Recently in Take a Ride on the Drama Llama Category

Moving and new job are at the top of the list for life events most stressful. Moving back to a town where most of my friends live takes the edge off - I have some support and things to do from time to time. Also the folks at work are great and I am making a few potential friends, not just friendly-because-we're-here acquaintances. Still, I continue to be lonelier than hell. To offset this, I have been going on hikes with an active hiking group, and accumulating gear for actual backpacking trips. It keeps me occupied. I made myself a hiking quilt, sort of a sleeping bag minus the zipper and a couple other features that make mummy bags too claustrophobic for my liking. I joined hiking forums. I did a lot of research. I'm still unpacking from the move and will likely share a booth at the swap meet with a friend to offload random items and the plethora of books I haven't read in two years. My pets are doing okay, but I have lately wanted to kill them for waking me up too early - the time change is not our friend. I am trying hard to move slowly, make no rash decisions, take deep breaths, move through the transitional period and let the situation settle before doing anything else like committing to another group or shifting my work schedule. The impulse is to get busy and stop feeling so lonely. It's not that friends aren't great - it's just that I've gotten to the point that coming home to an empty apartment is getting harder and harder, and nearly half my life is behind me. One of my friends is widowed; she got to spend her younger active years with a husband she loved dearly. Others have had relationships, spouses, divorces, and have children and grandchildren to fill the space. I've had relationships, a husband, and they're all gone. In my less rational moments I have to wonder what I did wrong. It's not like I don't know how to be a good friend, or how to make connections. It's just sort of what happened. And the older you get, the fewer options there seem to be. I haven't met an unattached *person* in two years - everyone's got someone. Forget meeting someone compatible; that seems like a pipe dream. The one compatible person I knew didn't want me, apparently. It all seems harder and harder to handle. So I write less, and blog less, and try harder to be active, because it's pretty much all I can do. And before you suggest dating sites.. been there, done that, not going back to it. All it taught me was that people either lie, or have distorted self awareness that leads to uncomfortable situations. I only ever met one person on them who was honest. That didn't work either.

But more tired. I've started saying good bye to some of the kids I've been working with. Who knew 12 year old boys were such drama queens?

Why did I leave the final bit of my yuletide fic til now? Why did I forget what brilliant thing I was going to end it with? Why did I wait until now to turn all this yarn into one sided scarves for various persons I know? Lo, behold, the lady of unanswerable imponderables. Yogis on mountains in Siberia are pondering these, and shall do so until the end of time.

Followup call to person who interviewed me. "Is [name] there?" "No, she's no longer with [business]." Um. Oh. Guess I'll keep sending resumes.

Ever feel like you were riding along on a tall wave and were just reaching the tiptop of it, and it was about to crash down flat and take you with it? My first choice of work issue solution did not work out. Now I am discussing options and forwarding resumes. I hate instability - I wanted to be here for more than a year. Now it's looking like that isn't an option.

My life could not be more complicated. Um. It could - but I'm already feeling overwhelmed, so, like, it can just stay the way it is and not get worse, okay? Tuesday night, I got very little sleep. My neighbor with whom I share a single wall has an alarm clock that went off at about 3 AM or so, and stayed on for hours. WHEEP WHEEP WHEEP WHEEP WHEEP for five hours straight. (It was my day to go in an hour later than everyone else.) I noticed about ten minutes after I finally struggled out of bed that the alarm was now silent and they were watching the news on TV. HOW DO YOU SLEEP THROUGH FIVE HOURS OF AN ALARM CLOCK GOING OFF! I couldn't even tune it out when it was muffled by a wall! AND THEN. On top of all the stuff I won't mention here because it could lead to various personages tracking me down and wreaking havoc on my life, I got a call at work the other day that nearly traumatized me. "Hi, this is (name) at (property management place handling my rent check each month). I'm just calling to see if you've moved out yet? We have the 19th as your move-out date." The back of my mind: GUH. AAAAAAHHHHHHH! NYARRRRRRGH! My mouth: WHAT? AM I BEING EVICTED? Voice over the phone, muffled: "She sounds shocked." Various crashing rustling crinkling noises. New voice on phone: "HI THERE, this is (name of a lady I actually remember), um, I'm so sorry, we've managed to cross up your apartment with (other address that's COMPLETELY DIFFERENT except for the unit number) AGAIN, heh, I'm sooooo sorry." Me: So I don't need a Uhaul and a bunch of therapy to get over the trauma? Lady: "Oh, no, *chuckle*, no no no, I'm so sorry." And then my phone went berserk for the rest of the day and would not let me get voicemail. You do not know how crazy it made me thinking people in crisis might have left me voicemail I could not get. And then, I would leave my office and come back wondering if the impassioned voicemail I left for the help desk had resulted in a return call that got sent to voicemail. Maybe there was a voicemail about how to get into my voicemail? So I send an email about my voicemail. It righted itself eventually and the only voicemail I got... was nothing more than someone confused about an appointment time, which I'd already settled with them. Whew. That was just yesterday. This morning, I stumbled into the kitchen to find the first roach I have seen since the Bug Guy sprayed around. HIDING UNDER THE ROACH MOTEL. Reader, I squished him. DEAR UNIVERSE, PLEASE STOP TRAUMATIZING ME, KTHXBYE. CYNICAL CAT WOULD LIKE TO BE LEFT ALONE NAOW.

