Jam Tonight Sold Out'.

Another product that shouldn't exist? I like milk. Chocolate milk is good. I haven't had strawberry milk and vanilla milk tastes too much like a melted vanilla milk shake, but I'm fine with their existences. But 'creamy orange milk', uh....

I like the rain but I hate umbrellas. Walking down a sidewalk full of umbrella users is like driving on a highway full of SUVs, and I walk like Andrew drives.

Was walking close behind a girl getting ready to pass when she opens her umbrella, effectively blocking my entire view of the path ahead. Then there's those people who walk under the awnings with their umbrellas open forcing other people out into the rain (or worse, the drippy edge.) And the people using family-sized umbrellas by themselves, taking up the entire sidewalk with their circumference. Let's not forget the ones who don't realize each of those points is a dangerous weapon.

Monday's wind storm broke my umbrella, actually bent the stem. I had to throw it out at the bus stop and find a replacement at Bartells on my way home. Selection was limited and I had to get a black one that's automatic. I've never had an automatic umbrella before—I consider them pointless like automatic can openers. I couldn't figure out how to open it, (it involves twisting the handle and a very welcome camouflaging button,) there were no instructions, and it won't open manually (wonder if I voided the warranty trying) so I was walking through the pouring rain, sick and miserable, with an umbrella that won't open.

Nothing like a trash can full of used Kleenex to make you miss the foofy Henry cat.

I literally just finished the closing </p> tag, writing on my Palm, when the old man shows up!

First time ever, but as soon as I post it, the old man with the walker wasn't at the bus stop. The person sleeping across the bench was however.

Dumb humans should at least be smarter than smart dogs.

My bus this morning stopped next to a car with one of those little curly white dogs standing on the driver's lap, both paws out the window, and the driver went speeding off that way.

<Day's worth of ranting and complaining about being sick omitted for your reading pleasure>

I'm starting to think I may have managed a cold and flu on top of each other. I checked a symptom chart and last week I was having some flu-specific symptoms (fever, 'extreme exhaustion', dizziness) while today, just as I was thinking I'm nearly better, the full-blown feel-like-I'm-dying, head-wants-to-explode, Tylenol Cold Extra Strength Multi-Symptom Non-Drowsy (which is just an euphemism for doesn't-do-anything-but-makes-you-feel-like-you're-trying) cold hit. And there's something very specific about a cold that makes me feel like I'm dying, even though I'm better off than when I was sicker. It must be my head hurting from the inside out, trying to simultaneously explode and implode and so settling for leaking out my nose, feeling like the back of my eyeballs itch because I can't sneeze.

Tonight I repay Andrew for using all my Kleenex.

I so want spray-on pantyhose. The site is an unfortunate victim of 'engrish' though.

Q. I have an allergy, so is it possible to cause rough skin?
A. It is not sure everyone has effect on allergic reaction. So, please use it after confirming the elements.

Another product that shouldn't exist: Turkey Spam!

I was allowed to replace one of my unpaid sick days last week with a vacation day so it won't hit quite so hard.

I'm thinking about taking 'Find a new job by Christmas!!!' off my To Do list. I'm hitting the point again where there are multiple paid holidays, and a bonus coming up that might be worth sticking around for.

Whenever I take the bus to work from Andrew's in the morning, there's always an old man sitting with an advanced looking walker in the same spot on the same bench at the bus stop. He never takes my bus so I've assumed he's waiting for the 12, but this morning I just barely missed the earlier 12 and he was still sitting there, definitely in time to catch it. It makes me wonder if he just sits there all day.

Posting was left off for the last few days while I was dealing with the killer death flu (which is not technically a flu or deadly) because there are only so many ways to say 'I'm sick' and I slept through most of them. I was home from work for two days and then sent home after an hour on Friday. Work even paid for a cab home. Free ride, no sick pay...

Thursday I woke up and there was a box from my mom—cookies, hot chocolate, Kleenex, purple gloves(!) (She works in a hospital.) I also got my late birthday present from bikepoet, a pen (mmm, pen fetish) and a bag of microwave popcorn that said, 'I sent you food.'

Friday Walker brought me food at lunchtime, soup and good macaroni. My sick foods seem to change each time around. The last time it was all chicken & stars soup and now I don't want to eat anything but Lipton noodle soup and Stouffer's macaroni and cheese.

Andrew and I went to the Squee party Friday night with the 'Come as a(n 80s) song' theme. We wore our kitty ears and went as Lovecats, an idea I came up with while laying in bed in a delirious haze. We did our best to spread the love but as far as I know everyone's still healthy.

