wombat_socho

Last night started off well - my masseuse did wonders for my back and shoulders, worked the lymph nodes in my legs (it hurt so good) and in general made me feel, if not like a whole new man, then at least like a factory-reconditioned man. ^_^

We also talked about the downtown crime situation, and I strongly advised her to take a carry class and get herself something small and deadly...like a Makarov. She grew up in a family of hunters, so she's not a complete n00b about gun safety, but like most civilian women I've known she's not keen on the idea of being armed & dangerous to criminals, despite having been mugged about seven years back.
( The rest of the evening I mostly wasted. )

Fortunately, there is coffee and enough work to keep me busy. Tonight, however, I am thinking the early bedtime will be required.

The problem with drugs is that while they make you feel better, everyone else can tell you're still sick and should have stayed in bed. Hopefully I was coherent enough in my answers to the various essay questions I attempted on the final exam; what I was writing seemed to make sense, but then I was wasted on DayQuils and Tylenol, so what the hell do I know? For a bonus, I also pulled the alternative assessment plan out of my ass this afternoon before heading in to take the final (2 hours late) and turned in the midterm quiz along with the final. There was nothing I could do about the test questions that were due last week, but I'm confident enough about the other stuff to be sure that won't drop my grade to a C. So hopefully after three times through the assessment course I'm done with it, unless of course I was too wasted to write clearly and coherently...no, we will not even consider such an unfortunate possibility.

After that there was nothing to do but swing by Chipotle and consume the most red-mad barbacoa burrito I could stomach, washed down by a Negra Modelo*. So I did. Then, since Best Buy was closed, I went to the Wal-Mart and procured some Stones, because I badly wanted to hear "It's Only Rock 'N Roll". So I did. Now I am home listening to Mick Jagger and the lads. There are worse ways to end the night.


*Yeah, one Negra Modelo. I'm a real cheap date these days, what with all the meds making my liver work 36 hours a day...

Came home with every intention of eating dinner and pitching into assessment homework. One pizza and a half-kilo of broccoli later, pwnd by fatigue and apathy. Maybe I'm coming down with something. Again. Bah. I think I'll get a full night's sleep and try again tomorrow.

It's just an ungodly slow day at work, enough to make me wish I'd called in sick so I could have stayed home and worked on all the assessment stuff I need to turn in over the next week. Since I didn't, I'm sitting here in my cube waiting for the work to dribble in, and thinking I should have taken some time this weekend to work on the quiz, the test questions, and other stuff coming due. So far I have two A's for the term and have pulled my GPA up to 2.53, but I really need to nail down the assessment class.

One thing I forgot to mention about the weekend was that it started poorly. On the way out to meet with Kendra and Mark for the post-convention hotel meeting, I got pulled over by a Minneapolis policeman and informed that my tabs were expired. That was an unpleasant surprise, since I just replaced them last fall, and when he ran my license he discovered that the tabs had been purchased but were missing. So I get to buy some replacement tabs and drop by the Violations Bureau to have the ticket quashed, once I get paid on Friday. What a pain. This isn't the first time this has happened, but I haven't lived in Phillips for a few years so I wasn't expecting it.

Speaking of the assessment class, I get to leave for it in 20 minutes. Wish me luck staying awake in it.

Never did do laundry yesterday, but I did take jamestrainor out to lunch at the New Century. We agreed not to talk about the current unpleasantness between phoenixalpha and their mother since it was something neither one of us could really do anything constructive about, which meant we could spend the time talking about more pleasant things like AD, 4chan, and stuff like that. After that I went home, stuck my legs in the cuff for an hour and rapidly became bored with Civicrack...433 had left a voice mail message for me inviting me to throw a team together at the last minute for the MISFITS Trivia Contest, and failing that to just show up for the entertainment. Which I did, and enjoyed myself thoroughly. Saw most of the CO\Nnvergence people I knew there, either working as contest staff or in the audience; talked briefly with qob, 433 and others in between breaks. I was pretty croggled by the contest - it required a depth of SF knowledge I definitely don't have, and I don't think my reflexes are good enough any more to get me through the Jeopardy round if a team had been relying on me. Well, maybe next year we'll see - apparently they had trouble scraping up eight teams for the competition.

Afterwards I tagged along to the Uptown Diner with petsnakereggie, moneygod, chebutykin, cajones,michaellee, frozendragon, weasel_king, and jklumpp as well as Kelvin; much SMOFfing ensued along with tasty food (hash browns a little underdone, but not intolerably so) and more Dr. Who information than you could shake a stick at, which gave me a chance to eat instead of talk. ^^ As a late-night option, the Uptown Diner is definitely worth choosing over Perkins or Denny's, fond as I am of the latter.

