archived notes for Dec. 1999

12.31.99 - (5:39 AM -- added the art of flight)

On the morning of 12.30.99, I wrote:

Reading Dave’s site made me jealous. I wanted to update my own.

But no, not doing that from mom’s computer in Southern Cal. Instead I just read, chuckled, and then started to type this.

In a little over five and a half hours I’m going to be on a plane heading toward Missouri. And that’s good, because I love my family, and I’m going to miss them, and I can’t believe it’s been eleven days, but I want my stuff back.

Doesn’t it always come down to that? I’m not an ascetic, though I probably value material things less than people know, however I like to get back to MY stuff. MY cat. MY house. MY car. MY music. Jeesh. It’s been eleven days since I last listened to the Metallica CDs.

There’s a lot to talk about here, but I don’t have time nor do I have the inclination to do so now I’m physically uncomfortable on my parent’s computer, which is probably why in eleven days, I only wrote ten paragraphs of anything substantial. I’m itching to go home and write about my characters -- I’ve been jotting things down in my Visor as they come to me, but it’s just not the same.

Still.

I’m going to miss my mommy.

(sigh)

Trade-offs. There’s always a trade-off. I don’t want to leave her. Sometimes, I wish I’d have been born first, just so I can have spent more time with her.

I think I’ll be back in a few months. I always wind up missing my family, even if I do miss my stuff.

If you live near your mommy, give her a hug for me Give your daddy a hug too, just so he won’t feel left out. Unless you’re a guy, in which case you should give him a nice manly bearhug type thing I dunno. Do that thing guys do.

I'm home now. My cable modem is not working. This is bad. I'm itching to answer my email and update the site. Much to talk about. Something did weird things with my contacts pages -- the formatting somehow got screwed up and so words run together and make it look like it was typed by a five year old. Yet another thing I have to fix. Grrrr. Nothing I can do about it till my home connection gets fixed, though. So until then....

12.18.99 - Yikes! The entry for 12-17 was held up due to my provider being down for some maintenance Andy-Andy told me about. But did I remember? Nooooooo.

Anyway, it's somewhat ironic that I am/was listening to "Consider Me Gone" while I wrote the "gone fishin'" pages for here because, after today, you can consider me gone. No email, no FTP, no joke.

I will miss you all, and will be sure to try and come back with something amusing when I do return to these pages. In the meantime, I'll have a random image generation with (gasp) five images of my family. I admit that this is in part just a futile attempt by me to build something for my page that I can show off to the family in case someone (gulp) asks about this place.

I got some really great gifts today. Dave got me a nice spice rack (oooh. marjoram!), and a Rogue Spear t-shirt (now I can frag Russian terrorists in style!). Jeff got me the boxed collection of the Egypt aromatherapy kit (with lotus oil! LOTUS OIL!!!) and a Sailor Moon t-shirt (moon scepter halation!). My secret Santa (one of The Company's programmers) got me a cool Egypt card game and I got not one but two Egyptian incense burners (an Eye and an ankh). I got a henna art tattoo kit (think Jeff would notice if I did it to him while he was sleeping? bwahahaahahah!), Egypt stickpins (anyone sense a theme here?), snickerdoodle coffee, an Amazon.com gift certificate, and even Amber got some fine gifts from Tamma, Nebet-Het of The Company (by that I mean the actual title -- Tamma is the one who coordinates everything in The Company, making her a true "Lady of the House"). And I got bath teas and drinky teas, a comfy Starduck's mug, and a neat-o last-1000-years-in-review day-to-day calendar. And chocolate. And cookies. And valomilks!! I got valomilks!!!! VALOMILKS!!!

I accidentally opened up the gift my dad got me, which was the Eddie Izzard video, Glorious. I wavered over watching it, but -- Dad, if you ever read this, I'm sorry. J'adore Eddie Izzard. I had to watch it. And oh God -- he's good. He went from the Old Testament to Revelations and everything in-between. I loved it. It was better than Cats. I must watch it, again and again. I don't know if it was as good as the other stand-up act I saw him do but -- god. "I am an evil herbivore." I'm still giggling.

