I steamed my first artichoke! Yay me!

Lou suddenly started talking out of nowhere. "In France they don't call them Big Macs. They call them Les Big Macs," said with standard English pronunciation. "Les Big Macs."

After Karla corrected him, 'lei' or 'lay', he adds, "And the fries aren't fries. They're frits!"

Lou must have a Pepe Le Pew understanding of the French Language, where English words become another language by walking around saying, "Le mew."

Well this is the strangest spam I've gotten in a while:

Hello!


My dear beautiful stranger!
If your heart does not belong to any beautiful lady,
and if your solitude is not good enough for you,
just as well for me, so maybe we can become good friends first?
And then maybe the time will show that we are a good match?
Who knows...
I wish you all the best and I hope to hear from you soon.
My homepage is here http://-------


With kindest wishes of happiness
Olga

I don't know what's going on at work, but we have pizza for some reason.

Someone left their glasses in my bathroom, which is strange because I don't know anyone who spends time in this house other than me who wears glasses.

Final Fantasy XI was released for the PS2 today which means the game is suddenly overrun with new people. I found out you can make a lot of friends just by being willing to answer questions. I showed two people how to get outside, made sure one got started alright, cast Protect spells on everyone in the newbie area. I realized all these people starting new today are going to be caught up to grouping level in a couple weeks, and then if they're the typical gamer types, far outleveled in another week.

I forgot I'm not allowed to play with knives. I'm not bleeding all over my food this time though so it's okay.

Leave it to Georgia to ban genital piercing. Well, to ban female genital piercing. It was tacked onto a bill banning female genital mutilation, and:

Amendment sponsor Rep. Bill Heath, R-Bremen, was slack-jawed when told after the vote that some adults seek the piercings.

"What? I've never seen such a thing," Heath said. "I, uh, I wouldn't approve of anyone doing it. I don't think that's an appropriate thing to be doing."

While I usually go through my stacks of books too quickly, the ones that can't leave the house—Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns, The Topping/Bottoming Book, etc.—never seem to get read since I tend to only read away from home. Selina suggests using book covers to bring those ones out in public, (I remember reading the Story of O in school, with a pretty white and floral cover made out of the store's paper bag,) but there's still the issue of pictures, and any book exposed at work gets asked about by Paul and often asked to borrow.

I just realized Paul is going on vacation next week. This is the perfect opportunity to cover and start reading my Jay Wiseman bondage book, making Selina happy when I learn enough to use on her. Then making Andrew happy because he's next in line to read it, and me happy when he learns enough to use on me. After that I'm guessing Walker wants to read it, by that point making a lot of people happy.

Well it's about time. We're getting a bright, shiny, new, um... dot matrix printer. I guess it is relatively modern since it's listed on the company's web site.

Yesterday's "interesting" doesn't even begin to cover it today. Unfortunately Lou is talking to me again, but our printer broke last night and went out for good today. At the same time the computers went down for everyone for part of the morning. Since the computers came back up we've had to type everything without printing and send the hand-written copies out to the warehouse to the fill will-calls.

Things are so much more interesting around here when things are broken.

Yay to Izzy! He sent me this adorable Flash movie first thing this morning.

Walker is holding a raspberry cheesecake (flavor of my choice) over my head as incentive for me to catch up in updating.

I had the weirdest experience on the bus when someone who recognized me from the Vogue said hi and sat next to me. The thing is, for the entire conversation, I had no idea who he is. No idea. At all. He even placed me with a guy whose description doesn't match anyone I can think of, let alone have actually dated.

I have two pickles in two pickle-sized zip-lock bags.

I have a feeling this is going to be an interesting day, and not in a good way. Just have to remember, Lou not talking to you is a good thing.

I just gave the Sierra Club $10 at my door, but they owe me a new bowl of cereal.

