.. to a deluxe apartment cubicle in the sky.

I moved again at work:

WINDOW! SILL!

My team (which is just me for the next half hour or so) swapped pods with the Sales Team, and there was a lovely window seat available. I was hesitant to take it (for reasons that will become clear in a moment), but my boss insisted .. and here I am. I am not so much excited about the window (the glare when the sun comes out will drive me insane) as I am about the triumphant return of my access to a windowsill: I can put all my crap back! Hooray!

There were some sacrifices to be made, of course. I lost my fabric walls, meaning I can’t hang things. The desk is not optimized for stolen shelving; I had to give up my hutch. I don’t have regular desk drawers, I have this bizarre Ikea abomination that requires Salad Fingers to reach anything inside. I love a challenge though, so I moved myself right in and started appropriating pieces of office equipment from other departments to build myself a Frankenhome – it’s a little precarious, but it works. Besides, they don’t call me Precarious Kimli for nothing – I am constant in danger of being buried by things. I have made peace with this.

So, why the hesitation when offered an upgrade to an excellent workspace? Because my old boss – who shall henceforth be known as ODB (as in Ol’ Dirty Boss even though he is neither old nor dirty but because it makes me laugh) – has been absorbed into my team, and as such, downgraded from his office to a cubicle in the P&C pod (which has been dubbed the Culturedome because I MUST NAME EVERYTHING). ODB has several levels and 7+ years seniority over me (like, Director vs. whatever the hell I am), so I was going to leave the prime spot for him as is fair. My boss (who needs a nickname; this is getting confusing – I was thinking Sylar not because she’s evil or has played Spock but because she’s absorbing people from other departments to become more powerful and I can’t think of a non-villainous equivalent that isn’t terribly insulting which is not my intent*) overruled my humble postulation though, and said I should just take it despite my protests. Even today, when word officially came down that he would be leaving the other team and joining mine, I offered to move so he could have the desk – but he doesn’t want it. That doesn’t make me feel any less guilty, though – he should have the fancy desk, not me. I’m already getting weird looks because I moved again; I don’t want people to think I refused ODB the good spot. I didn’t! I tried to give it to him! Oh I am wracked with guilt and caffeine. :(

It’s nice to be able to look outside, though. I can see the weather! It is raining.

*: I just lost about 20 nerd points – Ed suggested I call my boss Rogue, which is so fitting it actually kind of hurts. Also, she drives a friggin’ Rogue. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this myself. I’m going to go self-flagellate for a while with a Cat o’ Cat 5.

this has nothing to do with anything; i just like the picture

I almost fell over a block from work this morning. I was feeling all fine and dandy, thinking about just how naked I was going to spend my evening, when WHOOSH – I was hit with a wall of vertigo and came close to finding down. It’s been a very unusual morning, complete with a ranty man on the bus and two guys on a cherry picker outside my bedroom window (they were not there to pick cherries) – and now I’m crazy dizzy on top of everything else. I really hope this isn’t the start of something (a lot of my coworkers seem to be out sick), because I totally don’t have time for this. No time, I tell you! I’m having at you!

I spent much of last night surrounded by porn and presents. The porn is not at all unusual – my mother would be so proud – but the presents were; I was elbow-deep in holiday trimmings. A few years ago, I declared war on wrapping paper and refused to buy any more once my supply ran out. I used the last scraps of paper up a while ago, so I’ve had to rely on creative wrapping tools since then. I’m not a crazy eco-warrior hippie or anything; I just think it’s ridiculously wasteful to spend money on paper that you ultimately plan to throw away especially when there’s so much scrap paper lying around all over the place. Sure, you want your gifts to be fancy – but that doesn’t mean you have to have the traditional gift wrap festooned with gaudy, in-your-face reminders that it is the holiday season. All it takes is a little creativity, and anything at all can make a pretty present – or, in my case, a triple-X throwdown:

the title of the spread i used is "eco-rotic" - i love it when a theme comes together

I had to include the text on one of the presents; it was just too awesome to leave out:

Grabbing her fellow conversationalist’s tumid man root, Leela stuffs the groin gourd into her hot gullet. Steam rises from Rick’s member as it spurts hot love goo into Leela’s open mouth. Licking her soft lips clean, the natural beauty smiles, “The most important thing is, always remember to recycle.”

