i'm sitting in peets, drinking a cup of coffee and using up a couple hours of free internet, checking emails (and facebook, b411, bciti, and LJ).

catching up on LJ, i keep tearing up reading Bob's entries and thinking i'm surrounded by people living very separate lives: sitting across from each other, ear buds in, reading their own books or magazines or pc screen content...and perfectly content.

i do not want what i have not got - said sinead.  i am human - good and bad, set in my ways and ever changing, part of the greatness that is life but very distinct from every other part of it.  where do i end and you begin?  somewhere in my head when i try to communicate probably.

i lost my fiance to cancer and yet the other day i had to argue why cancer should exist and is necessary.  every thing is both good and evil.

i can do anything i set my mind to, but what if i just don't want to do anything?  what if i'm at that sophmorish moment in my early 40s when i normally i would be able to go back to school and learn a new career, but instead have to find some income to increase the length of time my dwindled retirement accounts can keep the foreclosure at bay?  fkng fk and fk.

well, at least i like our president again.  whatever.

ganked from markosf

:)









Hmmmm go fig.

okay, so i have not posted here in a very long time and this will not be the entry to catch everyone up, rather just to say why and to promise a better posting soon.

my position at Patelco Credit Union was eliminated as part of the merging of my credit union (Cal State 9) into its behemoth maw. that was due to the redundancy of their already having a VP of Information Systems (my equivalent in their organization). there was, of course, talk of creating a position for me since my skill set is fairly unique and certainly valuable to a credit union running the host system i've spent the past 16 years on (any credit union really, but especially a Summit CU). with the losses Patelco took in 2008 as good loans went bad, and bad loans went unrecovered, decisions were made that hiring would freeze (and since i would have been fairly expensive anyway) that meant i joined the ranks of the unemployed as of 12/31.

happy new year - i'm sacked.

i'm off this month. i've been having lunch with friends, working on projects around the house, and am finally getting to go snowboarding this weekend. my new car has needed service a few times for (get this) the CD Changer which keeps eating the CD's i load into it. this means i keep spending mornings sitting at Peet's coffee in berkeley, watching the eyecandy and wondering when colleges started accepting fourteen year old's.

i've been reading texts (PMP certification, software quality assurance, embedded software testing, information system auditing, fuuuuun stuff really) and even some fiction and fun books (grisham, dawkins) i had backlogged, and playing with toys that i've had for a while and never really gotten to use. i have a sansa mp3 player (sized and shaped nearly identically to the classic ipod nano) that i never loaded music on. it was a gift within weeks of getting my iphone, which made it moot; except that i refuse to take my iphone with me up on the mountain when i go snowboarding (since i get one screen replacement and my warranty is voided but i want music up there).

i have been running on the treadmill pretty much every day, but not doing the hard exercise i promised myself i would do this month. i'm pretty sure my suits will fit better by the end of the month than they did at the beginning, which was the goal anyway.

and - then there was facebook which, let's face it - if you have an iPhone is pretty friggin addictive. i have something like 90000 friends whose lives i can now track with some level of detail and detached interest.

oh, and they have these things now called "Beers". not quite sure how long they've been around, but i've found that i like them very much. not as much as my new green hightop pumas, but rather a lot.

okay - so now you know why i haven't been on the LJ. there will be posts with pictures and notes about what life really should be like. lates.

discuss.

So, in preparation for a complete restructuring of my finances next year, I needed to get this in before Dec 31.

What do you think of my new baby?






:)

This is my brand new (certified preowned) 2008 Toyota Camry Hybrid Sedan.

My friend Simone, who was a Toyota salesperson for about a decade, *totally* hooked me up. She found this car, and brokered the deal for me so that it cost me about 7000USD less than it should have.

The car is covered bumper to bumper for 7 years or 100K miles, and has about 6800 miles on it right now.

And it has EVERYTHING. Don't know how to make it rub my shoulders and tell me I'm wonderful yet, but I just *KNOW* there's an option in there somewhere, since yesterday I clicked VoiceCommand and when prompted said "I'm hungry". It added restaurant icons to the map on the navigation display. This morning, I dried "COFFEE!!!" and it added coffee logos to the map.

Ganked from casecob

Post the first sentence of the first LiveJournal entry of each month this year.

January
I was standing in the grocery line of my favorite checker, the one I always say hello to, even though the line was two people longer (but neither of them had that much stuff in their baskets).

February
So, Lou was acting drunk last night which in the past has meant his sugar was too high.

March
Okay, so it's only the fourth - but I have.

April
All told for the month - 12.5 pounds.

May
SMITH kinda ruins this statistic.

June
i am suuuuch a copy cat. but different.

July
I haven't posted for some time, since before the iPhone3G was released, since before July 4, since before Pride.

August
i will have more to say later, but how's about this?

September
"booze, comics, dancing, food" - i love that they get alphabetized.

October
[whining: on] so, i was thinking earlier today that the tightness in my back muscles has got to be stress, and that's just from all the crap i am dealing with at work and home and personally.

November
okay, first - no i haven't voted yet, but will on my way home and i'm leaving around 430 to make sure there is not a problem doing so.

December
Okay, so, um, how come Vices and Fashion are the only two categories I've done everything they listed?

:)

that was not all that painful?

Quizzes: Your kind of evil
Congratulations, You Are Creatively Evil!


Raw evil score: 53.33%

Okay, so, um, how come Vices and Fashion are the only two categories I've done everything they listed?  What does that say?

