Jen who?

Yeah, so I'm lazy and I don't post often. Cope.

Short version of recent events:
1. Wisdom tooth out. Blood everywhere. Crunching noises. Three days on Percocet. No birthday party afterward, but I discovered a TV show on the Sci-Fi channel called Firefly that was cancelled three years ago by the morons at Fox and has only 14 episodes in the world (go to Amazon for DVDs) and a movie that came out on September 30 called Serenity. I have already ordered them both. I got the TV show, but I have to wait until nearly Christmas for the movie.
2. They finally hired my replacement at work. Things are smooth as razor clam shells over in their department. Smugly, I said, "I told you you'd need two people to replace me." I was wrong - they need three.
3. New Harry Potter movie: The book is better, but the special effects are fantastic.
4. Wine tasting party coming up at Michelle's. Yet another bid to meet Darrin.
5. School is going well. I still have a 3.8 grade point average. Only one more year until I graduate!
6. Going blank. Nothing else. Hunger... overtaking!
Must
eat
cookies!

The waiting game

So it has been a month or so since I got my promotion. I'm still in my old job and I'm doing most of my new job. They still haven't gotten a replacement for me. Hopefully, they'll hire the guy named Brian who can start on Monday. I would like to start training my replacement ASAP so that I can move over into my new job before I have to do the quarter-end inventory accounting. I don't know how to do it yet, so it would be nice to get a running start at it, you know?

On the good news front, school is going well and I haven't had anything go terribly wrong lately. The weather's been great, money's not so tight, I've started rebuilding the South fence, and my CD collection is growing.

On the bad news front, I'm having a wisdom tooth removed next Friday. I'm... uh... nervous. Actually, when I think about it, I can feel the hysteria rising like a big, stinky burp after eating Thai food and drinking a Coke. I guess that "scared" is a better word than "nervous." I am not so much afraid of pain, since I'll be numbed into oblivion. What worries me is how I will react to the prying and pulling and cracking, and the squeal of the root on my jaw bone as they pull it out, and the popping of each little capillary as it breaks from the root. I'm afraid I'll fight with them or try to get away. However, they have given me tranquilizers, so that should be fun. Even better, the day after that I have a birthday party to go to. Once again, Michelle is trying to get me to meet Darrin. I can see it now. Me, swollen and bruised, mumbling through painkillers, possibly drooling. That should impress him.

Slip of the tongue? Or a deliberate hint?

Yesterday during our vendor meeting, our controller introduced me to the vendor as the Senior Accounts Payable Specialist. My title in my current position is, in fact, just plain old Accounts Payable Specialist. I do know that our thick-as-a-plank Accounts Payable Supervisor will be demoted to Accounts Payable Specialist when I move up to my Staff Accountant position, and I suspect that my replacement will be titled Senior Accounts Payable Specialist. Our controller, however, is not given to accidentally letting things slip, so I'm wondering if that was a subtle, deliberate hint at what is to come in this department.

Speaking of which, they have yet to find a replacement for me. Argh. Argh, I say! I want my new job now! Actually, I have my new job now, and I am trying to keep up with both jobs. I want out of my old job now so that I can focus on my new job, but Thick-as-a-plank over there wouldn't be able to do any of this desk's work, so I 'm currently stuck.

Argh again.

No, I don't ride the short bus.

Ever have one of those days where you wake up feeling well rested, you have a good hair day, your clothes fit, you go to work and have a reasonable time of it, the commute doesn't suck totally, and then you get home at the end of the day and you find that in the 10 hours you were out of your house, a new, gigantic white pimple came up and you didn't even feel it? Do you find yourself realizing that was that was the reason that your cow-orker's eyes kept slipping down to your chin while they spoke to you? That the look in their eyes wasn't stress from work, but from wanting to escape the hideousness erupting on your face? That the people who like you did their best not to look at it because they didn't want to embarass you, but the people who don't like you didn't want to give it away and spoil the fun?

Yeah, me too. That was yesterday.

Today, I managed to draw all over my white shirt with a red pen without noticing, and I have a meeting with a vendor this afternoon. I can see it now... "No, ma'am, I'm not retarded, I am just shockingly unaware of what my hands are doing when I'm not looking at them as they hold an uncapped red marker and apparently flail around wildly." It's going to be great. Maybe I should take a Chonga Bagel into the meeting with me so that I can get poppy seeds stuck in my teeth and cream cheese on my lips and under my nails and grease on the table top to complete the first impression.

