Today left on my chair (in Invader Zim font) was just a giant "ZIM". I have a feeling someone's trying to tell me something...

Andrew is making me stop talking about Ebola.

The big drama at work today: they changed the printer paper. (Thicker paper, better carbon, changed the order of some layers.) Everyone found a reason to hate it within five minutes. I didn't like the thicker paper myself, going to be a pain when it gets up to billing and back down to me to sort. I don't think this is going to last the hour.

When everyday gets called "one of those days," I think you lose your "one of those days" privileges. At that point it's just a day and "those" are elevated to the next level of 'one-of-ness'. I am so tired of hearing that phrase around work that I want to put up a flow chart like the 'How to tell if your cold/flu symptoms are really anthrax' one we had last winter, 'How to tell if you're having one of those days'.

I don't want to hear the Scary One say the word 'nipple', whatever the context.

Even less do I want to the Scary One talk about shirtless oiled men, when there is no context that could relate that to the metal industry.

In honor of Pi Day, Paul gave me my birthday in pi.

It's pi day! It's pie day!

Well joy, my W-2 came in. I did my taxes through Telefile and I owe $93.

Reading a book about Ebola over lunch however isn't the best idea.

It's funny how my lunch is used to train new employees at Taco Del Mar. I guess I'm picky and predictable, but the regular lunch employees know exactly what I eat.

My phone has been going on and off all day and there's been no call, at least no message, from Fed Ex so far.

I came into work and found a post-it note on the cash sales, 'Counted and split in half.' This makes me nervous. I don't know if she's gotten the hint, or if she's read something I've written somehow.

I got my fairy princess dress at Ross for cheap, a sparkly white dress that was just asking to be part of a fairy princess costume. Someday, I justified, I will have a need for a fairy princess costume. It looks like a prom dress, and for all I know it is one, with small patterns made out of glitter.

I wore this dress to the Grind to the Nines last night. I get self-conscious every time I go out in something out-of-character dressy, but I walk into the door to compliments and 'wow's. Everyone should have been thoroughly sparkled by the end of the night.

I am hating Fed Ex more than UPS now.

They didn't leave my package even though I signed the thingy and left it on the door. I had a 'final attempt' delivery notice left instead with a number to call.

I called the number. I got a voice recognition automated phone system. Who in their right mind ever thought this was a good idea? How is saying "technical support" (five syllables, one of the options) more efficient than pushing '3'? My first thought was what if someone calls who can't talk? Or can't talk well? Or has an accent? Or just plain doesn't like being vocal to machines? I don't talk to machines. I don't leave messages except when absolutely necessary (email and caller ID cover most of my needs) and I outright refuse to deal with microphones and tape recorders. I stayed silent and eventually the helpful computer voice started repeating my options, none of which were what I needed. I pushed 0 a bunch of times to get through to a person.

The first person I talked to tried to call the station to authorize another person to pick it up for me and found out it's only open 9 – 5, told me to call them tomorrow during the day. Fed Ex and UPS both have the problem of not wanting to let you know where your package is being held, either on the delivery notices or their web sites. I had to call back, convince the helpful voice that I wanted to talk to a person, and start over. This person says she left a message with the driver to call me tomorrow and arrange... something, I'm not sure.

I remembered my phone was dead when I left work too. Who knows if it'll be working tomorrow.

I posted a rant on LiveJournal about a stupid guy making me miss my bus.

I'm being tempted into the Grind. Andrew said he'd be driving me to work if I go. It's the special dress-up night so I'd need something special to wear though.

Kylldoran: go naked with your tiara on... that's fancy
Kylldoran: then you'd really be doing the "empress's new clothes" costume :)

I decided to be a true addict and try staying in for lunch and playing Final Fantasy over the wireless network. I won't actually play while working because that seems like a bad idea on both ends—might get in trouble at work, and might get my character in trouble in the game if I have to stop in the middle of a battle.

