Given my ridiculous affinity for memes…well, Amber did it first. I blame her.

“This meme asks for a quick list of 15 books you’ve read that will always stick with you – list the first 15 you can recall in 15 minutes. Don’t take too long to think about it.”

In absolutely no order whatsoever…

• A Murder for Her Majesty – Beth Hilgartner – I read this for the first time when I was nine. The protagonists are eleven, they’re smart, they’re sassy, and they’re self-sufficient. They’re also musicians and it’s historical fiction. And they take down the hypocritical authority figure. It really could have been written just for me.
• Between the Bridge and the River – Craig Ferguson – I knew Craig was a little smartypants from devotedly following The Late Late Show, but this just proved it – in spades. It’s well-written, beautiful, funny, thoughtful, tongue-in-cheek…it’s Craig. Read it, dammit.
• The Trial / Der Prozess – Franz Kafka – I was approaching the end of this book and didn’t really feel like I got it until one sentence made the entire novel coalesce for me. This book can be interpreted so many ways and some days, I swear, I am Joseph K. It pains me that Kafka wanted all his writing destroyed upon his death and it pains me that his friend didn’t follow his wishes. But I’m so, so grateful for it.
• The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera – Reading this book felt like crawling inside the consciousness of the Prague Spring – the elation and jubilation, followed by bitter disappointment and disillusion. I really don’t like the way Kundera treats women (characters), but I can’t bring myself to stop reading him. And I’m yet to see anyone else come close to illustrating the yearning, desperation, and frustration of 20th century Central Europe.
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull – Richard Bach – I remember the aesthetic of this book and the determination. Mostly, for me, it’s about aesthetics.
• The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins – Dr. Seuss – This was the longest book we had in our regular cycle of bedtime stories when I was a kid. It was my top choice, to stay up later. In retrospect, it’s all about othering and tolerance and typical Seussian brilliance. Geisel really was a genius.
• To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee – Somehow I didn’t read this book until I was 27 years old and it pissed me off that I’d been deprived for so long. It might be the most perfect novel written, to date.
• The Book of Esther – Yes, the one in The Bible – Esther was my hero as a kid. She was a kid, who kicked some serious ass. She outsmarted the adults and the scheming men to, oh, prevent the genocide of her people. Esther fucking rocked and I totally wanted to be like her.
• Haroun and the Sea of Stories – Salman Rushdie – Again, with aesthetics. This book is all about the imagery for me. Yes, it’s Rushdie and there are 5 million layers and references I know I’m missing, but…it’s gorgeous and lush and decadent writing. Glorious.
• The Giant Jam Sandwich – John Vernon Lord & Janet Burroway – This book has been read aloud so many times by so many members of my family, we can all recite portions of it at will. “‘What can we do?’ And they said, ‘Good question.’ But nobody had a good suggestion. The Bap the baker leaped to his feet, ‘Let’s make something good to eat!’”
• The Long Winter – Laura Ingalls Wilder – Aesthetics yet again. I would physically get cold while reading this book. The story was so powerful for me – cold, hunger, desperation – I would read it curled up as tightly as I could under my comforter and take the tiniest nibbles off a piece of bread.

Is this more information about me than you should know?

• Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen – I kind of hate that this makes the list, but that’s part of why it makes the list. I don’t want to like Jane Austen nearly as much as I do. But I do love Lizzie and, dammit, Mr. Darcy. The bastard. *sigh* Yes, I’m a fucking cliche. Shuddup.
• The Devil Wears Prada – Lauren Weisberger – I was an executive assistant when this book came out and OH MY GOD THIS WAS MY LIFE. So. Damn. True.
• Survivor: A Novel – Chuck Palahniuk – This was the first Palahniuk novel I read…and then read them all (to date) in the span of about 3 weeks. By the end, I was sort of ready to slit my wrists. Love this book though. Love them all.
• The Eyre Affair – Jasper Fforde – I went into Micawber’s Books after my Palahniuk spree and told them what I’d done. They gayboys looked at me in horror, and led me to Jasper. This book is so hilariously brilliant, fresh, smart, and surprising. Fforde is a bibliophile’s dream and this is one where you know you’re missing countless inside jokes, but it’s totally worth it for the ones you catch.

