Kate

One of the benefits of living alone is that I can cook food that neither James nor Meredith like and enjoy it without listening to the chorus of 'Ewwwwwwwww'. Tonight? A thoroughly artery-clogging meal of breaded chicken livers fried in bacon grease. (I know, I know - Ewwwwwwwwwwwww. I like 'em, sue me.) I rarely make this meal because I'm the only one who eats it, unless my mom's around, and my craving is generally satisfied by far less than the entire tub of chicken livers. On the upside, I don't think there's a less expensive meat. My excuse for making it now is that I'm donating blood tomorrow and I have a tendency towards anemia. Yay iron.

Other unimportant news of the week... I started Monday off by forgetting a meeting had been scheduled for Monday morning at 9:00. Yeah, didn't make that one. Whoops.

Then I had to re-do a financial because Finance decided my fee percentage was four thousandths of a percent too high. Yeah, I love the Finance dept. Anal fucks.

I've got some fun stuff planned for my RP characters, so that's nice. Not ALL my characters, but a few. Makes me happy.

*yawn*

And... I'm tired.

While I'm here, click on my eggs if you feel like it. :D The little blue baby is one I bred with my grown-up dragons. Are you excited? And if you want to see the ones you've helped grow up, go here: http://dragcave.net/user/kateinva

Good grief, it's been a long week.

( Cut for those of you who don't feel like hearing me ramble )

Okay, it's been forever since I've done a real update, so I'll try to catch up on the important moments in the last - what? - two months or so? *shrugs* A long time at any rate. My life is pretty routine anyway, so it won't take that long.

( The excitement that is my life )

WHINING:

So. I woke up this morning to discover that I've caught Meredith's pink eye. *sigh* This was quickly followed by the realization that I'd sent the eye drops from the last time I had pink eye to NC with Meredith. Probability of drops not returning with her tomorrow: Pretty high.

Tomorrow is the one day out of the fiscal month that I have to go to work. Ergo, cannot go to the doctor until Tuesday if the drops are not returned to me.

Was supposed to see Iron Man today with my mom. Canceled due to allergies and pink eye. Mom was disappointed.

Mom asked if Mer and I want to go away for the long weekend to Cherokee/Asheville/Bryson City (where my great-grandfather was born). Mer's aunt is recently engaged and the engagement party is next weekend. We've both said we'd be there. Mom was disappointed. Told her I'll talk to Mer and see if I can convince her to miss the party. This is unlikely, as we're talking about Mer's favorite aunt, who is much more fun than her mom, grandmother, and uncle with Down Syndrome on a days long trip to the country. Could leave her behind with her dad for the weekend, but Mom would be disappointed. Do we sense a theme here? Could force her to go, but will then have a grumpy teenager spoiling everyone's good time and annoying me with her constant text messaging.

On the plus side, I tagged in on five scenes this morning and then went back to bed for two hours. Have I mentioned that I love Married!Romy/Oliver? I do. They're sickening. It's fun to have a blissfully happy character. And hello? Smuts like whoa. And, of course, Erin is teh awesome, even in Tokyo.

I need to eat. And shower. And clean. And GROCERY SHOP - NO FOOD! And hopefully scene some more. Nap again? Maybe.

Just a quick update, in list form. I haven't done a real update in awhile now, so I'm going back a ways. Forgive me if I'm repeating myself.

Cars:
- Spent ~$700 getting the Sebring fixed a few weeks ago. It had been parked since last September.
- Last weekend Mer run up onto a curve in said Sebring. Popped a tire, screwed up the alignment, and broke off a good chunk of plastic guard underneath the engine.
- Sebring is now parked again.

Mer:
- Is out of school sick for the third day this week.
- Is no longer seeing Derek, and may start dating Vasy again. (She dated him last fall and they went to homecoming together. He's the one with the crazy mother.)
- Told Derek they couldn't be friends right now because when he texted her the sight of his name made her throw up. Suspect this might actually have been the bug she's got rather than disgust at ex-boyfriend.

