My girlfriend got laid off Friday. So of course now is not the time for me to be changing my job, but there is that opening at Gallaudet…I just printed an application anyway. Didn’t get to go kayaking this weekend, unfortunately. My hives were really bad yesterday and I couldn’t walk so well - edema on my feet - so as usual I spent the weekend feeling sorry for myself. I also did an entire reworking of the Roller Coasters category at ODP. Everything had been all jumbled into one big category, so I made categories for Developers, Groups, Image Galleries, and Individual Rides…also added some stuff to the Games category (which was already there) and I’ll probably find more for the Models category (also already there). It had really needed help and I’m glad I fixed it…of course I have plenty of other work to do in other categories too, but I’ll probably keep working on roller coasters for a while.

Forgive me for waking old ghosts, but I have only just now come across pictures that really made clear to me what Lower Manhattan must look like without its most famous landmark. In the 9:02am picture, the towers are burning. A large brown building is visible to the right, and a traffic light and Canal Street sign are to the left. Two hours later, at 11:02am, the building, light, and sign are all still there. The towers are gone, with only a few puffs of gray smoke indicating something happened.

I really shouldn’t be up this late - I was up until about 3:45am last night - but I have tried to go to bed and found it boring. So here I sit in the kitchen with my girlfriend’s laptop humming quietly before me.

I finally remembered to check the listing of job openings at Gallaudet, and this time there are actually positions I could apply for. I don’t have a CS degree, but I meet all the other qualifications for the Junior User Support Technician position, and I might be able to handle the Telecommunications Technician position. I could also do well at any of the first three secretarial positions - but the support tech job is what I’d really like. That would be perfect for me - my ideal job for the past few years has been helpdesk work, and that way I’d end up working with deaf people well before getting my interpreter certification. Damn I want that job!

This morning’s excitement - which wasn’t terribly exciting, just not part of the usual routine - was courtesy Agaricus (pictured at left as usual). He came into the bedroom while I was getting dressed, yelling his little head off for attention - he meows loud when he wants to - and eating from Toadstool’s food dish. He followed me downstairs when I went to get ready to leave, and when I picked him up I noticed a little bead-like thing stuck to the base of his right ear. It was smooth, gray, and a fat oval shape - looked sort of like a spider’s egg sac, but I figured that wasn’t the case. It refused to budge when I tried to pull it off, and finally I noticed what appeared to be little legs at the end attached to his head. Aha! So I brought him upstairs because it was time to wake my girlfriend anyway (she drives me to the bus stop in the morning and picks me up there at night), and while she was putting on her glasses I told her about the bug. It took a bit of tugging but she finally managed to get it off, apparently intact - Agaricus was really good the whole time, very passive while I held him, he didn’t squirm and only turned his head a couple of times while she was working at it. We peered at the paper towel, and a big fat deer tick was waving its little legs feebly - yuck! She balled up the paper towel and gave it to me to flush down the toilet. (I’m sure you didn’t need all that detail. I should probably have just said “the cat had a tick this morning” but it’s all written now.)

Anyway, I’d better get started working.

2001.10.24@17:16 Cool Man Eddie says Yo, the entire node LeVar

Burton was editor cooled. You have a writeup in there; your reward is knowing you’re cooler than liquid nitrogen.

2001.10.24@17:16 Roninspoon says very nice bio on levar burton.

I had worked really hard on that, so I’m delighted it got that kind of recognition, plus a ching and a whole lot of upvotes. Now I know getting cooled doesn’t actually do anything much - no XP, no mark on the writeup (in fact it’s the entire node that’s cooled, but in this case it’s obvious which writeup got the node noticed), no special bonus prize. But Roninspoon could easily have chinged it and been on his way - except that it was good enough for special attention, and that is what I’m so proud of.



I realize most people reading this have no idea what I’m talking about; there’s an article you can read if you’d like to understand cooling, chinging, and related stuff.

