Time off for good behavior

This post is long. I shall splice in random pictures without any connection to the stories at hand to keep you awake.

So when we last left our heroine she was screaming at pretty much anyone unfortunate enough to be in her vicinity. Ok, not really screaming, more shooting silent dirty looks but I was screaming on the inside. I was hateful Monday, it never got any better. It did work out a little bit though as I got to apply my nastitude productively towards the end of the day to a local LAN administrator who for 6 consecutive months has ignored what has been requested of her in regards to my project coming to her building.

So Monday she tried to tell me there would be emergency costs associated with my needing her work completed by Tuesday and I was quite uhh..."vehement" in my assertion that since I had a documented set of requests going back 6 months and there was no need for it to be an emergency that she should get out her checkbook for said emergency costs. I thought I might have overdone it when my very reasonable partner in crime from NSI suggested I go busy myself in the other room with anything other than speaking, but I was comforted by the fact that I was right, and what's she going to do anyway? Start not doing what I ask of her because I'm a bitch?

Please. We're there.

From my walk Monday night. Dog and I both needed to pound the ground for a couple of hours and this just cracked me up. The barricade they made was most impressive.

Anyhoo, later in the day I noticed that the 2 people I was working with, both married men, just started saying "Yes, absolutely" and "wow, that's great" to everything I said. I started to think I was even more obviously heroic than at times past when I realized they weren't even paying attention to me! Anytime I opened my mouth, practically before I was done with my sentence it was "Wow. Great!" They were PANDERING! Not offensive, since "that's great" just never gets old (and to be fair, my ideas were all great) but it occurred to me I must be giving off obvious danger signals if I was activating Married Man Danger Evasion Behavior- so I got out the calendar and lo and behold if PMS isn't blinking like a neon light on my forehead. Explains so much (tight fitting pants!).

Prettiness in the parkage

Tuesday I was just busy which was fun-ish. It also involved a wet lunch, which might account for the majority of the fondness with which I recall the day. The local LAN lady isn't speaking to me but there were 8 new network ports activated and waiting for me at her building the next day. Not content to leave well enough alone, and not quite through to the other side of the nasty I completed one final steam blowing act of thanking her for getting that done so quickly, and then asking if it could be done so fast why it took six months and 100 points of my blood pressure to get it to happen. I've not gotten a response to that, but I asked her in email and cc'ed some key people so it's out of my hands. We were setting up one of the satellites of NSI to go live for Weds, and the fact that she didn't register my static IP address still screwed me, only I don't have time to wait because I'm off to Portland next week. This site is still using FILM people, I consider this an emergency and for 3 weeks now we have pushed it back because of this douche. I decided hell to the NO on waiting any longer. With some creative configuring and the help of the incredibly responsive and competent LAN admin at the main NSI site, I went through the MF'ing problem. As a result, Weds live came and went without a hitch as did Thursday, most of which passed in a fog admittedly. Allergies.

All the rain we've been getting has given the trickle of water at the park near my house the courage it needs to be a real river now. Complete with whitecaps!

So today, having decided that I need/NEED/deserve a new backpack, and having ordered said backpack in an "I must have this before I leave for Portland Sunday because I'm taking public transportation the whole 2 weeks I'm there and goddammit I NEED THIS" frenzy yesterday and paid in blood for expedited shipping, I am sitting at home waiting for "the package" to be delivered. I told everyone at NSI I may or may not be in at all, though I will indeed be going in now due to a run-in on the streets of Fells Point last night: HN and I decided to check out the Cat's Eye and see what was doing, and we ran into the brain trust from my company, who I knew was in town but didn't expect to see barhopping at night. Anyhoo, I've been promised some one on one time today with the CTO. 2 hours of sitting with him is like a semester class in 100 different subjects and I am unable to resist. He gives me just enough leads on things that I can look them up and work them out myself, and I'm very excited as I've just recently hit the wall of What I Know with a bunch of stuff at work. I am V nerdly excited.

I'm also excited about Portland because The Cleanse, while it continues here, has not made much progress. Still nothing worth writing home about, and I haven't had time or inclination to delve into what I'm missing so I decided to combine a bunch of birds with one stone and call in the Pros.
Notice Portland. Notice Cleanse. Through nefarious means I have secured some private time with Dr J and she is going to learn me, clean me, and poke me with needles (all of which I LOVE having done, sigh)
You might not even recognize me when I get back I'll be so clean and relaxed. And detoxed, which surely must be a first. ha.

There are also plans to take another, more serious stab the Mt they call Hood while I'm out there so I'll either have pics of that or awesome stories about rock climbing on Mt Smith. I'll keep you posted on the cleanse. This time shit's going to sparkle. Literally.