CafeChatNoir

Well, seems that me & Tim are the only two working tomorrow, LOL

This NASA (news - web sites) image shows a view of Hurricane Isabel taken by one of the Expedition 7 crewmembers onboard the International Space Station (news - web sites) (ISS).(AFP/NASA-HO)

Saw Pirates of the Caribbean tonight. If you’re looking for fun, silly, escapist entertainment, I highly recommend it. :-D

I am in a seriously bad mood today. No real reason, just one of those days where you want to go kick people.

Morning is here, and there is still a hurricane out there. Damn, I was sure that spending money on batteries and junk food would make it disappear.

Hurricane Isabel is shown in this image from television taken from the international space station (news - web sites) as it orbits over the storm Monday, Sept. 15, 2003. (AP Photo/NASA TV)

So, I am slightly more prepared now. Started w/ dropping by - on phone w/ his mom and she wants to know if I have put gas in the car. Not yet, planning on taking care of it on the way to work in the AM. Not good enough, LOL - I was instructed (more like ordered) to go do it NOW. My own mother hasn’t even bugged me about it. So the car has gas in it - about 12 hours before it would have anyway.

Stopped again at the store while out. Snagged some of my fav junk food in disguise as non-perishable items. Found masking tape (WTF do I do with it? When we were in typhoon country, we never taped the windows - we had full-on typhoon shutters that slid over the windows. Problem solved. Does the tape really help that much?) The grocery store is looking like it does when a snowstorm approaches… Water, 80% gone, batteries - forget it, unless you have a flashlight that takes AA’s, and the ‘pop off the top and microwave’ soup is pretty much wiped out.

I did manage to find batteries at 7-11, at a slightly lower rate than ’s generous offer of $25 a piece. Lady at the counter said they had more in the back if I needed them. So, I’m good to go there.

So, if the power goes out, I’ve got food (had food before, have good junk food now.), had water anyway, got lots of other things I can drink as well and have batteries for the radio and flashlight. (I am more concerned w/ the radio than the flashlight.) Not a whole hell of a lot else I can do. If a tree comes down on the house, I’m screwed no matter what.

And if push comes to shove and they say to get out, I at least have a light packing list. 2 cats, their food & water, 1 computer (box only), 2 small jewelry boxes and one photo album. Oh, and some underwear. Drive over the mountain and find a red roof in or something owned by Starwood since they take pets.

I hit the grocery store this evening, my one concession to Isabel being getting some C batteries for my radio. (They were already sold out of size D for the flashlight.) I get them, get home, and discover that the radio in fact takes D anyway, and apparently the ones in there leaked and corroded, so who knows if the damn thing even works anymore.

I have no masking tape, not much in the way of non-persihables and my storm prep generally sucks. Where I am running into problems is the fact that anything I could do seriously smacks of overreaction to me…

…means 4 afternoons of being off calls! Changed my VM again - now has that I am in from 8-5 eastern, how to put in a NEW support call instead of trying to circumvent the call center and that I am oh-so-not available from 1-4 this week.

(Yeah, there’s a day when I’ll be here, but I don’t feel like having to switch it again.)

It’s Monday… I overlept, the hurricane hasn’t changed track as of 5 AM this morning, but at least it’s a Cat 4 now. I have to go to the store for regular groceries tonight, and if Washingtonians are being true to form, there will be no milk, bread, toilet paper or chicken available.

Wow, I need to go back to bed!

It occurs to me that I have to actually get up and go to work in the morning, so it’s time to stop looking at satellite photos of hurricanes and get to bed… Be interesting to see what track they’re calling in the morning

Several more to go! Finished Mom’s pearls - that was an easy one. 4 strands, 31.5 inches. She said she wanted opera length, and she’s got it and then some. Next is the bracelet w/ grandma’s beads, and then something I’ve had rattling around in my head for a while - itty bitty seed beads, 3 shades of blue, one shade of green, and some bigger beads randomly thrown in. It looks great in my mind…

I’ve whipped through the downstairs, it’s ready for the cleaning service tomorrow, just need to gather up the laundry in my room and dump it in a laundry basket. Only thing I’ll have to worry about in the AM is pulling the sheets off the bed and leaving new ones for them.

Be interesting to see where this hurricane decides to go, and right now, it seems to have decided on hitting us. Just checked the most recent update, and this is the first one where the track has stayed steady - every other one has changed. Looks like Thursday & Friday will be the nastiest. I sure hope it decides to take one more right turn… At least I am well stocked with indoor things to do over the weekend. (I don’t even want to think about the possibility of evacuation)

But it’s going to be so good. Swung by the bead shop this morning to get some clasps for some projects I’m working on.

