lance just came into my cube and showed me this theorem:

how can i think of anything else ever?

life doesn’t get much better than that. it’s a new episode of buffy tonight. it’s raining outside. i’m in my warm pj’s. it’s all good.

a class is being offered, here at work, on commercial printing. the tools, the workflow, the types of printing, stuff like that. a co-worker mentioned he might take it, so i offered to explain the commercial printing workflow to him myself. and this is what i wrote. lonnie can verify this is all true.
1. the job comes in via sales. On the sales team there is going to be at least one sales person who has slept his or her way to the “top” [which means, the big money accounts are assigned to them.], one addicted to coke, and one who spends his or her entire day as far away from the office as possible….the “mystery sales rep.” ….no one is even sure what they look like. Or, all of these traits can be combined into one ubersales person.
2. The job goes through customer service/estimation or whatever they call it. The csr’s are treated like crap and paid less, but at least one of them thinks they are better than the rest, and feels that he or she spends enough energy being nice to customers, so they don’t have to be nice to co-workers. One of them is probably sleeping with one of the sales people. Probably the one addicted to coke. If not, he or she is sleeping with a multitude of people in the shop. And one of them does the majority of the work.
3. digital pre-press is full of skater punks and goths who know nothing of traditional pre-press, unless they earned some kind of AA in Commercial Printing. [which means they are never leaving the world of printing and probably smoke a lot of pot.] everyone in this department likes the fact that what they do scares the more mature employees [aka: dinosaurs] who are used to “old ways.” and take great delight in tossing around terms like PostScript, font substitution, bitmap, screen preview, PDF, EPS, simply to watch the dinosaurs tremble. They are full of themselves, and you should stay on their good side at all times, unless you know how to do their job. Don’t talk to them in the morning because they are probably hung over. Half of them are in a band.
4. traditional pre-press. These people come in at 5:30 in the morning. They still wear the press shirts that display the name of the shop before it was bought and sold to the last three corporations that tried to make it a profitable business. Those were the “good old days.” They are union employees, who’s profession is dying out. Most of them are bitter about this, and walk around mumbling under their breaths. They hate the digital pre press dept, and spend a lot of time complaining about their music. Leave them alone and let them do their job…and don’t feed them, they bite.
5. press-men. These guys listen to talk radio all day long. They like tom likus and rush limbaugh, and they openly lust after the slutty csr with two failed marriages and bleach blond hair. They SECRETLY lust after the dark little goth girl who works in digital. They all chain smoke. And bathe infrequently.
6. bindery and finishing. This department is full of contract employees from temp agencies who do not speak English. They spend their days collating or binding or replacing pages with other pages or other really boring things. They all gather together in the lunch room and speak about you in a different language. They think you are spoiled. But they work harder than anyone else in the shop, so just be nice to them. The entire dept. is ruled over by a manager with a mood disorder. He plays softball like it’s a religion. His face gets really red when he’s angry and twice a day he blows his top and the entire shop can hear him yell. Nobody pays attention to him.
7. shipping and fulfillment. This is where you go to get drugs. They run their own little “shipping and fulfillment” business on the side. They keep porn in the warehouse bathroom and are never without visine in their pockets. They come back from lunch stoned, well, more stoned then they are the rest of the day. Unless they drive a delivery truck, then they come back from lunch drunk.
And that is a commercial print shop, your little print job can get screwed up at any one of these stops in the workflow. Badly. And they will never even notice. It’s AWESOME. Why did I ever leave?

in case i wasn’t clear, yippee-skippy-potato-chippy, the entry, was begun thursday afternoon about this time. i had to start a new entry for friday. otherwise the days experiences and feelings will get all over each other.
i’m on hold with bank of america, trying to pay my car payment. which is very very late. i think it’s funny that i am on hold when they’ve been calling me over and over and over again at home. but i don’t answer. i figure, why answer if you don’t know what to tell them. but now i want to pay some money… and i am holding. oops! no i’m not. it was hurting my neck. screw them. i’ll try again when i get home.
it takes 14 days for the library to mail you your card. i think this is why the library annoys me. i want instant gratification. as it is, i will probably have to request the books and ask that they be held and who knows how long it could be to get a book. it could take FOREVER!! and that is a very very long time.
sleepy again. maybe i’ll try that curling up in the chair thing again. it’s that 2:30-3:30 crash.