It’s late. I’m caffeinated from watching fireworks with Palestinians, and I’m getting up at 5am to watch Roger in the Wimbledon final. I am so screwed.

There are days when the universe looks you straight in the face, points and laughs. Hard.

For more than two years, I’ve fought an on-and-off battle with The Powers That Claim To Be about distributing basic, fundamental, information in our work. The information is readily available in DC, but seldom makes it outside the beltway. The irony is that the information seldom matters in DC, but can be critical elsewhere.

Naturally.

I’ve written about my increasing frustration and descent into insanity over this a time or two. A couple of months ago, I had a falling out, via email, with a friend who represents TPTCTB and recently we’ve both made quiet gestures toward reconciliation which, unfortunately, means this is going to surface again. There’s really just no way around it.

It’s been on my mind every day lately and I know I need to push forward. There’s no sense in waiting. My anger has subsided; I can deal with this constructively; my persuasive argument is solidifying in my head. The time, alas, is here.

The universe, it seems, agrees.

This afternoon at work, I got a phone call from our Tech Support Guy. He asked if I could have everyone log off of our database, so that he could run a routine update. Annoyed, because there is nothing I had less time for today than a trivial database update, I nonetheless ran around the office to ensure compliance. Minutes later, over the phone, he directed me to the new location of the updated database on our server to test it. When he told me the name of the execute command, I paused.

Really? I asked. I know, he said. It’s different…but I asked [the person who is supposed to know everything about this]. She said that this is the right file.

I stuttered to find words as I opened the database format that is used in DC.

Well, um, it seems to be working, I fumbled. It’s definitely different, but it looks like all of our records are here.

Tech Support Guy was thrilled and told me to be sure to call him if there were any problems and, not to worry, he had a full back-up of our database from before the update.

After two years of advising, explaining, nudging, pleading, begging, ranting – I have mistakenly been handed exactly what I wanted.

Before we get too excited, don’t think this is a solution. I might have this, but there are more than 90 other organizations out there that still don’t.

Regardless.

The irony – the sheer absurdity – still leaves me without words.

Because I’m an ethical fool – and because future updates will probably fuck things up – I’ll report this next week, and they’ll undoubtedly “fix” it so I have access to less information again. Additionally, for this to be an actual solution for anyone – one with any sort of reliability or consistency – the entire way data is entered in DC would have to change.

But still.

Two years of lobbying gets me nowhere. A five minute fuck-up gets me exactly what I would need, maybe 95% of the time.

My life is a French film, I swear. As perpetually implied, I live in Theatre of the Absurd.

You’d think I’d at least get to have coffee with Tom Stoppard.

Maybe it’s that my mom, two aunts and grandma were all teachers, or maybe it’s just cultural. Regardless, I tend to self-evaluate in educational terms. Lately, the comments on my personal report card haven’t been so stellar:

Doesn’t play well with others.

I fail at life.

Cognitively, I’m aware that neither of those are true and that the latter is just a tich melodramatic. I do not fail at melodrama.  A more accurate assessment might be:

I’m introverted.

My work/life balance issues are exacerbated by being in a new place and not knowing people.

Terminology doesn’t change the fact that I don’t make friends easily and that my community is ridiculously far-flung at this point in my life. This week I’ve heard or read the words, “I miss you” from people in New York, DC, Minnesota and Florida. And it’s only Wednesday. I’ve decided I need a more positive construction for that phrase.

“I miss you” sucks on all fronts, unless you’re going to see that person again in the immediate future. It accomplishes nothing. We don’t always have to accomplish something and it’s okay to just sit with missing someone but, given that everyone I know and love is more than a thousand miles away from me, “I miss you” is not a phrase that does me any good.

I miss everyone. I miss my friends that I’ve known for a decade (or decades) who know me, backwards and forwards. I miss my friends through work that I only see once a year but connect with so innately that it doesn’t lessen the friendship. I miss my friends who are just easy, casual acquaintances I can meet for lunch and laugh with. I miss my friends that I met last month and knew for 48 hours before I sent them home to countries I’ve never seen.

