soft, fuzzy, warm, and plaid

so I'm San Diego, the first of two back-to-back california trips. we're on our own for dinner tonight, so i perused the hotel restaurants. all are closed except one, which has a bunch of overpriced california cusine, none of which sounds appetizing. but, hey - i'm in the gaslight district. there are dozens of amazing restaurants within walking distance. i'll go (way) out of my comfort zone and take a stroll.

i walked about 3 blocks in one direction, made a right, saw nothing but a starbucks. kept walking. started to feel...strange. kept walking. after another block or so, it occurred to me that it wasn't my anxiety. it was the part of my brain saying "hey, dumb-ass. you're walking alone in a strange city down streets with crappy lighting and not a lot of foot traffic after dark. you know better." um, yeah. so i headed back around the block and back to the hotel, where i am now patiently awaiting room service.

so, no randomly yummy local food for me. but, i got a little out of my comfort zone, and got a good half-mile walk in.

i think if i was in jeans and some boots or sneaks, rather than in a dress and clogs carrying a purse (!), i'd have been a hell of a lot more comfortable schlepping around out there. ah, well.

and yes, for the record, i could have gone out with one of the groups from work. i just really hate spending my "night off" with work people and having to continue to schmooze through dinner and into the wee hours of the morning. plus, i can smoke in my room. (a smoking room in california...who knew?)

tomorrow i head home, then friday in the office, before heading back to california (palm springs this time) on monday.

eta:a huge meal (entree, salad, dessert, and beverage) for what i would have paid downstairs for an entree. highlight? a creme brulee bigger than my salad and possibly my head. i adore creme brulee, and only finished about 2/3 of it. yum.

Our real estate agent neglected to tell us that when we bought a house in Pottstown, we should have bought a boat as well.

This morning, every single road out of Pottstown was closed except 422. So, I took 422 for as long as I could stand the traffic, and got off at 29, planning to shoot down through Great Valley into Frazer. No dice - 29 is closed just south of the Redner's in Collegeville. Double back, cut across to 113. Shoot down through Phoenixville to the other end of 29...which is closed. Cut back across Pothouse Road? Nope. Closed. Ookay...23. I can take 23 into Valley Forge and shoot down 202...nope - 23 is closed. Call the office, find out how one of my co-workers got to work - cut back up 113, down the back road he suggested. Total commute? 32 miles over *three hours*. Whee! Two hours later, head to King of Prussia to run a training class, then home (via 422) so that there was a chance in hell of me making my 6:00 appointment with the sleep specialist.

Sit at home and watch the news, read the news, wish we had a boat...because according to the local paper, a boat is the only way we're leaving the city tomorrow. Of course, I have to be back in KoP at 8 for another training class...and I'm the only one who can do it, because the training materials and the tech equipment needed are all in my truck. Call my boss, let him know what's up. He says I can drive to KoP tonight, stay in the hotel, and get reimbursed, or leave at 5 in the morning (!) to beat the 422 traffic and leave around noon.

Since I'm sitting at home watching so you think you can dance crack tv, it's obvious what i chose.

Mer had a similarly crappy commute today, driving 2 hours from Pottstown to Phoenixville. Bleh.

The appointment with the sleep doc was interesting, and I get to go be hooked up to wires in july to find out what's actually wrong. apparently, my symptoms are weird, which makes me a challenge, which the doctor likes.

in happy homeowner news, the basement is very, very wet, and instead of buying the parts to finish mer's new 'puter, we'll be buying a dehumidifer, shelves for the catering stuff, concrete to fill the drain hole that the water is coming out of, and possibly a shop vac. also? i really need a dry day so I can mow the lawn, because the back yard is turning into a jungle, and electrocution via electric weedwhacker and rainwater is not on my list of fun things to do.

but? i had a really good bar of dark chocolate today, we're financially stable enough to buy the stuff we need for the basement, and i have an anacrostic that's calling my name. life is surprisingly good.

so, the jetta's gone. i am happily the owner of a brand new debt...er, truck. It's a 2006 Chevy Colorado, very base (A/C, but no CD player), manual transmission, silver birch metallic (it looks silver sometimes and, um, birch others). it was, hands down, the most comfortable truck i drove, for both me & mer. we're taking it down the shore this weekend to see mer's folks.

