| Death |
[Jul. 2nd, 2009|09:47 pm] |
There is something slightly disturbing about receiving a birthday reminder for a recently deceased cousin. She would have been 33 next week. She died of breast cancer last week.
Over the weekend one of Paul's coworkers died in a car accident.
I'm not one to follow celebrity news, but the news about Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett makes it feel like we're experiencing a weird cluster of deaths right now. |
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| Baby Dragons |
[Jun. 22nd, 2009|11:26 am] |
I just got an email from my aunt. It had little ascii angels
^j^ ^j^ ^j^ ^j^ ^j^ ^j^
See now, my first impression was that they were baby dragons... Maybe it all depends on your frame of reference :) |
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| Surprising me with groceries... |
[Feb. 11th, 2009|04:16 pm] |
...is almost as good as flowers :)
I have the best sweetie in the world :^D
He's making mushroom and asparagus risotto. |
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| I've changed my mind... |
[Jan. 19th, 2009|04:07 pm] |
Owning a snowblower is *not* a mark of laziness, extravagance, middle-age, or luxury. At least not here in The Frozen North. Anyone South of NJ owning one is still a pansy.
I've had it up to *here* with shoveling. I'm not lazy, I'm tired, and since I'm spending about 50% of my time in NY these days, I don't feel like it's fair to leave Paul to shovel out when I'm not around. Not to mention that it would be nice to have an actual driveway and walkway rather than just a parking space and an icy path worn through the snow by trampling. |
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| My week in New York City |
[Dec. 22nd, 2008|08:20 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  amused | ] |
For those who don't know, I spent last week in New York. I learned some things. I learned that New Yorkers are lazy (a true NYer told me so himself), and as such, no one does for themselves anything that might be unpleasant like hauling garbage, shoveling snow, or even fishing computer cables. There are still elevator operators: people who actually stand there (ok, so the ones I saw had stools) and push the elevator button for you. I suppose this means that there are plenty of crap jobs to go around. I also learned that New Yorkers freak out at the least bit of snow. And the most surprising to my little puritan-New-Englander self was that you can buy beer in the Grand Central Station tunnels. In other words, you don't even have to wait until you get home or to the bar to start your happy hour. I know lots of people (many related to me) who would think this is a fabulous idea :) |
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| Know anyone who does pewter work? |
[Dec. 11th, 2008|12:35 pm] |
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A few years ago Paul's mom gifted us some pewter & glass champagne flutes. Yesterday a kitty who shall remain unidentified knocked them both off the counter (and was summarily both scared and scolded) the pewter bases are pretty much intact if a little bent, but the glass parts shattered. I have no idea what it would take/cost to get them fixed. |
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| The busiest unemployed person ever... |
[Dec. 4th, 2008|04:26 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | home | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | hopeful | ] |
So yeah, I'm unemployed again. Or, more accurately I'm technically employed until 12/31/08, but not actually going to the office anymore. My company laid off a *lot* of people, which considering I was working in the Financial sector, isn't so surprising. What is surprising, and touching is that I found out that my manager tried to trade herself for me. I also got a lot of people offering me references including one Assistant Vice President I didn't realize even knew me. I kicked ass at my job and apparently it showed. I'm not angry because it was a business decision for the good of the company that was made very high up and affected hundreds of people at every level of the company. There wasn't anything personal about it. The past 48 hours have been a whirlwind for me. I think we're going to be ok, and possibly this will lead me to something even better. |
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| My 50 year old mother had a heart attack on Friday night. |
[Aug. 31st, 2008|04:56 pm] |
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She had a stent put into one of her arteries and she seems to be doing a whole lot better now. I'm still a bit anxious about the whole thing. I want my mom to be at her granddaughter's graduation(s). I want her to see her grandkids grow up. I want my mom to eat more vegetarian meals and lower her cholesterol. I want her to lose weight and get off of some of her medications. I want my dad to get on board with it and stop thinking he's invincible and that the normal rules don't apply to him. |
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| Safe and healthy delivery vibes for my sister, please |
[Aug. 3rd, 2008|05:11 pm] |
My sister went to the hospital at 4am this morning. Her water broke around 8 or 9 and they gave her drugs at 11am. Considering my family history, my mom and I are antsy. Please wish for a healthy baby soon so we can stop worrying!
