a little italy

I was trying to steer my bike into the offices past the very heavy security door, when I heard this conversation from two men coming out of the bathroom.

"Dude, you never wash your hands?"

Okay, so it wasn't much of a conversation, but it was enough of one to get me started.

There are lots of disgusting things in this world. Leopard-skin baby carriages, for instance. Old Navy commercials. My tennis shoes. None of them hold a candle to Peepee Man.

He knows who he is. He goes to the toilet, does his thing, and then comes bouncing out of the bathroom with e coli under his fingernails. He's too much of a man to let soap and water touch his hands. "Hi, Yuhri!!" he yells, and comes charging up for a hug, and because you don't realize that he's the Peepee Man and that he's spreading dead cells from unmentionable body parts all over your clothes, together with a dozen other dangerous and potentially lethal diseases, you let him. And if you're really unlucky, I mean really unlucky, he's the guy who cooks in your cafeteria, or offers you a slice of his apple, which he peeled and sliced with his own bare hands. I loathe these men. In fact, I loathe the women who pretend to be these men. There is a special hell for these people, and someday, I will find out who they are and make them pay. They should have special tags identifying them so that non-Peepee Men and non-Peepee Women can decide whether or not they want to share their french fries or not. Peepee Men and Peepee Women should have special Peepee Clubs away from non-Peepee People where they can meet and breed and have ugly little Peepee Babies who will become experimental subjects for germ warfare programs.

It's revolting.

No, don't argue with me.

Ick.

***

A couple more scenes from work before I go on to the main body.

Max the dog came to visit us yesterday; we were busy celebrating Indian Mom's birthday with a pink cake, -- "since it's more cost-effective than handing out individual pink slips," someone joked, ha ha, very funny, bite me -- when the Project Coordinator brought her visiting dog Max into the conference room.

Max and Slushpuppy boy instantly made friends; there was much petting and panting and shedding involved on both sides. At one point, Max dropped his hindquarters on the Project Coordinator's lap and began busily cleaning any and all body parts that could be considered even remotely reproductive in nature; that accomplished, he promptly dashed up to me and planted his tongue and nose squarely on my lips. In view of my opinions expressed above, this was not a fun thing. Of course, nobody wants to look like an animal hater, so on the outside I laughed, while on the inside, I went to my happy place.

A small crowd of Excite -- not @Home, but Excite -- employees walked by outside, and Max trotted over to the window to stare at them.

"You want to meet them, Max?" crooned Slushpuppy boy. "Those are Excite QA engineers. They're going to be unemployed soon."

Our stock closed at 52 cents, a one-week high, and that's how morale is in my company. How about yours?

***

Scene Two.

Monday, I gave the Firecracker a belated birthday present. "I couldn't find the one I originally meant to give you," I apologized. "I hope this works out."

I got her a hat at Macy's, a red wool felt job with a curved brim on one side and a floppy thing on the other. "A hat's such a personal thing. I mean, not all hats look good on people. I know that on my head---"

I was going to say, 'on my head, most hats look bad,' but the Firecracker never let me finish my sentence.

"OH, HAT. IS GOOD. I LOOK GOOD IN HATS. SEE? IT FIT PERFECTLY. I HAVE NICE HEAD." She slid it on and regarded me complacently. It was true. She looked cute.

...so now I know my problem. I no have nice head. "Great," I said, weakly. "Glad you like it."

***

There's an Italian food chain up and down the west cost, possibly elsewhere as well, called 'Bucca di Beppo.' This is, without a doubt, the biggest, most extravagent, obscene example of family dining in the world. Italian food is served, not by the platter, but by the trough; each dish serves ten people or more, with leftovers. Those Italians can't seem to do anything in moderation. First they have to conquer the entire world, then they have to build a wall across England, then they have to run Catholicism, and now Bucca di Beppo's. Moderation is a totally foreign concept to them. I think if they had to participate in an American election, it would kill them, every last one.

The Guy's friend was putting together a party for after their weekly softball game, and I received an evite at work one day.

"Come," he urged. "You can meet all my friends."

My very presence at a social gathering where I know fewer than 95% of the people is a party foul. I have the people skills of a born-again fundamentalist at a pro-choice convention. Plus, there are stags during hunting season less shy of meeting people than I am. Compared to me, they're busy hauling trays of hors d'oeuvres to red-capped hunters in the woods. "So, you comfortable out here? Can I get you anything? Tea? Biscuits? Could I interest you in a bulls-eye painted on my ass?" Despite the fact that I've met four of the Guy's friends already and had thus filled my yearly quota of "New People," I RSVPed back and put the appointment in my Palm.

"Yo. What should I call [insert name here] for the journal?"

The Guy stares at me from the Harry Potter book. "Soprano girl? I don't know. Sweet Pipes?"

Um, okay. (Does he mean 'Soprano' as in the HBO series? We'll pretend that he does. We don't understand the Sweet Pipes reference.)

I rode down to Palo Alto on the train, a ten minute ride, and was met by my boyfriend at the station. We walked the two blocks to the restaurant, where I underwent the harrowing experience of meeting forty complete strangers and learning sixty names, all of them alien. Where are all the normal-named people? Where are the Bobs, the Jeffs, the Jacks, the Harrys? Why don't I ever get to meet any of them?

"Hi, my name is Mawahahilak'toi. You can call me Mawaha'toi."

Right.

The Guy introduced me to a nine-foot tall man who actually had a normal, human name, a name that I could retain for longer than it would take me to sneeze. "You know Yuhri?" he asked him.

"Oh, right, we've met before," the complete stranger said, and towered over me.

"Okay," I said, agreeably. "What's your name?"

"[insert name here]," the Tall Guy said, and, I swear to God, got taller.

I only just bit back one of those slightly hysterical, completely un-PC things that skip to the tip of my tongue in situations like this. "Sorry. I can never remember you white people from one day to the next. You all look alike." "Sorry," I mumbled meekly, instead, and committed his name to memory.

Maturity points for me! 28! 28!

Little John, it turned out, was a hilarious handicap to have inflicted on one during a foreign social situation; a half-second before I met another completely new person, my seventieth new person of the night, he swooped down on me; for a moment, the world was blacked out: so this is what it's like to get squashed by a falling satellite, I thought, vaguely. "Don't look this girl in the eyes," he hissed at me. "She's evil. She serves Satan." Then he was gone, and I found myself numbly committing some sweet-looking blonde's name to memory as 'Lucifer' and wondering exactly why I kept avoiding looking her in the face.

The rule was that the restaurant wouldn't seat a party until the entire party had gathered. Soprano Girl was the cruise director of the evening; she counted heads, did a Solid Gold dance on the sidewalk for the entertainment of bemused passersby, then disappeared into the restaurant to place an order for her favorite dish. Outside, the party grew rowdier. It was, hm, one of those nights. To wit:

"....every Canadian I know says that Canadian women are dumb," the Guy told all of Palo Alto, loudly, apropos some trip that Little John and his buddies had made to our neighbors to the north earlier in the year. "It's weird. Like, four Canadian guys I know all say the same thing, that the women up there are dumb."

"They have good beer, and that makes up for it, I guess," Little John joked.

"....must have had three or four," Little John's friend said, following some other tangent of the same conversation.

"Uh, beer--?" asked the Guy. "--Just checking."

"What do you do?" the others at the table asked when we were seated.

"She works for Excite@Home," the Guy told them. I started to laugh. In my youth, I would never have realized that 'work at' could be a relative term.

"Are you still employed?" everyone wanted to know.

Little John poked me, gingerly. "A real live Excite@Home employee. I touched one!" he yelled.

Soprano Girl roamed about the restaurant at will; she'd already bonded with the entire staff there, and was moving on to make conquests of the other patrons as well. While she seduced a slice of pizza off of a neighboring table, we inspected the black-and-white photographs covering the walls. To one side was a picture of Sophia Loren staring dubiously down the decollage of a very well-endowed blond woman whose dress looked like it was taped onto the nipples to keep from falling down.

On the wall directly facing us, another black-and-white featured a smiling woman in a low-cut dress holding up a fork loaded with enough spaghetti to feed most of the restaurant. As in the Sophia Loren picture, it was a very low-cut dress; in fact, the picture was chiefly noodles and breasts. The rest of the woman, smiles and clothes and all, were an afterthought.

"Who's that?" I asked the Guy and Little John in order to participate in the conversation, however inane my contribution. Both of them turned to look, and focused instantly on the woman.

"I want spaghetti," the Guy and Little John chorused in unison.

"I want breasts with mine," Little John declared.

Well, part of the woman, anyway.

Somehow, during the course of this conversation, Soprano Girl had managed to liberate the rest of the pizza from the complete strangers who were sitting at the nearby table.

I can just imagine the conversation taking place at that table once the pizza was gone.

"What the hell just happened there?"

"Did you just give our pizza to that chick?"