Torchlight

Last weekend I went over to Ken and Brad's new place, bearing proudly the chocolate cheesecake before me, which I laid down my Saturday morning to bake. We hung around and waited for Max and Michelle to show up, then barbecued the heck out of some stuff. We headed down to the Torchlight Parade and found a great spot on the balcony of the new and yet unfinished City Hall. It was a great view, up from the crowds. I managed to finally break my $500 camera, so I'm a bit hacked off. I think I may now have a reason to break down and buy a C-8080 or a D-70, both of which I've been slobbering over for some time now. The parade was fun, and we headed back to Ken's for drinks. He has the best home bar I've ever seen, and I took serious advantage of it. The guest room is great, easily as nice as some B&Bs I've seen. Private bath, veranda with teak furniture, comfy bed, and so on. I woke up around 8, showered and headed upstairs for a breakfast of blueberry pancakes and apple crisp before heading home to mow my lawn and do home work. Woo hoo!

And that was my Seafair weekend.

Work has been interesting... or something. I'm trying to get all of my process documentation in order for my replacement while trying to learn a new job and keep up with the old one. In updating all of the information, I'm finding that there is a huge amount of work to teach our new victim, and it is going to be a minor nightmare for the unlucky soul. Oh well. It will pay their bills. They're just fortunate they won't have to answer to the slack-jawed yokel currently in charge. On the other hand, they'll probably have to babysit her like I have been for four and a half years. (Don't get me wrong - she isn't inbred white hillbilly trash. She's just... kinda glazed over if you use words over a fourth-grade level.)

I've discovered two new bands. Well, they're new to me. Embrace and The Arcade Fire. Oh, and British Sea Power. And Super Furry Animals! That's more than two. Get over it. And Anna Nalick! Sorry, they just keep coming to me.

It just gets better and better.

Not only do I get a massive promotion and a raise, and I get to have a decent manager that I can respect and learn from, but my current "boss" is getting demoted!

She seems to think that she has grounds for a discrimination lawsuit, but that's just laughable. If anything, she's been getting preferential treatment because nobody wants to offend her or make her cry by telling her she needs to do a better job.

Now that she's forced to learn my job, they're finding out just how little she does and how little she's capable of. They are reducing her position to that of a second AP specialist. They are also going to redistribute the work load so that it is more even between the two positions, which is going to either force her to learn something, or quit, or be fired.

I can't wait to see how this plays out. Am I just mean, or is it justified to want to see someone made miserable when they get their comeuppance?

Color me pleased with myself.

I have a new job! I have a new job! I have a new job! I have a new job! I have a new job! (Insert happy dance here.)

I am moving from an Accounts Payable Specialist job to a Senior Accountant job. I knew an education would pay off sooner or later. And I don't even have the degree yet!

Boy, if I felt overwhelmed before, I'm in for it now...

So, have you finished reading "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" yet?

Let me just say this. I am not going to kill myself like that one guy did(n't) when he found out who killed whom.

That's all I'm saying... at the moment.

Oh, and this.

AAAAAAAUGH!!! THAT BASTARD!

That's all.

African Grey Parrots

Some birds can do a pretty reasonable job of imitation, but this one is one of the best I've seen.

Alex is still the best.

I've moved into the 21st century!

No more dialup! Woo hoo! I downloaded both of the text books for my next class in less than 2 minutes! I have broadband! I have broadband! I have broadband!

Now I must celebrate by downloading things I could never download before. I have many software updates on my agenda.

And some mp3s are out there with my name on them...

I'd just be the frogman of your life.

I am having a really slow day at work, so thankfully a friend sent me a link to a great website that has misheard lyrics on it, such as the following gem from Elton John's song "Your Song."

Misheard Lyrics:
You've got a real hairy body
And a great big s******
You may have a wide pimpled butt
But it turns me on.

Correct Lyrics:
And you can tell everybody
That this is your song
It may be quite simple but
Now that it's gone.

I've been amusing myself off and on all day with this. I have to keep lying about what I'm laughing at.

