Jealousy.

The dude whose office I am sitting in has a most superior chair.

Family Biz

Working for the same company as my cousin—especially at the same site—is a little strange. For example, I can chat to him over company IM, on company time. I’D LIKE TO POINT OUT THAT WE RARELY DO THIS. But. All the same, it’s a possibility. He and his wife just had a baby, so occasionally, news needs to be passed, and it’s odd, but handy, to be able to discuss things while at work, and just by typing.

And it’s handy for me when I do things like miss a bus and need a ride to the express to Seattle, and my poor cousin gets called at home while he’s already in his pjs, and drives me to Everett Station.

And it’s ESPECIALLY handy when we want to go to lunch together and can easily plan it, and talk about who’s driving, which led to the following exchange.

Him: “Hey, do you have an elite parking pass?” (Parking at our site is notoriously, outrageously, difficult.)

Me: “HELL no.”

Him: “LOL okay. I thought, since you just changed jobs, you might get some kind of ‘relocation’ or ‘guest work’ type consideration.”

Me: “I WISH. Some members of my new team did, and I wish I could hate them, but they are very nice about it and carpool me around all over the place. This makes it impossible to hate them.”

Him: “It would.”

Me: “B*tches.”

Nothing Is Irreversible

Mighty Girl. "Decorating Your Home: 5 Tips On How To Get Started"

Turns out I have the Number 3 tip DOWN PAT. I am that girl who says, with an extremely outwardly-expressed form of long-suffering patience, "Look, let's just get paint on that wall/move the bookshelves from the warehouse to the kitchen/move your table into the living room so I can install MY table, because I'm tired of making decisions, and if you don't like it, we can always change it later. NOTHING IS IRREVERSIBLE." Many roommates have been very bothered by this. I still have trouble understanding them. 

Comes With The Territory

"Hi", I typed to AZ. "I'm tired and whiny."

"So you said hi just to whine?"


Me: "Yep!"


Him: "How did I get so lucky?"


Me: "...you dated me."

On Romantic Love and the Duration Thereof

From my hero, describing the start of her romance with her husband:

"...But that same afternoon after my break-up, he told me he was going to walk to Wawa’s (the New Haven version of QuikTrip) to get a Coke, and did I want to come? I did. We walked to Wawa’s, then back to the law school, and sat on a bench beneath some blooming magnolia trees. He said something completely incoherent, then took my hand; this was the first time we ever touched. At that moment, if he’d asked me to marry him, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised, and I might well have said “Yes.” (We did get engaged several months later.)

Now, so many years later, is it the same? Yes and no. Yes, because I still love him passionately, and more deeply, because I know him so much better. No, because he’s passed through my heart and into my soul, and he pervades my entire life, so now sometimes it’s hard to see him. Married people are so intertwined, so interdependent, so symbiotic, that it’s hard to maintain that sense of wonder and excitement..."

And this:

"When we first met, I honestly wondered whether it would ever be possible for me to read when we were sitting in a room together; I found it so hard to concentrate that I couldn’t make sense of anything more complicated than the newspaper. Now, I find it hard to tear myself away from my work and my email to hold up my end of a marital conversation."

She and her husband love each other very much, I've no doubt, but I believe (from what I can tell of it so far) her description of making an ongoing life with another person is dead on. As always, her writing style is so naked and unashamed that it's like reading my own thoughts, only edited by, say, Sylvia Plath. Or possibly Anais Nin.  There's a great passage describing a sympathetic listener in "My Old Man and The Sea": "It's like going out to dinner with yourself." That's what Ms. Rubin does for me; she takes me out to dinner with myself.

Should your partner be able to do that for you as well? I'm not sure. That seems like a special skill that really a very few people have in this world; which means it may not be a practical requirement that you should look for in a life partner. I do believe strongly that your life partner should make you a better VERSION of yourself, but that's not necessarily the same as being the kind of sympathetic listener that attracts people to them like moths to a flame.

And on Sunday, 12/2/2012, I Became Entrepreneur's Dream Girl

See this device?

(Picture of HP Touchpad)

This is a sweet, 0.7 inch, 32GB touchpad piece of hardware that I got off Ebay for $230 bucks with shipping, including a fancy stand and a few other accessories.

The only problem: it's an HP. It runs webOS, which is faintly related to Palm. No apps, no support, no updates. It's basically a mobile web browser, which is a damn waste of 32GB of memory.

