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dragonlady7I forgot yesterday: happy birthday to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
buschibaby! She would be, what, twenty-six now?
I was present for her nineteenth birthday, I believe it was... Yes. I had just recovered from mono and was not allowed to drink alcohol, so I was the sober chaperone for her party, which is just as well as I do not believe that even at my healthiest I would have been able to cope with the sheer amount of gin everyone else consumed.
Holy fuck, that was seven years ago. Seven years. !!
I grow old, I grow old; I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Actually, wait... well, no, not lately.
I wound up working at Jake's yesterday, by some odd chance, and it was interesting, because at Jake's, people tell you stories. It is a smaller bar than the others, and more intimate, and so you are more likely to hear stories. Must remember to write one or two of them up so I have something to put on airportbartender like, ever.
I smacked my hand against a metal bar, and while at the time it was moderately painful but faded to nothing, I have just awoken and it is quite awfully sore. Highly irritating. It is the ring finger of my right hand that is affected, and you'd be amazed how much you use that one to type.
I woke about an hour ago and lay in bed, thinking, for a while. When I rolled over to get up to answer nature's call, I was absolutely astonished to notice that it was 1:45 am. I had rather assumed it to be about seven in the morning.
So here I am. I can only blame the quarter-cup of coffee I sipped at nine pm when I was trying to wake up enough to write for an hour before bed.
I had a lovely evening with Z. I feel I don't talk enough about the good times, but only whine about him. I am not fair to him when I whine. I would say you should read his blog for his perspective on things, to understand how unfair I am to him, but he doesn't keep one, and so you'll have to rely on my journalistic integrity and the rare instances where I am mature enough to consider admitting I was wrong about something. (T-shirt a bar customer was wearing last Sunday: "If a man speaks in a forest, and no woman is there to hear him, is he still wrong?" Co-worker's answer: "Probably.")
I got home from work and he suggested that since I got out earlier than normal and also made more money than I was expecting, that we should go out to dinner. So we zipped over to Pizza Plant, and had a happy evening there. Z was excited about something that had happened at work.
He'd spent the entire day, again, fixing people's computers. It was not until four-thirty that he got a moment to sit down and say to himself, "Now, what was I going to do today?"
So at that point, he sent his boss an email. "The IT 'department' needs to have more people in it," he said. He told the boss that all these great ideas they have for the website are great and all, but they will never happen, unless there is a second person to deal with all the minor crises that running a business entails. He wrote out a list: "Things You Wanted Me To Do This Week", which involved a lengthy, ambitious, but practical list of very good improvements to the website. He wrote out another list: "Things I Actually Did This Week", which was almost entirely composed of things like removing crumpled bits of paper from the printer fuser, replacing toner cartridges, performing server maintenance, updating computer equipment for staff members, finding an employee a new mouse when hers went on the fritz, etc.
Z was excited because he had made the decision while writing the email to suggest that someone be hired to do those things, to be the sysadmin, so that he would have time to work on the website instead. It was a close thing-- the sysadmin is an important job, and it is one Z is quite good at. But the webdesigner is a more exciting job, with much more potential for expansion, Z thinks. And indeed, the webdesign aspect is the reason Z wanted to take that particular job in the first place, even though it was paying about half what he could reasonably expect to make. The fact that he was capable of doing the webdesign part was why they hired him on as a full-time employee rather than the part-time they had been expecting.
Still. Z said that he felt rather like he was pulling a Sensitive Artist-type stunt: "I can't work under these conditions," he said, affecting a huffy air. But, it's true. He spends thirty hours a week fixing whatever breaks around the place, and then another couple hours a week publishing the paper content on the Web. He hasn't done any programming in almost two weeks at this point. It's enough to make one forget that he is a software engineer.
The boss had answered that Z was right, there really ought to be two positions. So Z was excited about that, and got rather flushed and sparkly-eyed on the excitement plus the extremely potent microbrew he was drinking. (Enough so that even though I had one of the same plus a pint of some exotic porter, I got to be the sober driver home. What? I was.)