You, too, can be a victim if you only try hard enough!

My "supervisor" came in today, absolutely breathless to tell her co-workers about the latest tragedy in her life.

Just for clarity, I must add that she has no tragedy in her life. She's only happy when she has something to complain about. It is all about her family's problems. Her nearly blind dying mother. Her crackhead son. Her Omarosa-like sister in a marriage of money. Her promiscuous artist sister. Her sex-addicted son that likes abuse from women. Her crackhead son's dirt-stupid drugged-up girlfriend. Her crackhead son's latest illegitimate child and the abuse she suffers at the hands of her parents. Take your pick. I only feel free to mention these people's personal problems because the "supervisor" broadcasts them around the office with impunity, so no harm done.

So this is her latest tragedy. Apparently there was nothing happening on the family front, so she had to find another way to portray herself as a victim. She was on the way home from work yesterday and there was a fatality traffic accident that kept her from getting to her hair appointment. So sad.

Fatality traffic accident. Hair appointment.

You know, even in my head, I can't keep the sneer out of my voice when I re-read that.

And so he says to me, you got legs, baby, you're everywhere…you're all over the place! Yeah!

I’m wondering if it is just my imagination that I keep ending up dealing with smelly or otherwise tremendously annoying people on the train. Almost every day, I end up in a booth with one of them. I get to the train fairly early so that I can relax and read and get a good seat. Almost every day, one of them sits in my booth instead of, say, one of the 12 empty booths near me. I seem to have some kind of freak magnetism.

Yesterday I had a fat, smelly, sweaty, coughing, eating guy with headphones turned up loud enough for everyone. He was huffing from the four stairs he had to climb to get on the train, so I had to listen to him breathing for 40 minutes from 6 feet away over the noise of the train. Even worse, his breathing sounded like snoring, but I know he was awake. Every three and a half minutes he would cough – one loud, sharp cough that actually hurt my ears. He ate something that left greasy fingerprints all over the table and crumbs on his messily unshaven face. (Men, if you insist on maintaining the stubble look, keep it neat.) He kept picking up his backpack, rummaging through it, taking out a water bottle, drinking, then putting it away, and then doing it again. He must have done this eight times instead of just leaving the bottle out where he could get it.

This isn’t the first time, either. I seem to get one or two a week, especially on the evening train. I figure that if they can afford the $4.00 trip, they should be able to afford to shower and wash their clothes regularly enough to be inoffensive. There’s a guy on the morning train that never changes his clothes. You can smell him before you see him. He always gets to sit alone. I wonder if that is the intention…

Then there's the total psycho. He sits in one of the end booths with his back to everyone and if anyone coughs or sneezes, he turns around and glares at them repeatedly. After a few times, he starts making comments like, "Knock it off, you're just doing that for attention." He sits and plays with his little beeping watch the whole time, which is really annoying, and he has it set so that the alarm goes off just before the Kent stop. He's always clutching a bag or breifcase-like-thingie to his chest. His glasses are huge and thick and come down to his cheekbones. He reminds me of the Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight!

When I am on the train, I do not make any noise, I do not touch anyone, I do not make anyone smell me. I try to be invisible just out of courtesy to others. I know they don’t want to be bothered with me any more than I want to be bothered with them. Are some people so desperate for contact with others that they will annoy strangers just to draw attention to them?

And speaking of drawing the attention of strangers, here I am with a blog… Hello, pot? This is the kettle. You’re black!

The need for speed.

You can't tell, but I'm doing a happy dance.

I'm getting broadband this week! Broadband! Broadband! Broadband! Excuse me while I squeal like a little girl.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

My basic excuse for this extravagant expenditure is that I need it for school. It is painful to download 12mb annual reports with a 56K modem. It makes me cry when I have to download 100 newsgroup messages. I want to shoot myself in the head when I take online proficiency tests that I have to do over when my ISP boots me out just as I submit my final answers. I may be able to cut down my homework/school time by 8 hours a week with faster downloads/uploads.

And then there's the streaming capabilities... but that would be playtime. I have no time for that... No, really! Playtime is for non-undergraduate students. I wish I was a non-undergraduate student... There are so many things I would be able to do if I had time that I don't even know the possibilities. I could probably play Doom online, and stream music and videos, and shop on eBay...

