I must say, while I can deal with beet juice and even pureed beets, applesauce and dried cherries are a little weird to be putting into red velvet cake. I mean, I get the impulse to try to make it healthier... but calling it red velvet at that point is pretty off. Especially since it didn't turn out red! Just a very dark brown. And the quinoa flour? Really felt extraneously "lawl helthy stuffz!"

I've been dipping my toes in the water of feminist blogs for a while, never quite daring to either go away or take the plunge and really immerse myself. I can't just stop reading, because oh my god this. This post, written by a woman whom I do not know, whose path I have probably never crossed, whom I will likely never meet, almost perfectly describes my experiences. It puts words on the anger and the helplessness and the confusion and why my stomach knots when it does and the helpless, impotent, crazy-making rage. And by naming, it helps me process.

But processing makes it harder in some respects. I can't blame my overall jitteriness and wariness on public transportation on hormones, or having gotten a poor night's sleep, or anything having to do with me. I can't think about the times when I failed to stand up for myself and my boundaries against some asshole who was encroaching upon them and blame myself for some weakness or failing. And not blaming myself means I want to go back and "fix" things - I want to go up to the asshole who terrified me and tell him in no uncertain terms exactly why what he did was inappropriate, finally being able to express it to myself, but I can't even do that because the Schroedinger Effect still applies, so part of me wants to flee far away from the idea of feminism and pretend nothing bad ever happens because dealing with it sucks. But I think being unable to articulate the things going through my head was worse than the low level rage running through me.

I feel incredibly lucky to be dating a guy who is already a good ally. He is onboard with the crazy notion that Wimminz Are People Too, he doesn't find rape jokes funny, he validates my feelings even when he's utterly bewildered by them rather than insisting they're somehow wrong, and he engages in discussion when I bring up some new Uppity Wimminz Issue that I've been thinking about with no eye rolling or sighing or other sign that something which matters to me is completely unimportant to him.

And yet, I still find my heart beating faster and my blood pressure rising and my hands getting clammy and my body tensing to flee whenever I think about gently raising some Uppity Wimminz Issue with him. Because the Schroedinger Effect never goes away.

When I was being hassled by someone whom I could not reasonably avoid, I made what I thought was a perfectly reasonable request to the guy I was seeing at the time to arrange for us to be holding hands and walk past the guy - maybe seeing me with someone would make my lack of interest sink in, even when talking about my boyfriend didn't. I was - and still am - more concerned with my ability to feel safe than avoiding the "oh I can't mess with her because she's some other guy's property" response.

He said no. He said it was a coward's way out, and I shouldn't be resorting to underhanded things like that - I should march up to this guy and tell him in no uncertain terms that I wasn't interested and he needed to leave me alone please. And if he continued to bother me, I should report it to someone in authority.

I couldn't explain - and he couldn't have understood even if I had been able to - my complete abject terror at this idea. I wanted nothing more than for him to go the hell away and not bother me again, but the idea of staring a confrontation sent adrenaline coursing through my body and made tears start welling up in my eyes. "I can't," I said. "I can't because I don't know what to say and what if he doesn't stop and when is it appropriate to bring it up and I just want him to go away and leave me alone and why can't he just get that without me having to say so and how do I say 'leave me the fuck alone you creep' without sounding mean or rude or hostile or unfriendly because that wouldn't be nice!"

I couldn't explain that terror then, but I can now. I barely knew this guy, and to me, he was Schroedinger's Rapist and Schroedinger's Stalker and Schroedinger's Violent Temper and Schroedinger's Entitled Asshole and Schroedinger's Harrasser all rolled into one. I had absolutely no way of knowing what his response to "Please leave me alone" would be - maybe an apologetic and courteous "Oh, I'm sorry for bothering you." Maybe a "I was just trying to be nice!" Maybe a "Bitch." Maybe he would have gotten angry, maybe shouted, maybe been physically aggressive, maybe actually violent. Maybe he would have started stalking me, and maybe that would have escalated. There was just no way to know.

I was feeling lazy today, so I rode the bus to and from school instead of biking. When I got on the bus home, many of the seats were taken. There was a seat right up front that I only registered after I walked past it, there was a seat in a two-seat row next to some guy, and there were several seats open in the very back of the bus.

