So, Denver got another medium-big snow yesterday. I'm covering for the guy who works the end of the week. I got in my car yesterday at 12:30pm and drove to work. I got to work at 3 pm. The office had already closed, and 'essential personnel' were all that was left -- one guy in customer support, most of us in the NOC. The company had provided food (frozen dinners, sandwich stuff, veggies and fruit, etc.) and a hotel for the night (and a case of what I assume is decent beer, and a bottle of tequila).

So the 'days' crew goes over to the hotel, with the nights sup, and begin to party. The nights sup calls over, says she and the (hourly) guy who comes in nights are going to be late, and she's made the arrangements, and would I mind bunking co-ed. Well, um.. wtf? Co-ed? I get the "we're all professionals" line. Yeah, but try explaining that to a spouse. I asked the guys I was with (all married) how their wife would react if they spent the night (no matter how chastely) with a woman they hardly knew, in a hotel room.

The swings sup gets on the phone with the manager, who says if we can't figure something out, there are other hotels in the area, and we can expense it. After he goes over to check things out and discuss the propriety of 'bunking' people of different sexes into rooms, it gets worked out that one of the days guys will sleep on the floor in another room, and I get a room to myself (?), and the nights sup will sleep in the room with her charge (male).

The 2 of them (nights sup and nights guy) show up reeking of alcohol, slurring their words, around 2 hours after they're supposed to show up. The days guy drove them over in his 4wd truck, and when asked when he's going to sleep, just laughs.

So, were we all wrong to think that co-ed hotel rooms are inappropriate, and that coming in at the very least rather buzzed (and slurring words) is just plain wrong (even if the company paid for alcohol)? Or am I just a major buzzkill?

Personally, I believe that you should come to work sober. Sure, party some, but drink responsibly, and don't get drunk off your ass if you know you're coming into work later. I also know that while Ben probably wouldn't have held it against me that I was in a hotel room with another guy, that I wouldn't be comfortable with it. Especially if it was one of the guys who had been drinking.

Oh well, off to edit some photos. One of my xmas presents was a 60gb hd for the ibook, and I finally got CS2 re-authenticated (via the phone and a nice lady at adobe support).

PS - what is this publicize-publish-post crap?

So, the new Knitty mag is up... with this enchanting pattern: Norberta

I had to knit it. I have 2 models now, blue and grey and the Noro Kureyon version. For you non-knitters, Kureyon is a single ply yarn that changes color in long stretches along its length. I thought it would be pretty awesome for a dragon, so.. there it is.

It's a rather quick knit (well, for me, at least); I decided to knit one the day the new Knitty was up, and finished sewing the first one together before I went to bed that night. The seaming is what kills me. I've done some tweaking of the pattern for the 2nd dargon, and will further tweak it to be able to make it at a tighter gauge so that the stuffing doesn't show so much.

Right here.

Full track listing from the BNL concert:

Wind It Up
The Old Apartment
Adlib 1 (14th and...)
Sound Of Your Voice
Hello City
Life, In a Nutshell
I Live With It Every Day
Never is Enough
Adlib 2 (I Was Gonna Workout)
Go Home
Maybe Katie
Maybe You're Right
Beautiful
In The Drink (acoustic)
Upside Down (acoustic)
Too Little Too Late
Bank Job
Angry People
Pinch Me
Vanishing
It's All Been Done
One Week
Brian Wilson
Easy
If I Had $1000000
Feliz Thanksgiving
Call and Answer

You can get it at some url or another if you're up to that kind of thing. I bought it because I went, and it's a souvenir of the concert for me. The best quote? "It's beer! It's here! Get used to it!" (I guess that's what we get for having Coors here, huh?)

My house guest is gone. We had to pay her first month's rent, but it was worth it for our sanity. I had a huge post written out earlier and closed the tab (on purpose). I was thinking (on the way to work) that I should come up with a list of house rules. But the people who need a list of rules that essentially say "act like a human being, and don't be rude" are no longer allowed in my house. For example, rule 3 was about going out to dinner, and how you're supposed to use basic etiquette, like not licking your plate (yes, this actually happened), etc.

I shouldn't have to tell adults this kind of thing. So I won't.

As I told my mom this weekend, all of my brothers have jobs. The 2 who are in post-secondary school, the one in high school, and the youngest who is in a vocational training program. I would bet all of them know all of the rules I'd set out as a result of the bullshit we've gone through.

