ricevermicelli

Please understand, just for starts, I love my job. Genuinely and unsarcastically, I love my job with all the joy that was sucked out of my heart and replaced with mostly cynicism back around the time I quit Girl Scouts. Accounting is a license to be nosy, and I try to contain it, but I am the nosiest person you know. If I had understood how much fun there was to be had in accounting back when I was in college, I would have thrown over my English major and walked out with some kind of business degree, and that would probably be true even if I had known then what I know now about the actual proportions of juicy scandal to trivia about local real estate ownership.

So I love my job. I love that I get to work with numbers. I love having co-workers and talking to them. I love the intellectual minutia of my profession (I love intellectual minutia of many kinds). I love that I can sit someone down over coffee for a rousing discussion of LTV vs. CAC and roll that right on over into lunch and spreadsheets.

Just, jesusgoddamnfuck I am cranky today. The office wifi wasn't working, so I went to work from home, which meant I could not physically storm the sales office when I was sent a contract (in .pdf, so I couldn't even EDIT the bastard) that basically said that for a shiny penny from 1983, we will let the customer have our entire teapot reinvention service department for a year and a half, and also they can send an auditor at their option and our expense to ask about the color of my panties, and if we are very nice they will put the penny through the souvenir machine at a science museum before they pay it.

MY PANTIES HAVE DARTH VADAR ON THEM AND I AM UP TO MY EARS IN SOUVENIR SMOOSHED PENNIES, OKAY?

I learn new things all the time. This week, for example, I learned that igneous rocks exude low levels of radioactive gas that cause cancer. Usually lung cancer. And I already knew that I live near igneous rocks. The Eastern Seaboard, basically, is igneous rocks. Sometimes, when I feel like there is not enough nature in my life, I leave my house in the city, where someone at some point hauled some of the igneous rock away to make room for roads and things, and go for a stroll through bigger, unedited heaps of igneous rock, which have been less deranged by human intervention.

I am sorry for any readers who find that this kind of thing tweaks their anxiety. It tweaked the hell out of mine.

This came up because I put an offer on a house, and when you attempt to buy a house, there are regulatory authorities that believe you should get a disclosure statement about the igneous rocks. This seems reasonable, really. Also terrifying. "Hello, people who psyched themselves up to spend vast piles of dollars. Here are some things you should know about rocks today!"

I have not heard back from the sellers about my offer. I have heard that they received fourteen offers, and I have surmised that they were probably all for approximately similar amounts of money, and that many (including mine) were delivered with cover letters intended to convince the sellers to ignore the money a little and trade portions of their home equity for warm fuzzies. Had I been delivered a giant stack of mail that worked so hard to play on my feelings I imagine I would not respond quickly either. Step one would probably be drinking, step two would be going on vacation, and step three would be picking a name out of a hat. I would guess that the sellers are in between steps one and two right now, crawling groggily out of their hangovers to see what's cheap on Expedia.

The world is full of mysteries. Whether I am buying this house or not turns out to be one of them.

UPDATE: Not buying that house. Oh well. Next time.

I had this cold. The kids are in New York. I haven't seen Black Panther yet. Three things make a post. These aren't very strung together - definitely not my best work - but it's what I have tonight.

Tomorrow, I go back to work. I love my job, and the price of loving it is that it takes up more time than it ever has before. I love how they trust me and respect me and believe what I tell them and I want them to keep doing that, which means that I feel like I have no time for my internet people or internet arguments. I miss these things! They get about five more minutes tonight before I go to bed and hope that the dregs of my cold are dead by the time the alarm goes off in the morning.

Hotspur came home from school on the 14th with Valentines. And candy. So much candy. Good god, why.

Someone in her class handed out an item that Hotspur calls "The Lollipop Apocalypse." It is a paper bag - red, with hearts - containing approximately 30 lollipops, plus a handful of starbursts, and one. Single. Off-brand. Peanut butter cup.

Who the heck thinks that an ENTIRE second grade class needs 30 lollipops each, or that you can apologize to those children's parents with off-brand reese's imitations?

Schrodinger and I discussed fantasy series tonight. I told him about the books I fell for when I was in fifth grade (The Seven Citadels series, by Geraldine Harris). They had maps of imaginary places, and pull quotes from made-up religious texts at the start of each chapter, which were almost a whole additional novel in themselves. Ms. Harris limited herself to four books, but the school library had only two of them. The town library had the third. No one had the fourth. No one at all. The school library finally ordered it sometime in my sixth grade year, but it didn't actually come in until I had moved on to junior high. I didn't find a copy of book 4 until the summer before high school.

The last sentence of book three was "In the morning, the ships of Fangmere caught them." I was on that cliffhanger for three years.

This was back when I was the ingenuest of all ingenues, of course, eons ago, when a year between books was a long time. Three years on that cliffhanger was excellent practice for waiting for the fifth Harry Potter book, and barely a warmup for Game of Thrones in print.

So, today has been a day. The kids are here. Hotspur is living his best life. Schrodinger would like to file a complaint with the management. Fortunately, they both like chicken soup.

What's an issue is me. I am blue as hell. I have no idea why. Because I oversugared with Girl Scout cookies? Because TurboTax sucks all the joy out of filing my taxes? Because I am waiting forever for books I want to read? Because I have accounted for basically nothing since Friday? Who the hell knows.

I'm going to go try to make sure I get the kids to bed at a reasonable hour, with all their stuff packed. Might as well give tomorrow a better start.