I always save e-mails…just about all of them. I particularly save every single e-mail from my girlfriend, even if there’s nothing important in the message. A while back I was using a webmail service called Subdimension and eventually decided they just had too many outages and problems so I switched to Yahoo Mail. I kept all the messages saved in the Subdimension folders, and managed to get some of them forwarded to my Runbox account - it has 100MB of storage, so that’s all I use it for. I went back to Subdimension today to forward more of the old messages…and they were gone. They’ve completely redone the system and it seems much more reliable now - I got logged in on the first try, which is a surprise - but everything is gone. I never got any notice about this: they didn’t even inform me that my data was being erased. Those messages were important to me, dammit. They’re such fuckwits. I suppose I should have gotten them forwarded sooner - of course, I can’t depend on Runbox, either, the internet is too transitory for that. I wish I could afford a CD burner; I could just burn all this stuff to disc and I’d be fine. Sigh.



Anyway, I had a good weekend. On Saturday my girlfriend and I went to Six Flags America, which is a little under an hour from our house. We got there shortly after it opened and went on the big swings right away - they’re the first thing you come to as you enter the park. Next we headed for Twoface: The Flip Side, an inverted Vekoma boomerang - it’s a standard shuttle, fairly simple: draws you up the back and then sends you through the station, over a cobra roll, into a vertical loop, and up the other side. Then you do the whole thing in reverse, and then ease back into the station. It’s rather tame as coasters go, but my girlfriend wasn’t warmed up yet and felt ill, so she kept her eyes closed the entire time. The seats are arranged so you’re facing each other, and I watched her - I didn’t get to enjoy the coaster as much as I could have because I could see her eyes were closed and I was worried! She was still happy to go directly to another coaster, though, and as with Twoface there was no line yet for The Wild One, the park’s double-out-and-back woodie. After the first ride there was still basically no line, so the operator let us stay on for another go - we were about in the middle of the trains for every ride we went on. We had said we weren’t going to, but after The Wild One we decided to go on Tower of Doom after all. It’s a regular freefall ride - up the tower, hang, then drop. It turned out to be rather uninteresting: by the time you realize you’re falling and think “hey, I’m falling” it’s already over. We went back into the “Gotham City” section next, which was added when Six Flags bought the park. I was really disappointed that Joker’s Jinx wasn’t running that day - it’s a LIM-launched coaster, which means there’s no lift hill but instead the train is electromagnetically launched from the station very quickly. They’re a lot of fun, and that’s the park’s only LIM coaster…I couldn’t find out why it was closed. So we went on Superman: Ride of Steel instead, which we had seen from The Wild One. It’s a clone of the other two with the same name (one is at Six Flags Darien Lake and the other at Six Flags New England), all three are Intamin designed. It’s just cheaper to clone coasters…designing new ones is expensive, so I don’t mind. In fact it lets people ride a coaster without having to travel far, though SFDL is in New York and SFNE is in Massachusetts…it would have been better to put the clones in parks across the country rather than all right nearby. Anyway, after a few minutes in line and then the ride, we got something to eat and tried another little ride before heading for the next coaster. Batwing is the park’s newest ride, and it’s pretty cool - a Vekoma Flying Dutchman model. The seats are at a sharp angle when you get in, then they recline so you’re lying flat on your back in a seated position. You go up the lift hill that way - on your back, staring at the sun - and then immediately after the lift hill is an inversion and you’re facing straight down as if you’re “flying.” The walkway approaching Batwing is really long…there are little Batman-themed displays along the way, and my assumption is that in peak season the line stretches all the way along the path. Batwing’s was the first line we encountered, but we were just outside the covered portion wth rails when we got in at the end of the line. We’d been there for about 20 minutes when we realized they were running it empty a few times, and then sure enough they announced a technical problem and delay of unknown length, we were welcome to wait in line or enjoy the other rides at Six Flags America. A lot of people left but I convinced my girlfriend to stay; we moved up in line a lot and then only five or ten minutes later they let people back on the ride. Too bad for the people who left the line! We still had another 45 minutes or so to wait, so we practiced fingerspelling together - my girlfriend has just learned the letters, and I’m learning tactile reception so she spelled words into my palm while we waited. After finally finishing on Batwing - which was neat, it’s not a particularly interesting coaster but being face-down is a novelty, and also I was distracted because my girlfriend had left her glasses on, which is against the rules, and I was afraid she was going to lose them - we wandered around for a bit. When we came across a bathroom my girlfriend handed me her wallet to hold while I waited, so I took advantage of the situation and bought pink fluffy cotton candy. Normally I’m not really into that kind of thing - well, I am, but I know it’s bad for me - but it was just nice to have real cotton candy as opposed to the chewy stuff you can buy in bags at the store. I had to take really small bites and eat slowly so there would be some left for my girlfriend when she came out! When she did, she got a lemonade, and because I finished my cotton candy before she was finished drinking I went to take a look at Roar, the other wooden coaster, this one a twister. At first I thought the line was really long, but that turned out to be the line for the haunted house - there was almost no line for Roar. So we trotted up to it and would have had to wait maybe one or two trains - but then we realized it was stuck. One train was just approaching the station and the other just beginning to climb the lift hill, but they weren’t going anywhere. Sure enough, they announced a delay, and the people in front of us all left and we waited right next to the airgates. They finally got the trains moving, offloaded the first one, and when the second one returned they offloaded that one too. Then they kept running them over and over without passengers while the mechanics worked on it - this was maybe 15 or 20 minutes worth of empty runs - and we finally got to go on. We ambled toward the next coaster but I wanted to run ahead…I’d been feeling that way all day. Unfortunately only little kids can get away with that! There wasn’t much of a line for Mind Eraser, an inverted Vekoma coaster with five inversions. We made it on fairly quickly, but didn’t like it very much. The restraints are too close to your head, so you really get banged around a lot - it made my girlfriend’s headache worse, and gave me one. There are identical Mind Erasers at four other Six Flags parks - Darien Lake, Worlds of Adventure (in Ohio), New England, and Elitch Gardens (near Denver) - and I don’t understand why nobody has complained about having their head bashed around. We tried to go on Twoface again after that, but decided the line was too long so we checked out the gift shops (didn’t buy anything) and left.



