I’m in a really really really really really bad mood and I’d be willing to, at the very least, to beat someone up for a candy bar.
But it has to be chocolate type candy bar. Yesterday, I ate far too many Sour Skittles and ended up with tummy ache.

You know, not a lot of interesting things happened last week. We had a retirement party for someone on Friday. That was nice. There was a funny bit of video done for it, but I did not appear in it. By design. The fact that I did not appear in it, did not detract from it’s amusing nature one whit. I did not work closely with her, so I stayed out of it. But I didn’t have any of the chocolate cake or alcohol. I think we should just be proud of me for not attending the end of the day party in my normal manner. Which is to say, when we have afternoon parties around here, which we often do, I like to attend them from my car. On my way home. In spirit.
So I did a lot of day dreaming this weekend. A gave a good amount of time and energy to it. I think I have a certain knack for it. I’ve always lived a large portion of my life in my head, I think. Unfortunately, it wasn’t terribly useful dreaming. That is to say, it wasn’t like I came out of the day dreaming with fabulous stories to write and share with people. It was that sort of “if my life were better it would be like THIS” day dreaming. It usually involves a considerable loss of weight, an increase in income, and the appearance of one, or two, of my favorite characters from different books. Oh, and my apartment is cleaner. And much larger, and in a much cooler location. With a washer and dryer IN the apartment. But still with a my own covered parking spot. Sometimes, it’s a house!

On Wonkette, I read a letter from a former editor/reporter of the Washington Post, expressing his sympathy to the paper, on their loss of the suddenly beloved Ronald Regan. I like it, because it expressed the surprise I feel over the current exaltation he’s enjoyed, since he died. I mean… putting him on money? That’s kinda fitting, I suppose, since it was the focus for his presidency. As opposed to … ummm… people. Like.. citizens of the country he was leading. Remember them? Anyway, read the letter. It’s witty, in a dry way.
The other day, one of the super rad admins in my department rode up the elevator with me. She said, “This is going to sound weird, I know we don’t know each other that well…. but I have a present for you.” Presents are always acceptable, to me. She had not brought the present with her, however, so I had to wait a couple of days. Mary is one of the knitters at my company. They gather in the sunny corner of the second floor around lunchtime, and knit all sorts of things. She also likes to incorporate beads in her stuff. She makes these beautiful wrist cuffs she wears in the winter. She made me a pair of wonder woman wrist cuffs with beaded stars!!! We’d talked about the idea a long time ago, when I was hanging out in the corner reading. And she figured I should have a pair. She’s made some for her friends. They are sooooo awesome!! Now I can deflect bullets! When people shoot at me! Which they often do, you know. I absolutely LOVE these wrist cuffs.

Ok, show of hands… how many of you walk up to your front door and point your car lock remote at it, hitting the button a couple of times, before you realize what you are doing. And why the door is still locked.
I just cannot believe that I’m the only who does this.

We had a terrific thunderstorm here last night. In my parking lot, I swear to god. It didn’t start out that way. For most of the evening, I could see some impressive lightening off in the distance. I couldn’t hear the thunder tho, over the noise of my fans. You see, it got up to 85 degrees here yesterday. That’s very warm for us. Too fucking warm, in my opinion. It’s supposed to get that hot today, as well. Very few homes, in the greater Seattle-Tacoma area, have air conditioning. And living on the top floor of the building with windows all on one side, no possible cross breeze, I had several fans turned on. But I digress. Not long after I went to bed, some time after midnight, I started to hear the thunder. Eventually, the thunder and lightening came to visit me in my parking lot. The lightening had been impressive all evening, big and bright and clear. But the thunder! There was no way you could sleep through that. It was so loud, it was like explosions. Things shook in the wake of it! Luckily, Pru didn’t freak out. Until it got very very close, she was sitting in the bedroom window sill, watching. With her mighty hunter face on.
We don’t get many thunderstorms here. It’s usually not hot and humid enough for them. I had total flashbacks to living in Oklahoma. Standing outside and watching storms moving through the distance. Watching tornados move through the distance. Tornados pretty much suck, if they are coming at you, but if they pass you by, they are pretty interesting to watch. I think the flash floods scared me more. Only once, while living in Tulsa, was a storm bad enough, the tornado close enough, to cause me any real worry. My parents were out that evening, and they actually got caught and had to pull over and take shelter in a hotel lobby. The road was closed due to flash flood, and it was too dangerous to continue driving until the storm passed. I was home alone. My mom stood in line, at the pay phone, called to check on me, and then would just get back in the long line again. It’s the only time I’ve ever chased down the dog and cat, and put them in the central bathroom, so I wouldn’t have to chase them down when the tornado came to get us. I had a flashlight in there, and a radio with batteries. Eventually, i just moved into the bathroom, with the phone, just in case.
As you can tell, we survived. So did the house. It didn’t actually touch us. Bunker and Magnum [dog and cat, respectively] were good company, sitting in the bathtub with me. Leaning on me, reassuringly. Everything turned out fine, and here I am. You know, there is some kind of law in Oklahoma, that new houses need to be made up of a certain percentage of brick. It was pretty bizarre looking to me, at first, moving there. After living in the pacific northwest. But I imagine they have good reason.