When you're walking to a seat and the bus is starting to go, you don't have time for lengthy considerations of which seat to take. It's snap judgement or fall on your face.

I chose to sit next to the guy in the two-seat row. Because this sort of thing has been on my mind, I then asked myself why, exactly, I picked that spot instead of one of the seats with empties on either side. And (predictably), several factors were contributing:

1) Dude had a notebook open and a pen out. Busy dude is less likely to try to bother me, especially when I have my headphones in.
2) Back of the bus had two guys sitting several seats apart, and no women.
3) Back of the bus was very poorly lit - I think a light was out
4) Dudes on the back of the bus were white, and preppily dressed - the privilegiest of the privileged.
5) Dude with the seat next to him was not white, and was dressed in a manner that was not (to me) threatening.

Having absolutely zero desire to be bothered, sitting next to some strange guy who looked unlikely to bother me was a better alternative than sitting in a poorly lit area with two guys who were not otherwise occupied. And of course, when sitting down, I did so with my back to the guy I was sitting next to. Cause there's nothing like being approached by someone's back that says "Oh yes, bother me, bother me!"

This isn't something new. I - and most other women - have been doing this sort of threat assessment for as long as we can remember. The difference now is that I can name it, describe it, analyzing.

It's empowering, but it's also maddening - I wish I lived on a planet where I didn't have to constantly be doing threat analysis.

And ultimately, that's why I can't run off and stick my head in the sand and sing "Lalalala, can't hear you feminism, lalala". It takes all of us to fight the kyriarchy.


(Anybody interested in a better explanation of the Schroedinger Effect, see http://kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-schrodinger’s-rapist-or-a-guy’s-guide-to-approaching-strange-women-without-being-maced/ for the original post on the matter.)

I feel awful. I've been crying all day and I don't feel the slightest bit better. I wish I knew somebody - anybody - who could come over and hug me. I wish I knew somebody - anybody - who wouldn't need me to explain why what I found was so heartbreaking. I wish I knew of something - anything - that could possibly make this okay.

But I don't. I can't think of any possible reasonable explanation. I don't know anybody who would just get it. And I don't know anybody I can ask to please come over because I am falling to pieces and I don't know how to deal with this and I just need a goddamn hug.

I don't know how I'm going to make it two eight hour classes without sobbing into my dough.

I am not okay.

I reinvented the wheel today. Well, not the wheel, so much, but something else similarly necessary (at the time).

You see, orientation was this afternoon. (Also I got into culinary school. Yay me! I keep waiting for them to call me and say it was all a mistake, though.) While there, I received the rest of my equipment and also a very large binder.

Now, normally I have a milk crate on the back of my bicycle, to aid in the carrying of such things as groceries... or binders. However, M had been doing some tinkering to find a better way to mount it, since the way we had put the seat so high I couldn't get on without using a curb. The bike store was closed yesterday, though... so my bike got put back together sans milk crate.

So I had a rather sinking feeling in my stomach as I was handed these items today, having absolutely no idea how to transport them back. Because I had also not brought a backpack with me. Oooooops.

My first plan was to use a couple grocery bags, double-bag the binder et al, and hang it on my handlebars. It's only about a 10 minute bike ride, so that would be doable.

Buuut... they had no such bags. Only very large trash bags.

"A trash bag's a start!" says I, because of course getting everything into any kind of bag is a start. So into the bag went my things.

So now I had a very large trash bag I needed to carry home. Neat!

Draping it over my handlebars proved too unwieldy, and slinging it over my back required the use of a hand to hold it in place. While holding it that way, a thought occurs. "If only I had some way to fasten a loop..."

"Ohh, a loop!" I cry. I attempt to tie a loop in the bag itself, but no go. Luckily, there are other ways to make loops, and out comes my hair elastic.

I looped it a couple times until tight around the bag, as low as it would go, then threaded the ends of the bag underneath and around a few times to prevent them from slipping. Then put my head and one arm through the hole, and voila! A primitive yet functional backpack!

It was enough to bike the ten minutes home, but I wouldn't want to use it for longer than that. The way it was constructed put some pressure on the neck, and constricted breathing if it hung the wrong way. I'm sure it also looked pretty silly, but that I'm not too concerned about. I solved a problem! And for that I feel moderately accomplished. :)

Phone interview set up for next week. Hope my phone behaves. Neither of my recommendation letters have arrived yet though. :( One I know is in the mail, but the other... well, it was SUPPOSED to be done end of July, and she's now in Japan and not answering emails. And I don't have her cell phone number. I'm kiiiind of starting to panic.

