i did four loads of laundry and that’s not even the tip of the iceberg baby. that’s just all the darks. minus any black. the blacks warrant a load or two all their own. yes, i have not done significant laundry in a while. plus, i have a lot of sheets. i have a slight bedding addiction.
since i found the cord to my digital camera, here are two pictures from the conveyor belt sushi place. click image to enlarge:

evildeb’s pile of sushi plates. the colors represent the different prices. which were listed on the wall. that’s evildeb’s evil hand with the chopsticks.

sushi going ’round and ’round and nobody eating it until it gets bad and poisonous. but that’s just my concern. i have no proof.

so high tea? ROCKS!! everyone go out and have high tea right now. i’ve discovered i like tea. good tea. with milk. i’d never had tea with milk. well, except for oregon chai. which is pretty damn good stuff. in of itself. but i had a chai tea brewed loose, with milk. and wee bit of sugar. so good. i had lots of it. lots and lots and lots. pots and pots. and little chicken salad sandwiches with no crusts. and tiny lemon tarts. and chocolate cake. and scones. and sorbet. and shortbread. and fresh fruit. so much little food. and soooo much lovely caffeine. delightful. i even had my own little bowl of real whipped cream. and butter. we decided that the ladies’ high tea club is going to have to meet quarterly. on bonus paycheck day. should we warrant our bonuses that quarter.
this weekend is northwest bookfest and fee and ellie… you will be jealous. big scrabble to-do. you get to challenge a seattle scrabble club champion… or something. whoo-eeee… scrabble. anyway, i might try to hit it on saturday.
we had a big storm last night, wind and rain. lots of flooding and fallen trees guess a lot people lost power, but i did not. and one guy died, stepping on a downed power line. he thought it was a flare and asked his friend to stop the van, he got out to stomp on it, put it out, and died instantly. probably not a bad way to die, except that it’s very sad he died in the first place. his poor friend must have freaked.
that’s all i have today. i’ve got a huge headache. i’d really like someone to cut off my head please. i was hoping lots and lots of caffeine would help. sadly, no. but it did give me the jitters. which is fun.

i’m sort of annoyed. bored, in a way. i have not seen anything interesting in many days. no impatient senior citizens, pushing people into crosswalks, no screaming insane men, spraying the inside of garment bags and yelling at people, nobody walking down the street in a planet of the apes mask. i haven’t even had to admonish any fellow consumers, who were being unnecessarily rude to retail clerks. and that’s my favorite hobby! i had to nearly swallow a bug, just to liven things up! sad. the satus quo is boring.
i’m going to lunch with my fellow teammates. we are going to some new sushi place that has food going around on a conveyor belt. you take what you want. thing is, i don’t want anything, because i don’t like sushi. i’m hoping for some teriyaki. there’d better be some teriyaki, or i am going to pout. or, i’m just going to start messing with things, as they go by!! yeah, that’s what i’ll do. i will touch each and every piece of sushi that moves past me. i’ll let you know how it goes.
oh, but this is cute. on friday, the ladies of the dept are having the first official High Teas and Tiaras outing. we are going to the queen mary’s tea room. the reason for the tiara part? they give you tiaras to wear. like i don’t do THAT everyday. this whole idea was evildeb’s. she is a cruise director. when she left my team for a while, i really missed that. and i had to start doing it. but she’s back. so i can relax. anyway, we’ve actually found numerous places to have high tea, including a scottish place nearby. so we are hoping to make this a regular thing. now if the boys want to have their own outing, they can. but they will never get it together enough to plan it. maybe they could just all walk across the street together. and go to the auto parts store.