Solution: I hacked it, of course! I followed the instructions in (insert link) this link to install Android's Ice Cream Sandwich over the top of the webOS, and et voila: I have a sweet Android touchpad with 32GB of memory and a damn nice processor for less than $200, if you look at just the price I paid for the device. It was so easy that I can't really even consider it hacking, although I will take every opportunity to use that word anyway. (For comparison: the cheapest 10 inch Android tablet on the market right now is $399, and it has HALF THE MEMORY.)

I was so happy.

AND THEN. And then. There we were, cuddling on the couch, watching about 15 NCIS episodes in a row, your generally awesome Sunday evening, and it got to be about that hour and Entrepreneur and I were hungry. And we didn't necessarily feel like cooking anything. And so I pulled out my Android touchpad, downloaded the EAT 24 app, and made food happen. Within thirty minutes we had hot Indian food show up at our door, and I hadn't moved more than a few finger taps.

IT WAS AWESOME.

From the Twitter Feed

"Made the big HOME DEPOT run with Entrepreneur last night. Then bison burgers to celebrate...w. cheese seared by blowtorch. As you do."

Tri-tip, as always, had the perfect response: "Your experience last night was so manly that my chest hair grew another inch just be reading it."

I would like to point out that my own chest hair has not grown one iota, which is a little disappointing, but more importantly, as it should be.

I'd also like to point out that my boyfriend HAND-SEARS my choice of cheese on my bison burger, because he loves me. 

I'm just sad I didn't get any pictures of it. OR of all the friends we made at Home Depot last night! But I think that might have struck them as weird. ("Thanks for getting that quote together! Hey, can you go stand oh-so-casually by your computer and smile pretty for my Instagram feed?")

In related news, I may soon be taking many pictures of my car, because I have goblins in my engine block and my fan belt has started a squealing argument with them, and if it lasts for just the next week I can take enough time to actually figure out what I want to do with it, whether that's sell it or have it fixed AGAIN, since I just spent $1000 on it over the summer, or if I can attempt to fix it myself--which worked so well last time. (This time, though, I have my own garage! Hi, mom.)

More Pictures

See that rain BOUNCING off the sidewalk? Yeah. Hello, winter.

Now THIS is a way to deal with winter. In the lodge on the mountain.

Recent Saturday after Pilates. I ran so many errands and got so much done, yay! I now have armwarmers and fuzzy socks. Crucial for this upcoming season.

Also crucial for this upcoming season. Hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps.

Yes.

Pictures! And Life.

It's important for me to remember that all the other blogs that I read--the ones that are updated daily and perfectly and are full of great content--are written by people who blog for a JOB. I have a day job, and it is NOT blogging. I'm lucky I can write and type so quickly in the first place, or else this blog would NEVER get updated! I can't decide which would worry my mother more: if this blog never got updated, or if it suddenly got updated ALL THE TIME.

Something to ponder.

Here are some pictures.

Did you know this? Me either! Hallelujah for the first vacation day I have had in months. Allows for all sorts of exploring.

I was shocked. SHOCKED I TELL YOU. Also: new hair color! AND new part. I switched sides for the first time in 31 years. (Almost 32!)

The Library. (Read: a delicious, and close, restaurant and bar.)

I wandered in there at 1:30 on a weekday and they made me breakfast ANYWAY.

I wish OUR warehouse looked this good.

Not so recent shot.

Titan was surprised by a bag of flour. He is unfazed, because the Boy is holding food in his hand. Also: the Boy needs new shoes.

Awww. Dawg.

Aren't these gorgeous?

Recent hiking trip with the Boy and his Mom.

Recent camping trip in which we ended up camping in the snow, not like I'm still bragging about that or anything.

 In other news, I'm trying to be patient as my cube mate is on the phone with the "Help" desk here at the Lazy B, because her email is "down". PEBKAC. But she is a very nice lady and I am trying to remember that.

In other OTHER news, the Boy and I got to go out to dinner (which we haven't done in awhile) with our friends Marisa and Brian (whom we ALSO haven't seen in awhile) and it was awesome. A grownup date, hooray, at one of our favorite local spots, hooray times two, for half price meals, AGAIN I SAY HOORAY!

Can't Get Me Down

Happy Thursday!!

Dawg is...

...exhausted by the hard work of protecting our perimeter.

Our NETWORK perimeter, that is.

I keep trying to tell him that viruses have no smell, but I'm not sure it's getting through. (Spot the pun!)

IT'S A BEAUTIFUL MORNING!!

America, I love you.

(This post is so cheating and I don't even care.)

And E, Entrepreneur, my boy, the light of my heart, who canvassed for the Human Rights Campaign when he could barely walk, YOU. You helped. You actually, measurably, HELPED CHANGE THE WORLD.

SO sexy.

Who says one person can't change the world?

Today, the world has been changed for everyone.

