corpora lente augescent cito extinguuntur

It's been quite a few days- I'm sorry to all of you who just got comments I left on 10-day-old posts. My apathy is overwhelming sometimes.
But HAY- I'm here now with so much to share!!!


First off- I finished painting the study, FINALLY- and now just have to rip up the carpet and sand/ finish the floor... just. *sigh* yeah-
But we GOT A ROOMMATE. He's a friend-quaintence of ours who we both adore but hardly ever see. Christopher is highly gay and highly awesome. He's into really great movies, he's clean, quiet, has awesome taste, and, well- I just can't say enough how happy I am to get him. I think it's going to be grand, and we'll be making 450- a month that will cover our evil winter heating bills, and now we'll be able to buy FOOD and possibly even PAY THE MORTGAGE on time. AMAZING.
It won't be till November, which gives me time to clear out the library:


and relocate ALL OF THAT CRAP elsewhere so he will have somewhere to live.

Therefore, my remodeling (painting and carpet removal) (the room was blood red and black, now it's pale grey-purple and white= lots of paint) of the old study (which will be the new library) has to get DONE.

Much painting and cleaning has been done this weekend, and now I'm back to work-

as a matter of fact- on that note- I'm working 2 weeks on the graveyard shift. 10pm to 10 am- today is my first. It's 3am and a bit.... surreal. But very peaceful.


What else have I been up to?
Well- I finished the CAT YARN project (part one- this is going to definately continue since i had such success)- I made about 12 feet of cat-twine, which became 6 feet when put together and 3 feet when twisted in half. I soaked it in water, and discovered that it was REALLY STRONG. I didn't have enough to KNIT a cat toy, so instead I constructed one in basket-weaving fashion with red thread- and stuffed it with catnip.
So far the reaction has been: Bafflement, sniffing, disintrest, OBOYFUNBATBAT, disintrest, sniffing again, disintrest, slight fear, more sniffing, forgotton.




*****************************************************************
Yes, I've saved the best for last.


I got MAIL.

two AWESOME things came for me in the past few days.

( Check it oooouuuut!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! )

I crawl out of bed in a haze, grab my shit in a state of semiconciousness that sometimes results in shirts that are turned inside-out.
I forget my coffee, but now I'm late, so off I go, hauling ass to the bus stop.

Within one block of the stop, it whizzes past me with an almost spiteful humm to it's engine.
"Hummmmmmmm, if you had left one minute ago you would have made it, HAHA"
WHIZZZZZZZZZZzzz


I'm standing there, like a fucking idiot, staring off into space, holding my bags and my phone, trying to decide what to do. I make up my mind to walk to the 82nd stop, where there's a bench, and possibly more entertaining wildlife.

I'm passing a pink plastic tampon applicator, a McDonalds stir-stick, cigarette butts, rusted metallic refuse, plasic ties, tissue paper, all degrading, as though they were ancient boulders, into unidentifiable particles that line the streets like confetti, random bits of things that were useful once, maybe, if you're feeling generous, but have now devolved into flecks of orange whatever in the gutters.
The cars drive mercilessly by, like a damn storm, wave after wave of grey toxic gas just wrapping me up and making me stink and cough and I'm so used to it I barely even notice anymore, but I bet to anyone who lives in the country I would smell like the fucking tailpipe of an 89 camry.
A car drives past me and slows down. I look straight ahead and keep up my pace, the nice way of saying I'm not a working girl.
There's gravel and it's in these traffic islands. Gravel and rocks. I pick up a nice big rock and I think about hitting people with it. How much damage could I do to a passing car if I threw this?
Then I look at it and try to imagine what this place must have been like in a time before humans came.
I heft the stone in my palm and turn it around and imagine lakes, streams, trees, wan morning sunlight and dew on leaves as I pass FAT CITY FIREWORKS and some drunks hooting and hollering outside the Hing Ming Market.
They're flailing their arms around and clearly all worked up about something. Maybe one of them saved up enough to buy a fresh can of Steel Reserve.

I get on the bus and I start thinking about this shitty ass thing that happened to me- how I'm going to have 138$ garnished by the fucking government from my goddamned paycheck becasue some asshole who bought my old car got a parking ticket and didn't bother to turn over the title.
I remember what I told Hunter when I found out via a friendly looking envelope covered sinister official print.
"When you're a little baby, life sweetly pats you on the head like a good puppy,
When you're a kid, life is tousling your hair with the occasional unwanted smack on the ass, and when you're an adolecent, life is putting it's hands into dark places and telling to to stay quiet becasue this is our little secret.
By the time you're grown up, life has dispensed with the finery and has you bent over. It's fucking you in the ass, with absolutely NO lubrication, and you know it's never going to stop until you die."