I actually managed to bite the underside of my tongue while eating a bagel.

Your Evil Spleen: No, no, this is opposite night, now you have to make up a purple-prose intro since I jumped you ;)

I had no intentions of getting sick this year. Seriously, even with Andrew coming down the sickness going around, I claim to be immune to him (kind of like astronauts quarantined together.)

When I called in to the HR guy at work this morning and said I caught the death flu that's going around he seemed to know exactly what I'm talking about and nearly cut me off to say, "Staying home and getting better?" I have a bad guilt complex about calling in sick, which I know is strange considering how much I'd like to quit altogether. It's something like if I'm well enough to make it to the phone, should I really be staying home? Doesn't help that Andrew told me it's only going to get worse and I wait until I really need it. After calling in, sometime around when Andrew got out of the shower, my body felt middle-of-the-night, 'what could anyone possibly be doing up at this hour?' exhausted. Definitely needed to stay home.

I slept until 1, which is 14 hours or 7 depending on how you look at it. I don't think I actually slept until that last hour before the alarm went off. I spent the night freezing cold, except when I was hot with cold chills, with Andrew cuddling me to keep me warm. My brain is fuzzy with sickness and I keep getting sentimental about that.

The weird thing about my colds lately is that I don't show much in the way of external symptoms (coughing, sniffling...) The cold puts all it's energy into making me feel bad instead. The other problem here is that I don't necessarily appear sick to people who don't already know, so to the people at Pete's for example (or work) just think I haven't brushed my hair all day and probably stayed out too late.

I'm frustrated that I didn't get a thing productive done today, whether or not I'm supposed to be getting things done right now. It's just—whole day off work! must get stuff done that never gets done! Well I folded a towel and a couple pairs of underwear...

Anyway, I'm off to knock myself out with Nyquil and do it all again tomorrow.

This season's plague just hit me all at once... well, not all at once actually. I've been fighting it for a couple days but since lunch it's taking all of my energy just remembering to breathe and near the end of work the shakey feverish part hit.

Random thought of the day: That better not be a dancing hamster.

Turns out it was.

I think I can understand why so many people have a fear of spiders. This morning I saw a giant spider out of the corner of my eye on my shower wall, and after depth perception kicked in it was still a creature with too many legs suspended from my shower curtain rod, and running along an invisible line to the wall.

I usually rescue spiders but it was too early this morning to deal with it. I'll make peace later, or else have Andrew squish it while I don't watch.

I didn't wake up every two hours but I did wake up at 4:44, which is worth mentioning in itself.

I just had the weirdest moment in the shower. Finished washing myself, and stopped, completely forgetting what I was going to do next. I stayed that way for a whole minute trying to figure it out until I had to give up and wash my hair, but that didn't seem right. It's like I lost a whole step out of my shower routine for good, and all my girly bath implements won't give up the secret.

I'm trying to get all my updated typed up quickly and posted so I can go to bed early. Andrew's been sick and I spent the weekend with him, so you can guess where it goes from there. I've had a cough and the headache he warned me about has been trying to make itself known. I still think I'm at the can-go-either-way point so I've been taking echinacea, bought zinc lozenges, and have been trying to drink all kinds of fluids. Now I attempt to get enough sleep, though it seems counterproductive when drinking so much is going to be waking me up every two hours.

I went to Victoria's Secret after work to buy some new underwear, continuing the underwear saga that I haven't actually typed up anywhere. I got to overhear the end of an interview where the interviewee was being told when to expect a call, and the two women began discussing him as he walked off. It was outright creepy. I know that hopeful feeling you try to leave with while they're talking behind your back.

On a related note, I like watching men trying to pick out underwear in Victoria's Secret.

This sounds like something Andrew would say, but fate must be pushing me to get on with my life by making me hate my job so much. I didn't need the reminder first thing Monday morning.

Happy 'Explorer got lost, found an island that was already found, and enslaved the inhabitants' Day. I've never found it much to celebrate but that might just be sour grapes because I don't get the day off, unlike my 'weekends and bank holidays' boyfriend.

It's also Canadian Thanksgiving (Happy Thanksgiving Andrew). Convenient of them to time the holidays together, isn't it? I know some of my co-workers will be celebrating the lack of Canadian orders today, myself included.

"Did you just blow my armpit?" – Roberta

"Izzy called. He's going to be late."
"You mean Izzy's showing up?"