How people raised by the same mother and father can be so different... maybe it's that Ben takes after his dad, and doesn't believe that "God will provide, so I don't have to lift a finger". He believes in working for a living, although he also believes that our society should support artists more. And had houseguest actually produced anything while she stayed, and had she treated us and our house and our tools with a modicum of respect, she could probably have stayed.

OMG, that was the best concert I've seen in ... quite a while. It was my first BNL concert ever, but we'll have to keep an eye out for them when they come around again.

The set included 6 tracks from the new album:

Bank Job, Sound of your Voice, Maybe You're Right, Vanishing, Easy, and Wind It Up.

They played older stuff:

Maybe Katie, Upside Down, Hello City, Brian Wilson, In the Drink, Break Your Heart, The Old Apartment, Never is Enough, Call and Answer, and of course, If I Had $1000000.

The opening band's sound was "muddy", for lack of a better word. Their lights were simple, but annoying. The one camera focused on the entire stage, and the projection screens on either side of the stage showed an unfocused view of what were probably faces of the band (whose name is, according to the tour dates I could find online, "Mike Doughty", which we could only understand after the 'Ladies took the stage and told us). There was one song where all we could hear was "something something Starbucks", which itunes tells me is probably "Busting Up a Starbucks". There was one where the lead singer kept saying "get up on that" for like 100 repetitions. I don't even want to try to find that one. There was one song "Accidental... something".

Then the 'Ladies took the stage. The sound was MUCH better, the production value much better than the simple 'crossing and uncrossing lights' of the opening act. Amazing what a few more sound guys, lighting guys, and video guys will do. I'm not a music snob, so I can't tell you what equipment they had, but it's nice to be able to HEAR the band you paid to see. :D

Ed and Steven sang a couple of impromptu ... songs, I guess, about Denver (including one about "14th and Arapahoe"), and one of their ramblings ended with "It's Beer! It's Here! Get used to it!" which I thought was rather funny, as about 90% of the people around us had beer in hand. They were talking about Coors being in Golden, but we just snickered because of the abundance of beer. We figured it was the only thing concessions was selling, until a kid came back to his seat with a plate of fried chicken.

And something I noticed that I don't usually see a lot, probably because I don't hang out with college kids... the low-rise jeans + shirt that barely hits it when you stand up thing... there were about a dozen college-age girls sitting a couple rows in front of us, and every time they stood up (usually to get more beer), there was about 6" of back showing, and a serious hiking of the pants. Ben remarked about never having pants that he had to pull up all the damned time, and I told him that's because men don't have hips. :D

It was a great show, and they were insane. Steven jumped around the stage like a happy marionette (something I hadn't seen since I saw No Doubt forever ago). Ed and Jim spent some time doing the 'rock star poses' with their guitars. Kevin came out from behind the keyboards a couple of times.

The second encore started with "Feliz Thanks-giv-ing" (Prospero año y felici-ding) (with everyone on the "wrong" instruments -- Ed on the keyboards, Steven on the Drums, Kevin on the bass, Jim on the guitar, and Tyler singing) and ended with "If I had $1000000" (complete with interstitial speaking about their childhood in the gifted program, where the coolest guys in their classes were already the nerdiest guys in any school, and Ed's favorite t-shirt was the one from math camp).

All in all, four thumbs up (since 2 of us went to see them. :)).

Some people dream in color, some in black and white. Some people dream in super-3d-pump-the-saturation-up-surround-sound-virtual reality. I have been the latter lately. And that's my normal dreaming state. I've been thinking about taking up the pencil again. Only time will tell if I'm really "back to normal".

I dreamed last night (this morning, technically, since I sleep from 3a-11a or so) that I was in some sort of VR LARP. Not that I LARP. But it got me thinking about RPG's again. My brain's been too ... unfocused, I guess, to do much of anything that's enjoyable. It's been too uncomfortable to be in my house, too uncomfortable to lounge. Too much stress, with work and home. I spent an hour playing Fire Emblem this morning after dusting off the 'cube, and putting new(ly charged) batteries into the wireless controller.

Tomorrow, Ben & I are going to see the Barenaked Ladies. I work on Wednesday, and then we have *3 full days* and one partial day off together. Insanity, to think of having that many days off IN A ROW and to be able to spend them with my husband, of all people! Thursday at dusk, we're going to try to get some good shots of the city lights. I know a place that has lovely views of Black Forest and Colorado Springs. Friday, it's turkey with the neighbors.