oh my god. wait until you hear what happened to me this morning. i WAS prepared to tell you all about how i colored my hair red last night. and how i sort of only took into account the “medium brown” aspects of it, and not the growing out blond. and about how i now had BRIGHT FUCK OFF RED highlights instead of blond. but i’m not going to do that. cuz i just did. looks kinda punk actually. it’s semi-perm, so it will fade a bit.
anway, what happened to me this morning is far more tragic and dramatic. it’s the kind of thing that makes me say “uh. well. at least i have something to write about.” so, do you remember the story about evildeb, the latte, and the bee? well, i had my own little bug experience this morning. i was sitting in my boss’s office, having a 1:1, drinking my breakfast. which, for those of you who do not know, is a 44 ounce dr. pepper from a soda fountain in the mini mart near my house. i’d been working on it for about 45 minutes. i felt something in my mouth, and thought it was a thread or something. and then i realized, whatever was in my mouth, came from the straw. i had just taken a sip. i spit it out into my hand and it was a BUG!! but it was a long skinny type bug. black. it looked sort of centipedish. i went “aaarrrrrhhhh!” and pam said, “there’s still some in your mouth there is still some in your mouth!!” so i started swiping at my tongue to get it out. she handed me a bottle of water, but i had to make sure it was all off before i could swallow water. otherwise i’d be swallowing bug bits.
near as i can figure, it had to be dead in the cup. because the soda would have gone through some kind of aerator thing. i’m totally sicked out. so was pam. it’s her worst nightmare, she said. i think we both should go home. molly said a wee little centipede is worse than a bee. because bee’s are cute and fuzzy and do good things. and centipede’s are not. and have too many legs. but i’m not sure “fuzzy” should count as a good thing, when it comes to having it in your mouth.
blech. i am going to go buy two naglene wide mouth bottles, in pretty colors of course, and drill straw size holes in the top. [yay! power tools!] and i’m using those from now on. they are transparent. i’ll be able to see what’s inside. and i’ll be able to run them through the dishwasher. plus, molly says they are on sale this weekend, at REI.

i have a confession to make. or maybe i don’t need to confess anything… i can just be open about it. there is no guilt or shame. therefore, it’s not a confession. here it is… i, despite the fact i don’t like professional wrestling and against my better judgement, have decided i am a fan of The Rock. and in being so, i was unavoidably drawn to the new movie The Rundown. after announcing this to evildeb, i found that she, too, was inexplicably drawn to it. so we went to see it last night. and let me tell you… it was FUNNY!! we laughed out loud in several places. we enjoyed it very much. there was mucho muy fighting going on. really good fighting . a lot of tree or treebranch-fu. trees were used in many violent and painful ways, in this movie. every fight, fall and tumble hurt to watch. a lot. and stifler and the rock had good chemistry. the rock did a great job, at all of it, the action and the humor. and there were many funny parts.
evildeb and i gave it a B. a solid, very entertained B. but, evilD said, and this is true, grading on the curve of what we EXPECTED it got an A+. a big fat punching A plus to the solar plexus. thought it would be crap. turned out to be delightful. we enjoyed it much more than underworld. which turned out to be only mediocre. maybe slightly less.
go away, monkey!!

it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood today. when i was driving over the bridge, i had a crystal clear view of the olympics. and on my way home, i’m sure i’ll have an amazing view of mt. ranier. whenever i drive across lake washington, on a morning like today, i realize why i live here. why i came back 15 years ago, and why i never want to live anywhere else. i belong here.
well, that’s sweet. enough of that crap. here, where i work, we create these tests, for users of our software. that way, they can take these tests and say “look at me, i’m an EXPERT at this software. yay me!” often, members of my team assist in the creation of this test. it’s a big deal. so today, we were tech reviewing some of the questions that have been written. the questions were displayed up on the wall, and dr. stevil, evildeb and i were present to review. whenever you get dr. stevil, evildeb and i in a room together, chaos ensues. it’s why people usually enjoy working with us, and sometimes find it frustrating as well. it’s evildeb’s fault. she’s very argumentative. in a 2 hour and 45 minute time span, she either argued with us, or bossed us around, 18 times. i kept count. and she has two counts of delusional thinking. we’ll be at this again on monday, the reviewing. it will be interesting to see her final count.
here is a self portrait of me thinking, trying to remember the correct way to use a feature i never use, in a prerelease version of the software.

