A Mighty Fine Life

So I felt quite a bit better Sunday and Monday, and then Tuesday woke up with an incredibly sore throat and started having coughing fits. Came home early from work, stayed home today, and have been "working from home" which means "sitting on the couch watching TV" (and occasionally coding stuff for work, but they've only contacted me, like... twice all day).

Flipping channels led to me watching Catch That Kid on Disney XD, because it stars bitty Corbin. (Also bitty Kristen Stewart.) So it's extremely bad, but there's this love triangle subplot where Corbin and the Other Dude are both in love with K-Stew (even though they're, like... 13?) and refuse to help her rob the bank to save her father (the "plot," as it were) until she decides which one of them she wants to date. So she gives them each half of an "I love you" heart necklace and tells each one not to tell the other. Hijinks ensue, etc etc, and anyway, it turns out, Corbin has always come across as wicked gay on screen. It was mildly disconcerting. He was a baby.

(Well, 14 if my math is right, but he looks super duper younger than that.)

Also in the last scene of the movie, K-Stew makes the boys turn around while she tries to decide which one of them to go out with, and then she runs away and leaves them discussing how they'll always be best friends, no matter what.

I really need to not slash Disney movies quite so hard. Speaking of which... *cough*

And now I may go back to bed. WHY AM I STILL SICK? Blehhhh.

1) Saw Cobra with Jess and DK Friday night. It was the oldest crowd I've ever seen at at Cobra show, in that the majority of the audience was over the age of 15.

2) We have two conferences at work right now. This is a wee bit stressful, as you can imagine. But I'm surviving. This is particularly exciting (the surviving bit) because today I actually went to a conference for the first time. It turned out to be pretty anticlimactic, notable mostly because a) I am socially awkward, and being professionally perky is not my forte; and b) I actually had to dress like a grown up for it.

3) This necessitated buying clothing over the weekend.

4) I am not seeing OK Go right now. :(((((((

5) Apparently, I'm pissed off about the VMAs. I would not have predicted that.

6) Mmm... Bedtime?

Conversation at work today...

Me: I feel so dreadful I couldn't even drink coffee this morning.
My Boss: That bad? Don't come in tomorrow.

(And that was the mean boss.)

Speaking of work, I got paid to watch and discuss this video today. (Warning: NSFW. Gay sex. Penis rollercoaster.)



Also, meme from harmonyangel:
1.) Comment with any character you know I've written.
2.) Receive three bits of trivia about their sexuality: practices, preferences, experiences, fantasies, kinks, etc.
3.) Profit!

What the sky looked like over Citi Field last night:


(From the NY Times.)

(ETA: More pictures of the sky from yesterday.)

I almost never actually use this place to write about things I do in my life, which is weird, now that I think about it. But let's see. Thursday night I went out with a bunch of my coworkers to see "7.Eleven," which is a series of seven eleven-minute long plays, all set in convenience stores/bodegas, about the Indian-American immigrant experience. I missed a lot of cultural references (and I don't speak Hindi), but they were all phenomenally well done and I'm really glad I went.

After, we all went out for dinner. Amazing: fried goat cheese with honey. I basically ate my weight in it.

Last night was the game. My boss (a die-hard Mets fan) had an extra ticket and offered it to me; I went as my birthday present to myself. (Two and a half weeks, just FYI...) It started pouring while we were on the 7 train out to the stadium, and didn't let up for quite awhile; there was an hour rain delay. But after the storm passed over, it was gorgeous out. The sunset looked a bit apocalyptic, but it was pretty warm and summery, and good game-seeing weather.

And the game... :D I had a slightly better night than my boss, but he took it in stride. The Yankees won, 9-1, and it was one of the more entertaining games I've seen. Sabathia was completely on, which was just awesome to watch. I also really liked Citi Field, btw, probably more than Yankee Stadium II.

Anything else? Hm, at work yesterday we listened to Michael Jackson all day. But I think that's about it.

I was at work for ten and a half hours today.

I think the less said about that, the better.

Unrelated: my project for the last few days has been moving and organizing my delicious bookmarks, so that fannish things aren't under an account name that my coworkers could potentially run across. So, I did that.

