Laughing All The Way

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Ode to Billy Joe

I AM having the time of my life.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Some of you will know this and some of you won’t

I know, donkey years since I’ve posted. There were some issues with the server on which my blog lives. To be exact:

“Dear customer,
Problem solved, there were a truckload of zombie processes, killed them off and you’re all set.
Thanks,
Scripting Specialist”

I had to wiki the phrase “zombie processes” and have learned the following:

“On Unix and Unix-like computer operating systems, a zombie process or defunct process is a process that has completed execution but still has an entry in the process table, this entry being still needed to allow the process that started the zombie process to read its exit status. The term zombie process derives from the common definition of zombie—an undead person. In the term’s colorful metaphor, the child process has died but has not yet been reaped.”

I don’t know exactly what this all means but I am inferring from what I’ve read that it wasn’t my fault and there are brain-eating demons messing with my blog. I just like the jaunty tone with which the tech informed me of the issue. If this guy was in the bay area I would totally want to hang out with him. I just feel like he would speak short fragments and we would be really efficient in our conversation. Also, we would use the word “dude” a lot.

Atizz sent me a WTF email. I think she was concerned that she killed another blog, but have no fear, I have not died. Merely lived in a blog-free purgatory for 18 days (but who’s counting?). Of course there were things that I thought I should blog, but I hate blogging about things that happened days ago. Over it already.

At work my co-worker who is still the reigning title holder of “most likely to be fired on Friday” is still going strong. She’s started to interview in other departments. We would LOOOOOVE for her to go, bad news is the interviews are “courtesy” interviews. I don’t think that they are really about courtesy because no one is really going to hire this woman. Though she has no idea about this. In conversation she’s stated that she wants to get back into management. I don’t know if she is really this clueless, but the people in charge of management in my company are the ones who foisted her onto my department. They had no other place for her and now she’s washing out as the “coordinator”. I quoted coordinator because I am pretty sure most office coordinators know how to send appointments in outlook, send registered mail, type, save documents, and send attachments. This is not an extensive list of all the things she cannot do, just the things that have come up in the last week or so.

Also at work I am coming to my one-year review. I had to complete my self-evaluation and turn that in to my boss. I think it’s kind of a joke that they make you write the thing and then use your own words against you. As a rule I never include anything to work on or needs improvement; I just write all of the things I’ve done and all the projects I’ve completed. I make my boss have to do the hard part about the whole needs improvement thing. I also get a kick about writing about myself in third person. “Some Girl has been a joy to work with. She is always willing to take on additional work that falls beyond the purview of her job description.” That’s right bitches, I said that.

See ya on the flip side.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Also

I know that something weird is going on with my comments, like sometimes you click on the link and it never loads and when you do get to the page, the background cream color is missing. Can’t believe how long I’ve work on that template and still something is wrong, I am sure a tag is hanging open somewhere making my template very, very sullen.

Who knows? No really, does anyone have a clue as to what is going on? Let me know, otherwise, sorry for the weirdness. I clearly have no control over this.

That is all.

A Matter of Fact and Law

I have a co-worker who is fairly new to my department, but a long time employee of my organization. She is also my current nomination for the person most likely to get fired. I say this, not because I dislike her, which I do, for let us be honest here, she’s bat shit crazy, but because she has taken to giving the art work on the walls away to other people who work for our company. I KNOW.

There is bat shit crazy, and then there is this lady. I am not entirely sure what she was thinking, but funnily enough, she tried to give the art away to someone else and our director explained that she couldn’t do this as it was illegal to give away company property (like this is something that needs to be expressed out loud in actual words). As my co-worker proceeded to go ahead and give the art to yet another co-worker our director is now in a really awkward position. I don’t know how things are going to turn out, but I expect that firing Friday* will make a showing in my department.

*HR is located off-site except for Fridays when they sit in the same hallway in which I work. On Friday afternoons there is the stream of managers and employees: two go in, one comes out. It’s always interesting to see the reactions.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Magically Delish!

I caught this show called: Ashley Paige: Bikini or Bust” and I think I have a new favorite show. The main character is of no importance, it’s her mom who makes the whole thing worth while. In an attempt to find her daughter a boyfriend, the woman goes to the hardware store. Her thinking was the hardware store “cause it’s usually full of men.” She then approaches endless men in the store making small talk and sounding generally crazy. But, god bless the mother’s of the men in this hardware store, because without an exception, every single one of them was appropriately “interested” in the conversation this lady was insisting on having with them.