Something major was going on downtown—backed up traffic, emergency lights in two different areas, and my bus was stopped completely for about 20 minutes. No word on what was going on now that I'm home either though.

Exactly one week since the Bad Friday, Karla went off on another minor rage. I don't know if this one is because of something I did (you know, typing, doing my job) or because she was told not to put the cardboard printer paper boxes in the paper recycling bins. Either way the result is the same, and for some reason I still get the feeling it's directed at me.

The bakery next to work has started selling deli sandwiches, both pre-made and to-order (and pick up the next day.) What's great is they don't have mayonaise, as generally comes standard with any non-special sandwich.

I was just about to eat a turkey sandwich I bought when I remembered one of my art school teacher's story about why she won't ever eat a deli turkey sandwich. The short version is one bite of a friend's sandwich made her extremely sick—the friend of course was even worse off.

Absurd question on the day: "It going to rain, you think?"

My Miata is back! A red Miata was parked at the top of the hill again, though much shinier and new looking than before so maybe the owners upgraded for me.

I was going to ask, 'What, are they insane?' but I guess I already know the answer to that.

The Catholic Church is telling people in countries stricken by Aids not to use condoms because they have tiny holes in them through which the HIV virus can pass - potentially exposing thousands of people to risk.

I just paid 25 cents for two M&Ms that will find a lost child.

Since I got to leave work early and was going to be on Capital Hill when I was done, I brought my laptop with me so I could go to the Aurafice and work on job searching away from home. For some reason I get more done when I'm not at home. What I wasn't counting on was getting out of my appointment early enough to reasonably go back to work. I hope I'm justified, given the amount of time and trouble it was take me to bus there and home again, to not go back to work for an hour, especially when I never had time to get lunch.

So I'm updating my web site from a coffee shop, (so far no job hunting, too much typing to do) with a black cherry Italian soda. Looking out the window it seems to be both raining and not raining at the same time. I thought I saw Andrew's car go by, perfectly reasonable since he lives up the street, but realized he shouldn't be able to get to his car yet.

I'll probably find out later, since I'm next stopping by to pick up my leftover Thai food and cheese hot dogs (don't ask). I was considering going there first to have food, but even with my new keyed status I don't like the idea of showing up unannounced when no one's home, taking something and leaving.

At my last dermatologist appointment, during the Great Blackout of Happy-clicker, I had a moral dilemma when I saw that the doctors's offices had purple non-latex gloves. I. want. purple. (non)latex. gloves. By the time I found a legitimate reason to have purple gloves (they'd go great in my Hello Kitty safe sex kit!) it was too late to risk it. So today I was prepared. As soon as the nurse left I grabbed a pair, and then felt a bit guilty. But I have purple gloves.

I am not a friend of automatic flushing toilets. It seems like when they were new (to me?) they'd want to go off all the time—stand up, flush, pull up pants, flush, turn around, flush, etc. They must have fixed that because now the things never go off for me. I can stand up, spin around, wave my hands, pretend I'm about to open the stall door, and nothing. (Northgate Mall is a good example of this. And they have automatic faucets too.)

The Polyclinic's managed to get both at once. I hadn't stood up, not even moved slightly I think, when it decides to flush. Then when I'm ready, even waving my hand in front of the sensor wouldn't make it work.

When I got on the bus and sat down, first seat of the back section of a bendy-straw style bus, the man in the last seat of the first turned around and looked at me with what looked like a look of recognition. He looked much like he was going to say something and I half looked at him trying to place who he was and half tried to read my book. He got up and moved to the middle section, right ahead of me, still looked at me as if he was going to say something—from here I could tell that he was actually no one I know—and toom something out of his coat that was in a purple plastic bag. Then he puts it back, and goes back to his seat.

On my second bus of the trip, a man sits next to me at the same stop I got on, and looks at me. I try to pay attention to my puzzle game, but keep noticing out of the corner of my eye that he's looking at me! At this point I want to say, "Say something already, so I know it's you that's crazy and not me!"

I made sure Karla remembered my appointment today since I'm leaving work early. She thought it was next week and got me worried because while I thought it was today I haven't gotten a reminder call or any other proof than the date in my Palm. It turns out that my original appointment card is still inside one of the pockets of my Palm's case, confirming that today is the appointment. For all our faith in technology, there's nothing more reassuring than a handwritten piece of paper.

Today I learned that I can wake up at Andrew's five minutes after I'm supposed to leave, and if I don't eat, brush my teeth, or wash my face I can run out the door and barely catch my bus on time.