"Did I?"

"Where the f*** is the rest of our pizza? Is she going to return it?"

"Jeff just gave it to that girl."

"Goddammit, Jeff!" -- the four guys at this table are named Bob, Jeff, Jack, and Harry; the normal-named people went out together tonight, and that's why they weren't with us -- "We were going to eat that."

"You were not."

"Well, I might have."

"Who the hell gives away half a pizza to a girl?"

"Who the hell comes by and asks for half a pizza?"

"Did you guys see that girl?"

"Well, then. I think, under the circumstances, I was fully justified in giving away the pizza. You going to finish eating that piece of chicken there, Jack?"

"You try to give my chicken to her, Jeff, you're a dead man."

"I can't believe you gave away half our pizza to a girl, dude."

Soprano Girl's a babe.

After dinner, I found myself waiting for the Guy to say goodbye to his friends in front of a plaster Venus that some considerate soul had thoughtfully marked nipples on. One of his friends--

"Hey. What should I call [insert name here]?"

"Well, her Yahoo ID is Diva."

Vocalists. Ah, it takes me back--

--told us about her new fitness program, showed us the most frightening 'before' and 'after' shots I've ever seen, (though they give me hope. Someday, I'll be one of those. Look, ma! Before! Before! And af--no, wait, we're still at before. Before!) and then went on to say she'd been reading my journal.

"When I get bored at work, I reach over and click on Faulty Vision, get on the phone with Soprano Girl...psst. Yuhri's posted another entry...."

Readers. Hm. "You've inspired me," Soprano Girl said. "I started one. I call it 'Misadventures in Dating.' I'll link to yours off of it--" and off she flitted, to say good-bye to somebody else.

***

"Soprano Girl's going to have a totally big head after reading this," the Guy informs me.

"She's a babe," I tell him, and walk into the kitchen where my roommate is busily cleaning the oven.

Easy-Off is lethal stuff. I started cleaning the oven yesterday and accidentally breathed in some of the mist. My lungs still burn when I exert myself. I nearly coughed one of them up.

"Are you okay?" I ask her, and she stares at me blankly.

"What? I'm fine. I'm not light-headed or anything. Ooh, maybe I'm high off this stuff and that's where I'm getting all this energy." She waves the canister around with triumph and sprays some more while I make a hasty escape. 12:47 am.

One fruit roll-up, and then I'm going to bed.

rebuttal

I have this insane urge to yell "CHEEKY MONKEY! CHEEKY MONKEY!" and dash out of work in my bare feet today. I suppose it all comes of being a Friday. I have two tupperware containers full of leftovers on my desk, and one of them is full of two pounds of salmon. See, and I don't know what I was thinking when I brought it to work, hoping my coworkers would eat it. Like, half of them are vegetarian, and even though I tried to convince them otherwise, they don't seem to feel that salmon classifies as a vegetable.

Slushpuppy stood outside my cube for a long time playing with my magnetic-pen Playskool etch-a-sketch, and when I finally pounced out to investigate, I discovered that he'd drawn a picture of the 101 and a massive accident involving little cars and scottish terriers. "Happy Birthday," he said. "So, hey, you're old, aren't you? September 14th. That's when I turn 22."

Okay, so I've already written an entry for the day, but I don't care. It's Friday, and while I'm usually really productive on Fridays, today I feel a little bit, ho hum, not productive.

So.

Oh, that's sweet. The Intern just gave me a little box of Godiva chocolates. I like the Godiva assortment boxes; they're little and square and gold and neatly packaged; I promptly popped it open and found, in the selection of four, `one that was shaped like a pendulous breast defying gravity. Enchanted, I ate it. It was a white cherry cordial, apparently; I swallowed it quickly -- sweet! sugar! black dots dancing in front of eyes! -- and thanked the Intern.

Then I went back to my desk and thought out entertaining reasons why I should have decided to eat a breast-shaped chocolate. I once spent a twelve-hour day pretending to be lesbian, if you make faces like that, someday your face will freeze like that, but I'm pretty sure there were no lingering Freudian motivations behind the selection. Besides, being lesbian was just like not being lesbian for me, except that I got to wear Tevas. Of course, I was wearing Tevas anyway, and becoming lesbian was sort of an arbitrary decision I made between breakfast and lunch because I didn't have anything else to do but housework, and okay, so I didn't actually leave the apartment the entire day except to go out once to buy a head of cabbage -- do lesbians buy cabbage? -- so maybe it wasn't exactly an Event in the great books of social experimentation, but still.

***

Slushpuppy asked, "So what're you going to do for your birthday? You going to party? You going to paint the town red? Go dancing, dinner, what? Hanging out with your boyfriend?"

"I'll find out," I told him, and went home from work at around seven.

Straight home. The Guy and I held unenthusiastic conversation on the phone when I got home, "Do you want me to come over?" "It doesn't matter to me. Do you want to come over?" "I could. It's your birthday." "If you want to, come over. How do you feel?" "Nauseous."

Oh, right, so the Guy has been suffering food poisoning since England. He got on the plane sick, he got off the plane sick, and he's continued to eat and be sick all week. Solid food, it turns out, is a bad thing for those who have food poisoning. Go figure. He came over. I made him soup. I ate a tuna fish sandwich. He brought some comic books over that he knew I wanted to read. The Guy read comic books, then felt woozy and went to bed. My mom called; we talked on the phone for a while, or rather, I listened while she brought up every single embarrassing story of Yuhri-as-a-baby that she's ever trotted out of her endless repository of baby stories. I read comics until about one a.m., and then I went to bed. Also, the Guy ate the rest of my chocolates, but I think that might have been the next day so never mind.

...and that was my birthday. I'm a grown-up now. I do grown-up things, yo. (Ignore the bit about the comics. That was a flashback to my immature youth. Right.)

My sister called me at an obscene hour -- "Come up. Come up! What're you doing? You're reading? That's pathetic. Let's go do something..." -- and only backed down when she found out that the Guy was ill. In an abrupt, slightly surreal about-face, she directed me to take care of him. "Because that's what girlfriends do," she lied. Having finally seen me together with a guy, she suffers intense anxiety that I shall fail in my girlfriendly duties due to some lack of coaching on her part. Lacking any useful advice, or at least any advice that I would be willing to believe she'd ever practiced in her own relationships, she makes stuff up as she goes along. "Make him turtle soup. Heat him up. Um, Pat him on the head and tell him that he's a good boy. Oh, and get him vodka. That always works for me." Having ended on a note of actual verity, we made plans for the next day and she hung up.

After a course of my sister's cure, my boyfriend would end up a certified alcoholic Irish setter.

Saturday, to make up for Friday, I rolled up to San Francisco on the train, met up with my sister for lunch, bought myself an L-clamp adaptor for my binoculars, (it doesn't fit on the tripod sitting in my living room, which just figures), went to dinner with the Guy, my sister, and her boyfriend, and treated them all to a showing of Rush Hour 2. Then I looked at stars.

Grown-ups, I tell you. Grown-up things. Ignore the bit about Rush Hour 2. I'm sort of dubious about the maturity points I'd get for that.

I changed my mind. I don't like being a grown-up. I like hanging with my sister, but I did that before I was a grown-up. I like going out to dinner and going to movies, but that's not a grown-up thing either, is it? Oh, I got to ride on the train all by myself, but I did that when I was young and nubile, so that can't be a grown-up thing. Grown-up. 28. I changed my mind. I'm entitled to do that from time to time. I'm depressed. According to statistics, that means I'm, uh, let's see. 82 minus 28, which leaves 54 years left of my life.

My Life. My Life! My beautiful Life! It's almost over. Where did the time go? Dammit, I'm sure someone has stolen my youth. Someone must have, or I would remember more of it. I mean, I'm pretty sure that I wasn't some fall-down, black-out crack baby, which is the only reason I can think of for not having childhood memories. I wasn't in any major car accidents so I couldn't have amnesia; I'm also pretty sure I was never kidnapped and probed by aliens, which seems to be Most Popular Reason Number Three for not being able to remember the past. Of course, I'm not from Nebraska so I couldn't claim that excuse anyway. I don't even remember being potty trained! Don't you think I should remember something like that? My God. What if I was never potty trained? What if that was something that happened to someone else, and they only told me that I was potty trained, and I believed them because I'm JUST THAT SENILE?

Damn, I'm depressed. I'm not going to be able to let go of that, now. It'll haunt me for years. I'll never be able to look a toilet in the eye again.

***

Okay. It's morning, and I've changed my mind again. I can do that, because I'm a woman, and women do that sort of thing. I'm not depressed. I like being 28. You know why? Because until I'm 30, I can at least hold out hopes of a sudden growth spurt. I really could be 5'3" by the time I get to work tomorrow.

Also, I'm pretty sure that I was potty trained. I walked into the bathroom today and it all came flooding back to me.

