So long and thanks for all the fish.

Yes, I realize I've used that title before, but not on this blog. (I am forgetting most of my Myspace years, so if ya don't like the title repeat, just get over it.)
Disclaimer- No, do not take the title to mean that I've quit my job. I have not.

Speaking of work... this week was... slightly on the hellish side.
Monday was calm and easy and as it was a DOE holiday, but not a VOLT Holiday, I worked it. (not willing to take a non paid day off if I can avoid it)
Unlike my days on Postal... I don't get yelled at if we watch something on Youtube. (My gawd Martin the jackass used to have a hissy fit about any flash or streaming material.)
So, I spent the day watching Doctor Who season 4. Only got two episodes because I could not get a good link for Episode 3, so I spent the other time surfing. Calls were moderate and not too annoyance filled.

Monday night on the other hand, I was sick as a dog. Either I ate something that did not agree with me, or I caught whatever was floating around. (Lots of people have been elsicko at work, and it is less easy to avoid dealing with people and human contact on the new desk.)

Finally around 2 am I am no longer getting up every 20 minutes to do things that you really do not want to read about, nor do I wish to type. (I'll type it for a novel, but my blog... nah)
But, that means I've gotten no sleep. There is no way I could go into work like that. If I didn't just start getting sick again (while at work of all places... ugh) I'd end up snapping due to lack of sleep.
So, I spent Tuesday curled up in my chair (no longer the couch, though I wish the couch was downstairs again so I could have been stretched out on it), watching Season 1 of Angel and me reading Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

Speaking of Good Omens. I highly enjoyed it. Can't tell who wrote which parts, mostly because I've never read any Pratchett novels yet.
I rather liked Crowley and his Angel counter part who's name is escaping me.
And there were a few other characters I rather enjoyed.
There was one character that annoyed me for the most part... But it wasn't his fault, he was just written that way. His name also escapes me. But he was the one in charge of the Witchfinders. He was an idiot, he bugged me.

Wednesday I was back at work, Thursday too... oh, and today... what a concept.
None of the days were fun. Not at all.
Oh, and somewhere in those days I finished reading Fatal Voyage by Kathy Reichs.
Highly enjoyed this one. All the uncanny coincidences were missing from this one. There was really only 1 coincidence, but it worked and didn't actually feel forced. There was actually reason behind it, and plot was setup in the third book.
The plot of this one was focused around an Airplane crash, and everything that goes into dealing with the aftermath, then a horrible twist added in. Once again I did not see the "Whodunit" until it was actually revealed.
It's honestly that aspect which made me forgive all the "uncanny coincidences" from the first 3 books. Kathy keeps me guessing right till the end. Generally when I watch a movie or read a book, I can figure out who the "killer" is in the first 10 minutes. Half way through at the latest. But so far, I'm along for the ride right along with Tempe. Lets hope the latter books remain that way.

Today at work, I was dealing with the official aspects of "Oh my god this place is killing me" and had a sit down with Manager R.
Convo went as such:
Me: "Doode, something's not right with the priorities you've got me at. It's killing me. We'll have 14 avail, I'll be on a call, as soon as I hang up the call I get another one even though we still have 14 people sitting there waiting for a call. Please tell me why."
Him: "Thats impossible. You are set to being in the slow queue."
Me: "Pull the data. I'm getting more calls than anyone around me."
Him: (pulls the data) "WOW. You weren't kidding."
We pull up the individual data, he's right though. I'm in the "slow" queue.
We've got 3 queues.
My highest priority is in the Outlook queue.
My middle priority is the Primary queue (which is also known as "every thing").
My lowest priority is the password reset queue.

Password resets and Primary gets the most amount of calls per day.
But, I am so kick ass at my job, that I end up taking on 3 times more calls than everyone else because I'm just so quick.
My stats from yesterday.
48 calls.
6 minute average on those calls.
ACW (After call Work) - less than 30 seconds

Yup, I had the highest amount of calls for the entire DESK. Not just my team, but the entire desk.
Lowest call time average as well.
And rocking ACW. (They want you to keep it under a minute)

Manager R was quite in shock about my stats. He was impressed.
In his words "your cooking."
In my words "but I'm also burning...out."