One day this guy is going to make it big. Buy stock now.

When I get to work today, I'll pop up a picture of my Sailor Moon t-shirt for you all. I've burned through the tv-series already, but I still have the manga to fall back on, as it's not completely translated and released yet. I've decided I like the manga better. Characters are more solid.

So that's all for now. A big hunka notes for you all. See ya!

12.17.99 - Mi gato es bailarín del regazo.

You are a mere two days away from no-more-Steph-for-a-while. I must fish up that image I plan to put here while I'm gone. Yes. I must.

Let's see. Who's left....

• Espie
• Dad
• Mom
• Jen
• Cindy
• Jeff + Jeff's Birthday
• Craig
• Xina

"What's that, mama?"
"That's where Bast lives, son."
"Can I look in there?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"You can't."
"But why?"
"Because if you do, lasers will come out of her eyes and burn you to a crisp."
(pause)
"Really, mom?"
"Yes, really."
"THAT'S COOL! LET'S TRY IT!"
"(sigh)"

12.16.99 - Late night update. Sometimes the muse is an assassin.

I'll try to add more to this tomorrow after I finish buying gifts, but for now, some charm for you.

12.15.99 - My knee hurts today -- kind of a sharp, stabbing pain. Most unpleasant.

Much stewing in my head, but I can't really talk about it. Mostly personal spiritual stuff, which I've found doesn't make much sense outside my brain, so it'll stay there for a while. I thought I'd write it down so I'd remember.

You know those group names for birds? Like "an unkindness of ravens" or (my favorite) "an exaltation of larks"? I've started applying that to my real life groups.

A murple of Ambers.
A vent of Stephanies.
A belligerent of Daves.
A Gingham of onsites.
A nagging of moms.
A side order of Jeffs.

12.14.99 - Yay for Christmas bonuses. Now I don't want to work, I want to go buy gifts.

So far, the remaining list is:

• Espie
• Dad
• Mom
• Jen
• Cindy
• Jeff + Jeff's Birthday
• Craig
• Xina

12.12.99 - Earlier I said: Back to work today. I'll be heading in in about eleven hours.

And then I added: I'll be adding a decent photo of me from the party tonight, or the aftermath. It's at work, though, and I'm at home at the moment. Mental note to self: Need to finish Yula's Story for Melissa by Sunday shift's end.

So here it is:

12.11.99 - In retrospect....

After a night of dreams where I was trying to take down the entry from last night, I woke up today and decided to take it down myself, here, in the real world. I don't think it painted an accurate portrayal of my family. It is something that I need to write about at some later date, but I think right now isn't it.

If the jury would please disregard their having read last night's entry -- thanks. If any family members for some reason read it, my apologies. I probably shouldn't have posted it.

This is obviously something I need to think through a little more before I write about it. I will write about it, but it's too tied up into some of my past anxieties to do so quickly.

Need to wash my hair and brush my filthy teeth, and then Jeff and I need to go to the store to buy the necessary ingredients for our contributions to the Ratcliff bash. I don't think there will be a Vent today. I'll think about this a little bit. There's some stuff I need to muddle through.

But it was nice last night, going home. There are nice things about Mooville. The sky has hundreds of my ancestors looking down on me on any given night. You don't see that in San Francisco. By some miraculous stroke of -- okay, we'll call it luck for the sake of the disbelievers out there -- my parking spot was still open up front when I got home at 3 a.m. Very unusual. And my spiffy pearl necklace came in. I'll wear it and my green tie-dye scarf with the suns on it to the party, and probably my black dress. No vest, though. Sorry.

12.10.99 - My new favorite place to eat is Culpeppers. Their hotwings are excellent. Reminiscent of the ones I make, but without the celery. I like the wings, but I miss the celery.

Car fixed. Wallet slimmer. I consoled myself by buying fruit syrups for Italian sodas. My consolations cost me $22. Well, that wasn't very smart. Oh well.