If you are for some reason interested in perusing a massive list of HSM (and a less massive list of Newsies) fics I enjoyed enough to want to reread (the closes to a recs list I've got), it's over here.

Possibly it's especially useful if you're looking for pr0n.

I FINALLY SAW STAR TREK. OH MY GOD YOU GUYS, I REALLY REALLY LOVED IT. Except the bits I didn't. BUT IT WAS SO MUCH BETTER THAN IT HAD ANY RIGHT TO BE, AND IT WAS SILLY, AND KIRK GOT BEAT DOWN A LOT WHICH I QUITE ENJOYED.

Unrelated: I'm a video newscaster! Sort of. Look at me read the news! (Well. Click to the twitter link and then to the video, because I'd rather not link directly from LJ to my workplace, and I'm way too lazy to figure out another way to do that.)

Related: Sponsor me in the AIDS Walk!

(Er, if you did not watch the video, that's related as my news anchor role is specific to HIV headlines.)

DID I MENTION THAT STAR TREK WAS SERIOUSLY ENJOYABLE?????

So it turns out I'm getting a bonus at work. I don't entirely get why (except for the obvious, "I'm awesome," explanation, but apparently something corporate policy and my employment agreement which I TOTALLY READ, and anyway, I am) and while it's not enormous it is, actually, pretty sizable.

Smart thing to do would probably be put it in savings. I'm trying to build that bank account up, 'cause it's pretty sad, and... You know, recessions are scary.

On the other hand, I've been saving up for a new bed, because I kind of badly need one. And a real dresser. And some bookshelves. And I have this beautiful dream of buying a desk, not that I'd ever use it except as a place to pile papers. So I just cruised the IKEA website for all of these things and worked it out, and, well...

If I blow the entire bonus, I can buy 'em all. I wouldn't just do it all at once, but there's no way to get things here except by shipping, and shipping is pretty outrageous, and cheaper to do all at once. So after that check clears, I'm buying basically an entire bedroom set. HOORAY!

Work has been killer this week -- the biggest HIV conference of the year is going on, so while not as overwhelming as the insane conference in August was, I've been pulling 10-12 hour days, and working until midnight or after. (From home, for the last few hours of it, at least.) And remember that stint in December when I condensed a three month projected into three weeks, culminating with me being horrifically ill but dragging myself into the office to launch the damn thing anyway? Yeah, my job is pretty great, but sometimes it's also COMPLETE RIDICULOUS.

So today we had an all-company conference call. These things are very tedious and never relate to our office, anyway, so we put it on as background noise, mute our end, and go about our business. But the last segment today was the first ever Peer Recognition Awards thingie, where the last 10 minutes were devoted to people saying nice things about other people who had done something remarkable. We were told about this in advance, but none of us paid any attention, because it was made pretty clear that the #1 thing to recognize was sales, creating sales opportunities, and selling stuff. So.

Imagine my surprise when my name was the second one called to be recognized. :D :D :D Because I was not the only one who remembered that INSANE PROJECT, and so our biz director said some very, very nice things about my work ethic and abilities, and the lovely things I do for the company, and basically how I am totally awesome.

I try not to seek too much outside validation; my dad firmly ingrained in me the motto, "Toot your own horn, 'cause ain't no one gonna toot it for you." (Dad is full of such wisdom.) But DAMN, it is nice to feel appreciated.

Also, I bought a cute dress today, whcih means I now own...one dress. Heh.

Also also: Happy Darwin Day, and happy Pitchers & Catchers Day! (Well, some time this week. I forget which day. Whatever. Anyway, you can insert the annual "is that a baseball thing or a slash thing?" joke HERE. No, seriously, if you look through the last few years of this journal, someone makes that joke every year.)

And now, to bed. SO TIRED ZOMG.

I felt about 50% better this morning. I actually started feeling better over night, because I was lying awake in bed. Not because I couldn't breathe (unlike the previous night), but because when I'm super anxious about something, my brain DOES NOT turn off, so I spent the entire night in an endless loop of worries about the project launch today.

So: my throat is really raw and I'm kind of stuffy and headachey on and off, but doing better.