The training I’ve been attending this week is a Technical writing class. The University of Washington has a Tech Writing certification program. Many people in my dept have gone through the program, and they all say the very best part, the thing that made it all worth it, was a grammar class taught by particular professor. So we decided that we should have her come in, and teach just a few pared down classes, because maybe our skills could be sharpened. Or something like that. So, usually, when we are in some kind of training, it feels exactly like that – Professional Training. Taught by “trainers.” There’s a difference between trainers and teachers. This class feels like school, and Jan is a teacher… a professor. And I am enjoying the heck out of it. We started with ways to organize technical data. Because we have to write a lot of tech emails to non-tech people now, we knew we could use some help with that. Now we are into style, then we’ll do grammar. And it’s so much fun, I can’t tell you. I must be a geek, but I am am so enjoying the language play. And we were talking about clauses on Wednesday. Independent clauses!! When’s the last time you even considered splitting infinitives? The best part was… I found out… it’s ok to end a sentence with a preposition!! All modern grammar books say so. The old grammar rules were based on latin, I guess. And they are all crap! That’s the other thing, I can start sentences with AND if I want to. Not like I wasn’t already. The problem is, people still hang on to the rules, so if you do end your sentences with a preposition, they might think you are a little challenged, grammatically. But who cares? Silly grammatical dinosaurs with their archaic rules.
I feel so free now.

I don’t watch the Simpsons. I’ve probably mentioned that before. I am in the minority. I’ve seen it. At times it was funny. But I’ve never found it to even remotely live up to the hype. It’s not that I don’t like satirical animation. I love South Park. But with the Simpsons… I just don’t get it. People refuse to believe me. Dr. Stevil just bought the latest release on DVD. He and Lloyd are reviewing the episode titles and reminiscing.
“Jodi… don’t you want to skip training class and watch the Simpsons instead?”
“What? No! I do not.”
“Oh… you do too… you know you do.”
“Ummmm…. let me think. Maybe you’re right. Hang on… NOPE!! I don’t.”
You know what else? I did not like Seinfeld. There. I said it. I didn’t watch it, I found it extremely annoying, and if I saw Kramer on the street, I would run up and punch him. Luckily for both of us, he’s a character and not a real person.
Last night was great. I forgot to pay my power again. I swear to god I did. I thought I paid it on the phone. But I guess that was the phone bill? I don’t know. I’m such a phenomenal idiot. So I get home, and the power is off and it’s too late to do anything about it. It was about 8pm, and I would have to wait until today to get it back on. Great. Luckily, we are coming up upon the longest day of the year. Who needs power? You can read by window light until after 9pm! Try it! It’s fun. It was also to my benefit that I woke up so early yesterday morning. Because when the light faded, I was tired enough to crawl into bed with my iPod and fall asleep. However, I woke up at 1:45 this morning and never went back to sleep. It was PAINFUL, I tell you. I couldn’t read or use the computer to play shanghai or watch tivo, or any of the movies I have from Netflix. I tried for hours to go back to sleep. I was ready to go to work at 3:30, but I waited and came in at 6:30. They like you to at least work a shift that spans 9am to 3pm.
Sleep is for sissies. So is electricity. I tell you these wonderful stories about my loss of power, financial woes, and the ever popular REPOSSESSING OF MY CAR [still traumatizes me to this day] so that you will feel better about yourselves. No matter how much you think you fuck up, you could not possibly be such a mess. I do this for you, my internet friends.
Don’t say I never did anything for you.

I got this quiz from loon. I thought it was an important thing to know about myself so I took it. And now you can too!

Your comic relief saved you. You were probably
the hero’s best friend and messed up a lot, but
helped him in some major way, believing in
yourself, near the end. As the sympathetic
character, you live.