I just got a message from Michael (he's starting to exist again!) asking how far Redmond is from me—he's applying for a job there—and asked if I still need a roommate. Oops, a little late on that one unfortunately.

Today was the deadline for the United Way donations. I don't know why they put a deadline on giving money, especially when the end of year bonuses are a bigger incentive to donate, once people know how much they can afford. I decided not to bother altogether and I'm going to donate directly to Planned Parenthood at the end of the year instead.

I don't understand a diet where you eat mayonnaise but not the bread.

Despite the number of sci-fi future worlds have been burned into our collective consciousness, in the real world computers should not talk. Especially computers that are normally well behaved and silent, should not start talking in a quiet apartment. (Selina, your virus definitions have been updated.)

I went to sleep with the heating pad last night for my sore legs. They still hurt, but it certainly felt good while I was in bed.

We're officially decorated for the holiday now. Selina set up my fiber optic Christmas tree on the dining room table just now.

I saw a box of Children's Scrabble in the toy collection basket at Starbucks. Now I'm wondering, how exactly does an adult game about making letters into words get turned into a children's game about making letters into words? More vowels? More consonants?

Next thing someone's going to get smart and actually market 'dirty Scrabble', which will completely defeat the purpose.

I just saw my first real-life Segway, carrying a person down Fifth Ave.

It's embarrassing, but I danced so much Saturday night at the Nightmare Before Christmas party that my calves are too sore to walk without limping. I'm surprised no one's asked me about it today, but I suspect people are afraid to hear my reason for walking funny.

The last night of the long weekend my body had finally adjusted to vacation schedule and didn't want to sleep. But I have one more vacation day to use up before the end of the year, and Karla is taking off all the Thursday and Fridays before I go to Mexico (my own personal vacation from her.)

I think I'm managing to evade a cold. It was good timing with the lazy weekend, and large smoothies. It should be gone before it amounts to anything.

Quite a while back I helped sabotage an online poll by voting to support gay marriage when the site was expecting their audience to support their side and prove their point. They weeded out all the votes without a valid email address (which still led to results they weren't hoping for) but since I used my actual email address, I'm still getting mail from them.

Now they want me to 'show my support' and 'Help make the display of the ten commandments legal in all public places'.

For more fun, it invites me to watch a video called 'It's Not Gay'. "This 28-minute video presents a story that few have heard, allowing former homosexuals the opportunity to tell their own story in their own words. Along with medical and mental health experts, these individuals express a clear warning that the sanitized version of homosexuality being presented to students is not the whole truth."

Email to my dad has been bouncing for a while so it looks like I have to give in and call him to let him know about my new address. But my cell phone's been dead since sometime this weekend. Shows how much I care about phones. I'll try to remember to recharge it tonight.

I've been getting a lot of green card spam lately (did you know I could live and work in the U.S.A?), but the best yet:

Subject: Are you happy with your country?

My paycheck doesn't have the overtime from when I missed lunch last week! Somebody probably assume I just forgot to punch out and compensated.

It's a bad sign when I wake up from a dream that I was in the hospital, disappointed that I have to go to work instead.

Psycho-girl... Since Friday:

Two angry blow-ups because I wouldn't let her get away with breaking her own rules.
Decided to take a 'late lunch' on Friday, leaving fifteen minutes before my usual lunchtime. (I go two hours after her normal.)
Consistently takes every long order in the morning (while still requiring that the number of orders we take remains even) and played 'brick wall' when I tried to confront her.
Stares me down when I happen to get a long order during the day, both when I type and print it.
Violently angrily grabbed all the orders out of the bin after I got back from lunch and picked up two orders to match the ones she was typing.
Just threw her pen and walked off glaring at me while I printed my credit holds.

I know the office environment will keep her in check from becoming outright threatening (that's why passive-aggressiveness works so wonderfully for someone like her) but her irrational temper is actually frightening. She was angry enough yesterday over something so small, that I honestly didn't realize was even wrong, that I'm afraid of how she'll react the next time some such thing sets her off.

Documenting this list and sending it off to my boss soon.

On my morning route through the cash counter I found Jason standing on the other side of the counter, buying shiny bits of metal. He said he was going to surprise me but he's lucky I showed up since it got him a good price. (Ted asked if he was supposed to be nice to him or charge him double.)

He also mentioned coming back to take me out to lunch, but I realized later we hadn't set anything up for sure. I looked around at 2:15 but no Jason. Does this mean I've been stood up?

Baked potato & chedder soup is the best soup ever.

I just got back from one of those guilt-trip United Way work meetings, which we were forced into signing up for. I'll give them money, to be eligible for the 'incentive' prizes, but I'm specifying it goes to Planned Parenthood.

I found a crunched up little dead spider on my desk this morning, which when I tried to brush it off, turned out to be a crunched up little live spider. I had to do a rescue mission first thing with it dangling from my hand.

NWR has been talking about an article on labial plastic surgery. (Lost the actual article.) I just have to say, of all the body parts there are to be self-conscious about, I'm glad that one never occurred to me.

Seeing Voltaire tonight. I am so happy I am allowed to drink tea again.

I wonder how people would talk if we actually got to carry about boxes of magnetic poetry to mix into our conversations.

Random thought of the (last) night: Using the (Final Fantasy) auto-translator is like playing with magnetic poetry.

Getting scarier here all the time. Druggists refuse to give out pill.