I probably could have phrased that better, so we'll leave that where it is and move on to something else, which was the guy sitting next to us in the restaurant yesterday.

Halfway through dinner last night, I noticed that there was a solitary man eating dinner at the table next to ours. He was listening to our conversation.

"...because we were having this conversation, and Masako said I was one of the most stable people she knew," I explained. (Wait for it. This isn't a random segue. It's got relevence. Wait for it, wait for it.)

My sister was unwilling to commit that far. "Well, you're stable in a neurotic way," she amended. "You're really responsible. You'll always do the right thing, but you'll be all neurotic the rest of the time."

"That's my responsible girl," crooned the Guy. "It's the ox in her."

I paused, and eyed him speculatively. (Wait for it, wait for it.) "Did you just call me a cow?"

The guy in the table next to us -- I was the only one who was facing him directly at this point -- started to hiccup on his tea. He hastily covered his face with a napkin, and I could just see the muscles in his cheek while he grinned his head off. Ah ha, thought I. Audience. The rest of the evening was spent, on my side anyway, trying to entertain him.

"I object to the outright lying that happens in your journal," the Guy said.

"Lying? What lying? I never lie."

"You squished two conversations into one, that's what I call lying. Okay, so you misled---"

"What's this?" asked my sister's boyfriend.

"Yuhri keeps a journal online," my sister explained. "It's funny--"

"---Never lie," I said, firmly.

"---conversation in the grocery store, and then later on, when you stole the peach---"

"---she keeps it where?--"

"---two completely different convers---"

"---there's a web page, I think. I haven't read it in---"

"---who cares? Poetic license---"

"---email?---"

"---never said 'let's hear it for genetic engineering'---"

"---does she write about me?---"

"---I remember distinctly. I was just saving---"

"---selective memory---"

"---Aha! Selective memory! That's what it is."

"If you want, I'll let you rebut online," I said with dignity.

"Flatulant monkey," the Guy accused.

The man at the next table took hasty refuge behind his napkin again. And now I've presented the Guy's rebuttal to my previous entry, so we'll call it even.

Who, by the way, calls their girlfriend Flatulant Monkey? I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to do that.

***

Two items I consider worthy of note.

1. Jeremy Piven was in Rush Hour 2. I squeaked when I saw him.

"Jeremy Piven! I love him!"

The Guy volunteered the information, "He used to have his own TV show."

"What?" I said, stupidly. It was surprise that the Guy knew this at all.

"Cupid," he explained, and lapsed into silence while I digested the fact that I'm dating a know-it-all who knows the Right Things, and how cool is that?

2. I went to Costco and got Fruit Roll-ups. Life is sweet.

me me me!

I love the Firecracker. She's one of my favorite people; one of the reasons I go into work every day. For some unfathomable reason, she persists in acting like I'm the repository for all knowledge in the universe. No matter how idiotic the question, how unlikely it is that I would know the answer, or how much more qualified everybody else in the group is to answer, she always seems to come to me first.

"YUHRI? HOW YOU DO REGULAR EXPRESSION IN SHELL?"

"YUHRI? HOW I FIND DOCTOR FOR KAISER?"

"YUHRI? HOW I FIX CAR?"

"YUHRI? THESE PANTS LOOK FUNNY?"

She caught me on the way out of the office today at lunch to tell me the latest entry in her ongoing allergy saga. A while back she started breaking out in little rashes across her body for no apparent reason; she went in to Kaiser to get them looked at, and they gave her some random medication which just ran out.

"I HAVE WORST DOCTOR IN WORLD TODAY," she told me in her usual exclamation point conversational style. "I TELL HIM, I HAVE RASH, IT ALLERGY, DOING TESTING MORE AND I OUT MEDICINE, I ASK HIM, MEDICINE NO WORKING AND HE SAY IT NO CURING. I TELL HIM, I NOT WANT TO BE LIKE MOTHER, LIKE RELATIVE FOR 20 YEAR THEY HAVE RASH IT NEVER GO AWAY AND HE SAY I TELL YOU TWO TIMES IT NO CURE HE DOESN'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT. AND HE SAY HE DOESN'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT AND HE LEAVE."

She ended on a note of righteous indignation, and I couldn't help but laugh. Poor Firecracker. She's really suffering, but she's so funny too. I love this woman. I just want to squish her.

***

....and now the Firecracker is convinced that we're all out to get her. "Just because you think there's a conspiracy against you, doesn't mean you're wrong," I assured her.

I adore her. Also, I'm a little frightened of her. She may only be four-foot two, but she's feisty, by gum. If she ever reads this journal, I'm a dead woman.

***

I promised the Guy I would write about the kegger in my kitchen, but I haven't had the energy. Also, it's my birthday, so I'm going to do what I want to do.

Hey, guess what! I was making fish faces at him in the car and looking at his bald spot, and I named it. "Skid Row." How's that? A little touch of Seattle, a little play on words....it's a bald spot on his jaw, by the way, not his head. There's a little patch of skin on his right jaw that doesn't have any hair follicles on it, so when he shaves, the razor just "skids" right off of it, see? Damn, I'm clever. His nose can be the Space Needle. It's so nice having a boyfriend with a three-dimensional face.

I'm also old. My driver's license says I'm 28. How did that happen? Just yesterday I was a blithe, happy, roly-poly 27-year-old dancing through the halls of life wearing a blue propeller beanie, and now I'm a blithe, happy, roly-poly 28-year-old skipping through the halls of life wearing a blue propeller beanie.

I stole a peach from the Guy. "They're not like this in England," he said when he bought it. "Food's expensive there, and the fruit is scrawny. Not like the fruit in the US. It's double the size and half the price."

"It's also genetically engineered," I reminded him.

"Let's hear it for genetically engineered fruit!"

"Is it ripe?" I asked him when I stole it.

"It's firm, but it's actually good. It's just like you."

I poked the peach. It was almost a perfect sphere. "Are you calling me fat?" I asked, suspiciously.

"Not at all. It's full-bodied and good, just like you," he declared.

It never ceases to entertain me, how he manages to steer clear of the word 'fat'. He's a wily one. I cackled.

***

I walked in to work today and found that one of my co-workers had put up a Winnie-The-Pooh chain of letters in my cube reading 'H-A-P-P-Y-B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y.' I squeaked emotionally at her and squashed her mercilessly.

"I got you a balloon too," she said apologetically, rubbing her bruises, "but I was trying to put it in the car and it got away."

A giant box sitting on my chair turned out to be from Alex in Bryn Mawr; my teammates gathered around, devoured with curiosity, and ooh-ed and aah-ed at the spiffy present. He sent me a really neat kaleidoscope made of glass and shiny sparkly bits. Everybody demanded to have a look, which I very generously permitted, and I wasn't dancing around in anxiety that it would get dropped and broken, oh no. His card from the previous year is still sitting in splendor atop my shelf at work. Binky sent me a happy birthday email; two messages were waiting for me on the phone, one of Tara and her husband singing happy birthday -- a vaguely painful experience, since they're both moderately tone-deaf, but charming nonetheless -- and another of my sister and her boyfriend yelling the same from their work. My manager came around the corner to wish me happy birthday, and stayed to eat my cereal.

I feel Loved. Hurrah!

***

Okay. The Firecracker is tremendously excited about my kaleidoscope. "I WANT ONE! I GOING TO GET ONE. WHERE YOU GET?" she yelled over my cubicle wall, and then engaged me in a massive dialogue over the fact that I never seem to get 'normal' presents. "I GET NORMAL THING FOR BIRTHDAY, DINNER, FLOWERS, PERFUME, ALWAYS SAME. IS VERY BORING. YOU GET DIFFERENT THING, ALWAYS INTERESTING. YOUR FRIEND KNOW, YOU LIKE THING NOT SAME LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE."

Well, yeah, I have cool friends. There was the time my Mom gave me a dirt turtle, for instance. (For those of you who are wondering, this isn't a breed. This is, quite literally, a turtle made out of dirt.) She'd decided that I was collecting turtles. Then there was the time a friend gave me half a chess set. That is to say, all the black pieces. No board. And then there was the spiffy lucite ball I got from my sister last year, and the devil duckies and the sadistic rubiks nightmare Flamingo gave me, and the silk dying kit that Binky gave me, and the two little eggs with flat feet that Tara gave me that stick to things and spill salt and pepper. I get cool shit, yo. I don't think anybody has ever given me perfume, and I'd like to keep it that way. Don't buy me feminine crap. I'm not good at being feminine. Buy me shiny things, colorful things, things that fly or roll or bounce or twist, things I can play with that'll make me laugh and other people swear.

Overwhelmed with compassion for the poor Firecracker, I interrupted her as she complained about never being able to get out anymore to volunteer to babysit for her round-headed baby. She became quite giddy with delight. Also, very loud. My roommate will be ecstatic. She loves babies.