Of course I would not be able to wash my face on the day of my dermatologist appointment, and my teeth have felt icky un-brushed all day.

I don't know if this is another sign of the season, but I've been wanting to eat junk food like crazy lately, Milano cookies, peanut butter cups, Stouffer's macaroni and cheese, hot chocolate. Luckily it's mostly just passing thoughts when I don't have access to food, but so far none have been accompanied by the desire to go to the gym.

It must be a sign of the season when Taco Del Mar is playing 'This Is Halloween' as their store music.

Rain on the bus windows is such a soothing sound to fall asleep to... too bad I have to get up and go to work.

The latest CD copy protection has already been broken, and this time it's easier than a sharpie. Hold down the shift key and prevent autorun. Even better, the company knew about it but just hoped it would deter the average user.

Putting all the music from my themed CDs into one playlist and randomizing makes for some interesting song switches—from VNV Nation to the techno Smurf song.

My comment script was fixed but my comment counting script was still having issues it looks like. So for a while I was complaining about lack of comments when they were really just hiding. It's all fixed now of course. Wanna take bets on when I'll break it again?

An envelope came in the mail from the United States Department of State Seattle Passport Agency. I thought my passport had arrived. No, the United States Department of Passport wants "additional documentation to further establish my identity." First they want me to fill out a Supplemental Information Sheet asking for,

Name, address, phone number, date and place of birth of my mother, father, (brothers, sisters, spouse, former spouse.)

Two references – name, address, and phone number – that I've known at least five years.

All schools, with name, address, and dates I've attended (ever?)

Complete addresses for the last ten years.

Name, address, phone number, and supervisor's name for all employers for the last ten years.

Everywhere I've lived, everywhere I've worked, since I was fifteen! How many times did I move in school housing? Do I give the address of my house in Maine before or after the street number changed? Do I count Maine twice since I moved to/from Indiana there? And jobs, that's everything from the part time summers at York Wild Kingdom to my days of contracting before the dot-com crash. Half the companies don't exist anymore! Phone numbers? Supervisors!? Am I a terrorist because I didn't start record keeping in high school?

References, five years? Everyone I know in Seattle, except Selena, I've met since I turned 21 (I'm 25). I'm wondering if step-parents count, or if I'm going to have to talk to The Ex. Maybe this is a good excuse to call Eric again, who's probably already been wondering if this bi-poly-pagan freak girl is the same one he used to know in Indiana.

The next page continues, Supplemental Identification List. They want photocopies of at least three pieces of supplemental identification that are five years or older. They already have my birth certificate, attached to a form somewhere off in their office. I showed them my ID and social security card when I applied. Three more things that old just don't exist—I'm afraid I'm not old enough to apply for a passport!

What is going on here? I haven't seen or heard anything about this in anyone's passport obtaining experience. It is special post-9/11 procedures? Am I labeled a potential threat? I'm afraid I both won't be able to get a passport and will lose my $85 application fee, that was part of my trip money.

I got a note back from HR about the billing job:

I'd be happy to resubmit your app. for the billing clerk, but you need to be aware that it pays about $1.50 less an hour than you currently earn. Let me know if you want me to still move forward.

Is it normal to expect a pay cut when changing jobs internally or is my company on crack?

Hmm... desperate to change jobs vs. already tight budget. It's not even a question, unfortunately... The search goes on.

You'll have to ignore the source but read it for amusement value—Working With Idiots Can Kill You.

Choco-sticks! Choco-sticks were a Japanese junk food product I used to love, which made me think of inverted Pocky—straight pretzel tubes filled with chocolate. Well as things tend to go with weird Japanese products, when I find one I love it goes away. I haven't seen choco-sticks in years. And I'm pretty sure now that 'choco-sticks' was a description, not a name, given how many things I've seen with 'choco' in the name, so not something I could ask for. Well, today at Uwajimaya I found something called Toppo, by Lotte, the company that seems to make all the Japanese junk food goodness. I think I've found my choco-sticks in a new package. Yay, choco-sticks!

This feels like cheating. Jennifer complimented my new coat at work and I told her I did some retail therapy after work Friday. She found that phrase hilarious and wants to use it herself. It's not like I'm even the one who made it up!

I've gotten more comments on my pseudo Livejournal in the one day I've had it than I've gotten here in the whole time the site's been back up. I'm torn between the two, here where I put all my effort into and there where people will actually read.