Did I say that out loud?

But, hey, yeah, I'm thrilled that I can now get at my schoolwork in a minimum of time. That'll rock. Nothing makes life quite worth living like blazing fast downloads of college textbooks.

Life is full of surprises.

My sister is kind of the geanealogist of the family. This is a big shock to me, simply because I pictured her becoming something more like a groupie for AC/DC than a committed family historian. Anyway, in her searches, she has found that we are related to some very interesting people. One of our 7th great grandfathers was Sir Thomas Forster X. It gets more interesting from there, but I won't bore you with further details. Unfortunately, this won't do me any good, but it does give me a giggle to think of the histories of my ancestors.

I think I'll plant a white rose bush in my back yard...

I thought it was just me!

I constantly find myself behind drivers who are startled and baffled by virtually everything they encounter, as though they've never been outdoors before. They'll see, for example, a tree, and immediately they hit their brakes, as if they expect the tree to leap into the middle of the road. They also brake for mailboxes, buildings and their own rearview mirrors. But above all, they brake for the most disturbing and mysterious of all earthly phenomena, a green traffic light, which causes them to come to a virtual standstill, paralyzed, until the light turns yellow and then red, at which point they accelerate to 275 mph and shoot through the intersection, leaving me stuck at the light, shouting until spittle covers the dashboard.
-- from “Winning the big butt games” by Dave Barry (Column was originally published on Aug. 28, 1994)

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

They got Ralph Fiennes and Miranda Richardson for the next movie! Woo hoo!

Hello, Dalai!

Hey, its the Dalai Lama's 70th birthday!

You've got to check out the picture of the Tibetan Bagpipers... I am not making this up.

London

Maybe I'm stupid or naïve or ignorant, but it seems to me that people who bomb innocent commuters are not doing anything to further their own causes. All they do is make everyone hate them. Maybe that's what they want. Nothing else makes sense. Do they really think that anyone is going to have any sympathy for their cause after doing something like this? Why can't they just be civilized beings? Are we going to read the news reports about harmless little old English ladies with flowered hats splashed across the Underground and say to ourselves, "Gosh, I think we may be misunderstanding these poor gentlemen so profoundly that they feel the need to kill random, innocent citizens. Let's do whatever they want us to do"? As some wise person once said: puh-leeze. I think not. I'm guessing that the guilty parties are in for a world of hurt if they get caught. They certainly have it coming to them.

The reaping of the hay field.

My property finally looks like a lawn again! On Monday, my neighbor Dan stopped by with a brush cutter to brutalize my back yard into submission. Once that was finished, I whipped out my weed whacker and my newly repaired lawn mower and finished it off. My neighbors no longer glare in contempt as they pass my house. Now the trick is to maintain it while still getting everything else done. I have no idea how I'm going to manage that.

Mt. Mystery from Upper Royal Basin 

Mt. Deception from Upper Royal Basin 

Mt. Clark (on left) and the Needles from Upper Royal Basin  

Royal Lake 

I survived the hike!

Woo hoo! Royal Basin is all that I remembered and more.

I started out early from home and drove to the trailhead in the pouring rain. Since it was raining so very hard, I decided that I would get to the trailhead and wait until noon to see if it would clear up. It actually stopped raining before I got there, and it never started again. On the drive, I saw a racoon, two cats, a raven, 17 deer, and a grouse, in that order. It was an omen of what was to come.

I hiked up to Royal Lake. It is about 5 miles and 2600 feet of elevation gain from the parking lot to the lake. The trail starts out gently, small rolling hills through forest and an empire of moss. Eventually the trail conditions get rougher and the trail itself gets steeper each time it starts uphill. Luckily, the trail grade is not consistent, and you get lots of breaks on flat trail before continuing upward. Last year I could have handled more of an incline, but this is only the second hike I've done since last August, and it is the first overnighter. That's a heavy pack to throw on when you're out of shape!

The lower meadows are gorgeous. I love the wildflowers, the views of the peaks surrounding the basin, and the ice-milk blue stream that runs through it. They've put good footbridges over all of the larger creeks. It used to be more difficult to cross them. I got to the lake at noon and set up camp. Before I even had my tent up (and it takes about 5 minutes), I had a deer in camp begging for food. I had intermittent visits the whole time I was there.

