October 2005 Archives

This evening as we were leaving to go to Fred Meyer, I told Richard that the building across from us has a smoke detector going out. Having been a faithful Loveline listener for years, I know the unmistakable chirp that a smoke detector makes when it's battery is dying. I noticed it first a few days ago while I was walking the dog, but figured someone else would notice it and actually know where it was coming from and report it to maintenance.

As we were coming back from Fred Meyer I told Richard to turn down the radio and roll down the windows to see if he could hear it. We turn the corner, and there's a massive ladder truck and a fire marshall's truck right in front of the building. Woops. Didn't appear to be a fire at all (and the batteries shouldn't have died in a few days), so I'm wondering if someone called it into 911 freaked out about the chirping :)

Got the whole permit thing taken care of, just waiting for the permanent one to arrive in the mail next week. Went shopping with Leslie up to a very nice outlet mall and came away with a beautiful blue topaz star necklace to match my earrings, an aubergine/deep purple classic city bag from the Coach outlet store, some cute black suede loafers from Clarks, and crappy fudge from The Fudgery (word to the wise, if it looks like it's been sitting there for ages, it probably has). After that we went to Belle Square and I also picked up some small diamond studs at Helzberg, and the last crap I'll ever buy from Lush. Lots of shopping but everything came to about $400 (yay for sales and discounts). Richard approved of the purchases and thought everything looked very nice :)

I'm still having problems sleeping. If I don't get 6 solid hours, I wind up feeling like crap and constantly craving a nap. If I end up giving into the nap, I'll sleep for 2.5 to 3 hours, which totally sucks away the day. Bleh.

Clowns will eat me. Damn clowns. Soooo, I took a kind of mental health day today. I know I was supposed to be cleaning and getting the house in order for Richard's grand arrival home tomorrow night (now today I guess). But, I really needed it. It's been a long time since I could just get lost in my music and sing along and just kind of chill. Finally Leslie coaxed me out of my little nest, and we went out to get really excellent Chinese food from Twin Dragon in Duvall. I had General Tsao's chicken with white meat, but I think next time I'll try to get them to just spice up some chicken with broccoli -- I'm not into all that sugar anymore. And oh my god, the crab rangoon was just amazing -- actually crabby and not just an excuse to eat deepfried cream cheese :)

Then we all came back here and investigated the media center and wtf is wrong with it. Adam did a bunch of stuff while we watched and nodded and smiled. Seems to be doing better -- a large part of the problem apparently is the usb keyboard we were trying to use. Ultimately we probably need to swap out the case, but it's a huge clusterfuck right now.

Tomorrow is the DOL to get my permit changed to Washington. I read the whole book from cover to cover so the test should go fine, as long as I can figure out how to get to sleep. I had some leftover chinese food, some hot minty tea, but I'm still not feeling particularly tired. I tried calling Richard but it went to VM. Hopefully he doesn't stay out too late tonight, since he has a presentation at 11am.

Funny quote of the night... Adam needed my keyboard (wireless keyboard mouse combo) because it had a PS2 connector. So I went over to my mess of a desk and I turned the keyboard on end and started tapping and shaking it against the desk. Leslie calls over and says, "What are you doing?" I said, "Well, you know how on CSI they always talk about epithelials? (pause) I'm getting rid of the epithelials"

Back to trying to get to sleep. I went upstairs at 10:30 and grabbed the DOL manual that I needed to read, finished that around midnight, and couldn't sleep.

I can't say that much progress has been made on the house or on anything else here. I've been stumbling along things from a time pretty much forgotten. Last night it was the poems, today I unpacked a box and found about 30 cds that had been forgotten. I pulled the guts and the discs from the jewel cases and trashed them. Then I ripped what I could. Some were old old mix cds that Leslie had made for me. One was the cd that Ray burned for me... of all my personal stuff from my Miningco laptop... when I was leaving for Globalcenter. It was bizarre going through that stuff. Old mirc logs too.. from like 1997. Old web pages I'd done. More copies of the poems.

Last night I was talking to Sarah, and one of my old poems popped into my head. I'd long ago lost all copies of it (computer crashes, moving, etc). I tried to think of who might still have copies, and Chris wasn't online. So I decided to try the archive.org's wayback machine. Holy crap they had my poems! I was able to snag all of the ones I'd ever posted, and wow. Not all of the poems are the best, but it was fascinating how much emotion they still brought up. I could remember the moments that they were written like it was yesterday, and yet, it's worlds away from where I am now in life.