Isolation hit me hard this week when I had a scary allergic reaction on Monday night and realized, there isn’t a single person in this city I would call to take me to the emergency room. There are people in Minneapolis, in Amman, in DC, in Belgrade, in Albany, in Vienna, in Atlanta, in Pensacola, in Miami, in New York…and not one in Seattle.

I’m not sure how to build that community. I’m great at building a superficial one – Trevor makes my latte and Keith has my scone in a bag before I ask for it. Paul and I compete for who’s had, or will have, the longest day when he lets me into the building. Stephanie pushes her co-workers aside to find out if I want organic strawberries or local cherries this afternoon.  I kick ass at the local life – and I love that about Seattle. It’s something I missed every day when I was in DC. Here, after just a couple of months, my day-to-day community was well-established and thoroughly charmed.

It’s the 4 a.m. phone call to take me to a doctor when my throat’s closing off that I’m missing. It’s the people whose couch I can just fling myself down on and talk. Or not talk.  It’s connection.

I’ve never had large cadres of friends. I don’t do parties or group events, which seems to be everyone’s method of choice here for introducing me to people.

I connect with people pretty intuitively. When it happens, it usually happens fast – almost instantaneously – and I don’t know how to facilitate that. I can’t walk down the hall and say hello to someone and make it turn into a 3 hour conversation. I can’t attend a meeting and offer an opinion and guarantee that the person who leeches onto me afterward will become a lifelong friend. It just seems to happen in my world and I don’t know how (and I don’t want) to force it.

Part of my challenge is that pieces of me want to be elsewhere. A substantive part of me wants nothing more than to go back to St. Paul and slip into comfortable places and activities like I never left. Another part of me yearns for Vienna, where everything is familiar but simultaneously challenging and intriguing.

I think in order to settle in Seattle, I need to find a way to let go of that – not permanently – just for a while. I excel at living in the past and the future – at living inside my head. I need to let go of what else is possible, of what else I want, just a little bit, and let myself be here.

It’s scary here. And it’s cozy inside my head. I’m not here yet, but I’m trying.

I still don’t have a positive construction for “I miss you” though.

As ever, I need a piano. Tonight, we hand it over to a straight boy with a piano. I know – what are the odds? Skim forward to around 52 seconds in to avoid a brutally annoying “interview.” And no, the irony of this song’s title and premise is not lost on me. But it works.

Yes, I am posting about the Obamas’ new puppy.

I can’t help it – it’s too too adorable.

Look at him!  He’s wearing a rainbow lei!

It’s an adorable puppy, wearing a gay pride Easter lei. You cannot expect me to not flail my hands above my head and eep with happiness.

What, it’s not a gay pride Easter lei, you say? Nuh-uh. You don’t get to rain on my happy little parade of fabulosity. For the first time ever gay couples were invited to the Easter Egg Roll at the White House. It’s a Yay! Gay! Easter lei!

On such a cute widdle puppy. Wook at the cute widdle puppy in his gay widdle Easter lei.

With all of the NOM, 2M4M, AmazonFail what the fuckery of late, this just makes me happy, Happy, HAPPY!

As if that weren’t enough (um, so clearly, it is), they released this photo, which makes me happier beyond anything rational:

They’re just so real. So authentic. I mean…is it “presidential” to run through the halls with your new puppy? Probably not. Is that exactly what you do with a new puppy? Um, yeah. Because they’re cute and they’re widdle and you want to see them run and get excited. Oh, yes you do. Yes you do! With those cute little white paws, you do!

And then your mom gives you a stern look and tells you not to rile up the puppy.

Seriously, is there more than this? Because I have rainbows (and unicorns) exploding out of my ears right now. And there is because someecards had to get in the game with the most perfect card about this silliness:

*snerk*

Okay, Bo appears to only be white on his paws, but…oh, how I love someecards. Hi. Larious. As always.

Quick question though…how long do you suppose it takes for Fox “News” to start commenting on the ego/arrogance/bullshit that…the dog’s name is Barack Obama’s initials. That’s, um…okay?