in news that's just as exciting, i managed to finagle myself a 4-day weekend. sweet. tomorrow i catch up on house stuff, saturday and sunday we'll be in jersey, monday will be a me day.

i do have a need to draw on the collective lj brain trust. i'm looking for rainbow *cat* paw prints for my truck. i know they exist. i've seen them. but so far today, i've only been able to find bear paw prints. well, i found cat paw prints, but black, which kind of defeats the purpose. what i'm looking for are little individual paw prints, one in each color. i've seen them on vehicles - they're out there - i just can't find them for sale. anyone have any ideas?

this would be perfect, if the prints were not black.

ETA: i found this place, where i can get 3" decals from the UK for about $6.50 a piece, but i don't want them quite that big. sigh.

Official countdown: 17 days 'til settlement, 19 days 'til the move
Boxes packed: 55 62
Items acquired since last week's update: a shitload of free boxes from work
Items flung since last week: miscellaneous crap
Checklist items completed since last week: new cable/internet set up, mortgage paperwork complete
Housework done since last week: very little
Packing done since last week: catering stuff, craft/sewing stuff, office books, geek stuff, holiday decorations, some dishes, some other kitchen stuff
To do yet tonight: make dinner, laundry, dishes, more kitchen packing
To do this week: return stemware I never returned last week, move Mer's computer to the small desk, trash the big desk, laundry, dishes, clean bathtub, sweep kitchen/bathroom floors (gee, that looks strangely similar to last week's list, no?), transfer comcast email addys to new account
Packing/flinging work yet to do: remainder of kitchen, tools, pictures/artwork, DVDs, electronics, stuff in the bar, coat closet, reinforce the couch
Still need to buy: washer/dryer, tv stand, chairs

I know we got a lot done this weekend (and the day's not over yet), but I'm feeling extraordinarily overwhelmed. Adding to that is the stress of knowing that we lose next sunday as a packing day (driving up home for easter), plus I need to take a few hours today and finish work that I was not willing to stay late on Friday to finish. Also, my desktop's hard drive started sounding like a lawnmower yesterday....so until i find the time to dig the cylinder of blank cds out of mer's trunk and back up all my freaking data, i'm leaving it shut down. the box i'm currently using was an old one that my boss was getting rid of, and i know there's a duplicate box in the config room at work, so hopefully i can pull the hard drive, take it to work, and ghost it onto the hard drive from that box. that would be the easiest. until then, i'll either hop on mer's box, or use my laptop and my sneaky firefox-on-usb.

le sigh.

in other news, anyone not working during the day on Thursday 4/27 that wants to help me paint and/or rip up carpeting, or on Friday 4/28 that wants to sit with the cat while the movers do their thing? (my mom bailed on me.) all i can offer is your preference of takeout food, your choice of beverage, and the honor of being our first guest/first person I bribed to help with my "honeydo" list.

Supergalore was absolutely amazing. I spent the majority of the night in "chef space", so I didn't get to see most of the people there, but the energy was incredible and everyone looked hot. Many, many thanks to bounce_n_jiggle and nerd_dog for the crash space (they have the most comfortable guest bed in the world, btw) and to the lovely hhholiday for the coffee and cheesecake on our way out of the city.

Ugh. I need to go pack now. And hem pants. And de-hair my legs. 'Cause, you know, showing off my hairiness at a business function just doesn't seem appropriate somehow, and I would like to swim if I get the chance.

I will be offline until friday night or so. If anything needs my immediate attention, please let fuzzybutchkins know, and she can get in touch with me.

Have a good week, y'all.

When I was in school, the day before a break was always reather strange. No one, including the teachers, paid attention, and it seemed the strangeness of the day increased with the length of the vacation it preceeded.

Today my life was like the last day of school before summer break, after you've finished finals.

