Holy F*ckballs, We Bought a House

Sooooooooo, a lot has happened since the last time I posted here. The Keeper and I were house hunting from, like, October to December last year. We found a place, bought it, painted it, moved in and we’ve been trying to get it furnished and organized for most of the year so far. Still not quite done with that last part. I’m in the middle of putting a stencil up on a wall in our dining/living room, which is WAY more time consuming than you might expect. Before that there was painting old furniture we got from The Keeper’s grandmother. And before that there was buying furniture. I still don’t have my office set up. But we’re getting there.

Warm Red Ecstasy

A few years ago there was a site run by Alexandra Erin called 365 Tales. It was a place for people to post “flash fiction”, or super short stories. The main rule was each submission had to be 365 words or less. I posted a few things there before some catastrophe erased it from the interwebs and you can still find some of the site via Wayback Machine, but there was one story above all the rest. One story that got more feedback from the other posters on the site. One story that I was really, really proud of. That story, unfortunately, cannot be found on Wayback Machine and I didn’t ever save copies of the things I wrote for 365 Tales because I was a moron.

I tried a few times to re-create that story, but I was paralyzed by the fear of any second attempt being clearly inferior to the original. I’ve finally pushed through that fear and I think I’ve at least paid adequate tribute to the lost masterpiece I wrote for 365 Tales.

WARNING: THE NEXT 359 WORDS ARE GRAPHIC AND MAY BE DISTURBING TO SOME VIEWERS.

Marina pulled the robe around her a little tighter as she watched the rain through the broken windows of the abandoned warehouse. Behind her on the thin mattress her new toy was beginning to wake. Her toy’s eyes were opening when she turned around and it was just beginning to realize it was naked and bound.

Her toy stopped thrashing when it heard her approach. It’s eyes were wide with fear and anger as she stood over it. When she dropped her robe she saw lust begin to mix with the fear and anger. She stood allowing her toy to fully take in the sight of her curly red hair tumbling over her heavy, round breasts and the little tuft of red on her mound above the glistening, hard protrusion of her clit. The fear had disappeared from her toy’s eyes, and the anger was almost gone as well leaving only the lust. And when the lust had done it’s job, Marina sunk down to her knees straddling her toy’s hips as she slowly guided it’s hard cock inside her and began to ride.

Marina rocked back and forth on her toy slowly at first. Her fingers found her clit and she began thrusting her hips harder, head falling back and eyes closing as her orgasm began to build. She was getting close when the first noise of pleasure from her toy reached her ears. That would not do.

With her hips still thrusting Marina stretched back and found the knife. The blade bit into her toy’s inner thigh and it’s eyes flew open in confusion. Marina’s hips thrust and rocked more quickly as she ran the blade over her toy’s other thigh, eliciting an angry growl through the gag in her toy’s mouth. She slashed at her toy’s arms and chest and the growls turned to screams.

Marina ground her cunt down hard onto her toy’s cock, her body beginning to shake and shudder as she brought the knife across it’s throat. Warm, red ecstasy washed over her as she rode out the orgasm. Too soon she realized her toy had gone still. She had ruined another one.

Am I Alone In Wanting To Be Left Alone?

I was out running an errand tonight and decided to treat myself to some frozen yogurt. So I go into the shop and I’m headed toward the cups when I am accosted by the cashier.

First she welcomes me to the store. Yea, ok fine. I know you’re probably not nearly as cheery and happy as you sound because I also work in food service, but your boss probably requires you to greet the customers so whatever.

Then she asks if I’ve been there before. I had, and I told her that, but why even ask? Why does it matter at all if I’ve been there before?

Lastly, after learning that I’ve bought yogurt from this store before, she thanks me for coming back. Uh… you’re welcome?

Just leave me the hell alone and let me go about my business!! Seriously, am I the only person who actively dislikes all the stupid polite small talk shit that the owners and managers of retail and food service places require their employees to spew at their customers? When I go into a shop of any kind I just want to do my shopping and leave. If I have a question, I will ask.

I don’t need to be greeted, I know you don’t care how my day is and I know you aren’t nearly as happy to be there as you’re pretending to be. So can we just skip that completely pointless interaction? I honestly do not understand why the people who manage these stores seem to think it makes any difference to the customer whether they are greeted when they come in. I have never spoken to someone who was happy with their purchase but wasn’t going to go back to a place because no one said hello when they walked in the door.

I don’t need help. At least not the minute I enter your store. If you’re a retailer, I need to look for the thing I’m there to buy. If you’re a food service establishment, I need to decide what I want to eat. What I do not need is you bothering me before I’m ready to make my purchase. All you’re doing is wasting both our time. Go do something more productive until I’m either ready to leave or I actually do need your help.

I don’t like platitudes, polite small talk or attempts to sell me things. Just leave me alone and let me get what I came for. As long as you’re not rude to me when or if I engage you I will be happy.

Am I alone in this? Do other people actually care whether they’re greeted or like it when a sales person tries to give them a tour or spiel about the products in the store?

No Promises

Eight months. I haven’t written anything substantial in eight months.

And I’m not really writing anything now. But I’ve started to feel the itch again, so I thought I’d pop in here and let anyone who’s interested know that I’m not dead and hopefully neither is this blog.

Hopefully. But I’m not making any promises. That way lies disappointment.

Sporcle

I read a blog post recently about making sure you learn something new every day. It was one of those “keep your mind active”, “exercise your mind” type posts. And it put me in a mood to do one of those timed “name all the _______” quizzes, which is something I do from time to time anyway when I’m bored.

