Mmm. Talked to Boss today, to see what the hell is going on with me - short story, no one really knows. I let him know I would prefer a transfer, but that if it’s impossible I’m not going to throw a fit or anything. He said he’d talk to Shan’s supervisor and see what’s what next week. I’m… nervous. I’ve never dared to speak up at a job before. Expressing wants is still very difficult for me. I get worried about being fired.

But oh, glorious weekend. No more thinking about work. Work is over. Now is the time for naps and TV and reading and gym and walking and maybe buying and probably shopping for food. :d Also, apparently the neighbor’s water heater blew itself up? And took out some of the stuff of a guy that was moving anyway? We heard some kind of alarm on the way to work that day, but it wasn’t a fire alarm and we had to get to work, and we kinda figured hey, not much we can do if it wants to destroy our stuff anyway, right? So yeah.

School is almost over. Feels weird. I had to change my final project subtly, but I’m already making good headway on the second half - I have to backtrack and research some stuff for the first half, but the second half is all make-believe anyway. I know. Soft sciences. What can you do with them? At least I know enough legalese to make things up very nicely. Yay for a childhood spent reading the encyclopedia for fun!

I’ve also started thinking through a Dark Tower computer game. I, um, yeah. Not much to say about that. Having trouble with the storyline, but the interface and such are pretty much set. I’ll never make it or anything - way beyond my league, dude. But if I get a comprehensive enough outline, I might toss it around. Mmm. It’s good practice on how to subtly work instructions into your work, though - for example, I want to start in a town. For a lot of reasons - to give you a feel for the world, the controls, how to interact with your environment, all the usual reasons, but also to gently nudge you into a feeling of companionship with the people. I was considering starting on the beach, but that would mean ages of walking around with no people - you learn to be a loner that way, which isn’t what I want. Oh, reminder to self: train billy-bumblers.

Mmm, the gym is good for me. Worked out the kinks in my back that have built up over the last week, and started getting kinda serious about improvising physical therapy on my knee. Mostly a lot of incredibly low weights to gently stretch out the tendons. And by incredibly low, I mean the lowest setting humanly possible, which is still almost too much most of the time. I, ah, okay, you know how for the leg press, you should always be able to do your own weight, because that’s what standing up is? I can do, um, a quarter of my weight. I cannot physically stand up. That… depresses me incredibly, considering I used to leg press 1000 lbs. And now it’s like, 50. ;_; WRYYY. If it weren’t for the knee, I could do at least my own weight - the good leg can handle 90 lbs just fine by itself. But I have no desire to destroy my knee any more than it already is, so there we go.

But ohhh, my back feels good. Mmm. And we got tickets to some concerts, Rasputina and Cope, and They Might Be Giants are coming in May, so all is well in my little world.

FOUND THE GOOD PART OF MISSING CLASS AND NOT DOING HOMEWORK. A teacher who lets you make it up with two classes in the semester to go, with full credit. GOD BLESS ENGINEERS. Also I totally get that sigma stuff lawlz. Logs still elude me most of the time. I beat them with sticks and fake my way through it. I also got an extra, um, 8 points on a test because I managed to explain my thought process to the teacher and got partial credit. Yay me and my broken brain! But I am so proud of getting this most recent chapter. I need the formulas in front of me, but oh, expanding binomials, you are so easy to comprehend. None of this random, nonsensical moving things around in peculiar ways. I like my math to make sense, even if it is in infinite sequences.

The bad part of getting sick and falling behind on your math homework is that it never, ever gets done after that. The good part… There is no good part. Plus I’m getting sick again. Sigh.

Work has been… stressful, to say the least. The last week was spent in Gang Drills, or something, which is so great. The guy smells like sewage, but he leaves me alone and actually teaches me what I need to know. I’m so spoiled now that I’ve spent a week away from Sempai. She honestly thinks she’s higher on the chain of command than our boss. Honestly. She truly believes it. I haven’t met someone with this ability to alter reality since… oh hey, since my mother. I love work. Mm-hmm. (I really do love the drills and taps and such. I can daydream and no one really bothers me unless they want the part I’m working on, and since I work well above rate [I can claim parts! I actually get credit for my work! HOLY CRAP] I kinda shrug and give them an estimate of when I’ll be done. Not that it happens much, since I am very much not in charge, which is fine. I get credit for my own work! It’s so awesome! No one is hovering over my shoulder screaming at me. How novel. I’m currently wary of it ending abruptly, though - standing orders are to report to drills, unless told directly by a supervisor to go elsewhere, which has to be specified because of Sempai’s above misunderestimation of authority. But I could get tossed back with her at any time, and she’s pissed because she wants me back to be her whipping girl again, and it will be very, very miserable if/when I go back. I am desperately pushing for a permanent transfer, although not too hard, because I don’t want to seem too desperate, you know? But the guy that runs Drills keeps telling the supervisors he wants to keep me (so he doesn’t have to do any work, lolz, which is fine by me because instead of bitching at me he just wanders off who knows where all day) and the supervisor gave me overtime last weekend so I think he wants to keep me but Boss probably wants me back to keep Sempai quiet. Sigh. We’ll see, I guess. Worst case, no one decides what to do with me and I get fired (incredibly unlikely, so unlikely it is a negative on the scale of likeliness). Best case, I work in Gang Drills and buy some air fresheners to tape under the benches (also unlikely, but possible). Probable case, I go back to Scales and go insane by degrees. I am apparently not made to work with people I despise. This does not surprise me.

