The Rose's Grove

Because I didn't have enough to be doing I decided that I wanted to start learning Japanese. Ha. Sure, why not? I'm using Duolingo, which is... interesting, as this is my first time using it for its intended purpose (learning a new language) rather than for the purpose of trying desperately not to forget absolutely everything I ever learned in high school and college French. I'm not sure I love their system, and for my purposes (potential travel) it would be more useful to learn verbal language only and use Romanized spellings rather than making me learn hiragana, but I an enjoying learning hiragana even though it slows down my intention, so... whatever!

The "everything else" that I'm doing at the moment is fact-checking clean-up ("Did they really mean this? Did they specify that? Can you get this person who it was nearly impossible to pin down last time to email you again to confirm this?"), transcription (oh god so many meetings), fertility appointments (catheters of personal fluids being stuck up places you really don't want to hear about, I'm sure), and theoretically doing some writing of my own again at some point, although probably not for NaNoWriMo this year. Unless I panic and sign up in the next week because I can't stand the thought of not doing it for the first time since 2002. And, of course, keeping up with whatever the retainer clients need from me (right now not too much, but that could change at any moment).

I'm also trying to set up my character for a new tabletop campaign set in the Fallout universe. Oh, and I have readings for docent training next week, but that's not until next week. I can deal with that.

I'd like to make some new icons, as well, and I should get back to work on my next set of Christmas socks. But those are kind of lower priority than all the stuff that's more immediate. At least they are until I crash and desperately need knitting time. ...If you just recently added me, I swear most of my posts are fandom-related, lately. But for some reason (avoiding transcription...) I felt chatty tonight.

Interesting. I seem to have forgotten my keys and my cellphone charger at home today, and only noticed the absence of the keys just as I was leaving the office. Meaning I did not have a chance earlier in the day to tell The Boy "gee, maybe I should borrow your keys so that I can go home, since you have a meeting off-site tonight and don't expect to be home until about 7:30."

Oops.

So, I'm just going to hang out here in the office for a bit (too bad we have construction right now, complete with jackhammers, but... eh, that was going toward the end of the work-day, as well, so it's not the biggest deal), and I might stop by the Tully's to pick up a stupidly sweet drink of some kind to keep me company on the walk home and in case he's later than expected. Fortunately I can get into our building. ...Just not into our apartment. :P

ETA: All fixed. The Boy got my email and stopped by work after his meeting to find me still at my desk. "I bet you want to go home." To which I answered YES, PLEASE. ♥ And all was well.

I know it's Friday, and I know it's 2pm, but can the week be over now? Seriously? Can we just be done and have a weekend and have everything stop existing on the scale of mild suck?

I'm tired. I would like to go home and do useless things, and maybe work on the baby blanket I'm crocheting for my cousin, and poke more at the fic I'm trying to write. If I really get excited, I could try to figure out how we can have a Christmas tree with our three obnoxious fuzzballs and their tendency to create disaster. Really, that's all I want to do. I'm tired of the rest of it.

I have neck- and head-aches (unrelated, I'm pretty sure - neck is from tweaking a muscle last week, head is either a cold or from the weather changes we've been going through) that respond to ibuprofen, and a... kind of an "eugh"-feeling wisdom tooth/jaw that only sort of does. Daaaaaaaaammmmnnnnn. The tooth is the least of it, IMHO, it just makes me go "AAAAAHHHHHH MY TOOTH IS GROWING INTO MY SINUSES AND NECK" sort of. *Headdesk* Because I'm hilariously paranoid when I'm in pain.

The good news is, our queue at work is about half of what it was last week, thanks to some lovely people who worked over the weekend. That's a very good thing. And after hating my NaNovel with a passion on Saturday, I discovered Sunday that I actually sort of like it. Oh, NaNoWriMo, you are so very crazy-making. It just drives me crazy to have to rush through things quickly - I'm always left thinking "god, this stinks," when (most of) it's really just that I don't have enough time to think clearly about how I ought to be accomplishing the goals of a scene, and I can't go back and actually delete the parts I don't like, or edit as I'm going or anything. Always makes me twitchy.

...Well, that and that I think part of how I tweaked my neck is the way my laptop is set up. Urgh. Must see if I can change the arrangement of the monitors tonight, in order to cut down on the oh-god-pain. :P

Survived meeting. Did not so much see Obama as was stuck in a stopped charter bus in the middle of a bridge for about 20 minutes experiencing the fact that authorities had shut temporarily closed off the freeway in order to allow his motorcade to pass (an understandable inconvenience), and heard after the fact that someone in a seaplane accidentally violated the no-fly zone over his visit and was forced into an emergency landing by fighter jets that appeared with a sonic boom. At the very sea-plane harbor that I frequent (ish) for my occasional jaunts to the San Juan Islands, no less. Kind of sorry I missed that, I'm sure it caused no end of confusion for the very nice folks at the little airline there.

Anyway. We're bought (or is that owned, now?), we have a lot of paperwork and other HR stuff headed our way, and they gave each of us little welcome goodie bags with a nice new coffee cup and an anti-grav pen (the kind that can write upside-down, I mean) and a notebook and stuff, all branded with their logo. Which is... kind of odd, now. Equally odd that our company colors have changed. And that (apparently unrelated, but a change that also went through today) I have a different manager than I did yesterday. It's all a little confusing, but... so far, so good?

Anyway, I'm just working on some editing, and since my brain seems to be trying to melt out my ears I thought I'd throw out a meme, from several people but most recently alto2:

Ask me my Top Five Whatevers. Fannish or literary or otherwise. Any top fives. Doesn't matter what, really! Fandoms, books I might get around to writing one day, women in my fandoms, ideal holiday destinations, goals for the future, celebrity crushes, books I wish would be made into movies, love songs. And I will answer them all in a new post (or in comments).

