November 2005 Archives

All the appropriate items have been written, signed, and faxed. All the appropriate phone calls have been made. Everyone who needs to know something knows it. The moving tomorrow should proceed according to plan (such as it is...).

I'm gonna offer Fly Girl's movers some cash and hopefully they'll come pick up some of my stuff. She doesn't have too much. I don't have too much. And I don't live too far out of the way. So the whole deal shouldn't take too long. Even if they just take my furniture and nothing else, that would be supremely helpful.

Oh please oh please oh please oh please oh pretty please Mr. Nice Movers. I beg of you. I should probably make sure I actually have some cash to give them.

23.5 hours from now, Fly Girl and I will both be signed and (mostly) moved.

But I need to decompress. Today was rotten.

I got a call yesterday afternoon from the manager in my apartment-building-to-be -- ten days (four business days) after I turned my application in -- saying that they can't approve my application because my current landlord hadn't received notice from me yet. We were trying to circumvent the jackhole and just have the subletter move in. So I called the jackhole and left him a message and didn't hear back from him.

First thing this morning the rental-company-to-be calls and says my landlord needs written notice so if I could just get that to him, we'd be all set.

Keep in mind I'm supposed to sign a lease at 7:30 a.m. tomorrow.

I call my jackhole landlord and he's ornery and retarded, as expected. He needs written notice from me, and also a written release from my roommates. I freak out and call Fly Girl. She talks me down. I draft a letter to my landlord, go back and forth on the phone with both roommates on the language, call jackhole a couple more times to make sure we both have the information that we need, and finally we've got the thing written and all three of us have signed it.

Go to fax it to the jackhole, and he's unreachable. His ghetto home office set up is not having our fax. In the mean time, jackhole has faxed me a rental application for the subletter. I drive to the subletter's work to drop off the application, all the while trying to call jackhole and getting a busy signal.

Finally got through to his house, let them know a fax was coming, and notify my roommate who is in possession of the fax. As far as I know the fax has been sent. (Maybe. I hope.) The rental-company-to-be knows that he should be getting the fax and hopefully has talked to him. (Maybe. I hope.)

Oh, and I skipped work today. Tomorrow hasn't even happened yet. Tomorrow is a delicate balance of lease-signing, coordinating movers, going back and forth between Minneapolis and St. Paul, and then after all that I need to finish moving my things. This is almost all before 1:00 p.m.

Christ, I'm not gonna sleep tonight.

Okay, back to packing.

I have not gone to bed yet. Therefore it's still Monday.

1. What is the most annoying ringtone you have ever heard? Anything resembling a video game.
2. What is the best Christmas or holiday CD ever? The Charlie Brown one.
3. Is there snow on the ground where you are? There was, and then it melted. And now the rain is slowly turning into snow. So, um, yes. Sort of.
4. Would you rather crap over a beehive in the woods or on the sidewalk in Manhattan? Don't people crap on the sidewalk in Manhattan all the time? I'll take my chances on the street. Performance art, whatnot.
5. What is in the perfect omelet? Potatoes, ham, cheddar, bacon. Or spinach and feta. That's not a very creative answer.
6. When do you consider it appropriate for a woman to use the clearly marked men's restroom in a restaurant, bar or other public space? Whenever the line for the men's is markedly shorter. Or in cases of emergency.
7. Do you use compact flourescent light bulbs? Uhh... I haven't bought a light bulb in a long time. Probably not.
8. Paper or plastic? Paper.
9. What career should my friend Janet consider after she has made enough money to escape the prison of student loans (she's currently an attorney)? Life coaching.
10. Ask me something. What's your opinion on guys who hang out on message boards geared towards women?

Someone at the Cool Running forums asked about goals for 2006. I'll probably wait until December or January to really work these out, but off the top of my head, I'm thinking:

• 2 half marathons
• 1 marathon
• a 5 mile race and a 10k (since I don't have official times for those distances)
• get some more structure around my low heart rate training

This is keeping me busy and stressing me out. I'm forseeing a packing all-nighter on Tuesday. You know, since I did nothing of the sort over the long weekend.

So likely not much around here until all that moving stuff is over and done with.

*deep breaths*

At Downtown Lad, via Lach:

My friend's father passed away about a month ago. He just found out that he inherited a large sum of money. However, the money is contingent upon my friend getting married to someone of the opposite sex.