After 23 years I finally got a name—von Willebrand Disease! I didn't even know this thing had a name and what little information I've had comes from overhearing my dad talk to doctors about me as a child. Rare platelet disorder, "storage pool deficiency", easy bruising, nosebleeds, Medic Alert bracelet that made it sound like I was going to bleed to death if I trip and fall, bleed time tests, still bruising but they declared I'd outgrown it.

I feel like he's been holding out on me this whole time. With a name there's information and I've spent all day looking up information. It's not as rare as I was told. I'm not sure how I feel about that—on the one hand I'm not as "special" as I thought, but I've found stories of actual people who have this.

Now this might explain some of my Ebola symptoms that I didn't necessarily know were related. Treatment is still the same however, have to go back on the pill.

This is annoying. I keep looking at the clock and it should be an hour later than it is. I got to work late because of my dermatologist appointment so I didn't take lunch today.

Typical Peteness:

Spleen-boy: So, fair warning. I am coming to Seattle in September, quite likely for the entire month or longer. Plan accordingly. ;)
stari: ramen?
Spleen-boy: Mmmmmm YES!!!!!!!!!11111111111111111111111111
Spleen-boy: Andrew and Becky present RAMEN NIGHT FOR TEH PETE
Spleen-boy: Ramen has vodka in it, right?

I've decided I need to find a new, exotic, interesting sounding disease to blame my headaches on. I have to admit that Ebola would have killed me by now.

My dermatologist is more optimistic than I am, but then she is the expert. She tells me I'm getting better when I look at my face and just see red. Six more weeks on the antibiotics and I should be done with that, just topical creams left over I guess permanently.

Nothing worse than losing your glasses, while you aren't wearing your glasses of course, and can't see to find them.

This pictures's a couple years old now but I was playing with my new scanner/printer and Photoshop while cleaning.

I got a ride home, for all of two blocks. Technically it was three blocks, where it would have been two walking, but the point was that my boy stopped for me while he was delivering my forgotten power cord and I was too busy reading an outdated flier on a telephone pole to notice his car.

I talked to my boss after work, after everyone, including psycho-girl had left. I think fate was testing me, with last-minute orders that caused her to hang around late. The end result I think was something less than good but more than bad. He would like us to work things between ourselves if possible, and so it feels like I'm just restarting the process all over again.

When he was talking about how it's important to solve these issues so that work doesn't become intolerable, just a place to go to get a paycheck... I couldn't say I've already been there for so long now... I couldn't emphasize enough that the order division issue is just a symptom of an overall hostility problem. Or that any attempts to politely reason with her cause her to immediately become defensive or blow it off completely. We have the option to switch sides but I don't see her considering it as a valid possibility, even though her issue is with me being closer to the work.

Still, the fact that I went through with it gives me a moment of peace where I don't have to think about it anymore.

I think the internet is broken today, many sites not coming up for many people. I could tell Andrew's been away from tech support long enough when I could say something like, "The internet is broken," jokingly of course, without him imploding.

Again, for the third time, I don't have my power cord. Not forgotten, exactly, but left at Andrew's where it's all around hopeless. Another wasted day, because I don't even have work from billing, plenty of free time I could be using to work on things more important than a logic puzzle book.

I have to wonder if the real purpose is that I won't be badgered by friends online about talking to my boss.

When dealing with Karla I've been stuck between ignoring her tantrums, as you're supposed to do with small children, or calling her on her actions so she knows she's doing something wrong, as you would a dog.

It took me another hour to go through with it, but when she walked away from the area to brush her teeth I sent a message to my boss saying I need to talk about something work related (and please don't mention it in front of Karla—she's already scaring me.)

I probably already knew this, but I was just reminded that Berta is the other person in the world who dips her Mexican restaurant tortilla chips in water.

Andrew just told me Earth & Beyond is ending in September. I didn't even know these kinds of games ended, yet another reason to be glad I switched over to Final Fantasy.

Leave it to Andrew to make it hail before his birthday.

