kitanzi: (hey you - iconomania)
I had meant to say, and I got sidetracked - today I'm wearing the lovely new sweater that [livejournal.com profile] telynor made for me. It's big and cozy and a gorgeous sort of puplish rose color and I just love it. Georgia has finally hit just the right temperature for it, and it's wonderful.

It also comes with an unexpected bonus - she apparently knitted in many long strands of her own hair, quite by accident. I'm odd, I'm sure, but it's a nice reminder that it's handmade with care and comes from her.

Slow motion

Sep. 2nd, 2005 06:15 am
kitanzi: (Oh my god - by Kataclysmic)
I think half of the horror of Katrina's aftermath is that it's all in slow motion. Evacuations are slowed, even stopped, by people shooting at the rescuers. Looters have gone far beyond getting food and clothing and necessities of life (where the hell are they going to store a television set right now anyhow??) and are compounding the misery and horror tenfold. Resources are moving, but seemingly too little and too late for a lot of the people trapped in the nightmare, and from here how much better can I say I could have done it? What the hell can I do, besides give spare cash? It's a feeling of helplessness, even worse than 9/11. Imagine if the people trapped in the fires jumped from the buildings, and fell for four days, and we watched them fall, heard them screaming, and still couldn't do anything to save them...

No, I didn't sleep very well last night, why do you ask?

Anyhow, I'd like to recommend a filk Harold Feld wrote recently: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.music.filk/browse_frm/thread/149c9f1639209d1e/151132658d37ff51?hl=en#151132658d37ff51

Now I need to get ready for work, where I will sit on my hands and wait for someone to eventually find something for me to do (curse of being too efficient, apparently), read news on the net and feel utterly useless.

EDIT: For those who asked, we came through just fine. We got a fair amount of rain and some fairly brisk winds, but it never got scary in our part of GA. Tornado sirens went off once, briefly, but nothing seems to have come of that. Thank you for being concerned, though!
kitanzi: (Default)
I have to say, I have a number of friends who deal with chronic pain without any real expectation that it can be made to go away. I have new appreciation for you all.

Mind over matter, hah! )
kitanzi: (bad day -iconomania)
If my brain would shut up and let me sleep for a while. Recurring vivid nightmares alternating murder and suicide are not restful. Recurring obsessive visions of the same, for no apparent reason, when I wake up again are even less so. Please shut off my brain.
kitanzi: (lost - iconomania)
Year end gave me lots of stress dreams last year, and it's doing it again this year apparently. Why are ACat and I up at quarter past two? Well, I've been re-reading Lois McMaster Bujold's Memory (re-re-re-re-re-re-reading, actually) and I had a dream. I dreamed that Gregor's wedding was about to happen, and somehow someone had done the tax paperwork wrong. (Don't ask me, I have no idea why they're related!) Anyhow, I was frantically checking all the Type of Service levels on the paperwork with some ImpSec goon hanging over my shoulder being quietly menacing and wanting to know how this happened - when the cat apparently walks across the bed and scratches my arm. I apparently made a loud desperate noise and levitated about six inches. ACat claims he was aleady awake, but if he hadn't been he certainly would have been at that point. On the whole, not a good dream - but not one I really needed such an awakening from! Fortunately, I can take a nap later if I need one...
kitanzi: (oh really - iconomania)
The good - I'm much happier than I was, say, a week ago in my relationships. I'm walking around smiling at random people, humming happy songs. Communication has been clarified, happiness has been expedited, redefinition has been embraced where needed, and I'm considerably more content with the universe than I was. This is a Damn Good Thing, because...

The bad - work is being insane. Seriously. At the moment our department is down to 5 people on the phones including me, down from over twice that when I started a year ago. All five of us are grumbling and bitching back and forth, and the lunch our supervisor has promised to buy us Monday just isn't going to fix this morale problem. *And* I'm going to only half days on the phones, which will reduce coverage further. Unfortunately, that's still too MUCH time for me on the phones, because I'm moving to a different department asap and part of that is training which is designed to be five weeks of EIGHT HOUR DAYS doing nothing but training. Instead, I'm getting half days to train from now through December 6th, except for such days as I don't get to train at all. That would include today, since the people who are apparently supposed to be agreeing between them WHICH half of the day I am doing what can't seem to get this worked out. December 6th I go to Parsippany for two weeks of intensive training on the new (to me) mainframe computer system I'll be using. By all description it's a beast and a pain in the neck, so I'd better have the rest of this licked before I go. Ha.

The bored - However, I am completely bored at the moment. Nope, can't effectively start the training on my own because I can't seem to get fifteen minutes straight without someone interrupting me for something, plus I can't seem to get to the software demo I was told I would be able to practice on. Legitimate interruptions, mostly - phone calls, coworkers asking for info, whatever. Still, I give up. They're boring, I'm bored, bleah. I'm counting days to OVFF... hell, right now I'm counting breaths to OVFF.
kitanzi: (madzot -QoW)
It's really bad when a song you love becomes so entrenched in your head that you become desperate to get it OUT. It's worse when you try to replace it with a different song - and they merge into some hybrid horror that you STILL can't get out of your head, and you can't sing it, either.