My friend is gay.

I told Fly Girl I was getting out of work early on Wednesday. When I did leave at 7:45, I had a message from her on my voicemail telling me she had a surprise for me and that I should call her as soon as I got out of work. So I did, and she came on over. And she announced she was taking me to see Rent!

I've squealed every time I've seen mention of it, in previews or on tv or whatever. Wednesday night was opening night in the Twin Cities, so went and saw it at a blissfully uncrowded theater.

It was fantastic! I sniffled in a couple spots each time I saw the musical, but I cried through the whole second half of the movie (as did numerous other people in the theater). It was hard not to sing along. I think a fair number of people in the audience were teenage girl theater nerds who know every single word in the show.

And when you're one of those theater nerds, you have really high expectations for the movie adaptation of one of your favorite musicals. I thought the movie was very well done. AfterEllen loved it, too.

I have the soundtrack with the original cast, and it was trippy to hear all those exact same voices in the movie. (Out of seven main characters, only Joanne and Mimi were not in the original cast.) Hearing that so much of the original cast was returning was what got me excited about seeing the movie in the first place.

P.S. I did not moo at the screen.

So my big moment in the paper came and went. Here's the Pioneer Press article from last Sunday (you may have to bugmenot that).

Before we even met the reporter, we got a message from Sean Bonner (father of Metroblogging), about the conversation he'd already had with him. So I was wary going in.

It was very cool to meet the other Metrobloggers. As always with bloggers, it's interesting to put faces and voices and mannerisms with the names and personas. We should do that again sometime. But with food and drinks and without the press.

The interview itself was... enh. It kinda seemed like he was looking for some sort of juicy dirt. We mentioned some topics that have proven to be popular and polarizing, and he kept digging at that. Someone said later that it sounded like he had the story in mind already, and was fishing for quotes from us to fill in. I don't think the article conveyed the essence of Metroblog very well. But then, the article wasn't just about Metroblog.

Julio said he stumbled across Metroblog quite on accident, and that he'd had kind of a hard time finding blogs around town that fit the description of what he was looking for for the article. To which I say, for the tech/internet guy who's supposed to be plugged into the local scene, this guy has no idea what's going in the TC blogosphere. I could have named a number of blogs that devote a lot of attention to local issues (that aren't politics). Or at least pointed him towards a number of places where TC blogs are listed, but it sounds like he doesn't have time to actually click through them all to find out.

My favorite part of the whole interview was when I said that I wanted to write for Metroblog because most people that read my personal blog (that would be what you're reading right now) aren't from around here, so most folks don't get what I'm even talking about when I mention what I do around town. And Julio says to me.... heh heh... he says to me, "They're not from around here because.... they're your parents?"

Now, maybe it's just a reporter thing where they ask these kinds of questions just to be extra careful and clear. But that said to me that he doesn't really get how blogs work. People that read me aren't from here because with blogs, you just click around when you see links and comments and you stumble across these people and if you like what they have to say, you keep reading. Every time one of us mentioned a website, he'd ask where we found it, and we'd always say "I don't know, I just clicked through from another blog."

So yeah. That was it.

I'm too lazy to rewrite, so this is mostly what I already posted on Metroblog.

Sunday night I went to the Seward Cafe for a little benefit concert. A friendster of mine and some folks he knows were playing. One of the folks performing that night was Coleman Lindberg.

Coleman Lindberg is my new favorite person.

He's, by his own description, "folk/punk/popster." I like folksy popster, and I'm a big fan of the acoustic strummy stuff. More so than the plugged in rocking. So this right up my alley.

I heard it mentioned that he's got a myspace site, so I went home, looked it up, and downloaded some of the songs he's got available there. I have not been able to stop listening to them since Sunday. Lucky for me he played a show last night.

So if folk/punk/popster sounds like something you might be interested in, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Go directly here and here for streaming and downloads. My particular favorites are Crawling Home and Wounded Winter.

Seriously, Crawling Home will not let me sleep or work or do anything in peace.

Today is not gonna be your day
I would find another way
My heart beats for me alone
Bloody knees to concrete, crawling home

Watching him live is particularly fun because he's got these Flying Fingers of Fury. He doesn't use a guitar pick when he plays, so he's all fingers everywhere.