So I did a quick google search and I was soon on Sporcle. I’m not really sure what the name is supposed to mean, but the “games” section is fantastic. Especially with regard to the type of quizzes I was looking for. I started out with the simple “U.S. States” quiz where you have to name all the states in something like 5 minutes. Usually when I haven’t done this in a while I’ll miss one or two of the states I never have cause to think about in my daily life. Like Nebraska. Who thinks about Nebraska? Ya know, unless they live there. Anyhow, I don’t like to do these over and over because when you run out of time the ones you missed are displayed, and I feel it’s kind of cheating to look over the answers and then immediately go and retake the quiz. So I had to find another one to divert my focus before going back to try again.

I chose Countries of Europe.

 

Then, after switching back and forth between the US and Europe, I added South America.

 
Since there are only 12 countries in South America, it didn’t take me long to get them memorized. So I added Africa.

Once I had all 47 countries of Europe, all 12 countries of South America and the majority of Africa memorized, I decided to take on naming all the countries of the world.

I quickly realized that this was going to be more difficult than each of the little regional quizzes, because the world map is so much smaller that once you start naming things the names start to cover up the map and I had been remembering some countries based on their location on the map. I’m not doing too badly though. I can name about 150 of the 196 countries on the World quiz.

How many countries can you name?

Things I Don’t Understand…

During my looooong break from blogging there were a few things that came to my attention that just make absolutely no sense to me, or that I just don’t know the answer to or understand the reasoning behind. I considered writing about them individually, giving my opinions based on my extremely limited understanding, and then letting readers correct or applaud or call me an idiot depending on what they felt appropriate. But it occurred to me that doing things that way might not actually be the best way to educate myself. The posts (at least one of them) would probably end up being pretty inflammatory, which would mean the responses would probably be more accusatory than enlightening. So here’s what I’m going to do instead. I’m going to ask my questions in the least judgmental way I can come up with. Then I want you all to comment and try to educate me in the comments. And whether anyone replies or not, I’ll make follow up posts expressing my opinions. Sound like a plan? Good, then here are the questions:

• Why do people whose children have extremely kinky, curly hair allow them to get it straightened when they know how harsh and harmful the chemicals required to do so are?
• Why do people pay exorbitant amounts of money, money which in many cases might be better spent on things like food, shelter and clothing for themselves and/or their children, on hair weaves?
• What exactly is offensive about the word “midget”?
• Is there some reason that every time I see a girl with Down Syndrome, they always have the exact same haircut? Not the guys. The guys seem to either have differing haircuts, or they’re less noticeable or something. But all the girls I see with Down Syndrome seem to have the exact same hair and I just want to know whether there’s some reason for that.

Now, please, educate me.

(Note: It has been almost two months since I posted this and I have gotten zero comments or emails trying to give me some perspective on these questions. So I have decided to just ignore this post’s existence until someone bothers to comment on it. )

LivingSocial From A Restaurant’s Perspective

Living Social, Daily Deals, Groupon and other deal-a-day sites are great for customers. The Keeper and I have bought deals on food, cleaning services and one for a day out at a firing range from Living Social. But what about the businesses that participate in these promotions? To be honest, I never really thought about what the businesses get out of these deals or what impact these deals have on them when they are redeemed. I was just happy to be paying half price. But last Friday I got to experience a Living Social deal from the perspective of someone working in a restaurant. Here’s what went down:

We started getting calls at about 9:30am (an hour and a half before we actually open) from people asking questions about the deal and wanting to make reservations. The deal in question was with Living Social’s brand new “Instant Deals” function and the deal itself was $20 worth of food/drink and you pay only $1. They’re calling it their $1 Lunch deal and it was supposed to be valid from 11am until 2pm.

So when the managers on duty realized what was about to happen when we opened (the manager that handles making promo deals like this was conveniently scheduled until later in the day), they began frantically calling employees who weren’t scheduled to try and bring more kitchen and serving staff in to handle the extra traffic. I work in the back office normally, but being a new employee and knowing that the restaurant was going to be slammed today I volunteered to help out. They stationed me up front with the hostesses to redeem all the deal codes.

We opened at 11am and were pretty much immediately slammed. There was a line of people going out the door waiting for seats and to place carry out orders. There were people who had made reservations who weren’t getting seated because we were so packed. The kitchen was so backed up that people were waiting up to an hour for their food, both dine-in and carry out. We had to cut off service before the time that had been designated on Living Social’s site because of how backed up everything was. It was a nightmare.

Now, to be fair, I doubt this sort of thing happens with the normal deals from Living Social and other such places. Usually it’s a deal for 50% or so and it doesn’t become usable until the day after you buy it. Then there’s an expiration date like any other coupon, so people have weeks, or sometimes months to use the deal. This $1 lunch thing had a window of 3 hours in which to use it before you were refunded your money and the voucher code was no longer valid, so it stands to reason that during that window the places participating would be packed. However, as best we could tell, no one had given Living Social a maximum number of deals we could handle. Their site sold out of our deal before we actually opened, but we have no idea how many deals were bought. This sort of thing is more likely to hurt business than help it, which for the businesses is the entire point of participating.

Pink Eye+New Job= FAIL

After my temp position debacle, I lost all motivation and inspiration. I would sit down to write, but nothing appeared on the screen. Or nothing appeared that I was happy with. I was not quite fully depressed, but definitely in a depression-like slump. The fact that my unemployment benefits came into question because of the shitty temp job did not help.