The best part was when she interviewed to the camera as she’s walking around the corner, away from the camera, in the hardware store: “Goodness gracious, this place is so full of people, this is the perfect place to find a man.” The brilliance of this part is that she wasn’t really talking to the camera, she was crazy-lady talking to herself, it was just happenstance that the camera was there to catch this outing.

I have a soft spot for these types of people. My grandmother is known to have conversations with the random passerby and she does insist on speaking to herself at a loud-ish tone, to the point that strangers sometimes thinks she’s yelling at them.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

What I did on my summer vacation: by Some Girl

Bruce, the thoughtful bugger, called me yesterday while I was picking up dinner. We had a quick rendezvous at the gas station (so romantic, cost more than a gourmet dinner too, fuckers) and I went to pick up food and he went home. In the ten minutes that I was at the restaurant Bruce called to tell me that I had a message on the answering machine and that the fish were still alive. The fish are living in a condition that no mere mortal fish would survive. Bruce and I returned from Boston from our yearly summer vacation. The fourth of July in Boston is a good time. I managed to see almost everyone that I like to see once a year. Technically I would like to see everyone more often but those bitched won’t come here. Hurry up bitches, come here!

Because here is suddenly more awesome.

Two days before we left for Boston, I moved out of my apartment with Bruce and into my own place in San Francisco. I may have picked the worst time in the world to make a move what with vacation coming, plus I had a certification exam at work that required 8 hours a day of studying for the two weeks leading up to the exam. I may have experienced a minor mental breakdown on my first day of vacation. I then read four books in five days, got a wicked tan, ate some lobster, and did some drinking.

As always, getting back to real life was the sadness; both Bruce and I were shooting looks of longing at the receding Boston shoreline and then bounced right back into life. I now have the pleasure of spending the next two weeks moving the remaining objects up to the city. I am going to address the important things first. For instance, right now the only edible objects in my apartment are containers of powdered iced-tea. Not surprisingly the only thing in my refrigerator is a pitcher of iced-tea. My furniture is getting delivered, very slowly, by freight companies across the bay area. I figure at this rate, I will have a hard surface for writing by 2009.

Work has decided to calm down, very nicely of it, if I do say so myself, and with any luck Bruce will minimize the phone calls about phone calls. Which is probably best because I still haven’t figured out how to work the phone in my apartment.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Pinball Widget

I am back suckas! I am done with my spring cleaning and enjoying the site of the new design. I am now going to commence sleeping.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Wicked

I keep planning on writing my blog posts at work and then send them to my email to post later. My plan includes going to work, getting a coffee, and sitting down to inform everyone of all the things that make me giggle. And yet work seems to be interfering with my blog posting opportunities. I mean to tell you all about my new coworker who has some sort of neurological disorder. Of course I mean this in the nicest of ways. It’s just that she’s a little off in both the ways she interacts and her social sensibilities. Like, for instance, she told my department about how she found her most recent colonoscopy to be no big deal. After all, “you get undressed, you get some drugs, you wake up, you never even know anyone did anything to you.” Now, if I were in any other place I would have had no choice but to say: “Sounds like an average Friday night,” but because I was at work, all I did was nod knowingly and made a note to see if she was carrying anything good in her purse.

Needless to say having this particular new employee hasn’t diminished the amount of work that I need to do. In fact, I believe my work load has increased since she arrived. I think that this is just a situation that will go on for a while, but Bruce believes that new coworker is going to be fired soon. He has faith in my boss. I don’t know. In healthcare people don’t get fired even when people die.

Besides new coworker I have to contend with a certification exam I am taking in a few weeks. My work day between now and then is consumed with studying like a mad woman. I can’t remember the last test I took that stressed me out this much. my coworkers who have taken different levels of this certification test have all failed at least once, and one particular person failed 5 times. This is not a good sign. I am just going to be heads-down studying these few weeks with the hope of being better than excellent. Of course on top of studying I am moving.

I finally found the place of my dreams in the city. Bruce doesn’t want to move with me so I am going to go on my own. He’s seemingly okay with this. I think he’s looking forward to going back to some of his bachelor ways: not changing the sheets for months on end, leaving his socks on the floor, eating canned food cold. Yes, I believe Bruce will enjoy life without me for some time. I move two days after my test date so that’s awesome. Plenty of time to set up utilities and furniture. Awesome. Oh, and three days after I move I am heading back to Boston for the July 4 week. Double awesome.