And he's a nice guy. I want to have his little gay music babies.

I'm thankful for...

... my girlfriend.
... my health.
... my friends.
... changes. Change is good.

New toy! New toy! New toy!

Sunshine Sinatra decided to upgrade from his iPod mini to a new 30GB iPod, so he's getting rid of the mini and the accessories. I scored his iTrip mini FM transmitter.

It works great in the car, but what I like best about it is using it at home with my stereo. The AV cable I was using to connect the mini to the stereo wasn't quite right and I couldn't get the full range of sound. But now it sounds fantastic.

Woo!

Maybe it's the short work week.
Maybe it's the pending move.
Maybe it's the newly discovered music.
Maybe it's the decent run I had today.
Maybe it's the fact that I'm not just making it this pay period.
Maybe it's the relatively low stress at work today.
Maybe it's the Reese's Miniature I'm about to have.
Maybe it's the out of the ordinary mid-afternoon chat I had with Fly Girl, in which she was also in a great mood.

On Monday! I'm so proud of myself.

1. What is your favorite Thanksgiving food? Turkey and stuffing with gravy. I would gladly forgo all the other stuff just to have this.
2. If you could impose a heavy luxury tax on any single item, what would it be? Hummers (the vehicles, not the sex act) (made for civilians, not the military).
3. What's the most interesting job you've ever had? The cereal-making job was the most interesting, even though I hated it.
4. Have you ever been on TV? I've been on local news a handful of times, most when I was a kid.
5. If you had a 5 year old daughter who wanted to be in a pageant, would you let her? Uh, no.
6. Would you rather have a constant itch, or a constant sore throat? Itch.
7. What's one TV show you simply cannot miss each week? Survivor.
8. When is the last time you went out dancing? Not too long ago. Definitely within the last couple of months.
9. Does hearing Christmas music before Thanksgiving annoy anyone else as much as it annoys me? HELL YES.
10. Ask me something. What's your new favorite thing?

Has anybody tried Silk Nog? The soy milk egg nog?

Dude, it's delicious. I think I like it better than regular egg nog. Haven't tried it with any "Xmas cheer" in it yet, though.

Actually, not so much the lease yet, but a rental agreement. I'm not sure why the intermediate step, but whatever.

Last we saw our heroine, she had just declined to sign a lease for which her application had been accepted.

And I cannot continue to tell this story in the third person.

Yeah, so what's actually going on is...

Apparently there was an episode of Trading Spouses (a show I have never watched) in which a devoutly Christian woman swapped with some folks who have some kind of pagan leanings.

And when the Christian woman returns home, she goes completely batshit (download the video from there).

I found that via Feministe, whose commenters think the lady is actually mentally ill. If she is mentally ill, that makes it a little less funny. In principle. But to me, it's still pretty funny. Until it gets scary and weird and uncomfortable.

Since Lach and Bayou and Dawn were all making suggestions....

• Sean Paul - We Be Ridin'
• Sidsel Endresen & Bugge Wesseltoft - Try (from the Prime soundtrack)
• Dario G - Sunchyme
• Kevin Lyttle & Alison Hinds - Turn Me On (Mad Hatters Ball Remix) (as obtained from Dawn)
• Black Eyed Peas & Sting - Union (still)

I've had this thing with my numb finger tips that comes and goes. I had an "episode" yesterday. At the moment, it's now happening to my big toe. I'm positive it's not because of the cold. My other foot is cold. It's not the same.

Trippy.

Last week:

1. What's your current favorite song? Union by Black Eyed Peas and Sting (originally obtained from Ms. Bayou).
2. Any interesting elections in your neck of the woods tomorrow? Where by "tomorrow" we mean "last Tuesday." The mayors of both Minneapolis and St. Paul. No surprise outcomes.
3. Would you rather lose the thumb on your dominant hand or lose your peripheral vision in your dominant eye? Peripheral vision. Those opposable thumbs are awfully useful.
4. How many active email accounts do you have? Five.
5. What is your favorite thing about the city/town in which you live? The trails and lakes.
6. Have you ever been in a long-distance relationship? Would you do it again? No, I haven't. And I wouldn't want to if I could avoid it. Like most people said in answer to this question, if I were in a relationship and one of us had to move, I'd try to make it work, but I wouldn't really want to enter into a long distance situation to start with.
7. Where do you get most of your news (paper, TV, internet, etc.)? Internet.
8. Do you regularly check your horoscope? No.
9. If you could, what's one thing you would change about me? I'd move you to somewhere you'd rather live.
10. Ask me something. What are you doing for Thanksgiving?