The first thing I found is that the wireless doesn't reach to the upstairs break room. I hadn't had my laptop out yet so I was afraid they may have shut it down altogether. (Oops, caught.) It doesn't reach to the downstairs lunch room either. It must only cover the downstairs office area because I had to spend the rest of my lunch in the bathroom lounge with my laptop if I wanted to be online and I got a good half hour of Final Fantasy in while eating a deli sandwich.

There, that should be sufficient to make all of you (except those of you who can actually play games at work) jealous.

Tom sent me away for saying, "I don't care about the kid, but the cat's adorable." Heh.. parents.

The black trenchcoated tech guy was looking around my desk this morning, I think something to do with my phone lines. My phone is still messed up and today I don't know what he did because it was blinking on and off and making low ringing noises while all the lights blinks all through the day. Finally, in the middle of a call it died altogether. When it didn't come back after a couple minutes I used that as an excuse to just walk upstairs and find the credit department.

There's someone new at work, I'm guessing an intern with the way she's been helping various people out. There's something about her that very much reminds me of Sona. If she shows up in bunny ears, I'll know what's up!

I was too tired to pull off the getting to work early today, with the opportunity to sleep in (Andrew driving me to work.) That means I shouldn't go out to the Grind tonight either since that'll mean getting up even earlier on less sleep. I wouldn't have any problem with staying in tonight, any more than any other Thursday night, if I didn't keep getting the feeling that everyone else is going to out having fun without me.

Andrew and I had stir-fry tacos for dinner. You'd be surprised how good jasmine rice inside a taco shell can be!

I had another follow up doctor's appointment after work. Now I'm set for six months and have my prescription renewed. I can start taking them all at once instead of twice a day if I want. He said that everyone gets started on twice a day but switch to all at once. He said he asked the psychiatrist why that is and he didn't know!

I had to be poked by the vampires again to make sure I'm not toxic. I love that terminology. It makes it sound like someone could bite me and die. And if my levels are good, I can be labeled non-toxic like a box of crayons.

This is trust in a '00s relationship: Andrew knows most of my passwords and I have a good number of his. We're sharing web hosting and made the agreement when that started that in the event of a bad breakup we wouldn't touch the domains. He's edited happy-clicker through Blogger for me before.

Final Fantasy went down for emergency maintenance last night and I had to log out in a tower at the other end of the zone from town. I was actually hoping to fight something big and scary in the tower to raise my skills and get an instant trip back to town when I died, at the cost of some experience. Instead I was being swarmed by "too weak to be worthwhile" enemies who couldn't gather the forces to kill me.

So Andrew told me that if I was "really nice" he'd log in as me and run me back to town this morning, and check on my gardening (which is the reason I like to log out at 'home' in the first place.)

I keep getting these looks of hatred from Karla. I don't think she likes that I can get here before her and get my share of the work. She even sounded short with someone on the phone, which isn't like her, as she can generally keep her negative feelings directed right at me and sound happy-perky to anyone else at the same time.

My second half-asleep moment this morning was flipping through a Martha Stewart magazine looking at the ads. That might be my art school training showing through again though.

My half-asleep moment this morning – I was on the bus looking at the graffiti on a train, trying to figure out which one would be my style.

I just bought a ton of everyday underwear from Victoria Secret.

My boots just started falling apart on me! I'm annoyed because I spent a lot of money on these to finally have a pair that would last longer than Payless boots, and now they already have a hole in the toe (been there a while) and I noticed a whole two inches has detached from the bottom. In other words, one good drizzle and my feet will be soaked. I have to start shopping for new boots as soon as possible.

Andrew has helped me figure out what the mocklybid is about.

"maybe you were going to write about the tragic decline of the morkybid population due to environmental attrocities and alien enslavement"

Does the word 'mocklybid' mean anything to anyone? Apparently I was supposed to write about it on LJ but I can't read my handwriting to figure out what that one translates to.

Someone just walked by and seeing no more than me concentrating on my screen, asked if I'm playing Solitaire. I guess that's what computers are for, playing Solitaire.

There's been a water bottle of unknown origin on the living room floor, near the clutter of my desk but not mine. This morning I remembered that I did buy a Dasani bottle recently and remembered to take it with me, since I always run up the hill to my bus and then wish I had cold water.