When I get a chance, I'll post them here.

Just got back from dinner out with Leslie and Adam -- had a great time at Las Margaritas. Food was very good and it was great seeing them again. Life's been so busy that we haven't gotten together in forever. I gave Leslie the FSM car thingy and she loved it, yay!

I'm doing laundry now for Richard's trip tomorrow. We're perpetually behind on things like this, but someday maybe we'll dig ourselves out of it :) I'll focus on cleaning once he leaves so that we can have more people over. His friend Matt wants to come hang when Richard gets back from LA, so that will be cool.

Tonight I'd like to finish reading Blink, and maybe unearth The Tipping Point again.

Pros: 1 mile away from home
Open 24 hours
Almost Wegman's like selection of items

Cons: No cilantro (proof that ethnic people just are not around here)
Weird checkout system -- like Trader Joe's, which really only works when you have a Trader Joe's sized cart
Skimpy meat selection -- didn't have Ground Turkey Breast no skin
If something's not on sale (blessed be the loss-leader specials), it's expensive... sometimes by a buck or more

I do love shopping there, but virtually everyone who knows me, knows of my unquenchable lust for cilantro. Finding only one leaf in the "weird leafy herbs" section was quite a sad moment.

Hrm, well I could recap the past week or two, but I'm pretty sure I don't remember all of it :) Sarah's visit was excellent -- she's totally come into her own since the breakup, and she's already well on her way to happiness. Unfortunately it doesn't look like that happiness is going to lead her out here in the near term, but I'm absolutely ecstatic about her happiness out there, yay!

Fall has been happening around us... leaves are changing and falling, the days are gray, but it's still comfortable and peaceful. It was nice seeing Seattle, though it's really hard to believe that it's only 15 miles from here. Still a beautiful city, full of lots of fun activities.

Richard's off to NANOG in LA this weekend, and I still feel no need to travel anywhere :) We are thinking of doing the peering cruise in March though, still waiting for word back on the logistics of that. I'll probably still not want to leave, but I've never been on a cruise before and I love love love being on the water.

In slightly sucky news, I tweaked my knee and it hurts a lot. Trying to rest it and give it plenty of aleve and icy hot.

Fucking puked and ate my beautiful unpublished entry. Grrr. SO! I've been cleaning and putting stuff away in preparation for Sarah's arrival tomorrow. We'll do dinner tomorrow night, Seattle on Sunday, and chill and drive around on Monday, and she goes home Monday night. Wheeee.

Pissed off the neighbors because the sub isn't calibrated properly. Whoops, apologized and turned it down to off for now. Richard can work on it tomorrow.

I've got the cleaning plan for tomorrow morning. I need to figure out what i'm going to wear to dinner tomorrow night. Business casual, so I can wear those Lane Bryant pants. Need to pull shoes out too and figure out parking and directions and stuff. But that can wait until tomorrow.

I was walking the dog last night before bed -- around 2am. Opened the door and got out onto the street and I noticed that it was completely silent. No wind, no traffic, no people, no animals, just a complete stillness. Any other place and a moment like that would make me uneasy. Cupertino, right after 9/11, with no planes flying and the world paused. Ashburn, during the sniper panic, no cars running on 267 or on the streets. But here, the silence, the stillness, seems natural. This is how it's supposed to be. We are the trespassers; we are what's out of place.

I haven't felt like updating much lately, been working a lot. Fall is definitely here; rain has started to set in, and it's definitely colder. It's a very Bay Area/San Francisco kind of cold -- the dampness goes through whatever you're wearing and straight through to your bones. I guess all that grunge layering wasn't just a fashion statement :)

It's still beautiful here, and we're still unpacking and settling in. This weekend we want to make a big push for getting a bit more unpacked and put away since Sarah will be here next Saturday. Things aren't that bad now, but I'd still like to pretty things up a bit. Mostly everything is set up -- bathroom is all outfitted, just need to move the cat things into our bathroom, and the couch is ready. I just need to tear through the kitchen and figure out where I'm putting all the utensils and then pack up the coffee maker, and unpack the mixer, etc.

In other news, we had some high winds the other day, and this apparently downed quite a bit of things in the trail area behind our place. This morning Gbic and I found a 10 inch tree blocking the very end of the path. It was cute watching her trying to jump over it though. I still love the walks and although the apartment management people here are so incredibly flakey, I'm still really glad we moved out here to Redmond Ridge.