Tumid man root? Groin gourd? Hot gullet? I AM SO AROUSED!

the hat isn't on the actual present; i had a last minute change of heart about giving you an eyeful of tumid man root so early in the week

The article is from an old issue of Hustler Canada – fitting, because we all fuck in the snow up here. The winters are long and hard, and so are our men – what else is there to do?

This post was probably not safe for work. Sorry about that, unless you enjoyed it at which point Merry Christmas to you!

Seriously, don’t ever invite me over to your child’s birthday party.

Last night at The Raven (which I just can’t love – every time I go there, I am disappointed with the food and the regulars are dicks; we need a new place to hang out), I got bored and started to doodle. By the time we left, I had drawn our whole group:

the resemblance is uncanny

Starting from the top:

• Shan, wearing big earrings and reading a book
• Reilly and his chin scruff, playing the guitar
• Ed chewing on a straw
• Sharon, cheering for some reason
• The server who delivered my pizza (plus a hat, and steam)
• Me in my awesome Hello Kitty hat
• Josh and his mighty beard playing on his iPad-sized iPhone
• Miranda knitting
• Darren doing the helicopter with a piece of bacon in lieu of his penis

Oh yeah. I’m totally channeling Da Vinci up in here.

I RULE at Sunday!

Up at 9:30, mom called, 7 loaves of banana bread in the oven (two banana chocolate, three banana walnut, two plain), dishwasher going, kitchen cleaned – and it’s not even 11am. WHO’S AWESOME? I’M AWESOME!

Did you know that it’s very difficult to bake when you’ve got a near-obsessive compulsion to have clean hands? It’s true! I absolutely HATE having anything on my hands, and baking is not a tidy job. It’s why I can’t make anything that involves ingredient manipulation, like shaped cookies or pies – I’d have to touch the dough and I just can’t do that. Having sticky or dirty hands is so uncomfortable to me that it makes me panic a little, especially if there’s no easy way to get them clean. Ever see me fish ice out of my drink and rub it all over my hands? Yeah, that’s me with a desperate need to clean myself off. I’ve always had an aversion to being sticky, but I think I can pinpoint the moment it turned into a phobia: we were at Circle in Calgary, celebrating Yule. The candy was flowing fast and furious, and people had brought their children to the party. At one point in the night, we had to form a large circle and hold hands – and to my left was a small sticky child with a cold, who had, mere moments before, sneezed into his hands and wiped them off onto his pants. He was covered in crumbs and germs, and I had to hold his hand for what seemed like forever – it makes me shudder to this day; remembering the horrible sensation of icky sticky snotty child hand tightly clutching mine. It may have been a festive Yule, but a compulsion was born: clean hands, all the time, or a little piece of me dies inside.

My other phobia – and this is an actual phobia; if it happened for longer than 3 seconds every two months I would scream out loud – involves hair dryers.

I am off to shower! It’s time to finish my Giftmas shopping!

ninjamas!

We didn’t have a tree up Lastmas, because we had just moved in (one year ago today!) – but this year, it is crazy festive all up in here:

treeeeeee!