i have pigtails in my hair today, they look exactly like that.
earlier today, i conducted a test, to see how long it would take me to write 1667 words. if you divided the 50,000 words by 30 days, that would be the daily word count. i’m getting ready for NaNoWriMo, as you can tell. well, i didn’t have enough time to finish 1667 words, before i got interrupted. however, i did manage to write about 40% of the total words needed in 24 minutes. totally doable. i was writing a story about my mo¸r mo¸r’s motel, and her hidden haunted catacombs. i’ll post it on jodiferous when it’s done. maybe i’ll even find some pictures. most people agree, when they hear the stories about the motel, that my mo¸r mo¸r kicked ass. and so did her motel.
it might be time for me to go home now. i think so!

evildeb sits right next to me now. in the next cube. she talks to herself all the time. i’d forgotten. “ok, that one still crashes.” “it doesn’t SAY you need to hit the preview button first….” it’s funny. also, it’s handy. you can ignore her when she talks to you and just say that you thought she was talking to herself.
you’ll be glad to know that i finished all my tech docs yesterday. all the ones that were due. i was sooo happy. i didn’t even have to stay late to do it. mostly it’s because two of them turned out to be incredibly easy. well, easier than i expected. but i didn’t know that ahead of time. it could have sucked. but it didn’t.
so i have two main sources for my dr. pepper, in the morning. option A, my preferred source. it’s 20 cents cheaper. they sell lotto tickets, and the cups are paper. and option B, where the cups are plastic and there are no lottery tickets. additionally, the clerk at option B had become a little creepy, as of late. not a lot, but enough to make me avoid option B, because i didn’t feel like doing all that talking first thing in the morning. why do i even go to option B? well, first, it’s good to have a back up, in case option A runs out of dr.pepper syrup, or ice or something. and second, the hostess chocolate baby donnette delivery schedule. chocolate babies are best when fresh. the baby donut delivery date for option A is friday. i don’t know what option B is, but i usually go there on around weds or thursday, to see if i can hit it. ok, the whole point of this story is not to demonstrate what a complete dork i am, but rather to say that this morning i found out that option B clerk is transferring to another store, further south. which is kinda nice for me.
now that that’s out, i realize how mundane and boring that is. but not much else has happened to write about. this morning i saw a guy walking his dog across the street, to gasworks park. it was a little dog. and it was SO EXCITED that it crossed the street almost primarily on it’s hind legs, doing a happy puppy dance. i swear it’s front paws didn’t touch the ground. it was cute.
that’s it. all i got. maybe i should just go out and find a new personality quiz. 🙂

two tech docs down, two more to go. one easy, and one infused with the tedium of HELL!!
what constitutes an “outfit?” over the weekend, fee’s sister was at her house, changing for the eddie izzard show. *pause… think of eddie. deep sigh.* anyway, aaishya [while i am not entirely sure i am spelling the name correctly, it is true that it starts with a bunch of vowels in a row] was putting on some jeans. some ANNE TAYLOR jeans. because she’s posh. they had some scallopy things along the bottom of the leg. and creases. because she irons her jeans. again, she’s posh. so she tells us how the anne taylor sales girl talked her into buying the matching denim jacket. which, fee and remarked, made what she was wearing “an outfit.”
evildeb said that what i was wearing today came damn close to “an outfit.” but i disagree. i just match. see, i am wearing a long sleeved red tshirt, levi’s, and navy blue suede converse star sneakers. but the kicker is, i have my family tartan in my hair. i have a scrunchie made out of my tartan. which is red, with blue and white. so it matches. it’s not an OUTFIT because i did not buy any of these pieces together. they are four separate elements that happen to match.
not an outfit. not an outfit at all.
edit: i also have a navy blue hoodie. but i ALWAYS have that. that navy blue hoodie is E.O. as in i wear it Every Other day, practically.

