fox

I took a personal day.

My god, it's the best idea I ever had. I should have had this idea years ago.

I stayed at Gentleman Caller's last night, and while he normally telecommutes on Tuesdays, he had to go in today for a meeting; nevertheless, we were able to have a slightly lazier morning than we get on days when we both have to go to work. When he left I came along home and ordered the adorable Fluevog Mini Elifs in the new black-and-ivory color (didn't get free shoes, but did get free shipping for Fluevog Day, which I believe should be called Fluevog And Fox Day), and a little later I went to a makeup yoga class, which was really hard and really excellent; then I went to fetch delicious cupcakes from downtown; went to fetch some tasty burger takeout lunch (with a side trip to put gas in the car and a charming encounter with an older woman who'd prepaid for gas and then driven away, and only realized it after I'd started the pump without realizing it hadn't taken my credit card ... because her prepay was still sitting there, so I bought the prepaid gas off her, she prepaid again and remembered to pump her gas that time, and everything was fine except that she'd lost her gas cap, bless her, but she used the word "fermisht" and was so grateful that I was so patient with her); also got some apples and some soda; came home and watched some TV and decided not to do the guest room laundry until tomorrow, and have knit a few rows and eaten a cupcake and had a lovely birthday phone call from my brother and fifty-odd birthday wishes on Facebook.

In general it has been pretty much the best birthday ever, and I think for as long as I have personal days (and presuming the ongoing grooviness of my team and no impending deadlines), I should make it a plan to take a personal day on my birthday as a matter of policy.

IT IS sanj'S BIRTHDAY

RIGHT NOW

YAAAAAAAAAAY

Day started out kind of rough, actually, but I had sanj to abet my retail therapy (in fact, I accomplished most of my retail therapy between my eye appointment and meeting up with sanj, and what she was abetting was errands, but still, the company was valuable in the extreme), and then I came home and had a little rest and then off for dinner with sanj and ellen_fremedon and neotoma and abka and denis77, at my favorite Chinese place, which was v. yummy, and then the gelato place down the street from there, which was nigh miraculous.

Home again in the rain. Days that begin bumpy and end well are better than the opposite kind. Plus, there's more cupcakes in the refrigerator, so it can carry on being my birthday tomorrow as well. :-)

The first bit was a thing where the fifth season of Doctor Who only had one episode, and it involved a nuclear bomb hitting Paris (sorry, Paris), and Rose and Sarah Jane and some random dude and I (?) had just enough time to join the Tenth Doctor in the TARDIS and get the damn door shut before the ... rolling cloud of destruction, such as (a) would be created by something more like a meteor impact than a nuclear bomb and (b) would be moving faster than the speed of sound, never mind faster than, you know, me (but, hey, if Jake Gyllenhaal can outrun freezing) ... anyway, get the damn door shut before it got there. The TARDIS is evidently radiation-proof when closed and secured with one of those question-mark-shaped hooks you often see on screen porch doors.

That was evidently the warm-up act, because the really annoying or troubling dream involved a house guest -- someone I didn't know very well, but a young friend of a friend who needed a place to crash, and he was kind of awful, making a minor ruin of my kitchen and flooding the bathroom and using the vacuum cleaner, which is (note) not a shopvac, to clean it up; all of which was annoying, right, but then when my friends J and D from high school (whom I haven't seen since B and H's wedding omfg ten years ago; D's father died two years ago last week, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, and I couldn't get home for the funeral; my parents did go, and I'd asked them to give her and her mother big hugs from me, and they took this directive quite literally, and explained to D and M as they hugged them that this had been my instruction, and told me later that D and M had agreed that sounded just like me -- none of this was a dream, just a tangent) turned up and I rearranged some things to make room for them too (my apartment as currently configured can sleep about six, and the apartment in the dream was a little bigger), J soon confided in me that the kid, whoever he was, had said something disparaging about my housekeeping. And of course I was having none of that, and if memory serves I slapped him across the face and pulled his hair and tackled him in the manner of a Law & Order police detective and held his face to the ground until he recanted the slur. The fact that my floorboards are soaked and there's a broken vacuum cleaner on my balcony (note: I do not have a balcony) and rice dumped all over my desk (note: I also do not have a desk, though in the dream I had one with a sort of well for a pencil cup, which was, yes, full of rice) is not because I keep a messy apartment, right?, not when the person with my knee in the small of his back is the one who made it that way. At some point in all of this wholenother appeared and also needed a place to stay, and was starting to say how she seemed to have wandered into a party, and then saw me twist the kid's arm behind him a little further, and I clearly remember her saying "Ah. Never mind."

In short, I had an unpleasant dream about a bad houseguest. Given that datlowen -- a good houseguest! -- is coming next week to crash here for a bit before he can move into his place for the summer, that's only a little bit surprising; then as I was putting the coffee on this morning I remembered that I got a notice that shortly some county inspectors will be coming to take a look at my place. I have no idea what they're inspecting for, but it's evidently got me sufficiently rattled to give me unhappy dreams between snooze alarms even though I vacuumed and scrubbed and generally tidied up (vacuumed the freakin sofa!) less than 48 hours ago.