The project launch. It went... Well. Like, almost worryingly so. Not perfectly of course. But not only better than my stupid brain feared, but actually well. Which meant it only took, you know... four hours? Something like that. BUT IT'S DONE. MOTHERFUCKING DONE. (If you're curious: thebody[dot]com. I'm way too tired to bother looking up the noreferral thingie. Basically, the front page was entirely redesigned, and the entire site was widened out to 1000px, which involved overhauling all of the templates we run on, and all of the style sheets we use. I did this essentially on my own [except for the forums] and in about two and a half weeks.)

And then there was the weekly mailing.

And basically at that point I collapsed, because I started feeling sick again, and I'm SO EXHAUSTED. They actually sent me home early (well, 40 minutes early, but since I'm usually at least an hour late, that's saying something.) And several people congratulated me on my way out, because this thing has been all consuming.

Deep breath.

It's done.

FINALLY.

Nah, I take that back. I am going in for a half day now. Fingers crossed, we will launch the massive project of doom this afternoon.

Hey, I can almost move again without wanting/needing to collapse! That's a step.

I feel wretched.

I'm still going to work.

God damn work ethic.

Fuck the work ethic. I'm going back to bed. Oh my god my heaaaaaaaaaaad. My ability to breaaaaathe. *cries*

I went to work for the first time in a week and a half today. Luckily, it was not the mess I feared, and nothing exploded without me. On the other hand, absolutely nothing I did today went right, and I could feel myself getting sick as I sat at my desk. Things I did not have this morning but do now: a stuffed up head, a sore throat, and a headache.

In much better news, I'm halfway through season two of Avatar, after marathoning season one in two sittings with Margot over vacation. Oh my GOD. I love everything about the show. If it had been around when I was 13, I'd have written the world's most EPIC Mary Sue about how I need to hug Zuko IMMEDIATELY and then fix his broken life. Because poor baby is BROKEN and I LOVE HIM.

That's all I got. Dinner now; then Tylenol PM and collapsing in bed.

Yesterday was supposed to be my family's Chanukah party, but due to weather, it was canceled. I was both bummed and relieved by that; I wanted to see the fam, of course, but I was drop-dead exhausted and spent yesterday basically dead to the world, sitting on the couch staring at the wall. (The most productive I was all day was alphabetizing all the DVDs in our apartment. It was bugging me like whoa that they weren't.)

Today, however, was poisonivory's family Chanukah party! And she invited friends as well, so I met up with second_batgirl and we headed out to Jersey (and met up with harmonyangel there, of course). It was a nice, chill afternoon, full of delicious latkes and lots and lots of chocolate-covered pretzels. Which are, of course, DELICIOUS.

Aaaaand presents! I am such a flake that I forgot to bring anything with me, but Margot got me the new Mercedes Lackey book (!), and Jess combined my birthday and Chaunkah gifts and gave me a raccoon stuffed animal that she knitted herself (I just about cried -- long story), the first HSM on DVD (I know it seems odd that I didn't own it, but I didn't!) and Jump In!, which clearly I NEEDED.

And speaking of things I needed? Jen got me HSM candy canes. Chad is yellow (tropical fruit), Troy is blue (blue raspberry), Gabi is pink (strawberry or cherry, I forget) and Sharpay is green (green apple -- and why is Shar not pink?!). Sadly no Ryan or Taylor. But this is especially awesome because a) apparently, Jen is just fantastic at finding delicious HSM candy (she's also the one who gave me Ryan- and Chad-flavored bubble gum!), and b) you can imagine the dirty, dirty jokes about sucking Chad. *cough* *blush*

Work for the next three days is going to be killer. But then: VACATION. :D :D I'm not going anywhere (except Jersey, for the rescheduled family party, and Long Island, to visit Margot), or doing anything (except the afore mentioned visiting), but DAMN I am looking forward to spending a week and a half chilling on my couch with no stress. HUZZAH.

You know, I probably don't need two Newsies icons for essentially the same purpose, but whatevs.

So the snowpocalypse was a teeny bit of a let down, in that...it didn't happen? It started to snow pretty hard while I was on the subway, and kept up for awhile. We have a few inches of accumulation that immediately turned into ankle-soaking grey slush, as it will. But that was it. No crises or even trains running behind schedule; heck, this isn't even the coldest its been recently.