I've been humming and singing Caledonia all damn day today, and most of yesterday, rather to coworkers' bemusement. In pure desperation I dug out a printout of Postmortem on Our Love - and now I've got some incomprehensible mishmash of the Postmortem lyrics trying to shoehorn themselves into some variation of the tune of Caledonia. Someone let me out of my braaaaaain......

(And please, don't suggest I turn it all into a filk. It's just not going that way!)
kitanzi: (oh really - iconomania)
I'm updating yet again. Look out, might be a trend! Might even be contagious - watch to see if [livejournal.com profile] autographedcat starts next!

Still not necessarily interesting, though, so... )
kitanzi: (Default)
I'm Larissa and I, too, am a survivor of sexual violence. No pity. No shame. No silence.

(If you're wondering what all this is about, go look at [livejournal.com profile] misia's journal.)

On one hand, I'm horrified by the number of people who have posted this meme. On the other hand, I'm very heartened.
kitanzi: (Default)
I come from a family with a military tradition. My parents met in the Air Force, my little brother is a Marine and has been since shortly after he graduated from high school - he's made a career out of it, and will be eligible to retire in just a few years. I've never had the slightest inclination to go in the military - ACat can tell you I hate taking orders - but I'm proud of him.

By and large, I get the impression they're considerably more gung-ho than I am about the war our country is in the middle of, especially my brother. (I don't think anyone is rationally arguing that we are NOT still in a war.) I don't discuss politics with my family too much. I am fairly sure we're all voting for the same person in the next election, but I'm also pretty sure it's for a somewhat different set of reasons. We're not what you'd call a close or communicative family.

I probably should have posted this closer to Memorial Day, but I guess my two cents worth doesn't lose currency by being a few days later. Although I don't support the war we're in, I damn well do support the troops stuck fighting it. "Stuck" seems additionally appropriate given the expanded "stop-loss" program that's been initiated. I also wanted to mention again the Books For Soldiers program, which is probably even more important now.

Every one is entitled to their two cents worth, and that, just now, is mine.
kitanzi: (cheshire)
First, thanks you to the manymany people on (and off) LJ who really made my day yesterday by saying Happy Birthday to me. (And the ones who did it today, too!) I don't usually do it, because I just KNOW I'll forget someone and hurt their feelings, so I leave it out for everyone. But I really liked it.

I've been thinking about ups and downs of being 35, and it occurs to me that, compared to ten years ago, I am healthier, saner, happier, more stable on EVERY level, and all around much improved in my life. I like this. Here's to being able to say the same thing again in ten more!

Yawn

Mar. 31st, 2004 07:18 am
kitanzi: (mooncat)
My job is product support and customer service for small businesses doing payroll, and their associated tax issues. Today is the very last day of the first quarter, and we've been understandably busy. I've been coming home physically and mentally wiped this week, so I suppose it makes sense I'd dream about it, unfair as it seems. The same thing happened almost nightly during year end.(Why CAN'T I get paid for the calls I take in my sleep? I'm still working...)

Sometime in the early hours this morning my brain generated a call for me - my phone rang, I grabbed my headset and answered it in approved fashion, talked the caller through the first few steps of a fairly standard problem. Then I somehow realized I was dreaming, stopped short, and told her to fuck off. The caller was startled and huffy, and I told her I didn't have to talk to her, this was a dream. She argued a bit and hung up. It's really rather funny - it was quite vivid. If I weren't quite, quite sure this happened a insane-o'clock in the morning and could not have possibly been real, I'd be a bit worried!

I don't generally remember my dreams, unless they happen to be particularly bad or I happen to be woken up in the middle of one. I'm kind of glad I remember this one, though - perhaps a speck of wish fufillment just now.
kitanzi: (cheshire)
Well, ACat and I have both been a little grumpy for the last day or so, and we aren't sure why. We were both short on sleep, but we've caught up on that as of last night at least. (His sleep schedule got fractured by having to go into work at 1 am Thursday night to do maintenance.) I got a nice long talk with [livejournal.com profile] maedbh7 last night which cheered me considerably, but ACat was tired and unsocial, so that was less help to him. We did have fun making plans for her planned visit here in April, though - we're all psyched about going to the Georgia Renfest, which we've never been to before. It sounds like quite a lot of fun, and we'd meant to go last year. The cats, on the other hand, are being more social and Jenna's taken to sleeping on the bed with us. Well, hanging out on the bed while we're trying to sleep, at least - she's a bit too active about it, wiggling and writhing and wanting to be petted, but she settles down and she's a very sweet kitty. Dayna's still hissing at her, but they're both out and about the apartment now during the day and Jenna seems to mostly ignore the hissing, so I suppose it's no matter. :)

