At least I'm not the only one

Okay, so the subjects of the study are little kids, but it confirms that how I feel about these things is not unusual. I'm not scared of them, but I think they're just creepy and not right. I will definitely go out of my way to avoid one however.

I disagree with the author's idea that popular culture makes them creepy since I've not personally seen the movies that are referenced. I don't think pop culture made them creepy; I think their natural creepiness led to their roles in pop culture.

But at least this article proves that I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Brain Dump

It's been a long while since I posted anything here. I just haven't had much to say, and I really haven't felt like coming up with anything to write. No, there's not been anything wrong, I've just not in the mood. It's already been an interesting year, and it's not quite the end of January.

The big news for me is actually at work. My perpetually late/absent employee announced last week that she and her husband are moving to Japan, next week. She's always been prone to tall tales (although I'm convinced she really believes them) and this is no exception. The story is something about her husband, who doesn't actually meet the qualifications of the jobs his company needs to fill, was somehow their first pick our of several hundred people who applied for various transfers and he could go anywhere in the world. So, they chose Italy (stick with me here...) and were all excited about it. That was Thursday morning and there were stories of how they would be leaving immediately, his company was paying to move all their stuff, giving him a huge raise, and paying ALL their living expenses for the next year. Sounded fishy to me already. So how did they end up in Japan? By Thursday afternoon the story had changed to be that his company, which employees easily more than 100,000 people, needed his apparently one-of-a-kind skills desperately not in Italy, but in Japan. So, they decided to move to Japan, with barely two weeks notice. The company is still paying for everything and for them to live after they get there. It all sounds like bullshit to me. Her story has too many holes to be completely true and maybe she just wants a different job but she's too chicken-shit to say so.

So, long story short (too late huh?), it causes me major changes at work. I've already got two official titles and am really doing one and a half jobs. Until we hire someone to replace her I'll be adding all of her work to mine, so I'll be doing two and a half jobs until we fill that position. I'm not looking forward to it, at all. The upside to all this is that she's been unreliable with her schedule and now that little problem is moving to Japan. She uses any excuse to be late or out completely and more than once in the last year has gone beyond the sick and vacation time she has available. She does a good job when she's there, so she's sort of got many others bamboozled which has made it hard to discipline her. Each time I talk to her and get her back on track, she takes advantage again and the powers-that-be let it slip and cover her time off. It's hard for me to be an effective manager when the people above me undermine me. With her departure, she solves the problem for me. In spite of being so busy for the next month or two I'm welcoming the change, and welcoming being able to get started with someone new in that job.

Otherwise, work has just been work. It's been getting slowly busier since the beginning of the year, but that's not a bad thing in itself. It certainly makes the day go faster.

Home has also been busy, but we've been having fun. We've just been on the go a lot, which is typical. The hubby has developed a minor case of Bell's Palsy and it's not painful, but it's just odd. It scared me at first since I wasn't sure what it was. Luckily the doc confirmed that it's harmless and will eventually go away.

We took a friend to the boat show over the weekend. It was his first time to go to a boat show and I enjoyed getting to play expert and edumacate him about boats. Plus, it was fun getting to dig around boats I don't own or have to clean. The only problem was when our friend started pushing buttons and levers on one of the bigger boats we went on and almost dropped the anchor. It was a heavy anchor, and there was a smaller, but VERY expensive boat sitting directly under the anchor. He thought that the "windlass" (look it up if you're not sure what it is) had something to do with the windshield and kept pushing the button when he didn't see the windshield doing anything. He figured something wasn't right when the loud beeping noise started, and the salesman on the boat came running up to the top deck. I let our friend know that, as a rule of thumb, it's a bad idea to start pushing buttons on a boat when you know nothing about boats. The idea of "What does this button do?" can get very expensive on someone else's boat.

I did one really good thing happen at the show. I had ordered a sail for our boat way back in May. After I ordered it, the guy kinda vanished, so I started looking at other options. I found his booth at the boat show and chatted with him and told him that I had found other options. He didn't have any use for the custom-made sail, so he is selling it to me at cost. Having a 5 minute conversation saved me $800. I like those kinds of conversations.

Sadly there's not much more I can think to blather on about. Life's not to exciting at the moment, but I've learned not to wish for excitement; the universe tends to give me a lot more than I want. I've not been doing much more than laying low...I've not even been keeping up with the news sites and blogs that I normally read. I think I need to hibernate for a month and start fresh in March.

My candidate

I know I've said that I've already lost interest in the 2008 elections and am not tuning in at this point. However, once in a while a candidate comes along that just speaks to who I am and makes me feel good about the future. I've found that candidate this year:

Back to the salt mines

So I get to go back to work tomorrow, after two full weeks off. It wasn't supposed to be that long off work, but an unexpected illness extended the time. I should be upset about being sick, but in a weird way it's been an okay way to start a new year. I truly got to ease into the new year with rest and sleep and just general taking it easy. It feels like I got a chance to shut down completely from 2007 and now restart tomorrow to go back to work. I've got a long list of stuff to do right away already but I don't mind. Having the extra time off gave me enough time to feel like I got completely away from work; I think I'm ready to deal with it again.

