Personal Perestróĭka

Is there anything better than someone going to Starbucks and bringing you back something? Especially if it’s a hot, tasty coffee drink when your office is cold, cold, cold?

I am sitting at my desk in a giant fuzzy scarf and cable-knit handwarmers. My toes are cold.

Etsy is freaking

There’s so much stuff on there I could browse forever. I was talking to Jed about it last night and she said that problem with it is that you spend forever browsing it, and often in the time you spent browsing, you could have made yourself half the items you were eyeing! So true, but also filled with cool, cool handmade stuff I could never make. I have a growing favorites list over there. What I very most want is this necklace. How are people so clever and creative that they think of things like that? Totally beyond me. So who else is on Etsy? Let’s all ‘heart’ each other over there!

My 14 year old sister informs me that I need an Etsy store to be cool. There’s not much in it yet, but more coming. It’s a little easier than the website, so I may give up new updates there and put stuff here. Maybe. I don’t know yet. It’s shiny fun though. Mostly because I love shopping through all the other stuff on there.

I am currently the only person in my office. I have work I should be doing so I can be caught up next week. Instead I have spent most of the morning texting with cousin J. Even though he will be here in a few hours for the weekend. I am contemplating doing only the last few urgent things and then leaving to go do the last few T-day errands and then fucking off until I have to go to work tonight.

You know how people have had those “help me pay my debt” pages where they get a dollar from thousands of people and get out of debt? Do you think I could manage a “get me more tattooed” donation page? Yeah, it probably would have to be at least a little pornographic. DAMN IT. I guess I’ll just have to get yet another additional job.

It’s 71°F in Nashville. Seriously, fall, if you want to continue to be like this, I’m all for it. Please tell your brother, winter, that we’d like him to be this mild and lovely as well.

I was flying in this morning and it was cloudy the whole way until we were just outside of Nashville. The late coloring trees looked spectacular from the air. Like lush, lovely, green Tennessee topped in a startling froth of red and orange. It took all I had to come into work today and not convince my friend who picked me up that we should run off and play in the park all day.

I’m so on edge today that every time the phone rings not only do I jump a little, but I’m filled with exceptional dread that this is the call about some indefinable awful thing has happened.

Music soothes me. A little.

Kate Bush – Hounds of Love and Running Up That Hill (click each to download)

Mercury Retrograde, I am so over you. I know you are nearly done, but did you have to punch me in the face on your way out?

It’s rainy and grim outside. Just an hour ago I was walking up the street in my cute neighborhood, almost too warm in the morning sun. The trees were a spectacular, full spectrum of reds, oranges and yellows. Loose leaves drifted in the light breeze as they fell and scuffled along the sidewalk. Sadly I didn’t have my real camera with me, only my phone, which didn’t do the loveliness of it justice, but I’ll share the pics anyway:

(click to see them in their blurry mid-sized fullsize-ness. Ugh, can’t write sensible sentences, need more delicious coffee.)

Can barely force myself to work. It’s like someone turned off the focus feature in my brain. Scattered.

Like Rasputin – Amy Rigby (click to download)

I was admiring the trees as I drove in this morning. It’s the pinnacle of fall here now. The trees are insanely gorgeous, the weather is still mild. Soon it will be cold and the trees will be bare and dead, but for now it’s just picture book pretty, lovely like a never ending story of autumn.

I feel out of sorts today. Like literally unsorted. I’m not sure where I should be. It’s grey and rainy out now. My work email doesn’t seem to be functioning. I’m not getting any personal email, voicemail or text messages this morning. No one seems to be updating any of the blogs I read. It’s enough to make a girl wonder if she exists at all. Maybe I am trapped in some awful limbo where one refreshes and refreshes everything on the internet and nothing ever changes.

Per a conversation I had with K last night, I present you a pointless poll.

Okay, there’s trees on Cherry Blossom Designs.

TREES!

Okay, kids, think of this as pre-ordering, or at least expressing interest so I know how many to make to start off. If you think, maybe, you want a jewelry tree at the low, low price of $20, fill out this poll, so I can at least make some for you all, before I put them up on the site.

Conversation in my office:

AD (*taking a long time to decide what to get for take out*): You don’t know what you want either.

Me: Broccoli beef

AD: Damn it, that’s what I was going to get.

Me: You can order the same thing as me.

AD: Are you being sarcastic?

Me: No, I’m saying, we aren’t on a blind date and sharing tastes from each other’s plates, so it doesn’t matter if we order the same thing.

AD: But I like to be different.

Me: Your individuality is not measured by what you order for Chinese take out.

AD: It is when there’s 32 lunch options and the two of us pick the same things. (*calls – waits*) The take out line is busy, do you want to change your choice while we’re waiting?

Me: No, I’m very confident in my choice. Have you decided what you’re getting?

AD: Yes, but I’m not telling you because you’ll steal my idea.

Seriously, if it was just me and the AD working in the office with the interns and support staff, I’d work here forever and ever. We were both super late for work, because I gave him a ride in and dragged him around on all my pre-work (but work related) errands (and also I was late picking him up because I was late period). And the way in he tried to convince me I was a closeted Republican. Then we went to Starbucks and after working for an hour, my big boss came in with his daughter the AD gave her a handful of Sharpies to color with. Now she has permanent color all over her face. Hee! Probably not as cute to her parents as it is to us. While she colored the AD tried to convince my boss to give us the old printer to take outside and SMASH,

. Big Boss said, no as a conservation organization, we had to donate it somewhere or find a way to recycle it blah blah blah. AD said, no, no! There is more value in aggression release in your employees, let us smash it!