I ran up the hill and drank half the bottle. I went to put it away and found my bottle already in the water bottle pocket. I'm telling myself the worst that could happen is I drank someone else's water. There can't be anything wrong with it, as long as Jason hasn't started taking his work home disguised in plastic water bottles that is.

The problem with bringing my laptop to work is that it's going to get heavy carrying it both ways.

I caught the early (early) bus, laptop and all, and got to work about 7:30. I'm going to try to keep this up as much as possible. It's good for my sanity. Forget about breakfast though—no time and even Louisa's Bakery isn't open that early.

I keep running into people in unexpected places. Twice in two buses this morning: Phil sat next to me on the first bus downtown, and Derick in front of me on the second. I "complained" before that all the cute people are on the later bus. I guess that goes for the early bus too.

Two people at work had to make sure I saw this article—Move over, Hello Kitty: New characters are taking over the kingdom of cute

I had to stop at Uwajimaya after work and of course I had to look at the Sanrio section. I don't think Hello Kitty has anything to worry about as far as competition goes. She alone has more products than all of these other characters combined.

My Emily calendar has weird things listed for some of the days, so whenever I see 'MLK day' in a narrow bold font from this distance I think it ways 'MILK day'.

I got a new origami calendar from someone at work who got two for Christmas.

I took my laptop out at work, testing the waters again, and I'm online! Yay for unsecured wireless networks!

Now I can finally learn Perl at work the proper way—read a paragraph, stop to type in one of the examples, get distracted with 'what happens if I try this... or this... and then this', and get all excited when things work. It's slow but more effective.

Since Andrew's car is being fixed (bad clutch, not my fault) and might not be ready until Monday I'm going straight to his place after work and I have to be prepared to possibly not go home this weekend. So, I remembered my laptop but forgot my Palm. I remembered clean socks but I forgot underwear.

I wonder what one of the salespersons had on her mind when she wrote a location as 'Rocky Reach Damn'. This being the same one who yelled about making the typists type everything she writes (over a missing period in a place it wouldn't have made sense) I should have left it her way. Her response to the 'type what I write' thing, I'm told, was 'not all the time'.

I went out of my way to get to work early today, catching the first 70 run, and made it 20 – 25 minutes before 8 (and more importantly, before Karla.) She looked visibly annoyed when she found out I beat her but couldn't say anything when she's getting her fair share, exactly half. (I counted.)

In my mini-protest against Karla, it's tempting to do what she does back to her and take all the orders, leaving her a token one or two. I know the point would be lost on her and would end with tantrums and fighting. It's more sanity preservation than true protest. I did have a dilemma when I got in though. There were five new orders, an odd number. So I thought What Would Karla Do? and I took the extra one.

This won't be around long because it's E-Bay—'PFHT Pet Foil Hat Technology STOP BRAIN SCANS'

Hanes' web site has a "Special Fit Tips" section including the answer to the question "Is there a right way to put on panties?"

Streakers in restaurant watch as their car stolen

My printer has shipped and it's in Nashville. I love online tracking.

After the whole sandwich thing I had to run over to Paul's desk because he left the shipping date off of an order. He stops what he's doing and asks. "Did I hear you right? Are you asking me for a date?" Then to the area in general, "I'm a married man. She's asking me for a date."

Joanne joins in, "Well give her a date. Figure out when you're free and write it down for her."

So when I get the order back with the 16th I tell him, "Oh this is Friday. I'm busy Friday."

I hate that bakery next to work. Every time I count on them for food something goes wrong. Today I didn't have breakfast and forgot the yogurt I got to keep at work. The first time I went over to the bakery, early to get a good one, they were late and predicted another hour and a half. The next time their phone lines were down so my credit card wouldn't process, and I didn't have more than four dollars if you start adding up change. Finally I was able to run over with borrowed cash and grab the last one.

The guy in the bakery calls me Becky. I don't even know where he got that name.