Not lots to report on here this weekend. I spent a good part of it doing laundry that I was really behind on. I even got the clothes out of the luggage from NYC and got them washed. It only took three weeks to do it too! We took down the lights outside down before we got completely sick of them. We still have the few x-mas decorations inside but those will go away soon I'm sure. They've already faded into the background and are nothing more than "white noise" at this state. I also sat down and got all the bills paid and up to date, which was something I had been avoiding for a while.

I've not been spending much time reading news and politics. I'm already sick of the 2008 election cycle and it's only the first week of January. By November the noise level will have become just one loud screech so I might as well just tune in at the last minute. I'm not confident that anything will change, regardless of who is elected. The Dems in Congress have had plenty of chance to make changes over the last year and they've failed miserably. We supposedly have two parties in this country, but in the end it's really just two branches of the same party. One branch plays the conservative bad-cop role while the other branch plays the liberal good-cop role. In the end, they both seem to want the same thing, mostly to get re-elected. It's just a sad self-serving plutocracy that perpetuates itself by accomplishing as little as possible. Anyone who upsets the status quo in government is a risk and is quickly run out.

Well, I think that's all I've got at the moment. Wish me luck back at work tomorrow.

It's about damn time

I finally got the camera out of the luggage and off-loaded the pictures. I know I know...it shouldn't have taken three weeks to do it, but oh well. If you'd rather view them in a grid as opposed to the slideshow, you can use the link under the Photos section to the right. Hope they were worth the wait!

Goodbye, and good riddance

It's already 2008 in a good portion of the world, and will be here in exactly 6 hours. We were planning to have a couple of good friends over for dinner and game night to ring in the new year, but the cold I came down with has only gotten worse so I had to call it off. So, we'll be spending the evening at home under a blanket while I try not to cough myself to death. While spending the evening with the hubby under a blanket by the fire is a good thing in itself, it seems a fitting end to a year where nothing has gone has planned. As someone at work said, it's been a year where everything has needed to be a Plan B. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I consider 2007 to be the worst year of my life. I won't go into what made it all so bad, but you probably already know. So, as 2007 comes to a close, the best thing I can think to say is "It can't end soon enough!"

Instead of rehashing all the bad things that happened in 2007, to me and the people I care about, I think I should concentrate on the good things that did happen in the last year. Yes, there were plenty of good things, and it would be so easy to let them be overshadowed by the negatives. If there was every any doubt, I'm definitely an optimist. I've taken all the negative things that happened and still managed to find positives in them. As it turns out, most of the positives were things that I learned by trying to cope with the negatives.

The saying that "Wisdom comes from experience" certainly is true. I learned this year that I'm actually a much stronger person than I ever thought possible. I've dealt with things this year that prior to this I wouldn't have thought I could handle. It was dealing with all the crap that made me stronger, so indeed some good did come of it all. I also realized that I'm pretty good at taking control of a situation without being an asshole about it.

I learned that I know how to take things one day at a time, and that the theory really works. I figured out who my real friends were this year and also learned that it's okay to open up to them; if they're true friends, they won't run away. In fact, my true friends rallied around when things were tough and I'm forever grateful to them. I learned that I truly can't fix everything (even though I've often tried) and that it's okay to lean on people. I also learned that I'm pretty good at utilizing my resources to get things done.

I learned this year that my relationship is even stronger than I thought. I always knew we had a very strong bond, but dealing with things together this year cemented that even further. Instead of the bad things tearing us apart like I've seen happen to so many other couples, it brought us closer together. I'm definitely thankful for that.

I don't believe in New Year's resolutions. I've always thought it a bad idea to take on an arbitrary commitment just because we hang up a new calendar. However, I can say that I will be taking the things I learned in 2007 into 2008 in order to make it a good year. Maybe that's something of a resolution after. I'm still counting down the minutes until this wretched year ends, and as it does I would like to say to it: "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out."

Post-nap ramble

I just woke up from a much-needed nap and felt inspired to write, so here I am.

Well, it's day 8 of my 11 day stretch of time off work. The time seemed to go really fast, but that's usually what happens with time off. This is the longest I've had off work since 2004 when we took a two week vacation. I can't say that I have anything to show for the time off, but ask me if I care... ;-)  I go back to work on Wednesday and it's going to be a shock to my system to have to get out of bed and out of the house by a certain time, and to be civil to other humans before 10AM. Wish me luck. 

Most of my time off was spent with our friend Rick who was here for the holiday. I had a great time with him here. We didn't do any touristy things since he's been here so many times, unless you count Pike Place Market. It's nice that we can spend whole days doing nothing but talking (and often-times eating) and still not run out of things to talk about. He's truly family to me and I'm so glad he came up.