We went to my parents’ house after that for my mother’s birthday. We went out to a Mongolian grill for dinner…I’d never tried anything like that before, but it was really good. The chocolate mousse birthday cake my parents had gotten was amazing! My mom liked her presents - I’d given her some birding book she wanted…a Sibley’s something, but I don’t even remember the title. She really liked it anyway, and my dad gave her some listing software - I think by AviSys or something like that. My girlfriend and I eventually made it downstairs for bed, and we watched John Cleese’s “How to Irritate People” videotape. I brought out the laptop after that (my girlfriend had suggested bringing it because she knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep) and looked up roller coaster info while she slept. We went to church with my parents the next morning and I saw several people I’ve known since I was little but haven’t seen in years.

---

I AM 23% PUNK.




Well, I may know what punk is, but… Okay maybe some people think I am punk, but is that enough? Nope.



Take the PUNK/POSER Test at Fuali.com!



I AM 25% GEEK.





I wanna be a geek. But I’m not. Why would I even want to be one. Do I think it’s fun? I should try writing an online test application at 1am in my underwear.


Take the GEEK Test at Fuali.com!

I found the oddly-named Chinese Laundry Shoes company and decided I really like some of their shoes. I know it’s terribly consumerist of me and terribly greedy too…but I’m just sharing. I love catalogs and things like that, so I’m sharing my enthusiasm with other people. You don’t have to look, anyway. But I like the Globe in silver and the Jacky in black. I like the Kiki in black but I’m not so sure about the rickrack edging. The Poppyin black has a nice tuxedo look, as does the Wing. The Zuma looks good in crinkle patent black or red, and the Swing is an interesting little shoe, best in black just because I can’t think much you could wear the electric blue with and if you’re paying $42 for a flimsy little pair of shoes like that they’d better be versatile. So there you have it, my little shoe fiends.

