I turned in my two weeks notice at work yesterday. Today I signed all the paperwork with HR. This feeling that has pervaded my day I can only describe as odd. I stood looking at my own job posted for the taking on the company bulletin board. It had just gone up so no one had signed yet, but all the same I remember the mad scramble when the position was created. I can’t even begin to describe the tooth and nail catfight that strung on for weeks as management weighed in their minds the merits of choosing the most qualified applicant versus the most attractive applicant.

Well, I guess I misspoke. I stood looking at one of my jobs on the board. My primary position won’t be posted. Regardless of what she may want, my assistant is being moved into my job in something like a mandatory promotion. She’ll do fine, she’s a smart girl, but I have no idea how to train her. I’ve trained a countless number of assistants, but when it comes to explaining my job I don’t know where to begin. I can tell her the logic of it, that is to say, the steps but I can’t teach her how to dance. I know this but all the same I’m reluctant to hand over my kingdom to some nooby. I built this empire and now I have to let it go and walk away, because I know I’m walking into better things but at the same time this little voice screams in my head, “But its mine!”

Its kind of like dieing, really. I know that I’m only a big fish in a very small pond and going to quickly pass into oblivion quickly, but all the same it’s nice to be a celebrity for a little while.

Dear Readers, how do I sum up my ridiculously extended absence? Well, it was a bit hairy but I now know for a fact that I do not have herpes. Now, before you get all grossed out and quit reading, let me tell you what a feat this is on my part. 60% of America has herpes (the cold sore kind) and one in four have the genital kind. I, under ludicrous circumstance, was tested for both strains and spent my birthday weekend stressing about the impending possibility of being a permanently diseased human being. Human being, yes, I am prepared to deal with that and all the age and death this state of being entails. But diseased? Diseased I just do not see myself. But fear not! I am of the elite, the chosen few who have managed to escape the herpes epidemic! At least that’s how I feel today and I’m indulging it.
Oh yes, and it was my birthday in the interim since last you heard from me. I am now twenty four and loving every day away from twenty one. Frankly, I’m scared that everyone I know wants me to get hammered for my birthdays. Really I have no problem with a good sloshing, but the mood and my birthday don’t exactly coincide. This year for instance: the weekend before I was unintentionally pretty effing drunk at my favorite sushi place because the husband and I were sharing sake with the chef and waitresses. We ended up staying way after close, eating free sashimi the Korean way (as our waitress liked it) and discussing whether sex is better with women or men among other interesting subjects. So anyway, after a weekend like that, I needed a chill. I ended up cooking all day and eating my most favorite things in the whole world for dinner. It was lovely.
Ah, but what do you want to know? Probably none of that, but you simply must check this out. I love Quaffs and Quibbles anyway, but if you haven’t seen this video you are truly deprived.

I could say that I’ve been unbelievably busy, but that would be a lie. The truth of my absence would be something more like “I’ve been paying attention to other things.” There’s been no disaster but other aspects of my life have required my attention and mental presence, so the blog continued to be cut. And there you have it. I’ll get back to you all when I have something to say and the energy to say it.

Nothing of great interest has happened to me over the last few days. Well, let me rephrase that. I’ve found my life interesting, but I don’t judge that any of it would be interesting to anyone else, really. For instance, I spent a few days figuring out how to darn my favorite sweater that had been partially eaten by a former cat of mine. Yes, I spent a serious amount of time darning a sweater and I’m excited about it. So anyway, this post is more of an amalgamation than a proper cohesive thought. Primarily, I wanted to tell you all about something that happened today.

I don’t even remember the segue, but this guy at work brought up blowing $500 at a strip club in an evening. What? We simply must hear the story now! So he tells us about graduating high school, partying all night, and waking up at four P.M. the next day with nothing to do. His friend calls, and they go to the strip club in the big city with their brand new graduation money, drinking all the way. They stumble to the door, and the bouncer almost doesn’t let them in until my coworker tells him “Dude! I just graduated high school yesterday!” My coworker immediately gets $100 in ones, and then wraps his four $100 bills around the wad so he can flip through his money like the eighteen year old pimp he is. The whole night he’s telling the strippers, “I just graduated high school! Give me a lap dance!” And at one point he walks up to the stage ready to go with four dollars behind his ears, four dollars in his mouth and two dollars stuck to his forehead somehow. At this point I had to admit to myself that no, even if bad comes to worse, I will never be a stripper. If I’m stripping and some kid walks up to me like that, I’d probably fall off the pole laughing. Yeah, I’m naked, but you’re stupid.

And now for something completely different: a smattering of links to things I liked for various reasons. I give you: something I couldn’t agree more with; something true and brief; here I admit I only read the first paragraph but all the same, it was something I didn’t know; and the grand finale, something I refuse to call snobbery that has ruined a few relationships of mine as well.

I cannot even begin to express my frustration at this moment. Maybe this is ignorance on my part, but I’m being done wrong and I see no legal way to bash in the offender’s face. Let me explain. My husband and I have a wireless network for our shared internet access, a setup we chose to accommodate the mobility of our laptops. During the past couple of months we’ve been having glitches and hiccups in our previously seamless network. During this time, we have closed our previously open network, changed our passwords, etc, but it was when my husband noticed that somebody was spoofing my IP address to administrate (not piggyback, but administrate) our network that we began to accept that we were dealing with a malicious person, not some freakish dead zone or whatever. So today found me coming home from work expecting my computer to be just as I left it, but instead I found that Firefox isn’t working. After running through a few basic checks I decide this is a problem and sick my resident computer genius (husband) on it. Half an hour later he informs me that some clumsy idiot who fancies himself a hacker has set up an automated brute attack on our humble network. I say clumsy because not only does the very idea of “hacker” carry “ninja” with it, but this idiot thinks we’re so fucking stupid as not to notice that all of a sudden, the network doesn’t work! Oh, I could wax poetic on that subject, but I’ll keep this brief. So I have reasonable suspicion that someone in close vicinity is trying to hack my network, but what can I do about it? As far as I can see legally, nothing. Now, illegally… I vote to backhack the motherfucker and burn him. Raze him to the ground. This is mine and you can’t take it. Its that simple.

PS This is posted because my computer genius is truly a computer genius. Everybody cross your fingers so it’ll keep working.