I set a dishtowel on fire on the stove.
I had a greasefire in the oven, because of a roast chicken's leg dripping over the edge of the pan, and I never used to mind bawdy chicken, but I understand the whole thing with the kitchen twine now.
Also, I keep a baking sheet in the oven.
Which is great, because of the thing where I tried to saute onions in the casserole dish to save time on cleanup, and only after the horrible noises stopped and black dal was leaking out of my casserole at the sides did I realize that the thermal expansion properties of ceramics make them oven safe but not good for the stove top.
A lot of my tupperware is improvisational, and I have to tell you that Talenti gelato containers are fantastic for transportation, but bad in the microwave, and really only top rack dishwasher safe.
Probably best to not empty your dishwasher right away when it stops. Wait for it to cool. There might be melted stuff in there.

Ever since I quit having cancer, my medical hobby is strep. I get it 2-3 times a year. I usually have strep at the hobbyist level - I go into my doctor with a sore throat and basically nothing else, and she doesn't believe me particularly, but the rapid strep test comes back positive and I go home with antibiotics. This time, though, I started to get sick on a Sunday (in a city with no Minute Clinics), which turns out to have been a spectacular opportunity to really get out there, and develop a platonic case of strep.

It's amazing. I had never really appreciated the depth of possibilities before. The places I can get to with just a little commitment, and the unexplored potential still out there! Scarletina! Rheumatic fever!

Actually, I'm staring at my antibiotics, wondering if I can move this along by taking them ahead of schedule.

So here's the deal: I can't be cynical about Star Wars. I know a lot of people who are over it, or done with it, and feel like it's unoriginal - I hear you all, and I just can't care.

I didn't see the original trilogy at all until I was in high school, and I didn't actually get to watch the movies until I was in college. I cannot tell you how important Princess Leia was to me - secretly at the time, less so now. Leia is only waiting to be rescued because she knows rescue is coming. Leia is not going to sit back and be helpless just because she needed a pair of faux-stormtroopers to open the door. Leia was in that cell with a torture droid, her home planet was blown up, and when the guys get there, she's not even crying. Seeing her again, older, sadder, still working for a better world - this is what prayer looks like to an atheist.

Further, at least some of Leia's efforts are possibly paying off. There are women all over the place here, pilots, mechanics, doctors, scavengers, smugglers, officers, bartenders. The original trilogy was kind of a sausage fest. This is a delightful improvement. So is Rey. I would personally cut J.J. Abrams a check for the scene where the self-rescuing ingenue dashes out of the cockpit to congratulate her gunner on his shooting.

Lots of plots are retreads. How many versions of "Henry VIII goes nuts and gets married again" have I gotten though? How thrilled am I to show up every time someone comes up with another way to commit Robin Hood to film? Serenity was the plottiest bits of a bunch of Firefly episodes patched together with duct tape and baling wire. Persuasion is Pride and Prejudice but eight years later. Much Ado About Nothing (which I have seen in two movies and a whole bunch of times on stage) is about 50% Romeo and Juliet, with less dying this time. So yes, there's a cute robot here, and a plucky kid from a desert planet, and a guy who almost chickens out instead of being a hero, and a planet-destroying battlestation where the contractors cut costs by omitting handrails. This is the movie I expected to see. It feels like running into an old friend.

Do I want a temp-to-perm job with an organization that lost its CFO to a work-related criminal inquiry six months ago, and also uses accounting software I'm not familiar with?

Please, universe and everyone in it, please -

Sometimes you say no to me. No, you are not going to hire me. No, you are not going to rent me that apartment. No, you do not have the thing and cannot get it for me. No, that is not possible. It will not happen.

These are never joyous moments. Also, these are moments we do not have to share. The information has been conveyed. Further processing is something we would probably all (I would certainly) be happier to do independently. I do not want to spend this next moment hearing that you wish things were otherwise, that you wish this were a universe in which you could pull the thing that I want out of your ear and present it to me on an antique cake plate, alongside a bouquet of flawless white roses. No matter how much we would both like that, you have already said it is not going to happen. And so I would like to limit these conversations to the vital information. "No," and perhaps as much as a single other sentence. "Please try us again in a few months," or "Sorry for the bad news."

Please just do this. You say no, and then we both move on. Alone. If you want us to move on together, you have to say yes. If you don't say yes, I need to get back to reading the help-wanteds.

Current Mood: frustrated

Can anyone recommend me a good realtor for the Boston area?

I wrote this.

http://the-toast.net/2015/05/28/the-one-percent/

Please oh please like, share or tweet.

Can anyone suggest a good algebra book for second graders? DL! is bored to tears with his classwork, and has loved the algebra he's run across. I'd like to give him more of it.

If anyone can make it to my house, I will host a dramatic reading of the local NWS forecasts. Their growing despair begs for theatrical treatment. Perhaps they could be staged as an opera.

School is closed tomorrow. It was also closed today. And for three days last week.

In between storms, the only thing I managed to stock up on was wine. I tried, but the grocery store was still mostly out of things.

I anticipate Boston schools will pre-emptively announce a Tuesday closure sometime tonight.

My plans for Arisia are a little vague on the details just yet. However, the con is showing Winter Soldier on Friday at 8 p.m., in Revere. I will be there, with the kids. We are wearing pajamas, bringing some fuzzy blankets, and possibly importing highly necessary Red Vines. We would adore to be joined by people we know.

Hotspur's latest composition is a piece she calls The I Love You Song. She performed it for me, accompanying herself on an out of tune ukelele. The chorus goes "I love you, I love you, I love you, but I don't really care."

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ricevermicelli

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