After eating lunch (lasagne!), I headed up to the upper basin. The trail from the lake passes through the meadows in which the ranger station is located, past Shelter Rock, then up for a while to another huge alpine meadow. The avalanche lilies have taken over this part of the trail. I've never seen so many in one place! After crossing a stream coming down from Mt. Deception (you can see a huge waterfall off to your left at this point), you start up a trail that is pretty steep and narrow along what looks like a recent landslide. It may have happened years ago, but it has the look of a fresh one. It is all lose scree, and the footing is a little tricky - especially on the way down.

Since the weather wasn't great, the pictures were just OK. It was cold and overcast. The upper basin is at 5600 feet, so low clouds up there are at about eye-level. I hung out in the basin for a while, eating my victory snack (a Snickers bar) and watching a party of four descending the glacier next to Mt. Deception. I also saw a group of five descending Mt. Clark. I stayed in my safe little haven of the upper basin next to the big tarn that looks like an underlit opal. I watched the marmots for a while. There is an abundance of marmots up there! After I got cold, I headed back down to camp.

Once I got back to the lake, I walked the trail around the lake and took pictures. I then went back to camp and ate dinner (Chili Mac with beans!) and had a victory drink (Vodka!). I stashed my bear vault and organized camp. It was time to relax! I sat by the lake and dangled my feet over the little cliff for a while, reading my book (Holy Blood, Holy Grail) and watching some guy fishing. It was getting pretty cold at this point, so I headed into my tent with my book.

I woke up only a few times. Once, I heard someone come into my camp and stand there for about 30 seconds, then leave. I know it was a person because of the stomping footfall and the swishing of the pants with each step. Another time, I heard something kick some rocks as it walked past my tent. That one was probably a deer. I hauled the required 2-1/2 pound bear vault up for protection from deer? I woke at about 2 a.m. to find the temperature was about 35 outside, but it was about 55 in the tent. I didn't realize how much breathing and body heat could warm up a tent!

When I woke up at 6 a.m., it was about 59 degrees in the tent and it was very bright. I stuck my head out to find a crystal clear blue sky. I got up and ate breakfast (scrambled eggs and bacon!) and headed back up to the upper basin. More deer, more marmots, more flowers, no people! I got there just in time to see the first jets of the day marring the sky with contrails. As soon as one contrail dissipated, another would cross the sky. I had to be quick with the camera to get pictures that didn't have little white lines all over the background. I did get some nice pictures, though! I'll post a link when I can.

I headed back to camp. On the way, I spoke with two other hikers who mentioned a weather system that was coming in that they didn't want to get caught in. I didn't want to get caught in it either. I broke camp and headed out. It turns out that it never happened, but I needed to get home to do some work anyway.

All in all, it was an excellent weekend hike.

Since this was my first camping trip of the year, my legs took quite a pounding. It took me almost as long to get back to my car as it took me to hike in, and I was already stiffening up by the time I got out of the parking lot. I've been hobbling around this morning as though I crossed the country barefoot! But hey, I did it, and the weather was perfect, and that is all I really wanted anyway.

Ask Adventure Woman!

I have apparently become the resident hiking advice person in my office. I've had three people tell me to tell them where to go this weekend.

You can probably imagine where I'd like to tell them to go, but I give them a list of hikes instead.

So if you're in the area and you don't know where to go, read this list and make up your own mind.

Only 10 hours and 22 minutes until I wake up and start preparing to leave! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Local hero

One of our guys that was dragged off a year ago returned to the office today from a 10-month stay in Iraq. He has no physical scars and no obvioius emotional scars. Woo hoo!

They were here first.

There are those people who don't like bears. I have a lot of words to describe those people, and none of them are very nice. I particularly don't like the idea that they believe bears are a nuisance to be removed from the population. The fact is that we are infringing on their territory more every year. They have nowhere to go, and their food sources are waning. They don't like us because we know that we will hurt them if given the opportunity, but they still show up where they are not welcome. For instance, in mid-June there was a black bear captured near a local elementary school using 20 dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts as bait. It is all fine and good that they feel they must protect the children (spare me that rationale, please - we could stand to lose a few), but poisoning this poor animal with refined white sugar and flour in order to capture it and relocate it seems more of a publicity stunt than anything.