Then I was contacted by a couple people for interviews and I thought things were looking up. I went to two interviews one week, which was more than I’d had in the previous 4 months or so. But they were both a bust and I continued to wallow in “meh”-ness.

Saint Patrick’s Day came, and with it a phone call. The author of one of the random ads I’d responded to on Craig’s List, despite the lack of simple information like a company name or who to address the emailed resume to, had liked my resume and was interested in speaking with me. But first, for whatever reason, he wanted to make sure we were on the same page regarding pay. He had budgeted $13-14/hour for the position, but since the job was located in the city I was pretty sure that I’d need a minimum of $15/hour to cover the added transportation costs. We signed off of our phone conversation with the understanding that I would do some calculations and let him know if I could make $14 work. The answer was no, but I emailed him to let him know that if he was willing to consider paying the $15/hour for the right candidate then I would still love to come in and interview.

That Saturday, during my monthly Pathfinder game, another man called me from the same business. I explained what I had spoken about and emailed to the first guy and he said they would talk it over and get back to me. A little while later he called back to say that they were still interested in talking to me, so we set up an interview for Monday.

Monday came and the interview went splendidly. I left feeling excited and optimistic. The job would be a pretty basic Administrative Assistant position, but instead of being in a typical office setting I would be working in the back office of a restaurant. A beautiful restaurant with exotic food that smelled delicious. It was perfect. And there would even be room for growth, because this wasn’t just any restaurant. This was a foreign restaurant chain which was trying to expand into the US, and the location where I would be working was the first US location. Now all I had to do was wait while they finished up their other interviews and chose who to hire.

On Friday I spoke on the phone again with one of the two guys I’d interviewed with and was informed that I had gotten the job! They wanted me to start on the following Monday! I was elated! This was the first “real” job I had gotten all on my own, and it felt fantastic.

Then, on Sunday morning, The Keeper started complaining about his eyes. They were irritated and gooey and in pain. By Sunday evening he was having trouble seeing because of gunk forming on his eyeballs and he was fairly sure he had pink eye. In both eyes. My eyes were just fine though, so I decided to go in for my first day of work as planned. I would just tell my new employers as soon as I got there what was going on, so that they would be aware and have warning in the event that I caught this affliction.

On Monday morning I got up, I got ready and I took the bus and the Metro into DC. I arrived at my new job on time and when my new boss began to extend his hand to shake mine I greeted him with the following:

“Hi! Listen, before we get started and before I shake your hand there’s something I should probably make you aware of… this weekend my boyfriend seems to have come down with a double case of pink eye. I haven’t had any problems, my eyes are just fine, but I thought I should let you know before I touch you or anything else here.”

We talked about the situation a little bit and he decided we should probably push back my start date, just to be safe. Since it’s a restaurant and all. I apologized profusely and felt terrible about the whole thing, but I think he was grateful that I brought it up instead of just jumping right in and then saying something when/if my eyes actually started to be a problem.

How Bad Can It Be?

I spoke too soon. After I left work today, I got a call from my recruiter at the temp agency saying that the organization had decided they wanted today to be my last day. Given the fact that the manager that I was dealing with at the organization was pretty obviously annoyed with all the questions I was asking and with my lack of understanding of the one task he gave me to do (which I told him up front I had no experience with), I’m not all that surprised. Considering the emotional and physical breakdown I had when I got home today, I’m also not all that upset. It would have been nice to stay long enough that I would feel comfortable putting the position on my resume, but since that didn’t happen I’m just not going to worry about it. I had been toying with the idea months ago of starting my own Etsy shop and trying to make an income from my arts and crafting. Perhaps with part of my tax return, I can make that happen.

Excuses

I realize I didn’t explicitly say I was going to try to blog more when I posted my list of 2011 resolutions, but that was kind of my intention with the meme ideas. I wanted to get into some sort of regular schedule, but I seem to be failing spectacularly at that. I mean, the first full week in January I posted on 6 out of 7 days. The next week, twice. Last week, 4 times. And this week is looking like maybe just once. This week I have a pretty good excuse though.

I got a job.

I have been unemployed since February 20th of last year. During that time I have been looking for jobs through Craig’s List and Monster, and I have been in contact with multiple temp agencies. On Monday, one of those temp agencies finally came through with a job for me. It is a temporary position with, forgive me for being vague but I’d like to protect my anonymity, an organization of scientists and healthcare professionals who study diseases of a certain bodily organ. There was no interview and the temp agency initially said that it was a 2-5 week assignment, however I’ve been given the impression that there is a possibility of the position becoming permanent if these people can settle on someone to hire.

The problem is, they don’t seem to be able to find anyone to hire. These people have been through multiple temps from various agencies and have been unhappy with all of them. My temp agency actually submitted me for this position with them weeks ago and they hired someone from a difference agency before coming back to my agency and asking to see my resume again. They asked to see my resume Monday and wanted me to start today. I had to scramble yesterday to buy some work clothes that actually fit and get out to my agency’s office and do the required paperwork.

Today I had my first day of work in almost a year. It kind of sucked. Even ignoring the fact that I’ve come to enjoy being home all day with my cats, my arts and crafts, and my internet it still sucked. It sucked because the guy I’m working for seems incapable of explaining anything in a way that makes sense. He reminds me of my last manager, actually, which makes me wonder if it’s a cultural issue, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is, just based on my experience today, I have a suspicion this place can’t keep temps because they have unreasonable expectations and not because there was something wrong with the temps.