"Some pharmacists, however, disagree and refuse on moral grounds to fill prescriptions for contraceptives. And states from Rhode Island to Washington have proposed laws that would protect such decisions."

If you have a problem filling certain prescriptions, then pharmacy shouldn't be your profession. What happens when one declares a moral issue with anti-depressants? Are they checking for a wedding ring before handing out Viagra? Refusing pain medication? How about a faith healer who refuses to give out medication altogether, and sends people home to pray for their sickness?

The office Mac has been having issues so I keep being called over to troubleshoot it. I feel all special and knowledgeable. So far I have: 1. Hit a bunch of keys until I find the Mac equivalent of Ctr-Alt-Delete. 2. Deleted the problem email after the salesperson had the customer fax the attachment instead. 3. Restarted the computer.

I used the age-old trick of pawning off leftover Halloween candy on a co-worker today. I think I even managed to do it anonymously though she has a candy jar specifically for the purpose of distributing sugar throughout the office.

Walker thinks he found me a reason to quit Final Fantasy (though credit for the link goes to Andrew first) – the Hello Kitty Online World. The game is an online multiplayer test of how much cuteness you can stand before your head explodes!

As far as quitting Final Fantasy, I think I'd rather see the two combined: Hello Kitty vs. Black mandragora! Would Hello Kitty be a cross between a Tarutaru and a Mithra?

The funny thing about paranoia is you need a certain amount of arrogance to assume people are concerning themselves with you in the first place.

I'm being paranoid again. I just got home and Selina's not here, which is unusual in itself, and suddenly I'm worrying that she may have taken my ranting yesterday as more than just a bad reaction to a very stressful day. I'm still not happy with people in general, given the news.

I've read that red wine is good for cramps. (Seems too early for that but then doesn't it always?) I'm thinking it can't be too bad for reading election news either.

Low-carb jelly beans.

While we're in the midst of all this absurdity, Man Survives Jump Into Lion's Den, 46-Year-Old Reportedly Trying To Convert Lions To Christianity.

There was another E-Bay dispute on the People's Court, and this one wasn't a rerun.

Let's hope I never need to buy individual health insurance...

Individual insurers may deny you coverage based on your medical history if it includes:

* Use of prescription drugs to treat anxiety, depression or a physical condition, including Ativan, Klonipin, Paxil, Prozac, Serzone, Zoloft, Xanax and Wellbutrin.
* Counseling for anxiety, depression, grief or an eating or sleep disorder. Even if you briefly sought counseling as a way to cope with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, you could be denied individual health insurance, according to researchers with Georgetown's Health Privacy Project

My former boss is wearing a Rocky Horror t-shirt.

CNN.com said 252 to 254 this morning. It was better news than I was expecting to wake up to. Then I got word at work that Kerry conceded over Ohio. What!? The vote aren't even all counted yet (absentee, provisional) and he gave up already.

I'm going between feeling political and angry, which lets me distance myself emotionally, and wanting to curl up in a ball and cry. One to get me through and one for tonight I suppose.

Last night was the first time I've seen (read) most of a mailing list getting drunk together. Reports from the field said it wasn't helping. I went out to dinner with Andrew so I could get away from the impulsive refreshing of election results. I told him I'm taking my lithium so whatever breakdown I have today can't be blamed on that.

www.marryanamerican.ca

I'm not going to change anyone's mind about voting, especially since this won't be published until the polls are closed, but why do non-voters seem to think that their refusal to make a choice means that choice won't have to be made. Regardless of how you feel about the candidates, one of these men will be the next U.S. president. One of these men will be the next president. One of these men and their stance on the issues will be deciding the fate of the country for the next four years. Calling them both the same is insulting to those of us who do care.

I still hate people. Some guy stopped his van halfway through a right turn, to tell me through the window, "Can't you see the sign? It says 'don't walk'!" He took the to hold up traffic turning behind him to give me that lecture, when I was crossing on the proper traffic light (the walk sign would have flipped if I hit the button two seconds earlier and caught the cycle), when he should have been down the road before I got to his part of the street anyway.

Misheard (soap opera) quote of the day: "Everything I worked hard for, all of my pants are ruined!"

"I'm hating everyone today."
"Even me?"
"No, just everyone."

I follow Andrew's theory that you can only have two out of three parts of life (home, job, and relationship) going well at the same time, but even two aren't guaranteed. I know this much annoyance can't be good for me.

I can't get over the feeling that I'm living with a college roommate again, the kind where unless you get a lucky match, you live next to each other rather than with each other. I thought I was past the point in my life where I had to worry about separate silverware drawers and ramen shelves, having someone freak out if I touched their laundry or put a knife back in the wrong place, or being alerted to every status change in the apartment (light on, light off.) I miss Jason where we had a pretty good innate knowledge of how to coexist while being friends.

Then at work Karla loaded herself up with large, multi-page orders, and gets mad at me for taking two later to even out the balance. I have to stop whatever I'm doing the moment an order is released from credit hold, never mind my train of thought, to print it or she'll glare and snort at me when I print it later. (And if she happens to be typing when my orders are released, then I'm in a catch-22.) Here we revert to kindergarten with our turns and tantrums, and Lou whining like a two year-old every time someone makes him do his job.

And then I realize it's election day...

I'd like to submit my alarm clock design to the writer of the wonderful book, The Design of Everyday Things. Twice now I've managed to misset my alarm, last night by turning "on" the dimmer switch instead of the second alarm, so that Andrew and I woke up on our own at exactly 8:00.