Alas no printer smashing today, but hey! Chinese food! Even if it is crappy Nashville Chinese food. (My fried rice is ORANGE, yo. And, no, Seattle folks, it isn’t like the awesome pink rice at Yak’s in Fremont).

Good – Gingerbread. For breakfast. A good sign today won’t be the worst day ever. Even if it got off to a very slow start. I now have coffee. And gingerbread. Even bad gingerbread is pretty good, as long as it’s not dry and crumbly.

Bad – I hate the pants I’m wearing today. I couldn’t decide what to wear. My good jeans were all dirty. And I found these pants way in the back of a drawer and thought, “Hey! I never wear those.” So I wore them and lo, I hate them. Which is presumably why I never wear them. It might time for another round of clearing out chaff from the closet.

Good – My printer replacement has arrived at work (yes, the FOURTH replacement–never buy anything but HPs people) and the brand new printer should arrive today. Then I will have TWO working printers. Trust me, this is awesome as I currently have two BROKEN printers.

Bad – I’m way behind on a bunch of work because not being able to print, copy or fax has seriously hindered me. Plus it’s super nice outside and thus I don’t want to work. Especially not crappy catch up back work.

Back to the important things. Gingerbread. This one is okay, though perhaps made to appeal to the largest common group of people (it’s from Starbucks) and thus not perfect. It’s not dark enough or spiced enough. And it has frosting on it (though that was easily removed). Am now tempted to make gingerbread at home this weekend. Which means holiday season which means damn Starbucks with their holiday decorations and holiday treats have pushed me early into the holiday season. I guess I should be glad that it’s at least November and not still October.

Remember a while back I said that a Clinton/Giuliani race would be very interesting because the Christian conservatives said that if such a race happened then abortion would be completely off the table as an issue and they would start looking at other things to decide who to vote for (as many evangelical churches vote as a block). The implication here was that social justice would come to the forefront and perhaps the conservative Christian vote would swing to left. Hmm. Well now Pat Robertson has come out for Giuliani. YIKES.

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I am so procrastinating today as work is irritating me like a sweater made out of fire ants. I even typed up a post about it, but even that was so annoying to me that I’ll put it under a cut

How do you accidentally taint toys with GHB? Seriously, I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but how does one have an

like this with chemicals on toys?

Like mint-flavored yogurt covered raisins, but with mushy chocolate inside. Um, having typed that I realize it doesn’t sound at all appealing. It’s okay. Doesn’t have to be appealing to you. More for me.

I really love this picture. Someday I will have a house to decorate as I please and money to do so and I will buy lots and lots of big prints from Shorpy and frame them and hang them all over. Tintype Cowboy would go in the living room, by the front door of my imaginary house.

Heat finally turned on in office. Unfortunately not until after I had to sit through a meeting where I was not only freezing, but also so bored I was contemplating how far I could stab a pen into my leg before the discomfort would noticably register on my face to the other attendees of the meeting. Yep, it’s Monday.

In more (or perhaps less) cheerful news, here’s a song for you: Reputation – Jon Byrd (click to download). I may have to replace Todd Snider’s “Lonely Girl” with this as my new personal theme song (see that’s less cheerful, but new songs for you is cheerful).

I did many things today, the most tangible of which was making little tiny trees to hang earrings on:

TREE!! YAY! They don’t photograph well though. It’s way cooler looking in real life. Or perhaps I am just bad photographer.

My hands are tired. Achy. Bending wire around all day is hard work, yo. But look! Tree! Um, yes, I am inordinately proud of it. Little tree! I will make a forest of them. Now I need to make 7 billion more pairs of cherry earrings.

I followed enochs_fable’s link to Glassbooth, which is an online quiz that matches you up with presidential candidates based on issues you think are important. I took it a couple times, changing up the importance of some issues and no matter what it keeps giving me Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson as my candidates. Which means neither of them will win. Bill was already my main man, and I wasn’t holding out any hope on that point. I don’t like Kucinich, I can’t remember why, so perhaps he just rubs me the wrong way.

I am drinking gas station coffee. It could be worse. I’m not sure how. I guess I could be drinking gas station coffee that didn’t have 6 little things of half n’ half in it to neutralize the exceptional acidity.

Día de los Muertos!!! So much better than Halloween. Next year I am building an altar for it. Hmm, maybe a really funky one to country stars who have moved on. Oooh, I feel the tingle of massive art project perhaps too big to undertake coming on! Hurray! Like this:

Only, oh man, with like Minnie Pearl and Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb and EVERYONE, dressed up like saints, decorated in Mexican folk art and just oh oh oh oh! I am so rearranging my whole life so I have time to do this next year. Yeah, Día de los Muertos is good times alright, or gonna be anyway.

HOWEVER, there’s more important things than that even on November 2. WAY MORE IMPORTANT.

Miss RiRi, sister of my heart, if I was there, I would so totally make you this cake:

(HA! Since I am far away you cannot prove that I wouldn’t make this cake, nor can you get me for lying. HEHEHEHEHE!)

Hmm, I’m feeling all powerful right now, I know I could make you cry, but I’m not actually usually intentionally mean, so instead I’ll just say that I love more than pie. More than bacon. If I could spend a sunny fall afternoon any way I wanted I’d go for a walk with you and then we could split a Coke and couple slices at Pagliacci’s while commenting on the pretty gay boys walking by on Broadway. You are the sum of all my best parts, what keeps my worst parts in check and both the weight and the feather that keeps me balanced no matter how far away I am.

Of course now you are OLD and I’m not sure I can depend on you anymore what with the senility and all. I will visit you at the old folks home as often as I can though. Love you so very much. Happy birthday!!