It's such a slow day at work I feel like I should be working on some project or another, but all I have access to is a book of logic problems and my Palm, which I'm afraid to turn on since the battery died this weekend and it reset itself with the sound on.

I've just spent way too much time updating and customizing my LiveJournal considering I don't plan to use it for anything other than its initial post. At least now I'll be content to just let it sit.

Andrew and I went toEpilogue Books in Ballard today. It's owned by a woman (or women) off of the NWR list so I'd been meaning to check it out, only Ballard is kind of out of my way on the bus. I'm too shy to actually say, "Hi, I'm from NWR," but I did overspend my budget on used books as usual.

I wanted to go specifically today (or this weekend in general) because they're having a sale on all art, cooking, and gardening books. I got a vegetarian cookbook as well as a children's cookbook because I thought I need to just start over at the beginning. (How embarrassing.)

Selina gave me a new AOL CD coaster last night because it was shiny with stars and moons.

"It's part of the atmosphere of Beth's [cafe]."
"Jeremy?"

This sounds like a scene out of a commercial: Your lover and you start getting amorous in the living room, slowly making your way towards the bedroom. Suddenly the moment is interrupted by a very loud 'You've Got Mail' coming up from the basement.

Nothing kills the mood like AOL.

Taking a survey for Blogger I realized I've suddenly gone from the 18–24 age range to the 25–29 age range!

I'm being the official spectator at the ongoing all-night D&D game in Andrew's living room, still waiting to figure out what my spectating experience is. In the meantime, I've figured out why the comments were broken.

The geeky explanation: Blogger is assigning much longer post IDs than it used to. My script uses a casting operator to force the query string (set to the post ID) to an integer as a security measure. The extra long IDs turn out to be too long to be a valid integer, and were being converted to the same seemingly random number. I'll have to verify the number-ness manually when I update the script, but taking out the (int) command fixed the problem for now.

Retail therapy after work: I got a new coat, and velvet gloves at Ross cheap. Then I spent over $40 on socks fulfilling my sock fantasy.

I just got to over hear a lovely conversation at lunch about how gay people should not be allowed to raise children because gay people will raise gay children. They keep saying it's biological but we're a product of our environment and children of gay people will be more open to certain things and certain things should not be allowed to fly.

Gay people are very generous though, says the other.

I don't know about generous, but they have a lot of money. Gay people have a lot of money they can use to get what they want. (Huh??)

I wanted to go off on these two women as well as say I don't care if my kids turn out to be gay, straight, bi, transgendered, hermaphrodites, drag queens, or cheerleaders—anything as long as they're not Republicans.

I got my lunch for half price today. I went to Arby's where the manager (I think he's a manager—the different clothes always give away the managers) recognizes me and thinks I'm a regular. (Actually by going to Arby's I'm cheating on Taco Del Mar.) He said he knew I'd show up today since they're out of potatoes. (I always eat baked potatoes and salads there.) So I had to pick something else and he gave me half off!

I try to keep work drama off my site because I'm sure I annoy enough people with it in real life. I've tried to cut back on that as well but there are some days that demand it.

Karla has been getting increasingly psycho on me, going off on rages over virtually nothing, the definitive sign being when she starts violently swiping orders from the bins over my head and otherwise slamming things around and sounding huffy.

<Long story of today omitted due to mental exhaustion.>

There's easy amused and then there's actually being amused by a rubber band taped inside a birthday card saying 'I paid for a band that'll entertain you all night.'

Grr, I found out last night that the comments aren't working, too late to do anything more than verify that it's broken—and I'm a comment whore. I know for a fact that they were working when I got the site back up.

Wow, I actually got spam that was meant for me, 'g00d t0ys for all women'.

Leftover tofu remnants from Roberta's cooking have gone from smelling good to smelling amazingly good. I'll appease myself by having another peanut butter cup.

So, I finally got a LiveJournal account, evil evil thing that it is. I vowed never to touch the thing, but decided to pick one up eventually just for the sake of posting my web site link, so I wouldn't be so left out when people start trading journals. Andrew got a LiveJournal recently and I've started hearing things I'd never her coming out of his mouth, "Have you read my LiveJournal?" After a week he got me a code, and there mine sits, without a single post.

I did start playing around with the friends list and looked at the customization. I had forgotten about the emotion selector. I thought it would be funny to start posting bi-polar, every hour or so.