No links, no free press. I have spent too much time this evening (when not making quiches, mmm, quiche lorraine) surfing around the links to kerfuffles regarding fanlib.com. This is the brainchild of people with Too Much Money and not enough savvy about fandom, not in the slightest, no way. The ads are ludricous and obviously aimed at what they think is their target audience - ergo, I find them WEIRD and ODD and somewhat EWWWW. The TOS is in no way satisfactory to anyone who wants to feel safe - they assume, apparently, that there are no people with knowledge of publishing in fandom (wrong! there are published authors in fandom) or maybe they are hoping the Barnum Principle is in their favor (there's a fool born every minute). Or maybe they'll just think they can bluff through all the flack - and there is lots of flack flying about. My favorite volley is in Lizbee's livejournal. :D They show no clue about the internet culture - spamming people with invites to join their community, and being all reassuring and cuddly without saying anything to satisfy anyone's concerns about the TOS. Thinking they can get snippy in public, which is, anywhere Google can reach you. And it reaches. LJ is only the best rumor mill online. It's gone up at Making Light (blog by editors at TOR) as one of those funny sorts of things that happen on teh intarwebs for us to poke with a stick and laugh at. And indeed it is. I'll stay over here in the corner, thanks, guys. Have fun with your three million dollar website and the few thousand angry fen you've pissed off - hope you have a great firewall, some of those wacky fen have mighty geek-fu and less funded sites have been hacked for less reason.

Drink two glasses of wine, before eating. Pay bills online. Discover a decimal placement error that will slap you in the poorhouse, several hours later. Panic. Panic again, with visions of eviction. Figure out how to cancel payment and reissue. Stop panicking. Fall into bed in a dead stupor. And to think tomorrow will be a twelve hour day, if I'm lucky.

So as usual I am debating whether to post something about what's going on. Wondering a) who really reads this anyway and b) whether they're anyone I know in the flesh. What's going on? Stress. I should never go into such detail here that it's recognizable, I've decided, so I'll leave it at this: disagreements and condescension and manipulation and politics. I hate politics. I hate condescension. I try to be straight and fair, and honest with coworkers. I try to let petty things go. But this is not petty, and it's unfair. So, document and document and wait for things to settle down, or work themselves up to a sort of frenzied defend-myself level. I've seen this game before. In other news, I'm swearing off many book purchases, limiting myself to one a month. Of course, I had to order 6 books for the one purchase. They're mostly used, and less than 10 bucks a book, but still. I also requested ones I didn't order from the library. This weekend, for the first time in months, I am visiting the family. It's not exactly going to be fun. I chose a two day weekend to limit the hours I had to spend gnawing mum's iron grip off my ankle. She's already complaining about that. I had to sit in a training yesterday for most of the day. The dude couldn't figure out powerpoint so I was yelling answers. Mum said I had to fix their new printer. I will never get away from computer geeking for others, I fear.

Updated Home in a Handbasket with some additional pages. Am concerned about a variety of things, not the least of which is whether the post office is really going to deliver my mail. Internet was down most of the day today. Bleh. I had to argue with tech support - just because it said 'wrong password' didn't mean I was typing it wrong. Also, if you have DSL, you also get dialup as part of the package, and the login is the same - tech tried to BS me about needing a different password for DSL. Uh, no, it worked before, regardless of my usage of dialup, it is the same either way. Just because my DSL abruptly stops working in the middle of surfing my usual blog rounds and you don't have a clue what's wrong, that does not mean you can make up crap just to sound knowledgable. All I wanted to know is whether they were having server issues, not to get a lecture about 'you have to type it the same both times, ok?' And for the eighty bajillionth time - I HAVE A MAC, stop telling me to use Windows software to do things, and HEY, your web page code is CRAP, it's not my browser! As I recall the page didn't load on the Windows box I used when setting up the router the first time, either. Why yes, I hate calling tech support.