Everyone in Vermont thinks ice cream comes from a dispenser and is semi-liquid. WHAT THE HELL GUYS. I THOUGHT THIS WAS LIKE THE ICE CREAM CAPITAL OF THE WORLD. YOU HAVE BEN & JERRY’S. There are, I think, two places in the state that serve hard ice cream. I am so serious. I have seen exactly two. It’s so disappointing. Soft serve is nasty, man. Just so gross. Like eating partially digested ice cream. Uuuuugh. But oh, there is nothing better than ginger ice cream - I snagged some at a restaurant last week, or maybe the week before, and oh. The server came by and was like, “Is it everything you hoped for?” which okay, is kinda of a creepy way of asking if I like my food, but I was like, “OH HELL YES. You beautiful man you.” Except without that second part, because I think he was already creeped out by my habit of saying “thank you” every time someone does something for me, and if you’re a waitron that’s all the time. I can’t help it, politeness was required of me in my formative years and also my first two jobs. D:

I need to learn how to disable car alarms, preferably with minimal damage to the car. But dude, ice cream. So sad. At least VT does cheese right. Right? Cabot, man. Mmmm. I could do some sharp cheddar.

Tonight we got delivered pizza. Somehow, it sucked. I know! Bad pizza = good pizza, yes, but… it sucked. But it was our first college-kids-on-their-own meal ever, so that part was fun. And cheese bread sticks. Mmm. Fooooood. I kinda want ramen now. D: I make it funny, with next to no broth, some cheese, and some egg and lettuce and stuff. Mmm. I dunno if I could eat it anymore, though - my stomach has 1) shrunk and B) likes actual food and III) gets weirded out by some of the stuff I used to eat. I can make “food” out of almost anything! And eat enough of it to not starve! I could so live in the wild, man, eating cattail roots and stuff. :D And then I’d eat a mushroom and die.

OKAY SO BORED STOP AM READING FIC FOR A SERIES I HAVE NEVER SEEN STOP SEND CLASSICAL MUSIC STOP

AHHH SO BORED. And yet it’s so nice out! But slightly cold! But bored! But nothing to do! LE SIGH. Am re-reading Good Omens, which is nearly unheard of for me, and liking it better the second time around, which is completely unheard of. :D There was an Elvis cameo and I never noticed. Shame on me. It was nicely subtle, too.

Booooooored.

Alright, now that it’s the day after, I’ll give into St. Pat’s day long enough to say two things:

Happy birthday, little sis!

Clover tastes really good - especially young clover. It’s a little like fresh, mild mint, and a little like clean, wild grass. The thin-leafed kind, not that nasty broad-leafed stuff that you can turn into a whistle. I intend to grow herbs this spring, and I’m going to try to grow some clover as well. Maybe some aloe, too. How does aloe do in this climate? Not particularly well, I’d think. I like growing useful plants, though.

Yesterday I bought Good Omens. Just for the hell of it. I started reading it in the gym (you gotta do something when you’re on the elliptical with no headphones) and didn’t stop until it was so late my eyes watered, and then I woke up and finished it. This is, unfortunately, my usual reading pattern.

It’s damn good. The style makes me cringe sometimes, those unrelated tangents that are supposed to feel like in-jokes, the footnotes that are almost nonsensical, but good lord. Crowley and Aziraphael are possibly the best characters ever. But again, style of writing? Bleh. But tolerable, unlike Hitchiker’s Guide. Ugh. Hated that book. Anyway, Good Omens - fun book, good read, totally awesome characters that I want more of. <3 I can see why everyone kept recommending it to me. I particularly liked the end - was that a cameo by God? Hee! I still can’t figure out who the main character was, though. I think Crowley, which is a little peculiar. Hmm.

So. Good book, would recommend. Probably won’t read again, or at least not for a long time.

*laughs hysterically* Oh, David Nykl, everyone loves you. (He plays a secondary character on Atlantis, which means that seriously, everyone loves him. He takes it very well, and takes some behind-the-scenes pictures. Apparently work is a little stressful right now, though.)

Money is so weird. I think I will go buy myself some brunch (okay, fine, lunch, but only because I never have breakfast anyway) instead of trying to make something. It snowed a lot last night - another big storm. I haven’t checked what we actually got, since I think it’s still coming down, but they were saying a minimum of six and a max of thirty six, depending on the weather station. I hope we get plowed out before Monday.

HALLELUJAH. Federal tax return: check! Money in bank: check! Credit card paid off: check! Money for car/investment up to an even $2000: hell yeah! Money in savings in case I lose work: oh thank god! Money for me: WHAT THE HELL DO I DO WITH THIS SHIT.

Answer: Get a gym membership and a nice dinner and maybe something pretty. Like a book. Oh my gosh, I could get a book. Or - or anything! Anything less than $50, anyway, since that’s what I have allotted myself for playing with, post dinner and gym. Oh my gosh money. Also I got paid last Tuesday and actually, you know, made more money than I needed to spend, so there’s that.

OH HI CHECK FROM THE STATE. I LIKE YOU. <3 <3 <3