He is now aware of just what I'm dealing with. He knows I can't purposefully slow down my work, and this is killing me.
And if I need to take a break, I can tell my team lead that Manager R needs to see me, go into a special aux code. Walk over and tell him I need a break and just take a few minutes for myself.
He knows I will use it sparingly, and only if I'm about to go postal on someone. He knows I am trying to avoid loosing my temper, and to keep my attitude "cheery".

So at least he knows now what is going on. And he says he's going to bring it up in the next meeting and push to get me on the equivalent of Backlogs.
And once again, I have proven to myself that as long as I don't snap and tell some principle to shove it where the sun don't shine, I'm not going to get let go any time soon. This should be comforting. Why is it not?

Today I stop at Sunflower Market on the way home. So brain dead I pick a few things up, but nothing that actually will constitute a meal for the evening.
I am craving Sushi.
The sushi at Sunflower doesn't look that appealing.
Head home with my few wares.
Talk to Mother of Mine about sushi for dinner. Can't really afford it, but Sushi is comfort food for me, and generally saves the world from mass destruction at by the will of me.

We decide to go to a place we've never tried before. It was near the fabric store mother of mine needed to go to.

It is not one we shall ever go to again.
How hard is this?
Cucumber roll (which is really what i was craving)
Tuna roll
Salmon Skin hand roll
2 pieces of Mackerel
2 pieces of Salmon

Simple right?
They were out of Mackerel.
The were out of Salmon skin.
So we replaced the Salmon skin hand roll, simply for salmon
We replaced the Mackerel with shrimp
We also decided we wanted some little Roe (the name I'm forgetting right now)

Here is what we got.
No cucumber roll
2 rolls that we honestly couldn't tell if it was tuna or salmon.
2 pieces of Shrimp
2 pieces of very salty salmon
2 pieces of little Roe
1 very salty and weird salmon handroll. (we had been expecting our salmon roll to just be a regular salmon roll instead of a hand roll.. cause that was just... weird. Should have gone with tuna instead.)

The miso soup was luke warm... like everywhere.
The edamame was amazing. Honestly the best I've ever had.
The price was.... well shockingly less than I was expecting.
But the old adage is true... You get what you pay for.
Oh, and there was lots and lots of waiting.

We have crossed the place off from our lists of sushi places around town.
I can't even recall the name of it right now. It is on the corner of Austin Bluffs and Academy on the East side, north of the intersection. (In the same place with the Underwater Connection)

The last time I blogged about Sushi saving the world from destruction, I was living in Denver. Still working at Transfirst. That place was good.

I have started reading Digital Fortress, which I've already seen the formula. Honestly, Dan Brown has 1 formula, and so far it only generally works for his character of Robert Langdon. Mother of Mine and I discussed that while at dinner, it's because Robert Langdon is a character we can like.
Personally, he's a character that I've always looked at as what I like in the male species if I could find one. - What can I say, I've academia in my blood. Though my specific generation of the family tree has been unable to attend the ivy covered walls, "Professor" was always on the list of acceptable professions of my non existent future husband. The one caveat being of course that I don't care how sweet the little coeds are, there is no way in hell that he'd get away with any dalliance. Which I'm going to stop that paragraph right there, because my views are quite different than any of the normal views when it comes to that discussion.
I digress, Robert Langdon is a character I like. So I look forward to reading the next book. Won't buy it. Nope I'd rather Diana Gabaldon get higher on the list than him. But Katte already has the book, has finished the book, and it will most likely be coming home with Mother of Mine at the end of this weekend, which it will take her 2 nights at most to read it, then she'll pass it to me.
Where was I?
Oh yes, Digital Fortress. I'm reading it. Most likely won't like it, as I can already see flaws in the actual guts of the theory. (which is sad, since I'm no where near proficient in mathematics to ever actually work with crpyto at all. Even though it fascinates me, and always has. But if I can already see the flaws, that is sayin' something.)

