Here, there and everywhere

Broken up
Originally uploaded by Minarae

I try really hard not to talk about my job here, because really, I do not want to lose it. I think I've said that more than once, haven't I? Anyway, my job has really been trying my patience over the past week. There has been more than one moment when I have told people that all I want to do is punch someone in the face because man ALIVE, they have been trying my patience lately. In fact, on Friday I told my boss that I deserve a big giant raise simply because I HAVEN'T punched anyone in the face. For some reason, everyone seems to have decided that the week before a massive new software rollout is the exact right week to be especially stupid. Never mind the fact that I am frantically trying to get all the financials cleaned up before we switch out our finance system or trying to make sure that everyone has done their training before we switch out our timecard system or desperately trying to make sure all of our travel and expense reports are done before we switch out our travel and expense system; ordering business cards is SO MUCH more important. GAH.

So yeah. Every single process of my job is going to be different as of Saturday, so there's a little stress going on there. It would be nice if someone other than my boss understood that really, the admins are being affected way more than the rest of the employees in the group.

Oh and also, the 3-Day starts a week from Friday, and I am trying to get everything packed up and organized and ready. I switched to a Camelbak DayStar this year; the fanny pack i used the last two times is causing more hip/lower back pain than it used to. My only explanation for the new pain is that there is less hips and butt to hold it up this year so I get sore easier.

The real crux of my problem is that I keep overscheduling myself, especially this fall. The months of September-November found my calendar filled on every single damn day. I've gotten such a reputation for a filled calendar that one of my friends emailed me yesterday to tell me her baby shower date...in February. She just wanted to make sure she got on my calendar before something else did. (It's not an insane thing to do, really...I already have things on the calendar for January.) You know, even once I get past the walk, things aren't going to slow down that much, what with the holidays and all. And I would really like it if I had a sweater that fit properly and more than one pair of jeans that doesn't spend all their time trying to fall off of me.

Wah wah wah. Listen to me weep copious amounts of tears about my horrible life filled with social events and volunteering. Oh woe is me, with my boss who digs me and my job that leaves me plenty of time and a flexible schedule so I can do things like go back to school and volunteer. My diamond shoes, they pinch!

Blargh. Apparently I am having one of my scattered, crazy, makes-no-sense days.

(Ain't Kevin lucky? He gets to live with this EVERY DAY!)

But in the end, we're all okay

It's the worst kind of deja vu. Four years to the week after the horror of the fires in 2003, we're sitting in the middle of massive fires all over the county. Fires rage to the north of here, to the east of here, to the south of here.

We live in the center of it all, next to the city. We're in the safest part of the county, and for that I am grateful. But our family (Kevin's father, my mother) live in the suburbs, and we're watching fires creep closer to their homes. We've relocated my in-laws since Kevin's stepmother is ill and cannot handle being in the smoke, and the moms are packed up and ready to go since they are on the very edge of an area that's already under mandatory evacuation orders. I am helping my boss find missing employees, I am command central since all the other admins are either evacuating or on alert.

I don't know whether to throw up or cry or go to sleep. All I know is that I am barely keeping it together, but everyone and everything I love is still okay and I'm clinging to that as tight as I can.

Pray for the city, wish for the city, do whatever you have to. If you have some money, please donate it to the San Diego United Way or the San Diego Red Cross. There are a lot of people that they need to help. We'll be okay, but this is beyond bad.

Left my heart there, yes I did

A few months back, Southwest decided to start flying into San Francisco directly again, and since they decided to kick things off with a huge fare sale I decided it was time for me to go soak in the atmosphere of my favorite city. And that is how I found myself sitting on the N train with Shawn and Jen Fu, on our way to Spike's obscenely cheap and obnoxiously large apartment. (Seriously, it is large enough and cheap enough to cause one to entertain ideas of kidnapping Spike and moving in once he's stashed at the safe house.) We three had spent the day chatting in Jen Fu's wee, perfect apartment, and the conversation had continued itself when we climbed on the train.

People climbed on after us, and a slight figure in teeny silver framed glasses and a hat walked by. The facial features were fine and feminine, but there was a long, elegantly curling goatee growing from the chin. Fu and I glanced at each other, our eyes asking each other the same question.

"I think it's a woman," she murmured. I was just glad I wasn't the only one who had noticed the bearded lady as she boarded.

And then a fantastic creature came onboard. Tall and covered in dirt bike armor, resplendent with a brown cape, facial piercings and long hair that looked almost exactly like Mel Gibson's hair in Braveheart. Jen Fu loved him. So did I.

It was only after a little girl threw up into a plastic bag that I realized that this amusingly perfect train ride in my favorite city with two of my favorite women was exactly what I needed to calm my frazzled brain if only for a little while. And since I was not brave enough to whip out my camera and capture it all right then and there, these few inadequate words will have to preserve it for me so I can remember it later when I need a moment of zen.

Man, I hope there's another fare sale soon.

What I did on my summer vacation

We went to Rhode Island and watched two awesome people get married and I made a bunch of new friends and looked really hot in a pretty dress and then we went to Pennsylvania and we snuggled a bunch of bunnies and shopped for 5 hours and then we went to Delaware and I bought a really expensive camera so I could take a bunch of cool pictures of the Liberty Bell and stuff and then my new friends came to visit and then we flew home.

The end.

Man, I am excellent at summing things up in one sentence, aren't I?

The thing is, there's really no way for me to be able to recap a 10 day vacation in a way that won't bore you. And also, my ability to string words together in a decent way seems to be at an all time low right now. But I will say this much: Measi and Erich have fantastic friends. Never before have I gone to a wedding where I knew no one other than the bride and groom and had such a good time. I was literally sad at the end when I was saying goodbye to my fellow bridesmaids and my other new friends. Not only did we form a new religion (all hail Cheezus!), we formed a gang...a gang of AWESOMENESS. How awesome? So awesome that we had the worm and the crab fighting on the dance floor during the reception. And then we danced and snarked and had such a fantastic time that John and Rodney came to visit us while we were in Pennsylvania with the Pratts.

Because the only thing that could have made the fantasticness of the wedding even more fantastic was the fact that when it was all over, we got to go to the PrattCave and hang out with Pratt and his Mrs and all of the bunnies. And being the fabulous hosts that they are, they took us all over Pennsylvania for shopping and historical adventures in places where Washington slept (and also peed on a tree or two, I'm sure). On top of all that, I even got to see the lovely Coleen again, who is still just as sweet and awesome as she ever was.

In other words, it was a Super Fantastic Vacation, but we're glad to be home. Well, not glad to have to be working again, but happy to be in our own bed with our own yowling, annoying, adorable cats.

Wait til you hear what we came home to. More AWESOMENESS.