I'm taking Mom's Incredible Crab Dip ^TM for Ratcliff's holiday bash. People will like it. It has all the terrible things we Western-born socialites love -- cheese, seafood, mayonnaise, and butter. Yeah, baby.

Dave and I went to the supermarket last night, and quacked. I don't know why we were quacking. Maybe it was the chicken wings. I've never seen a man eat so many chicken wings!

12.09.99 - Did you ever write the lyrics of songs on the inside of your school binders because you had the song stuck in your head and, being in class, you couldn't go listen to it?

I used to write down the titles of all the books I'd read, too. And draw.

Though I posted it this morning, I thought I'd mention here that the exposition of my life continues with talk about drugs, rock and roll, and Death, of course.

My tire is well and truly flat and needs to be replaced. I'm down to $60 in my bank account because silly me decided to buy food on this paycheck. My car loan (which usually lets me defer my December payment at the low cost of $50 versus the usual $306 payment) decided not to give me a break this year. We won't talk about my teeth and how they feel about all this.

Pray for that Christmas bonus coming on the 15th for me, kids.

I think I'm a little bummed. I had been looking forward to an extra $256 to buy gifts with, and I don't know why Mercantile Bank opted not to give me a break this time around. I haven't been late on my payments, though they are up as of May of 2000. Mercantile was bought by another bank last year. Maybe that has something do with it.

Surprisingly, though I am probably disappointed in a distant sort of way, I'm not in a bad mood. It doesn't bother me that my tire was flat, that my bank is being a ninny, that my cat is looking at me funny. Nuisances, but I can work around them, and I will. Worse comes to worse, I'll just give people shampoo bricks for Christmas this year. :)

Which reminds me, I think I know where I went wrong there. Pectin. The recipes I'm finding online all mention using pectin when you're making the shampoo. So I'm gonna give that a whirl. I made a nice face cleanser with green clay, oatmeal, roses, and lavender today, so I'm encouraged. And I set up some vinegar herb splashes for later, as well as started up a new eyepillow made with rice, flax, hops, chamomile flowers, and lavender.

Jeff and Dave understand that their gifts will come late -- Jeff in particular has a birthday on the 17th, and knows it's going to be hard for me to accomplish birthday and Christmas gifts at the same time. So that leaves Craig, Ryan, Xina, my sisters, my brother, my mom, my dad, and Espie to buy for. Hmmmmm.

I'm sorry for those of you who I would like to get gifts out to who aren't on the above list. There are lots of you. :\ It really all depends on how much money I have. I don't have high hopes that the paycheck will be that big, though I will be getting my Thanksgiving overtime (I hope).

I will try to make it up to you on Kemetic New Year. :)

Final note: For Jeff, Dave, the person who managed to get me as their Secret Santa at the office, and anyone else who has been conniving to get me gifts behind my back, the ultra-spiffy Amazon.com wish list!

12.08.99 - Everyone repeat after me: "I Love The Onion."

I'm working on the Kemet.org book reivews page, which meant an overhauling of one of the templates I use on Kemet.org, but otherwise it's going along swimmingly. I really have no choice, actually, except to stay at home and work on stuff. My right front tire is flat (again) and I need to get a new one tomorrow, when the tire places open. Tried to patch it before, now I'm just going to put a new one on. And just in time for Christmas! Yee ha.

The front page was messed up for a little bit. My bet is it was Belligerent Dave's evil lizard lackey sock puppets at work to make sure no one ever got to my notes page again. Dave, however, couldn't anticipate the powers of Super Heff, who pointed out the problem, which I've since corrected. Super Heff's sidekick, the Amazing Bamber, was not available for comment.

Yup.

I gotta get that tire fixed.

12.07.99 - Weeeeell, my face soap curdled. Hm. This is a sign. I must not use brick o' shampoo, though it might make a fine Christmas gift to certain family members who mocked me for attempting this.