Do not believe for a second that I am not willing to poison myself with refined white sugar and flour. Oh, yes, I will do that in a heartbeat. I do it every time I have the option. I would fall into a trap set with Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Fatty fatty fat fat!

However, you just don't do that to the animals. That's just cruel. How's that bear going to get doughnuts where they relocate her? What's she going to do to satisfy her carb cravings, eat fruit? Can you imagine?

And to those rich people who build their houses up in the mountains and then complain about the bears getting in their hot tubs and clogging the filters with their hair, I have only this to say. "Dude, you bought a house in the wilderness. You can afford a locking hot tub cover. Get over it."

I love dogs...

But I truly love John Cusack. And he has a new movie coming out!

Seriously, though, I actually bought a house specifically because I wanted a dog and you can't have a dog in an apartment. Well, not a dog worth having, anyway... Those stupid little yappy rat-dogs that my cat could kill don't count. I bought my house the moment 9/11 happened (war profiteering, anyone?) and yet, no dog. After I graduate, go to England, and get a Jeep, I'll get a dog. Does that sound fair? Actually, I may have to wait until the cat... uh, she may be reading this, so hold that thought.

You know. Cats and dogs. Oil and water. Christians and anyone else. Vinagre and chocolate. Me and "children." Some things just don't mix.

On the other hand, I may have bought a house because I SO HATED living in apartments. My last apartment caused me so much stress (gang members for neighbors, daylight armed break-ins in the neighboring buildings, drug dealers for neighbors, police calling me to find out if anything was worth investigating [I knew many of the Renton cops on a first-name basis], rats, giant hairy spiders) that I actually bought out my lease to leave it. And it isn't as though I could afford to pay a few month's rent to get out! I actually medically needed to leave. It is not a good situation when you cannot sleep for more than 15 minutes at a time because of the noise level and you start having heart palpitations from stress.

Whatever.

The point is that I own a fully-fenced quarter acre and no dog. What the hell?!

But back to John Cusack. I have had some kind of a fixation on him since the early '80s. So naturally, I'm gonna see this new movie. It is called Must Love Dogs, in case you didn't bother to click on that link up there.

Holy crap, my fixation on this guy that I will never meet and who wouldn't know I existed even if I did actually meet him is probably the closest thing to a non-self-destructive relationship that I have ever had. How sad is that?

And speaking of police... My boss's boss (who I used to have a problem with, but now that I see that my boss's assessment of her boss is totally ridiculous and I'm not speaking to her anymore because she is a liar and a backstabber) has talked to all of her friends about me and her ex-husband's best friend, and after her friends and her sister all met me they all agree that I should meet him and we would be like the bestest couple ever... wait a minute, I just lost my train of thought.

More concisely: Michelle and all of her friends think that Darrin and I should meet. He's on the local police force. They keep trying to introduce us, and it keeps not happening. I don't know what to think of the whole situation. I was at a dinner party recently in which the whole group that knew him was harassing him over speaker-phone for not showing up, and based solely on that I would say that he and I would hit it off. He was funny and intelligent and dealt well with harassment. (Those are requirements.) I've also seen pictures, and they were... appealing.

However.

I'm emotionally rather, uh, well, hmmmmm... distant. And I kinda like it that way. The more distant, the better. The more distant, the less chance of being screwed over. Safety net, you know? How awkward would it be to get screwed over by your boss's boss's ex-husband's best friend? That's just a Jerry Springer episode waiting to happen.

Hey, speaking of which, Max and Michelle just got married earlier this month! (Michelle is not my boss's boss. In case you didn't pick up on that.)

Oh, and Darrin owns a Harley. It would never work.

So, I'm thinking Siberian Husky mix. I need a non-human hiking partner, and I figure a dog that can be outside all day long in the cold and snow is probably ideal. The moment I graduate, I'll start looking into it. I also have to finish rebuilding my fence. Whole 'nother story there. Maybe some other day.

Chair Peak and half-frozen Snow Lake, May 28 2005 

My stalker

I don't think that I have previously mentioned my stalker.