I can't believe I am such a flake. I forgot the power cord to my laptop again, and this time there was no reason why I should have. I even had to unplug the laptop to take it with me.

Today psycho-girl has been making sideways accusations that I'm leaving all the COD orders for her. It makes it all the worse that I would like to leave all the CODs, as well as take all the work in the mornings leaving a small token number to show her how it felt, but I won't do either due to some misplaced ethics. If I'm going to be accused, I would at least like to get the benefit.

I really, really hate this place. My job would be a million times more tolerable if Karla could be convinced to go on some medication. Can I start sneaking my lithium in her coffee?

Sometime before Christmas I broke myself of the fingernail polish habit. I took it off so I wouldn't have to deal with it in Mexico and haven't bothered since. It used to be I had to have something on, down to those little leftover flecks, or my fingers would feel naked.

I didn't even have time to do green nail polish this year, which has been my tradition since I first found green nail polish. It won me a dollar on a free scratch-off lottery ticket the first time.

So I'm wearing green tights that were surprisingly hard to find the day before St. Patrick's day, and a short enough skirt to show them of. I'm not trusting my cute 'one size fits all teenagers' clover leaf tights to fit so I'm not bothering to try. I found a brand of colors that come in sizes, if only tights weren't being phased out for spring.

Dumb-day continues into Monday (actually I guess it started on Monday.) I forgot the power cord for my laptop. I'm going to find it sitting at home in the place I left it last night while making a mental note not to forget it.

Yesterday must have been a Dumb-day, where my brain went all-around useless.

Dumb moment #1:
It was almost midnight but I had to stop at the grocery store quick to pick up some milk on my way home. There was only one checkout line open and so we get stuck behind Chatty Girl with a pile of groceries. Chatty Girl is the young and trendy version of Lonely Old Person who's only social life is talking to the drug and grocery store cashiers. In this case they seemed to know each other and slowed their movement to fill the length of the conversation, regardless of the huge line forming behind us.

Walking back to the car I was imitating her further line-slowing abilities. In trendy-girl voice, "'You want to see my ID? You're serious? You really want to see my ID? You're really serious?' and then there was her, 'oh yeah, let me find my card, now let me fumble my card...'"

When we got in the car Andrew tells me, "That girl is the one who parked next to me."

Oops. Did she hear me? I'll never see her again, right? I'll just never shop at that Safeway again, or I'll wear bright colors and act perky so she'll never recognize me.

I blame it on low blood-sugar.

Dumb moment #2:
I turned on the water for the shower and got distracted talking to Andrew. I started to step in, screamed, and got a first degree burn on my foot because I forgot to turn the cold water on.

I think I missed Selina dropping off an application at my company. When I got back from lunch one of the receptionists told me someone had come by for me and asked if I have a sister.

Andrew kept me up too late playing Final Fantasy last night. I barely dragged myself out of bed in time and by some miracle caught the early bus. I expected some kind of retaliation for yesterday morning. If there was any, it was her showing up at the same time as me, 7:35, but she hid out in the bathroom for a while and all was calm for the morning.

She did her first angry swiping later since I sent that little note about passive aggressive behavior. Apparently I'm not supposed to type orders after finishing the Canadians. If I had a quicker response I would've said in response, "I'm sorry, I'll remember not to leave you any next time."

Why can't I be nocturnal? I was in the shower thinking about database design for my Final Fantasy gardening database, which reminded me of the blogging script that was going to be my first mySQL project. Jon told me once that my comment script was too advanced to attempt as a first project with PHP but it came out perfectly in the end. A blogging script will be even more advanced. I've noticed I tend to jump into these things head first, because I have no desire to write the useless little programs generally used to learn from. I installed the build-your-own version of Linux, which I broke somewhere along the way, so I'm going to cheat and install mySQL on Windows after all since the goal was to learn mySQL, not Linux at the moment.