Incidentally, I hate my birth stone. Peridot. Peri-dot. It's bile-green. Whoever thought that was a good idea?

***

Broadband Network Management Solutions, Monitor Development

Weekly Project Status Report, 8/24.

Accomplished: blah, blah, blah, blah... Turned 28. I'm a grown-up, yay!

Next Week Goals: blah, blah, blah, blah... Grow to be five feet two inches tall.

gahmorning

Our heroine slept in. She does that from time to time. It was a dark and cloudy day outside: a day for staying under the covers and contemplating navel lint, and this is exactly what our heroine did until 9:00. It isn't that our heroine is lazy, exactly, or that she's inclined towards sloth rather than work, though that too is the case. Our heroine is what we like to call an energy-conserver, part of the growing base of California's population that choose to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. At any rate, around 9 am-ish, hearing her roommate dutifully head out for work, she rolled over out of bed and fell on the floor.

Our heroine has a very strict early morning -- or, granted, late morning -- regimen by which she prepares herself for a working day. Coffee is an avenue of easy starts that is denied her; to our heroine's finicky palate, coffee tastes like the liquid leavings of a snot-nosed feral camel with a urinary tract infection. Many times our heroine has been enchanted with the delightful smell of coffee brewing, cozened by that insubstantial promise of smoky, richly-flavored heaven into taking a sip, only to find herself with a mouth full of rancid cockroach droppings stewed in sewage water. Still, everybody else seems to enjoy it, and overcome with envy at their evident delight in what could only be the final piece of evidence that the evolution of the human taste bud has hit a wall, our heroine has learned to compensate by developing a sure-fire technique for waking up in the morning.

Event one. Our heroine rolls out of bed and falls onto the floor. This has been part of her morning program since freshman year of college, when mornings started at the undignified hour of two in the afternoon. She has learned that the shock of landing, while coupled with a distressing tendency to cause the occasional concussion or bruising, serves as a salutary jolt to the system. Of late, she has noticed that this part of the routine is not as effective as it once was, and is beginning to wonder if the fact that she slept on the top bunk of a two bunk bed in college and is now sleeping on a ground-level twin is making a difference. This bears investigating.

Event two. Our heroine rolls into the bathroom and splashes water on her face, vigorously. The vigorously is important. In the event that all else fails, she can complete her daily ablutions by slipping on the water that has spilled onto the bathroom floor, fall down, and give herself another shock.

Event three. Our heroine climbs into the shower and attempts to adjust the water temperature while standing in the spray. This is occasion for multiple shocks of different and unexpected kinds. Being very efficient, our heroine uses this opportunity to warm up her vocal cords with assorted choice selections from her wide and scholarly vocabulary.

Event four. Our heroine bathes. In the shower. Soap, shampoo, and scrubby things participate. Also, lather. This portion is included only for the titillation of the male members of our audience, who are weird.

Event five. Wrapping a towel around her, our heroine goes to the kitchen to investigate the sanitary conditions of the sink. If there is any work to be done there, our heroine does it, leaving a little pool of water on the kitchen floor as a backup to the water now flooding the bathroom.

Event six. Our heroine gets dressed and sings loudly. Choice of music is optional.

Event seven. Our heroine realizes she forgot to dry herself and whines.

Event eight. Toothbrushing takes place. By this point, our heroine is quite awake and willing to face the world. From event seven onwards, all actions and consequences cannot be blamed on residual drowsiness. The very fact that our heroine has remembered to put clothes on at all constitutes full awareness and empirical evidence of sanity fully admissable in court.

Toothbrushing is a very serious business, by far the trickiest part of the day. This morning our heroine was as meticulous as ever in observing the technical challenges of the operation. .2 oz of Colgate Total Stripe Tartar Preventing Plaque Reducing toothpaste was spread on a parallel roll along the mouth of a pink Mentadent flexible handle toothbrush. The toothbrush was raised in a light but firm grip utilizing all fingers and thumbs in a cross-latticed standard wield. The operator faced herself squarely in the mirror, toothbrush raised parallel to the floor and forearm, elbow raised to shoulder height with toothpaste roll facing the oral aperature.

Today, things went wrong. All of the above went fine. One could explain the technical details of the subsequent fiasco using long and detailed phrases, but your honored storyteller, boys and girls, is getting bored. In layman's terms, quite simply: our heroine missed her mouth.

"Nerts," said our heroine.

Now, mind you, this sort of thing doesn't happen very often. Our heroine has a substantial oral cavity. Even the US Air Force would have no trouble hitting her mouth. However, on this particular occasion, our heroine found herself blinking at a reflection of herself with a large smear of blue-green Colgate Total Stripe Tartar Preventing Plaque Reducing toothpaste spread in copious amounts across her cheek and hair.

Subsequent investigation uncovered that the proud manufacturers of Colgate, who have spent many long hours and millions on their product, have developed a miraculous composite of various minerals and chemicals, (mixed with flouride and a minty fresh taste), that is stunning in its versatility. Ladies and gentlemen, it has the tenacity of duct tape, the viscosity of motor oil, the porous and quick-drying qualities of plaster, and the water resistance of a two-year-old. Sold in bottles of 7.8 oz, available at your nearest grocery store, Colgate has made available to the world a substance that could literally caulk aircraft carriers, and leave them smelling like your favorite brand of dental floss. Think of the possibilities of this substance. Facial masks; military repairs; home improvement projects; house cleaning; room freshening; automotive cleaning; deck sealing.

"Fudge," said our heroine, who is prone to using dated expressions because they have five letters, not four, and more is always better. She scrubbed her cheek with her toothbrush, (newly washed), until it was ruddy and clean and smelled nice.

Colgate Total Stripe Tartar Preventing Plaque Reducing 7.6 oz of toothpaste. Buy it. Not for human consumption.

***

In retrospect, instead of the novel I just wrote, I could have just written: 'missed my mouth while brushing. Guess that's the kind of day it's going to be.' However, that wouldn't have been half as entertaining.

***

Okay, the real point of this entry was going to be the party that's been going on in my kitchen for the past two weeks, but I'm exhausted from writing about my morning so I'm going to go crawl under my desk and nap for a while. I'll write about it when I wake up.

converse & the guy

"Tortoises are funny," sez I.

"Yeah, in your mouth," sez he.

"That's vaguely sexual," sez he.

"You're giving tortoises HEAD," sez he.

He cracks himself up.

***

So, The Guy came back from England today and I went to pick him up and now I'm at work -- no, don't be worried, Patti, I really am working; I just can't do anything right now because I'm waiting for the network to unfreeze in another window -- eating Starburst and thinking about how nice it is that The Guy is back.

Bob, ("Roberta." "Bob." "Roberta." "Right, so Bob, he--" "She." "HE--") was very excited that The Guy was coming back, and insisted that he get a nice shower, as he was covered in little white bird poo-poos and dust, so I took him back to the place that did such a nice job before and then Bob and I went to the airport and picked him up. "I've never seen her so shiny," The Guy marvelled.

"They did a good job on him," I agreed.

On the way back, we had the following discussion.

"Why does he have to be a girl?" asked I.

"Because she just is," said he. "She's so a girl."

"What, you can't drive a car that's a guy?"

"No."

"Why not? Can't guys have nice relationships with other guys?"

"No. A partnership, maybe," he added as an afterthought.

"What, and you don't have a partnership with your car?"

"No." Which sort of begged the question, see.

"So you have a female car because you don't have a partnership with females?"

I watched him grin out of the corner of my eye. "A sexual one, maybe."

"You have a sexual relationship with your car," I said, flatly.

"Mm hm." He leered. "You know. We like to drive a car HARD."

I considered a moment, then screamed. This is my ultimate response to all instances of idiocy.

"I'm going to tell everybody that you said that," I threatened.

And so I have. The Guy's a lech. Now, moving on....

***

The general theme of the day seems to be that I should be out of a job soon, sort of a case of going down with a sinking ship. Thanks to all of those who've asked, by the way; I still love this company, sadly. Kind of a pain, all things considered. I figure the company will never love me back, and I'm okay with that. Whether or not I'll get laid off is something else altogether; my -- okay, our -- more immediate worries are whether or not the company will even be here in four months. We'll see. It doesn't look good. From being pretty much nonexistent in the media, we're suddenly front-page news, and rumblings about bankruptcy and lawsuits against previous (or present) executives, not to mention Ma Bell, have been flying around. Eh. Business is business. It'd be ironic if we all had to go back to 56k modems, wouldn't it?

My mind is wandering. I went and saw The Others with Tara on Saturday. Not a bad movie at all; I'd sort of figured it out halfway through, but there was still enough suspense happening and enough doubt regarding the other stuff that was going on so that it wasn't a wasted last half. It's not Sixth Sense, but it's a reasonable step-sibling.

