Currents of Time

In town again. Back home tomorrow. Back in town the day after. Probably back home again after that. AND BACK IN TOWN ON WEDNESDAY. And back home for New Year's.

Curiosity has inspired me to turn on My Guests (for now, at least. I feel exposed and I do not like it. NOW EVERYONE THE PEOPLE I STUMBLE UPON WILL BE AWARE OF MY CONFUSED, MEANDERING TRIPS ACROSS LJ. I spend so much time going, "wait how did i get here" it is not funny. Except it kinda is. So now I find myself logging out all the time, and then getting annoyed at being asked if I'm old enough to handle whatever, and then logging in on one of my character accounts - and so then almost posting to them, instead) and it is weird. Also. I get a lot more traffic than I thought? ALSO. The only link I can determine is that a fair percentage of them are members of topgearslash (three guesses which cluster of entries they're coming to from there, and anything not having "GT" somewhere in it don't count) which is kind of surprising (people are still reading that?), but kinda cool. Hopefully it is not offending anyone's sensibilities or something.

Everyone else, I have no idea. More internet nomads. (Hello?)

.....



Anyway, it is a neat feature! But, as written above, I will probably turn it back off soon.

Both my department manager and assistant manager know I'm going away and will be out of work for at least the rest of the month. My manager has known this for a while, my assistant manager less so, but when I asked, neither of them said I had to talk to anyone else or fill out any forms or anything for it.

So this morning while I am asleep, the phone rings. My mother is off bringing my brother back to campus and my father is at work and possibly losing his job today, so I stagger up and answer it.

IT IS WORK!

I need to come in and fill out a form. (And then watch the food safety video, since I'm gonna be there and I need to be re-certified and all. Oh, but I can clock in for the goddamn video no i am not clocking in i am busy LEAVE ME ALONE argh!)


I'm annoyed! I'm annoyed because no one mentioned this earlier! I'm annoyed it has to be done now! I'm annoyed because we don't have a working car here today (Honda's with Dad, Toyota's in New York, van's largely undrivable - the most recent broken thing is the speedometer FUN TIMES) and now I have to try and call my father and convince him to come home early when his work is doing another massive round of layoffs and the last things we need is for him to be cutting out! I'm annoyed (and getting a bit worried) because I've been calling him for the last hour and a half and no one is answering! I am annoyed because I have told them a million times and they have heard from my parents half a million times and THEY ARE PLAINLY AWARE that I am not a morning person so why do they keep calling me at a time when they know I will not be awake?!


AND WHY COULDN'T I HAVE BEEN TOLD ABOUT THIS A LITTLE EARLIER?! I WAS JUST IN THERE SUNDAY, I COULD HAVE PICKED ONE UP THEN ASGDSFDJJKLRGJLK



Edit:
Got into work without dying. Filled out the form and watched the stupid video. Got in contact with my father, who's still got his job for at least another two and a half weeks, and then we'll see again.

I DO NOT WANT TO GO TO WORK TODAY.

IT IS BLACK FRIDAY.

I WANT TO STAY HOME AWAY FROM THE CRAZY PEOPLE.


My hope is that everyone will be too busy spamming (haha, what? How was I going to finish this sentence? Spamming the stores with themselves?) attacking each other in WalMart and Best Buy and wherever else people go today to come and swarm my bread display, but people always have time to Zerg the bread, so I am not holding out much hope.

I'm still not feeling too great, which doesn't exactly help.




END OF WHINY ENTRY.


Edit:
And then I come home and, hey, you know what? Looking over the news? At least no one at my store died. Dear Lord, humanity.

Amazon's mp3 library is probably one of the worst things that has ever happened to my wallet. (Well, uh. THIS ONE WAS FREE, AT LEAST. Don't look at me.) (I think I need to just stop browsing YouTube for music videos, because then the amount of new pretty music I encounter will drop off by at least half...)

TODAY WAS MY MOTHER'S BIRTHDAY. She made a cake and it failed miserably*, so then she made a second cake, which came out nice until she dumped a lot of icing on it, and then it ... kind of collapsed in on itself. It was hilarious and I'm not entirely sure why. You could literally watch it slowly slump more and more... We ended up scraping it all back off and putting it in a bowl. So now you have to put it back on if you want any.

* While I was at work, my brother and my mother put half of the first cake in the blender and made "cake balls." (The second half followed later that night, and then Mom melted chocolate all over them. STRANGELY DELICIOUS.)


This morning I had a melting-brain moment. Mother was talking about how she likes a radio bit - think it's called World Cafe? - and how they play pretty much anything. They went from a pretty foreign language song to "Love Shack" right then, so I laughed and said, "Yeah, that's quite different."

