21 May 2001
Bah. Looks like the office internet connection is down. I'm hoping it'll be back up before too much longer.
Right. So. How's that song go? You don't always get what you want / But sometimes you get what you need. That's my morning in a nutshell.
Understand, while I'm not naturally a morning person, I like being the first person to the office in the morning. It's quiet, dark, and soothing. I get a little bit of time with just the halogen lamp in our office before everyone starts turning on the glaring fluorescent lights in the hallways.
This morning, when I pulled into the parking lot, there were four cars already clustered around the building. I groaned inwardly. I didn't want to deal with people on a Monday morning! But there was nothing I could do about it, so I put on my best face and strolled on in.
I greeted Jim, who's actually a friend, with "You're in early!" Jim looked up glumly and said, "Yeah..."
When I stopped in the kitchen to put my microwave meal in the freezer, I encountered Bruce and Mike. "Lots of people here early," I commented.
"The audit starts today," Bruce reminded me.
Oh, yeah, I thought. Unless something goes wrong, I won't have to deal with the auditor unless they decide to spot-check to see if I've got a task letter in my files for my current project. Which I do, so the audit isn't anything I'm worried about. Not in an immediate sense, anyway. So I made a knowing noise and told Bruce and Mike, "Y'all have fun," as I left the kitchen and rounded the corner to the hallway where my office is.
Now, one thing you need to understand about the building where I work is that the carpets are brown. They're that dingy, dusty brown color that's perfect for offices because it's virtually impossible to show dirt or wear on them.
There's always bits of fluff and trash on the floor. From the end of the hall, it looked like a discoloration where someone had spilled a bit of Coke as they came out of the printer/copier room (where, inexplicably, the drink machine is kept).
And then I got closer and realized, Hey, that's a bug.
And then I got close enough to see the rounded abdomen and thought, Shit, it's a spider.
I'm trying - I really am trying - not to be such a reactionary goober about spiders. I'm certainly not going to cuddle them, or even treat them nicely enough to move them outdoors. But I generally try to kill them on my own. Calling someone to kill spiders for me is just a little too evocative of cartoon characters standing on a chair and shrieking.
Besides, when I lived in that Apartment From Hell in college, I killed spiders - not once, but twice - that were half the size of my hand. (In case you're curious, I stabbed them to death with the end of a broom.) That was in the first month that I lived there. I was ready to freak, but then we got a spider-eating cat, and I never saw another one that was bigger than my thumbnail.
This spider was probably the same species as those: Round, fuzzy, brown... And only half as large. Just step on it, I said to Myself.
Myself got a good look at that almost perfectly spherical abdomen and said, WHAT? Are you CRAZY? Speaking of cartoons, have you ever seen a cartoon where the character gets so widged out by something he tries to climb himself to get away from whatever it is? My brain desperately wanted me to pull that trick out of my hat. Since, alas, I must obey the laws of physics, I retreated back to the end of the hall.
"Um... Help?" I said in a voice that quavered.
Bruce popped his head out of the kitchen. "Yes?" he said.
(Here's where you need to understand that I'm not a member of Bruce's fan club. But just at that moment, I've never been so glad to see anyone in my life.) "Bruce!" I said, still quavering, "Can you come kill a spider for me?"
Just as a side note, something similar once happened at 3GI. (Why I live in an area with such an astonishing proliferation of spiders, I don't know. Though at least there aren't any tarantulas native to Virginia.) At 3GI, the spider was much bigger, though not actually inside the office - it was sitting just outside, ready to leap on unwary passers-by. The person I called to deal with it there took one look at the spider and said, "Woah. That's a little big even for me." It took a tiny 5'2" pencil-thin woman to come around and chase the spider back into the bushes from whence it had come.
Bruce came around the corner, and I pointed at the spider. "Thanks," I said. "I'm a bit of an arachnophobe."
Bruce walked over to the spider and looked down at it. "Wow," he said, "That is a big one." And then he dropped a paper towel on it and stepped on it. I heard the crunch from all the way down the hall. Bruce used the paper towel to collect the carcass, and I thanked him profusely, edging away from him (well, from the paper towel) as he walked past.
I'm still a little widged out. But just think: If this had been a standard Monday morning, I'd have had to deal with the little creepy-crawlie on my own.
You don't always get what you want / But sometimes, you get what you need.
We went to see Shrek last night. Greg had organized it - he and T and some friends of their were going to come up from Virginia Beach (and environs), and Matt and I would come down from Williamsburg, and K.T. and Kevin and Ashby would hop over from Newport News, and we'd all meet at the best movie theater on the Peninsula to see the movie.
Well, Matt and I came down, and K.T. and Kevin and Ashby hopped over, but when the previews started, there was still no Greg and T and friends. Typical of Greg, really, to miss an event he'd organized.
Well, it was a great movie. Fun, funny, fantastic CGI... Lots of in-jokes to snicker at. And the ending was just perfect. I won't spoil it for you, though you'll guess about twenty minutes into the show what it is; I know I did.
Anyway, it was good, and I laughed my ass off, and I'll probably buy it when it comes out on DVD.
We found Greg and T and (just one) friend as we were leaving the theater. They'd gotten lost trying to find the friend to pick her up. Really lost, apparently.
We stood in front of the theater chatting for a while, and all of a sudden, I wanted to go. I'm not sure why, even. I'm a little weird around strangers, but that kind of ratio doesn't usually bother me. And I was still feeling happy about the movie.
I managed to freak Matt out a little by practically dragging him away. I still don't know what came over me.
I've been a little strange lately in general. I've been anti-social, hiding behind my Mac and concentrating very hard on doctoring pictures I've pulled off the net for my RPG website. I've tried writing three stories in the past four days, and they've all been crap.
Matt told me, "You can't expect to make them perfect on the first try every time." But these were so awful, I'm not sure they can be salvaged, even. The one thing that was even slightly readable turned out to be almost shockingly explicit (for me, anyway) homoerotica. And I stayed up late last night to re-write huge chunks of that. (In case you're curious, I did post it. Why bother having an erotica section on my fiction site if I'm not going to post the erotica I write? But I'm not linking it from here. If you actually want to read it, you can either poke around for a link to the fiction site, or ask me.)
It's like I can't focus on anything enough to understand the big picture. I'm okay in small bits, but as soon as I try to comprehend a whole project, I fall to pieces.
(And speaking of fragmented thought, I just realized what's wrong with the picture I was working on yesterday: Eyebrows are very important.)
I'm seriously considering taking a day or two off sometime soon. I think I need some time to refocus.
Speaking of my RPG site, I finally got around to e-mailing all the various artists whose work I'd doctored to use on the site, asking for permission. I was a little nervous about it. What if they got mad at the doctoring? Artists can be touchy that way sometimes.
All but two have responded, though, and they've all said pretty much the same thing: Provide credit and a link-back, and I can use the pictures. One said she didn't generally give permission for doctored pictures, but that since my changes were pretty minor (Naturally I'd given them all links so they could see what I'd done) she'd allow it. One wanted me to provide not only credit but a copyright line. One wanted me to put his name on the actual picture. I considered all of these to be fairly reasonable requests.
I'm feeling stoked about it. Of the two remaining, one picture isn't modified at all (aside from changing its size) so I expect that artist to agree. I'm a little nervous abou the other, though. I modified that picture rather a lot, and I really like the modification. I don't want to lose it.
Oh, well. If the artist never answers my query to say so, I'm not taking the picture down. So nyah.
Currently Reading:
- nothing
Current Projects:
- Kris' afghan
- garden