Great things I have discovered about the new house:
*Much more kitchen storage than I had previously suspected.
*So much closet space. So much.
*Master bath could probably accomodate half a dozen people at one time, let alone two. Not that I have any immediate plans to test that theory.
*The previous owners left it more or less clean, so we can just go ahead and unpack.
*Good A/C.
Things that are not so great:
*Our duplex is still a wreck. Improving, but still a wreck.
*I suck at packing. I'm perfectly capable of putting stuff in boxes, yes, but can I move them once they're full? Hell no.
*The pantry is not yet moved, so I've been subsisting on a steady diet of McDonald's cheeseburgers for almost a week. And I would totally eat those if the world were ending tomorrow, but urrgh. Too much of a good thing.
*I believe I am currently experiencing some sort of caffeine-related attack. Or perhaps possession.
Why did I think I liked to pack? I don't. Never again will I forget this.
Good news on the job front--Friday afternoon my boss pulled me into her office and told me that she was putting in for a 25% pay raise for me, to be retroactive to the date I should have had my yearly review. The numbers have to be approved, of course, so I may not actually get that much, but in this case the thought is definitely what counts. My problem with my salary has always been more about the pride than the money--certainly the money is nice, but come on. I'm a speech therapist for a non-profit organization. I knew there weren't going to be big bucks involved when I signed on, especially as I was uncertified at the time. But it's one thing to accept a lower salary in the name of community outreach, and quite another to feel like you're getting paid peanuts because that's all the boss thinks you're worth.
Goddammit. That last sentence just set me back weeks in terms of my spiritual relationship with money. Money does not have to be a measure of worth, seeing as it does not buy happiness and all that. Sacrament, damn it, think of it as a sacrament. Oy.
You know what I want? I want a photo collage of all the moments where blood has been important in Smallville canon. Lex in "Tempest" with the blood streaming down his face, Clark's nosebleed in "Leech," Lex in the rain of blood...there must be others. If you wanted to get twisted, there's the shot of Lionel reaching over Lex's shoulder with the wineglass--shed for you, like Te's livejournal icon. Please, somebody make this.
Packing, cleaning, getting ready to move next week. I'm busy these days; don't expect much here for a while. A little too busy, really--I've also been vaguely contemplating a job change, although not very seriously. Pursued a position at another facility mostly to see if they would hire me, and if so, to get a feel for exactly how criminally underpaid I currently am. Now that we're getting down to the nitty gritty, though, I'm starting to wimp out. Am 95% positive I do not want the job, and am becoming more and more unwilling to gamble with my current job by trying to use the offer to force my overdue yearly review and raise. So I'm finding myself stuck in the position of making nice in unwanted interviews, while still fuming at my boss's unprofessional behavior because I'm too scared to give her an ultimatum. Rock and a goddamned hard place.
Also got rear-ended on the way to work yesterday--my first car accident ever. I am completely fine, but they're estimating over $3000 worth of damage to my car, as the left rear bumper's smashed in and the trunk's crumpled. Luckily, the woman who hit me was extremely cooperative and apologetic, and her insurance is paying for everything. I'm dropping my car off tomorrow, and will have a rental for the next week or so.
Anybody out there familiar with the greater Milwaukee area? We're flying up there the second weekend in June for a (cough) video game convention, as the Hubster wants to sell more copies of his game and I want to get the hell out of the Texas summer heat. We will have very limited time for sight-seeing, but is there anything we need to make time for? Also, anybody in the area want to have lunch or coffee? Drop me a line.
So, May 8th? Most pointless entry ever. Don't ask what possessed me to share that with the world.
My living room is currently hosting a gathering of Atari geeks. (What's the group term for those? A MEG of Atari geeks? A system?) It's actually only the Hubster and two guys from the Atari Age website, but it's enough to send me scurrying upstairs away from the bloop-bleeping music and the discussion of joysticks. Luckily, there is beer aplenty and probably barbeque later, so I should be alright.
I've reached the point again where I have much to recount, and yet have been too busy over the past few weeks to spend more than a few minutes on the computer at a time. It's the sort of dilemma I'd like to have more often, really. So here are some snapshots of the past three weeks or so:
*Did my first trail race at a ranch out in the Texas hill country. It was a smallish affair; maybe fifty people, and the race was actually divided into several categories. The first, in which I participated, was a 25K (15.5 mile) run. There was also a 50K (31 miler, which I did not do because that is insane) and a run/bike duathalon, though I think that was held the day after my event. The ranch itself was apparently designed for mountain biking, and was only opened up for runners during this yearly race, so the trails were just crazy: switchbacks, logs to climb over, sand pits, and constant little 8 to 10 foot rolling hills, the kind that you don't feel as the burn in your quads, but rather as a slow, creeping fatigue from the unremittant climbing. I had a fabulous time. I'd never done an organized trail race before, so the whole experience felt fresh and exciting. It was perfect weather for running--coolish and overcast in the morning, with the clouds only burning off toward noon, by which time most of us were finishing anyway. It was humid as hell, though; I was soaked with sweat after the first fifteen minutes. But I got to run with a couple of the women from my Saturday trail running group, and the scenery was so gorgeous as to be almost overwhelming. Much of the course was through a heavily wooded area, and it felt very strange to me to think that I was in Texas, because with the tall pines, scrubby oaks and bushes, and needle-carpeted floor, it felt like growing up in Florida. Add in some palmettos and a few more water oaks, and I would have been back home. I'm hardly ever nostalgic for the area where I grew up, but I had more than one pang of homesickness that morning.