Oh man. I sent in my application to culinary school this morning. Shit, I'm really nervous. And I'm not sure how long I'm going to have to wait before hearing anything. Twitch.

Also I have quite a lot of cleaning to do, dammit.




Twitch.

I am sick.

Sulk.

I made cupcakes last night, but I think they turned out pretty meh. I've got a thing about bits in things, and eating these cupcakes triggers my "OH GOD IT'S NOT HOMOGENOUS SPIT IT OUT" reflex. My sister, on the other hand, thinks they're the greatest thing since text messaging.

I think I'll "forget" to bring them with me tomorrow morning. She should be happy with that.

I made way better cupcakes a week and a half ago. Chocolate and cayenne, with a cinnamon icing. They were probably some of the best cupcakes I've ever had, ever. M enjoyed them served with vanilla ice cream and a sprinkling of cinnamon on top. I should make them again, double the recipe and quadruple the frosting. There wasn't quiiiite enough last time... And they went way too quickly. Nom.



I can now do 20 miles on my bike. :) Could probably do more, but the 10-ish-each-way on the bike trail is so convenient. Distance-wise, I could now bike to work... but some of the big hills along Rt. 225 are rather frightening. I should probably try it some day, though. The worst that might happen is needing to walk the bike up the hills.



Was home visiting my parents for some of this weekend. It works out okay as long as I stay in my room on the computer, but as soon as I *do* something there's friction. If I make food, I get lectured on how much of a mess I'm making and how it all needs to be cleaned up, either before I've had a chance to tidy up or while I'm doing so. If I pull out the Game Cube, I get a lecture on how I had better not leave it out when I'm done, and if the dog trips over the cable they'll be very angry, and how I shouldn't turn the volume up too high if I'm still playing in three hours. At least M has the good sense not to lecture me until AFTER I've walked away from a mess! :P

I'm very glad I don't have to stay at home most of the time, though. That would get problematic very fast.

Man, I suck at this whole "adult" thing.

The CSA we joined has given us pretty much straight lettuce for the past three weeks - seven heads of it a week! OH MY GOD SO MUCH LETTUCE. Okay, okay, we got celery the second week and turnips and carrots and peas this week, but OH MY GOD SO MUCH LETTUCE. (Also, I am using "lettuce" as an overarching term for all grean leafy things, including chard and spinach and so on.)

I am not that great at innovating. Lettuce isn't that great a food to begin with, and the only thing I really know how to do with it is salad. So for the first week, it was lettuce-carrot-tomato salad every night.

Man, did that get old fast.

So then I did a little thinking, and we had green apple, walnut, and feta salad for the next couple days... with some lettuce tossed in as an afterthought. Cause it needed to get used.

But I'm having a very hard time coming up with things *other* than salad where you can maybe toss lettuce in without upsetting people. I managed to do it tonight with the chard, which got sauteed with garlic, olive oil, and kielbasa, and then those all got mixed with pasta. Also more seasoning. I think that worked okay, and it got eaten so yay.

And I'm doing something involving the stems from the chard, and cream and butter and pasta, but since pasta was tonight I might not wanna do that for tomorrow. Maybe thursday? But then I have to figure out what's going on tomorrow... I guess we have ground beef and lettuce (SO MUCH) and tomatoes and soft-shell tacos. So maybe that. Or burritos. Burritos were mentioned.

I did end up blanching a bunch of the greens we got. Now the freezer has several bags of sad little bunches of various greeny things.

Sometimes, I really feel like I'm faking being an adult on the slim hope that it will become real before the maturity cops come and kick me out of the cool kids' table. Am I the only one just pretending not to still be a kid, pretending to do the cooking and cleaning and washing and laundry because it's there and it needs to be done and I'm supposed to be an adult now?

I'm starting to wonder if the best place for the wine glasses is really over the drying rack. This has to be the, what, eighth glass I've broken? It'd be one thing if they were even my wine glasses, but other people tend to get annoyed when you break their shit.

Especially when you're *constantly* breaking their shit.

Guess I'm buying M more wine glasses! Oh boy!