Work:
- Had a fun cinco de mayo party on Monday. Got a little tipsy, but was ok to drive home by the end of the day. Not sure I accomplished much that afternoon, though.
- I really need to get ready to go there.

RPGs:
- Caliga Ortus has several openings for characters who've puppeteers have left/are leaving the game. Off the top of my head I believe there is: Severus Snape, Pansy Parkinson, Cormac McLaggen, Michael Corner, Padma and Parvati Patil, and Su Li. If you're interested in picking one of these folks up, you can go to www.dracoandginny.com/caliga and get the audition form. Would be a good idea to familiarize yourself with the character as he/she has been played thus far first. For that you can go to caliga_rpg and click on the character's name in 'tags'.
- There is a nifty new community for posting historical, future, and AU Caliga scenes called caliga_plus. You can also request scenes.
- There's a new HP rpg starting up, Si Muove. If you're interested in joining, go to si_muove_ooc and send an application for the character you'd like to play.

That's all for now. I'd better get to the office.

So, today I'm sitting in a meeting and there are maybe 10 of us in the conference room. One guy is teleconferenced in and the manager who is heading up the meeting (John) is going through the motions, telling the guy on the phone who is there. John starts making a circular motion in front of his face and introducing people with "And I see Billy and Jen..." and so on. The vast majority of the people in the conference room were too young to get the reference, but not me. Oh no. At 35, I rank with the two managers (both of whom are over 50) as part of the 'old' crowd. So while most of the table is staring blankly at John, I start giggling. Loudly.

John looks at Chip (the other manager) and says, "What was the name of that show?" Chip's clueless, along with the table full of youngsters. Me? I blurt out, "ROMPER ROOM!" John makes some comment along the lines of "Right, Romper Room!" and the very pregnant Contracts Rep sitting next to me tell me that I'm sitting at the wrong end of the table, I belong over with the old guys.

This is not long after I had to explain our (50-something) Operation Manager's bad joke about 'Iraq the Casbah' to a group of younger folks in the office. A surprising number of young professionals are completely clueless about The Clash. It's sad, really.

And I am old.

Oh, another fun exchange in the meeting today:

Jessica, one of our Contracts folks is a slightly built young woman going through law school. She is also having substantial dental work done.

Chip: I'm sorry. I zoned out while Jessica was talking.

Sue: It's a lawyer trick.

Chip: She's kind of scary, isn't she?

Jessica: Don't worry, Chip. I intimidate a lot of people. I think it's the braces.

And OH! The woman in charge of stocking the kitchens and ordering vending machine stuffs keeps a paper on the fridge so people can request certain types of drinks. Currently the only request is a particular brand of gin. Hee.

As much as I hate work, my office is pretty awesome.

First off, let me apologize profusely for not having wished Ayla a happy birthday ON her birthday. So, HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, AYLA!

And a big happy birthday to Yssa, too!

( Random newsiness and babble )

It's positively painful to be at the office today. Very few people are in this week, and those that were here have mostly gone for the day. I'm very tempted to sneak out myself. Seriously, this place is tedious over the holidays.

However, my fellow project controllers surprised me with cake today. I really had no idea what was going on, despite being perfectly aware that my birthday is this weekend. So that was nice. We munched and chatted just enough about work that we could justifiably charge the time.

My boss and one of my co-workers were no here to partake. Jeff left early, and Tiff has been placed on bedrest. She's 19 weeks pregnant and they are hoping to keep her from delivering until week 25 at least, but her pregnancy history is not great. This is her 5th pregnancy, I believe. The child from her only successful pregnancy was born in October of last year. Keep her in your thoughts, please.

I need to go to the grocery and get staples, at least. I'm out of milk and pretty much every other type of drink save Gatorade (blech!) and old beer. Beer's just not good on cereal.