A psychologist could probably explain how connections get made in the brain. Some make sense, like Subway tuna sandwiches and Mountain Dew. That used to be my lunch often when I worked at Sears. One that doesn't make sense: when I start doing my daily billing invoice stamping and sorting, I start thinking of making origami stars.

So today I brought one set of origami star paper to work, not my whole collection, so now at least there's that option.

I forget I have one more pseudo-vacation to look forward to—not my own day off, but Karla's birthday/birthday holiday is coming up.

I figure as long as I get Christmas gifts all taken care of by the end of January I'm doing good. I got my mom's in the mail, Shannon's finally wrapped (it was bought in December) and Selina's all together (but not wrapped, oops.)

I was supposed to give Shannon's gift to Walker, which I did. I remarked that he didn't have a coat to leave it on to remember it so he left it on someone else's clothes (Jason's suitcase from Hawaii.) This morning I saw it still sitting there, (oops).

Andrew: it's okay, I'm making spaghetti. a nd if I get really desperate for brownies, I can go out and get some tofu and cover it with the chocolate syrup in the kitchen :)
Andrew: at least it'd *look* like a brownie

Wow, I'm actually using my LiveJournal and for something other than just complaining about work.

Oh please no, not extreme toothpaste.

I'm seeing Walker again tonight and I'm wearing pants, so if someone tells me to take them off, I guess I'm obligated.

I had a dermatologist appointment this morning which meant getting into work late. I stopped at the bakery for a sandwich so I could eat in and skip lunch. They were already down to roast beef on good bread or turkey on not-so-good bread so I decided to try roast beef even though I'm not so sure I like it (and there is that whole mad cow thing...)

While I was talking to Ted, trying to decide if I wanted to go out for lunch after all, he expressed interest in my sandwich (roast beef his favorite.) He ended up buying it off of me later and insisted on throwing in an extra dollar to cover tax. Sandwich at a profit. The whole time money was exchanging hands I felt like I was involved in a shady sandwich deal.

Gah, now she's humming! I wonder how long this annoying phase will last.

A sign at work says that Girl Scout cookies are available for ordering again. I'm trying to break myself of junk food (it's more a a passive resistance—don't eat it just because it's available, only because you actually want it) and I have no particular need of cookies. I hid Thin Mints from myself so well I'm sure I still have some from a couple years ago. But I have to order Girl Scout cookies! I feel like I'm supporting a good cause and it's tradition.

I think 'borderline' is just a medical term for 'enough to be annoying but not bad enough to treat.'

My kids are only getting generic chewable vitamins. The Bartells brand is the only one I can find that doesn't have aspartame. If it needs a warning label, it isn't healthy!

The Polyclinic has hand sanitizer dispensers by the elevators in the parking garage. There are no more warnings about SARS though.

Somewhat random thought while thinking about how many people view immigration: If you're worried about competition for your job, stop having children. Does that make any sense? Each child born is competition in that generation's future job market, and in your own when employers are ready to replace you with someone younger and faster at half the cost. If I had never been born that would be one more job available in this economy, and the same goes for the rest of you.

So the argument goes that all these children will enrich society and therefore deserve their place in it, but for some reason that argument only applies to good Christian Americans.

There are stories of eccentric older people who due to the way they grew up, generally poor, have odd habits like stashing food under cushions. I must be preparing to be old and eccentric, since I just pulled an old avocado out of my bag that I had forgotten was there.

Andrew and I are going to see LOTR ROTK (seeing how many acronyms I can fit into a single movie) tonight, before it leaves the Cinerama. With a name that long, of course it has to be three and a half hours long. I thought it was funny, when the movie was new, people on NWR were asking the ones who had seen it where the good bathroom break points are. I'm at least trying not to drink so much tea at work today, which is hard because I'm an addict.

I got to use my new umbrella for the first time. I bought it off of E-Bay so I don't have a reliable picture, but it's the Starry Starry Night (stari stari night?) painting.

Of all the things I've overheard at work, this tops them all: Lou complaining after reading that they're going to be adding 20,000 jobs, that he wants there to be 20,000 less jobs—so he can get home! Too many cars on the road, he says, he wants to see everyone go away. Karla just agreed.