But, a job is a job. I intend to work there at least until the temporary assignment is over. Perhaps once I get acclimated to the place my first impression based opinion will change. I mean, it’s not all bad. I have my own office. Not cube, OFFICE. And there’s a Perfect Pita across the street. How bad can it be?

Another Meme Idea

I’ve come up with another meme idea, though it’s kind of shrimpy. It’s hard to come up with questions for these.

10 Days of Self Analysis

1. How would you describe yourself to someone you’d never met before?
2. How do you think others would describe you to someone you’d never met before?
3. Do you have regrets? Would you change anything in your past?
4. How do you think your childhood has influenced your adulthood?
5. Do you have spiritual beliefs? What are they?
6. Have you ever done something you consider to be truly evil? What was it, and why did you do it?
7. Do you believe the world is black and white, or are there grey areas? Explain.
8. How would you describe your own sense of morality? What do “right” and “wrong” mean to you?
9. Are there things you’d like to change about yourself? What and why?
10. What do you love about yourself? Why?

Memes And Memes And Memes

Well then, now that the 30 Days of Kink are over I’m going to have to come up with something other than BDSM to write about here. I also feel I should find a way to keep up posting regularly, since that meme had me posting (with the one exception) every day for a month. With these things in mind, I’ve decided to make up my own memes for some of the other platypi. I don’t think I’ll follow the same post title format I did for the Kink meme, and I might try to mix it up a little instead of focusing on just one meme for thirty days straight. The point isn’t so much to participate in a meme anymore, just to post regularly. But, just in case someone else wants to participate in my memes, I’ll be posting them as I come up with them. Here are the ones I have so far.

15 Days of Nerd

1. Do you have a favorite superhero? Who and why?
2. Do you have a favorite anti-hero? Who and why?
3. Do you have a favorite super villain? Who and why?
4. Do you play tabletop RPGs? Which ones and what do you like about them? If you don’t, why not?
5. What are your top ten favorite cartoons?
6. Are you a fan of anime? If so, what shows do you like best and why? If not, why?
7. What do you think of miniature war games like Warhammer?
8. What is your favorite Sci-Fi tv series and why?
9. What is your favorite Fantasy tv series and why?
10. If you’re a Star Trek fan, who was your favorite character from all the shows and movies? If you’re more of a Star Wars nerd, who was your favorite character from those movies? If you hate both, why?
11. What do you think of Bruce Campbell?
12. What are your top ten favorite video games?
13. What is your favorite Fantasy book or series of books and why?
14. What is your favorite Sci-Fi book or series of books and why?
15. Choose a non- Fantasy or Sci-Fi, but still nerdy, tv series and explain why you love it, or hate it.

20 Days of Food

1. What is your favorite breakfast? How do you make it?
2. What is your favorite lunch? How do you make it?
3. Share your favorite pie recipe.
4. What is your favorite dinner involving chicken? How do you make it?
5. What is your go-to pot luck dish? How do you make it?
6. Share your favorite cookie recipe.
7. Describe your favorite sandwich.
8. What is your favorite dinner involving beef? How do you make it?
9. What is your favorite cocktail? How do you make it?
10. How do you make your favorite snack?
11. Share your favorite cake recipe.
12. What is your favorite dinner involving pork? How do you make it?
13. What is your favorite type of ethnic/cultural food? Can you cook any dishes of that type of food?
14. What is your favorite non-pie, cake or cookie dessert? How do you make it?
15. Share your favorite potato recipe.
16. What dish or meal do you make that gets the most compliments? Share the recipe.
17. What is your favorite holiday food? How do you make it?
18. Share your favorite pasta sauce recipe.
19. Share your recipe for your favorite rice dish.
20. What one recipe did you make sure you got from your parents when you moved away from home?

Obligatory Welcoming Of The New Year- 2011

Over the last couple of months I’ve purposely not posted anything here about the holiday season. There was no post for Thanksgiving, no post for Christmas, and I thought that there would be no post for the New Year.

I don’t have anything in particular against the holiday season, I’ve just always been kind of annoyed by the seemingly obligatory “Happy [insert holiday here]” webcomics and blog posts. And, regarding the New Year specifically, I’ve never really been the type to seriously make resolutions. I’ve always felt that they were just sort of pointless. No one ever sticks to their big, meaningful resolutions for more than a few weeks; which is probably due to the fact that they only made big, meaningful resolutions because it was New Year’s and that’s what you’re supposed to do. So usually, I just don’t make resolutions at all. I might think about things I want to do differently in the new year, but I don’t formalize them into resolutions.

This year, however, I joined Twitter and Twitter doesn’t allow you the number of characters it would take to explain that something is not a resolution, it’s just something you’re hoping to change during the next year. Which means that as I thought of things I should probably do differently in 2011 I had to call them resolutions if I wanted to Tweet about them. And then I decided that if I was going to Tweet about it, I may as well blog about it. So, here we are. These are my resolutions for 2011:

1. Cook more; order delivery, take out fast food and go out to eat less. I spend money on groceries, I really ought to actually eat some of them.
2. Leave my apartment on days that are not weekends and for reasons other than D&D or running errands. Seriously, I have been a ridiculous hermit since I lost my job.
3. Create some sort of cleaning schedule for the apartment and stick to it. This place is such a sty most of the time.
4. Have more sex. This will require either help from The Keeper, or his permission to be a swinger.
5. Get an effing job. This is less of a resolution and more of a hope. I would settle for an extension on my unemployment benefits though if necessary.
6. Create more. Drawing, painting, writing, knitting, cross-stitching, sculpting- all things that I don’t do enough of to actually become skilled at instead of just talented.