So it was a pretty normal Friday, except we played four hours of Beatles music in the office because my boss wasn't there. My insane project of dooooooooooooooom is going well. Now, weekend. Then three more days of work. Then vacaaaaaaaaatioooooooooon. Woo!

I am home.

The party had a keg. It turns out drinking games are a totally legitimate team building activity! And the company got fined for excessive beer spillage on the carpet.

I suspect our CEO might be a cult leader. If not, he should be. I'd join.

All the people I met were very nice.

The end.

Allrighty, so...I'm off to DC for the company Christmas party. On the one hand, hooray for not needing to go into the office for two days! On the other hand, spending five hours on a bus today, and then again tomorrow hungover. I should return to the internets at some point tomorrow night. Perhaps I shall have wacky stories of some sort!

So I hosted a party tonight! I've never done such a thing before (no, I don't count cast parties in mod 10 -- they were neither planned nor financed by me). Mostly it was folks I work with, though Jess and a few of Rachel's friends also came. We had dinner, drinks, and played pop culture trivial pursuit. A good time was had by all (at least to the best of my knowledge).

Employee review went well, I think.

Night.

So once upon a time I was told by ConEd that a) our account at our previous apartment was canceled, and b) it had been moved to our current address. So today, when I received both a bill for August at our old apartment AND a notice that our power is going to be shut off in THIS apartment, due to non-payment.

FUCKING CON ED.

So the guy who said he canceled our account didn't actually. It turns out he needed RACHEL to do that, and he didn't TELL ME THAT or she'd have called. He said it was done, no problem!

Our apartment management company never changed the account. So we had to convince ConEd to open a SECOND account at this residence, and I need to call the company tomorrow and get them to cancel theirs.

I just -- ARRRRG. Why why why? WHY CAN'T PEOPLE BE COMPETENT AND DO THE THINGS THEY SAY THEY WILL?????

And because when it rains, it pours, my company was sold last week. AND I have an employee review tomorrow. The two are not related; the first is actually good, because my job is safe and now I get better benefits (dental! vision! a 401k! huh?), the second is intimidating, but hopefully will have positive results.

JUST, STRESS.

COME ON, MISTY MAY AND KERRY! AMERICA IS COUNTING ON YOU!

In other news, my boss abruptly granted us a three-day weekend, so I'm not working tomorrow. Huzzah!

(ETA: Hells yeah!)

I am not at all sleepy, but really need to go to bed because I work tomorrow. Even though tomorrow is Sunday. There's a massive international HIV/AIDS conference going on all next week, starting tomorrow, so I shall be quite, quite busy with work and likely pulling 10-14 hour days. JOY.

But this is a happy post, because after living here for a week and a half, I finally have something that resembles a bedroom! It's actually very sparse and empty, because I don't own much stuff and the room is much bigger than I thought it was when we signed the lease (hooray, I guess!), but it's clean and unpacked. I have my closet all set up -- I own very little hanging clothing (well, I own very little clothing period) so that wasn't hard, but I think it's the first time in my entire life I've had an organized closet. And I washed pretty much all the clothing that I own (it took one load; I wasn't joking about not owning a lot of clothes) and it's all put away neatly, too. Which yes, is a big deal for me, as anyone who has seen the state of my bedroom on an average day since I was about 4 years old can tell you.

I would like to someday buy a new bed (the one I have now is a futon that was primarily intended to serve as a couch, is not a standard mattress size and thus can not be made up properly since no sheets fit it, and also it isn't very comfortable), and a real dresser (right now I have two plastic drawer thingies side-by-side), and maaaaybe even a desk. I have room for it! But first things first; this week I'm going to buy some bookshelves, because I need more than the one I have. (I'll probably buy more than I need, since I buy a lot of books...)

I need posters. I finally have walls to hang things on! I have virtually nothing to put on the walls at this point, as it's been so long since I've had a room to hang things in. I've got some action figures to hang up, and...that's about it. All the stuff I had from college has disappeared somewhere, or ripped, or I've gotten over. I'm buying that Newsies poster (I've settled on the orange one) but I have a lot of blank wall space here.

But mostly I'm just very happy. A room! That's mine! With my stuff in places I can find it! It is temporarily super clean, even! Hooray on all counts!

Okay, I'd best sleep now.