It wasn't the best run I've ever had by any means--the hills got me around mile 12 or 13, and I walked a lot more than I wanted to. Plus, while I didn't have hip pain for a change, which was great, the outside of both my knees hurt like fuck for the last few miles, as well as for the rest of the day. I think it was probably just IT band stuff from the hills, because the pain went away pretty fast, but it was damned uncomfortable while it lasted. But I didn't care, because the whole experience was so cool. We camped out at the ranch the night before; the first time we've been camping this year. Walking from the campsite to the ranch saloon made me feel like I was in Smallville; it was sundown, and the air was quiet and soft in the twilight, and all alongside the dusty dirt road were green fields and greener woods peppered with wildflowers. (Then I got kind of mad at myself, like, woman, does everything have to come back to tv with you?!) We ate enormous grilled hamburgers at the saloon, and listened to live country guitar while watching the other patrons. They had the best cold beer I've ever tasted there--it was just Dos Equis and Shiner, but something about the mix of wood smoke and the soft open air made the beer just amazing. I didn't have my own because of the race, but I kept stealing sips of the Hubster's. We spent a long time talking to an older married couple there at the saloon--they turned out to be transplants from our city who heartily espoused the country life ("We'll never go back," they said repeatedly), and it also happened that the woman was a speech therapist and the augmentative communication specialist for the county, so I made a great professional contact too. "You know I'm going to remember your name and call you, right?" I kept telling her. She and her husband were working their way through an impressive quantity of fabulous, freezing cold beer, and I wanted to make sure she would remember me. "Sure, honey, you go right ahead," she told me more than once. It was a wonderful weekend.
*We closed on our house on the 29th. It was so painless as to be disconcerting. The worst part was signing all the damn forms; I was about as deathly ill as you can get with a simple cold, and could barely keep the kleenex away from my nose long enough to put pen to paper.
*Mr. Sinatra began his career as a therapy cat with rousing success. My one kid SC, who I probably indulge way too much, had been asking repeatedly if I could bring him to work. I kept putting her off by saying I'd have to ask my boss, and then one Wednesday she and I were gathering materials in the staff office when my boss walked in. SC's eyes narrowed in a downright feral manner. "Is that your boss?" she said. "Go ask her about the cat." So I did, and, cornered, my boss allowed that there was really no reason Mr. S. couldn't spend a few hours in the supply room if we were very careful about keeping the door shut. So the next Monday Mr. Sinatra came to work with me, sending SC into fits of joy. And he was wonderful with her. I had been afraid he would hide, or struggle, or otherwise be unsociable, but obviously I had forgotten about how he's basically a big whore for attention. He sidled over to let anybody and everybody pet him, rubbed and wound himself about SC's legs with total abandon, and allowed her to pick him up and lug him around without breaking a sweat. The first time she asked if she could pick him up, I said rather doubtfully that she could try, and then squinched up my eyes in fear that Mr. S. would blow a gasket. But he remained completely cool as SC hefted him into her arms, totally grabbing his little cat ass in the process, and proceeded to bounce him like a baby. The fifth or sixth time she did it he decided he'd had enough and scrambled over her shoulder, but I think by then he'd paid his dues. I was so proud of him.
*Celebrated our one year wedding anniversary last Sunday. We spent the weekend in Fredricksburg, a quaint, touristy little town with a great WWII museum and fabulous German food. Sat on a shaded patio outside a winery and drank some wonderful smoky chardonnay, getting tipsy in the heat and reminiscing. Came home on Sunday and enjoyed the very nice bottle of champagne that my Australian buddy LH gave us as a wedding present. (We treated it with the proper respect, L, I swear! It was great!) I actually ate some of the year-old wedding cake we'd been saving in the freezer--it was fine, if a little stale--but the Hubster couldn't have more than a taste, saying he was creeped out by the age of the cake.
*I did two Friday evening sailing races with the Hubster on his bigger boat (yes, he owns more than one sailboat. Yes, that makes us yuppies. No, I am not at all defensive about that). The first Friday there was almost no wind, so we sat on the boat in the soft dimming light, drinking beer and eating Doritos and feeling romantic. The second Friday it was blowing a whole hell of a lot of knots, and I discovered that I am next to worthless when it comes to providing muscle on the end of a line. The Hubster would be frantically yelling, "Sheet in! Sheet in! That means pull harder!" while I was throwing my entire strength into simply hanging onto the damn rope. Am thinking about doing some push-ups before we go out again.
*Drank margaritas and talked Smallville subtext with GG, my Jehovah's Witness friend from work. Although I have never actually mentioned the word slash to him and have no plans to detail my involvement or knowledge of internet fandom, we do read the TwoP recaps during lunch, as well as rehash and occasionally re-enact particularly lascivious exchanges between Lex and Clark. We have a rather involved set of slashy in-jokes involving Smallville, pirates, the battleship Lexington in Corpus Christi, and various nautical phrases, and frankly I find it borderline hysterical that The Person With Whom I Am Most Likely to Discuss Gay Subtext on Prime-Time Teen Dramas is a devout Witness. Anyway, it was early in the evening on the Tuesday "Drone" aired, and we were at happy hour with coworkers and making some passing reference to the show. Mid-conversation, GG turns to me and says, "You know what would be so funny? You know the previews for next week's show that come on after the episode? What if it's, like, 'Next Week on Smallville,' and it's just Luthor looks at Clark, and Clark looks at Luthor, and then the camera pans away and all you see is two pairs of pants flying in the air? Oh man, that would be so funny." Me: "Aaahaahaaahaaa--ow! Cognitive dissonance!"
Okay. I really have to go to bed. More snapshots tomorrow.
Time: Too late.
Temper: Frayed.
Mr. Sinatra: Working my last nerve.
Chances anybody who watches both Buffy and Smallville is talking about Smallville: Slim.
Best possible decision at this point: Euthanasia. Or bedtime.