well, according to my tax lawyer, as of yesterday, i was within full compliance with the law, and able to exercise my “tax payers rights.” uh… ok. he said, call ’em up! tell them that 4.61 is a hardship! he also said that it’s an art, more than a science, dealing with the IRS. and if it wasn’t going well, i should yell FIRE! hang up, and call back and get a different agent out of the thousands of agents they have.
well i guess i have a bit of talent when it comes to dealing with the IRS. because i got them to agree to payments of $200 a month for all three years i owe. now, that is still more than i really want to pay, with all my bills. the lawyer said, “agree to anything, just get it lifted. and then you and i will come up with a reasonable plan and present it to them. nothing is set in stone.” but when making rough estimates, he was thinking the payments would be around $250 plus. so when mr. darcy, my irs representative, said, “how much you want to pay?” i said that i’d like to keep it under two hundred. he said ok. i faxed over some stuff and they are faxing a release to my extremely patient and understanding payroll goddess before the deadline.
short story long, i should get a full paycheck on the 30th. whew. now if i could just get the credit card people off my back. i’d be as happy as a little girl!
my internet went down, at home. i’m actually at work. because evildeb is going to take me to the airport. i don’t know what’s worng with my dsl, and i didn’t have time to figure it out. it had better just fix itself while i’m gone, that’s all i’m saying.
next time we speak, i’ll either be in pasadena ca. or i will be home. so. yeah. either one.

i’m wearing pants today. proud of me? i’m wearing pants, as opposed to shorts or capris. because it’s that cool and rainy out. so i’m wearing levi’s. and i was excited because i got to get out my winter sneakers. the suede converse, with the glow in the dark star. the navy blue ones. as opposed to the black.
ok. now that we know what i am wearing….
the crazies are out today. oddities are occurring. today, evildeb and i went a mall at lunch. northgate to be specific. she wanted to walk around and i wanted something to eat and it was raining. i was standing at taco time, waiting for my crispy beef burrito to be done crispying, when all of the sudden my bag started to vibrate. it was my cell phone. and i had a text message. it said “you are weird.” so i answered back “takes one to know one.” i have no idea who this is, it’s a 206 number. but not one i know. so they answered back “ha ha ya ok freak.” and before i could respond, they said “the vibrating felt weird in my pocket lol.” still thinking i knew them somehow, i said something typical of me. “do not talk dirty to me, stranger.”
“i’m so confused.”
“that makes two of us.”
“where’s your phone?”
“in my hand. who are you?”
“wait… lol… who is this?”
“oh no no… i asked you first.”
silence. evildeb says i should continuously msg them saying “who are you who are you who are you?” over and over. then tomorrow, i should start calling. my guess, it’s a girl. only a girl would LOL so much.
so that was fun. but the most fun was when we were walking out of the mall. there was this guy, sort of a nondescript guy, in dark pants and a white business shirt. short brown hair, glasses. nice shoes. he had several shopping bags at his feet, one was nordstrom. he was holding a suit bag, and spraying the inside of it with some kind of aerosol. now, here is what i think happened, we walked out, as we were walking away, i sort kicked the top to the can. there was a lady coming toward us. near as i can figure, she picked up the top and threw it away, probably thinking it was garbage. she was a pretty mild mannered looking lady, in her 50’s. all of the sudden, behind us, we heard the guy SCREAM [and i mean scream] “WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHY DID YOU DO THAT? I WAS USING THAT!! YOU BITCH!!!” top of his lungs. we turned around and the woman was frantically trying to get through the door, away from him.
here is our theory… this guy is a: wound tight as a drum and b: crazy. he was spraying the inside of the suit bag with a disinfectant. because he’s terrified of germs. the woman threw the top away, which means if he wanted it back, and you know he did, because the top belonged on the can, he’d have to reach into the garbage can and pull out the lid. but he can’t do that, because of the germs. so he freaked.
i really really regret not asking him what was up… why he was yelling at a total stranger like that. i am so sorry i didn’t do it. because i think the answer would have been hysterical. i bet the lady went and got security. i wish i had seen that too. bummer. periodically, on the drive home, i would turn to edeb and yell “WHY DID YOU DO THAT? I WAS USING THAT!! YOU BITCH!!” and she’d laugh and laugh and laugh. proving to me i was not wrong. it was funny.
my cube is officially too messy. i’ve reached a threshold, and i can’t take it. tomorrow… we are cleaning the cube.