I tried to create a nation to play this game Lynn found, only all the countries I want to be are reserved or already taken. :(

Who else of you out there is creating the Most Serene Republic of Oops, whose currency is the Oopsie-daisy? Hmmmmmmm?

Well. I find parts of this hard to believe. :)


Congratulations! You're Elrond!


Which Lord of the Rings character and personality problem are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Kimberly, a way cool paralegal, sent me this link because she knows I'm a liberal. :) She's awesome! I totally plan to participate.

Heh!

"I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever
after, and changed my ideas: they've gone through me, like wine
through water, and altered the color of my mind."
--Emily Bronte

A public domain quote that I like.

And now, a poem entitled "Stopping Up Sinks on a Snowy Evening." I wrote it for the office kitchen area, but when I read it to Rob he stopped me after the first stanza and grumbled, "I was going to get to the dishes." Methinks he felt a tad guilty, what what. :)


Whose dish this is, I think I know
His butt’s not in the kitchen, though;
He will not see it fester here
Nor watch the grey-green fungi grow.

The dishwashing machine so near
Waits to feel some dirty-dish cheer.
Between the sink and microwave,
The loneliest machine of all.

Two side-steps is all it would take
For others’ sanity not to break.
If only into it we peep
And out of it clean dishes take.

The sink is noisome, dark and deep.
And we, too busy for its upkeep,
Yet it must be clean before we sleep,
Yet it must be clean before we sleep.

- by Tracy, who greatly admires Robert Frost and apologizes for trying to come up with a poem that includes dishwashers and microwaves.

One thing I hate is when I find notes I wrote a long time ago and now I can't remember where I got the information from. :(

In preparation for the walk-through by two prospective real estate agents looking to push our property, I cleared off a pile of papers and found buried within it a list of Greek clothing options that I remember jotting down after reviewing a book on Greek clothes and costumes.

Unfortunately, despite making a cute little drawing to remind me exactly what a kyne is (one of those helmets with a crest of feathers bisecting front to back), I neglected to jot down the name of the actual publication this stuff came from. Argh!

Now I can't seem to find any information on tarentine, which according to my notes is "females - thin, sheer white fabric" to know whether this is an article of clothing or a description of a type of cloth.

Well, I'll just go pull on my anaxyrides (loose, baggy pants), theristrion (a light veil or cloak) and some cothuroi (elevator shoes) and wander to the library again someday, hoping to find this same book.

I went to a training session at lunch. Boxed sandwiches with cookies and a bag of chips, plus soft drinks were provided. The room was set up in classroom style, with rows of chairs facing the whiteboard at the front.

After work, there'll be a "wine social" for the paralegal association that I'll be attending. As newsletter editor and secretary-elect, I have to go to these things and glad-hand around the room. Since I'm working all day and going to the social directly from here, I'm wearing one of these outfits that supposedly allows one to transition from day to night with ease: black capri pants, a tan silk shirt and a white blazer. Very functional!

However, the meeting at lunch was pretty awkward as one is trying to balance the handouts, a sandwich, the other half of the lunch and a pen to take notes.

Back at the office the first thing I asked Clare was, "Can you see where I dropped part of my sandwich mayonaise-side down on my pants?" To which she said no. "Whew!" I said, adding, "What a relief! It was right there. pointing to a delicate part of the female pants-covered frontal anatomy And when I bent to look where the bread went, a tomato fell out!" Pause. "Of the sandwich."

Duh. I sincerely hope I'm a lot more sparkly and witty tonight. Also hoping there's no tomatoes.

Blogger has a new interface. Apparently they snuck it in during the last couple of weeks when I was too busy to look. It's interesting, and hopefully I'll be able to recall exactly what I did last time to get a post to publish. :)

I now have a kitty litter pan under my desk. That darn cat (named "Maggie" for it is she who is the pee-perp that has been using my desk as her personal pan) had better recognize and use the pan or she will find herself staying at Chez PAWS because I have had about enough of this.