The first is re-stringing some freshwater pearls that are about 3-4MM that my mom got in Hong Kong about 20 years ago but never has done anything with. It’s going to be 4 strands, roughly opera length and this is the clasp I chose for it:

The second is going to be for me. I have a bunch of bugle beads that were my grandmothers’. Some silver and black in varying lengths that she bought when she visited us in Japan about 20 years ago (still in the little vials and the paper bag from the shop) and two little packets of black iridescent bugle beads that are about 5MM long from forever and ever ago. I bought a hank of sliver-grey seed beads today to round that out, and I am going to be doing a bracelet with all of these sort of randomized through it. I did some ‘test stringing’ this morning to see how they all looked together, and it is going to be terrific. This is the clasp I picked out for this one:

The pearls should go fairly quickly. The bracelet will take longer, between the tiny beads and the fact that I am going to 6 strand it to give it some width. (I’ve done 2 strands to one loop before, so I know it can be done. It’s a matter of just holding your mouth right and growing an extra hand.) And the beads are tiny. Did I mention tiny?

Young yet tall : Giraffe baby Rahima stands next to his mother Lisboa at the Dortmund Zoo. (AFP/Volker Hartmann)

It would seem that the quickest way to find something that you’ve lost is to post on LJ for the whole world to see… I went and looked one more time and found it - right where I swear I had already looked a dozen times.

ok, so it was a short trip.

I have managed to lose one of these

No, I have no idea how one manages to misplace a .50 caliber ammo canister either. (No, it does not have ammo in it.) I must have put it somewhere in preparation for the cleaning service. BUT WHERE????

Ouch - Final Score: Maryland 61, Citadel 0.

Well, we didn’t get to go flying today, but Kaiti & I still had lunch up at the Hard Rock Cafe and a good time. Except for the parking ticket. (Note to self: Look to be sure that the car that you’re replacing isn’t already illegally parked…) We stopped in at B&N and I was weak. But not as weak as I could have been - I only walked out w/ one item and I am now the happy owner of a big ol’ Get Fuzzy book.

is off watching the Citadel get their heads handed to them by Maryland. I had REALLY hoped that they would pull a rabbit out of their hats and win, but at last look the score was 47 to nothing, so I just hope the tailgating was good.

Bye, Johnny….

Pisces: (Feb. 19—March 20)
Filing off the numbers and reselling the hot goods would be a workable plan, if you didn’t deal in stolen credit cards.

http://www.theonion.com/3935/horoscopes.html

It’s very hard to believe it’s been two years. God, that was a long day. Second day of what turned out to be one of the WORST jobs of my life. Day #2 should have been a big freaking neon sign.

I SO don’t want to go into the city tomorrow. At all. I’d just as soon haul my ass out to Strausburg after work and stay there for the night.

I tell ya, this job gives whole new meaning to the hump day thing. It’s our busiest day of the week, and ever Wednesday at 5, TPIC & I look at each other and say, “Tomorrow CANNOT be this bad.” And it usually isn’t.

One of the gals in our group, “Mama Bird”, has been wonderful. Really supportive and very helpful. When it comes to the job, she is a kick ass and take name kinda gal and has zero patience for slackers. I think that’s why we’re getting on real well - I am the same way. She’s taken TPIC & me under her wing and is doing an awesome job of showing us the ropes.

Today was BRUTAL - from about 10:30 to noon, it seemed like everyone disappeared. Only people actually taking calls were TPIC, me & Mama bird. We still can’t figure out WTF happened there, but I ended up with a shitload of calls assigned to myself by the time it was all said and done.

Well, at about 1 minute of 5, we get a mass message from one of the other gals in the department:
“Hey, let’s do some callbacks!”
My thoughts?
Oh, piss off, I still have 8 calls assigned to me and I can’t take the chance that one of those people is going to actually answer their phone and I’ll be stuck with another one, Miss has ONE freaking call to her name at the moment!

TPIC was standing there and saw the mass IM come in, too and had the same reaction. We’d already been steamrolled, no more of that today, thanks!

At which point a new IM window popped up on my screen from Mama bird…

“So, are you gonna whup her ass or shall I?”

After howling so hard there were tears in my eyes, I let her know that TPIC & I were ready to go for it. As Mama bird then said,
“Not only am I NOT doing callbacks, I’m going home to boot.”

I followed her lead. Fortunately with this job, there is no shame in quitting at quitting time, and if you don’t, you’ll just burn out. The calls will still be there tomorrow when you get back in.

Inspecting my eyelid for damage after a supremely clumsy moment on the part of the cat. Yeah, there’s gonna be a scar…

Between that and the bedhead, I’m really glad our clients don’t have video access

“Your files are out of date. You really should see about getting them updated - you’re probably missing some patches as well.”
“Well, we don’t do patches or upgrades if things are working.”
“But, ma’am, it’s not working.”
Otherwise you wouldn’t be calling us…

so the cats played me like a cheap fiddle, knowing somehow that faking disinterest in breakfast would result in dinner being a nice can of real tuna. Got home, breakfast was gone and dinner was inhaled like there was no tomorrow.