Rick has also been looking at applying for a job here in Seattle but he's waffling on it. I would very much like him to move up here...after all, who doesn't want a close friend to live nearby? So, everyone should go to his LiveJournal page here and let him know that he NEEDS to move to Seattle. Maybe others out there can come up with better arguments than I have about why he should move here. Apparently "...because I really really want you to!" isn't enough to convince him. 

Somehow I managed to get a cold this weekend. I think our dinner host on x-mas day had something and he sent me home with it. I'll have to remember not to kiss the host next time. I started feeling crappy on Thursday and by today it's going full force. I did manage to spend some time with a good friend this week, even though I knew I was coming down with something. I really enjoyed the time together. Of course, wandering around downtown in almost-freezing temps and rain might not have helped my situation...oh well. Otherwise, I've been spending a lot of time sleeping and I think it's helping. I've slept over 18 hours in the last 24; I feel like such a slug. This afternoon I just couldn't sleep any more and had to get up and do something so here I am typing this. As it is now, Jayson is still asleep upstairs. I hope that doesn't mean that he's trying to catch what I have.

I still owe everyone pics of the NYC trip from almost 2 weeks ago. The camera is still in the luggage and (this is very embarrassing) we haven't yet unpacked from the trip. The luggage is sitting in the bedroom near the closet entrance and we've been stepping over it for so long now that it has kind of become part of the room decor. I'm usually not this bad when it comes to putting things away, but we were busy from the time we got home, then had a house guest, then had x-mas, and now I'm sick. Yes yes yes...I know I'm rationalizing, but I'm good at it and I enjoy it. I'm thinking we'll get it taken care of this weekend since we're both tired of looking at it, and we're running out of socks. Soon as I get the camera out of the luggage I'll post the pics. They won't be timely, but at least they'll be.

I wish I had more to talk about, but that's all that's going on. We're planning to spend New Year's Eve with some friends having a game night, something we had been doing monthly but let lapse for some unknown reason. I'm looking forward to it since we always have fun with these guys. Our previous game nights were a great time. I hope we can make this the beginning of a new regular trend. If nothing else, it will be a nice way to ring in the new year, and I'll be so glad to see this year end.

Well, I think that's all I've got at the moment. Don't forget to stop by Rick's page and argue for him to move to Seattle. ;-)

Happy Boxing Day

It's been quite a while since I posted anything here; the last few weeks have been VERY busy. The New York trip took went really well and was a lot of fun. Jayson and I were there on our from Wednesday to Friday afternoon and enjoyed doing whatever sounded good at the time. Wednesday we merely wandered around the village and then headed out for dinner after a nap. We spent part of the evening at Rock Center taking pics and just enjoying the energy that was there. The next day the weather was amazingly bad (sleet, snow, heavy rain) so we spent much of the day sitting drinking tea watching the city go by. Of all the things we did, that was one of the most enjoyable. B & C arrived in town on Friday and we spent the rest of the weekend with them. We all had a great time it seemed. We did lots of tourist things, but in NYC even those are fun.

After NYC I had a busy week getting ready for the holiday. Our friend was arriving in town on Saturday and we had a lot of things to do to be prepared for that. Unfortunately we weren't able to get everything done, but that's okay. He's as close to family as possible, so he understands if the house isn't "just so". As it is, we still haven't unpacked the luggage from NYC (and we've been home 10 days...ugh). It's been a really good weekend and holiday. We spent X-mas eve out at dinner with friends. Surprisingly, Jayson and I had two margaritas (okay, Italian margaritas, whatever those are)...I didn't think I'd have those again for a long time. In any event, the evening was a lot of fun. X-mas day we got up early, opened our gifts, dug into our stockings, which is always the most fun), and then went to dinner at some friends' house. We spent the entire afternoon and evening there and had a really good time. They made an amazing meal and I appreciate all the effort they went to.

My friend is here until this afternoon and I'm sure we'll be doing very little today until lunch time. I'm off work until next Wednesday and I'm loving it. It's been a couple of years since I've had 11 days in a row off work. I think I need to take time off more often!

I think that's all I've got right now. I thought after not posting anything for so long I'd have more to talk about, and be wittier about it. Hmmm.... I could go into great detail about some of the NYC trip, but that would be entirely uninteresting, and mildly embarrassing as well. I'll post some pics of the trip in the next day or two, soon as I pull them off the camera (which is still in the luggage).

Isn't Jesus busier than this?

I would think the christian messiah would have better things to do than to appear on an x-ray for some guy in Florida. Surely he’s got a much fuller schedule that doesn’t allow him the free time to randomly appear in places like this. I would think planning for the apocalypse and his second coming would already fill most of his time. Yet somehow he can find the time to appear on things like pancakes, trees, and x-rays. If he’s trying to communicate with the world, it would be so much more efficient to come right out and say “Hello” and make a personal appearance. Maybe heaven isn’t nearly as exciting as we’ve been led be believe and Jesus is just bored. At least he’s finally using technology for a change.

Santa is a pedophile

What a nice idea this was. Take technology, add some Christmas (and Microsoft) automagic and voila, you can talk to Santa. Only problem: Santa can be a dirty old man. Ho, ho, ho indeed.