Except it came out as "that's quite that's quite that's quite that's quite that's quite that's quite - different." It was the strangest thing. I could not stop repeating myself. Then I went around all day feeling extremely off my mental balance.

ALSO JUST ONCE I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE A DAY AT WORK WHERE MY CUSTOMERS DO NOT EITHER (a) CONFUSE ME TERRIBLY OR (b) MAKE ME WANT TO MURDER SOMETHING.

Yay for mothers!


We have a new assistant manager at work. IT IS MALE. THIS IS BIZARRE. So now there are three males working in the bakery! But one of them is quitting or leaving or something later this week, if the notes on the schedule are anything to go by, so perhaps they wanted to keep the balance. Well, there isn't any balance. Maybe they didn't want the last guy to feel even more outnumbered.

Anyway, he seemed nice enough. I only saw him for like a minute, since he left when I got in.

Also, I have new shoes, so today my feet didn't hurt during or after work. It is glorious.



For the latest "thing Aniko has somehow convinced me to write," (seriously, I'll write anything if people try to talk me into it. WEAK. SO WEAK. I don't just write what Aniko tells me to, Aniko's just the only person who tells me to) I find myself needing a medic-bot. This puts me in the unfortunate position of having to make one up. This is something I am not exactly good at. I'm probably going to use Paradron as an excuse for who this idiot is and where s/he came from, but that doesn't change the IT NEEDS A NAME (and a pronoun...) thing. I've been referring to hir as MedicDude in our AIM conversations, which could actually been abbreviated to MD, or EmDee or something, except then I remember: someone actually has an OC medic named that already.

My soul.


It weeps.


Back to the drawing board!


Edit:
Do you know what I need to stop doing? Reading something and finding points in it I don't like and then having my brain try to figure out how I'd have written it "better." Seriously. KNOCK IT OFF. At least I never seriously consider writing any of it.

Even if I completely do like some of my ideas better.

One of the other people in my Thursday afternoon class works for the same company as I do, but at a different location. Towards the end of tonight's class, we all broke into smaller groups (we have a group project) and since we didn't really have anything to talk about that related to our topic, we talked about other things. Work came up eventually, and, ha, turns out he'd even worked in my department (again, still in a different store) for a while. Said it wasn't so bad, and I said I used to think that until we got our new manager from yet another different store (I named the store in the conversation, but refrain from doing so here!).

He knew immediately who I was talking about and agreed with me about her being slightly awful.

LIFE AFFIRMING MOMENT, LET ME TELL YOU.



Tired. Always tired. Want to not be tired. Hate sick. Also, not sure if I'm going to participate in the strike or not. Guess I'll find out soon, won't I?

I AM COMPOSED ENTIRELY OF MOLDY-BAGEL RAGE.

( Why? )

But, in happier news... I HAS A BROTHER. HOORAY!

And, and, this is the best part. I have made him a fan of Top Gear and we spent over an hour this evening gleeing over things the trio have done. And Oliver. Because no one is immune to Oliver. (I know he actually likes it and is not just letting me talk because it was a conversation and not a Jecca-ramble, and because then he was talking about it to our parents, who both just looked confused.)

...but then, so little of this mess is.


I have now declared my intent to finish "GT" by the end of the month to anyone who will listen, so hopefully a lot of people will be willing to kick me should (when, arg) I fail.


The "James and Richard decide to steal the car" thing was not my idea (it was presented to me when I was, sadly, still suffering from some delusions that this was somehow supposed to make sense. Haha, silly me! My own writings make my head hurt. wah), but it is turning out to be a lot of fun to write, so.

I scrawled out what amounts to about two pages (when typed) at work this evening. ... See, The Stupid Manager insists we all need to become more productive. This, apparently, means coming in and getting all possible work done within the first hour (which, for me, is entirely possible. I suppose she keeps thinking I'm the other closing person, the one who does take forever and a day to do things) and then doing nothing for the next five. Glorious.

TANGENT ASIDE, it is not finished yet (the car theft part, not the entire thing. Obviously the entire thing's not done yet, or I'd just be posting it), but I am actually looking forward to writing more of it. (Though I am quite sure the other two are ridiculously, er, 'out of character,' though it feels really odd applying that phrase to real people, or even fictional representations of real people. I'm going to stop thinking about that now.)



On the entirely other hand, I still cannot believe I am doing this. (The rational part won't die - which is good, really, I need it, but it's suffering pretty thoroughly these days.)


Also, if I do not get to the post office tomorrow before work, I am going to kick myself.


I had some other stuff to say, but the hour is late enough for my Brain to be a little too active, so instead, I have some stuff I need to do before I make that entry. BE AFRAID. (I certainly am a bit worried, at least. When I am not laughing like a deranged fool.)