But, I made a delicious cinnamon-coffee-chocolate cake. Or, it should be delicious. I hope. It is still in the oven at the moment, and I am pretending not to see all the dirty dishes glaring at me.

It'd be easier to do them if they all had a place to live, but now that I've added my own dishes to what M already had (because mine are pretty, dammit, instead of plain, boring white), along with buying new useful tools, cabinet space is a rapidly shrinking commodity.

Also the internet is on the fritz again. WTF is up with that?



I suppose now is as good a time as any to mention, I'm not going back to school next year. I'm not officially withdrawing, not yet, because I want to leave my options open, but I'm taking a leave of absence and, depending on how this year goes, probably won't be going back.

It's not entirely clear yet what I'm doing instead, but hopefully (*crosses fingers*) I'll be going to culinary school. There's a school just up Mass Ave, about a ten minute bike ride, and I'm taking a basic class over the summer to see if I like it. So far, I really, really do. If they accept me, I'll be starting the pastry program in September, and finishing next June. I don't exactly know what I want to do, but I've got a waaaay better idea than when thinking about what I might've done with Linguistics - the architecture of pastries is something that has always fascinated me, so wedding cakes is definitely something I could see myself doing. I couldn't start out there, obviously, but it's a goal, and one that's actually attainable.



Because I'm not going to be at school again next year, I have no reason to keep my apartment in Waltham and thus chose not to renew the lease. Some of my stuff got moved out over the last month (like moving one of my dressers to M's), but the big-ass move was today. M rented a van, and we lugged the rest of my furniture and junk up to NH. My parents aren't entirely thrilled with it all coming back to them, but hopefully it's only temporary. I'm "living" at home again, but not actually spending most of the week there, because M is in Arlington and my parents live in New Hampshire, and maaaan! There's nobody in NH!



Not even clumens and Miz Awesome, whose wedding was yesterday and are probably on a plane into Europe for a two week cruise at the moment! Lucky them. It was a really nice wedding, though - very short, sweet, and snazzy (it's fun seeing people from work dressed up in fancy clothes!). And the reception food and wedding cake were delicious - oh man, guys, oh man, bacon and cream cheese inside mushrooms? Oh man, BEST. FOOD. EVER. That's the way stomachs were meant to be treated.

I am EGGED OUT, though. Today's cooking class was All About Eggs, and so we learned stuff about what temperature eggs are fully cooked at and basic egg safety, and then we poached, quiched, omeletted, creped, frittataed, souffled, piperaded, and benedicted them! I have never eaten nor made a poached egg before in my life, so it was an adventure when I got assigned to the poaching! A fun adventure though, because that is what cooking is! And as it turns out, eggs are delicious in all their many forms, and there was much nomming.

But man, I think I must've eaten a dozen eggs! So like I said, EGGED OUT.

My mom gets back from Hawaii on wednesday, though, so I am making her Creme Brulee, and that calls for something like eight egg yolks. Soooo delicious, but not something you can really eat more than once a month at the most.

And now it is time to pull my (hopefully) delicious cake out of the oven, so I bid you all a very eggy adieu!

It's kinda fun to watch the body heal.

I made pie last Thursday, you see. Two pies, really. And when they came out of the oven after midnight, I got a little careless and my arm touched the side of the oven. It's not a terribly bad burn, but I pickpickpick at things and so I've been making it worse. So this morning I put on a "liquid bandaid" (which is some sort of devilish magic) and let it be. It's healed up spectacularly in just a day.

Anyway, I made pie because it was going to be Mother's Day and I had nothing else to give my mother. And I made two because, well, why not keep some for yourself? I don't even like pie. But it wasn't bad, and almost everybody who had some said it was good.

I say almost everybody because my dad was quick to say that while it was a good first attempt at a pie, I shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that it was a good pie.

He's right, of course. Obviously he's right. I've never made pie before, so really, there's no way it could qualify as anywhere near a "good" pie.

But, because underneath it all I am small and pathetic and want nothing more than to make my father proud, I feel like a failure.

A sad, small, pathetic little failure.

Happy birthday to me!
Happy birthday to me!
Happy birthday dear meeeee!
Now let's stick me with needles!

(Pics to come later, when I have a way to connect my camera to the computer.)


I either need to stop sticking myself with needles on my birthday, or I need to get over my phobia of needles. One way or t'other, one of them has got to go!