Campbell’s Noodle Soup

Best. Sick. Food. Ever.

Seriously, this stuff is amazing for when you’re sick. Way better than normal chicken noodle soup. And it’s pretty damn good when you’re not sick too.

Product Review

So I realize this is a little out of the ordinary for this blog. Usually if I’m reviewing something it’s a movie, or a video game, or a restaurant. I don’t even have a “persona” that I feel like this even fits into, which is why I’m posting this under Platypus Prime. And to be completely honest, I’m still a little undecided on the product I’m about to review here. But for some reason I feel compelled to write about this. So here goes.

I posted a question on FetLife recently. In another thread I’d seen more than one person talking about how they don’t shave their nether regions, they use a hair removal cream for sensitive areas. No one said what brand of cream they used though, so I asked. I wanted to know what people were using, because every time I looked into using these types of cream the instructions have said not to use them in the area I wanted to use them. I was expecting a bunch of people to mention Nair and Veet, and hopefully elaborate so that I wouldn’t feel intimidated by the instructions on those products anymore. And a few people did mention those, but a few others suggested something I never would have thought to use.

SoftSheen-Carson brand Magic Razorless Cream Shave

 
(The tube I got was green, but this is the best picture I could find.)

Actually, the recommendation I got was for the powdered version that you mix with water to make the cream, but I didn’t see that when I went to CVS and I wasn’t too keen on mixing it up anyway if there was a ready made cream available.

Anyhow, the reason I never would have even known this existed is because it is a men’s product. More specifically, it is a black men’s product. Apparently black men have trouble with razor bumps, so SoftSheen created something for them to use on their faces that didn’t involve a razor. And, according to the people in my FetLife discussion, it works really well on girly naughty bits as well as legs, underarms and anywhere else you have hair you want to get rid of. So I got some and today I tried it.

It was weird.

First, it smells kinda weird. I’ve been trying to come up with a way to describe the smell, or something to compare it to, and I’ve got nothing. It’s just weird.

Next, it seems to be water resistant. After I slathered some on my mons I tried to rinse off the cream that was left on my fingers. Regardless of water temperature it just kind of sat there. I had to rub to get it off. Not such a big deal for my hands, but when it came time to remove the cream and hair it was a bit annoying. See, I was using a plastic card (think credit card, or a restaurant rewards card) because one of the people who’d suggested this product said that’s what his girl uses. The problem is that after a couple passes with the card, there’s a buildup of cream. Rinsing wasn’t working. Annoying.

Finally, the results are kind of mixed. I used it on my mons and on one leg. It left stubble on my mons instead of smooth skin. But it seems to have worked pretty well on my leg.

I think I’m going to keep using it, try to get used to using it. At least until I run out, since I don’t want to waste it.

There Is No Excuse For Me

I’m not going to try to make excuses, I have been a lazy bitch over the last couple months. I kept thinking, “hey, I should probably post something on my blog” and then I just sat there and did something else, or I posted something but it was sort of a cop out like the “things that infuriate me” post.

Anyway, I apologize and I’m going to try to post more from now on. I’d still rather not hold myself to a schedule yet, but I’m hoping to be able to write something at least once per week.

Now that’s out of the way, here’s what I’ve been up to lately in case anyone has been curious:

• My laptop died and The Keeper had to resuscitate it for me (meaning it kept freezing and refusing to open internet browsers so I had The Keeper format it and reinstall Vista). This worked out fairly well, but since I’m not the only lazy person in this household it didn’t actually get done until a week or two after I decided not to touch the thing until it was fixed. Then once everything was reinstalled I discovered that there were some drivers missing and causing things to be weird, so I had to get him to fix that, which also took a week or two before he got around to it.
• I went through another depressive cycle, which I think was partially exacerbated by my having to use The Keeper’s netbook or the desktop he’s got hooked up to the TV if I wanted to do the things I do regularly online, neither of which do I enjoy using all that much. The netbook is hard to type on because of the tiny keyboard and there’s no comfortable place to sit to use the TV/desktop because if you sit on the living room furniture the screen is far enough away to be difficult to read and if I sit on the floor for extended periods of time my back starts hurting.
• I was basically forced to discontinue the use of my 10 year old LiveJournal because of some drama. I’m still a little bitter about that, so I won’t go into too much detail here.
• I met my new nephew and he is, well, he’s a baby so he’s small and kind of wiggly.
• My job search continues, however I have recently had a wave of motivation/inspiration and intend to work toward opening an Etsy shop and attempting to make a living selling a random assortment of my own crafts and art.
• This week I started reorienting my sleep schedule. As much as I love sleep and hate waking up, I always seem to get so much more done when I get up in the earlier morning rather than later morning. And getting more done helps me not feel down on myself for being a lazy ass. So The Keeper has been getting me up and moving at about 6:50am when he comes back into the bedroom to get dressed and leave for work. So far, it’s working out pretty well. The apartment is much more consistently tidy and I’ve been eating real meals at normal times instead of just munching on whatever will take the least amount of preparation.
• Oh, and I bought the upgrade from WordPress that allows you to edit CSS and had a friend help me tweak a few things. There are a couple things about the new look that I’m not thrilled with that will be tweaked soonish, and at least one of them can’t actually be changed because it would require editing the html rather than the style sheet and WordPress doesn’t give that option, but overall I’m happy with it.

Cats

No, not the musical. Actual cats. See, that’s what has been distracting me from posting here. Let me start at the beginning.