As expected, my arm is sore from yesterday's air hockey. I'm so out of practice and my skee ball skill is lacking. I need more time at Chuck E. Cheese.

In response to my ICQ number:

metaltweety: Wow. That's the lowest number I think I've seen.

Due to excessive apostrophe debate I decided to make it easy on myself and skip this post altogether.

Spam told me, "She said you need a lonbismuthger one." That's good to know but I wonder where I find a lonbismuthger one.

I'm officially crazi(er) now. My lithium is being increased to two pills twice a day instead of one and two.

Yay, my DSL cost went down slightly. That's always a plesant surprise.

There were two nearly identical jobs, a Producer for Media Guide in Brazil and Germany and one for the Australian, Canadian, and Taiwanese Media Guides. The first one required fluency in German and Portuguese. I half expected the second to require fluency in Canadian.

The problem with buying a paper is that I spend more time writing my reaction to articles then actually reading the thing. That, and I don't get links.

Bush is going to announce plans for a space program to Mars and a space station on the moon. Normally I'd get really excited over any space plans, but I'm too wary of anything that comes from Bush.

There was an article in the paper about a report saying people shouldn't eat farmed salmon because it contains industrial cancer-causing chemicals. Wild salmon also do to a lesser extent. Critics are complaining that the study focuses on long-term risks instead of the immediate benefits compared to other sources of protein.

Instead of picking the food that's going to take the longest to kill us, why can't we have food that isn't going to kill us in one way or another? Salmon causes cancer, tuna has mercury, beef comes with Mad Cow. The entire meat production process is horrible in ways that should make you ashamed to be on top of the food chain. Milk is full of hormones. Vegetables are full of pesticides and organic get the runoff. Fruit imported out of season has an environmental impact with the fuel used in transportation and the workers are probably being exploited in other countries. Workers are being exploited in this country. Packaged food has hydrogenated fat or they replace the fat with sugar which is why all of us are a diabetes case waiting to happen. I'm sure there's something wrong with soy by now. Fat is bad, carbs are bad, and your protein is going to kill you.

I just made my first ninja star, the kind boys used to fold out of notebook paper in school. I've never known how but the pattern was in my origami calendar from last year. It was kind of thrilling (don't laugh) like I was misbehaving in class, and I like how sturdy they come out.

Ted was asking if I can make one out of metal. I know he's joking, unless he has a specific customer in mind, but now I'm seeing it as a challenge.

Unfortunately I don't know what the accent was, but I loved hearing a man with an interesting foreign accent say, "Josie and the Pussycats."

I've started another book I highly, highly recommend, That Takes Ovaries. I know I spend more time in the Women's Studies section than most people would be comfortable with but the (true!) stories in this book are amazing.

The first one: a woman lectures a man who broke into her house in the middle of the night and makes him cry, the whole time wondering how she could get some underwear on. There's such a range then, an eight year-old's first gay pride parade with her two moms, a girl who stands up to the man coming after her with a gun saying, "If it will make you feel like a big man to shoot a ninety-pound teenager, then just go ahead and shoot," an anonymous writer who risked her life in a war-torn country as part of a conflict resolution program, a journalist also risking her life to make a documentary about the girls sold as slaves to Bombay brothels, a breast cancer survivor who decided on a double mastectomy and living without breasts rather than reconstructive surgery, a fat women buying her first tank top and finding out no one points and laughs, the founder of Good Vibrations, the first woman-based sex toy store!

Why did Shannon tell Walker to tell me to take off my pants?

This has got to be the best practical joke ever. I can't imagine the precision it took—they foiled everything down the quarters laying around.

Friends foil Olympia man's home

I just can't accept that it's time for pink Valentine's Day paraphernalia already. I know it's only a month away, a reasonable time for holiday planning, but when stores have the heart-shaped candy out before they can get the Christmas clearance signs up, it just all seems too soon.

Sour Altoids make my ears pop. They're between that gum for airplane rides thought.

