I'm going to level with you guys. I went to bed with pants on last night. I really did. They were my maroon UPS sweats, because if I sleep completely naked my ass gets cold, okay. IT DOES.
This morning I wake up groggy with a sore left leg and ass muscles. I am also ass naked, and my sweatpants are nowhere to be found.
This leaves me with two questions:
...I never posted the pictures of me from Halloween. Without further ado, I present...Wrenjamin.
Yes, those are pigtails.
So HR is taking the Christmas Decoration Debacle very seriously. They are treating it as a religious discrimination case, and as soon as my letter of complaint is formalized will turn it into a formal review, which means at the very least a letter in her permanent file.
In the meantime, I am convincing my fellow students to go to HR for other reasons, since she seems determined to piss off and walk all over everyone on the staff. For someone that rants about respect, she's not very good at treating us with any.
In short? She's in trouble. Hopefully this will encourage her to talk calmly before swan diving into our throats.
My desktop is back, baby. Looking pretty, and running the Windows 7 64-bit beta with no issues. It does all the things a little computer should do on its own like hibernating, booting, not upping the temperature of my room by five degrees, and not running its fans so loudly I can't sleep if its on.
As happens, now that I have my new tower under control, several of my friends want to redo/build one of their own. Isn't computer geekdom great? I'm just going to order them all to pay with cash and assume I'm stimulating the economy.
Now I just have to get my games installed (what did I do with the Oblivion EP? Oh Hell,) finish tidying up my documents folders, and redo my iTunes Library. *shakes fist*
Unc forgot my birthday.
I got a call from him at 1150 his time, and he left a very apologetic voicemail that didn't outright say he forgot, but made me suspicious.
The dozen red roses I received from him the next day, though? Those screamed guilt.
A word to the wise, guys: Flowers mean you fucked up or you're guilty about something.
I've gutted Estella. She is no more. This is cause for happiness!
Something hasn't been quite right with her since she was built, anyway. I never managed to fix the boot issues (which makes me believe it's the mobo's fault), and the mobo actively refused to recognize a good third of my USB ports (there were two bent pins in that area when it arrived, methinks that's the cause. Fuck you, ex-boyfriend, for getting it open box. It's like the fuck-you that kept on fucking. FOR TWO YEARS!). But, since I had nine ports on the front alone, I dealt with the other problem by never turning off the computer unless it was a dire emergency.
There's a problem with that. My graphics card is the size of Madagascar, and since the PNW doesn't use air conditioning, Estella would make my bedroom easily five degrees warmer than the rest of the house. Also the fans are loud when the room's that hot. And that's terrible.
So when it decided to stop recognizing the other USB ports? I decided change was needed. I bought a new mobo. An Intel mobo. And though it may be a weird thing to say, it's a pretty fucking sexy mobo. Everything is laid out really well, there are no cord issues, things are neatly labeled and color-coded. It's a joy to work with instead of an absolute fucking pain in the ass like the last one was. (Oddly enough, they're both by ASUS.)
While I was at it, I was browsing around and looking at how much prices had dropped, and realized that for $350 I could give my computer enough of an upgrade to work flawlessly for me for the next few years, especially since I tend to run a year behind the PC gaming curve. So I got more RAM, another DVD drive, a new processor (quad-core, stop laughing smugly Tim, it was $10 more than an Intel dual-core) and another hard drive (SATA, not IDE, my old hard drive is going to be retired to file storage.)
I'm still waiting for the processor to get here, but when it does, everything else will be ready. Case was gutted, everything was cleaned, wheels are on (thank god I hate dragging the fucking tower around), mobo is back in, everything is connected. I also downloaded the Windows 7 beta since I'm admittedly curious and definitely have more than enough room for two OSes. (Also I want something that's 64-bit just so I can see.)
In short? Happy birthday to me. In another week I should have a computer I can safely turn off when I'm done for the night.
Strip Deadwood: Anytime someone says "cocksucker," whoever's name is shouted first must remove an article of clothing. This continues until all members of the audience are naked. Once this happens, start putting clothes back on.
By the end of an episode, a fully-dressed audience of four will have stripped and redressed a single time. On a good day. If the episode features Mr. Wu, the cycle may never stop.
About this time last week, my computer decided to stop recognizing USB devices, essentially rendering deaf and blind. I've borrowed an old mouse/keyboard and am working on fixing the problem, but until then?
RAGE.
Night of Wii Fit hula hoop and skiing + DDR with Matt and The Boy?
Total fucking, epic win.
Now if you'll excuse me, I am going to go nurse my spine.
Am thinking about getting rid of Blackberry. Want smaller, less cracked-out phone, and don't want to pay $50/mo for internet, which is required if you buy a Blackberry.
Will probably go back to a Sony Ericsson. I miss the old one I had dearly, and the updated version is pretty sweet.
Yes, I am at work and cleaning out my car/paying bills, why do you ask?
The problem with having an espresso machine is now I can make it just as strong as I want it. Which means I am never, ever, ever going to be happy with commercially bought coffee again.
But I am going to be alert. Oh God, am I ever going to be alert.
After what I went through with my teachers last semester, I have come to the conclusion that I need to have a formal, documented, fucking notarized statement of disability for when I become an official employee, otherwise I'm going to be dragged to hell and back over the fact that I can't write. ("But you don't look sick!")
So, when I went in to get my meds refilled, I got two referrals. The first is to a psychiatrist who is "very good with treating bipolar disorder, but has a, er, strong personality." (I swear klaxons just went off somewhere.) The second is to a rheumatologist, whom he believes will help me get said diagnosis. I mean, we already know what I have. We just need them to tell my insurance and my employers, right? Right?