The dangers of public transportation:

• Missing your transportion and getting stranded
• Catching your transportation as planned and getting stuck with icky people for the whole ride

I define icky people as:

• People who physically invade your space
• People who won't shut up
• People who smell like 12 kinds of ass
• People with diseases that they feel no compulsion to avoid spreading to you by sneezing and couging on everything within a radius of 20 feet
• Stalkers

I suppose he doesn't technically qualify as a stalker, but he shows great promise. I base this statement on the following quotes:

• "I want to get to know you better."
• "Do you have time for coffee?"
• "Where do you live?"
• "Are you single?"
• "What trains do you take every day?"
• "Are you married?"

Worrisome, no? And this is after exactly one conversation, during which I repeatedly tried to politely shut him up by returning to my beaten-up copy of Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Not only did he not take the hint, he asked what the book was about. Try explaining a sci-fi fantasy good-versus-evil Pythonesque apocolyptic novel to a guy who does not get the sci-fi fantasy good-versus-evil Pythonesque apocolyptic genre, and you will find yourself pulling your hair out.

Needless to say, I know which trains he takes, and I no longer take them.

Fourth of July weekend

So, I'm thinking that the weather is going to be a suckfest this weekend, but I'm doing the hike anyway. I want to exhaust myself hiking in the rain up a valley on a trail traversing a towering ridgeline to a tiny campsite next to a gemlike glacier-fed alpine lake in a rocky cirque populated with large predatory animals that I will fend off for three days and two nights with my trekking poles while surviving on little plastic bottles of vodka and Johnny Walker Black and dehydrated beef stroganoff (mmmm... beefy...) and lasagne with no iPod or email or homework or (hopefully) other people. There's nothing like waking up with a bear breathing on your tent to make you feel alive. I'm sick of homework, I'm sick of studying, I'm sick of sitting around getting fat. And no, I don't mean "phat." I mean eating-two-TV-dinners-in-a-row-and-then-a-box-of-Haagen-Daaz-bars kind of fat. I haven't hiked regularly for 9 months, and at my (ahem) advanced age, you can't eat like that if all you do is sit at a computer every waking moment. Last summer, all I did was work and hike, so I could handle eating a 1,500-calorie sandwich for lunch, followed by a box of Girl Scout cookies (the Samoas, of course) and a two-liter bottle of Jolt, but things are not like they were 9 months ago. God, I cannot wait to graduate... I want my life back! I want free time! I want to be able to sleep enough every night! I want to do what I want to do!

Not to mention that I want out of this crap job. But I'm working on that.

I get to go hiking! I get to go hiking! I get to go hiking! Though I know the weather may not be ideal, or even pleasant for that matter, I get giggly and twirly just thinking about it. I'm currently doing an internal happy dance, evidenced only by the inane grin and slightly psychotic glint in my eyes. If a stranger saw me right now, they would be frightened and unnerved in some undefinable way.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

I just had a job interview. Woo hoo! I am first in line for a new position within the company. I'm nearly giddy with anticipation. I won't find out if I get it until next week.

If I was the praying type, I'd be praying right now.

Here's the nasty thing, though. I'll have to train my replacement. I am not fond of training, but naturally I will deal with it if I have to. I think that if I leave this position, they will find out just how much I do around here.

And they'll rue the day. Mwah ha ha ha!

Rue the day? Who talks like that?

Lawn fairies

A very strange thing happened on Monday.

I got home. Parked in the garage. Walked into the driveway. Smelled grass. Thought, "hey, someone mowed their lawn." Looked down. Someone had mowed my lawn.

Very strange indeed.

There's a little bit of a backstory to this. Last May, I mowed my lawn. And I had been mowing it about twice a week at that point. In a stunning upset, we stopped getting rain. It was seriously weird. We had a hot, dry summer. The lawn went dormant, so it didn't need mowing. I am not one of those freaks who is willing to run up my water bill to keep the grass green. I water the trees and shrubs, but that's it. Anyway, the hot, dry summer turned to a pleasantly warm, dry fall, and then to a surprisingly mild, dry winter.

Then spring came. And it started to rain. The ski resorts that closed early for lack of snow reopened in March. Oops. Prime grass growing season. Of course, that also meant that the grass was too wet to mow. So it grew and grew. By the time it was dry enough to mow, it was too late. My lawn mower wasn't starting. I borrowed my neighbor's mower, but my grass was too thick to cut. It is currently about armpit deep, but it is too heavy to stand, so it is all laying down. That's just the back yard. The front grows slowly and sparsely, so it is less to cope with. The front yard is the north side of the house - heavy shade and clay for soil.