For people who don't read Seagoth, Andrew's put up the announcement for our Pie For Pi night.

I forgot to charge my Palm last night so my battery's already half dead from writing updates. I may end up with the old-fashioned pen and paper.

Quite a few people were out from work yesterday because their power was out. I'd be happy for any excuse not to go to work but I don't understand this one. Maybe it's because I didn't lose power (lucky too, my laptop battery doesn't last long enough for reasonable Final Fantasy playing) or owned a home but wouldn't it be better to be at work where there is power? Is there a reason you have to be there when it comes back on?

I love spontaneous networking when I'm on break at work.

The first time I heard the expression "guess who's coming to dinner" I took it literally. It was during the failed custody battle when my dad flew out to Indiana to come take me back. I thought my dad was actually going to be sitting at our dinner table that night while my parents talked or fought or flipped a coin to see who got to keep me over my mom's cooking.

I was teasing Andrew saying you get all the special attention when you're new. He doesn't know what kind of macaroni Shannon wants tomorrow so he bought some of each (not really that big of a deal since he/we'll eat it anyway.) If it was me, I told him, he'd tell me to go pick out my own macaroni.

But then I told him I couldn't say anything about the macaroni after he made stir-fry for dinner and specially picked the vegetables (no mushrooms!) out of the pan for me.

This is a very ranty day. Slush is the worst of both worlds, half-frozen standing puddles and I've been walking through it ankle deep. It doesn't surprise me any that there are flood warnings now. I know it's bad weather when my feet get wet in my tall boots.

I was going to get the sandwich I ordered from the bakery next door and stay in for lunch since I wouldn't be able to walk anywhere fast enough that I wouldn't have to turn around and come back before I got there. The sandwiches didn't come in because of the snow. I hadn't eaten breakfast. I was having blood drawn after work.

I was already dizzy and near blacking out when I got back to work empty-handed. I got by with an old tupperware bowl of cereal I found in my drawer which I had nearly thrown out earlier this week, thinking it must be stale by now and I'm never going to eat it anyway. I ventured out for lunch hoping the rain had taken care of the sidewalks, and ate small and quick.

I had bad thoughts about Andrew's work being closed and him being home playing Final Fantasy and not even thinking to come pick me up and save me from the weather because he didn't want to leave his warm computer and go through the trouble.

I had to stop by the clinic to get blood drawn for a lithium level check and then walk to Andrew's, most likely beating him home. I was supposed to be able to drop in when I got there, according to my doctor, but the woman at the front desk said I needed an appointment. They'd try to fit me in if I really was on file (I was supposed to be,) sit down.

I waited an hour, still hungry and dizzy (but can't tell anyone that or they might not risk taking me at all) before going back up to the front desk to say I still didn't even know if they were going to see me. I was talking to a different person who found that I did have an appointment somehow, fifteen minutes ago, and no one took my lab orders to the lab. The lab was dead, they could have had me out in five minutes.

I just finished the book The Design of Everyday Things. It's original title, The Psychology of Everyday Things got it filed away in the Psychology section of book stores though it could better be described as psychology for designers than design for psychologists. I had this book recommended after telling my story of repeatedly walking into a Pull door that was masquerading as a Push door.

The book was first published I think sometime in the 80s, which is fine because good design is universal. Where the book really shows its age though is when taking about computers. Computers can do amazing things now that they never would have expected in the 80s, still with usability issues of course, but new and improved ones.

I loved the parts where the author was taking about a future product he'd like to see, a smart calendar/datebook or a pocket computer. Every time he'd describe it I'd look at my Palm&mdash&everything he wanted and more. The only part he got wrong was the size. He wanted a comfortable size he was used to, like a piece of notebook paper, with a large screen and full keyboard. I imagine something the size of Andrew's super-portable laptop, which is a great size for a laptop but a horribly bulky size for a glorified dayplanner/Palm that's meant to be carried all the time. I can't blame him for asking though. Back then if you had asked for a small high-resolution full-color screen and a fold-up keyboard attachment you'd be crazy.