Ho hum. I don't like Starburst. I feel like my teeth have been covered in sugared tar. Back to work for me....

turtle kisses

I'm tempted to redesign my web pages again. I get this urge, once every six months or so. Don't worry; it won't be drastic, assuming I get around to doing it at all. I'll probably just get rid of the frames -- frames are evil -- and maybe eliminate the javascript altogether, since the real reason for having it was so I could figure out how. I need a page for peeps, at the very least, and easier navigation. Ho hum. The work of an idle good-for-nothing is never done.

On with the show.

***

I sent an email to myself earlier in the week. 1. Black Adder DVDs, it reads. 2. Meteor shower. 3. Turtle kisses. 4. Poking baby.

Right. So, I ordered the collector's set of Black Adder DVDs, and they've arrived. I've spent the last couple of nights poking through the special features, singing along with the Black Adder Singalong, watching my favorite character -- madd Queen Elizabeth -- do her insane thing, and occasionally playing Playstation in between. In the meantime, I've also come down with a bad case of domesticity, one of the dangers of spending too much time with Tara. To wit: I've cooked dinner for the last three nights, and tonight attempted a failed experiment with zucchini bread. This is what comes of having Betty Crocker for a friend.

I've ambitions for the morrow. It's Friday; I was thinking of working half-day from home, taking time during the morning to bake a new loaf of zucchini bread. (An edible one.) This is the one I'll bring in to work. They'll be terribly impressed, my co-workers. I made polenta and wild mushroom sauce and brought it to work today for them to participate in. One of the Indian Women carried it around to the different cubes, giving everybody a taste.

I could hear College Boy in the next cubicle over express what I thought to be overly articulated disbelief that the food came from me.

"Yuhri cooked this?" he asked. "Yuhri?" There was alarm in his voice. The Indian Woman -- bravo to her! -- raised her voice in my defense.

"It's really good," she said. "Taste it."

There was a small silence while, apparently, he overcame his qualms long enough to nibble on my culinary offspring.

"Wow. Yuhri made this? She cooked it? The sun must be rising in the west."

"I HEARD THAT!" I yelled over the wall. "YOU CAN JUST BITE ME."

I'm so unprofessional.

***

Right. Turtle kisses. I was lying face down on the floor one day while the tortoises were going for their daily constitutional. Tortoises aren't speed walkers; they're not even brisk walkers. They sort of meander around the living room inspecting things, nibbling on bits of carpet lint, and generally go about the business of breathing in and out. One of them started heading my way with that vaguely wondering, "however did I end up over here?" way they have. I opened my mouth really wide -- don't ask why -- and the tortoise, without any hesitation at all, started crawling in.

These are not small tortoises, mind you. It was not a sanitary situation. I hastily disengaged myself, and was confronted with a pair of accusing tortoise eyes.

Let me tell you about tortoises. The only animals more capable of inspiring guilt with a simple look are dogs and Japanese mothers. Meekly resigned, I dropped my head again and opened my mouth for his entertainment.

He stalked deliberately back to my mouth and stuck his head inside.

And then just stopped.

And fell asleep.

I tell you, some pretty strange thoughts start creeping through your mind when you're lying on your living room floor, all alone in an apartment, with half a sleeping tortoise in your mouth.

***

Back in, oh, November, one of the Indian Women had her very first baby, thereby changing her title from 'Indian Woman' to 'Indian Mom.' However, she refused to bring any evidence of her child's existence -- namely, the child -- to the office, no matter how much I asked her to.

"Puh-leeze?"

"Someday."

"Tomorrow?"

"Maybe."

"C'mon. Bring him in. I want to play with him."

Her refusals initially were based on his youth. Later on, they were based on me.

"I want to squish him. Puh-leeeeeeeeze?"

This was usually the point where Indian Mom would give me a definitive 'no.'

In desperation, (I hate being thwarted on my way to a toy), I started announcing that Indian Mom wasn't really a mom; she'd just pretended to be pregnant so she could have six weeks of maternity leave. "I mean, what evidence do we have?" I asked my laughing teammates. "She brings in pictures. They could be neighbor children."

The rest of the group caught on, and threw themselves joyously in the campaign to madden Indian Mom. "How is your fake baby today?" the manager would ask, sunnily.

"What diet did you go on?" another would wonder. "I want to lose weight, too."

At length, the camel broke, and last week, Indian Mom brought her baby in.

I like babies. I especially love squishy babies. I just want to bite them. Hers was especially squishy; he kept wanting to climb things. People, tables, walls -- it was like trying to hang on to an electric eel.

"I'm not bringing him back in for a long time," she informed us, sternly. "You have to play with him now."

So, like, this is why our stock is so low. We were busy playing with the baby.

scatopy too

Ella Fitzgerald's singing something over my speakers; the stars are shining on her caravan. She's the marijuana jazz queen: sweet, smoky, and oh so bad. Sing it, Ella.

***

I thought I would write something vaguely serious about things that are happening to somebody important in my life, but I decided I wouldn't. It's not really my story anyway, and I think if I actually tried to write something serious, I'd start bleeding out the eyes. So, instead, I present you with a small melange of completely scatter-brained and disconnected issues in the life of yours truly.

1.

Birds are pooping on Bob. It's pissing me off.

You remember that I got Bob cleaned last week, right? (Sorry, dude. Bobby, though I'm telling you, you're seriously wrong on this one. I've looked all over Bob, and I've yet to find a single breast. Admittedly, possession of breasts isn't necessary an indicator of femininity, and absence of same isn't an indicator of masculinity, at least not if I'm any indication. However, in lieu of any other commanding features...) So, anyway, I paid some nice little car-washer-upper-people some big money to wash and wax the car, which they did. For all of two hours, he looked good. Then I got out of work, -- did I mention I did this on a late lunch break? -- and checked up on Bob, and he was covered with a thin film of dust.

Well, shit, thought I.

I drove home. I parked the car. The next morning I woke up, yawned, showered, dressed, and went out to the car ... only to discover that some overly generous avian had seen fit to deposit the processed leavings of his early morning breakfast on the windowshield.

Well, shit, thought I.

Fast forward to today, when I was getting into the car. Bob is now covered in dust and has little tiny white spots all over his roof and hood, from relatives of that same, initial bird. They're Hungarian or something. I don't know. It's like they have to share every single meal with complete strangers. I pulled out of the choice parking spot right in front of the apartment that I'd managed to land, a beautiful parallel parking job if I do say so myself, and just as I was turning a corner, something flickered in my peripheral vision. A new little white dot on the windowshield, right in front of me. Talk about adding insult to injury.

I cursed my way to work. I swear, if I get a choice in the matter, I'm coming back next life as a cat. A big cat. A big, clean, bird-eating cat.

***

2.

The Firecracker came stomping into work yesterday, and instantly came crashing around the corner to our corner of the office. "YOU GUYS," she wailed. "YOU GUYS, I DO SOMETHING AWFUL YESTERDAY. I ALMOST KILL MY BAY-BEE."

Apparently, she was changing her son's diapers on their changing table -- at this point in the story, she jabbed her chest with the blade of her hand to show us how tall it was -- and had strapped her son in with some sort of belt that these things come with. She turned away to get some water, "BECAUSE HE DO POOPY," she explained, (I can just imagine how her son will cringe when he's introducing his fiancee to his parents and his mom tells her how she once nearly killed him), and somehow while her back was turned, he managed to squirm out of the belt and fell off the table.

"I TURN AROUND AND HE ON FLOOR," she grieved. "HE CRY, HE LAND ON HEAD, I NEARLY KILL HIM. I BAD MOTHER."

"Where is he?" we asked, hopeful; if she'd brought him, we would have had a toy for the day.

"IN DAY CARE. I CAN NO LOOK AT HIM. I FEEL SO GUILTY. HE CRY AND HE CRY. I CALL DOCTOR AND HE SAY NOT BRING HIM IN, I DO 20 THINGS INSTEAD. I PLAY WITH HIM, SEE IF HE DO THINGS."

She shook her head, drowning in her inadequacies as a parent, while we attempted to comfort her. "I TERRIBLE MOTHER," she said, desolately. "TABLE THIS HIGH. ALMOST ONE METER. I MEASURE."

Ah. Important to have empirical data about one's failures as a parent. "I DROP ON HEAD. MAYBE HE GROW UP, BE STUPID, ALL MY FAULT."

"THIS HIGH," she reminded us, and demonstrated on her own body how high the table was. Her hand had moved up slightly since the last retelling. Of course, all of us are fairly short.

A few minutes later, someone else in our group came around the corner; one of the tallest in our team, actually. The Firecracker latched onto her to tell her the saga of her bad parenting.

"THIS HIGH," she said, and lifted her hand, breast-high on the other person. That this now made the changing table at eye-level with herself didn't seem to register on her.