Since I’m quite certain Sasha and Malia probably had naming rights, I’m going to assume there are other reasons. Or maybe their dad is gone a lot and Bo’s a cheeky, deliberate stand-in. Whatever.

So freakin’ adorable. *flail*

I love everything about this puppy. Love.

And yes, I’m pulling from an Easter hymn for this title. It feels appropriate. And I’ll see you in hell.

Really?

I’m starting to think that news sites should pay me to catch their errors. It’s been less than a month since I posted the last one and I know I’ve spotted at least three others since.

And I’m not looking for them.

This is nothing to do with me; none of these are remotely difficult to spot. Frankly, that makes it all the more offensive. Don’t they pay people to catch this shit? Just what are their editors editing?

Get it together, lovelies. Because you’re still infinitely better than mainstream American media…even if you can’t spell “Michelle.”

/haughty rant

All of the melodrama that’s been rearing its butt-ugly head lately at work…oh, bleh. I’m so fucking sick of it.

Here are some things that are making me happy today:

The fangirls who run the Face of Joe community over at LiveJournal generally do a bang-up job and are reliable for a giggle. I’m not sure why this one got me any more than their usual standard, but it did.

Bear in mind, my subset of this fandom is predicated on the character of John Sheppard (played by Joe Flanigan) being a closeted little slut (because he’s military and DADT is oppressive) who’s pining for his oblivious BFF Rodney McKay.  The comment (if you click through to the actual page) that John looks good on his knees is what really makes it for me.

Monty Python reference + Slutty!John reference = Happy

And John does look good on his knees. But then, when doesn’t John look good?

Completely à propos of nothing, I also have Jenny Lewis’ Rise Up With Fists in my head and there is the best video of a performance (With Sarah Silverman? What’s this from?) on YouTube. Because I am a YouTube whore:

After a ridiculous day at work and continuing melodrama blatant stupidity from people in DC, what this boils down to for me is: I will rise up with fists and bite your legs off.

Try me.

I think I am, generally, a pretty patient person. I let waiting cars turn in front of me in traffic. I’m nice to the hotel staff member who gets to apologize because someone else fucked up my bill. I edit documents three times that I could do once on my own so my interns can learn from their mistakes.

I believe I am, on the whole, a patient, flexible kind of girl.

This situation, however, has me stretched a bit tight.

I’m beginning to feel it in my heart. I feel…thin. Sort of stretched, like…butter scraped over too much bread. I need a holiday. A very long holiday.

I’m tired of being pressured to use software that doesn’t work, that isn’t accessible and disenfranchises people, and that has a support team that is never – ever – capable of fixing a problem.

This software was designed by a former Microsoft employee, specifically for a Large Government Agency. The joke writes itself: What do you get when you cross a Large Government Agency with Microsoft?

Not only is the ghastly result of that combination self-evident to anyone who’s ever a) used Microsoft products, b) worked on a government project, or c) filed their own taxes, but let me point out a key flaw in that logic. I do not work for a Large Government Agency. Why does said agency think they are capable of designing software for my use? I work at a nonprofit, which contracts with the LGA on specific projects, but I do not work for the government.

God help me, I do not work for the government, and until the day they fully fund my work – as opposed to 10% of it – they do not get to dictate how I do my job.

Today we installed an update on this software that we’re constantly pressured to use. This new version was supposed to do three things:

1. Create two new reports to reformat information.
2. Remove information, now to be placed in the new reports, from an existing report.
3. Allow us to export information without the system crashing.

After rebooting a server for the entire office (always a popular thing to do), the software indicated that everything installed correctly – Version 2.2.3 is now up and running. This new version does the following:

1. No new reports are available.
2. The information from the existing report was removed.
3. The system crashed when we tried to export data.

To sum up: We now have access to less information than we did this morning.

And people get pissy at me because I resist? It’s been a long week. I’m not in the best of moods but, really.

I’m tired of tilting at windmills. I’m ready to burn them down.

I can count on my fingers the number of times, in almost 29 years, that I’ve remembered a dream. This is a rare, rare thing and without fail, remembering serves a higher purpose – the dream either comes true or it teaches me something that I do not want to learn.