Urgh.

I really need to learn not to take NyQuil when I need to be awake for anything, ever. I thought I'd be okay if I took it this morning and slept all afternoon and then went to my evening class, but I'm not. I'm still struggling to stay awake (and it doesn't help that this professor is quite soporific).

I'm sure having to wake up at 1:30 because I was supposed to meet someone for lunch didn't help either. Stumbling over to the cafeteria with the world in a woozy haze was perhaps not the best idea, even if the food did help.

I've got dance at 6:30 and I'm wondering if I can possibly do it. Maybe half? We're doing quickstep and rumba, after all, and I don't really like quickstep so if we're doing rumba first I might beg out halfway through. Assuming I can even dance properly, that is.



...You know, I'm thinking that three swallows of NyQuil mightn't be the right amount for someone as small as me.



In other news, they were giving away free vagina cookies yesterday, complete with pink and white frosting, and sprinkles for hair if you wanted. There were other extras too, like M&Ms or jelly beans but those don't belong on cookies... though I did snag a pink jelly bean to give my vagina cookie a clitoris. Hehehe.

Son of a bitch.

I officially declare today to have been a Very Bad Day. Arrgh.

I have decided that if I ever get married and decide to have a ceremony, I want it to be on Halloween with everybody in full costume. I don't particularly care what costumes - though some coordination between myself and whomever I'm marrying would be a good thing - as long as they're all dressed up.

I sort of hope that these hypothetical future in-laws are very traditional. I would get a kick out of that. Does that make me a bad person?

GRAR!

So over winter break I was subjected to the yearly gynecologist visit in order to continue taking the pills that keep me (mostly) functional. My parents still handle mailing in my prescriptions, so I gave them the piece of paper and said I needed it by February break, please, so I didn't run out. I was given due assurance that that would happen.

Not so much. I remembered on pretty much the last day of break that I needed my new pills, so I asked them where they were... and they hadn't even sent in the prescription. Oh joy. They sent it in the next day, and in the meantime I was to call the gynecologist's office and get them to call one in to the CVS near me to last until I could get the "official" ones.

So I did, last Wednesday. Stopped into CVS on Friday and they had no record of it. They gave me a different number, I called the office back, and said I needed it resent again.. and they assured me it would happen, only on Monday since all the nurses had gone home by then (it was like, 4:30..?). Okay, that's starting to cut it close, but that should work.

So I go in today. They've got my pills, they take my insurance card... nope, insurance won't cover it. Because my parents have already mailed in the prescription, it got classified as "too fast of a refill". With insurance, it's $15. Without? $150. Holy shit. That's sure as hell not happening. The pharmacist suggested I get them to try a different prescription, but my hormones completely flip out every time I switch prescriptions without a month of "normal" time in between. Also not happening.

I now have pretty much exactly one week for my parents to get my meds and for them to get them to me. That SHOULD be enough time... but that assumes the postal service is running as it should and that's really not a great thing to hedge your bets on.

Gah. I just want my meds, dammit!

Gah.

I've spent pretty much all day today in the kitchen. At the moment, I'm watching my lentil soup burble at me deliciously. M and I had planned on eating dinner together, only M left while it was cooking. Apparently I was notified yesterday that this would be happening, but I don't recall being told...? Anyway, I'm now waiting for M to get back so I can eat.

I also made muffins, which are sitting in a basket waiting to be eaten, and jello shots which are chilling in the fridge. Somewhat creative jello shots, as I didn't have any little disposable cups, so I just got a bunch of shot glasses and small wine glasses and filled them. Also I made tuna melts for lunch, with some help because I burned mine. :(

Hungry. Feet hurt. Meh.

Japanese is as nuts as usual, only two hours earlier so I'm like "buh?" Neuro is... eh. The material seems very interesting, but the professor is the same guy I had for basic Psych and he's not any more interesting now. He's just not that engaging a speaker, especially when compared to my sexy-awesome professor last semester whose brain I want to nom on.

"Oh baby, I feel like a zombie around you..."?

Anyway!

One of my linguistics classes seems to be made of win, the other two are interesting but not as awesome.