Today, she spent the day with her baby, first taking it to the doctor to make sure that everything was okay. Before she left, there was a small argument in the manager's cube, which is right next to the Firecrackers. "...and anyway, it's not as though I dropped a baby," one of my teammates told the manager, heartlessly. The Firecracker wailed.

Incidentally, the doctor says the baby is fine. "You'll do a lot worse before he's finished growing," he apprently told the Firecracker.

So who's heartless now, hey?

***

3.

3.

I've started editing my older entries to bring them online, bit by bit. It's a painstaking process. The older ones have no pictures, which is fine; still, I have to strip a lot of HTML tags from the things. Irritating. Irritating. Perl script time. First up will
be the Chicken Family story, which I actually got three requests for today from different people. Well, two requests, and one reminder that I'd actually written it to begin with. As a nod to those people, and to The Guy, who's just started reading my journal, um, today? Yesterday?, I'll do something about that.

4.

RIF. Reduction In Force. Sounds a lot like Rest In Peace.

Three people were Reducted from my department today; one of them was extremely unexpected. One of them I didn't know.

And then there was Tweedledum.

I've never spoken about Tweedledum -- mostly because he could've gotten my ass fired, possibly -- but now that he's gone, you all
get to share in the glory that was Tweedle. You, my gentle readers, have no idea how much it nagged me to have this comic masterpiece, this treasure trove of entertainment sitting at my fingertips, blocked from my journal by political expediency.

No more.

My first encounter with Tweedledum was at an All Hands meeting, a company almost-rah-rah in which everybody is required to lose three hours of precious work time to sit in a conference room and listen to the head of the department talk. Sometimes, this is actually productive; the last one, I'll have to admit, was really worth every minute. They're of varying quality, like any meeting.

At any rate, this first meeting, someone's mobile phone suddenly went off. It was Tweedledum. In the middle of his boss's talk, he got up, went to the back of the conference room, plugged his ear, and started talking. It was quite irritating. Five, ten minutes he talked, and then he folded up his phone and walked back to his chair, without comment.

This is not a auspicious start, wiser heads -- mine -- thought.

It turned out that one of the women I work with, a scarily competent network engineer, is one of the technical leads under Tweedledum. From the very beginning, apparently, they hit it off like two dogs with one bone. The first time she actually met him, he told her that he had come from being a very good Vice President of Engineering at a start-up, and how he had provided superior leadership and motivation to his workers. Of course, then he had had to lay them all off when the company had gone under, he said. During the course of the conversation, the two of them started to map out exactly what the application she was heading would require, and what resources would need to be allocated from other departments. One of the pieces was a few HTML pages, relatively simple things that could've been slapped together with a rudimentary knowledge of Dreamweaver.

"We can get some women to do it," quoth Tweedledum. "It's low-skilled labor."

Ass, quoth I.

That week, my status report contained the following.

...finished documentation on application design, analysis of reliability and availability, and future architecture proposal. Lots of documentation; I hope I did an okay job of it. I'm a little worried because it wasn't low-skilled labor.

Through the course of his career at my company, Tweedledum continued to make a royal ass of himself. He informed the people under
him that they were not allowed to speak with his superiors, then went on vacation for a week and a half, during which time his superior emailed the people under him an urgent engineering question. Political astute, the person he emailed responded, wisely (or not) cc-ing Tweedledum on the reply. "You should be able to get more information from (Tweedledum) when he gets back," the email ended. "Hope that answered your question."

"So-and-so said this," Tweedledum's superior said during the next meeting that he was present at.

Tweedledum went back to the subordinate involved and yelled at the hapless fool. "You have a bad attitude!" he told this person. "I told you you weren't allowed to talk to him, and you tried to do things behind my back."

Given responsibility for an engineering group based in Utah, he gave them half of an engineering project, the other half of which
was being done by people in Redwood City. He then forbade either side to hold direct communication with each other. "Everything has to come through me," he decided, and that was that. Except he wasn't reading email, because he was too busy, and didn't answer phone calls, because he was too busy, and didn't have time to set up appointments, because he was too busy.

"Nobody likes you," he told one of his most popular managers during performance reviews, which he showed up fifteen minutes late for. "You're very unpopular, you don't work well with people, and I don't really like you either."

The cap to all of this was a meeting he held with all of his subordinates on Monday. Having gathered them all in a room, he announced, "I submitted one of your names for layoffs."

Today, we were greeted with the news that he had been Reducted.

All I have to say is: couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

***

4.

The Guy thinks my roommate is a hamster.

I would have chosen a more flattering animal, myself. Hummingbird, maybe. Hummingbirds have a really high metabolism, besides being the only type of bird that I'm in charity with right now. At least, I'm pretty sure that no hummingbird has as yet shat on Bob.

The Guy insists it's a hamster, and there the matter stands.

I'm not going to explain that. You can just torture yourselves trying to figure it out.

firecrackers

About three months ago I stopped by Costco and bought some goodies for my people at work. A six-pound box of cookies. A three-pound box of cereal. And a box of 40+ fruit roll-ups. They finished the cereal in a week, the box of cookies in four days, and the fruit roll-ups in two. Honesty would compell me to admit that I was the one who did most of the finishing in the case of the fruit roll-ups. Fortunately, honesty and me and the journal have never been on more than friendly hand-shake terms.

At any rate, I went back to Costco and bought another box. This one I ended up leaving on my refrigerator, where it miraculously emptied out in about a week.

So I bought another one.

And another one.

(...and another one.)

I'm on my second fruit roll-up of the day. My God, I love Costco.

***

I'm in the middle of documenting legacy code so that we can figure out why it's breaking. I could stab myself through the eye with a bicycle handle and the quality of my work wouldn't suffer. It's good to take pride in one's work. In the meantime, for the past two days now I've been amusing myself by randomly yelling out questions from Mindtrap cards. This is a cruel thing to do to intelligent Indian women who don't trust me anyway; their English is just good enough for them to ask these questions to, and just warped enough that they'll never get one of them right, no never, ever, ever.

"You throw away the outside and cook the inside, you use the outside and throw away the inside."

That's not a question. Work ground to a standstill while the Indian women pondered this; Slushpuppy shouted that he knew the answer and came hurtling around the cube farm to hiss it at me.

Have I never introduced Slushpuppy? He's new on our team. 22, half-Korean (half-white), smart, funny, skiis, and rich. He owns his own house down in Souther California; he grew up at my company. Started here when he was 17. Got lots of stock, cashed in on the boom, and bought himself a slush puppy machine which now resides somewhere on the campus. He's available. I think.

"I should go get it," he realizes when I ask him, and his eyes will get distant and foggy with fond memories. "I'm not really sure where it is."

Buying a slush puppy machine with one's newly made millions shows an exuberant commitment to ice that I just have to admire.

Operating under the assumption that our jobs are as stable as the Marina, -- little San Francisco joke there, see, the Marina is all fill and will cave in at the first big earthquake, but it's filled with beautiful, wealthy, Caucasian twenty-somethings so this would probably just improve the gene pool and nobody's crying; I ate at a restaurant there once, and in a city that has the largest Chinese population outside of China, I was the only non-blonde there -- I've framed my "Adversity" poster and have managed to balance it on the head of a sewing pin on my cubicle wall. I lead the dangerous life. At any moment it could come crashing down and disassemble on top of my bike, also parked in my cubicle. Cheap plastic could go flying.

"You look like you've moved in here," marvels a passing stranger, and I start to wonder if I'll be able to fit all my belongings in boxes if I get laid off. Then I decide it doesn't matter, and I don't care. I love my job, dammit, and I'll worry about that if it happens.

"Would you say that egg yolk is yellow? Or that egg yolk are yellow?"

Ah. One of the Indian women took time from her busy schedule to come around the corner and give me a dirty look when she learned the answer.

"How many times can you subtract 5 from 25?"

My God, she got it right.

I wander around the corner to start a quiver of employees (quiver, n. - a gathering of two or more employees at a company that is financially unstable) outside of College Boy's cube. Our manager, College Boy, Firecracker, and another employee gradually join our little circle. We laugh, we talk, we sing--

-- Firecracker starts to complain about something her mother-in-law says. "SHE SAY, MY BABY NOT AS SMART AS HER SON. HER SON, HE ALREADY ROLLING OVER BY HIMSELF WHEN HE FOUR MONTHS OLD. NOW I WORRY MY BABY STUPID."

"You shouldn't let your mother-in-law talk to your husband," I suggest. "Like, ever."

Firecracker plows on with her litany of grievances. "SHE SAY, HUSBAND SHOULDN'T LISTEN TO WIFE TOO MUCH, IT NOT GOOD FOR HUSBAND BE HEAD OF HOUSEHOLD."

Our manager starts to laugh, while I play with images of Firecracker's husband coming home early to stuff Q-tip heads in his ears before his wife comes home.

"Get rid of his mother," I urge again. "Just don't let them talk anymore."

