Today was a mimsy sort of day for us. Paid bills using the borogove checks. Received a new credit card with the new name. And thanks to our best girl, we snagged borogove.org today! Content and mail service to come soon, i promise.

Still trying to get into the working at home groove. I don't feel like I'm accomplishing enough yet. It's not like I don't distract myself with researching not-really-on-topic things when working in an office setting, though. The guilt-pressure hasn't yet built up enough to really drive me yet. Maybe using the laptop makes me think I'm on leisure time and I need to sit in front of a desktop machine to feel productive.

And then there's the cat. Goblin was incredibly fussy this morning. I fed her and threw her a couple of Pounce treats and cleaned her litterbox and explained to her repeatedly that, no, I wasn't going to leave the house and abandon her all day. She's finally apparently tired of crying at me and is now being lazy.

But I made some inari today, and since I completely miscalculated the amount of rice to make, I had to use it up rolling some random sushi. So not only did I make twice as much inari as I could eat, I now have approximately a kajillion cucumber rolls -- getting stale in the fridge. In meriko's words, "that sounds... appetizing."

We finished watching the first season of Buffy last night, and followed it up with the La Femme Nikita DVD. The subtitling on the DVD doesn't match the subtitling of the VHS version that I'm familiar with. It also has some weird translation choices that made me unhappy -- apparently-arbitrary changes of number, and idiomatic insertions/deletions that I thought unnecessary or just plain bad, even with my knowledge of French, which requires metric prefixes like "micro" and "nano" to quantify.

And there's the goddamned CD player, which used to whine and wail all the time, and which I've been threatening to take to the shop for years. I finally took it to the shop, and $140 later, it still whines and wails. Damn it. Damn it. Do I take it back to the shop and try to reproduce the problem for them, and try and argue that they should re-fix it for free?

Anyway.

So. Today i walked over to my mailbox at work, and in it was a CD mailer. From the BMG music club. Addressed to "Pure Evil, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, 95064".

Now, as the person on our team who has had silly goth/industrial nameplates, dresses mostly in black, and has a plethora of spiders and other monsterey things in her office, i could imagine why my AAs (who filter mail to our mailstop into our boxes, so helpfully) might have put that particular package in my box. I still don't quite grok how, though, the people in the Big Mailroom decided that our mailstop should get the package for "Pure Evil". When i think about it, it just seems a little ...strange that a package addressed simply to 'Pure Evil' found its way all the way to *my* box. I gave the package back to Rick, my friendly mail delivery guy for packages to figure out.

I wouldn't want Mr. or Ms. Evil to miss out on the Enya CD that appeared to be inside.

Today we got outside, into a lovely warm end-of-winter San Francisco weekend, and grubbed about in the dirt. I was feeling blah, and sleepy, and generally a bit malcontent, wondering if i was picking up R's bug. But no! All i needed was a little sunshine, sweat, dirt, and plant-tending to feel worlds better.

I'm not sure why mucking about in the dirt, caring for (in my case, specifically, herbs) plants feels so good. Getting thoroughly dirty is definitely part of it (and i hate the feeling of dirt caked under my nails, so it's not that i fundamentally like being dirty...). The hippy UCSC-roommate in my head whispers something about connecting with the earth, but while part of that may be true, it's just a little too hippy-lovechild-earthmother for me to beleive that's all of it. Maybe it just has to do with feeling like i'm a kid, waiting for the sweet peas i planted every year to bloom. (We all took part in the veggie garden, and the strawberry plot, but the sweetpeas were entirely mine, in a separate plot in the back, privy to my cuttings for blossoms and mine alone.)

At any rate, the herbs that made it through the winter have been looking great from the recent rains and sun, and now they look even happier, with the weeds gone and compost tucked in around them. I still have to decide what else we're going to plant this year....

Okay, so it's a little weird to be ill when you work at home. It's just a little head cold. I don't know if it'd be enough to keep me at home if I worked elsewhere. So I'm working. But it's slow and painful.

And Visual Studio is screwing me over repeatedly today. Something about the upgrade path, VC6SP4 on NT4, a WinCE for Dreamcast add-in installed and then half-uninstalled, NT4 upgraded to Win2K, somewhere along the line it refuses to run. There's precious little useful on this machine. I could blow it all away and start clean. I'm tempted.

I find that fundamentally, i am a shy person. I tend not to say that anymore; i just keep it to myself. (In the past, when i have claimed my shyness, people would just tend to laugh and laugh - claiming that in no way was i an introvert.) Sure, i can socialize when i need to; i can be polite, even charming as is required by my job, my friends, or the place and time i find myself. And if we're friends? No problems at all.