The Life Experience Test

Overall, you have partaken in 129 out of 169 possible life experiences. Your average life experience score is therefore 76%. The average score is 52%, making your experiences more than 98% of the people who have taken this test. The average for your age group (36-55) is 56%. Broken down by category: Art: 8/17 (47%) Career & Work: 12/13 (92%) Civics & Technology: 6/7 (86%) Crime & Disarray: 6/11 (55%) Education: 15/18 (83%) Fashion: 10/10 (100%) Fitness, Health and Sports: 6/7 (86%) Life in General: 10/14 (71%) Relationships: 12/14 (86%) Religion & Politics: 2/4 (50%) Social: 19/22 (86%) Travel: 11/20 (55%) Vices: 12/12 (100%)

Take the test and see how YOU compare

Is it supposed to take 90 minutes to setup your facebook account while continually refreshing the "People You May Know" page, selecting people to add as friends, typing personal messages, and sending off Add Friend requests?

During that 90 minutes, I got a few comments, messages, emails, and "bout friggin time" popups.

I *did* however upload only my Hairrison Hawk pic as my profile shot.  Heh.

ganked from cuboz

So, toomanytshirts, your LiveJournal reveals...


 

You are... 20% unique (blame, for example, your interest in occasional bits of fiction) and 30% herdlike (partly because you, like everyone else, enjoy snowboarding). When it comes to friends you are popular. In terms of the way you relate to people, you are keen to please. Your writing style (based on a recent public entry) is conventional.

Your overall weirdness is: 36

(The average level of weirdness is: 29.
You are weirder than 74% of other LJers.)

Find out what your weirdness level is!

ganked from cuboz

What Your Height Says About You

You are cheerful, expressive, and creative. You have the heart of an artist, and the whole world is your art project. You are the type of person who says “yes” a lot. You are optimistic and giving. You also love a challenge. You enjoy accomplishing the impossible. You are about as tall as the average Japanese man or the average Dutch woman.

oh yeah - i am soooo a dutch woman.  what evs.

okay, so - duh - i'm happy about obama winning, and yes, i'm depressed about 8.

i'm angry that so many would vote against what i view as the fundamental rights of one minority.  i'm given hope that there are precedents that may allow the effect of the proposition to be overturned and then force the haters to pass a 2/3 revision to the constitution (which they won't be able to do).

i'm pissed that my nerves are so frazzled that i'm grasping at straws like being mad at the bigoted church going blacks and latinos who loaded the yes side of the vote count by following the instructions of their leaders, especially when it was obama and his groundswelling support that turned this election.  california may not have needed a high black voter turnout to send obama her electoral votes, but most other states did, and i'll shuttup and take the bad with the good.

and, while i'm on this ever so race related tirade, as was pointed out to me by cattycritic where were the statistics on asians (a much larger california population than blacks)?

regardless - this too shall pass, but goddammit why does it have to be this hard?

ugh.

Break away from the politics and post something Happy and Blue.



Heh.

okay, first - no i haven't voted yet, but will on my way home and i'm leaving around 430 to make sure there is not a problem doing so. i would like to point out that while usually at this time of year i urge everyone to Vote Pepe for President (as generally speaking a furry muppet shrimp would be a better choice that the options presented by the larger political parties) but this year, i like the black guy. besides -



next, i seem to have lost my keys - the big ones with the master key to my office building on them. i'm sure they're in the house or garage but it's annoying as heck. i used them saturday evening, but on sunday they seemed to have disappeared.

lastly, i would like to point out that Motorola has designed, built and released to the world "Laundryproof Bluetooth Headsets". see that green light? it means that once i let the dang thing dry out of for two days, i was able to charge it and use it again. i couldn't find IT for a few days either, but i eventually did. in the washing machine when i moved the load of darks from the washer to the dryer.

I posted yesterday to my friends list that I have four Madonna tickets for this Saturday at the Oakland Arena.  Nobody has replied.

Please check with your friends or cross post.

I will put them on Craigs List tomorrow morning if nothing else comes of this.

Thanks,
Rs~

PRIOR POST BELOW

I have four tickets for Madonna's concert at Oakland Arena this Saturday, November 1, and I cannot go.  I'm pretty sure the concerts (there's another on Sunday night) are sold out, so maybe there is someone who wants them.

They are Section 201, Row 12, Seats 1 thru 4.

I paid $115 each for them, including taxes and web charges.  I am not trying to make money on them, rather to recoup my costs and not have them go to waste.

First posting is to my Friends list.

Any takers?

FLICKR meme ganked from boyshapedbox

This is my most viewed picture on FLICKR.




Taken on August 4, 2007 and viewed 584 times (not including by me).

I should so tell Gibby. He'll love it.

ganked from badgerpdx 

1. Your rock star name (first pet, current car):  Scotty Toyota

2. Your gangsta name (fave ice cream flavor, favorite type of shoe): Caramel Dulce Hightops

3. Your Native American name (favorite color, favorite animal): Green Cub

4. Your soap opera name (middle name, city where you were born): Isaac San Pablo

5. Your Star Wars name (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 of your first name): Smiru

6. Superhero name (2nd favorite color, favorite drink): Blue Heffeweizen

7. NASCAR name (the first names of your grandfathers): Thompson Leslie

8. Stripper name (the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy): Chrome Chocolate

9. TV weather anchor name (your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter): Maplethorpe Missoula

10.. Spy name (your favorite season/holiday, flower): Autumn Geranium

11. Cartoon name: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now): Peaches Jockstrap   (maybe that's my porn name)

12. Hippie name (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree): Americano Oak

i haven't seen many do this one, but since my hands are big and strong and manly and (dammit a hangnail)...







three posts in one day? i'm spent.

okay - this is what i've been working on -



and, then i brought the stuff back -



and put the tshirts on the shelves, organized by color (duh) -


i still have work to do: another round of purges, clean that mirror (ugh) and find a chair i like for the space between the hanging clothes areas. all in all, a very good reason to skip the social possibilities that were overlooked, don't you think?