We're only getting 2 of my brothers at Christmas, because mom waited until the last minute to buy plane tickets for herself and all the kids... but I think after the year we've had, it's probably better to have fewer people to worry about finding sleeping places for, to feed, and to transport around the countryside.

Well, good news for me, at least. We set a "you have to get out of our house" date for my sister-in-law. 5 months is a bit long to expect someone to feed & house you for free, and it will be 6 months by the time she leaves. It's probably 2 months too late for us to part amicably, but at this point, the goal is to get her the hell out of my house. It was this IM conversation that made me realize how annoyed Ben was with her, and he's her brother.

Ben: sigh, she burnt the pizza so bad that she has to push real hard to cut it.
Ben: fuck
Ben: now i have to listen to her chew
Me: :(
Me: well, 1 month, honey
Ben: could she eat any louder?
Me: yes. she could smack, too
Ben: she does
Me: :(
Me: i'm sorry, honeybunny
Ben: and goes "aocmp"
Me: sigh
Ben: or something like that

He sent her email that said "Come the beginning of December you will have been living here for 6 months, and you will (hopefully) have been gainfully employed for 1 month. Christy and I feel you have reached the extent of our hospitality. We will be asking you to find your own lodgings, and to pay for your own food by the end of November."

We're having my family for Christmas, and I wasn't looking forward to her trying to tell my family (especially Travis) what to do, and showing them around my house as if it were hers. As annoyed as we get when she tells the dog to move (the dog, who is part of our family) out of the chair she likes to sit in... I was forseeing her trying to deal with Travis, causing one of his screaming fits, and then telling us how badly she's being treated.

I'm looking forward to not having to worry about whether or not I'm 'properly dressed' when I go out into the living room. Not having to worry about her embarrassing us when we go out to eat, or about her ordering the most expensive thing on the menu and eating 1/3 of it. I won't have to listen to her say that she's been in the hospital for "running out of energy" when I ask her to do something around the house, and I won't have to go around the house and turn the goddamn lights off all the time. Oh, and I won't have to worry about her being pissy about us not giving her instruction on how to use our tools when we're busy doing other things, or about her using our tools without asking.

Things are looking up, people. Getting her out of our house is definitely a Good Thing.

On the fiber front, I rented a drum carder from my favorite LYS, and have been processing the other half of the shetland fleece I bought at Estes. A friend of ours bought the other half from me, and returned it to me on Wednesday, as she wouldn't have the time to process & spin it for quite a while. I carded it with some sparkly fibers, and am spinning a nice, somewhat thin single with it. The effect is subtle, and fabulous. (For the Fabulous Phoebe, who is the friend.)

We got one of our members back from "the dark side" last week, and she came again this week. MJ came back to us, and we finally found out what the *ENTIRE* brouhaha was about. It was about something that happened at one of the Puppy Parties. TOK's dog bit Lisa's dog, and Lisa said *TO HER DOG* "did that big bad dog scare you?" That's it. That's what broke up the group into 2, and caused TOK and F to blogstalk and leave nasty comments on the blogs of people who decided to continue to hang out together. MJ said that TOK *mailed* her house key to her, but MJ sent her husband over to give TOK her key back. MJ coming back to knit with us was more than that friendship could bear. Ben asked how his impression of TOK could not include "prone to go fucking nuts", and I said that none of us expected that.

Work-wise, the new schedule kicks ass. 4p-2a suits the way that my body wants to arrange its sleep-wake cycle. There's less stress. The guys I work with rock. Oh, and shift differential. ;)

There's my news update for a while; I've got tickets to see BNL on the 21st, and that will be fun, I'm sure. I've got a class to (maybe) teach next Friday on acid dyes, and that will be fun. I've got yarn to dye, yarn to spin, christmas gifts to make. And soon, the sister-in-law will be out of my house, so I can do them on my time.

If you are leaving then I wish you luck
I hope someone can make your heart warm
I was a baby when I learned to suck
But you have raised it to an art form

"Wind it up", Barenaked Ladies

Ah, the double entendre from the 'Ladies. I've been listening to them on the commute.

The first week of the new shift has been awesome. I do less. I get paid more. And the crew I work with is insane. Tonight's score: me 2, rich 1, stu 0, scoot 1.