This week:

1. How do you like your eggs prepared? Scrambled with cheddar.
2. You see a spider sitting on your pillow as you start to fall asleep. What do you do? Probably sit up really fast and swat it away. Then make sure I find it and dispose of it or else I'll never get back to sleep.
3. If you were going to enter a sand sculpture contest on a beach, what would your sculpture be? Probably something square. I'm the kind of person that can't really freeform doodle. I draw cubes and connect dots instead of drawing pictures. So my sand sculpture will be something equally "structured." Or I might sculpt boobies.
4. Do you subscribe to any magazines? Which ones? Nope.
5. Do you have more male or female friends? I have a few more female friends than male friends, but most of my guy friends are not local.
6. When is the last time you stopped to smell the flowers? Literally? Or figuratively. I don't actually smell flowers much, but I think the last time I stopped to enjoy some floral scenery was on a bike ride this summer.
7. Are you usually early, late or on-time to events? I think I average on-time.
8. If you were guaranteed honest answers to three questions, who would you question and what would you ask? Ooh, this is a hard one. 1. I'd ask my mom how she really feels about me being gay and what I'm doing with my life in general. 2. I'd ask Condoleeza Rice wtf is up with the Bush administration. 3. I'd ask a certain friend why they consider me a friend.
9. You're in a room full of celebrities. Would you rather be the best-looking person in the room, or the smartest? The smartest.
10. Ask me a question. How's the running going?

If you're going through hell, keep going.

I met Fly Girl one year ago today.

:)

We had a record high of something like 63° last week.

We didn't get the 6-8" of snow they were predicting yesterday. But it is 20° and windy as all get out. And my dumb ass went out running in it.

Fuckin' winter. *kicks winter*

I may or may not be in the local paper this weekend. A reporter from the St. Paul Pioneer Press interviewed some of us Metrobloggers. I say "may or may not" because I didn't actually say that much relative to everyone else and who knows what's gonna make the cut.

I'll... uh.... reserve my thoughts on the interview experience until after the article runs.

It was cool meeting the other Metbloggers. As usual, with the blogging thing, it was interesting to see the people behind the websites. I think we should do it again some time. But with food and drinks.

I've decided I'm gonna train for the Frozen Half, but I haven't decided yet if I'm actually going to run it. I need to have something to work towards now, because I've been unsatisfied with the freewheeling (lack of) plan I've been on.

I ran with the Running Room Run Club for the first time on their Sunday morning run. Alena invited me along. It was fun. We ran with the fastest pace group. It was supposed to be a slow run, but since it wasn't very far, I did the faster pace. They run 10-and-1s (so you run for 10 minutes, then walk for one, repeat). I can't decide if I like that or not. I should have taken Sunday off since I ran long on Saturday, but, you know, what the hell. It was a social engagement. I might even have to do that again some time.

Weather's starting to get gross, so this week will be a test of my mettle. It was upper 30s, drippy, and super windy on Sunday. The tights, jacket, and long sleeves are working just fine, but the first five or ten minutes until you warm up are killer. We're supposed to get snow on Tuesday. Ugh. Ugh, I say!

...the best form of birth control is other people's children.

On my favorite radio morning show yesterday, they talked about the Chicago bakery that has posted a sign stating that "children of all ages have to behave and use their indoor voices when coming to A Taste of Heaven."

This guy pretty well sums up my feelings on the subject.

Listen: If your kid cannot behave in public and use an inside voice, you should not be taking the kid to small, cozy cafes. Period. If the parent does have such a kid who cannot behave and that parent wants to go to said cafe, it's called a babysitter.

Can I get an Amen?

(via srah)

I'm trying to decide if I like Rocketboom, so I've been catching up on the last month's worth of vlogs and came across this cartoon which I could not turn off.