Where we camped

I think you might be interested in this track: https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=202352412221126755785.0004cd73f68a98ae93035 Created by My Tracks on Android. Name: 10/20/2012 15:08 Activity type: - Description: - Total distance: 4.22 km (2.6 mi) Total time: 05:57 Moving time: 05:39 Average speed: 42.52 km/h (26.4 mi/h) Average moving speed: 44.83 km/h (27.9 mi/h) Max speed: 74.70 km/h (46.4 mi/h) Average pace: 1.41 min/km (2.3 min/mi) Average moving pace: 1.34 min/km (2.2 min/mi) Fastest pace: 0.80 min/km (1.3 min/mi) Max elevation: 786 m (2579 ft) Min elevation: 684 m (2244 ft) Elevation gain: 2 m (6 ft) Max grade: 2 % Min grade: -16 % Recorded: 10/20/2012 15:08

Exotic is as Exotic Does

It's birthday season again, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my MOTHER and my LITTLE, both of whom are incredible ladies, although in very different ways, and many thanks to both of them for being born on the same date, to make it easier for me to remember both birthdays, as one reminds me of the other, and vice versa.

This has got me started thinking about birthdays, and what they are, and things like that.

In my office at the B, last year, the ladies took me out to lunch for my birthday, as is somewhat of a custom in our group at the B--there's four of us and we each take turns planning for the next lady's birthday after ours--and they asked me what I did to celebrate my birthday that year, although technically it had been the previous year as, being that my birthday is always in December, we hadn't gotten a chance to celebrate it in the same month or even in the same year, holiday schedules being what they are, plus the added complication of moving offices. (And we're moving AGAIN! Joy.)

Anyway, they asked me what I had done, and I said, "Oh, a bunch of my girlfriends threw a Trader Joe's themed party, in which everything came from Trader Joe's, because that's how *I* entertain, and we all congregated at someone's apartment and drank too much wine for a weeknight and just chatted."

There was a moment of silence, and then all the ladies sighed.

"Wow, that sounds...WONDERFUL," my cube mate said, and the other two made emphatic agreeing noises.

I was surprised--not because that celebration wasn't fun, because it was! But because it was pretty low-key to be considered, in my mind, as something "wonderful", at least with that kind of emphasis. After all, the year before, for my 30th birthday, I had thrown a fancy cocktail party in the middle of the week. Roommate made two kinds of punch cocktails from a signed punch recipe book that the head bartender at one of our favorite local cocktail havens had loaned her; we bought out the local Trader Joe's and offered foods galore; we insisted that everyone appear in fancy dress. It was a Happening. Sitting around and drinking wine seemed a little more low key in comparison.

But the ladies around me at the B are wives and mothers, in addition to being careerists, and they have a lot of demands on their time, especially now, as their kids are starting high school and such, and to them, a crew of ladies sitting around on a weeknight drinking too much wine for a school night and just chatting was the epitome of Wonderful.

Good to remember.

Monstrous Regiment of Women

I didn't know, until right now, that Terry Pratchett's "Monstrous Regiment" title actually had a source!

And a very old one, at that.

1558: John Knox publishes a pamphlet anonymously entitled: The first blast of the trumpet against the monstruous regiment of women.

The key blurb, with some of the original spelling:

"For who can denie but it repugneth to nature, that the blind shall be appointed to leade and conduct such as do see?

That the weake, the sicke, and impotent persones shall norishe and keepe the hole and strong, and finallie, that the foolishe, madde and phrenetike shal governe the discrete, and give counsel to such as be sober of mind?

And such be al women, compared unto man in bearing of authoritie. For their sight in ciuile regiment, is but blindnes: their strength, weaknes: their counsel, foolishenes: and judgement, phrenesie, if it be rightlie considered." 

Daily Routines

Inspired by this post over at Gretchen Rubin's blog, of course, like half my musings are.

Because then, you see, the wonderful Maggie Mason wrote this post about Winston Churchill's Daily Routine, and then I dove deep into the rabbit hole, which is always a delightful thing to do, especially for such a good cause.

Which just brought me back around to this, Joan Didion's Favorite Packing List.

In conclusion, there is so much good stuff in this world! Thanks, Internet. You make it possible. 

More Normal Conversation

Entrepreneur and I are in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner—or rather, I’m cleaning and he’s keeping me company, as he cooked the entire meal for me earlier while I lay in bed, as my back was acting up again, and I lay there and healed and drank ginger beer and and read Alison Bechdel, which is a really wonderful way to spend one’s time while your lover is slaving away over a George Forman for you, and I highly recommend it.