Double wicked awesome.

That’s it for now. Check back later for hilarity about my life.

Monday, June 09, 2008

Things My Boyfriend Says

Me: “We have to go to dinner. Let’s get ready.”
Bruce: “Ready.”
Me: “Don’t suppose you’re going to do anything about your hair?
Bruce: “?”
Me: “Your hair appears to be standing on end in the back.”
Bruce: “Sooooo?”
Me: “Take your shirt off, t-shirt too.”
Bruce: “Um, okay?”
Me: “Put your head in the sink.”
Bruce: (with his head in the sink) “What is going on here?”
Me: (Turning on the water) “Less talking, more washing.”
Bruce: “Don’t waterboard me Dick Cheney!”

Thursday, April 24, 2008

To tell the truth

There seems to be a thing where the spam bots are getting smarter and leaving both comments and track backs. I’ve started disabling the track back ability on all my posts. And when the insanity gets to me, I disable the comments. It’s not that I don’t want the comments. There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to why certain posts attract so much attention from fake bloggers, but they do.

So, if I’ve turned off comments on a post it’s not because I don’t want to hear what you’ve got to say. Feel free to comment away on other posts.

I am now going to go lay down and try to sleep, I’ve got a hell of a day left to this week, and I promise at the end of it all I will share with you the story of what happens when seven strangers live in a house…no wait, that’s the wrong intro…what happens with 8 members of my family descend on Seattle to visit my mom and her current husband.

People really do stop being polite.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

sated and satire

Soooooooooooooooo

I went to Texas a few weeks ago. What, you expect prompt updates? Please bitches. The mood had yet to strike.

Texas was fun. I hung out with 19 year-olds with fake ids. No really, that was fun. I must have been a little bit like those kids back in the days of my illegal drunkitude. I also hung out with 30-somethings with real ids. That was also fun. Mostly because we found the most excellent bar eva that served food late and played music that made me happy. (Oh yeah, hanging out with 19 year-olds meant that I knew one song throughout the whole night.) But really the best part of the whole weekend, and there were many wicked moments over the length of the weekend, was the moment at brunch when the band started to play. The sign on the door said Gospel music and my friend and I were expecting the very best baptist choir that Texas had to offer. Imagine our surprise at the blue-grass gospel that accompanied our brunch.

The one thing that Sunday brunch with blue-grass gospel made me realize (no, not that I am a sinner and that Jesus will walk me home, although that is what the lead singer would have me believe) was that I really miss living in the city. A point driven home when my friend and I had a few hours to waste and decided to catch a movie. The movie was hilarious but the theater was a gem. The served more than your usual popcorn and sour patch kids, they brought us a huge bowl of popcorn, warm cookies and ice cream. Also, if the mood should strike, a burger and a beer. Have no fear, my friend made sure to avail herself of the beer.

The need to move back to a city is hampered by a number of factors, like the car I just leased and my job that is squarely located in the suburbs. But in the end, I’ve told Bruce that it’s really a matter of my happiness and sanity, so I am going to have start looking for a place in the city. Of course this is a tall order because I need somewhere affordable (dang car payment), a secure place to park my car (no street parking for my dang car), and place that is one of three specific neighborhoods that are located next to the highway that would take me straight to my job. I know that finding the right place will take time, and that’s cool, but I would like to be there in the next few months.

Bruce keeps voicing his dislike for the idea of living in the city, and that’s cool. This is not the swan song for Bruce and Some Girl. I am just making the best of a situation and finding my way into living the best life I can in a place where I haven’t really found my footing. The only way I will ever make new friends is if I move. I can’t force Bruce to leave the suburbs but I can make the best decision for my life and that is moving to the city.

The decision was easy to make, now all I have to do is find a place that meets my requirements, and of course that’s always the hard part.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Eastered

So The Great White Way was fine and for my first business trip ever, was mostly easy. There was a missed flight due to no fault of my own but other than that, I survived being a grown-up. Then my second conference was okay as well. My co-workers are doing their best to make my job as difficult as possible and make really unreasonable suggestions in how they want our research data to be presented. But it’s cool because I made it entirely clear that I wasn’t doing the presentation so if someone in the audience had a question the presenter would be on their own to explain things. I think that they will come to the belief that the data should be shown in as simple way as possible.

