Office Monkey

• Passing a bus on a highway is easy. Trying to pass a bus before you get to a particular exit can be more challenging.
• The vending machine supply company has caught on. We now have two full rows of chocolate-frosted Hostess Donettes in our vending machine. The one half-row sold out every week.
• The generic burn-aid cream in the first-aid kit in the kitchenette smells funny.
• The largest sterile gauze pad in the first-aid kit in the kitchenette is just about the right size for the burn on my left forearm.
• Running a 5k after only two weeks of physical therapy requires me to make an increase in the quantity of ice packs we own.
• Watching Doctor Who lends me a weak British accent at random points throughout the day.
• I have two lunch meetings tomorrow. I’m going to eat at the first one (with a friend), and perhaps snack at the one featuring my new boss.
• Mandrina shaved four minutes off her 5k time in her first race on Saturday. I added four minutes to the time from my last race. The universe likes balance.
• The single-serve “iCup” vending machine in the kitchenette provided a hot-cocoa tease today. It cycled, and then… nothing. I used the other iCup machine, and got my cup of coffee.
• I have a lot of work to do this week.
• I have now almost set up a photogallery so I can upload any of the oodles of pictures I’ve taken over the last five years.

Calling this post long-delayed is a bit like calling the Pacific Ocean “wet” or the guy who slipped up on the Zune leap-year bug “fired” – it is a severe understatement while still being accurate. I was recently alerted by Nightsinger to the fact that my lovely wife repeatedly tells her version of the engagement story, which has certain elements which depart wildly from the truth. Admittedly, that’s mostly because she’s assuming chaos where there was intention, but there were equal parts chaos where she assumes intention. It evens out on my side, because I’m writing this.

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Warning: If you’re soft-hearted, or even have half a soul, and don’t want to cry, don’t read any further. Abigail, this means you.
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(A deal’s a deal. Even if I’m slow.)

My back has been giving me grief for most of the last four years. I spent a year fencing on a pair of sore ankles, but then when I hurt my back as well, I decided to call it quits.

Now, one might think that I might be interested in actually doing something about continual pain in my lower back, but hey, that might make sense! Be reasonable! Be, dare I say it, sensible! Instead, I just dealt with it, figuring it would go away. It didn’t.

About a month ago, people from a local chiropractor practice came by our cafeteria at work. They were trying to drumb up clientele for their new location “directly across” from campus. (It took me twenty minutes to walk “directly across” the street to their location in back of an industrial park.) In the interests of screwing with their heads, I sat down for their brief examination. When the chiropractor asked if I was stressed, I laughed at him. He noticed some longer-standing issues than just stress, and suggested I come in for a full evaluation. Surprise, surprise. But, the receptionist was cute, and more importantly, they were copay-free, and local. So I went in.
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(Hey, Abigail, shouldn’t that be lower-case-t-the?)

I am slowly losing my mind. For all of you who were previously convinced that I had lost my mind long ago, I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

First, the happy stuff:
For our one year wedding anniversary, Mandrina and I had chaos with a side order of fun. She had auditions both the day of our anniversary, and the next afternoon. The plans I had made for doing something ON our anniversary were therefore curtailed. Instead we had dinner at the Hunt Club in the Sorrento Hotel, and spent the night there. It was charmingly updated — the rooms had obviously not been originally designed to have the modern accoutrements of hotel living, such as a television, or electricity. Wire ran in visible metal conduits along the walls. Please don’t misunderstand, they were subtle. It was just a reminder that we were in a century-old hotel. Dinner was lovely; compared to the usual “cuisine” Mandrina likes to subject me to, I was in fact able to make a complete meal from the menu options. The wine was wonderful, but the port was just too much alcohol. The free chocolates were nice, though.

Since Mandrina had been busy right around our anniversary (she was cast, of course — “Oliver” at Shoreline Community College), we went to Vancouver the following weekend. There isn’t much to tell — more food was eaten, the hotel room was rather nice. We didn’t get to do much in the city — just lazing around was plenty eventful, although I did start going stir crazy. The one neat thing is that the hotel has two dogs “for rent.” Mandrina and I signed up on Saturday to take Beau for a walk on Sunday afternoon right before we left. Mandrina was surprised that I could hold a lead on a dog appropriately, but then I made Beau hate me because I made him run with me. Just a brief sprint back and forth, but he’s a dog, golly darn it! He repaid me by pointing out why dogs are taken for a walk.

Let’s see, other good stuff… Mandrina and I were invited (along with some others) to our most recent newlywed friends. Food and company were likewise good. Jonathan introduced me to Powershell. I had bumped into it before, but Jonathan showed off for a while, and I was impressed. I’ll probably write about it at length at some later juncture (currently, it’s installed on the two machines I use most — it’ll probably end up on the rest of them as well). Mandrina and I are watching all of the Lord of the Rings (Director’s Cuts). I got to see a bunch of people when I helped Xaandria move (sorry, too lazy to link to everyone. See my Vegas post, at least the girls get mentioned there). I get to go home every night to love and affection. Well, okay, I get to go home every night, and my wife is happy to see me, at least. The cats, well, are cats.

The bad stuff can wait until later.

Today is Mandrina and my first wedding anniversary. =]

That’s all.

Video: Andrew and Taj

This would be one of the aforementioned stories. That’s Taj.

Fortunately, I had married Mandrina months ago, so it wasn’t much of a surprise.

First, a pointer to Xaan‘s and Nightsinger‘s excellent write-ups of things I’m too lazy or preoccupied or self-centered to write up myself. Also, thanks to Jamie for deciding scandously to have a 21st birthday celebration in Vegas. Was a fantastical trip, although I could have done with more love from the gambling. Okay, I would have settled for just a little less hatred.

Second, I’ll writeup my memories, but stick them behind a cut so that my front page doesn’t suddenly grow huge again.

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Less than two weeks from today I hit my five year anniversary with my employer.

I’ll cut so you can avoid my whining here.

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Everyone sodding knows everyone. It’s a fairly populous area, but the place comes across as if everyone went to the same schools with the same people for years. Tara or Mandrina will give voice to how it’s a sucking vortex, and nobody escapes.

I hate it for entirely different reasons. I still have yet to be treated as an individual when I was there.

Case in point (and cause for today’s rant): I hired someone Mandrina approved of to take the wedding pictures. It’s been over a month, and I haven’t heard anything about them. So I asked. She’s an artist-type, I thought the photographer may have still been cleaning them up.

I got a response this morning — she had dropped the pictures off with Mandrina’s MOTHER. Why? Because she was in the neighborhood. Who paid for the photographs? Who arranged for the photography at all?

Not Mandrina’s mother.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Mandrina’s mother. This small town “everyone knows everyone” thing is annoying the heck out of me, because I don’t know everyone, so I’m just treated as an accessory.

We should have been the first ones to see the pictures after the photographer, and to pick and choose who sees what. This small-town mentality has ruined that option.

It will be a long time before I want to go back there again.