Sesame Street and Super Mario music is an interesting combination. Someone should make a song. Better yet, someone should tell me they already have.

There's a new job posted at work, a Document Control Clerk. The thing is, there's already someone doing that job—I'm not sure but I think he's a long-term temp—and I don't know if he's leaving or if this is just a formality to give him the job. They've done it before. I get excited about a job and they already know full well who it's going to before it's posted. Now that I think about it, the cashier job opening might be the same thing.

I have to start taking better care of my skin. My hands have gotten so dry from the winter air it hurt to put lotion on the first time. I heard that a good way to moisturize feet is to slather them in lotion before bed and sleep with socks. I wonder if this will work for hands too. I need to find a pair of cheap gloves, like those stretchy ones they used to sell for a dollar a pair.

Here's a lesson you tend to forget living in Seattle: snow + rain = slush.

I had to walk up the hill (both ways, in the sn..slush) at a quarter of my normal speed through ice and slush to see my bus go by when I hit the top. On the way up I realized I forget both my umbrella and warm gloves so I turned around to get them between buses. Going down was slower and scarier and took me five minutes to reach the bottom of the walkway (about a third of the way down.) I saw the rest of the hill in front of me and my time limit and had to turn around and go back up. At the top this time a 66 went by, an express bus that should have passed before the 70 but I would have caught if I had walked down one more stop instead.

More snow lessons for Seattle: If your side of the road has two lanes and one of those lanes is mostly clear while the other is slushy, everyone is driving on the clear side, don't drive on the slushy side so you send a five foot arc of it over the sidewalk. I was standing all the way back in the alcove and that hit me.

I don't care about people jaywalking if they aren't being dumb about it, but don't run across a busy and slippery street with your children in either hand! Not only are you expecting cars to stop for you, but for them to be able to stop, and none of you to fall.

It sounds like the company never officially shut down yesterday but people, including Karla, just left as they wanted. Did I mention I have the best roommate ever?

I am being ordered to go frolic in the snow.

On the way home I saw a guy running for Dean—in shorts, running with a Howard Dean campaign sign.

Jason is the best roommate ever. He showed up at my work about 11 this morning to ask if I wanted a ride home. While he was in the lobby talking to one of the receptionists who was asking Kermit about leaving work, Kermit gave permission for people to leave if they needed to and so I decided to take the opportunity. I have a feeling this is going to come at me later though, since while Karla didn't have to stay either, she'll probably play the martyr and take it out on me tomorrow instead.

The funniest part is where Jason was talking to Kermit about the road conditions and didn't know he was talking to the president of the company.

Wheee, snow day. My bus came forty minutes late, a crowd of us watching cars slide up and down the hill. At 8:00 I was going to give up, call in and say buses aren't running but it came, eventually, after we all walked down to Lynn for a better chance of express buses picking us up. Then Karla didn't even stay home like she claimed she would if it snowed. I was hoping for a frantic staff without typist, overjoyed that I braved the elements to be there. Instead it was more of a 'Oh it's you. I suppose you want some work too,' and -30 minutes pay.

Minxie: I will sic christina and her genital peircing on you if you don't update happy clicker!

I was rescued from the gym and everyone else's New Years resolution by the fact that I forgot to carry my gym card since we got back from Mexico. I took everything unnecessary out of my bag for the trip and my desk has, by its nature, sucked up my gym membership card, Costco card, various pet rodents, and possibly a small child. At least I managed to do my hand putty exercises again, which I'd fallen behind on for quite some time.

I put my Emily calendar up at work, reasserting my status as company freak.

Tempers were running high at work today, people all over yelling and slamming things. Even Psycho-girl, who's been relatively calm since the holidays, was mad about something in a slamming kind of way, making me paranoid about what I may have done to bother her now even though I wasn't around when whatever it was happened. (Was I not supposed to leave my desk at that particular time?) So I continued going to lunch with my MP3 player to drown out work again.

I'm trying to decide if I want to go to the gym tomorrow with everyone else who made New Years resolutions to go to the gym tomorrow.