It's not at all representative of what a typical Rocketboom vlog is like, in case you're wondering. But it's riveting in a really strange way. And I'm gonna have it in my head all damn day.

Bwaha! Bwahaha! *snerk*

(via Shawty)

I was a Senate mailroom worker.

I have tomorrow off. I don't have a whole lot planned. I have a whole list of things it would be nice if I could get done. The thing is, when I have a day of work off, it's so exciting to not be at work that I'm very energized. I'll probably get more done tomorrow than I normally would in a whole week or weekend. I hope.

My application for Option #3 was accepted. I had an appointment for this morning to sign the rental agreement and put down the deposit.

Except that some things have changed in the last 30 or so hours. So I'm not taking that apartment and I am back to searching with different criteria.

Tomorrow will be spent making a whole new stack of index cards and making a whole new slew of phone calls. I'm hoping the owners of Option #3 have something else that meets my new criteria, because I think they'd be great to rent from.

I'm not too worried about finding an available place for Dec 1, but it does stress me out that it's Nov 11 already.

I'll tell y'all what happened, but I'm not quite ready to go public with it yet. All in due time. In the mean time, I'd appreciate some happy apartment searching vibes.

I flipped on the tv, about to watch my tape of Commander in Chief* and Paul Anka is on Jimmy Kimmel doing this big band rendition of Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Shit, now he's doing Bon Jovi's It's My Life. Crazy.

*The show's website is like a fake political candidate blog. I can't tell if the comments are real or not. There aren't that many of them, so they must not be. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're fake.

Paint my face in your magazines
Make it look whiter than it seems
Paint me over with your dreams
Shove away my ethnicity
Burn every notion that I may have
a flame inside to fight
And say just what is on my mind
Without offending your might

Cuz this life is too short
to live it just for you
But when you feel so powerless
what are you gonna do
So say what you want

--Nelly Furtado

I could have written this....

A guy in the Cool Running forums posted saying that he got an incentive idea from a book he read. The general idea is to map yourself a route to travel from where you live to some dream destination of yours. Then as you run every day, mark off the miles on the map (or count 'em down, or whatever). If you have more cash flow than I, you may even sock away some funds to match your progress. Sounds like an awesome idea. Now I just have to pick where I'm going to run to.

Where would you run to?

Remember how I was dying for the weekend? The weekend done me some good.

Work was moderately less stressful on Friday. We had two really good days, followed by two really awful days. I know we won't be dealing with this shit again this week, so I'm not so much dreading going in.

I have the apartment situation under control to some degree. I'm submitting the application for Option #3 and crossing my fingers that it all works out. I'll have to do some talking with the owner. Hopefully we can work out a deal.

I had been slacking on running last week, but my 90 minutes today felt great.

And, most importantly, Fly Girl called me from San Francisco. I had been missing her and feeling somewhat disconnected because we just didn't catch each other last week except for the emergency flat-bike-tire situation. But we had a great conversation today about her trip and what I've been doing in her absence. Bonus: I'll get to see her, albeit briefly, tomorrow.

So being able to tell FG about all the other stuff just sort of tied it all together and made it all better. Icing on the cake.

I'm not quite ready to run into Monday screaming, "BRING IT ON, BITCHES!" Maybe on Thursday, since I have Friday off. In fact, if working weekends doesn't screw it all up, I won't have to work a full week for the rest of the year. Aaaaahhhhh.

You are Captain Janeway!

One of Starfleet's finest Captains, your style is unique in that you encapsulate the spirit of the Federation's highest ideals. Out in the Delta Quadrant, you came across more unknowns than any other officer in Starfleet. Your victories over the Borg Queen several times, as well as species 8472, have marked you as one of the most innovative Captains in Starfleet history. This is partly due to your ability to think "outside the box." Your crew will not only die for you, they will and have been to the ends of the Galaxy with you. Congratulations!

Which Starfleet Captain Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

(via Neil)

Food for thought: Kim Ficera at AfterEllen on Sheryl Swoopes' statement that she doesn't believe she was born gay.

Is a person who is born gay, but who doesn’t act on his homosexual urges, gay? According to a lot of homosexuals, the answer is yes — once gay, always gay. If you ask the religious right, the answer is no, at least not technically, because gay people can be led out of the sinful lifestyle by Christ.