Last week very exciting things happened which are still happening :) I have another week of exciting things to look forward to. For example, tomorrow morning Det. Tompkins with the King County Sheriff's Department is coming to my class from the violent homicide unit to discuss handling physical evidence. He brings with him a PowerPoint presentation. I don't know about you, but I look forward to starting my week with slides showing how to keep criminal evidence from becoming contaminated :P

I spent a good part of the day looking for an apartment via the internet. Have you ever seen Apartment Ratings? You have to take some of these reviews with a grain of salt. They are supposedly written by tenants or former tenants, but some of them sure look like they were written by the rental agent staff! Especially when an apartment had 3 extremely negative ratings followed by three really good ones to boost its percentage back to 50 percent!

For example, once upon a time, I lived here. It was an okay place to live. We had a bottom floor unit that stayed very cool in the summer because it didn't get any direct sunlight, and the way the apartments were built, the ground floor units had dirt pretty much up to the bottom of the windows; that's why they stayed so cool. One day there was a really, really huge rainstorm. The entire place flooded. :) But, as the reviews show, the office staff were really nice...and what could they have done anyway? But still, you have to wonder when you read some of the reviews that tell you the office staff totally sucked and the next review says how totally cool they are...did the office staff write that second review? The world may never know.

A tip for those who work in big office buildings:

If you approach a glass door and can see the word "PULL" written on it, but the word is backwards, you may treat it as though it reads "PUSH."

Just a friendly tip from the person who's walking behind you.

The cherubs are playing a form of cooperative HALO, wherein they try to kill each other in order to fill up the floor around them with their dead bodies. They are about ankle-deep in body husks now. It's a very unusual technique, but they're apparently enjoying the chaos. Weird.

Yesterday I had a tummy ache, but it's pretty much gone now. Spent part of the evening in CoH with Corey and Johnny, and we did pretty well for just a team of three. We kicked butt! And when our butts got kicked in return, Corey hauled her butt to a safer place and yanked me and Johnny over, then restored us to life.

Dr. Z is cool :)

I have piles of boxes at work that I need to bring home. Some of the kitchen gear we don't use can be put up and set aside for storage. The goal is to take out all the extra stuff and make the condo look less full, so that it appears even larger than it is. Rob put together the carpet cleaner for me yesterday, so I will hopefully be able to use it one patch of carpet at a time and bring some life back to the floor. And to take out some of that cat pee smell from under my desk.

My boss Heidi has a penchant for neatness that's as, if not more, intense as mine. She said that her husband jokes her superhero power would cause her to be named The Stacker. She confessed this to me as we stacked piles of papers and straightened them up one day. :)

After work she and I went to Old Navy where we bought identical pants and matching shirts to wear to the office tomorrow :) We're kind of funny that way.

And then she went with me to EB Games to pick up a copy of City of Heroes for Rob's very own. He's playing Issigri on my game right now. I'm tired (all that shopping!) and will now eat the rest of the cookies Rob made this weekend while I was gone, then pass out.

Spent Friday and Saturday at the WSPA conference in Ocean Shores. Fortunately, the main topic being covered at the conference is one which is near and dear to my scholarly heart: Witness Interviews. Fortunate, because that's what we're covering in class this week and I found out late Thursday that my speaker for tomorrow's 7AM class will not be there. That gave me enough time to panic, then write out a different lesson plan to cover the stuff the speaker would have covered.

Also finished grading the mid-term exams.

Also panicked about crafting, then became very Zen-like and decided I am much too young to die of heartburn.

Also was elected secretary for WSPA. Didn't win any door prizes though.

And Susan got her Paralegal of the Year award, so that was mighty cool. She stayed dry-eyed till I gave her the card the guys at the office signed for her. Me, I started crying when they read the letters Heidi and I wrote about her because it reminded me how hard Susan worked and under what stressful circumstance. She's a lovely woman and truly deserved the award.

Also made it to level 10 in CoH. Many deaths along the way. Still enjoying the game, getting around a bit better than before, although usually checking the map with one eye, looking for enemies with the other, running with the left hand and spinning around with my right hand. The only body parts not in use are my feet. Which is a good thing, as the cats continue to view the underside of my desk as their new toilet. They even, in the ultimate act of defiance, peed on the bag of pumice scent remover that I got at Restoration Hardware. Stupid cats.