susuwatari

I put an offer on a house yesterday. I’m surprisingly calm if you disregard the nervous twitching and foaming.

We were reminded during our group meeting this morning at work that it is once again almost time for summer hours. The deal is that if we work 9 hours during the week we can take a half day on Friday. My question was if I’m already working 9 to 10 hour days normally all week, does that mean I have to work 11-12 hour days to use summer hours? It’s these kind of smart-ass comments that makes my boss Eric adore me. Don’t feel too sorry for the guy, he deserves EVERYTHING I do to torment him.

My friend Pat is coming in town tomorrow night to play a show downtown in his BAND. He is a much cooler person than I am. He wears clothing from real thrift stores and dances with his arms in the air (and I never get tired of laughing at him). Anyway here is the email he sent to me today.

Hello The place is called the Lemp Art Center
Their policy is strictly stated on the website that they don’t allow jerks, but I will see if I can sneak you in.
OOOOOHHHHHH BUUUUUUURRRRRRRNNNNNNN!!!!!!!
I am looking forward to seeing you.
Pat

And here is my reply:

Love you too.
Oh yeah, our address is: XXXX (are you kidding me this is the internets!) We’ll be hanging out here playing Rock Band because we’re too cool. Have you warned your friends what big dorks we are?? I might embarrass you and bake cookies and knit. I do that sometimes.
love, Christina

At the Cardinal’s game on Sunday my sister-in-law shared a story about my 5yo niece Miranda.

Me: What’s Miranda doing today?

Marcie: She’s sitting at home writing apology notes to her classmates.

Me:  What’d she do now?

Marcie: She started a club at preschool and wouldn’t let two girls join because of their skin color.

Me: Wuh???

So it turns out Marcie got called in for a parent’s conference last Friday when Miranda’s preschool teachers found out that Miranda had started an exclusive club.  This club first started out as Miranda’s friends which were basically the four girls in the class and two of the boys.  Over time however, Miranda decided to exclude two of the girls from the group.  The preschool teachers told Marcie that this was a problem – the reason Miranda told these girls they could not be in her club was because of their skin color.  So we’re all thinking, Awesome parenting job right?  A racist 5 year old?  Not so much though.  Turns out one of the girls is as lily white as my fair niece and the other is Indian.  When asked by a bewildered mother why she would ever exclude these girls because of their skin color Miranda revealed that she was trying to be nice.  The real reason she had kicked them out was because the girls “smelled” and everyone knows how rude it is to tell someone they smell so telling them it was their skin color was her way of being polite.  The reason the girls smell is because they wear perfume and Miranda thought it was stinky.  So after getting in major trouble for creating a club in the first place and then not letting people join it for any reason she’s getting her first lesson on discrimination in a watered down way.  The preschool teachers believe that 5 is too young of an age to understand racism if you have never been exposed to it before.  I can understand this, there is no way her brain is ready to assimilate the history of prejudice and discrimination in our country or the world.  I’m pretty sure this is just going to be an embarrassing story for her in the future.

Wes’s response:  At least we know what costume to get her for Halloween now.  See this white hat Miranda?  You’re a ghost!

Bake, Shake’s buddy, passed away yesterday….maybe this weekend? Who knows, Kristin just noticed this morning that he seemed to have stopped moving permanently. He had a private Funeral Flush this morning, performed by Kristin his owner. He lived a rather long life for a Betta fish. Shake is still going strong proving once and for all that he was the better fish. For some reason I am the main suspect of Bake’s unexpected demise. Accusations ranging from over feeding to suggestions of poison have come from all corners of the office. What have I done to warrant such vile attacks on my person? The truth of my co-workers opinion of me has come out. It doesn’t matter, I keep pointing out they have no proof either way. Shake is in the same environment as Bake was and is still among the living….for now. Perhaps Bake was assassinated by security for our breach of the no pet rule, and I’m the sucker slated to take the fall for their dastardly deeds.

I need to stop reading murder mysteries and watching Law and Order.

Patience

We have these lounging massage chairs upstairs that my huge sense of guilt for taking any kind of break will not allow me to sit in. But GOD do I want to sit in that and fall asleep. Will anyone really miss me if I disappear for an hour?

Damn you father and your horribly unreasonable inherited sense of work ethic!

(Yes I do see the irony that I am willing to waste time posting a blog at work but not taking a break.  I am full of contradictions!)

I just finished Summers at Castle Auburn by Sharon Shinn. It’s like a historical fantasy romance with a dash of royal intrigue. Normally these are not my favorite but Christina lent it to me a while ago saying it was really good. I expected it to be enjoyable enough for a quick read, but I ended up really liking it a lot. I just really enjoyed the main character, she had a lot of personality but the author didn’t make her a faultless super-human. The other characters were very believable and engaging too and the world was constructed so well that you don’t find the fantastical part of the world that odd.

In short I liked it a lot. So much so that once I picked it up to read a little just to “check it out”, I ended up reading the whole book all day without noticing how late it was getting until I closed the book that evening tummy rumbling from skipping lunch.

I was woken up by an earthquake this morning. My befuddled mind thought that I live in Missouri not California so this can’t be an earthquake, some jerk is doing construction at 4:40 in the morning (not sure what kind of construction would cause my whole house to shake)! Then it stopped. Looked at my dog and cat, who both seemed to be like what’s your problem, and then went back to sleep. By the time I woke up, I had decided it was all a dream, but as I walked into my work lobby I heard people talking about the earthquake. Now we are being told to stay away from windows and within our building since someone heard gunshots in the east campus.
I turned to my friend Kristin and co-worker Lu and asked, “Are we on the east campus side?”
“Yes, yes we are and Patience get away from that window!”
“Well this will definitely be a day I remember.”
“If you survive, it’s only the morning and we’ve already had earthquakes with after-shocks and gunman, who KNOWS what this afternoon will bring”.

I find it a good omen that I’m supposed to be looking at houses this afternoon.

Oh yeah need to tell my Los Angeles relatives how I’m an earthquake survivor.

Patience

I mentioned earlier that I was having some fun in photoshop. Here is what I made:

I turned myself into a vampire…or Micheal Jackson?  Where did my nose go!?  Ah well it was fun to play around with, and Jenni did not get to make an appearance. 

Patience

Last night I stayed up too late playing with photoshop. I now have a heavily photoshopped (actually not that bad, I didn’t put up the ones of me with the scary inverted filter up) profile pic of me up. It also features my second chin Jenni. Drama has been the word of the day for me at work. The best part is that I get to hear about it but I’m not exactly involved in it.  Talked to Mom during lunch as my lunch buddy extraordinaire had to eat lunch with an interviewee. She’s actually (gasp!) going to go OUTSIDE and do stuff OUTSIDE in the real world. Amazing!

Patience