"I CAN'T," she wails. "THEY LIKE BEST FRIEND. I JEALOUS. HE TALK HER EVERY DAY FOR HOURS."

"Ah," I say, wisely. "Oedipus complex," I say, not so wisely.

Firecracker pounces: new word, unknown concept. "WHAT THAT? WHAT EDI-PUS COMPLEX?"

College Boy, who is even less wise than I, interjects. "I know that. Oedipal complex."

"EXPLAIN TO ME! WHAT EDI-PAL COMPLEX?"

The rest of the quiver instantly scatters, frightened into flight by the prospect of the Firecracker finding out what an Oedipus complex is. Our manager skids hastily back to her cube, eyes shiny.

"College Boy will explain it," I tell the Firecracker, and make my own quick escape over the sounds of College Boy whimpering, and Firecracker yelling. "WHAT? TELL ME WHAT EDI-PAL COMPLEX? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT IS IT? HOW YOU SPELL? WHAT IT MEAN? WHAT? WHAT?"

***

The Guy's car is named Bob, and he was unhappy, so I took him to get a bath and now everything's better.

We had an actual discussion about this on the phone. "We're getting very intimate," I assured him. "I drive him pretty much every day. He has a lot of moving parts, doesn't he? I named him Bob."

This met with disfavor from The Guy. Apparently, 'Bob' is a girl. "Don't be ridiculous," I scoffed. "He's definitely a guy."

This is apparently an insult to The Guy's manhood.

"How can you say that? She is so female. I could see Roberta, maybe, but Bob?"

I agreed to compromise on 'Bobby' to calm him down, but I have to admit that I'm not really convinced. Are there homosexual overtones to having a male car if one's a guy? "I wouldn't emasculate you," I whispered confidingly to Bob on the freeway, later, and he purred in response. Although now that I think about it, our apartment manager is named Bob, and he flames.

***

I sit here in my cube, typing harmlessly away at my journal, and I can hear the Firecracker screeching at walls, since College Boy has disclaimed knowledge and taken refuge somewhere safe. "WHAT EPI-DUS? IS DISEASE? WHERE?"

I shall always treasure the picture of her four-month old baby that she sent to our department, attached to the following email:

Hey guys, Attached is my baby's latest picture. Take a look. I choose this one to send it out is becasue[sic] this is my favor [sic] picture. If you wonder why he doesn't have any hair, that's becuase [sic] I shake [sic] all his hair off on weekend. :)

"Hey, did you really shake all his hair off?" I called over the wall, cautiously.

The Firecracker's voice came floating (cannoning) back. "YA, BECAUSE IT SO HEAVY BY MISTAKE."

"Oh," I said, weakly, and let it go.

Lest anybody think the Firecracker is adding child abuse to her other characteristics, I should explain that we eventually established that she meant 'shave,' though in my mind that's not substantially better. Her baby has a very round head. Kind of like a bowling ball, with nostrils.

***

We had a group meeting at work, where the Manager told us that her boss was going to be leaving the company. I was wondering why the woman had been in such a good mood for the last week or so; that would do it, I suppose. The kind of euphoria experienced by the college grad right after the last final is done and the first job is settled. "Also," said the Manager while we were digesting this, "I will be joining the company."

Overlooking the fact that she sounded like she would have preferred to read us her grocery list, we hurled congratulations and cheers over her head. Her status as a contractor had given us some uneasy qualms from time to time; it wasn't so much that most companies get rid of contractors first as a cost-cutting measure, but the fact that she could get sick of work and leave whenever she wanted to.

Although, now that I think about it, the situation hasn't particularly changed all that much.

She told us that there were going to be lay-offs, but that she didn't think there was going to be much impact in our group, if any. "Maybe some restructuring," she supposed. "They might want to farm some of us out to other engineering groups for a while. We have a good reputation for getting things done. Slowly, maybe, but getting them done at all is good. Also, we're nice and easy to work with, and we never get upset."

"It's because we're all women," the rest of us carolled in unison, then turned as one to stare at College Boy, who was sinking in his chair.

"Hey!" he protested.

"Don't worry," we said, comfortingly. "You're just one of the girls."

College Boy chose to look depressed.

capsized

The Guy has been in England for three days now -- he left on Tuesday -- and he calls me twice a day: once before bed, his time, once when he wakes up, his time. Vak, who was sitting on my cubicle floor giving me requirements the first time he did it, leered at me. I could hear my voice melting when I realized who it was, and I couldn't help myself. It's disgusting. I make myself sick.

But isn't it cuuuuuuuuuute?

It's ice cream day today. Yay! I have a chocolate ice cream sandwich. Now I don't. I threw it away. I don't like ice cream. I keep forgetting that. I should have gotten a fruit thingy.

For the first time since going blind in Crater Lake, I'm wearing my contacts. I blink a lot more when I wear them, a good thing considering all the computer work that I do; it's still kind of alien, having foreign bodies in my eyes. I'll switch out of them before I head down to Tara's and the Foothill Observatory tonight. Did I mention: I've gotten obsessed about astronomy, of a sudden? No? Never mind, then. I'll go into that at some other point.

On with the journal.

***

Riding with my sister at the wheel:

"Why's this person tailgating me when there're three lanes completely open all around us?"

"Don't think I'm going to change lanes just for you, buddy. Don't fight this battle, 'cuz this is one you're gonna lose."

I love my sister. She's nuts, too.

***

On Saturday, I started cleaning The Guy's apartment. He didn't want me to do it. I told him it was impossible anyway; I'd just give it my best shot. Hah. My best shot. That was ludicrous.

The first time I visited his apartment, way back when we started dating, I thought I saw the floor move. "Take off your shoes," he invited, while he bustled around in the kitchen. I eyed the carpet -- unvacuumed, I swear, since he moved into the place six years previously -- and demurred. I left my shoes on. He thought it was cute. The reality was, I was scared of the kind of stains and fungal growth I might end up picking up on my socks.

And that was just the first time I went to his place, mind you. He'd actually cleaned up for me. It's gotten worse since then.

With him safely packed away in England, I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to do something about the pigsty he calls home. "I don't see what the problem is," he protested over the phone. "I'll just move out at some point and they can keep my security deposit."

While I was growing up, my mother told us stories about her first apartment in the US, when she cleaned her apartment from top to bottom before she left, and was not only given back her security deposit, but was invited back by the landlord to live there again. We used to stay in hotels and strip the beds, dust the countertops, and fold the sheets in neat stacks atop the mattresses before we left. When we emptied the trash in the car, our parents would have us wander around the parking lot and pick up any other trash we might find so that we could put more trash into the bag we were disposing of, "as long as we're going to the trash bin anyway."

Needless to say, The Guy's solution to the CDC ground zero site he calls his apartment wasn't really acceptable.

I piled into the car on Saturday afternoon with a bag of cleaning supplies: sponges, mildew remover, bleach, comet. "Three hours I spent there," I raved at him over the phone, later. "I spent two hours scrubbing your kitchen floor. With a sponge. And comet. You do realize that the linoleum on your kitchen floor was supposed to be cream?"

"You're mad," he marvelled. "Are you going to break up with me now?"

"Three hours!!" I ranted. My voice was reaching subsonic levels. "Pots are not supposed to be fuzzy around the edges when you've finished washing them!"

"I told you not to do it. Did you clean the entire apartment?"

"THREE HOURS ON THE KITCHEN!"

He started to giggle.

***

Launchcast is trying to convince me that I like 'The Thong Song.' Every time I launch the application, it's one of the first songs that Launchcast plays. I haven't rated it; it's a sort of morbid fascination on my part that keeps me from getting rid of it altogether. I'm just curious to know how persistent the Launchcast algorithm is regarding this issue.

***

On Sunday, I almost died.

My sister and her boyfriend claim that I didn't, but I know perfectly well that I heard panic in his voice when he asked me if I was okay. He asked me multiple times.

Background: I went whitewater kayaking down the Russian River with my sister and her boyfriend. Her boyfriend is an expert at kayaking; she's advanced enough that between the two of them, I felt fairly confident I wasn't going to actually die. By way of insurance in that respect, the keys were tucked into a pocket on my lifejacket. "There," my sister said comfortingly. "Now, if we want to get home, we'll have to fish your body out of the river, at the very least."

Technical background: I've only gone kayaking once in my life. That is to say; I've gone kayaking twice, but I've only really gone onto the water once before. With kayaking, you end up wearing something that looks like a rubber lampshade around your waist, the bell of which fastens around the mouth of the kayak. This way, a seal is formed, which keeps you from taking in water. The bad thing about this is that it means you're effectively locked into the boat, so if the boat tips over and you don't know how to roll, you'll drown. This is why there's a handle on the front of the skirt, which one pulls in order to be popped out of the kayak. So.