Anyway, the front yard got weed whacked. My mower is with a neighbor who is fixing it in trade for my old TV. He stopped by one day to see if I was OK because I used to have the nicest yard in the 'hood, and now it looks like the crack house down the road. You'd think nobody lived there based on the "lawn." I told him my sad story (single woman, broken lawn mower, pay cut, undergrad, no free time, boo hoo) and he offered to find someone to take care of it.

Now that the lawn fairies stopped by to cut it, I'll be able to maintain it after I get my mower back . It will be nice to have people not stare in disgust at my yard as they drive past. I think my neighbor fixing my mower is the one that whacked it, but I'm not sure. There was no note, so it could have been any old vigilante yard maintenance guy with a vendetta against knee-deep grass and a heart of gold. Hopefully I'll find out soon.

Slow day...

I'm having a really slow day at work, which is why I'm killing time doing this. This is a really bad thing, because I'm in accounting and I have deadlines. The end of the month is approaching - June ends, for me, on July 5th - and I have to have everything into the system by then. However, nothing came in the mail today! Which means it will all be here tomorrow, Friday, or god forbid on Tuesday, when I have to really cram everything in. I have limited workday hours because of public transportation and school demands. If I can't get everything done, my supervisor is supposed to do it. I say "supposed to" because I have a feeling she'll suddenly have a sick day or some crisis and be unable to do anything. She's usually ill on the day following a long weekend holiday. If there's no holiday, she's just sick on Monday.

When you have a personal crisis every day, are they really crises anymore?

Here's the work situation. I've been in this job for almost 5 years. So has my supervisor. She still has not gained proficiency at her job, and it frustrates the living crap out of me. Even worse, I'm not good at hiding it. It turns out that there's an opening in another department, and I want it. I'm "interviewing" today. Wish me luck. Even worse, I have to convince her that she needs to learn my processes so that if I leave this position, she can keep the department going while my replacement gets up to speed. Instead of learning, say, how to do the wire transfers, she has decided that the process is too cumbersome and wants to change the process. It is not, in fact, cumbersome - if you understand it. She wants to shorten the process down so much that we won't be able to pay our vendors correctly or track wires in the system after we post them. In other words, she wants to do the absolute minimum and ignore things like audit trail and reporting requirements. She can do it after I quit, but while it is my process I'm going to do it correctly.

Hey, more mail came in! Gotta go.

First blog post!

If you found this blog, you may have found it because of my previous site, which I gave up because my parents found it. They're pretty intelligent, so they may find this one, too. I'm not creative enough to come up with a new name.

A bit about me... I'm a third-time college student (third time's a charm, right?) working in a full-time accounting job in downtown Seattle. I'm very average in most respects. I make the average income for King County, I have a car, a mortgage, a cat, and two fish tanks. I'm way too interested in hiking, but until I get my accounting degree I have cut down to one hike each month. When I have the time and energy, I also like to bike, skate, and snowboard. I really like to lounge around in the summer in my back yard with my grill and my barbecue and a book and a beer. I love road trips. I seriously dig my camera. I actually have a very small home business from which I sell some of my pictures. I have literally no social life because all of my time is spent either at work, at school, or trying to get away from work and/or school.

Get the picture?

So my passion is actually hiking with my camera. I've gotten some great pictures. I spent Memorial Day weekend getting horrifyingly sunburned on the Snow Lake/Gem Lake trail. This weekend I hope to get horrifyingly sunburned in Royal Basin. We shall see. Western Washington is always overcast or raining on the Fourth of July, so I won't be surprised if I'm waterlogged by the time I get back. For my birthday last year, I hiked up into the Enchantments. That was in late August. The first day was nice. The second day was nice if you like torrential downpours that are heavy enough to put out five month-old forest fires in a day. That kinda sucked, so I plan to go back in the summer of '07. This year for my birthday, I hope to hike the Necklace Valley. I have a four-day weekend, so it may work out.

And now I have to be a responsible working citizen. More later.