I was feeling virtuous: this morning (actually midday), after doing some cleaning in the kitchen and writing out outlines for the fanfic I want to squeeze into my free time (ha) this week, I actually took advantage of the gorgeous weather (seriously: 55 and sunny) and went for a jog for the first time in months. So I am sore and heavy-legged, but virtuous. And so I had a cookies and ice cream confection, and split it with Z. I am resolved that I will keep my physical activity levels up henceforth, as it does make me feel better to do so. Although at the moment, with my sore hand and my sore legs, I am not particularly feeling better.
But anyhow. The conversation wound down toward the end of the night, I being oddly sleepy, with Z being actually sentitive and understanding of my desire to write fanfiction in among the original writing: the ego boost of knowing people are reading and enjoying the fanfic is necessary for my original writing to have any real spirit in it. I have to be utterly convinced of my own competence. He was in a rather sincere mood, I think, talking about the things he hopes to accomplish rather than being sarcastic, and so he nodded and said he knew what I meant, and that writing this column for him was making him feel a great deal better about himself. Not that he thought he was the next Dave Barry or anything, but having people he respected tell him that his column was funny had really made him feel much better about himself as a writer and just in general.
Although he remains disappointed that he has received not one single letter to the editor about his column, and indeed nobody seems to have read it besides his mother. (And me.)
Hm. I am still awake. Oh well-- I guess I have no choice but to write some fanfic, just to help ease me back into sleep. Darn!! (I have a self-imposed rule, that I have to spend four hours on original fiction before I can earn an hour for fanfic, but I also have decided that Monday nights don't count, since I work on Mondays and my brain is not really my own. And you know, I still just want to write them all.)
I owe people replies to comments, I just feel like my brain doesn't work on weekends. Something about all that, you know, leaving the house and, like, problem-solving...
buschibaby! She would be, what, twenty-six now?I was present for her nineteenth birthday, I believe it was... Yes. I had just recovered from mono and was not allowed to drink alcohol, so I was the sober chaperone for her party, which is just as well as I do not believe that even at my healthiest I would have been able to cope with the sheer amount of gin everyone else consumed.
Holy fuck, that was seven years ago. Seven years. !!
I grow old, I grow old; I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Actually, wait... well, no, not lately.
I wound up working at Jake's yesterday, by some odd chance, and it was interesting, because at Jake's, people tell you stories. It is a smaller bar than the others, and more intimate, and so you are more likely to hear stories. Must remember to write one or two of them up so I have something to put on airportbartender like, ever.
I smacked my hand against a metal bar, and while at the time it was moderately painful but faded to nothing, I have just awoken and it is quite awfully sore. Highly irritating. It is the ring finger of my right hand that is affected, and you'd be amazed how much you use that one to type.
I woke about an hour ago and lay in bed, thinking, for a while. When I rolled over to get up to answer nature's call, I was absolutely astonished to notice that it was 1:45 am. I had rather assumed it to be about seven in the morning.
So here I am. I can only blame the quarter-cup of coffee I sipped at nine pm when I was trying to wake up enough to write for an hour before bed.
I had a lovely evening with Z. I feel I don't talk enough about the good times, but only whine about him. I am not fair to him when I whine. I would say you should read his blog for his perspective on things, to understand how unfair I am to him, but he doesn't keep one, and so you'll have to rely on my journalistic integrity and the rare instances where I am mature enough to consider admitting I was wrong about something. (T-shirt a bar customer was wearing last Sunday: "If a man speaks in a forest, and no woman is there to hear him, is he still wrong?" Co-worker's answer: "Probably.")
I got home from work and he suggested that since I got out earlier than normal and also made more money than I was expecting, that we should go out to dinner. So we zipped over to Pizza Plant, and had a happy evening there. Z was excited about something that had happened at work.
