have been radio silent lately, sorry. it’s been weird.

work has been Teh Suck™. two people are leaving, which makes me simultaneously sad because they’re people i like a lot and enjoy working with, but makes me happy because they are fleeing. so, two of them down means a little bit under 10% turnover; someone’s voting with up to 30% turnover by the time of our next staff meeting in august — which timing coincides with the one year rule of, um, about eight months ago. it seems more and more likely that i will depart one way or another, as things are just not getting better. it’s a pity because i honestly really adore most of my coworkers. it’s just — without going into detail (BLOG DRAMA!!!) — the environment is so irrevocably fuck. as i said, when it’s gotten to the point where in the mornings i have to convince myself to go to work, shit is bad and i should leave.

so, saving up money to make sure i can pay the rent (+car +mortgage +bills) in the event i have to go paycheckless for a month or so. it’s a shame i’m such a shitty, shitty saver.

i’m kinda eyeballing the financial sector. i’d have a hella short commute. and it would be nice to have actual goals that are tied to real reasons, like making company milestones, again, instead of goals that someone creates out of thin air for silly reasons. and it would be nice to have bureaucracy for reasons instead of “because my job title outranks you.” … oh, verging into BLOG DRAMA!!! here, better shut up. yeah, i know all you guys read this shit.

anyways, work has been just killing me with the immense hopelessness of it all lately. i actually was having such a rotten, rotten week last week (no surprise there) that i ended up going down the road of seeking professional help again. i’m seeing my primary doctor tomorrow afternoon to have him check out my left wrist, which has never stopped bothering me although the right (smashed into bits!) wrist is fine now, and i’m planning to ask him for a referral to a shrink that my insurance will cover. i also called up the free counseling that we get as a part of our benefits package, and made an appointment for the other evening. unfortunately, when i showed up, there was a computer glitch and they had cancelled my appointment, and everyone had gone home except for one guy, who was very apologetic. so i’m rescheduled for next thursday before work, which should be exciting — getting to go to work after spending an hour marinating in fear and loathing about work.

this weekend, took my cats to the vet. this was especially fun because tiger got a lion cut.

Before:

(awwww, aren’t they cute?)

After:

(“i am going to kill you while you sleep.”)

and so long as i’m posting pictures, here are my windows, with the how to make a temporary stained-glass window instructions ladytabitha posted ages ago. first off, i tried using a striped-print tissue paper:

but i didn’t really like the alignment issues it presented (even though i tried to make it interesting by mixing it up a little), so i did it again with colors:

and i like that much better. best of all, they reflect patterns of color on all kinds of things, which is neat. plus, i no longer feel like i am stalking my neighbors or they are stalking me, by looking through windows unintentionally all the time. (as you can see in the second photo, my windows look directly into my neighbors’ windows, across a 15′ or so chasm.) they also provide a little bit of shade — possibly irrelevant for keeping-this-place-cool purposes, but at least it’s not all glaring sunshine everywhere on sunny days, and i don’t have to keep my miniblinds down all the way because i don’t like them (and neither do my cats, who like to paw at them to look outside, resulting in irritating noise as they’re metal miniblinds. i also just like all the extra color. it’s neat. i like my windows.

kim turned me on to audioscrobbler, which is this somewhat-erratically-available but neat site that uploads what you’re listening to to their site, and charts your statistics, plus cross-references you with other people’s listening. here’s my page. today has been an eminem sort of day. but perhaps later it will become a fleetwood mac or pixies kind of day! you never know! i am inscrutable and unpredictable (except that whatever i listen to is generally fairly popular in at least some circles!)! they had some server problems last week, and i’m not sure they’ve actually accepted my client’s uploads since then, but … oh well. it’ll work eventually, i suppose.

Lucha Va Voom was thursday, cinco de mayo. it was a fucking blast. on my way to meet e&k for margaritas at lazo’s before the show, i stopped at my local wine shop across the street to buy cigarettes, where the kindly proprietor doled me out an evening-starting-off-on-the-right-foot healthy shot of a $45 tequila. normally i’m not a tequila kind of girl but, hey, cinco de mayo, friendly, and free. so from there to the el, to lazo’s, where there were multiple large and tasty margaritas. then on to the show, where there was STEALTHY!, EXCITING!, ADVENTUROUS! entry, with corona involved. and then of course, the show itself, which was a rollicking good time. plus, as it turned out, one of the hosts was none other than Tom Kenny, the voice of Spongebob Squarepants himself! i was very excited, and every so often i would shout out SPONGEBOB! in all the best mildly drunk fangirl form. b₀ made me swear that we would come back next year, while wearing his brand-new mexican wrestling mask, which he could not wait to go home and scare his girlfriend with. meanwhile, i informed e. that my goal for the evening was to do shots with SPONGEBOB!!!, a goal for which he was more than happy to strive. as soon as the show was over, he bought a round of shots and we worked our way up to the ring — now full of random people dancing with random members of the show to whatever random music the house was playing — and we did SHOTS WITH SPONGEBOB!! i was very pleased by the evening’s events. there could have been more shots with SPONGEBOB!!! had i followed the cast over to martyrs, but the other two b.’s (that’s the trouble with this whole obfuscating-the-names-of-people-by-initialing-them, when you end up with half your party has a name that starts with this one letter) and i decamped to the relatively quiet lemmings’, because b₂ knew the staff. then off home, for it was nearly 2.

and i then ended up calling in sick — not because of hangover, ironically, because i wasn’t hung over (let’s hear it for advance planning in the realm of hydration!), but i had actually lost my voice from screaming so much at the show. i could croak like some 70-year-old with an eight pack a day habit, but it freaking hurt. so i stayed home to work on sendmail foo and self-medicate with herbal tea laced with honey, popsicles, and about a million sugar free cough drops. by the evening, i actually was felled by a massive headache, probably caused by caffeine withdrawal, as i didn’t have any caffeine until i started getting the headache and went “oh shit, i need coffee now.” oops. oh well. thursday was still fucking brilliant.

okay, this is getting crazy too long. i shall leave you with one more photo, from las vegas last july (for defcon). click for larger image.