I can't promise I'll have clever answers, but I'll try to at least have answers.

Why does the writing only start cooperating when I can't keep going on it? Last night at 11:30 was bad enough, but this morning on the bus? I finally get two characters who usually won't even talk to each other agreeing on things, and suddenly - time for work. Arrrrgh.

This post brought to you by Twitter, which is, as usual, over capacity.

Following the (happily unanimous) advice of the poll in the previous post, I can now officially say that I'm at 9,375 words for NaNoWriMo so far. Nowhere near where I "ought" to be if I really expect to make it, but... hey, progress!

Better yet, I seem to be actually approaching something that looks like an ending for this dratted fic, which means I might actually get to write other stuff this month, too! Maybe even something original once I've knocked out the rest of the fic that's due for various things!

In other news, ye gods I'm sleepy, and ye gods I have about zero desire to go to work tomorrow. This whole class thing really makes my weekends feel soooo much shorter than they ought to. Which is sad, given how short they felt even before I started taking the class. *Sigh*

So, today's been interesting. Last night we (by which I mean "me" - it was less of a "hey, let's" and more of a "I just did," kind of thing) switched out The Boy's plain comforter (which I only allowed on the bed because of the heat and because when we first moved in I was mildly afraid his cat would pee on mine because it smelled of my cat) for my glorious down comforter. Most glorious comforter ever. I adore it.

...This, of course, means that when our alarm went off and The Boy said "Time to get up," I replied approximately "Ngggggggh, noooooo, I'm comfy," and pulled the comforter back over my head. To which he, quite reasonably, replied that perhaps we could skip going to the gym just this once. ♥

* * *

So, for those who aren't in Seattle, I have to say that this whole H1N1 thing has blown into my fair city in a big way in just the past week. See, last week I was... somewhat guiltily amused to hear that 200+ people had it at my alma mater's rival school, WSU. UW doesn't have any yet! ...Mostly because classes haven't started yet. Ahem. Edit: Apparently, I lied about that. Sorority Rush has started. Let's all be shocked that it's starting with them... And the numbers at WSU are still below 200 confirmed cases. The rest are "flu-like symptoms." But here's the thing - last weekend was also the infamous Penny Arcade Expo (aka PAX) here in Seattle, at the Convention Center just by my apartment. And it was packed. The Boy wanted to go, but waited too late to buy tickets, and it was sold out. Which, it turns out, is probably the only reason we are not yet sick.

That's right - there was an uninvited guest at PAX this year - Swine Flu. So, a whole jam-packed convention full of geeks, all holiday-weekend, exchanging germs as only geeks at a convention can do. But we're safe! Because we didn't go! Except some of our friends did... oh, yeah, and where do we work? Oh, yeah - a company full of geeks. Who all went to PAX.

So now, both our departments have received emails advising us that some of our co-workers are out with H1N1. Which leads to the following conversation just moments ago on AIM.

Boy (11:12:14 AM): we just got [company]-branded hand sanitizer :P
Me (1:42:34 PM): ....
Me (1:42:43 PM): WE haven't got [company]-branded hand sanitizer!
Me (1:42:49 PM): they obviously don't CARE about US.
Boy (1:44:28 PM): lol
Boy (1:44:32 PM): I think it was just our row
Boy (1:44:52 PM): the guy who sits across from me is out with H1N1 apparently
Me (1:45:11 PM): hahaha we're going to be sick by the end of the week.
Boy (1:45:18 PM): yeah, no kidding

So, yeah.

For the record: H1N1 is still no more dangerous than a regular flu (so far - so far, it hasn't mutated). We're fine. We're prepared. We're stopping by the store for supplied this evening, just in case, and washing our hands like truly professional neurotics. However. Given the extent to which this shit filters through office environments... I do not hold out much hope of not catching it, honestly. :P

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll go try to convince myself that the mild headache and scratchy throat I've had on and off all day is not, in fact, a sign of impending Death Flu (tm).

I don't have my hand lotion, and my hands are so dry that I've resorted to using lip gloss on my knuckles. Woe. My science podcasts are all swine flu all the time, so... I've heard more about that in the last few hours than I really want to think about.... so of course I'm more compulsive than usual (!) about washing my hands right now, which is just making the hand-dryness thing worse. *Sigh*

On the plus side, I bought a new backpack at REI yesterday, and I love it. It's small (but large enough to fit my work laptop, although I suspect my home laptop will not fit in it for traveling), and I can fit all my work stuff in it without it killing my freaking back like the one that the company gave me to use. I was exhausted this morning (not enough sleep, still stuck with the death cold that lingers forever), but I still could totally feel the difference in how well the pack carries weight. And that's including a bento full of granola and yogurt, a burrito and an apple for lunch, a banana and an energy bar, one of those fancy new Sigg aluminum water bottles, a book, my work laptop, wallet, keys... yeah. Everything I need. ♥

The sky outside my (southwest-facing) office window has the most amazing cloud formations right now. We've got a lot of wind today, so there are all sorts of little low wispy clouds zipping by against a background of lovely grey, yellow, orange-sherbert (yes, that's a color, even if LJ says I'm misspelling it...), and the tiniest bits of blue peeking through the jumble, all hovering over a horizon lined with pine trees so green they're almost black. The whole thing looks like the inside of a particularly spectacular agate. And if I scrunch a bit, I can't even see the freeway going by the office.

There are definitely some perks to this office, now that I've got my semi-permanent seat by the window.

One thing I miss about the city is having a proper horizon to look at. I guess if I get that at the office, that's an okay trade-off for being so far out of the city. I wish I hadn't taken my camera out of my work bag. I'm not sure this would photograph well, but I'd sure love to try...