Here we go again. ._.
[It's the start of the new semester, and the teachers are handing out the journals "we'll" be writing in during reflection time in class. Journals are passed out to my right, and run out just before getting to me.]
Tess: "That works out well!"[The stack of journals coming from the left also runs out one person before me. This girl, instead of realizing this happened for a reason, freaks her shit.]
Me: "I know, right?"
Girl: "WE NEED ANOTHER ONE FOR WREN."[All classroom activity grinds to a halt, and everyone, including the Dean and all six assembled professors, stops and stares. Someone on the far end of the classroom flings a journal at her out of desperation, and she presents it to me triumphantly.]
Me: "No, I don't."
Adrian: "She doesn't need one!"
Girl: *assumes we're both joking*
Girl: "WE NEED ANOTHER JOURNAL!" D:<
Adrian: "No, we really don't!"
Me: "Er, thanks, but I don't use them."She stared at me for the rest of the class period.
Girl: *absolutely aghast* "Why not?"
Class: *Is she serious?*
Me: *smashes face into laptop repeatedly*
So I may finally be mad enough at a coworker to go to Human Resources over it. (WARNING: Rant Content ahead.)
This year, for some strange reason, the office staff decided to decorate for Christmas. And I'm not talking a tree and some lights around the top of the room. We had stockings, garlands, enormous bows, sticky window decals, fake plastic poinsettias and almost every free surface was covered in wrapping paper. It was heinous. Some of the student staff (Okay, me and Shylock) grumbled about not appreciating having to work covered in other people's holidays, but were told they were "holiday" decorations, not Christmas.
Uh. There are angels covering the windows. But because they also bought some Jewish stars and "looked for a menorah" but couldn't find one, it's suddenly inoffensive. Never mind that Hanukkah is a minor Jewish holiday and other religions don't even have one at this point in the year, no. It's multicultural you can't complain.
So I didn't. I think it's a little unfair that these people covered the office in Christmas decor for three weeks and then went out of town for the holiday itself and let us heathens work while being blinded by Christmas lights, but I put up with it because some of my coworkers really liked it. But when I come back and work a grave shift on December 29, I'm looking around the office and decide to take them down. It's after Christmas, I'm dispatching with nothing to do, and I figure it will save Bosslady some time.
So. Tree goes back in tree box. Lights go back in light boxes. Garlands are tied and bagged, ornaments are hand wrapped, window decals are stored and labeled. Stockings are placed on the respective cubicles of their owners. Three hours later, the office has been restored, and everything is neatly put away. All's good, right?
If all had been good, this wouldn't be a rant post. The next day I come into work and find Bosslady waiting for me. Now, Bosslady is supposed to be on vacation. That's right. This woman took time out of her busy schedule to come yell at me for taking the decorations down.
"Wren, can I talk to you for a second?"
"Sure," I said, assuming we'd head for her office. Nope, she keeps standing right there in the middle of the office, in front of Daryl and Bossman Prime.
"Can you tell me why you took the Christmas decorations down?"
"It was time! They needed to be taken down."
There's a deadly pause. "And what do you mean by they 'needed' to be taken down?"
At this point I realize where this is going.
"Look, I was trying to help you out. It took me three hours to take them down and pack them up. And as I understand it, after Christmas, Christmas decorations go down."
"'As you understand it?'"
"Bosslady, I'm not Christian."
Cue furious backpedaling wherein she changes her tack. "Okay. I'm just asking because I got a call from a coworker who was very offended that they were taken down. The person also said the decorations had been thrown randomly around the office."
Now, anyone with half a brain would be able to tell that's not true. I explain my esoteric fucking organizational system to her, and she changes her tactic again. "Okay. Well, another issue here is that those decorations weren't the office's. They were mine."
"Yes, I know. That's one of the reasons I was so careful with them."
"Well, just because your bag is in the office doesn't give me permission to dig through it."
Here is where I didn't say "yes, but I don't hang my bag on the fucking walls for everyone to see." I'm still proud of myself for this one. Also, office policy is that any personal property we bring has to be stored in the back room. So if she wants to use this argument, she has to admit she was breaking the rules.
Long story short, she goes off on a tirade about respect. How I wasn't "respecting property" or people's religious beliefs because I offended them by taking the decorations down. Nevermind that I neatly labeled the decorations and made sure they were out for people to claim. Or that I've been responsible for taking decorations down countless times before. It's disrespectful, Wren! (Jesus would be ashamed of you!)
Meanwhile, I am being berated in front of a coworker and a friend and being shown no respect myself by being allowed to have this conversation privately. Also, she wants to talk about respecting people's religious beliefs? How about the fact that she didn't check to make sure it was okay to put the fucking decorations up in the first place? It doesn't matter that myself and several others were offended they were put up, because we are in a minority. But one Christian flips his lid that they were taken down four days after Christmas, and I get yelled at.
I've contacted HR. I'll be giving updates. This is fucking ridiculous.
1.) Wake up. Wonder whether or not am hungover.
2) Drive home from Seattle.
3) Tea and eggs.
4) Yep, am hungover.
5) Nap.
6) Ohgod it's six hours later!
7) Bailey's hot cocoa.
8) Okay still hungover.
9) Fried rice.
10) Sims 2
11) Bake cake.
12) Make Bailey's cake, which is like rum cake but warm and yummy.
13) Showers help hangovers right?
14) No.
15) Sims 2.
16) 6 AM: Clean apartment and go to work.
And then I come across words like this one:
Callipygian. (From the Greek καλλίπυγος) Adj. 1. Having beautifully-shaped buttocks.
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