geek girls of the world unite

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I’m sitting in a huge room full of nerds. Not that that’s really any different than my average workday, but today the nerds are all strangers. And most of them don’t speak English as their native language. Translation: this is Orientation Week. Which is funny, since I’ve worked for this company for almost 6 months and they’re just now getting around to sending me to orientation. So this morning was hell – go around the room, introduce yourself, talk about your previous work experience, why you joined this company, and your favorite hobby. Oh lordy. Have I mentioned how much I HATE talking about myself in front of large groups of people? If I had some assigned topic to talk about, I’d be fine, but not about my career and “fun facts” about my personal life. Ugh.

Interesting side note: there are actually more females in here than I was expecting; however, only 2 of us are non-Asians. And I don’t mean Asian-American, either – these girls work for my company’s branch offices in Singapore, Malaysia and Bangkok. However, I am the only female systems engineer in here, the Asian girls are all developers. And the sole other caucasian girl is one of our company’s internal lawyers. Once again, I’m the weirdo for being the girl with a guy’s job. I used to like having that distinction because it made me feel like some kind of pioneer feminist, but it’s starting to get kind of old. I wonder if I’d be a good developer. I met a guy this morning who switched fields and said it wasn’t that hard a transition. Hmmm. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about lately.

Anyway, this past weekend was pretty good, although poor Dave had to put up with an irrationally grouchy me for 2 days. I don’t know why I was in such a foul mood, but I couldn’t seem to snap myself out of it. I think it had something to do with my sinuses being all weird – I tend to get irritable when I have a sore throat & runny nose. But anyway, we got a lot done in the house. The living room is totally cleared out (the big-screen TV was the most daunting thing to move), and the plywood has all been laid down. There are some really funky angles in that room that allowed Dave to play with his new circular saw, which he thoroughly enjoyed. (Aside: the saw has a laser sight guide on it, and every time he mentioned something about it, I would have to repeat the world “laser” in my best Dr. Evil voice, complete with finger quotes.) We got the floor itself put down in most of the dining room, and we were going to do the rest on Sunday, but we were both tired and felt like taking a day off. Plus the fact that I was (and still am) sore as hell from spending most of Saturday on my hands and knees with a nail gun. I can’t imagine that it’ll take more than a day to get the rest done, so we’ll do it next Saturday. No worries. We should have enough time before the gorgeous new furniture shows up.

So yeah… Did I mention that I can’t wait for Orienation Week to be over?

The Fly

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Today marks two important occasions:
1) Dave and I have been dating for 4 months, which for those of you who don’t know my romantic past, is a record for me.
2) It has officially been 3 years since I moved to Washington state. That’s longer than I’ve lived anywhere since my hometown in Mississippi. I guess I’m over my nomadic phase – I really love it here, I think I’m sticking around.

In other (unimportant) news, there is a HUGE fly in my apartment that I don’t know what to do with. It’s just a housefly, but he’s at least the size of a nickel. And he’s aggressive, he keeps dive-bombing me when I don’t expect it. It’s totally freaking me out. But I can’t kill him because (a) he’s so huge that I know it’s going to leave a mess if I squish him, and the thought totally grosses me out, and (b) he’s too fast for me to catch him anyway. It’s funny when he dive-bombs Teenie, she’ll swat at him in the air, but then when she doesn’t catch him, she loses interest in about 2 seconds. Useless little huntress, she is. I tried opening my patio door and shooing the fly out, to no avail. He just dives at my head with his loud “Buzz-buzz-buzz!!!” until I scream and run away. I’m not even scared of flies, but the thought of this huge son-of-a-gun landing on me is freaky. And flies carry germs. Ick.

Teenie and I are taking off in a couple of hours for Dave’s house, where we’ll be doing floors all weekend. Whee! Hopefully Mr. Fly will be dead by the time I return to my apartment.