Current mood: happy
Current mood: depressed
Current mood: hyper
Current mood: mopey
Current mood: giddy
Current mood: sorrowful
Current mood: manic
Current mood: sullen

If anyone is interested, you have the opportunity to see the play Homebody/Kabul for free this Sunday at the Intiman Theater. A donor who was moved by the play to donate to underwrite all tickets to that performance, being given away at the box office starting at 4:00. Unfortunately Andrew and I decided that a nearly four hour play on a Sunday night would not be a good idea. (Show starts at 7.)

According to this article married couples with daughters are more likely to get divorced than those with sons. Well I'm a girl with divorced parents, but I don't put much stock in this guy's opinion. On the same site he wrote a horrible article suggesting jurors should be punished for 'wrong' verdicts. First of all, jury duty is a duty or a privilege, depending on how you look at it, but either way we're pretty much forced into it. There's no such thing as a professional juror (and no quality control that way either.) Second, a trial is not a game with a predetermined right answer. The 'right' answer as far as the jury's job is concerned may at times not be the right one as far as reality. It's unfortunate but that's how the system we have works. You can't punish someone for not being a mind reader. Third, DNA evidence could not be the definitive answer he's treating it as. The only person who truly knows what happened is the one on trial and the deity of your choice.

Overheard a little kid on the bus: "We have transportations!"

I think the scale at my gym is broken, as it's trying to tell me I've lost 30 pounds suddenly.

I misheard Paul complementing my sense of humor (there's a first) and thought he said, "I always knew there was a nudist under there."

There's a pull out in the paper for the Salmon Days festival this weekend in Issaquah which has, besides the horrible pun 'spawn-taneous' a picture of colorful stick people dancing with orange fish jumping(?) above their heads. Now, I'm not a fish, but if I was I imagine it'd be strange to have rainbow people dancing and celebrating my trip upstream to spawn and die. Of course if I were a fish, I probably wouldn't think my friends were yummy, especially baked in butter and lemon juice.

Couples in China can now get married without their employers' permission.

This article caught my eye, 'radical environmentalists' destroying SUVs!

This summer, environmentalists in Southern California turned luxury homes under construction into charred sticks of wood, destroyed an unfinished 206-unit apartment complex and firebombed brand-new Hummers, the mammoth sport-utility vehicles that start at $50,000.

There's a rumor at work that people are actually going to dress up for Halloween this year. I'm calling it a rumor since it was being said right next to me, but people don't actually talk to me here. I should be different and not dress up since I'm the only one who did the two years I've worked here.

They seem to have secretly changed the bus schedule for the 70 bus. The bus I take no longer exists, making me late to work Monday, so I have to start taking the earlier one. I'm also having to retrain myself to not ignore my alarm clock and sleep to the last minute, by actually setting my alarm later. (Too much snooze button.) I didn't realize that at the same time I leave to catch the earlier 70 I could walk down one stop and get the 66 express, something to try tomorrow.

It's a definite sign of winter when you leave for work in the morning and the streetlights are still on.

I've said before that my head is a giant jukebox set to random. I was trying to explain this to Andrew but it's hard to prove without someone following you around at all times to see what's just something picked up from grocery store mood music.

Waking up is the most random. I woke up at Andrew's with Mariah Carrey in my head, and it. wouldn't. go. away. If I'd been at home I'd know who to blame—my neighbors were playing Kenny G.

I picked up a pattern for a geisha kimono yesterday from a Seagoth who was selling things on E-Bay. I don't even know how to sew! I haven't decided if I'm going to use this to learn how, or give it to someone who can saying "This is what I want for Christmas."

Icky/old/drunk men on the street hit on girls with the same theory as spammers—get your message to enough people and maybe one will respond.

Why yes I would like my penis enlarged and a perscription for Viagra.

Uwajimaya is having a 10% off the entire store sale right now. (Yes, go shop at Uwajimaya!) They also have a pile of shiny origami star paper so I had to go back and stock up.

There was a point in time, an actual point, when it occurred to me—people really *do* talk about the weather!

I had to have a "talk" with Spike (no, not my cactus, I gave Paul a nickname based on his new hairstyle) about not bringing up what I write on my website at work. There's nothing like having someone say they read about your "chafing problem" and having to both figure out what that refers to (not liking to wear bras I think?) and what anyone who overheard thinks it means.

I got another phone message and an email from the perky sounding woman at Waste Management. I feel sort of pursued. I responded to the email saying unfortunately the commute isn't realistic for me so I don't damage my job hunting karma with a non-response.

Wow, that's an amazing feeling. Anyone who's gone through a job search (I was going to say 'bad job search' but there's no real distinction) can relate—getting to turn down an interview instead of the other way around.