Monday was awful! And it was an awful end of an awful work-week. AWFULNESS ABOUNDS. Thankfully, today is a blessedly work-free day. No work! Finally! A day off! Now I whine about yesterday, but I will put all of that under a cut so it can be avoided easily.

( Please don't take a picture. )

To celebrate my finally having a day off, last night I stole my brother's copy of Knights of the Old Republic, installed it on my laptop, and created a character. In typical fashion, after I'd picked a face and placed some of her stats, she peered out and decided to name herself. My characters always name themselves. It's very bizarre. I don't know when it started, because I have clear memories of struggling to come up with names for some of my earlier Diablo II characters.

Anyway, I was planning on either using Jade (even though Jade's claimed that one, because the face I chose is similar. Skin's too light and eyes are too blue and not green, but still similar), but, no. She wanted Kyra, but apparently there's an actor who spells her name like that and pronounces it "Kira," so I went with "Kaira." She's warming up to it well enough. (The good news is, despite her physical similarities to Jade, Kaira appears to be much nicer. Hooray!)

Though I can't complain too much, really. I'd rather they chose their own identities right from the beginning, rather than just deciding they weren't going to listen to me one day (like Jade, argh), or sneaking up on me. The sneaks usually tweak the spelling of their name (like Zil), or something similar.


And, really, today has already proven The Best Day Ever. I started my laptop up to find a message waiting over YIM telling me to get on FFXI as soon as I could, so I logged in and boggled for a minute over what the heck I was doing in South Gustaberg when I logged out in West Ronfaure (Gustaberg is several zones away) and macro-swapped my Summerfest Sunbreeze Fest outfit for my normal gear (yes, the fact that I macro-swapped is important, because it means I didn't open my inventory). Also hadn't thought much of the fact that I was standing in the spawning area for Leaping Lizzy (a Notorious Monster who drops a really nice pair of boots).

Anyway, finally Aniko told me to just check my equipment, so, uh. Dude.

Dude.

I have been after that miserable hairpin for about as long as I've been playing this game (we're approaching four years now). It has eluded me! For years! The drop rate is horrible, everyone tries to kill the monster it drops off (because everyone wants it) and the non-rare/ex version (meaning it's tradable) sells for more money than I will ever have. I FLAIL.

And also I owe Aniko a piece of my soul.

And now we (she managed to bring people with her!) are camping the aforementioned Leaping Lizzy and I need to stop being distracted.

They moved the oven forward a few feet about two weeks ago, and ever since, the door has had a habit of inching shut instead of just staying open where we leave it. (Management has been informed, but I'm not sure they care, and it's not as if we can move the oven back, what with them moving the wall forward.) People keep getting burned by it! I am no exception. I was pulling muffins out and the door closed further than I'd thought it would (did I take longer? Or did it shut faster?) and I bumped against the 380+ degree metal door.

Fortunately, I am not an idiot and know how to deal with burns. I'm currently sporting a lovely almost-second-degree char-mark on my elbow. It doesn't hurt (I am, to the best of my knowledge, immune to pain from burns. I've no desire to fully test this by going and getting severe burns or anything of the sort, but past experiences show that burns - sun, oven, others - that by all rights should hurt me simply do not).

I'm the third or fourth person in as many days. The oven is out for blood.



It's the weekend of San Diego Comic Con! Alternators Rodimus is rather steadily making his way onto eBay and I am prepared to battle to the death to obtain him. So. Pretty. And it's Rodimus, and so he is just inherently awesome, anyway. (Plus he's using the Ford GT - same as Mirage - mold, which I love. Obviously he is just excellent and must be owned.) (Edit: No one died! MINE.)


Edit:
We found where the lightning strike mentioned here struck - the box elder behind the barn had a limb with a giant blast-mark on it.

I'm almost certain I'm going to be retiring my Final Fantasy XI account after Summer Fest ends. Sunbreeze Fest. Whatever they're calling it this year. The event's already underway, but the new ("new," maybe) event doesn't start until August. I'm going to check it out, but then I think I'll just... stop. Not delete anything, but stop. I have no friends in-game and the people I know out-of-game who promised me we'd level together went back on their word. It's hard to have fun completely on your own all the time.

Really, I shouldn't be surprised. That's what always happens. Damnit, though, that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. I'm sorry I have a job and you guys don't! Sorry I have to go to work. Sorry you can't just wait until I get home and ask me to join you. I give up.

I'm sorry, Hisime, Ayarei, Kihara. I know you three won't hold it against me, but I'm still sorry. If I weren't so horribly pathetic and insecure and emotionally unstable as I apparently am, this wouldn't be a problem.