In other news, another of my oldest friends in the world, who never expected to be married, much less to be anybody's mother, is expecting a baby. I'm nothing but pleased for her and her husband, of course -- and really only a tiny, tiny bit heartbroken for me. :-] Happy new year.

My birthday is the first day in May that can never, as long as we keep the calendar as it is now, be Mother's Day. Because Mother's Day is the second Sunday in May, right?, so if May 1 is a Sunday, then Mother's Day is the 8th; and if May 1 is a Monday, then Mother's Day is the 14th. Put the converse way, if May 15 is a Sunday (as it was when I was born, incidentally), then it's the third Sunday in May. Thus are the mathematical possibilities of movable not-exactly-feasts.

With that said: today has been Mother's Day here in North America. In the past I've listed you all by name, but no longer, lest I wound someone by leaving her out, wound someone by including her when she'd rather I didn't, irretrievably eff up the coding now that we're crossing over two platforms, etc., etc. So let me just say that if you are or ever have been or been considered or considered yourself anybody's mother, I hope you have had a happy day. ♥

That's the second sock; the second sock inside-out, to show why we weave in ends as we go so we don't get to where we're finished and then have this staring us in the face before it counts as being done (which I did, so no worries); and the accumulated ends trimmed off both socks.

Picture of both socks together will follow when I can get both of them in the same room, probably on ellen_fremedon's feet.  w00t!

The record must absolutely show that when I gave ellen_fremedon the list of people who had contributed for yarn for her Sekrit Birthday Socks, I neglected to mention meri_oddities, who was therefore of course not included last night in Ellen's post of extreme squee.  This is my fault and not anyone else's, and I know Ellen will correct the squeeage as soon as she sees my flailing note to do so, because Meri should be worshipped right along with those other guys, but I did want to make this note of abject apology.  I'm really very sorry, Meri; the omission, as the Duke of Plaza-Toro says, was not intended as a slight; it was a moment of mental vacancy, and I'm very sorry it turned out to sting you.  :-(

Working from home today.  There is work that can be done at home, and I am going to do it, rather than be continually distracted by other people's meetings and whatnot.

ellen_fremedon, I'm still on for tapas, of course.  I'll just be coming from here instead of there.  Happy birthday!

One should not say "Today is my birthday," since a person has only one birthday, the very day he was born. More properly, one should say "Today is the anniversary of my birthday." Assuming, of course, it is the anniversary of one's birthday. -- Beth Baniszewski, of Columbia, MD, in a second-runner-up Style Invitational entry from August 1, 1999



Last year on my birthday the anniversary of my birthday, wordplay and ellen_fremedon took me out to lunch, and when we came back to work I found money in the parking lot and then I got to my desk and learned that Jerry Falwell had died.

This year, the Indians are up 4-1 in the 8th (and in first place in the AL Central, and no, I don't care that there's more than three quarters of a season to go), there is free iced coffee at Dunkin' Donuts, and the California Supreme Court has ruled in favor of equal marriage rights.


Who wants cake? :-D

[eta: And you know who else's birthday is today? I'll tell you:

Tenzing Norgay (a.k.a. Not Sir Edmund Hillary)
Jasper Johns
Sir Peter Shaffer (who wrote Equus and Amadeus and so on)
Pierre Curie
James Mason (the Voice of God [g])
Anna Maria Alberghetti
Madeleine Albright
etc.]

• presents, including good ones from my folks (and more to come, because my father tells me things shipped in two packages)
  
• tax refund check arrived (w00t!)
  
• the weather is gorgeous today (despite the high pollen count)
  
• lunch out with wordplay and ellen_fremedon (zomg FULL OF FOOD)
  
• money does, apparently, grow on trees/from the ground/etc. -- found a random $3 in the parking lot on the way back from lunch (three twenties would have been nice, but three singles is better than a poke in the eye)
  
• Jerry Falwell has died (sympathy for those who are grieving, but I'm not at all sorry he's gone)
  • Okay, but, this WaPo article attributes to Jerry the following quote: "I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved[.]" Evolved, y'all -- are you listening, Intelligent Designers? -- and I can't even give props to the staff writer and editor on this one.

And it's not even 3:00!

I have a package from Amazon.com.  I have not ordered anything from them, and the box isn't ticking or shedding white powder, so it must be birthday presents.  I am trying to be strong!, and not open it until Tuesday.  But it's difficult.  Monday will be all right, but today and tomorrow will be a challenge.  urgh!

-- to darthhellokitty?  (I know it's not at all how you planned it to be, what with the power failure and the thwarted travel plans.  But look at it this way:  without this complete fuck-up on someone else's part, you probably wouldn't have had this opportunity to use the word "thwarted", which is always a fun word to use.)

Hope it gets better!

1.  Happy birthday to lucinator!

2.  My Rachmaninov score has come home to me!  I sat right down and read through it and hummed.

3.  Celebratory retail!  I commemorated my first full week at work by buying a pot rack (just a wall bar -- my kitchen is of insufficient size even for a semicircle) and a shower curtain to go with my shower curtain liner.  And proper hooks for both.

I clean my bathroom now!  Yay!