I think it's a sign the CD isn't bad when I want to go to work just to listen to it. The Metallica CD isn't great, but it's not terrible. It could be better. I will probably continue to listen to it for a week, then forget about it in favor of Princess Mononoke once more.

I just wish I could rip out those manly gutteral words that Hettfield can do. "Back to the meaning of...life!" But alas, I have not the equipment. I R a folk singer.

Surly waiters annoy me. Not to get too far into it, but I tip rather well, and I tend to be sympathetic toward those who have to deliver dishes and take orders. I try to be nice. And when I ask for change, it usually means because out of the five they're going to bring back from a twenty dollar ticket, I'm going to take out a one and leave the rest. That one will be buying me a drink at work later, and I kind of need it.

Did Surlywaiter do this for me, though? No. He decided to be a smartass, and give me a Lincoln instead of five Washingtons.

Waiters, you know better than to do that, right? I mean, I'm not asking too much when I say OUT OF THIS THIRTY I NEED CHANGE. Not to mention that all we did was get the salad bar and some appetizers. He didn't even refill our drinks.

Grrr. I'm sorry. I guess I consider myself nice, though I really don't know that I am, since I've never actually waitressed in my life (though I did work at McDonald's for a year and a half when I was a teenager). But still...oh well. Nevermind.

Okay, I'm done.

Band names you too can use if you so wish: Jiffypop Eucharist.

Hey! Get away from that, ya mooch! Sheesh.

12.06.99 - The new Metallica CD (S&M) came in. It's pretty good. I didn't know it was live, but that's okay. The tracks I've heard so far are more than decent, though at times the orchestrations don't quite jive with the guitars and drums of the regular band. It's either something I'll get used to, or I won't. Still, it's nice to hear "Call of Ktulu" again.

The Sting CD (Nothing Like the Sun) also came in, but I know how that one will sound.

Yum. The Metallica CD just got to "Of Wolf and Man". Even if it is on the Black Album, which is an otherwise lamentable collection of Metallica songs, this one is one of my favorites.

Still coping with NT. I still don't like it. A lot of GUI, it seems, to do complicated stuff. I like GUI, but I also like to look at the guts of things...I dunno. I would be happy just muddling my way through hacking out a PERL version of the stuff we need, but MicroBorg is what companies use, so MicroBorg is what I use.

Otherwise, all's well with my world. Howsabout yours?

12.05.99 - My mom found my website. She read my common adventures essay. She liked it.

MY MOM FOUND MY WEBSITE.

Okay, I'm over it.

I realized at the end of "common adventures" I mentioned that I was going to write about Nebt-het, and then I didn't. So I'll have to remember to do that, because it was kind of amusing.

It went from seventy degrees Fahrenheit to snowing in the span of twenty-four hours here in Mooville. What's up with that?

My hair smells of ylang-ylang and cardamom. Very odd.

12.04.99 - So it's like, one of those days. What kind of day? Well, um, one of those days.

One of those days where I've spent not enough time sleeping. Fwoosh! Here I am again, awake at work, or trying to be.

Oh, the suffering. Oh, the torture. Oh the gripe gripe griping.

Adventures in e-commerce continue to be exciting and semi-lucrative. Do these people realize I'm using them? God, I hope not. I feel guilty using my sixtieth coupon at Healthshop.com but I checked out all their legalese and nothing in there says they have a problem with it. So, um, I guess I'll just keep doing it.

I would say that this is the lamest damn excuse I ever heard for justifying my abuse of coupons to get what I want, but this is a business issue and not a moral one: mainly that if they didn't want the coupons to be used, they shouldn't have issued them.

