Dibs!

We moved at work today, new cubicles and all that jazz. I went to use the restroom and the bathroom is set up exactly the same, so I went to my normal stall. I was a little surprised to see "Marlene" in stickers all over the door. I was a little shocked... you can claim a public bathroom stall? Does that mean I can't use it? (I was rebellious and used it.) I looked around and found that Chelcy, Jolynn, Katharine and Karen had also claimed stalls. That leaves 3 for the rest of the public.

My goal is now to meet Marlene to see if I should boobytrap her stall or if I should be nice.

Contradictions

I was discussing the pros and cons of blogging today with Laser Jock.  (Or, in other words, I was trying to convince him to blog and he'd have none of it.)  That conversation inspired me to blog again (see my last post) and next thing I knew, I was reading through my archives.  I found that when I got to my really long posts, I skipped them.

Does anyone else find this hypocritical of me?  I won't even read my own long blog posts?

[sigh]

For you, Goblin King

The Goblin King got mad at me the other day for not posting on this blog anymore.  "I miss all the random stuff you'd come up with."

Hmm... what random things could I tell you today?

Did you know that you can put together an entire artificial Christmas tree while running horrible, cursed stats, and get both done without sacrificing the other?  It also makes the worst job in the world tolerable.  Too bad I can't do it again tomorrow as I do the worst part of stats.  [sigh]

I repotted Alfred today.  Is it cruel to do this to a plant?

Laser Jock thought I was being quite cruel.  In fact he told me that I was beig string-ent.  [rolls eyes]  I convinced him I was doing it out of love.  Alfred isn't strong enough to hold himself up in his new pot quite yet.  Give it a week or so and I'll probably remove two of those three strings.  The last one will probably get moved over the weeks to train him to stay in his pot.  It's huge.  I can't repot him into something bigger.  He must learn to grow in a circle.

Hmmm... something else.  Three is a good number.  I should have three random things on here.  Oh, this should please you, GK.  A Garfield comic!  This one made me laugh right out loud.  Go check it out.

Yellow

This is the T-shirt I bought Yellow in Jerusalem as a gag gift. (Please note the word "Girl" is in various fonts. They didn't have the press-on with "girlfriend" so they got a "boyfriend" one, cut out the word "boy", and replaced it with scrap letters that they had cut out from other press-ons. Also, it was a man with one arm that made this shirt. Also, please note the color of the shirt.)

He wore it for the first time (that I've ever seen) when we went camping over Labor Day. It made me laugh and I figured it should be shared with the world.

Thank you for saying thank you!

Part of my job is to answer emails from patrons about our website. Sometimes patrons can be kind of snarky in their emails ("Why does your site do this when I obviously told it to do this other thing?!???!?!?!"), and I take great pleasure in either fixing the problem or writing back and very tactfully explaining what they did wrong. (I take no pleasure when there's nothing I can do about the problem. That just annoys me.)

Yesterday I answered just such an email. I saw immediately what she had done wrong and why it would be confusing. So, in great detail, I explained how each part of the site worked, and even went beyond that and did her search for her, telling her exactly where she could find the data she wanted. It made me feel kind of cool to be able to answer her email in such detail.

Today I got the following reply from her, "That was a FANTASTIC explanation! Thank you for taking time to do all that for me."

It made me smile. Those kind of responses make all the snarky emails totally worth it.

junk mail

Dear Publishers Clearing House ~

Stop sending me your crap. I don't open it, and you're just killing trees.

~ Dragon Lady

I CAN cook! I promise!

Despite my best efforts to prove otherwise today in my labors of a boston cream pie (Brother's birthday) and brownies (visiting teaching), I really can cook! (We won't go into the terrors of my kitchen today.) I mean, really... I made a boston cream pie!

So why is it that we got two fire extinguishers for wedding presents? Do people not know me at all?! (Heartless, you may remain silent on this one.)

Plant Spotlight - Iris Daphne of Guild

This beautiful orchid was one of my favorite splurges at IKEA. Isn't she pretty? Soon after I got her, I decided that all of my plants needed to be named. I enlisted the help of my roommates in doing so. The Cold One was quite fantastic about helping me come up with names... except for this beauty. The Cold One insisted upon calling her Iris. I can't call her Iris! She'll have an identity complex. Problem is, Heartless also liked the name Iris and every once in awhile I'd even find myself slipping. [sigh] However, I liked the name Daphne much better for her. It seems a royal name... also, it's the name of my best friend when I was a small child. Finally, a compromise was struck. Her name is officially Iris Daphne of Guild. When I initially named her, it was a lot more complicated. Probably something inspired by Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. The several names were forgotten, however, and it just became Iris Daphne. But that sounded... empty. It was missing something. It wasn't royal enough. So she got a place as well. Where is Guild, you ask? No idea. But I have the strangest suspicion that it was subconsciously influenced by Myst.

Sadly... she's down to only two flowers. However, I moved her to a windowsill and she has been much happier. There is a bud about ready to bloom and another one that I expect will bloom in a week or two.

Finally!

When you're done with the game, you can watch an instant replay. Typically this only takes a couple of minutes. As for this game...
Breakdown
Taking over all other colors: 2 mins
Battle over that one territory: 4.5 mins
Final takeover, once I broke through that bottleneck: 1 min

Dice Wars... indefinitely

This is a horrible position to be in.  I've been battling green for probably the past 20 minutes and it always comes back to this.  Unfortunately, Dice Wars is addicting, so I just keep playing... I wonder who will give up first, me or the computer.