We decorated with ninjas, Olympic mascots, my Mighty Ugly hockey, and secret Domos:

slurpees are festive

It’s been a busy couple of days around here. Last night was my office party, which was a blast – I wore the Kermit Dress, it was so green. Today was the kid’s party in Stanley Park, riding the Bright Lights train in the rain. It was my first time on the train, so I had fun even though it was friggin’ cold and wet. Trains are awesome, and there was a bear on stilts:

let him love you

Tomorrow I will bake a multitude of banana breads, finish my Christmas shopping, and possibly take a nap or two. I’ve got a busy week ahead (but less crazy than this past week), but I’m looking forward to getting some work done (the raise and booze I got on Friday likely has something to do with my sudden work ethic). Then .. Friendmas! And Foodmas! And a mini vacation – I’ve got a 5-day weekend over New Years that I plan to put to good use. I don’t know what that is yet, but I have grand aspirations and nothing on my plate – the very best kind of time off!

Yeah, it’s been a little scandal-free around these parts lately – I’ve actually been too busy to get into any trouble. Also, there’s nothing really hilarious going on. Things are just super, which doesn’t make for exciting times – I’m happy, conflict-free, enjoying my life, and have 14 litres of Diet Coke in the house. I may never need to put pants on again! Except I will, because I kind of miss my friends – feels like I haven’t seen them in seventeen years. We’re having Brunchmas at Sparta on the 25th and dinner in Railtown, but I hope there will be Hanging Out before then.

she can see into your soul >:E

In the end, every single wish from the tree was fulfilled. It took six people to load up all the gifts, and multiple extremely laden trips to deliver them all to the mom, who was beside herself with tears and gratitude. I may have choked up a little. For all the stressing and worrying I did, everything came together beautifully in the end. My coworkers are awesome at giving!

:}

After tomorrow at 5pm, I can stop worrying about other people and begin to worry about MY people. The Ninja Tree will go up this weekend!

I’m a festive ho ho ho!

When I got to work this morning, there were four snowmen on my desk.

The fact that there are snowmen on my desk is not the issue. The real problem is that when I left the office last night, there were only two snowmen on my desk. They are multiplying. Hide your carrots.

Truthfully, I am not that alarmed – the snowmen were accompanied by a penguin and a bear. I still have not caught up on my sleep and am barely functioning, so it might be that all of this didn’t really happen – but I’m pretty sure it did, and I’m amused as all hell that this kind of thing is relatively normal over here.

It’s Fancy Times in the office today – there are photographers about taking pictures of the office and some of the staff. They want to update our website to show that we have a fun, vibrant, diverse place to work so certain people were asked to dress a little better than we normally do (we work in IT – all hail jeans and t-shirts [concert tees for the sysadmins; software swag tees for support]). I’m a little cranky about it, though – neither me nor my desk were asked to be a part of our new image. I am offended, because I have the most awesome desk in the company:

I suppose I can somewhat understand my personal exclusion in the pictures (even though I am the walking definition of “diverse, vibrant and fun”) – when someone tells me to “dress up a little”, I inevitably show up looking like a French prostitute circa 1882. Since we sell the internet and are not a brothel, I guess I can forgive the slight. I hate my face and the universe a little less today, so I will tell myself that I am just too awesome (and busty) to be featured on the website (instead of the usual “you can’t market Mama Cass” song and dance).

Know what I miss? I miss parties.

these were some good times

I woke up so far on the wrong side of the bed this morning I can see the Atlantic Ocean outside my window. I feel as though I should post a warning sign on my cubicle: “Stupid questions will be met with bodily harm and foul language”. I hate feeling like this – there’s nothing wrong; I just hate the universe right now. And my face. The universe, and my face.

I need sleep and a hefty shot of holiday cheer.

I’m about to take a bath with one of these:

I am afraid for my urethra.

This is about as coherent as I feel right now:

i can't tell if this doesn't make sense, or if i am too tired to get it

I am exhausted and chicken-like, but things are great. I’ve spent most of the day organizing the presents people have brought in for our adopted family, which is for happy times – and the kitchen has been stocked with holiday treats all day. I need the sugar to keep myself awake for the next two hours, at which point I will go home and collapse and possibly not move until Wednesday arrives.

Shit, who’s the idiot who scheduled me for a 2-hour training session at 3pm? Fucker. (It was me. I HATE me.)