Anyhow, this morning I managed to make ACat laugh a few times, called it an accomplishment, and actually hauled my ass out of the house and over to the exercise room and did about 25 minutes on an exercise bike, which is good - I was a little intimidated by the seriously exercising guys who were down there, but I did my time anyhow. I had planned on dragging him out of the house for a nice rambly walk, but it was raining last night and again this morning. I think that might have been part of the joint melancholy mood, but who knows. Anyhow, we're gradually perking up as the weather improves, and if we don't go walking today maybe we will tomorrow. In the meantime I'm having an old fashioned "cooking as mood therapy" weekend, and I have a spinach and cottage cheese pie in the oven now. It smells pretty good, and will make a tasty lunch. After, I'm virtuously getting the shopping out of the way and trying to keep it light since we're slightly tight on cash until pay day, but I am getting things to make a cheesecake and trying out a Chicken Parmesean recipe that ACat got from his sister. I like cooking, when I'm not doing it to scramble together dinner after work. Even then it can be enjoyable, but weekends are when I can consider what do I feel like doing rather than what can I throw together when I get home at quarter past eight so we can eat before nine.

See what marvelously exciting weekends we have? Next, taking out the trash....

Blind spots

Mar. 1st, 2004 01:07 pm
kitanzi: (quizzical)
Wow... I guess I'm a bit of a snob and I just never thought about it - certainly not what I usually think of myself as. I was just talking to a co-worker about last night's Academy Awards, and the fact that RotK tied Titanic for number of nominations. She commented that everyone knew how Titanic ended, and I replied that everyone really knew how the Lord of the Rings trilogy turned out, too.

She turned around and said, "So does he really destroy that ring, or what? No, never mind, I didn't see it yet, don't spoil me."

I was surprised at the completeness of my surprise. I guess it's just a blind spot.
kitanzi: (Default)
I have no idea why, particularly, but I'm just absurdly cheerful and happy today. I'm smiling at people in the halls, humming The Heart of Summer and wishing I could get up to dance to it. It's just a day where I'm full of energy and good feeling and things just sort of click.

My life is good all around - maybe I don't appreciate that often enough. (It's been pointed out to me that most of my stories seem to be sad ones!) My blessings are many just now - sweeties who I dearly love and love me, many friends who are family to me, a job where I really feel I'm conquering the learning curve (and getting the best wage of my life for it), coworkers I enjoy (some of whom I'd even willing spend outside of work time with!), a nice place to live in an area I like, and less financial burden that I have EVER had since living on my own - I can even answer my own phone without fear of creditor attacks!

My health is good, my heart is happy and whole, my teeth are my own - what more could I ask for approaching 35?

Maybe the question ought to be why I don't walk around dancing to the music in my head more often. *G*

(And I am steadfastly refusing to even think about jinxing myself with this. :) )
kitanzi: (Default)
I just heard from someone who attended a panel at Boskone about disasters concoms had faced at various cons. He related, minus the names of the guilty, a little tale he heard there about a con which was suddenly forced to find a replacement treasurer, for reasons I won't repeat here in spite of them apparently having been given there.

That's not what caught my attention, though - the story teller's punchline was apparently "We had to find someone stupid enough to be Treasurer". Ahem.

*sigh* (Yes, I do expect it was said that way to make it a punchline. Nonetheless.... hmmmmm.)
kitanzi: (weird)
I was rereading through some old journal entries - I do that sometimes. Anyhow, I found the tempest in a teapot that the crush meme stirred up, and it made me curious.

If you have a crush on someone, do you tell them? Do you not? Do you tell mutual friends? Strangers who would have no idea who you're talking about? Does it make a difference if you think it's reciprocated? If so, how sure do you need to be? And if you think it isn't, do you nurture it, ignore it, or try to kill it off?

I'm curious, particularly because this meme included ex-crushes and I know a lot of people found that unknown people had ex-crushes. What does it take to turn a crush into an ex-crush? Apparent hopelessness, embarassment, disillusionment, nasty behavior from the crushee? (so to speak!)

I know I've historically been unlikely to tell anyone about a crush, but then historically I've had a fine habit of getting crushes almost exclusively on people bound to think I'm the wrong gender or the wrong kind of person, or else they're someone I should stay firmly at armslength from. Maybe for that reason I've had an awful lot of crushes just die a natural death after enough time, and a few I've firmly squelched for one reason or another. But what about the rest of you?
kitanzi: (Default)
FREE, FREE, by all that's holy, I am FREEEEEEEEE!

(Well, until I start the new job on Monday. But, y'know, I am FREEEEEEE!)

Resolution

Sep. 8th, 2003 08:18 pm
kitanzi: (pissed)
Enough. Keeping this job has finally hit the point of undeniably, unmistakably self-destructive. Thank you to everyone who has given me commiseration and support while I griped about it over the past year and a bit. I won't mention it again until it's gone and I have a new one. The last straw has come and gone.

December 2013

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