So I started thinking about how a blogging system would work without a database and came up with an extremely low-tech but completely functional idea, consisting of a system of text files and directories. Now I want to do it, just to see if it would work. Inspired, but have to go to bed.

One of these days I'm going to have a job where I can wander in late because I was up all night coding, and have that be appreciated.

Neiko pokes Trynn.
Trynn pokes Neiko.
(Neiko) sorry :)
(Trynn)you made a poke Trynn macro, didn't you?
(Neiko) no... but now that you mention it, that's a great idea!

I feel like I make Karla mad just by existing, but I got to do so in a very satisfying manner this morning. Not only did I get to work early enough to split the work myself, I found two government orders in the stack that I wouldn't dare let fall into her hands. Anything of complexity will take her all morning, set aside and not "counting" as she gets up to take new orders, and in the meantime insisting on doing everything the hard way.

In a complete role reversal, she arrived at work to find me already typing, getting a head start on those government orders. I can still feel the negative energy when my existence displeases her, but I think the note I sent has put a damper on the outright tantrums at least.

I think it's time to lay to rest my personal myth that I don't get PMS.

I had never made the connection before between health insurance and other types of insurance, that you're not actually supposed to use your insurance or risk being penalized. Add this to the list of reasons to hate my company. A memo came out today mentioning rising costs and a number of people hospitalized and "the use of expensive drugs" and ultimately our co-pays are being raised yet again.

The idea seems to be to make it too expensive to go to the doctor unless you're dying, and if you are dying you'll raise the rates for everyone else. This brings an office visit up to $35, and generic drugs to $20. My lithium costs $25 full price. What would I do without my insurance to save me a $5!? I've gotten to the point where I can't afford to have insurance. I'm considered uninsured to the clinic since it doesn't cover mental health, but I don't qualify for the Take Charge program at Planned Parenthood since I have insurance at all. I want to go back on the pill but I don't know how I'll afford a third maintenance drug now.

I am so tired of being treated like I don't exist here. And I'm tired of doing other people's work. I think the fact that those two issues can coexist is the real problem. I'm available as an endless source of sorting but ignored when it comes to my own job. "Karla, here's a bunch for you." "Are you busy Karla?" "Karla, can you fix this/change this/print this for me?" " "Give this to Karla for me." "Put this in Karla's bin." "Karla, don't leave! I've got one more for you."

I'm not exaggerating. I'll have to pay attention to see if my name gets mentioned once during a day. Karla has become synonymous with 'the typists'.

If I didn't fear the results of overt work snarkiness I'd sent out an email to the office introducing myself as the new typist, taking on full responsibility and half the work load of the typists' desk.

My computer was being replaced as I walked into work. I missed all the fun, but I'm told it was smoking. (And that smoking indoors was a violation of company policy, and that if I do it again I will have to be sent home. He then realized that wasn't much of a threat.)

Andrew showed me this video. It's supposed to be an episode of an old children's TV show, but it's just completely wrong.

My roommate existed briefly today, and gave me a Hello Kitty DVD.

I just realized, my dad finding my pictures has guaranteed that I'll never do porn, at least not while he's alive.

Curiosity got to me and I just bought some of that weird low-carb milk. I'd be happier if it didn't have words 'low-carb' or 'Atkins' anywhere on the carton though. As far as I'm concerned, I'm trying out high protein milk.

I was looking through the book A Return to Modesty in Borders the other day. I want to read this book for the absurdity of it, but I don't want to actually give the author money. I'll have to check the library for it sometime.

In the part I read the author was telling a story of watching women walking through a wind storm, bending open to hold the slits in their skirts closed, giving this as proof that modesty is a natural state for women. I was walking to the grocery store earlier wearing a skirt that stops me just short of taking my longest stride. I asked myself what I would do if I had to move quickly for some reason—easy, I answered, I would pull my skirt up above my knees and run. And while I would be embarrassed at exposing my legs like that, I wouldn't be bothered at all if I was wearing a skirt that just happened to fall to that length. By this same manner, women wear bikinis who would never be seen in public in a bra and panties, despite the same amount of coverage.