Is a person who claims to have been born straight, but who chooses to behave in a gay way, gay? In my opinion, the answer is no, because gay behavior isn’t enough. In fact, that exact behavior is what I bitch a lot about in this column.

However, if that person behaves gay and eventually chooses to be gay — not just when drunk or entertaining straight men, for example, but as a way of life — then he or she is no longer just acting or behaving like a gay person, he or she is a gay person. Why? Because that person said so.

If an individual can’t declare himself gay, then who can?

And then:

By running from the “gay is a choice” idea, is the gay community doing itself a disservice? If we took the religious right’s number one argument away from them, would it not make us stronger while weakening their position?

Taking the position that we can’t choose to be gay is actually quite a negative one for us to hold, politically and personally, and it’s one that’s not forward thinking. While it affords us the opportunity to say, “God made us this way,” it also robs us of our integrity, a chance to own ourselves.

We’re all going to be sinful in the eyes of the religious right regardless of whether or not we’re born gay. If a gay gene is discovered, the religious right is not suddenly going to say, “Oh, okay, you’re born gay. We’ve been wrong all along. We’re very sorry.”

If we want to show the world that being gay isn’t a horrible thing, then let’s stop saying that we can’t help it.

That's a mighty fine distinction to be making, but it makes some sense. It sounds to me that when Kim says we ought to "choose to be gay" what she actually means is we should "choose to be out." There's a gradient of outness and we make decisions every day on just how out to be. What symbols to display, what personal details to disclose, etc. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard. You might think it's old hat, and then a situation will come up that will surprise and test you. But we do make a choice, one way or another, all the time.

So, I've tried to be somewhat organized and proactive on this thing. Which is not really my usual way of doing things.

I've been watching craigslist. I checked the paper. I've checked RENTNET and Rent.com. I made up an index card for each place that looked interesting. Marked all the pertinent information down (which in some cases is not very much info at all). Used a pink glitter pen ('cause it's the only non-black pen I had) to indicate whether I had called already, appointment times, and a big "X" if it didn't work out for whatever reason.

I've got 22 of these index cards. Of those 22 places, only nine people bothered to call me back. I've seen seven of those apartments. The eighth I already mentioned I make too much money to live in. The ninth I changed my mind on when they told me the actual price was much higher than what they listed in the ad.

Of the seven places I saw, there are three that I like. And I'm having a tough time choosing between the three.

You can create an account on craigslist now. All your postings will all be there together and you can save settings for publishing stuff.

Wheeeee!

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a warning about a new virulent strain of Sexually Transmitted Disease. The disease is contracted through dangerous and high-risk behavior.

The disease is called Gonorrhea Lectim and pronounced “gonna re-elect him.” Many victims contracted it in 2004, after having been screwed for the past four years. Cognitive characteristics of individuals infected include: anti-social personality disorders, delusions of grandeur with messianic overtones, extreme cognitive dissonance, inability to incorporate new information, pronounced xenophobia and paranoia, inability to accept responsibility for own actions, cowardice masked by misplaced bravado, uncontrolled facial smirking, ignorance of geography and history, tendencies towards evangelical theocracy, categorical all-or-nothing behavior.

Naturalists and epidemiologists are amazed at how this destructive disease originated only a few years ago from a bush found in Texas.

This warning brought to you by Dawn.

The Season 2 DVD went on sale last week.

Season 3 premiers January 8. (via AfterEllen)

• I wasn't really a big Sheryl Swoopes fan before, but I sure am now. I'm reminded of how much more interested I was in the WNBA as a whole (instead of just a couple teams) after the Olympics, because all the Olympic players play on different teams. I don't really care much for Houston, but they have Dawn Staley now, and three Olympians in Dawn, Tina Thompson, and Sheryl. I'm-a have to add the Comets to the list of teams I want to make sure I catch when they play the Lynx.
• Is there an iPod accessory that is both an FM transmitter and an FM receiver? I want the transmitter for listening in the car. I want the receiver so I can listen to the radio while I run (so I don't miss any of Kevyn and Colleen in the mornings). I think I'd have to get two separate attachments. Actually, I'm not even positive you can get a receiver. But I'm too lazy to look right now.
• Is college football still going on? Meh. Big Ten parity shmarity. Somebody just tell me if USC loses.
• You'd think it wouldn't be hard to find a Turkey Trot to participate in, but the closest one around here is, like, 30 miles away. I don't have any other plans for T-Day, though, so maybe it won't be such a big deal.
• Since I'm now a Lead Tablet Monkey, I get to have a wee bit of input into the other monkeys' reviews. I've never been in that position before.
• In honor of Open Enrollment, we had a health fair thingy at work. A rep from Seattle Sutton's Healthy Eating was there. I like this idea in principle, as I don't eat enough, I don't eat healthily, and I hate to cook. But the fact that they don't tell you on the website how much it costs leads me to believe I probably can't afford it, either.