Given that I woke up this morning from a dream about an apocalypse, let’s hope I have something to learn.

It was a bizarre dream and made no sense whatsoever. Since the older I get, the more “woo-woo” I seem to become and I have the whole wide internet at my fingertips, I did a quick search and found myself at Dream Moods. Let me tell you, if I would have had this site ten years ago, it would have saved me years of anxiety…but that’s another story.

This morning’s dream was a cohesive scene, but I’m going to intersperse the dream narrative with the interpretation from Dream Moods’ dictionary.

………

I was at my boss’ apartment, a converted downtown storefront, and I stood facing a large window. Out of nowhere, a giant appeared, walking down the street.  I saw other people panicking, but I wanted them to give it the benefit of the doubt. Initially, the giant seemed nice – smiling and friendly – and I was excited. How cool – a giant! Then it picked up a woman, gave her a cursory look, and carelessly tossed her to the ground, killing her. Simultaneously, the weather changed and a slight wind picked up. The giant turned around with a menacing glint in his eye and said, “Keep up the wind.”

Giant – To see a giant in your dream, indicates a great struggle between you and your opponents. You are trying to overcome an overwhelming obstacle. Alternatively, a giant symbolizes an issue, a person or a feeling that is dominating you. You are having an inferiority complex.

Wind – To dream that the wind is blowing, symbolizes your life force, energy, and vigor. It reflects changes in your life. Alternatively, the dream suggests that you need to speed up toward achieving your goals or solving some lingering problem.

The giant turned and walked back in the direction he had come from, disappearing as quickly as he’d appeared. People were panicking and running in the streets. The buildings all around us were catching fire from the inside – the wiring was shorting out. Our building wasn’t on fire, but it was obviously only a matter of time. The people running out of the buildings around us were exhaling flames.

Fire – Depending on the context of your dream, to see fire in your dream can symbolize destruction, passion, desire, illumination, transformation, enlightenment, or anger. It may suggest that something old is passing and something new is entering into your life. Your thoughts and views are changing. …the dream may be warning you of your dangerous or risky activities. You are literally “playing with fire”…To dream that a house is on fire, indicates that you need to undergo some transformation.

Taking stock of the situation, to see if we had the capacity to potentially wait things out, I opened the refrigerator. It was packed full of one of my favorite kinds of yogurt.

Yogurt – To see or eat yogurt in your dream, suggests that you need to learn to behave appropriately for the different situations and circumstances you find yourself in.

It was clear that we needed to get out. My boss had lain down on the couch in denial, drinking sweet tea, the moment the giant appeared. I took her by the hand and led us out of her apartment through the back door.

Boss – To see your boss in your dream, represents the bossy or authoritative side of your own personality. Your boss may reveal self-confidence and the assertive aspect of yourself. It is telling of your issues of control and authority.

Tea – To dream that you are making or drinking tea, represents satisfaction and contentment in your life. You are taking your time with regards to some relationship or situation.

As we left the building, headed toward the car, a panicked and disheveled woman emerged from a dark doorway and threw deflated rubber balls at us in self-defense. The streets were also covered in golf balls.

Ball – To see or play with a ball in your dream, symbolizes completeness and wholeness. It may also indicate that you need to be more in tune with the inner child within. The dream may also be a metaphor for the testicles or that “he’s got balls” to indicate guts and strength.

We were headed for my boss’ car and I would have definitely driven, since she was essentially paralyzed. I didn’t know how far we’d make it in the car before we had to walk, but my plan was to get as far as we could. I considered driving in the opposite direction that everyone else was running, since there would be fewer people there with fewer problems, but reasoned that this was probably where the giants were and it wouldn’t be safe. Knowing this, I still hadn’t decided which way to go.

I was still trying to decide if the best path was to drive straight toward where the giants must be.

I woke up before we got to the car.

Car – To dream that you are driving a car, denotes your ambition, your drive and your ability to navigate from one stage of your life to another. Consider how smooth or rough the car ride is. If you are driving the car, then you are taking an active role in the way your life is going.

………
I concede that, most of the time, we see what we want to see – we interpret what we want the answer to be.

I think it’s the yogurt that blew me away.