Except I never saw or read Blade Runner, so I don’t know who that is. Damn! But hey, can’t go wrong as a doll faced babe.

I made up a little quiz about myself, it’s quite silly. I suppose I did it just as an exercise to keep busy or something. Find out if you know me.

I’m actually wearing a skirt to work today, I’m not sure why. It’s 100% rayon and I didn’t want any panty lines to show so I tried wearing a thong, but it was lacy and itchy so I took it off and stuffed it in my bag. I am padding around the office barefoot because my clunky shoes (the ones I got to go to Turkey) felt weird and I couldn’t tuck my feet up under myself - usually I do when I’m wearing jeans, but I didn’t want to damage the skirt. I have no idea why I’m wearing the skirt - well, I know sort of vague reasons, but they’re strange so I basically don’t know. It’s very unlike me to wear a skirt on a regular day - if I’m dressing up or going out or supposed to look nice then I wear one, but this is way off normal for me.

The company’s paying for lunch today and Chinese food is already on the way. Tomorrow my girlfriend and I go to Six Flags America! I’m really excited.

I don’t really feel like getting into all the dirty details of the past week, so I’ll just give a little update for each day. Friday night I went to the internist again, he gave me a shot of a low-dosage steroid that’s supposed to last six weeks. I had dinner with my parents after that. My girlfriend had lost her contract that day so she came home around 4:15 in the morning; I waited up for her but by that point I was pretty sleepy. Still, we talked some before falling asleep. Saturday I went to the Maryland Renaissance Festival, you can read about my day here. I spent Sunday in bed with really severe hives, which perplexed me because of the shot I had gotten a few days before. It turned out that the doctor had neglected to tell me the shot wouldn’t start working for three to five days. (It’s now Thursday, and while I am significantly improved I’m still awfully uncomfortable. Hmph.) Monday was work and class, Tuesday was work and then I watched an old episode - first season! - of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which I hadn’t seen in a couple of years. Last night was work and class again; my friend and I were chatting on the way home and the people behind us started talking about us loudly. I know they thought we were deaf, but I still think it was pretty funny that they were talking about us so clearly. (I think the guy was drunk and the girl was just…well, not so intelligent.) And now it’s Thursday morning and I really don’t want to be here at work right now. Sigh.

I wonder why I make friends and then drift away from them. I guess I’m very self-absorbed. I have a couple of people I’m really close to and stay close to, but then sometimes I’ll make a friend, talk with them a lot, get sort of close, and then - stop. This has happened a couple of times with varying consequences. Sometimes the other person is upset and thinks I’m ignoring them and manages to convey their understandable confusion - “why don’t you like me anymore?” Sometimes it’s more a mutual thing - we just stop talking. I miss the person, but we just don’t talk anymore; when the opportunity is there I don’t take it. In some of these cases I’d like to repair the friendship, but I don’t know how to get it back. Then there are also people I’d like to be friends with but just don’t put enough energy into for some reason.



I realized that for at least a couple of weeks I’ll have something to look forward to after every workday. Mondays I have class, Tuesdays will have a new Buffy for a while, Wednesdays I have class again, Thursdays I can pick up the City Paper, and Fridays I can get the Blade and then hey, it’s Friday.

It bugs me that the blind woman in class keeps voicing, but what just happened really pissed me off. The teacher was explaining the situations in which you would fingerspell the word “own” rather then signing it, the sign being basically the same as the one for “accept.” Suddently _T_ said “_P_, I forgot that one, you gotta tell me” and then several seconds later _P_ hissed “accept.” Excuse me?! It’s bad enough that anybody is voicing in class, but helping each other is really unbelievable.