I need this weekend so badly. The last two days of work have been ridiculously draining and supremely shitty and tomorrow looks to be about the same. As does the week after next when we run this same product again, but we get a bit of a reprieve next week and I've never been so glad to see artificial cherry flavor, which ordinarily I hate.

Fortunately, due to the fact that I have a week of vacation left that cannot be used during a holiday week, this should be my last full week of work for the rest of the year. Except, I think, for that week before Xmas. Although I heard there may be some working of weekends in the next couple of months. We haven't had any since the spring, which has been nice, since we worked weekends for the vast majority of the previous year. I could use the overtime, though. It'd be better than waiting for my raise to kick in in January.

Fly Girl's out of town as of tonight, which sucks. I haven't talked to her much this week. She's been super busy and I can hardly even get to the phone from work during the evening. I was lucky to get 45 minutes with her yesterday when she got a flat tire while out biking and called me to come pick her up. She's in the Bay Area visiting schools this weekend, so I probably won't talk to her this weekend and definitely won't see her until next weekend. It's bad enough not being able to see her very often, but it's even worse when I don't even get to talk to her. Email and random voicemails can only carry me so far. So, selfishly, I don't like that she's out of town, but I'm glad she's going. She's never even been to San Francisco! *gasp*

So I'm on my own this weekend and I'm supposed to be productive. We'll see about that.

I've looked at a couple apartments so far and will be seeing a few more this weekend. I'm totally ambivalent about this whole process. The idea of finding a place is fun, but the actual calling around and seeing places is less so. It's a little harder when there's only so much you can spend. There's actually plenty out there in the area I want to live in that's in my price range, but it ain't luxury livin', ya know?

People need to learn how to advertise. The newspaper sucks. I need more information than a neighborhood and a phone number. And fer chrissake, learn how to use craigslist, people. And if you are going to use craigslist, I expect more information than the 60 characters you are limited to in the newspaper. I'm appalled by the number of phone numbers I've called, when clearly the person I'm calling is the caretaker, and there's zero information (like a name, or the address of the building) in their recorded message.

One of the places I called must be getting some weird tax breaks, because the lady I talked to was telling me about all these IRS-imposed restrictions they have on their tenants. They won't accept any full-time-student households. Meaning somebody has to have a job. Which is fine. She made a point to tell me that having less-than-stellar credit isn't usually a big deal as long as your rental history is decent. Okay. But the one that really threw me is that there's an income ceiling. I make too much to live there. Great. Thanks for your time.

That's actually my biggest fear (besides picking the deposit from the money tree growing out of my ass). That my credit isn't good enough for me to qualify for a place on my own. It may be an unfounded fear, as my rental history is fine, but it worries me just the same.

Yes, let's work some overtime, please. My girlfriend will understand and my landlord will appreciate it.

On top of all that, I haven't been getting in the running and biking that I would like to. And I feel like such a slug. It's been a little warmer than normal around here and I haven't taken advantage of it. So not only am I not getting the exercise I'd like to be getting, I make it worse for myself by worrying about how I'm not going to acclimate to the cold well if I don't consistently get outside as it cools off.

Bleh. Bleh bleh. Bleh.

"Sex bomb."

I don't even like the song that much. I just like to say, "Sex bomb, sex bomb. You're a sex bomb."

Heh. Sex bomb.

Bomb is one of those words that the more you use it, the weirder it looks.

Sex bomb, sex bomb....

Today sucked. Actually, it was fine until I got to work. Work both sucked and blew.

Makes up for the great day we had yesterday. (Relatively speaking, of course. Work can only be so great.)

Fuckin' A, I'm tired.