I figured out casting on from the memory of what Miz Awesome showed me, and worked out binding off all by myself. :) I also have a project - dcantrell commissioned a hat or scarf with either the fedora logo or shadowman. I'm thinking fedora logo, because it's so much simpler to translate into stitches, but I'm torn about what garment to make. A scarf is easier, and I *can* do it on the circular needles Miz Awesome sent me home with, but knitting flat has more edges and my stitches at the ends of rows have a tendancy to be too loose. A hat could be knitted on the round but that would get complicated when it gets smaller. It's generally knitted on double pointed needles, from what I can tell, but to do that I'd have to pick some up. Of course, I need to pick up black, dark blue, and light blue yarn anyway. Also, the patterning on a hat is simpler.

Hm. Decisions, decisions!



Today was awesome. I wore a whole bunch of colors in an effort to imitate a rainbow, including putting my hair into pigtails with rainbow hair ties (I look really damn cute in pigtails), as a means of non-disruptive protest against Rick Warren. I also made raspberry sounds at the TV the entire time he was speaking. Pbbbt. Obama's speech was awesome, the "poet" absolutely sucked (the poem wasn't all that bad, I guess, but she delivered it so poorly), and the man who gave the benediction (whose name is escaping me - Lowry, was it?) sounded so old I reeeeeally wanted him to end the benediction with "Now all you kids get offa my mall!" Hee.



I woke up Sunday morning with a really sore throat, denied for half the day that it was because I was sick, and finally took some nyquil midway through the afternoon. Conked out on the couch during Law and Order and woke up an episode or two later, watched a few minutes, and went "Wait, what about the jewish guy?" (I think it came out more like "way, whuboutta jewshguh?" which caused M to laugh at me before explaining that it wasn't the same episode. Had a sore throat and a little bit of a stuffy nose yesterday, but it wasn't bad and I thought I was getting better. Woke up this morning with my head all clogged with snot. :( I've been sorta fuzzy most of the day. I might skip class tomorrow and spend the day sleeping if I still feel like crap. I should really pick up some nyquil of my own - I slept like a rock Sunday night (I seriously don't think I even moved after I fell asleep), but took benadryl (for conkage) and robitussin last night, and kept waking up every couple hours.



I think Dead was just sulking for separating him from Cally, because Cally was malfunctioning too last night. I'd installed a sound card over vacation but hadn't actually been home to test that it worked until last night. I turn him on, and he powers up okay, but I get no video output. Turn him off, lay him down, open him up, poke at wires, pull out sound card, and turn him on again... self power cycling. Along the lines of, ten seconds on, ten seconds off, ten seconds on, ten seconds off. This continues until I manually flip the switch in the back, so that the next time he tries to start up the lights flip on, then the power runs out and they flip off.

The next step is to disconnect some of the wires and check connections, which I do, which has no effect. He goes back to doing the power cycling. I notice that some of the fans aren't spinning right.

So then I disconnect and remove everything convenient - RAM, vidcard, fans, hdd, cd drive, all connections from the power source, etc. I blow on everything and reseat it all, except the soundcard which came out earlier, reconnect the cables, tidy them up, check that they're not blocking the fans. Turn him on, and he boots just fine. Turn off, add the sound card, reboot, install drivers, plug in speakers, victory!

Sort of. The sound doesn't always work right - sometimes it plays slower than usual, or it skips, or it doesn't play sound for a few seconds - so I need to do some testing to see what the heck is going on. But it's definitely better than no sound at all!


Also, my iPod is well and truly shot. :( Took it to the Apple store yesterday and they confirmed that the battery is dead, so I need to send it in for a $70 battery replacement after I get my stuff off of it. God damn Apple and their proprietary hardware. :-\

Today was an adventure.
( Dull First Adventure. )



There's a second adventure though, which is much more... exciting? Interesting? Frustrating? You decide!

( Exciting Second Adventure! )

I sometimes wonder if I shouldn't've gotten more serious about hardware. It's so much easier to just dive in and get my hands dirty than it is with the software-aspect of things, and I *like* working with my hands. When I built Excalibur, the very first thing that happened was he didn't display visuals properly. Opened him up, poked around, and fixed the problem - processor's heatsink wasn't on right (seems to be a common theme...). When Daedalus wouldn't start up when Jeremy and I first built him, it took all of "Oh, hey, we forgot that other power connector to the motherboard!" None of this, "ummm... I don't see a bug. Do you see a bug? WHERE'S THE DAMN BUG?" crap. Even if I can't figure out what the hell is going on, I can still mess around and eliminate things as problems (ie, it's clearly not any of the sticks of RAM causing an issue, because we can swap them out and it still does it. Unless ALL the sticks are problematic, but then there's something else going on).