i just feel asleep at my desk. tipped my chair back and curled up and fell asleep. with my headphones on, playing woxy into my head. i have a beanbag chair in my cube, i don’t know why i didn’t just curl up on that. oy. i’m tired today. i was falling asleep on my way into work. i was shaking my head and rolling down the windows and singing along to the cd, which was turned up to an almost excruciating volume and still my eyes kept shutting.
i’ve applied for a library card. i’ve been reading so many books, and last night i read “a is for alibi” by sue grafton another mystery series. i know i said i was going to read something that took me longer to read. but i couldn’t help it. i’m in to the quick reads and suddenly into the msyteries. and the slutty vampire books, of course. so these alphabet books… they go all the way up to Q, i think. at $7 a pop, and i read them in one day, that’s just a ridiculous amount of money. hence, i shall get them from THE LIBRARY. yes. apparently they do that there. who knew?
omigod. see what happens when you are sleepy? it’s friday now and i totally forgot to post this. oy.

wheeee! tom commented on my blog! isn’t that wonderful? the slightest bit of attention is all i need to gush. wow…that’s needy.
tom, two of three books you suggested are on my bookshelf, but unread. gravity’s rainbow and infinite jest. i started infinite jest at one point, but obviously got distracted. however, right now i need lighter fair. i want escapist fun. i don’t want to have to think too much. or look anything up in the dictionary. 🙂 what i realized, after looking at imajica and thinking it wasn’t the right time for it, is i have all five novels of douglas adams in one book. i’ve only read the first and that was a very very long time ago. so i might read those. funny would be good right now.
speaking of my smutty vampire novels, lisa is on book two. and lance is in the middle of book one. i’m so happy because now i can talk about them with someone. sexy jean claude. well, i’m not going to talk about sexy john claude with lance. and mary has started the stephanie plum novels. i love to share.
and fee reminded me of something, my great middle finger experiment!! [[see entry titled the most important email ever!]] after weeks of wearing my rings on any finger but the middle finger, noticed no decrease in fatigue, doubt, general malaise or depression. so i moved my rings back a few weeks ago. now i realize that i’ve been posting a great deal about the depression, but it’s been going on for a while. so the rings had nothing to do with. so therefore i’d like to encourage you, my internet friends, to feel free to wear whatever you want on that middle finger, don’t be afraid, raise that middle finger and show everyone what you think of email urban myths and that interfere with your ability to accessorize!!
having dinner with my dad tonight. taking him out for his birthday. his girlfriend, whom i do not know – and don’t really want to, called me on monday and left me a voice mail inviting me to dinner on wednesday as a surprise for ron [aka: my dad]. last weds. she said he would be really “pleased” to see me. however, i have a commitment to baby sit my sweet pea every monday and weds for the next few weeks.

cute!! so i sadly left a voice mail indicating i could not attend. so as a joke, a way to tease me, ron told me i ruined the dinner by not showing up, it was my fault. making me defensive. see, that’s where the humor comes in. making me defensive. isn’t that funny? when really, if she had called earlier, she would have got me before i agreed to the babysitting. this kind of interaction makes me tired. it’s not funny to me. i don’t like being put on the defensive all the time. but he thinks it’s teasing. if he does it tonight, i’m going to stare at him… silent. this is hard to do on the phone. the staring part. subconsciously i bet he thinks that i said that i had to babysit because i didn’t want to come. and he’s right, i didn’t want to go to her house. but the babysitting was just a fortunate coincidence. i don’t really want to get to know her. i lack the motivation. i don’t expect to find it soon. this is the woman that ron went away with, to the cabin on the san juan islands, where my mom caught him and asked him to move out. she is not the reason they divorced. it’s not her fault they divorced. they started having problems long before that. but why would i want to meet her if i don’t have to? i’m just not going to try very hard to do it, get to know her. he’s going to have to facilitate it. which will be hard for him because he KNOWS i don’t want to, and he doesn’t like emotional confrontation. i’m glad he has someone, and he’s happy. but i’m not the one who is going to do the work on this one. sorry, lonnie.
on a less annoying note: i’m drinking a iced chai latte and listening to woxy, so all is good at the moment.