( The Conlusion, with photos )

I had my annual review at work today and apparently I'm doing pretty well.
My boss literally had NO complaints or issues with me, and told me I was doing "awesome" and we pretty much just sat and bulshitted for half an hour.
I should have suspected everything was going to be okay after the executive director (my bosses boss) gave me flowers yesterday... but that was just cause they had forgotton to get me flowers when I first started, and everyone else got them. But still... anyway.
It's all good, and I'm feeling fucking rad.
After stressing out for the last month about this I'm feeling mightily relieved and somewhat amused, though my eye-twitch is starting to annoy the piss out of me, since it's over and done with, but apparently my body hasn't figured that out yet.

I don't know what kind of a raise I'm getting yet, but I'm greedily rubbing my hands together in my mind, and salivating like a pedophile in an amusement park.
Oh that was tasteless.
Cheers to me.

Alas, I've become grotequely addicted to "Farm Town" a rediculously pointless application on Facebook. It's so dumb but I just can't stop. Since I have these fucking absurd 12-hour shifts in front of a computer screen, and I CAN'T look at porn or download any programs (like WoW, probably for the best), I have to find ways to amuse myself when we're dead- which TBH, is a lot of the time.
SO I watch Hulu, and I learn to make origami, and I draw and sometimes I check my eyelids for lightleaks if I think I can get away wtih it- but man- what an utter waste of time that game is; and I really, really enjoy it.
Which reminds me, my IRL raspberries are just getting ripe, and eveything else in my garden is flourishing wildliy, so I'm going to spend some quality time wrestling with Audrey 3 the killer vine this weekend.

Ok, that was pretty much about nothing.


How's everyone in LJ land?

Ok, so there are just TOO MANY photos to post, so I made a couple slideshows-

Part 1


And Part 2


There are some AWESOME shots that are in these slideshows that are not in this post, so if you have time, check em out.

Then yesterday me and Hunter watched Xena and played Paradise Burnout. It was truly a day of rest, and I bloody needed it. I did a grand total of NOTHING and it was well deserved I think.

The night before the trip, I got 3 1/2 hours of sleep, and was SO TIRED when we were on the launch boat that I actually fell asleep. I was afraid I was going to get seasick, but I fell asleep like a fucking baby. It was great.

I now know that I love being on boats, and I was kind of heartbroken to have to leave Astoria.

It's an exquisitely beautiful town, and though horribly economically depressed, still manages to be wonderful and quirky. All the buildings were really old and all the paint was chipping and flaking. There were cracks in everything, and the cool, gloomy, grey mist that enveloped the whole town put me in a fantastic mood. I was bouncing around like a little kid half the time, and passed out asleep the other half.

Rindy, my coworker and guide, pointed out to me all the "Goonies" sights (the house, the jail, etc) and we ate Lemon Merangue Pie ice cream and the BEST goddamned squid I've ever had at this fish and chips place called "The Ship Inn".

We had gotten there just in time to see "The World", a floating condominium whose cabins go for a million bucks a pop passing by.
They were going to drop anchor to go to the Scandinavian Festival in the ailing township, but it was gloomy as hell, with rain-spittle and gusty wind all day, so I imagine most of the passengers just stayed on and played shuffleboard.

We ended up going all the way out to overlook the ocean, but by then my camera was out of batteries, tragically.
You'll just have to believe me when I tell you that it was really fukcking pretty.

In the 1800s they stacked up these HUGE boulders on the coast (South Jetty) so that the soil and sand would not erode into the channel and make it more difficult for boats to come in.
It's absolutely AMAZING there- like 15ft high of stacked rocks and if you climb to the top of them it's just ocean- that's all you can see. But if you're down on the ground all you can see is this endless rock wall. It's totally incredible.


Here's some of my favorite highlights for those of you who can't be bothered with a slideshow



The route from Portland



From Astoria to the tipppy tip of Oregon, looking out at the Pacific.








( My favorites, still a ton of photos, don't even bother if you've got dial up )

Today I spent twelve and a half hours on a work meet and greet- it was time consuming and bloody exhausting, just because of the number of people, and the fact that I'd slept 3 1/2 hours last night.
Anyway, from conception to end, this is probably the largest photo post anywhere, and I'm not even posting them all.

This is part 1 of 2, this is the pre tour shit- aw some stuff before we went on the trip that is not directly related, but is awesome- when I'm less drunk tomorrow I'll post more.


I just want to drink beer (thank you god for half off on good local brews) and stare vacantly into space, done with socializing, ready for nothing:



( Bus People, Bums, and awesome stuff )