I dunno. I guess hardware makes more intuitive sense to me. YES EVEN IF IT HATES ME.

So FUDCon was pretty good overall.

Friday was a mix of boring and interesting. About the most useful I got was taking notes on the board for f13 during the automated QA/testing stuff because my handwriting is generally legible. And listening to the conversation while doing so was pretty interesting, if only for the clash of personalities there. Lunch was in the MIT cafeteria-type thing. The afternoon got boring pretty fast until I said fuckit and hung out with clumens' fiancee. Who is absolutely awesome, for the record. I had been planning on going home when everyone left to go to dinner to eat mac n cheese and feel sorry for myself, but she firmly insisted that I was coming with them (her, clumens, dcantrell, wwoods + wife, and some woman I still don't know). So I did. It was pretty fun, too - they ordered a beer tower, which was similar to a really big test tube. Full of beer. It was neat!

Saturday was just plain excellent. Miz Awesome joked about standing up and announcing a talk about knitting, which I wholeheartedly endorsed, but she didn't actually do it. There was a plot begun to announce a talk on What Happened In August, with an open invitation to anybody who actually knew what happened in August, but nobody actually got up to announce it because of the presence of Management. Pft.

I went to part of the automated QA talk but got bored and left (it was just rehashing what we'd done the day before). I saw Miz Awesome knitting and mentioned I wanted to learn how to do that, so she taught me! She really quickly showed me how to cast on, but I didn't go over it so I'd have to grab some string and a chopstick to practice. :P Then she showed me how to knit and how to purl, and how to switch between existing colors. She handed me her scarf and I became the Mysterious Knitter after stealing clumens' excellent fedora.

It's a start, anyway! I'm sure I can figure out the casting on part, since I mostly remember what she showed me. Next things to learn are ending a piece and starting/stopping another color. Also I need to acquire needles and yarn, but that shouldn't be hard. I'm so excited about having an actual marketable skill!

FUDpub was pretty sweet. Once again, I hadn't really been planning on going, but it was free food so why the hell not? I think I actually *made* money while there. I had a couple free drink tickets, then got handed a couple more by the Canadian in a very sneaky, silly manner. It was like a black market transaction! I think that at some point ajax wanted to switch to harder stuff than beer so gave me one of his, but around then my memory got a little fuzzy. I do remember that the next several times I mentioned to the Canadian that I was out of beer tickets, he handed me a five, or a ten instead, because he was out too.

F13 expressed shock when I showed up on Sunday morning, which I found amusing. I get very giggly very fast when I drink, so it would seem that I appeared much drunker than I actually was. I'm sure that the mac n cheese I was force fed (okay, not really, but it's more dramatic that way) before bed helped stave off any sort of hangover.

Sunday was very low-key. I'm not sure if much hacking got done at all, but clumens and Miz Awesome did not show up so I didn't get to hack on the scarf some more. *sad face* The sunday crossword puzzle, however, seemed trivially easy when compared to most of the previous week (easier than Wednesday, even!).

Goddammit, I don't need *another* addictive activity. :(

Hm. After the pain I've been in for the last five days after playing Wii Sports for several hours on the 31st, I'm rethinking the fun-ness of exercising often. :(

It doesn't count as going off budget if you *get* more money than you planned on, right? Budgets are for spending regulation. At least, that's what I'm going with.

A slight clarification of 4: The operative interpretation here is "not having to spend money". Creating a lunch from the free food at work is valid.

And hurrah! First one crossed off. :D

86. One way or another, stop being a secret.

The secret is still a secret, but the people whom I wanted to know have been told so it's not rabidly "OMG SEKRITZ" anymore. And I'm going to stop worrying about people finding out.

And that means an update to #9: $10/$1010.





Blah. I wanna go back to bed. x.x Went to bed at 11 last night, didn't get to sleep until 1ish, slept until 2ish, got woken up by hail, tossed and turned for another several hours then got out of bed at 6:30 to get ready to come to work today. My brain feels like it's made of mush and I know I'm being a whiny grouch and it really can't be very fun for anybody else. At least I have the good sense to (mostly) keep quiet.