The plans for the weekend as of right now: start organizing the house to be able to clean the carpets.
Possibly dye yarn. My dyes arrived today. I've got yarn.

Last night I was once again inspired to dye some Avalanche inspired socks.
I think I have decided that my sports team yarns shall be self striping. We'll see how it goes.
The reason for the Avalanche inspiration, was because the 1st game of the season was last night, and I caught the first 5 minutes.
It was also the Farewell tribute to Joe Sakic, who retired. *sniff sniff*
By the way, the Avs won against the San Jose Sharks. It's cute because one of my Ravelry friends is a huge Sharks fan. She's the one who actually reminded me that the game was last night.
I hadn't planned on catching the game at all, because I never actually do. I generally miss it for various reasons. But I finished watching a recording of Cyrano De Bergerac with Kevin Kline and Jennifer Garner (and Eric Sarandon..) whom all were fabulous. But I just happened to flip channels right and landed on the hockey channel. (No I don't actually have the hockey channel, but last night was hockey night so whatever sports channel I was on was hockey-centric. Saw the last few minutes of the Toronto game before the start of the Avs game. I will admit it revved my inner hockey gal for the season.)

Last night while watching Cyrano, I got a bunch knitted on my Legal Assassin sock. I'm happy with it so far. Don't think it needs any tweaking at all. So we'll see what people think of the finished product.

Wow. Look at all this rambling. Didn'tcha miss me?
I won't say I'm "back" yet. But it looks like I'm starting to get there.
Just gotta survive October at this point.

Alright, I'm done. The tummy is not happy with all the lack luster sushi (prolly all the salt from the salmon.. seriously... I've never had salmon that salty and there was a lot of salmon)

Oh one last thing. Absolutely adorable. It got cold enough last night that Pan was huddled against me right from the start, and almost even crawled under the covers at one point. It would have been even more adorable if he hadn't been waking me up for the petting that was him nearly crawling under the covers.

Thats it. I'm done.
Night folks.

Angels and Demons, Bones, and a moment of panic.

So, I cast on and started my special project.
Some how, I messed up, and either cut an extra bit, or I split a bit, and I have to figure out what I did.

Figuring out that I messed up was actually only found out after I finished my second row, and 3 parts came off. It left me with a WTF? moment.

So after giving up last night due to frustration and sleepyness, I have not picked it back up again. I don't know if I will pick it up tonight or not, as my back is hurting, and I do not want to transfer any of the back pain vibes into the knitting. Which happens. And as this is a gift... I have to make sure it doesn't happen.


Yesterday I nearly had a heartastroke as, well mom and I went to see Angels and Demons.
We went to Whole Foods to buy a bit of lunch, and I must say that I feel as if I am cheating on my Whole Foods every time I go to the WF over on that side of town. It is a smaller one, and not nearly as good on top of the whole "I'm cheating" feeling.
After eating lunch, mom and I went to Coldstone next to the theater and got some ice cream.

Then we went into the theater. Of course we were the first ones there.

I sat down, got up, went to the loo, got us napkins, sat down, chilled, got comfy. So on and so forth.

I reached for my chapstick in my right pocket, and realized there were only 2 items in my pocket. My chapstick and my Orajel (the tooth I had a root canal on, and has been damaged etc has been bugging me, so I started keeping numb stuff with me again... you'd think that after 3 years (or more) of sucking that stuff down I'd be immune to it... nope. still works.. well for the most part. The problem I have can't be fully numbed, but I'll do my darndest.).