He'd spent the entire day, again, fixing people's computers. It was not until four-thirty that he got a moment to sit down and say to himself, "Now, what was I going to do today?"
So at that point, he sent his boss an email. "The IT 'department' needs to have more people in it," he said. He told the boss that all these great ideas they have for the website are great and all, but they will never happen, unless there is a second person to deal with all the minor crises that running a business entails. He wrote out a list: "Things You Wanted Me To Do This Week", which involved a lengthy, ambitious, but practical list of very good improvements to the website. He wrote out another list: "Things I Actually Did This Week", which was almost entirely composed of things like removing crumpled bits of paper from the printer fuser, replacing toner cartridges, performing server maintenance, updating computer equipment for staff members, finding an employee a new mouse when hers went on the fritz, etc.
Z was excited because he had made the decision while writing the email to suggest that someone be hired to do those things, to be the sysadmin, so that he would have time to work on the website instead. It was a close thing-- the sysadmin is an important job, and it is one Z is quite good at. But the webdesigner is a more exciting job, with much more potential for expansion, Z thinks. And indeed, the webdesign aspect is the reason Z wanted to take that particular job in the first place, even though it was paying about half what he could reasonably expect to make. The fact that he was capable of doing the webdesign part was why they hired him on as a full-time employee rather than the part-time they had been expecting.
Still. Z said that he felt rather like he was pulling a Sensitive Artist-type stunt: "I can't work under these conditions," he said, affecting a huffy air. But, it's true. He spends thirty hours a week fixing whatever breaks around the place, and then another couple hours a week publishing the paper content on the Web. He hasn't done any programming in almost two weeks at this point. It's enough to make one forget that he is a software engineer.
The boss had answered that Z was right, there really ought to be two positions. So Z was excited about that, and got rather flushed and sparkly-eyed on the excitement plus the extremely potent microbrew he was drinking. (Enough so that even though I had one of the same plus a pint of some exotic porter, I got to be the sober driver home. What? I was.)
I was feeling virtuous: this morning (actually midday), after doing some cleaning in the kitchen and writing out outlines for the fanfic I want to squeeze into my free time (ha) this week, I actually took advantage of the gorgeous weather (seriously: 55 and sunny) and went for a jog for the first time in months. So I am sore and heavy-legged, but virtuous. And so I had a cookies and ice cream confection, and split it with Z. I am resolved that I will keep my physical activity levels up henceforth, as it does make me feel better to do so. Although at the moment, with my sore hand and my sore legs, I am not particularly feeling better.
But anyhow. The conversation wound down toward the end of the night, I being oddly sleepy, with Z being actually sentitive and understanding of my desire to write fanfiction in among the original writing: the ego boost of knowing people are reading and enjoying the fanfic is necessary for my original writing to have any real spirit in it. I have to be utterly convinced of my own competence. He was in a rather sincere mood, I think, talking about the things he hopes to accomplish rather than being sarcastic, and so he nodded and said he knew what I meant, and that writing this column for him was making him feel a great deal better about himself. Not that he thought he was the next Dave Barry or anything, but having people he respected tell him that his column was funny had really made him feel much better about himself as a writer and just in general.
Although he remains disappointed that he has received not one single letter to the editor about his column, and indeed nobody seems to have read it besides his mother. (And me.)
Hm. I am still awake. Oh well-- I guess I have no choice but to write some fanfic, just to help ease me back into sleep. Darn!! (I have a self-imposed rule, that I have to spend four hours on original fiction before I can earn an hour for fanfic, but I also have decided that Monday nights don't count, since I work on Mondays and my brain is not really my own. And you know, I still just want to write them all.)
I owe people replies to comments, I just feel like my brain doesn't work on weekends. Something about all that, you know, leaving the house and, like, problem-solving...
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-31 10:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-02 01:22 am (UTC)He would love fanmail. Particularly from someone who understands that it's not actually a gadget column.