I have two of their lame holiday CDs now with a third on the way in my most recent order. If I could I'd send them a note saying, "Stop sending me your fricking CDs!" but that might alert them to my coupon activity, and the last thing I want is to have the FBI show up at my workplace to drag me off due to excessive use of websites like Amazing-Bargains.com or Deal of the Day. I know there's a packer somewhere in the HealthShop warehouse just shaking her head as she pops yet another bottle of essential oil or cosmetics-making ingredient into a box and counting the days before she stomps off to inform the management of my nefarious ways. What's going to be the final straw? The raspberry and almond chocolate bars ("Jeez! She's expanding into candy now!" mutters the disgruntled packer under her breath.) or the apparent hoarding of the holiday CDs ("She can't like Gene Autry that much...can she?")? And is that a likeable excuse at a trial? "Well gosh, Your Honor, I tried to stop, but I loved Joe Stampley's rendition of Jingle Bell Rock so much I just couldn't bear not to have it playing everywhere I have a CD player. So I got one for my car, and one for my house, and one for my workplace, and before I knew it...Oh... GOD! I'm an addict! I'm out of control!"

And then I break down into tears, blame my parents or my female mojo hormones for everything, and get off scot free.

Yeah, it's unlikely. What is likely though is that I'm going to have a complete Holiday-CD coaster set to match my woven AOL disk floormat.

I have a first aid kit. I love first aid kits. There's something very Florence Nightingale about them. The appeal of whipping one out and using it -- wow, sends shivers up my spine. OooooOOoooOOoooh!

Speaking of shivers, I bought some spearmint oil. OooOOoooOOooh!

Just added to the collection: Ylang-Ylang III, Fir, and Cardamom. I brushed a drop of ylang-ylang through my hair. The angels rejoiced.

On my desk: An empty glass, a Mason jar with sourballs in it, and the complete Lord of the Rings trilogy, courtesy of Seshat.org. It figures.

Need a band name? Here's one: Straight Pin Soup. Same cadence as Nine Inch Nails, and just as sharp. (yuk yuk yuk) If you use it, tell me. If you make money off it, send some.

I regret now having bought Dave Unreal Tournament for his birthday. To the left of me are random screams, taunts, and demonic voices announcing things like, "Rampage!" or "Killing Spree!" or "If a train travels East at 5 meters/second relative to the ground, which will be denoted in vector notation as VT = (0, 5), and a person on the train walks South at 1 meter/second relative to the train, which will be denoted as VP = (-1, 0), THEN the direction and speed that the person is traveling relative to the ground is represented by the vector VG = VT + VP = (0, 5) + (-1, 0) = (0 + -1, 5 + 0) = (-1, 5)".

No, really, it does.

Today is a Tool kind of day. Let the rabbits wear glasses.

12.03.99 - It's raining outside today, and I have the perfect music to accompany the soft storm -- the Princess Monoke (Monoke-Hime) soundtrack.

Three new oils added to my collection -- rosewood, tangerine, and violet leaf (10% dilution in jojoba). The oil I made for my face isn't working out -- my skin isn't soft, and I'm breaking out, so I'm dumping it to try another combination when next my skin clears up.

The shampoo also didn't work, though it might make for a nice face cleanser.

I like Vitamin E oil.

Today I'm going to try and wrap up all the stuff I meant to wrap up this week, namely all the Kemet.org stuff (the lecture and the book review), maybe an archive of the Netjer board, the letters and pages I promised to read, my turkey soup, my meatloaf, and oh yes, a little writing time :)

I went around my office today and put candy canes in everyone's stockings. I didn't have any left for me, but that's okay. I feel like the widow with the mite, except instead I'm a semi-single gal with a box of candycanes.

Bills are paid, cat litter is clean, house is a mess, all is well.

Oh, and the essential oils warnings page is done. :)

12.01.99 - Meanwhile!

Jeff is playing around with Acid Music. It's a thing. That does music. And samples stuff. He's flipping through club beats and such. I feel a little like I'm stuck in the middle of a Jennifer Lopez video.

And then meanwhile, to my left, Belligerent Dave is playing Tool. And now I feel like I'm stuck in a horror movie. Which is not all that dissimilar to the Jennifer Lopez video experience.

I've been experimenting with soap and oils and such on these, my pseudo-days off. We may be moving to a day shift. More as that develops.

Vent! Now with extra whitening power!