Earlier this week, I cried myself to sleep because a partner at work let me down (not my boss, but someone whose role it is to represent my interests). I should say, let me down again. Instead of representing my interests, and those of weaker partners, they’re planning to do the opposite.

This is all in relation to a situation in which I felt they knowingly used me to do their dirty work. They knew I would do it and they didn’t have the guts to do it themselves, so I waged a one-woman campaign and got the work done. Now that I’ve achieved the results – and not without personal cost – this organization is actually working to subvert those results. Worse yet, they fail to understand that this a problem. To them, everything is as it should be – except me – being a pain in the ass. Again.

Yes…giants, wind, fire, yogurt, my boss, tea, deflated rubber balls, and a car. It makes scarily perfect sense.

I still don’t know exactly how I’m going to proceed, but it does take a certain kind of fool to just drive toward the giants now, doesn’t it?

Perhaps we drive toward the giants after we’ve found other people with the courage to face them.

Hm.

My brain is melting.

This little bit of news about how

Russian media have been poking fun at the U.S. Secretary of State over a translation error on a gift she presented to her Russian counterpart.

because apparently

Hillary Clinton gave Sergei Lavrov a mock “reset” button, symbolizing U.S. hopes to mend frayed ties with Moscow.

But he said the word the Americans chose, “peregruzka,” meant “overloaded” or “overcharged,” rather than “reset.”

makes the synapses in my brain misfire.

Okay, so this time around – not a big deal. Everybody has a good laugh and goes home.

That said, if we’re mistranslating things that we’re giving to Russia, we’re fucked.

I can totally see how this happened. Someone – possibly Hillary, possibly not – came up with this cute little idea. They got all excited about it in their office and didn’t want anyone else to get credit for it (because all that matters in DC is who gets credit), so they did it themselves. They work at the State Department, you know. They know these things. It’s such a cute and charming idea and…

Get your shit together, Hillary.

Let me introduce you to your Department. It has an entire Office of Language Services dedicated to preventing these kinds of gaffes.

Did you even show it to one of the two the simultaneous English/Russian interpreters, who were with you the entire time and would have been native Russian-speakers? Did it occur to you to get their opinion about this, both linguistically and culturally? Because clearly, before you gave it to one, no other native Russian-speakers or actual Russians saw this overloaded button.

Again, I get that this is a minor issue and she’ll learn, but this is why she should be Secretary of Health and Human Services – an area that she understands and knows – not at the State Department where she’s learning on the job.

Prove me wrong, Hillary and Barack. Convince me that this was a good decision. Show me you can represent us and our interests with the cultural sensitivity and diplomatic skills required of a Secretary of State.

And always ask a native speaker about translation questions. For fuck sake.

If you’re not reading Project Rungay, I have failed. Get your ass over to Tom and Lorenzo’s little gem of a blog and laugh your snooty little tush off.

Don’t tell me you don’t watch Project Runway, so you don’t need to read it. Don’t tell me you have no interest in fashion, so you don’t need to read it. Don’t tell me that you don’t watch reality shows, so you don’t need to read it. Don’t tell me that’s just not your thing, so you don’t need to read it.

“When I think about my mom, the mennonite, or my dad, the mennonite, if they could see me naked in a box making out with a guy.”

Oh honey. Who are you trying to kid? You WANT Ma and Pa to see you making out with a guy in a box. Nothing wrong with a little teen rebellion, but let’s not pretend you’re agonizing over it.

You need to read this.

“Me and Chris working together, it makes me feel a little worried, the gay problem between me and him because I’m especially not gay, I know he is.”

What the hell does “ESPECIALLY not gay” mean?

Seriously, I’m telling you.

Lorenzo thinks he’s cute and Tom thinks Lorenzo is a perv for lusting after someone who can’t remember the first term of the Clinton administration.

What the fuck are you still doing here?

But why is Perou dressed like he’s starring in the Michael Jackson version of A Clockwork Orange?

Go snort with laughter over a post about a show you’d never watch. It’s hilarious. Don’t get pretentious about the fact that you don’t watch something when you can just point and laugh from afar.

Isn’t that far more pretentious anyway?