However, set me in a room full of people i don't know - a party, a bar, what have you. I'll be the kid sitting in the corner, maybe talking to the bartender, maybe reading a book i had tucked away, most likely sipping on my drink, quietly making up stories about people in my head. My brother got all the social skills in our family.... put *him* in a bar? Five minutes later, someone has bought him a drink. Everytime. I guess it's survival to a musician, no?

This weekend reminded me of all of these things; i met a few new people in the comfort of my living room, and i did ok. However, the woman who was outgoing, friendly, and good at drawing you into conversation was the one i wound up interacting with. (Actually, she reminded me very much of James, socially - maybe that had somethign to do with my immediate ease with her.) I went out to my first comic-convention ever, with izzy & jim (also masters of self-introduction). I quite enjoyed tagging along, meeting people as they introduced me. But when i wandered off on my own? Terribly shy about meeting people.

And then there's shy when starstruck - i met Michael Manning, who is a heck of a lot cuter than i thought. Charming, too. And turns out he lives in my 'hood. Actually, i felt pretty proud of myself here, because for the first time in the day, unaided, i stuck my hand out and said "You're Michael? I'm meriko - we *love* your work" and struck up a conversation. Big points for me!

Finally, there's the exception that proves the rule - for some reason, if you work in the food industry, i will likely befriend you. R. teases me about this all the time: "Did you come home from Victoria with all the waitron's phone numbers or email addresses??" It's odd; i find these conversations pretty comfortable and effortless, and i don't feel any of the nervey awful stomachey jittery feelings about striking up a conversation. Why? I have no idea.

Well, here I am with one more hobby to divide my time. I feel guilty about writing a blog when the movie pages are so far behind, but what can you do? Maybe we can add a movies category to U.B.V.B...

I really do like the look and feel of this software. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work quite right under Mozilla 0.9.4. I'll update Moz and see if it works any better.

Unemployment has been actually kind of nice. I'm itching to get started on this contract job that's in the pipeline, beginning to get a little uncomfortable with how long it's taking to get underway. But still, I've had time to see family at a time when it really counts, to write programs for myself (learning a lot about audio signal processing along the way), to make dinner for my lovely wife, to play some Counter-Strike. That's all quite nice.

That's it for the moment. The next few days are going to be pretty busy...

Sometimes, you just know folks will be in your life forever. No matter how often or how seldom you catch up with them, they'll be dear to you and part of your world.

(Jimson puts it a little less delicately: "Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.")

Today i was (luckily) reminded of just how fortunate i am to have so many people like this in my life. I was able to take one of them out for a birthday dinner tonight. I get to see his wife tomorrow evening. A long conversation with another dear friend on the phone after dinner. (And you all know how seldom an occurance that is for me.) An old roommate's story brightened my day, and yet another doll chatted with me here and there. And my stellar husband-creature picked me up at the train station late in the evening to collect me home, write this up, and tuck me into bed. (I'd link everyone in, but then other, more legal sorts might know where my alibis lie....)

I know i say it over in the foodie portion of my site, but really - here's to a good meal, a glass of wine, and conversation with dear friends. I'm not sure it gets much better than that.

That was quick. After a short tour of how to use Movable Type, Russell said (looking into his fnet window, eagerly) "Where's Beca!" Thus, i'll soon have some company here.

A few disclaimers at the outset:
--For Russell, il n'y a pas un bon vin blanc. The title is entirely mine (and i'll tell you the story later!). You'll find whisky's more his poison.
--Though he likes red, any bad coloring/ui is also entirely mine. He gets words.
--I'm a double dactyl. He's not.

Here's to company!

So, even though i went to UCSC, i seem to be a 'net late bloomer. Last of my 'class' to make a personal web page. Last of my 'class' to get a domain. Resisted putting the cookbook online for years. My resume remains firmly off the web, in a pdf, word, and simple ascii document.

Russell hooked me on a few blogs about a year ago, and i've added a few more of my own to my 'regular reading' list. I follow a group of friendly, like-minded perverts who live in the Seattle area, a few writers (some more famous than others), and a few local friends with blogs. I've toyed on and off with keeping an on-line journal, with all the normal concerns; censor what i'm writing 'cause i don't know who is reading? Write honestly no matter the strife caused? R&i have also toyed with the idea of a shared blog we both write in, but he's far more prolific a writer than i.... then again, that might make things more interesting.

But then Beca set up a nice blog system on bossanova, and she & tad started... and again, i, the late bloomer, joins. Private listing for now, but do tell me what you think if you've found me.