For the last few weeks The Keeper has been talking about getting pets. We’d thought about getting a couple rabbits when we first moved to our current location, but that never actually ended up happening. Then he started talking about dogs and cats (the only animals we would have to pay a pet deposit and pet rent for…) a few weeks ago. He’s never been terribly enthusiastic about pets, having never had any growing up, since most of his interactions with animals before he met me had been negative. But all of a sudden he was enthusiastic and his enthusiasm made me really want a pet too. So we waffled back and forth between waiting till I have a job or not and between cats or dogs or bunnies. The Keeper decided he could afford to foot the initial bills for pets and he didn’t want to wait and have it never happen, so we decided to start searching immediately.

Then we decided that our apartment isn’t really ideal for rabbits. I’d read that the cage should be kept out of direct sunlight and away from vents/radiators. Because of the way we have our furniture arranged, that meant the cage couldn’t be in the office or the living room area. I didn’t think it was a good idea to keep them in the dining area because of fur getting in food and any animal waste smells. Also didn’t want them in the bedroom because of smell and because The Keeper is a light sleeper as it is and we weren’t sure how much noise rabbits make at night. That left one little space in the hallway where we weren’t entirely sure a cage would even fit comfortably. So that was the end of the rabbit idea.

So the decision was between cats or dogs. Cats won out because we figured cats would deal better with being left alone for hours and hours during the day, plus we wouldn’t have to get up ultra early in order to take them for walks.

Once we decided on the what, we needed to find the animals we wanted. That was WAY more difficult than I was expecting. It seems like no one who lists animals on Petfinder is capable of taking decent pictures, so that made things a little difficult when we were trying to find cats we wanted to go visit. Plus, The Keeper wanted a grey cat. Like Russian Blue coloring, all grey. I like that coloring too, but he wouldn’t budge on this and at first we didn’t seem to be having a lot of luck finding greys we both agreed on. We also had some trouble deciding whether we wanted kittens or young cats. Kittens had the advantage of being friggin adorable, but a lot of the ones we were seeing online were too young to have been fixed yet and it wasn’t clear with a lot of the rescues whether the spaying/neutering would be part of the adoption fee and we’d have to bring them back for that and not pay more or if we’d have to foot the bill for surgery ourselves. The Keeper was willing to pay for the adoption and the pet deposit and all, but he wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of having to pay anywhere between $200 and $800 within a few weeks of adoption to get them fixed. And I can’t really blame him, especially considering there were plenty of slightly older kittens to choose from who’d already had their surgeries.

Anyway, to cut a somewhat boring story short, we finally found a couple cats and put applications in for them on Saturday. The woman who was fostering the grey called the next morning to let us know that they would both be at a Petsmart down in Woodbridge for an adoption event that day if we wanted to go meet them. We went and loved the grey, but the other cat we’d been interested in didn’t seem very friendly. We ended up bringing one of the grey’s foster-mates home with him instead.

Now, the foster owner had told us that the grey would take a while to warm up and might hide a lot the first couple weeks, but she didn’t really give us any specifics of how to make him comfortable or what to do when we got him home and he refused to come out of his carrier. The little calico/tortie shot right out of her carrier and started exploring, but the grey scrunched as far back in his as he could and wouldn’t budge. We were a little worried and went over a couple times to try and coax him out, but we figured he’d most likely venture out after we went to bed and hide somewhere in the apartment. I even made sure there were a couple places he could use to hide before we went to sleep. And we were right, he did come out in the middle of the night some time. And he ended up hiding under the bed. That worried us a little because we had had to close the bedroom door the night before in order for The Keeper to get some sleep (the calico/tortie kept clawing at his feet and his has a low threshold for pain) and we didn’t want to do that again if it meant trapping the grey away from the litter box. Fortunately The Keeper was a little more relaxed and so was the calico/tortie that second night and we were able to leave the bedroom door open.

The next morning we were intending to get him out from under the bed if he hadn’t done so on his own and then I was going to try some of the suggestions the foster owner had emailed me to make him a little more comfortable. The Keeper got up for work and couldn’t find him anywhere in the bedroom, so he shut the door and went on to work. A few hours later I went looking for our little scaredy cat and couldn’t find him. Anywhere. I thought maybe he’d just found some extra hidden place, so I started playing a video game to distract me from worrying. But then when The Keeper got home and couldn’t find him either we started worrying that maybe he’d gotten out of the apartment that morning when The Keeper was groggily leaving for work.

At that point The Keeper printed up a flier and went to ask around our hall and down at the front desk to see if anyone had seen him. I pretty much had a nervous breakdown. We’d only had him two days and he’d gotten lost? No one would ever trust us to adopt a pet again. And what if someone had taken him? Or he’d gotten hurt? And really the worst part was that I knew it didn’t make any sense. None of it made sense. We looked EVERYWHERE for him. We even took the mattress and box springs off the bed because we thought maybe he’d found or torn a hole in the lining under there and crawled inside. So we were so sure he wasn’t here. But it didn’t make sense for him to get out either. Every time we’d gotten close to him when he was in the carrier or under the bed, he’d backed away as far as he could. He wouldn’t have just run past The Keeper to get out. And even if he had, there is nowhere to hide in the hallway. Plus, we’re in the middle of the building far away from any of the branches in the hall. He couldn’t have possibly run so fast that he could have gotten out of sight down a branch of the hall without The Keeper hearing and seeing him. It just didn’t make sense.