I got points tonight for "with *ONE* eye" (Stu was talking about 'the' watering hole in Elizabeth, and that he was looking at the waitress, and she was looking at him) and "... and that's what happens when people call you stuart" (Stu again, was saying that only his mom called him Stuart, and she was dead.)

God, I've been laughing all week. This is much better. With the exception of my 2 hour commute home last night... they didn't plow very well from Monument down, and I drove over snowpack for about an hour. I'm not going to drive 75 on snowpack, people. I have more sense than that. I want to live.

I have an order in for sock needles. I have a serious issue with knitting the second sock, but I figure that knitting 2 socks on 2 needles will help with that. It helped me get the second sleeve knit for Ben's sweater (which is done). I will definitely have the time.

We don't generally go to movies. We've got other things going on, for the most part, and for the rest of it, dropping $20 to see parts of a movie (with children shrieking, people yakking through the film, cellphones ringing, etc.) that may or may not be worth seeing doesn't really appeal.

That aside, GO SEE LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. GO NOW. Stop reading this JE and go.

The way it was described by Fandango wasn't very flattering. The trailer may or may not be flattering; I've got no sound now. But what are you doing clicking on things? I told you to go see the film.

It's sweet, it's laugh-out-loud funny, and it's a great "bonding" film. It reminds me in that aspect of "the Ref". Only without Denis Leary.

Still alive.

Work: changing shifts to gain the 15% shift diff mid-october. 15% more for doing 40% less... ok. can do. Lappy comes along for the ride.

Birthday: last wednesday. really good. new camera. See it on dA if you're interested. It rocks. The tea rocks as well. And the new sunglasses, well, they rock, too. Oh, and the new BNL album... doesn't rock, it's more mellow.

Home: Busy. Much knitting going on - Ben's sweater is coming along; much spinning, much dyeing.

All, I am happy to announce the internal promotion of [the guy you can't stand] to NOC Supervisor effective September 3, 2006.
Stop by and congratulate him when you get a chance!
[idiot manager]

This guy who just got promoted didn't even interview. Didn't apply. Just got "promoted". While 2 other (qualified) people interviewed, went through the whole process to be denied because of "lack of management experience". And 3 people (2 of whom had no management experience) got leapfrogged to sup without being in the tier 3 position.

I need to get the hell out of here. Only 1 more hour. 1 more hour. And one more day of work this week. Unfortunately, the refi closing got pushed off until the 18th, so I have to stay here at least another month.

Archive.org to the rescue. Stupid script kiddies hit my crazymonkeycreations site, and a friend's site, too. replaced all our index.php's.

Dumbasses.

It does little to improve my mood today.

I spent an hour or so working on my knitblog; changing the 'look', writing a shortened version of how i feel about the explosion. I'm tired now.

Today, I've taken my vitamin, my st johns wort, and a claritin. Something's gotta give.

Off to zap my leftovers.

Obviously no one else can do the work.

So, if you fail something over, you create a ticket. Nice, shiny, happy, ok. The ticket gets closed after the fail back, right? You know, at night, right after you have all the customers online. No? Well, just leave it for days.

If you're having a network issue affecting more than a handful of customers, you open a network ticket on it, so you can link your customer tickets to it. At some point, you should FOLLOW UP on the ticket, perhaps explain what the problem actually was, who resolved it, etc. Close it after the problem's over.

Well, here, you open a ticket, link customer tickets to it, and let it sit there for ~2-3 weeks until someone gets tired of seeing the damned thing and closes it because the problem, whatever it was, isn't going on anymore, and there's not enough information to really give to someone to follow up with.

That's the kind of behavior that gets you promoted, you know. Leapfrogged over the next tier up straight to supervisor.

And don't get me started on the frickin' bill runs. They're so complicated only 2 of us are any good at it. But it's documented. In small steps. In english. Really.

I think I've made myself invaluable in my current position. That's never a good thing when all you want to do is get out of your current position. :(

My knitting group self-destructed sometime Friday night.

We had a yahoo group, and recently, the missing moderator/owner appeared with a new list of "THIS IS WHERE WE MEET, NO CHANGES!" and "THESE ARE THE RULES! NO TALKING ABOUT ANYTHING BUT KNITTING!" Hardly the group I joined, where we all had a hand in deciding where to meet, and could talk about anything, but I thought, "whatever".