The way that this last week went, next week is going to be a beast. The week after I head to super northern California for yet another conference. As much as I like a job that sends me to interesting place, I am almost burned out on this. I always thought I would love being a consultant and travel weekly to a customer site, and maybe I would if it were consistent, but this traveling for a day to be somewhere for a day to spend another day traveling home stuff kind of sucks.

The flip side is that the job itself is going really well. I tend not to write too much about the job but not because funny things don’t happen there, it’s just a different atmosphere than my last job so the “funny things” are much more contextual. Like the last funny thing was that I made the menopausal admin feel bad. See, without a huge contextual story that is totally not funny. And when I say funny, I mean not funny for her. And I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong the day I walked into the reception area of my office and asked if anyone else smelled that odor. (I described it as that smell of old lettuce. Like when you get a sandwich and eat only half and then eat the other half in a few days. The lettuce wilts and gets a very distinct taste. That taste was what I smelled). After spending about three minutes sniffing the air, the admin (aforementioned menopausal admin) said she couldn’t smell it, but she had just eaten her sandwich in the conference room but that it was a freshly made sandwich. Come to two days later when the analyst who sits next to the admin told me that apparently as a side affect of menopause our admin is secreting an odor out of her skin and two days before my odor sniffing adventure the other analyst and our boss had a similar conversation wherein the our boss who can’t smell because of a cold asked the analyst to sniff her (perfectly acceptable in our office) to confirm or deny that our boss was the source of the smell. When the analyst said that our boss was in the clear, the admin asked if it was her. The analyst innocently leaned in to sniff the admin and drew back quickly and was like: “um, kind of.” Unfortunately the way she drew back was more in line with the way people pull back when they open a container of rotten food, you know, all dramatic like. So you can now imagine how unfortunate my whole, “Do you smell that?” thing was.

So I call that funny, because when I was telling Bruce the whole thing from start to finish, the only thing I could do was laugh. I mean the whole thing was really unfortunate. And I totally feel bad knowing what I know now, because our admin is a nice person and is just doing her job.

Speaking of Bruce, who does not entirely find all my work stories as funny as I do, but totally thought the “Do you smell that” story was funny, he’s doing well enough. He’s got some weird pain things going on right now because of a tetanus shot he got on Friday. You see after the whole episode that meant I had to bring him to the hospital I made him get a complete physical (hence the tetanus shot). It turns out that the diet we’re on because Bruce felt fat has worked wonders on him, Bruce is now 5 pounds above his ideal weight. I wondered where I was at in the scheme of things and was rudely informed that I am not just overweight, I am technically considered obese. Damn, that is not good. Bruce seems even more motivated than ever, because those 5 pounds are totally weighing him down (seriously, why is he like this?) and wants to join a swish gym. I’m all in, because unless you’ve forgotten, I am technically obese.

Other than all that, things are so normal. I’ve taken to dropping the word marriage into every third conversation, least he forgets what I’m looking for here. Just yesterday we went to lunch with his sister and I told her that if Bruce didn’t propose in a timely manner I would move into a certain neighborhood in San Francisco. Bruce just rolled his eyes because he’s become use to my tactics of mentioning the fact that he hasn’t proposed marriage yet. His sister laughed but I am sure she will now apply gentle pressure to Bruce, mostly by telling her parents to pressure Bruce to propose. We’ll see what happens today at Easter lunch with his family.

And one final point: who finds Flavor Flav attractive? No really stop it VH-1.

Friday, March 07, 2008

Untitled

Things are going very well these days. Work has normalized. People who know I started work only 5 months ago would swear that I have been working there for years. That’s nice for several reasons, first because that means I really am the quick learner I said I was in all my interviews and second because it means that I am fitting in nicely. So nicely that I set up a drinks night with a bunch of the women in the office. Everyone responded by saying it was about time that we have a drinks night, but no one ever set anything up, so it was sort of well attended, and of course there are the promises of those who couldn’t attend. So next time there should be twice as much drunken dips as there was this week.

Also next time I am going to make Bruce do all the driving. Staying sober to drive home is stupid. Who was the loser that came up with that law?

Next week I am on a business trip to East Buttfuck, Very Cold Place, USA. I get back for about 8 hours and then I have to go to a conference in Farm Land, Very Warm Place, USA. Lots of travel and I guess it’s what I am suppose to want for my career, but if I could go somewhere awesome like LA or London, that would be way better.