All this late-night fun meant that I didn't get home until almost 2 PM what with a stop for gas, which magically turned into 3 since it's that damn time of the year again, and once more I was awake and lost the time. Grrr. On the other hand, I did catch the Root of All Evil and even joined the Evil Club, pledging $6.66/month for the next 12 months and receiving a Helmet CD as a premium. Yay! On the gripping hand, I forgot to bring in my laundry bag and detergent in from the truck, not that it mattered since I rejected the early wakeup and slept through until 1330 or so. I do need to go out and pick up some medications, and will probably put off laundry until Tuesday since I do have clean shirts for work.

Finished Beowulf's Children Friday and Jack Vance's Galactic Effectuator yesterday.

So after all the lovely family drama earlier this week the ex calls me to find out what's going on, since the daughter will tell her nothing and her fiance won't even talk to her at all, and after about two minutes of largely wasted time she finally gets around to accusing me of poisoning the fiance's mind against her. Not only that, she throws in as a free bonus the accusation that he is influencing the daughter against her, and flings a little more (aged) poo on behalf of her new husband. So according to her this is basically All My Fault.

Ooookay. You believe whatever you want to, and I'll just stay over here where I don't have to deal with you on an ongoing basis. I'm sure we'll both be happier that way. Well, I will. I can't say I care much whether you are or not.

I tell people that the only thing amicable about my divorce was the lack of lawyers, which isn't how it began, but it's certainly the way it ended.

I tell people that I bent over backwards to avoid saying anything bad about my wife to the kids after she moved out, because I didn't want to play that game.
( Family drama follows )

Yeah, I don't believe in karma (which is a subject for an entirely different post) but it leaves me without the means to interpret what happened today...maybe a fortuitous tilting of the Luck Plane? Well, Praise "Bob", then, and pass the mid-March blizzards.

I slept in this morning and didn't get up until 9, which was bad since I'm supposed to be at work by 8:30, but it all worked out since by the time I hit the road around 10, most of the other drivers had already made it to work/decided to stay home/wound up in the ditch. Thus I cruised up 35W in low-lock at a respectable 40 mph and got to work by 1030. My annual review meeting ensued. While my supervisor had a few bones to pick with me about neatness, timeliness and excessive socializing with the Controller's secretary, the review was generally adequate and I walked off with a raise slightly over 3%. Yay!

After that, I checked with the college and sure enough, all classes had been cancelled. The poor secretary sounded like she'd anwered that question a few hundred times already by the time I called. Lunch followed that, and when I was done stuffing my face I pitched into the 40+ upload files that had accumulated since 4 PM Friday. It was a good thing I had help from the other two people in the section, who normally do GL research and miscellaneous clerical scutwork for the Bank Accounting side of the department, because about 1230 the controller decided to let everyone go at 3:30. This too worked to my advantage since my boss agreed to let me work until 5:30 instead to make up the lost time from this morning. Roll that in with the short lunch I took, and I'm out of here in ten minutes!

For your consideration today:
Ann Althouse and her commenters rip an article on gender stereotypes in the IT world;

Johnny Rotten explains why the Sex Pistols' touring days are over, and Tom Wolfe talks about W, literature, and the Zeitgeist, also via Althouse.

Cobb and Reverend Sensing have hung up the keyboard to attend to more important matters. I'm going to miss both of them, although One Hand Clapping slipped to my B-list of blogs a while ago due to the increasing number of breaks.

If the war is going so badly, why are recruiting and retention up? (Via Instapundit.)

Finally, the definitive illustration of why "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus".

Dealing with the tennis elbow has meant solving one awkward problem after another. Probably the easiest thing was switching my trackball at work to the left side of the keyboard so that I could use it left-handed; that's been a lot easier than I thought it would be since I've been using it "wrong" all along. Instead of resting my hand on it, I treat it more like a touchpad, using my fingers to twiddle the ball and tap the buttons, which is probably part of how I messed up that elbow tendon in the first place. Other things have been more difficult.

For example, it seems to me that the heavy doses of ibuprofen I've been taking are having a similar effect to the MSG/aspartame combo, except instead of making me spacy, I feel just as buzzed as if I'd had a couple of good beers (pre-diabetes) or a tall Budwesier (post-diabetes). This can't be good. I've caught myself drowsing a couple of times in the afternoon at work despite having loud & obnoxious bands like The Donnas on the headphones. Well, it's only for another week or so, and in the meantime I get ample opportunity to reflect on what it's like to be left-handed in a right-handed world.

I finally found my missing dollars, after working my way through the jungle of people who knew people who knew stuff about tracking down errant funds transfers. Turns out the person who normally does EFTs for the college's bank in Winona was out sick Friday and was told it had gone out when she came in today. Imagine how surprised she was when a disgruntled customer called up! She told she's working on it now and I'll have the cash tomorrow, but I remain skeptical. This is going to cost me over $100 in late fees and bounces, which I'm sure I'm not going to see any time soon, and worse yet this will be the second time I've been late with the rent. Just what I need.

3/7 UPDATE: Well, what do you know. It's finally here.
*grabs checkbook and starts writing checks*