Update: It's a girl! 7.5 lbs, 19.5 inches. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 5th, 2008|07:47 pm] |
You are Ocean Blue
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You're both warm and practical. You're very driven, but you're also very well rounded.
You tend to see both sides to every issue, and people consider you a natural diplomat.
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| OCD Pantry list |
[Jun. 1st, 2008|05:41 pm] |
Here is a list of all the food in my house. I'm sure there is a week's worth of food in there, the challenge is making the most of it taste-wise while keeping the prep/cooking time to a maximum of 30 minutes a day. I have no patience for daily sustenance right now. The challenge: to spend as little money as possible this week while not living like a college student.
( Read more ) |
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| Small accomplishments |
[Jun. 1st, 2008|02:01 pm] |
I finally got my yearly service from my motorcycle mechanic. It's now legal for me to ride this year. I also finally weeded out and read through the 700+ backlog of blogposts in my GoogleReader account (and I figured out how to unsubscribe... not so hard). Judi the receptionist is back, the peonies are almost ready to bloom and I have a plan of attack for my sister's baby shower.
The house is still a mess, but I'm chipping away at it. I had to toss it a bit yesterday to find the registration sticker for my bike. Lots of paper everywhere. Though paper is much preferable to the ants that are invading... |
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| Happy Birthday Declan! |
[Apr. 21st, 2008|09:42 am] |
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I swear I tried to email you over the weekend but it bounced, and then Paul's email was down... I know poor excuse, but I hope your birthday was as wonderful as can be. |
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| It's been a good week... |
[Apr. 19th, 2008|08:27 am] |
Every morning I walk past a car in the parking lot that has a Wiccan Reed bumper sticker, and I've been trying to figure out who I work with who could be pagan. Of course there was always the possibility that it was someone working for one of the other companies that shares our campus. On Thursday I saw her. I was coming down for lunch at the terribly late hour of 2:30 PM and I saw a striking woman with flowing, wavy, red hair in a flowing, cape-like purple trench coat walking briskly out of the building and immediately thought "That's her." So I stood there in the foyer and watched her walk out to her car to confirm my hunch, then went to ask the property manager who that woman was. She's the catering manager, and she's named after a character from Lord of the Rings. 'Nuff said. I told the property manager cryptically to tell her I saw the bumper sticker and said to say "hi". Sometimes I'm such a dork. And really I'm not sure this is the right company to be out of the broom closet at, since almost everyone is straight laced, so I probably won't pursue it any further than that.
This week my dear, sweet coworker went for a series of procedures and scans to see if her cancer came back. Thankfully it hasn't. Thankfully next week we'll be back to our regular schedule and I'll be able to manage my time at work more effectively.
Also on Thursday I went to the DCU in person to cash my paycheck so that it wouldn't take the whole week to clear, and I bumped into a guy I knew from IBM. We started chatting and he asked where I was working now and I told him where and e asked what I was doing and I said "Oh, a bit of everything." What struck me was how much shame I felt about not being a programmer anymore. It was this psychological castration. There's so much intellectual machismo wrapped up in being a "hard-core" programmer, that even though it really isn't what I ultimately want to do with my life, I still feel ashamed of having left it, as though it were a giant failure on my part. Those who *want* to be programmers, can't conceive of anyone who *can* code willingly giving up the lifestyle and the money that goes with it. I will admit that it was hard, but IBM made it easier for me. As we chatted more, and I explained a bit of my reason for leaving (not wanting to work so much unpaid overtime) he talked about the management and cultural changes that have taken place since I left: daily status meetings, weekly meetings on "skills development", working lunches, expectations that you'll work from home in the evenings and on weekends, basically all of the reasons that I left have only become more acute. Freebies are gone, and there's more stick than carrot. I guess I made the right decision after all.
There is a woman that I work with at my new office who runs the Business Continuity Plan. She got a whiff of my computer skills and immediately started throwing me projects. So far they're small and easy and really just relieve some of her overburden. Since I'm being paid by the hour and can't be forced into overtime right now I gladly accepted. It gives me something to do when I'm tied to the desk and not running around the building. Yesterday morning the servers crashed, someone pulled a plug or something, but it took most of the morning to reboot and reset everything. Then at 4pm as I was wrapping up the day to leave everything crashed again and she had to stay and fix everything instead of taking her kids to their brown-belt test. There is no way I want her job. I brought her a sandwich for dinner and then went home. |
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