I capsized on the first rapid, a small thing; I got wedged against a rock, and the current happily flipped my boat over. After a few seconds of thrashing panic, I swallowed some of the river and managed to pull the skirt. When I surfaced, the boyfriend and my sister were bobbing nearby, waving encouragement.

"Did you see me?" he asked, anxiously. "I was waving to you. Like this."

My teeth were chattering; in between cold, the surge of adrenaline, and an idiotic, glorious fury at the river, I demanded: "And y-y-y-you th-thought that would h-h-help?"

"Sure," the boyfriend said, smiling sunnily. "It was encouraging, see?"

"I was waving too, Yuhri," my sister carolled from nearby.

I fished out a few choice four-letter expletives and climbed back into the kayak...only to capsize again on the next rapid.

I was raging by the time I was fished out of the next one; my feet were bruised, my knees were scratched up, and my shoulder was pulled out of joint from banging up against rocks. For the first time, I had a real sympathy for the College Boy and the way he felt when he was dumped in the San Francisco Bay.

The next two rapids I managed to take in the proper fashion: above water.

Then we got to the big one. And that's where everything went very bad.

At the very top of the rapids, the same thing happened that always happens; I got pulled sideways against a rock, the current pushed hard on the boat, and despite my best efforts, the kayak tipped and started sending me backwards down the rapids, underwater.

For once, I didn't panic. I attempted to reach the skirt, only to find out that I couldn't because the force of the current had pressed me flat back against the kayak itself, and the combination of rocks and water force was keeping me away from the skirt handle. Then I remembered that I'd gotten stuck at the top of the rapids because the boat was too wide, and I imagined what would happen if I got stuck like this at the bottom of the rapids, wedged between rocks and unable to reach the skirt.

That's when I learned the true meaning of terror.

The problem with panic is that one instantly loses all semblance of sanity. I instantly started trying to get air by twisting for the surface, and ended up breathing in a lung's worth of water. Miraculously, my twisting managed to bump the boat past the last possible wedge, and into relatively calm water where I managed to reach the skirt after all. It felt like hours. It lasted all of a few seconds.

I exploded out of the water choking, coughing, sputtering like a tuberculosis patient, and instantly lost my footing. I went under; another lung full of water. On my way back up, I cracked my head on the boat -- helmets are a Good Thing -- and managed to cling to it long enough to find some better footing. It was not a proud moment for the Hirata family. I was livid: not at the very happy boyfriend, who claimed to be very proud of me for going down the entire rapids underwater without ever trying to pop the skirt; not even at my sister for taking the exact same rapids without turning a hair. No, I was furious at the river. How's that for logic? One day, I swear, I'll make it down that river without capsizing. I refuse to let an f***ing river beat me.

I made it the rest of the way down without anything major happening; we saw some water turtles staring at us, spotted some otters eating fish, and a beautiful white heron attempting to raise a family in peace. In total, it was a six mile float, taking us approximately two and a half hours. It was glorious. It was fun. It was really, really irritating. I hate losing.

Today, I made a catalog of my injuries. I have a split toenail on my left foot, and bad bruising on my right. My instep looks like a big purple plum. My right ankle won't move at an angle. I have scratches across my knuckles on both hands, a bad cut on my middle finger, and criss-crossing scratches on my elbow. My right knee pops every time I move it. My right shoulder is experiencing a lingering, bone-deep ache, and my left arm won't lift above the shoulder.

I'm going to do it again. I am. Soon. Hurrah! I'm going to kick this river in the ass, dammit. And The Guy's going to go with me.

garlic ice cream

I try to pack too much into my journal entries, that's the primary problem. I start writing one one day, then leave it unfinished until a week passes; then I'm left to decide whether or not to finish writing for the day I began, or to fill in the gaps between initiation and publication.

My mother is stark raving mad. That was where I left off.

Binky has been in and out of town over the past two weeks, -- more "in" than "out" -- and crashing on my floor. She wears cashmere socks, much to the dismay of my vacuum cleaner; other than that, it was a fairly good visit, wherein I attempted as much as possible not to talk about The Guy and failed miserably, every time. Her cousin lives in Sunnyvale, not too far away; he's a nice guy and a motorcyclist, thereby guaranteeing himself an entry in the "good guy" record book of The Guy. By definition, almost any decent motorcyclist (excepting Harley-Davidson riders, for some intangible sport bike rider elitist reason) qualifies as a "good guy." Binky's cousin, being a fanatic who also teaches motorcycle safety courses, more than qualifies. Also, he doesn't own a Harley, which only elevates him in The Guy's eyes.

The four of us, me and The Guy on his Honda Superhawk, and Binky and her cousin on his cruiser tank, biked down to Gilroy just in time to join the milling crowd at the Garlic Festival. I've always considered myself a fan of garlic; of all the stinky spices in my life, garlic is the one that's nearest and dearest to my heart. This is just as well, since my roommate is Korean and has a fondness for that culinary freak called 'kim-chee.' I have a particular fondness for the same schlop myself; otherwise, cohabitation would be literally impossible. I have been a frequent patron of that legendary garlic restaurant in San Francisco, "The Stinking Rose," and there are entire generations of vampires who have developed genetic allergies to my presence.

Thus, the four hours I spent at Gilroy were entertaining enough to be worthwhile. Food stands set up around the perimeter coaxed us into spending a good half-hour on a relatively grassy patch, where we set up camp and occasionally sent out foray parties for more food. We went through six bottles of water in under ten minutes, all told; The Guy, (dressed in black leathers and an equally black t-shirt), and I in my tank top and jeans, didn't pass a single stand bearing the words "frozen" or "ice" in its title without leaving behind some money. Binky and her cousin, who had changes of clothing in the tank the Cousin drives, got by more comfortably in shorts.

And, let me add, in SPF.

I learned some interesting things at Gilroy. I learned that I do not look good in a garlic bulb hat. I learned that police tend to check people wearing leather at a festival in 95 degree weather. I learned that sunblock is a good thing, and was invented for universal use, not just for the Irish. I also learned, after having a taste of Binky's pistachio-garlic ice cream and being threatened with a chocolate-garlic-peanut-butter-cup, that it is possible to have too much garlic in one's life.

We motorcycled home, lane-splitting the entire way.

Now, some of you might not know what lane-splitting is. You know when you're sitting in a car through busy traffic, waiting for the person in front of you to move, wishing that someone would have the decency to invent a helicar, and are suddenly confronted with the offensive sight of a motorcyclist zipping down the median between lanes? You know that sudden epiphany you get, that burst of hatred for the motorcyclist that he can do that, a sudden, insane urge to swing the wheel and follow him, followed by stark envy at his freedom and then the thought, "I wonder if that's legal?"

It is legal, (mostly), but so much fun -- and think of the time that gets saved. The Guy, impatient with traffic at the best of times, zipped down the middle for about six or seven miles, at least. Probably more. I'm not sure, because I fell asleep on the back of his bike, and there's an expression of trust if there ever were any.

Binky was a little white-faced in the aftermath of the ride home. Lane-splitting, then zooming to 90 mph on the back of a motorcycle is one of those experiences that require increasing levels of numbness. Me, I love it. That's part of the reason The Guy and I are together.

***

It turns out that Binky wants to work in Antarctica.

"Why?" I asked her.

"Just because?" she replied.

Wrong answer. bzzzzzzzzz! Thank you for playing.

It's a six-month sojourn in nowhereland; they have positions for administrative assistants, cooks, accountants, engineers -- all sorts. They even have a website. It was inevitable that my sister, when she heard of it, would think that this was a great idea and want to apply herself.

"You already have a job," I objected, "and a boyfriend, and you have to finish school."

"But it would be fun," my sister declared.

Never argue with the terminally insane.

On my return home, I discovered a telephone message on my phone from Tara, who had seen fit to return from her ten week South Pacific honeymoon. Ffffft. What I want to know is, why?

***

It turns out that Binky and her Cousin are related by marriage, not blood. They're first cousins, but their mutual relatives have lived in Arkansas, which opens up a whole wealth of possibilities, you realize.

(I'd be worried about her hunting me down and hurting me for saying this, but she's up in Oregon, so what do I care? Nyah nyah!) In the interests of friendship, I'm not going to say anything further besides, um.

"If you think a family reunion is a great place to pick up chicks, you mah-te be a redneck."

I don't think the redneck, down South, wife-swappin', sister-lovin' community would be particularly keen on claiming Binky as one of their own. For one thing, she jogs. Without being chased.

***

Ho hum. Grandia is done, finally -- I had The Guy kill off the last bad guy, which he did and gloated tiresomely about -- and now I've started some new game called Final Fantasy VII. It's done by the same people who came out with the Final Fantasy movie; apparently there are at least ten Final Fantasy games, none of which have any relationship to each other beyond the manufacturers being the same. This leads me to believe that they have some serious deficit of imagination when it comes to titles. Personally, I loved the Final Fantasy movie. We'll have to see about the game.