Today The Keeper posted one of the fliers by the elevators even though that’s not actually allowed. I got up at 9am to take it down, since the idea was just to make sure people saw it on their way out to work. When I got back I got back in bed and tried to stay as quiet and still as possible, just in case we were wrong and he was still somewhere in the apartment. I didn’t hear anything that I could be certain was him, so finally at about 12:30 I got up because I needed to take my birth control. Then at about 1:25 I looked for him again, just in case. And I found him! The little bastard was under the bed again!

Now The Keeper wants to name him Houdini.

Quick Updates

To any new readers who may have found there way here through WordPress’s Freshly Pressed feature- Welcome! I am delighted to have you here and I hope you’ll stay for a while. I was astounded to have my post featured, and even more astounded by the amount of hits and comments that generated.

Due to the increased traffic here over the last couple days and since no one seems all that interested in using Google Buzz, I’ve created a Twitter account for the blog. It seems they have a character limit for usernames, so I couldn’t make my username there ImpassionedPlatypi like I wanted. One strike against Twitter so far… But anyway, the account is created and I’ve posted to it a couple of times. There’s a button on the sidebar that will take you to my profile page. I wanted to use a widget that would show posts there, but it wasn’t working. Also, I quite enjoy the alternate for "Twitter" and "Tweets" that The Over-Educated Nympho came up with, so from here on out I will be referring to the service as Twatter and the posts as Twats or Twatters. Context should pretty easily separate whether I’m talking about Twitter or a person.

The Q&A page that I mentioned in an earlier post is up, so remember to feel free to ask me anything. It can be weird, random, personal, sexual, anything you want. Just bear in mind that I may lie to protect my anonymity. I’ll try to make the answers entertaining if I lie though.

And finally, I’ve added a button at the bottom of the sidebar. The Organic Sister, in an effort to generate income while she and her family RV around the country, has started a coaching business aimed toward helping people who are interested in unschooling but don’t know where to start or how to handle certain situations that can arise. If you have questions, she can definitely answer them.

Question and Answer

I’ve decided I want to make a FAQ page. I don’t like "About" pages because even when I’m not trying to be anonymous I don’t like just talking about myself. When I meet new people I don’t just start spouting off info about myself, I need questions to get things rolling. So, I figure a page where I’m answering questions might be fun. Sometime today I’ll probably throw up my FAQ page with some weird, random questions I made up myself and the answers. In the meantime, if anyone out there has a question please feel free to ask. You can ask in email or in the comments, either is fine with me. And I don’t care what the question is about. No topic is off limits for asking, though to protect my anonymity I might decide not to answer or to lie in my answer. but that’s part of the fun I think. And if anyone asks a question that I think the answer to would make a fun blog post, I’ll make a blog post out of it and then just link the answer on the FAQ page.

Subject To Moods

It’s been a week since the last post here, and I feel I should explain the reason. It’s not a very good reason, in my opinion, but here it is. I have been somewhat depressed. This particular depression has been far more mild and short lived that others I’ve had in the past, but it had settled over me like a little cloud and only recently has begun to dissipate. It came to a head on Thursday last week when I tried a second time to make the ravioli I mentioned in the previous post. I didn’t exactly fail in my second attempt, I got the dough to do mostly what I thought it was supposed to do and I rolled it out and was going to try to proceed despite the fact that there didn’t appear to actually be enough dough to make a meal for two people. Then The Keeper came in after I’d asked him to go check something about the recipe on my computer and made a joking little comment about how the sheets looked right although he didn’t think he’d be able to read newspaper through it (which is something the recipe mentioned as a somewhat lofty goal when rolling out the dough). Then, when I started fretting a little over it, because I could try to roll it thinner but I’d already hurt my wrists getting it as thin as I’d managed to, he was trying to calm me down and he accidentally knocked the carton of eggs that I had out on the counter off onto the floor. It was at that point that I pretty much just gave up and sank into a despairing little haze while I cleaned up the eggs.

As tends to be the case when I get into these dark moods, I was caught in a circular conundrum. I felt worse than I might otherwise have because I knew I was worrying The Keeper and that I was relying on him for something that he isn’t naturally inclined to understand and render. But at the same time I couldn’t bring myself to do anything about it except mumble and murmur that I was sorry. And this was in addition to the stresses which had caused the mood to begin with. It wasn’t the ravioli or the eggs, that was just sort of the last straw. I’ve been unemployed longer than I was hoping, so I was feeling bad about that. And the depression seemed to be making it very difficult to motivate myself to do anything besides read, including getting on the computer and typing up interesting blog posts. Unfortunately it also included things around the house like cleaning, and I sank further under my little cloud because I was sitting and reading all day while The Keeper was out at work. I felt bad for being so lazy, but circularly again, couldn’t seem to get myself to not be lazy. And things just kept piling up until Thursday when the eggs got knocked over and I just snapped.
 
I spent most of the next day sleeping because I’d developed a really terrible headache, which didn’t really enhance my mood much. But then Saturday the cloud began to dissipate a bit and I think things are much better now. I’m still having trouble tearing myself away from the book I’m reading (which currently is Edward Rutherfurd’s The Rebels of Ireland), and I haven’t really been very productive yet this week, but hopefully my spirits will continue to rise and I can get some things done soon. I’ll be forced to, at least, on Thursday this week because of another of the things that had piled up and caused my little breakdown last week- The Keeper got into a traffic altercation. Someone ran a red light and struck him as he was making a left turn on his way to work last Thursday. The offending driver’s insurance should be paying for the repairs to my Element, but unfortunately the asshole is saying that The Keeper is the one who ran the light and since the police weren’t called and there were no witnesses who stopped to give their contact information, we are at an impasse. So, The Keeper and I will be driving to the closest Progressive repair center on Thursday morning to drop off the Element and acquire a rental car. I have to be there for that because the rental car requires a major credit card and I have one of those while The Keeper doesn’t. We are currently kicking ourselves for not electing to get the rental coverage Progressive offers.