What was missing from my pocket was my flash drive.
I had distinctly remembered putting it in my right pocket when I left work.
Que me panicking.
I search under my seat.
I trace my steps back to the loo.
I come up with nothing.
Mom said she remembered seeing it poking out of my pocket while we were in the car eating.
I did technically have time to go out and check the car, but there was a reason I didn't. The reason was this: If I simply clung to the hope that it was in the car, I'd be able to possibly enjoy the movie. If I went out to the car and it wasn't there. I'd cry, and thus not really enjoy the movie. So, the fear of not knowing helped me in this case.

Fast forward, yes. It was in the car. Thank gods.
Seriously, I'd rather loose my wallet then loose my flash drive.
Not because the stuff isn't replaceable (at most I'd loose a few reference images, that I had just added, because I'm a smart girl and saved a copy of everything on my computer.) but because that would mean a copy of both my unpublished novels, my resumes, documents on the whole "starting my own business" thing. (Including a list of all my colorways.)
a wallet would be, though expensive (just the fees of replacing my cards etc) would be less frightening to replace then the creative content that would then be floating into the world without my control.

Now, on to the movie.

Angels and Demons

I absolutely LOVED the movie.
It was breathtakingly beautiful.
The music was fantastic.
The changes they made, for the most part were completely understandable, and did not affect the overall story too much.

The only gripe I had, was the "Illuminati Diamond"
I will not give spoilers as there are people who haven't seen it yet.

I have to say also, that it is amazing, how just 1 scene.. an innocent scene, can cause the entire audience to collectively gasp. And no, it's not a scene any of you prolly think it is.

I'll wait at least 2 weeks, then I'll chat about it.

One thing I can say without spoiling anything.. .because I doubt anyone other then myself would have noticed it...

But the writers created a paradox.
That, is amusing to me.

They created a paradox because, the story of Angels and Demons is supposed to be set prior to the events in The Da Vinci Code. This, was also established in the DaVinci Code, because of Robert Langdon saying "I've met the pope" or whatever the line actually was. It implied the story that we didn't see. The story of Angels and Demons.

Well, in Angels and Demons, they set those events AFTER the events of The DaVinci Code, and makes a point of setting it AFTER.

Which means they created a paradox. Considering the subject matter... the fact that they created a paradox just highly, highly amuses me.

After the movie, mother of mine and I went to Hobby Lobby, as she needed to pick up some more paint. Why is it, you can have over 50 bottles of paint in the house, but not have the exact color you need?? I swear it's a giant conspiracy.
I picked up two rubber stamps, as I couldn't not get them.

One is of a crooked witches hat, and the other says "Bugs and Hisses"

I had to.. I just absolutely had to.

Caught up with Moonlighting season 3, man that show was good. And oh my gods, Mark Harmon was a hottie in it. Yes, the show immediately started to jump the shark after the whole "hook up" moment, but I'll still continue to watch the seasons as they come out on dvd.

Right now, I'm starting Season 4 of Silk Stalkings. Again I love that show.

I finished reading Death Du Jour by Kathy Reichs. The 2nd book of the Bones books.

I know I've commented on this already, but it was highly enjoyable, and I honestly can't wait to read the next one. Got to actually see more of Detective Ryan, which was enjoyable.. I very much am starting to imagine David Boreanaz when I see Detective Andrew Ryan.

Next book up, I'll be finally actually starting The Princess Bride, and I'll also quickly reread Dead Until Dark.

Today mother and I went out to Panera for breakfast to use our last free sammich certificate before it expires. After that we hit up Evilmart, and I bought myself a new pair of jeans. Mother of mine found a pair for me, that actually fit, and when we rung them up, 3$ oh yeah, nothing like finding a pair of jeans that fit and paying less than 5$ for them.
Wait, no that still bothers me. I hate shopping at Evilmart, but I just can't justify spending 40$ on a pair of jeans right now when ever penny is trying to be saved.
My last pair of Evilmart jeans lasted me nearly a year, and that was a year of tough wear, so these should at least last me till the move if I'm good at rotating all my jeans out.

Alright, I think I've rambled on enough. I gotta go check on my dinner.

Bugs and Hisses everyone.