i want the new 17″ g4 titanium powerbook from apple so bad it makes my heart hurt. it is so beautiful….. so beautiful. *sniff*
dammit. it sucks to be poor.
so, regarding that movie… xxx. it’s horrible!! so bad. one of the worst i’ve seen in a while. the dialog!! oh my god. and the stunts are supposed to be so amazing, but in reality, they suck. because all the sudden, with no regard to the laws of physics, vin is supposed to just be able to jump over a barn on his motorcycle? that seems unlikely. maybe i’m wrong, i was a psych major, not physics. but…. no. i think i am right. my favorite part was during the avalanche scene. after everything is buried in the snow, but at the top of this new uber mogul, rises out the antenna… like a cross. so much like a cross, that you are slapped in the face with the symbolism, as suddenly, vin’s hand busts through the snow… and joins jesus in that limited group of people who have been RESURRECTED!! amen!! i had a sudden craving for chocolate bunnies. it’s sooooo blatant… it’s like it’s neon… the symbolism. also, i would just like to say, bond would kick xxx’s ass in every single contest. because he has a BRAIN.
however, kam loves him. vin. he doesn’t do anything for me. but it’s good she loves him, because as it is, we are sharing henry rollins.
mmmmm…. henry…….

long time no see. i know. i’ve been exhibiting several self destructive behaviors over the past few weeks. i pretty much slept from dec. 26th – 30th. it’s all a blur. that’s so counter productive when you are battling depression. but, it’s what i’ve been wanting to do, so i thought…. why not give in!! maybe you’ll get it out of your system. not likely.
besides sleeping, i have been hooked into a book series… a trashy vampire hunter book series! these evil books sucked all my attention away from everything! just because i picked up the latest one in an airport bookstore over thanksgiving weekend.
— speaking of airports, did you hear about the airport security guard, here in seattle, who fell asleep on the job. when they found out, they had to re-scan everyone in that concourse. people were not pleased. oh he lost his job, alright.
anyway… smutty vampire books. yes. the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Series by Laurell K. Hamilton. they are like heroin, i’m telling you. [note: i have no idea what heroin is like, but it looks like a pretty intense addiction.] i guess i just decided that a world that included sexy vampire jean claude was better than my world. so i dove right into them and didn’t stop until i was done with all of ’em. and now i eagerly await the new release this spring. more jean claude more jean claude more jean claude. [and tell richard to quit whining. sheesh. a whining werewolf.]
after i finished that series, i jumped into the mystery section of my barnes and noble and immersed myself in the stephanie plum series by janet evanovich.. i have no idea what led me to them. but i loved them. they are very funny, and i really identify with stephanie. i’ve not blown up as many cars, however. but she’s very real and flawed and funny. finished those… waiting for the new release.
i’ve spent so much money at barnes and noble lately!! bad jodi. i was going through a book a day. i’ve decided that i now need to read a very looooong book. to keep me occupied for a few days. i’ve had imajica on my shelf forever, but never got through more than the first few chapters. maybe i should re-devote myself to that?
i’ll be back later. i have to write my opinion of the movie XXX, which i saw on new year’s eve. kam likes it… i don’t think she’s going to be happy with me. 🙂 maybe she’ll forgive me… since i am going to go read some clive barker….

… and then… when i realized that the camera was on me, and people [santa] was watching…

so, as you can see, i’ve been messing about with the design. i’ve changed the home page as well. i would not say everything is done. but i decided i just couldn’t stand that purple anymore. it was only supposed to be temporary.
alright, i’m very very tired now. i’ve had 3 days of os x training, which i enjoyed a great deal, as naturally i would. but between work and home, i’ve spent too much time in front of a computer and i think it’s affecting my brain.
look for the design/layout to get some final touches in the next few weeks.
ps: i changed the date’s to french, just for fun. because that is an option in movabletype. i thought it was tres cosmopolitan of me.