It's probably not expected for someone to argue semantics with themselves when sick, but... I know there's no such thing as a "stomach flu", it's not the same virus, but it's a convenient term to describe certain illness. I called in sick at about 3:30 am, because no matter how miraculously better I might feel in the morning (which I didn't), I still wasn't allowed to sleep until it was almost time to get up.

The really messed thing is that throughout most of the night I thought all of this was my period starting.

Andrew took me out to pick up my glasses—replaced scratched lens under warranty, yay!—and while they were being finished up, went to Eddie Bauer and the grocery store and generally spread the plague around. It seemed every perky salespesron today wanted to ask how I'm doing, while I'm thinking oh you don't want to know...

It's almost 9:30 but it's still light out and not convincing me to sit down and get something done. The ice cream truck went by a little bit ago and I should have ran after it. I should have a limesicle instead.

Karla got flowers delivered to her at work, sent by her roommate-boyfriend, apparently thanking her for his birthday. I want to know the secret—I've never had flowers sent to me like that. I bet she'll get flowers for my birthday too.

Misread quote of the day: Iraqi Hangover Complete

I didn't get a chance to post my excitement from getting a response back on the HTML job—they wanted to see me next week for an interview—when my second response said they filled the job. I can't help thinking in bad clichés about the light at the end of the tunnel being a train, and I feel like I just got ran over by the train itself.

I'm feeling left out. Everyone is talking about the lightning (no thunder) storm last night and I missed it. I had to go to Chicago for my last good storm.

I think Seattle is killing my heat tolerance (and cold, not that I ever had one.) I already feel like I'm melting outside. I am definitely not looking to my trip home. There's a rule I've noticed that once the temperature rises above 70, the bus will always be 30 degrees hotter inside.

Can I have Karla put to sleep and claim it was the humane thing to do? There have been some slow periods during the day and in the dead time she seems to be suffering from terminal boredom. The suffering of course is passed on to me.

It's no longer a matter of her needing twice what I have. She's acting disgusted if I get any work to do. Whenever I'm typing an order and she isn't (regardless if she just finished a stack herself) she starts spinning back and forth in her chair looking so expectant I'm afraid she will burst. I just got up and left in the middle of typing a three-pager to give her time to calm down and stop making intentional distractions after her spinning/rocking added on clicking her pen and banging it against the desk.

Someone give this girl some work. I'm afraid she's going to go postal!

I think a telephone pole fell somehow in the small street next to Louisa's Bakery. I had to make my way around rows of caution tape to get home last night (the walkway down was blocked off from the opposite side) and then forgot about it until this morning. The road's still blocked off to cars but not to pedestrian traffic.

There must be a new crow nesting site on my path into work. I got circled overhead and warned loudly three times before I was able to cut into the warehouse area. The third time was close meaning the fourth might have been an outright attack. If this keeps up I'm going to have to bring offerings of food and leave them on the sidewalk.

My spellchecker says that 'carb' isn't a word. I think it's on to something.

I got spam offering me the 'best premaid logos'. I'm trying to imagine a company with a logo already designed for every possible business name (Beaverworks?) as well as some generics for "So you own a sporting goods store... We have a tennis racket logo."

There was an interesting juxtaposition of commercials on the radio this morning. First a commercial for Franz Bakery, where I just happened to be at the time, was advertising their low-carb products. Then an audio scene described someone giving away free hot dogs, but without the bun. It turned out to be a metaphor for free checking ("what good is free if it doesn't give you everything you need?") but I kept thinking, 'It's low carb!'

On a slightly related note, I was (even more) picky as a child and I've never liked hot dog or hamburger buns. My parents had no idea I was just years ahead of my time.

I'm finding it funny how many people ask me if I had a good weekend. I mean, it's a weekend—by definition the most mundane, lounge-around, do-nothing weekend (I hit level 24, and had so much fun I did it two more times!) is better than the work week, and therefore good.

Some of my bath products are old enough for the plastic to start disintegrating and crack down the middle. I had pink, raspberry-flavored goo everywhere as I managed to get most of it into a spare container.

I was given the mission to kiss a girl last week(end). With the ranch party and cloven fruit this seemed likely enough and I accepted my mission.

The problem with cloven fruit is that you have to receive one before you can use it. Occasionally one is left laying around, free for pickup, but that feels like cheating. More than that, it feels like if I'm not worthy of being given fruit then... Unfortunately shy people don't project the proper openness to random kisses.

Saturday night I bounced up to the Ocicat after coming inside from cooling off after dancing. He thought I was hiding something behind my back so I showed him I was clean and told him my story, of my mission and my sad lack of cloven fruit. I honestly didn't realize I was tempting fate and setting myself up, but not two seconds later someone passes a lime off to Craig (host pass off, house rule) and tells him to have fun.

Then as I'm leaving the room I run into Deric, also presenting a lime. And so I find myself walking around the party with a lime in either hand.

By the end of the night I achieved five kisses, two girls. I was especially brave for the last, plotting and then grabbing an abandoned one to present to someone in a different room.

Mission accomplished.

Tom, looking at my Italian soda, asked seriously, "Do you know they don't put coffee in those!?"

Walker is a sushi tease.

"Rebecca, Don't make me come out there and beat someone up.". My mom doesn't like people changing my name. I agree but I decided on one exception per stupid name. Pete's the only one allowed to call me Becky, but that just means no one else knows who he's talking about.

I'm going to have to learn to post headlines without actually reading the articles. Reading makes me want to start yelling at the people quoted in the article.

At least my spam is getting accurate this time...

Subject: y stupidly stick with with ur current job? perform moving

Some more good news: The Chapel (of Izzy's birthday party) has a black velvet shirt in thier lost and found.

There's an AOL CD laying on my desk advertising 1199 hours free. I can't be the only one who thinks AOL should've given up on the free hours promotion back when they stopped charging hourly.

Finally some good news! Judge: Bush Abortion Ban Unconstitutional

My boss wants to "try something new". Every half-hour or so we're supposed to go around to the salespeople and pick up any orders they have ready. One one side this seems like a great way to improve workflow. But given Karla and my relationship, it seems like a disaster waiting to happen. Already the tantrums... little tantrums all day long.

I just got introduced to a new salesperson as 'Becky'. I'm never going to lose that name now—it's been made official.

New-Blogger's bad interface has caused updates to be slow even when I have them written on time.

We went to Folklife for two days of the festival. The weather was predicted as cold and rainy for the entire weekend but it helps to remember that the weather gods always smile on Folklife. Still, it was too cold to really take advantage of my once-a-year excuse to dress in my hippie clothes.

I want to get map of the world and start coloring in all the countries I've eaten food from. Thailand, Ethiopia, Japan... To keep filling in countries I realized I'd have to inherit Andrew's attitude about food and search out new things I haven't tried. So I ate Kenyan food, a deep-fried vegetable pocket.

Waiting for the bus, Jake of all people walked by with his best friend. I nearly didn't recognize him with glasses, and he seems to have gained weight since I last saw him (though I know I have too so I can't say anything there.) The funniest part was how Andrew scared him off without even trying. Jake sounded like he was going to stick around and chat a bit, until Andrew walked back from checking the bus schedules with perfect timing and Jake immediately switched to "Goodbye. Talk to you later.."