Then the emails started about people getting their FEEEELINGS hurt when people talked about spinning, because some people didn't want to talk about it (didn't want to spin, didn't want to talk about fiber, didn't want to talk about spinning). But no one SAID anything during the actual meetings. Because they didn't want to hurt anyone else's FEEEEEELINGS. (eyeroll)

Repeat after me, people. If you don't tell people what you want, you shouldn't be disappointed when you don't get it.

SO, one of the members started a spin-off group for those who *wanted* to talk about spinning and needlefelting and weaving and whatever. Some people joined. One person left the first group (because spinning is a BIG part of her life, and she felt unwelcome) and joined the second. Most of us who joined the second group did so without the intent of leaving the first group. We had one email accusing people of finger-pointing and talking about others behind their back, which was thoroughly unfounded.

If there was ANY "talking about others behind their back", it was the "concerned people" who didn't have enough guts to speak up at knit group who went running to the founder of the group (who hasn't shown up in 4 months, mostly because of her knee replacement surgery) whining about feeling left out and having their feelings hurt. From my reading between the lines, there were two or maybe three 'concerned people' im'ing and emailing each other, the group owner, AND NOT THE GROUP talking about how left out they felt.

Because, you see, we OBVIOUSLY started talking about spinning all the damned time, and didn't focus on knitting (although if it was happening, it was a few side group people, and not a huge amount of time spent on it... everyone was talking about the damned log cabin knitting, which I found insanely boring, as I came from a quilting background and there's nothing new about a log cabin pattern).

There was a big "I can't believe this is such a big deal" brouhaha and then, sometime in the night, the group... disappeared. No longer existed. Bereft of life, it rests in peace... etc. It was a very "I'm taking my toys and going home" move. Not something that should've been expected in a group of women ages 30+.

Seven of us met at the place we were supposed to meet on Saturday morning. None of us understood why this happened. Whoever's feelings were hurt by the discussion of spinning didn't show up (as one of the 7 wanted to buy a drop spindle from me, and the others were all as confused as I was). We talked about the things we normally talked about (and I jokingly steered us back to knitting, as part of the new rules stated "We are a KNITTING group, primarily focused on KNITTING.")

I'm mostly frustrated because I thought that part of being a mature adult was being able to speak up for yourself when you felt uncomfortable.

With 26 members, we weren't a huge group, but we were a group. We had connections with each other. I thought that we could say anything in our meetings because certainly topics were brought up that were... let's just say "blue", along with the normal bitching about work, and being laid off, dogs, clothes, shoes, etc. There were usually 6-10 of us, and with that many people, there are bound to be multiple conversations. Topics enough for everyone to get involved with.

I know I didn't care about Crocs (the shoes), knitting for pets, knitting charity blankets, the log cabin craze, or some of the other topics that came up, but that's when you nod politely, pick up your knitting, and knit a few rows.

The split in our group may be a good thing, or it may not be. It will take time to heal. Time to fix hurt feelings.

I told one of the group (the one who left, actually) that this was to be expected when this many women got together. Someone was bound to take something personally that wasn't meant that way, and it was bound to blow up.

*sigh* All I really care about now is, "Where are we meeting next Saturday?" I don't really care who shows up, as long as I can spend some time with my friends.

So, Ben & I were discussing voting on the 'Word of the Week' (it's a contest on dA -- see this url for more info about it). Slightly edited IM logs follow.

Me:
i voted for um... the wallpaper and the rose, i think

Benny:
Hmm ,theres a fairytale for you
"The Wallpaper and the Rose"

Me:
once upon a time, there was a roll of wallpaper....

every day, it sat in the corner and looked out the windows at the rose bushes, thinking to itself "why can't I be as pretty as the garden of rose bushes? I'm just a boring plaid wallpaper that was left over from decorating Suzie's room"

one day, as it sat sighing, a faerie godmother came down and said, "wallpaper, you can have your wish... I will make you as beautiful as the beds of roses in the spring", and with a wave of her wand and a *poof* of smoke, the wallpaper... well, it FELT unchanged, but it was now three rolls of a rose border that matched the plaid wallpaper it had been.

Mother came in, was delighted to find the border, and installed it in Suzie's room. Every day when the roses were in bloom, Suzie would bring in a rose, and point to the wallpaper border where the color was found.

In the winter, Suzie would count the roses to fall asleep.

And the wallpaper lived happily ever after.

The end.

Benny: :P