Anyhow, I’m hoping to get back into a habit of posting here. The Keeper and my two year anniversary was on Sunday and he took me out to PF Chang’s where I was able to take some wonderful food porn pictures, so that will probably be my next entry.

I’m Not Dead!

Just thought I’d clear that up. Yea, I’m not dead. I’ve just been very busy the past few days.

I was going to try and enjoy being unemployed for a little while, but I am a moron and I updated my Monster profile on my first weekday of unemployment last week. That resulted in almost immediately receiving calls from three different temp agencies to set up interviews so that they could look for jobs for me.

This was my week last week:

Monday- chill and update Monster
Tuesday- Interview
Wednesday- chill and play D&D
Thursday- Two Interviews
Friday thru Monday- Out of town in a hotel with no wifi because my Mom wasn’t willing to pay the extra $34/night for a nice hotel, and then staying with a friend who also did not have internet. Yes, those people exist.

So, yea, not a lot of time for blogging. But I have a feeling this week will be a little calmer.

Well This Was No Surprise

This Somehow Hadn’t Even Occurred To Me

Just read a blog post by Erik Van Slyke that got me thinking… My layoff makes pretty much no sense from a financial standpoint for the company. They say that the layoff I was part of was intended to streamline the business and help the company to grow later by becoming more efficient, or something. And at the time I was given my notice (9 months ago) it was also thought that by the time I was going to be leaving there would be some procedures in place to make my job a bit more automated and efficient, thereby making me irrelevant and justifying the lay off.

Those procedures are nowhere close to being in place. My team is at least a month behind on what we do. There are three temps helping the team I was working in, two doing the same job I had been doing and one as sort of an assistant to help with things that need done but take up time that the rest could be using to try and put a dent in that month long backlog. It is likely that they will bring more temps in to try and get caught up after I’m gone. Exactly how does any of this save the company money?

After reading that blog post though I’m wondering if the execs at my company might have just been trying to secure their own salaries or bonuses or something like that. I mean, I don’t think we’re one of those companies that gives out a bunch of bonuses, but it might just be that I wasn’t at the level to get one.

The Mundane

Two more days and no more job. I’m part of a layoff and Friday is my last day. I’ve known about it for a while (since, like, May of last year), but it’s a little strange for the day to finally almost be here. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do. Since I was notified about the layoff I’ve been sending resume’s out all over the place, but I’ve had no luck and to be honest I’m not terribly thrilled by the idea of another cube monkey job. I mean, if I can get something that pays well and requires so little effort that I’m able to get online and bullshit around all day like at this place, yea ok I wouldn’t mind that. I just don’t have much hope that will happen. Most other companies have far tighter controls on what people can and can’t do online at work, I just kinda lucked out here.

I could try to do something completely different, but I’m not sure what I’d do. I have a friend (back in the area where I grew up, not where I live now) who took a cake baking or decorating class or something and now has a business where she spends very little time and money making specialty cakes and selling them for ridiculously huge profits. I think that’s something I might be able to do, but I’m not sure. OEN has started her own greeting card business since she got laid off. I have no interest in that, but I’m wondering if there’s anything similar I could maybe do? There are some craft things that I’m fairly certain I could sell, but they take so long and so much effort to make that I’m not sure I could actually profit from them. I’ve begun thinking about basically setting something up so people pay me for general life advice, but I’m not sure I have the credentials for that. I don’t even know what the credentials for that would be, I just know that I give really good advice a lot of the time. I have a little time before the money runs out though, and if I come up with something really, truly kick ass I can lean on The Keeper a little I’m sure. Technically he could probably support both of us on his own, but I don’t want him to have to.

In other news, I think I may start using Google Buzz. If you have a Google account and want to follow me, my Gmail address is over there on the Contact a Platypus page *points at the sidebar*. If you do not have a Google account and you want to follow me, I’ve added a link over on the sidebar under the Other Blogs You Should Read category for my Buzz profile. I realize it’s not a blog, but I didn’t feel like adding a new category for just one link. Maybe I’ll add links for other people’s Buzzes or Twitters I like and then add a category. We’ll see.

I had been considering Twitter, even though I kind of had a bit of a hate-on for it, because a lot of the bloggers and webcomic artists I follow have Twitter and it is kind of cool to go to their page periodically and read through their updates. Especially OEN. But Buzz seems to be similar and is connected with the email and docs I use for this blog, so I think I’ll just use it, at least for now.

Global Warming My Ass

Yesterday I could not bend without hurting. Moving from a sitting position to a standing position hurt. Moving back down from standing to sitting hurt. When I was standing I couldn’t bend even a fraction of an inch forward or it hurt. Trying to change position in bed hurt. The only thing that did not hurt was to sit or stand or lay in a fixed position. Walking wasn’t too bad, but I could feel my back rebelling. Today isn’t much better, though it’s easier to move from sit to stand and stand to sit. And why am I in so much pain that I spent the better part of the day yesterday (because work got cancelled) playing Borderlands? Well it’s because on Sunday I did about 75% of the work of digging my vehicle out of the two plus feet of snow that had fallen over Friday and Saturday.

And now I have to go to the girly doctor to get my lady-bits checked out. Wooo!