I actually did go to dinner with my dad and my brothers last night. We went to Clyde's. Dad and I had a relatively friendly argument about illegal immigration. He also offered to pay for my divorce lawyer. Fun family moments. Clyde's beef stew is pretty yummy.

Meredith took the hermit crabs to her little cousins last night. Tommy is 7 and Joey is 5, I think. Tommy's scared of them. Joey doesn't mind them as long as Mer doesn't take them completely out of the tank. Hopefully Mer's Aunt Sherri will take proper care of them. I sent all their provisions, and a paper full of instructions. I also re-iterated my threat to Mer's dad that if he shows up with any more living creatures, expecting me to house them, I will remove his bits with a dull knife. He still thinks I'm joking. I'm not.

I had a bit of a scare just before Christmas. I was out shopping and suddenly my check card started getting declined. As I had gotten paid just two days before this occurred, I was a bit perplexed. Fortunately, I had done all the immediately necessary shopping and was only working on the last few things I need to mail out. Anyway, I went to the bank yesterday to ask about it. It seems there is a daily limit to how much you can charge on the debit card. I don't think I reached the amount they told me, but the balance they showed available was pretty close to what I expected to be in the account, so I guess all is right with the world again. I'm glad it didn't screw up my Christmas shopping too badly.

Yesterday I also went to the DMV for two flippin' hours. I needed to:

- renew my license
- change my address
- provide proof of insurance
- change the address on my registration for the Sebring
- register the Buick
- update my voting registration (Yes, we do that at the DMV here. Motor voter.)

I managed all of it except the parts to do with the car registrations. I couldn't change the address for the Sebring because James' name is first on the title. So he has to go in and change it to my address, even though I'm the one using (and paying for) that car. Or I can try to get his name taken off, but then I'd have to re-do the loan paperwork and blahblahblah. Too much hassle.

In order to register the Buick, which is currently titled in Florida in both of my grandparents' names, I have to bring in both of their death certificates and my mom's paperwork stating she is the executor of the estate and has authority to sign the title over to me. The Florida registration is good until February, so that gives me a little time to gather all that crap. Ah, the DMV. Second only to the IRS for most hated government office.

Well, that's all the stuff I can think to gripe about at the moment. Is it time to go home yet?

I am tired. I'd love to curl up in bed and snooze for a bit.

I am also cold. The curling up in bed thing would solve that problem.

I should really get to work. Getting in a hot shower would solve the cold problem and might wake me up some.

The sooner I go to work, the sooner I get to come home from work.

But my bed looks so cozy!

I get paid to be at work.

Bah. Work always wins. Stupid money.

I am already tired of political commercials, and there is still a year to go before the next presidential election. The AARP commercials are playing everywhere, all the time. *bangs head* It's running neck and neck with the 'Truth' anti-smoking commercials (that are put out by tobacco companies) for Most Annoying Advertisement Ever.

Despite the irritating commercials, I'm really giggly tonight. It's a product of the D/Gness that is now officially going on in caliga_rpg. Naked Draco makes me happy. Taunty Ginny makes me happy. Whatever will I do when the fandom dies out? D/G forever!

There is the slightest chance that I'm just giggly because at this time last night it was midnight and I'm really tired. That sentence sounds like it doesn't make sense, but it really does.

Does anybody else watch Next Iron Chef? Who are you rooting for? I think Chef Simon will win, but I'm pulling for Chef Besh. Gotta love the southern boy.

Ok, the guy on Ace of Cakes is located in Baltimore, so I could totally order a cake from him. His cakes are incredibly cool. There are two problems with this. One - His cakes start at $500. I don't have any occasion that necessitates that kind of cake expense. I don't even think I spent that much for my wedding cake. Two - I hate fondant. To do the kinds of kick ass cake designs he does, you really need to use fondant. That is such a bummer.

Tomorrow is my busy accrual day at work. I have those every four weeks. I hope the subcontractors get their stuff to me on time. I'm not trying to be there all night.