ANYWAY, AS I WAS SAYING. It’s rather late and we have just watched Real Time with Bill Maher, as we are wont to do, and therefore we have just learned that Ann Coulter will be a guest on the show next week, along with Ben Affleck, which is pretty much must-see-TV.

“She’s gotten crazier,” E said, around a spoonful of ice cream.

“Yeah, I agree,” I said. “I remember when she first came on the scene, and she was mainly famous because she was a conservative Republican and wore leopard-print miniskirts, and had long blond hair. Ashley’s character from the West Wing was based partly on her, remember? Because at first they thought she was just trying to get into show business, and then she turned out to know something. Ainsley, that is. NOT Ann Coulter.”

“We used to call her Brown-shirt Barbie,” E said, chuckling.

I grinned slightly. “I can understand the Barbie reference, although I have some issues with that term, but I don’t understand the brownshirt reference! Can you help?”

“They’re the original paramilitary arm of the Nazi party who  helped bring Adolf Hitler to power,” he informed me.

“Ah. That makes sense. I don’t like ‘Barbie’ as a term in general, though. It over simplifies and over generalizes the issues surrounding women in politics and how their looks affect their reputation, while at the same time dismissing the entire woman and the entire discussion of why looks are or aren’t important! Now, THAT’S an impressive sellout word.”

He is quiet, eating his ice cream, allowing me space to talk. We talk about gender a lot less than you might think, given our particular relationship, or put another way, the particulars of our relationship. He was raised by two mothers; his cousin just married her girlfriend of many years; he majored in Psychology. He does the cooking and stays home with the dog, and so far he has brushed my dog, too, more often than I have in the last two years, and often does the laundry. I go to work at a high-powered job all day and am spending my weekends helping run his business on the side. We break traditional gender roles like we breathe—which is maybe why we don’t talk about them much. We just are. And there are pitfalls, too—he has horror stories about his experiences in the psych department of his college, and his mother and I have precious little patience to hear about how difficult HIS life has been, gender-wise.

So we don’t talk about it much, not because it’s taboo but because it doesn’t seem to get us anywhere and I love our relationship, however it runs.

But I’m serious about this Barbie word and so, uncharacteristically, I’m off and running. “It’s like when they called Palin, ‘Caribou Barbie’, just because she was pretty. I mean, to give credit where credit is due, I don’t think she attempted to use her looks once in the whole campaign—it’s just about the only dirty trick she DIDN’T try to use. And even so, the media went crazy about the cost of her suits and her makeover, getting her out of those mom sweaters, and such. Like John McCain wore Mens Warehouse! But no one fussed over how much HIS image consultant spent on clothes.”

“Yes, that’s true,” E said, gently. “But I think they called her that because she had so little SUBSTANCE. I mean, ‘Barbie’ is a completely accurate assessment, there.”

I thought about it. “Yeah, I can see that.”

And I did, but I was still bothered. And I came to a conclusion of why it bothered me later, but most unusually for me I saved it until the blog, because it wasn’t worth re-hashing all that again.

And here it is: If you’re going to use the word “Barbie” about Sarah Palin, you can’t accurately use it about Ann Coulter, and vice versa. “Barbie” means too many things, and that derogative smears both ladies in a particularly obfuscating way. Calling Palin a “Barbie” apparently means, “She has little to no substance”. Whereas calling Coulter a “Barbie” apparently means, “She is overly reliant on her looks as a tool”.

And THAT’S dangerous. Really dangerous. Because if you describe Ann Coulter as a Barbie too many times, you might convince yourself—or the liberals you’re talking to—that she ALSO has “little to no substance”.

And now, suddenly, you’re no longer treating her like a theat.

I mean, this is ANN EFFING COULTER! She’s a threat!! She’s Defcon 4! Don’t forget it, ever. I don’t care what you call her, but don’t forget who she is and what she represents. I WISH she had “little to no substance”. What a wonderful world that would be.

What Passes For Normal Conversation In Our House

Entrepreneur and I are in line at Whole Foods, and he is unhappy. We have gone to Whole Foods, at his request, when I was tired. And I protested, but eventually acquiesced, because he wanted two things: lactose-free milk, and ginger beer. And I understood these needs, and agreed, finally, that it was the best place to go for these items.

As it ended up, they had neither.

Whereas, I cleaned out the aisles! For someone who hadn't wanted to go to WF in the first place, I was happy as a clam. The cart, that he had so patiently pushed around the aisles, was full of my stuff.

So there we were in line at Whole Foods, as I was saying, and the poor cashier asked us if we had "found everything okay." We looked at each other.

"Well, you don't have the right kind of ginger beer," I started, knowing that Entrepreneur wouldn't if I didn't.