Oh, and in totally unimportant news, I’m getting a haircut this afternoon. My usual lady has the day off, so I’m taking a chance on one of her colleagues. Wish me luck!

nothing, really

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I was going to write a nice little mid-week post, except…. hmmm, there’s not much going on. I just got a new project at work, so it looks like I may actually have to go into the office for the next few weeks. Which is kind of strange, I’ve gotten a bit spoiled by this whole working-from-home thing. Life is going to be a bit different now that I’m actually going to need some prep time in the mornings, and I can’t just roll out of bed at 8:00 a.m. and sit at my laptop in my PJ’s. Even though I have been working, it’s basically like I’ve been on a 2-month vacation. I think this week is going to involve a lot of Tylenol PM so I can get myself back in the habit of going to bed reasonably early. And the project looks like it’s going to be fun, and it’ll give me a chance to (hopefully) impress one of the big to-do’s in our internal IT department, which is good. I’ve decided that I really like the internal IT group because they get a lot of fun projects, but they also get to stay in Seattle and not travel. Plus all of them that I’ve met have been really nice people, so it’d be a fun group to work with.

There is one exception to this, though. There’s one guy who I worked with on a project back in May, and he always gave me the impression that he disliked me, although I have no idea why. And of course, I have to work with him again for this project (I’m meeting with him later this afternoon), so I’m a little nervous about that. I’ve seen him be nice to other people, so I know he’s not just a nasty person. I have no clue why he doesn’t like me in particular, I’ve always been polite and courteous with him. So my goal is to overwhelm him with my sheer niceness and likability and wear him down to the point where he feels that he has no choice but to be polite back to me. I’ve done it before (this approach has proven to be quite effective on bitter, middle-aged women, but I haven’t experimented on that many men), so hopefully I can pull it off again.

In other news, I don’t know how many of you read my cousin Cat’s blog, which is fabulous in its own right, but her dogs Modean and Goofch have also started their own blog. It’s hilarious. Go read it.

And speaking of animals, apparently UmaThurman loves Teenie. Teenie, it seems, doesn’t mind UmaThurman too much, either.

big birthday weekend

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This weekend was a lot of fun. I have to start this story by explaining that Dave is a birthday nazi who won’t open his presents until his actual birthday, which was on Sunday. I’m more of the “birthday weekend = close enough” mindset, so if my birthday falls on a Sunday, I want to open my presents on Friday night.

Anyway, on Friday I made Dave a birthday cake, and that was his one (perishable) gift that he got before Sunday. I’ve never tried to write anything on a cake before, so I took a picture of my first effort. The problem was that the icing came out faster than I was expecting, so the H in “happy” was way too big, and then I sort of had to abbreviate the rest of it to make it all fit. (Oh, and Dave said that my heart in the top right corner looked like intestines.) Ok, so it looks a bit like a drunk 6 year-old wrote it, and I obviously won’t be making a career change to become a master cake decorator anytime soon. But the cake tasted damn good, and as you can see, Dave was pretty pleased with it.

Saturday, we did the Humane Society walk, which was fun except that it was cold and it rained on us the whole time. But we got to see lots of doggies out running around having a great time, and that was cool. I’m waiting for Dave to email me the pictures from that so I can post them here, they’re pretty funny. Afterward (after I had showered and napped), we went to Best Buy so Dave could get an iPod. He was totally jealous of mine (iPod envy) so he had to go get one just like it. But I got mine first, nyah nyah. Sushi for dinner (mmm…) and then we started to watch a movie, but Dave wanted to play with his iPod and I wanted to sleep, so that was that.

Sunday, I was woken up at 8 a.m. by the birthday boy, who wanted to open his presents. He was bouncing around the room like a 4 year-old on Christmas morning. I think I did pretty well, he seemed to like everything. We went out for breakfast and then drove south to the Puyallup fair. Good lord, what an event that is. I had never been before, but I can safely say that it puts the state fair in Mississippi (the fair I grew up going to) to shame. And I learned that I’m allergic to some type of farm animal – most likely goats, since I pet a few of those – because my inner ears started itching before we even left the barns. Anyway, several hours, lots of junk food and a couple of rides later, we headed home. I crashed around 11 last night, which is unusually early for me (lately, anyway).