Modesty is both societally imposed and contextual, but there is nothing ingrained that keeps a 2 year-old from taking his or her clothes off at every given opportunity.

Help, a 16 year-old kid from Brazil is trying to talk to me! He uses too much punctuation!!!!!! He wants to know if I know Kurt Cobain and doesn't understand, "Sorry, I don't talk to random people on ICQ."

It's probably a good thing I hadn't read LiveJournal this morning so that I could hear from Jason directly that our apartment was flooding. So while I am stuck at work he is having to run around making the apartment look passable for the landlady. I told him he can throw things in my room and close the room. Too bad we can't pick up the living room in a giant blanket and hide it in the closet.

I think I'm just determined to hate that salon that opened by my bus stop, the one that started with walk-in special prices advertised with a five dollar difference between men and women's hair. (My boyfriend has longer hair than I do!) Now they have a flier in the window saying models needed for a "sexy hair contests" , "FREE" haircut! I don't trust fliers that can't use proper grammar. A "free" haircut isn't exactly free is it?

I have to make a sign and put it up at work tomorrow, telling people to stop slamming my bins already. Besides being right next to my head, which seems to be a source of amusement for some, they're falling apart. There were blue bits of plastic on my desk when I came in this morning, and later I found one in my tea!

Saw special sushi soy sauce at Uwajimaya. What's worse is that it's tempted me.

Yay, overtime... I sorted nonstop from this morning until 5:00 this evening, staying late to get it finished because there will just be more tomorrow. It was enough to make my hand and arm start hurting after lunch—and they wouldn't let me bring my laptop in after I got an RSI. "Here, have some more repetitive motion."

Andrew things I have a secret admirer in the game. I think he's not exactly secret.

Billing has been ambushing me with huge piles of their work while they do end-of-the-month closing, but at least I got a Girl Scout cookie in thanks this morning.

I finally put Guadior back together and got it running again. The computer's been in pieces since I cannibalized it for parts when building my new one.

Putting it together turned out to be the easy part. Now, I thought I knew how to reformat a computer. My old old computer had so many issues that reformatting it became regular maintenance. It might've take 12 hours to get it working after reinstalling Windows (95?) until I hit the magical combination to make it recognize the modem again, but the reformatting part was simple enough. XP however seems to want to make it as difficult as possible. I'll spare the details and now four hours later I've got a blank, formatted hard drive. I'm skipping the 'look, I did it all by myself' glory and asking Andrew to bring me a useful OS of some sort tomorrow.

The people at my bank told me they'd seen a dozen of those CD settlement checks already today.

Now that was embarrassing... Andrew drove me to work this morning so I didn't notice the change of the month and I tried to use last month's bus pass going home.

I got my $13.84 settlement check for the CD price fixing thing. I had forgotten I signed up so it was a bit scary to get mail with 'Antitrust Litigation' on it. I'd been trying to figure out what to spend it on—is there a CD I really want? Then I remembered something, and it's going in the bank with Jason's rent check to cover my Final Fantasy bill.

Tina was handing out ginger-snappish "mystery cookies" she made at work today. The mystery ingredient turned out to be tomato soup. Everyone was amazed but as soon as I was told I was aware of that spiced tomato taste. I'm getting better about my pickiness, but cooked tomatoes, especially cooked tomatoes and that tomato soup/sauce spice... ick. I ended up discretely dropping it in the trash. I think I reached my limit of mystery food over sushi last night.

There was much dancing at the Vogue last night and I think I pulled a leg muscle in the process. That's always the sign of a good night, right? Luckily it's not hurting to walk, more throbbing and reminding me that it's there when I'm sitting down. That might not be a pulled muscle exactly, but at any rate, there was much dancing last night.