Oh yeah, I finally got my car. Every time someone parks next to me I get mad and I already stared down my parking neighbor in my complex. It turns out that owning a car enhances the crazy. Wheeee!

Friday, February 29, 2008

Check it

I think Paris Hilton is a lesbian.

I’ve been thinking this for awhile and for those of you who know me and, well for those of you who don’t, I have a spot on gaydar. For the past year whenever I see pictures of her out and mostly off-guard, my gaydar is pinging. And then the more I consider things, the pinging turns into a full fledged air horn.

I mean that sex video with her dead eyes as she’s on all fours. Dude, that is someone who is totally removed from the experience. And sure, maybe she was just stupidly high, but there’s more. The pictures of her kissing her various female friends while seemingly innocuous, after all, all the kids are doing it, also remind me of a friend I had in high school. This friend would like to make out with girls and laugh it off as something she did to mess with the guys. This friend now has a myspace page talking about her great lesbian life.

I just bet that in forty years, thirty-nine years after she dies some tragic Hollywood death (what?) some tell all book will come out and people will be all: “Paris, yeah, she was a big ol’ lezzer. She liked the ladies, but hey, it was hard for her to be open and all. So she hid the truth and drank herself to death.”

Thursday, February 28, 2008

The one where I get all religious

So I now understand why people view buying a car as a painful task that one does only when needed. I get why my mom drove her cars into the ground rather than buying a new car every five years. Seriously, car salesmen are a breed unto themselves.

On that note, my new car should be here by Friday. I am so ready for this whole thing to be over, and this thing, as far as I can understand it, has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the car dealership in Reno that was pissed off with the car dealership in Oakland so Reno was refusing to trade cars with Oakland in order for me to get the car that I wanted.

Note to self: issue a fatwah on Reno

Beyond that, well Bruce is much better. He is his normal smiling, bouncy self. I’ve made him schedule an appointment with a doctor at my clinic because it’s been at least 2 years since he saw anyone for something that was not acute. The doctor of my choice has agreed to see Bruce and will in fact expedite the appointment so Bruce will only 3 weeks instead of 6. Yes, my friends, that’s right, I have connections. Too bad my connections don’t also supply Valium. Okay, my connections are kind of lame, whatever.

On the diet front, even though Bruce had a case of uncontrollable spasms, we’ve stuck with the diet and I am a full size smaller. That is the good. The bad is that I now have to go shopping for clothes that fit. I am not at a place where I want to stop loosing weight so I don’t want to invest too much in new clothes but my shirts are way too big and my pants are like clown pants. I think everyone knows what this means: shopping spree at Target! I suspect that $150 will get me two pairs of pants, three button-down shirts and a sweater. This is the greatness of Target. The only danger is if I wander into the health and beauty section. Then I will leave with $300 worth of hair care products and no new clothes.

And now there is news about work. I’ve finally corralled people into admitting that they too drink booze. I’ve organized a night out with a group of women. The email reads as follows: “For those new to this email chain, your names were sent to me by those who care about your liver’s ability to correctly process alcohol. We are running a test of such measure on Thursday March 6 at 4:59 PM at XXXXXX on XXXXXX Street.” This should be the most fun I’ve had in a minute. Also, I intuit that this night will show who can hang and who will go home early. Yay pitchers of Margaritas.

The other news work is that I saved myself by not being totally snarky for once. I sent an email to a doctor about an issue with a report and by proxy the data from the report. Luckily in the email I mentioned twice that the person who wrote the report has already verified the report in several ways and when we run it in a controlled environment the data is correct. The doctor decided that the best way to handle the issue was to send the person who wrote the report an email chain that originated with my email. I swear, if it weren’t for the blessed baby Jesus I would have written something super snarky and the tech who wrote the report in the first place would spend the rest of her time here figuring out how to cut me. Into tiny piece. And then feed me to Piranhas. No really.

I feel like there was something about the whole set up the last time I found this error that made me think that I would get burned if I weren’t careful. The other part of this is that a bunch of people who matter were cc’ed about this problem and at least all I look like is the inquisitive analyst to a bunch of people who matter. Also, if that tech had just listened to me ages ago when I pointed out the error in the data, instead of talking to me like I am some dumb girl who can’t understand SQL, well then maybe all of this could have been avoided. So you can see why I might have been tempted to write something snarky.

And to round out the big three…um Mazel Tov.

That’s all