So overall, it was a very good weekend. This coming weekend is going to be all about floors, floors, floors! And more of that XBox game where you crash into cars! Whee!

hey-la, hey-la, my boyfriend's blog

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Dave started a blog! The poor guy has actually been working on this for quite a while because he refused to go the simple Blogger method like the rest of us. Instead, he taught himself ASP.NET, god bless him. So it’s a little sparse right now, but I’m sure it’ll develop as time goes on. Hooray! (I’ve added him to my links sidebar thingie too.)

ruh-roh

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Whoop-whoop-whoop! Attention: security has been breached!!

Or in other words, my parents found my blog. This is actually not that big a deal, because I think they know most of this stuff already. But the occasional profane word does sneak in here and there, and I’m sure that if they start reading too far back, they could find a thing or two that they disapprove of (not that I’m mentioning topics, so everybody keep your mouths shut). Anyway, looks like I’m going to have to watch my language a bit for a while, at least until they get bored and stop paying attention. 🙂

Oh yeah, and my parents now have high-speed Internet access at their new house. As their personal resource for all aspects of technical support, I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. The good news is that now they can upgrade their pc to Windows XP, and I could use the Remote Assistance feature to help them from here when they have problems. (There really didn’t seem to be any point in upgrading them from 98 when they were on a 56K dial-up line.) At the same time, I’m expecting my call volume to increase significantly over the next few weeks. Whee!

Anyway, events for this weekend are as follows:
* Saturday – Dave & I are doing a fundraiser walk for the Humane Society. It’s only a 3K, so it’s not like we’re doing a marathon. It’s cool because they encourage people to walk with their dogs, so I imagine we’ll see lots of different types of pooches. And since I’m trying to coerce Dave into getting a dog, this can only help to further my cause. (Muuwaahahahaha!!)
* Sunday – DAVE’S BIRTHDAY!!! HOORAYY!!!

weather disasters and MP3 players

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My parents moved into a new house this past weekend. It’s been a long, arduous process, and they’re both completely exhausted. I move approximately once a year, so I’m familiar with how stressful it can be – however, I only move my little one-bedroom apartment, not a 4-bedroom house that I’ve lived in for 20 years. I can’t even fathom how much stuff they’ve accumulated over that amount of time. They’ve had at least 3 yard sales over the past 6 months just trying to get rid of all their junk.

Last night, I called my mom’s cell phone (they don’t have a land line yet) and my dad answered. I asked him how things were going, and after the quick unpacking recap, he said, “And your aunt Si is on her way here now.” Um… What? This aunt is actually a great aunt (she’s my mom’s aunt), and in my 28 years on this planet, she has never to my knowledge set foot in my hometown. We always see her when we go to New Orleans for family gatherings, but I honestly didn’t think that the woman ever traveled at all. So, my curiosity peaked, I asked my dad why she was coming, and he said “Oh, you know, just to visit…” I must have made some kind of confused “huh??” sound because my dad cracked up at that point. He laughed and explained that it’s because Hurricane Ivan is heading toward New Orleans and the local authorities have issued a mandatory evacuation of the entire city.

So my 90 year-old great aunt, her middle-aged daughter, their dog, and some nephew related by marriage who my parents have never met were all on the freeway headed out of New Orleans, moving along at a top speed of about 4 miles per hour. I guess that’s what happens when everyone in the city tries to leave at the same time. They had even changed the incoming freeway lanes to outgoing – no one can drive into the city at all. Pretty scary. My parents live about 200 miles north of New Orleans – they were predicting that my aunt and her posse would arrive at about 4 a.m. I haven’t called to get an update today, because my mom is totally stressed. Not only does she have 3 unexpected visitors (plus a dog), but they’re all going to be staying in a house that my parents have lived in for less than a week, and they can’t even get to the guest beds because they’re surrounded by boxes. Yep. Should be a rockin’ good time. It’s funny, I’m always happy that I don’t live in Mississippi anymore, but sometimes I’m REALLY particularly glad that I’m not there.

In other news, I got an iPod yesterday. Oh. My. God. It is so cool. I’m copying my entire CD collection onto it, I’m on the D’s right now. (Yes, I alphabetize my CD’s – my obsessive-compulsive disorder is just mild enough that it doesn’t require medication, so back off.) I’m not even using 2 GB of space yet, how am I ever going to fill up the 40 GB that are available? Oh happy happy happy…