At work:
I do minor admin work for my boss, and therefore am at the end of a row in an admin cube. across from me are three other admins, C, K, and A. we can get a little crazy. Today was a fine example. One of the managers across from C slammed his office door, which prompted C to say "Slam!" The remaining 3 of us chimed in, a line at a time, with "Doo doo doo - doo doo doo - let the boys be boys!". Other songs at random through the day, sung line by line by each of us and usually ending together, included "Sussudio", the theme from "Greatest American Hero", and "The Pina Colada Song", substituting one of the manager's names for "Pina Colada", because his name rhymes with, well, "Pina Colada". The stranger part about this? All the singing was done full-voice, with all of us at our respective desks.

On line:
Veronica Mars fucks Chicken Boo
Mother Nature is God in drag
The Bible, in Legos
Faeries Aire and Death Waltz (*.pdf file)

My boss isn't expecting me at work on Monday, as I should be up home visiting the forthcoming baby and new parents. And I left work at 5:00. I had PT before work, and I'm not hurting.

What a day.

this week at work we had mandatory harassment awareness training. the presentor had a chart showing all the things covered under our company's harassment policy, and went over all the things once by one. what he left off the chart was sexual orientation, which is covered in the policy. so i raised my hand to ask him why exactly he was skipping that. he pointed to me and said "yes, sir?" it wasn't until he corrected himself and said "yes, ma'am?" that i realized what he said. a strange moment, that was. the harassment training lawyer getting upset because he thought (correctly, in this case) that he spoke the wrong gender. in this situation, it was weird, because it obviously made him uncomfortable. it's amusing to me how the same gender question a few weeks ago at nolose would have been a courtesy rather than a mistake. anyway, he hemmed and hawed about how he "forgot" to add that to his board, and said a little blurb about sexual orientation, yadda yadda yadda. it pissed me off because he had done probably a dozen classes with that board before the one I attended. the other thing that pissed me off was when he made a statement - went on some length, actually - about how there are two genders: "you're either a man, or you're a woman. there's only two." But, having just outed myself to a few dozen co-workers and execs, I didn't have the balls to argue gender theory with a corporate lawyer.

on a slight tangent from that, there is the matter of my forthcoming sister, and her uber-catholic relatives. quick recap: my dad's wife's family has their religion shoved so far up their asses that until a few weeks ago they were refusing to acknowledge their grandchild, because she was conceived out of wedlock. that has changed, and i'm glad for my dad's wife's sake. now maternal grandma-to-be is throwing the baby shower. i got the invitation in the mail, and it was addressed only to me. not wanting to fuck things up between baby-mom and baby-grandma inadvertently, i called my dad and asked if fuzzybutchkins was invited to the shower or not. he said that yes, she was invited, and that he and baby-mom want us both to be there, but that we are just to be "friends" at the shower. my dad made it very clear that this was not a reflection on what he and his wife think, and i truly believe that. he says they haven't told her parents yet because for the time being, what they don't know won't hurt them. i asked him if he realized that they were going to have to know eventually, and he said yes, but that could wait. in a way, i understand this. i do. i want baby-mom to have a good relationship with her family, because they're important to her. a happy mommy makes for a happy baby, and that baby is my sister, damnit, so she'd better be happy. so when i called baby-grandma to rsvp, i told her that "my dad said i could bring my roommate". i felt like i was back in college. and i need to remember to call my relatives that will be there, so they know that we're just "roommates" that day. but part of me wants to scream, "what the fuck?!" this is my kid sister we're talking about here, and i will never be anyone other than who i am to her. she will never know mer as my rommate. she'll know her as her sister out-law, or whatever better term we come up with by the time the kid has concepts for such things. come the holidays, am i going to have to spend a few uncomfortable hours pretending i'm somebody else? yeah, it'll take a couple years before paige gets the concept. but after a few years of showing up to everything with the same "roommate", i have a sneaking suspicion that her parents might figure it out. and so all my fears about the back-and-forth of what this kid's going to have to listen to growing up have come back to smack me upside the head, just as i'm crashing down off a week lived entirely on adrenaline, long hours, and yoghurt smoothies. fuck.

tomorrow (or, more accurately, today) and Sunday, we're going away to mer's parents' place at the shore, where i can smoke like a chimney, curse like a sailor, lose myself in a book, and be the fat dyke that i am.