"Yeah," he said. "You only have Reed's, and that's...not my favorite. And you actually don't carry full-fat lactose-free milk."

Another cashier wandered up, and dutifully took down our suggestions. And then we both realized, in the moment: here we were, two people that had eaten today, and had jobs (well, me, anyway) and driving cars and everything, and we had supportive families that were talking to each other and we lived in America, and we were in line at Whole Foods complaining that they didn't have full-fat lactose free milk or our favorite kind of ginger beer.

We finished our conversation with both of the cashiers that had now been forced into helping us, due to corporate policy, and extricated ourselves with as much dignity as we could muster, which wasn't very much.

Thirty minutes later we were unloading our hard-won privileged grocery items and we noticed a huge amount of, shall we say, hippie-types hanging around Century Link Field. Entrepreneur did a little research on his phone and found the cause. "Ah. There's a show with members of both Phish AND The Grateful Dead tonight."

"Ah," I said.

Him: "So, if you want to score some acid, you know, tonight's the night."

Me: "Thank God, I've been meaning to get some! I looked for it at Whole Foods but they only had that one kind, which I hate."

Him: "Yeah. And when you complain to the cashier, they just look at you weird."

I'm Doing Laundry...

...in a place in which I need pliers to work the washer and dryer.

I LOVE IT.

If My Friend Molly Can Post Reguarly From EUROPE...

Then I really have no excuse, beyond that it hurts to type and I need to save every available minute I have for work papers, because I have a $40 million paper to get out today and a $100 million dollar paper to get out by Wednesday.

I know, right? I mean, THAT'S boring! But it's what I do, and furthermore it's what the Man pays me to do, and, you know, it's not trivial, this business of planes and foreign militaries and surveillance and so on. It's not Dilbert, although it can look like it if you're not paying attention. It's Serious Business, and I'm good at it, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view.

Fortunately, because between Entrepreneur and myself, someone has to make the money, and really, if I'm honest, I had to make money previous to me being in this relationship anyway! I mean, sadly, no one pays me to sit around and look pretty. I KNOW. I'm annoyed every day.

And unfortunately, because I actually love my job and would probably go batshit insane if I didn't have something LIKE it to do, and because if I want do it well, it can produce a lot of pressure and stress, two things I don't necessarily handle well, and finally, because as aforementioned, it requires 10 hours a day of constant typing and it turns out that I now hurt like the dickens, all the time.

ALL THE TIME. It's still weird for me to think about it, really. Like this is my new normal. Like my body just woke up one day and said, "You know what? I think I'm going to stop working today. I'm just, I don't know, tired, you know? I need some 'me' time. I just have to go...somewhere that's not here." And just took off, and I'm sitting there at the restaurant on this date with life that I've made, all like, "How can you leave me like this? After all I did for you? I looked after you and fed you and took you on walks!" And my body is already out the door, and the waiter's there handing me the check that I can't afford and also I'm naked, although maybe that only happens in my nightmares.

But, yeah. It's weird. It's hard to get used to a new normal at 31. I have to rewrite my life narrative. Ixnay on the tequila-fueled salsa dancing marathons, bring on the multiple cups of tea and ergonomic shoes. It's not...exactly...like getting old, but it feels damned similar. To be comfortable with it, I have to rewrite my narrative in a way that has promise to me, that shows promise FOR me, that seems like it will have good things around every corner, secret easter eggs that I have to walk slowly to find.

And so I'm doing things like: taking a lot more pictures, trying to stay present in the moment instead of wanting to fly off into the Great Gray Cloud Of Sadness And Despair. Trying to find small, good, things. Like, for example:

The fact that I have great health care (and that is a LARGE good thing!) and that I can even put my partner on it, saving HIM money, which is a good thing for US.

Even HAVING an US. (Again: a rather large good thing.)

The fact that the internet exists. Miles and miles of internet, miles and miles of entertainment, and not just mindless, either. For example: there is my friend Molly's travel blog, found here. I mean, my friend Molly can post updates to her blog from all over the world, and I can read them, here, standing at my ergonomic desk wearing my ergonomic shoes, and people say we don't live in the future? (To be fair, I would still like a jetpack.)

Also, you know what else exists on the internet? The text of Ernest Hemingway's story, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place", the title of which I just realized does not use the Oxford Comma, which is a thing I know about because of the internet. (Curious? Google the following: Oxford Comma Strippers. I PROMISE it is actually safe for work and will make you LOL.)

And finally, the following:

PLANT! It's name is Plant. It's a maidenhair fern, and it's in my cubicle, and it makes me so happy.