Sometimes arguing with strangers via Twitter/Twinkle is highly entertaining.

(read from the bottom up)

I think I may hate wearing rain pants almost as much as I hate taking the bus.

I hate wearing pants enough as it is, and somehow I’m supposed to be okay with wearing TWO PAIRS OF PANTS AT ONCE? You’re kidding, right?

Naturally, I wore the stupid rain pants this morning and it didn’t rain on me. I did get some panicked looks from a staunchy oil tycoon when I started to strip off my layers in the parkade, but there was no way I was going to continue feeling like a sausage when I didn’t have to. I hate my rain pants. Wearing them makes me almost want to take the bus, but then I remember all the reasons I hate taking the bus and then I just want to crawl back into bed. I need a job that’ll let me work from home when it rains. Those exist, right?

Yesterday I was a very, very bad girl. I had excellent intentions – go to the mall after work and a) drop off my Holga film, b) pick up my copy of Bioware’s new DS game, c) buy a new toothbrush. I did get all those things done, but somehow I also ended up with not one but TWO new pairs of boots, a fantastic green blazer with scary bear-clawed buttons, a see-through purple shirt for sluttin’, and two boxes of Q-Tips. There was a sale, see. I used to be really bad for this kind of splurging, but I’ve come a long way since my wayward spending days – but yesterday everything was just super and I was feeling flush and perhaps now I will feel pretty. I doubt it, but I can try.

Besides, look at these boots:

Feeling fabulous is almost better than feeling pretty.

I woke up this morning utterly depressed, and I think it is because I have roots.

I’m usually pretty good about scheduling a date with henna the instant my hair starts to glitter under fluorescent lights, but lately I’ve been too busy/tired/lazy to do it. It also doesn’t help that my hair has been more or less fabulous lately. In addition to colouring my hair a healthy orange, henna will make it thick and shiny and smelling like dirt. Usually when I’m feeling drab and rooty, I just have a henna evening and lo my hair is once again large and unmanageable, just the way I like it. Lately though, my hair has been large and unmanageable on its own – and if not for the Hulk-smash anger I feel when I see how much white there is on my head, I probably would just skip the henna altogether. I don’t really feel like it, but I am officially declaring tonight Girl Maintenance night. I will henna, shave, pluck, exfoliate, moisten, trim, buff and oil. I may even polish. There is a possibility of cucumber sandwiches.

Being a girl is a pain in the ass.

It is very, very dark outside. My corner of the Lab doesn’t have overhead lights, which is fantastic – but without a great deal of natural light, it is damn spooky over here. It goes very well with my overall gothiness today. While I didn’t start out intending to look like I was dipped in Hot Topic on my way over, if the black lace fingerless gloves fit ..

Ali is visiting this weekend, and I am looking forward to it. The weather doesn’t want to cooperate, but I’m sure we can find some fun that may or may not include alcohol. It’s been far too long since we’ve seen Ali, and we need her vowel in our gang. It will be good. Hooray for fun and vowels!

Perhaps I should document things now.

Oh, snap – I was chastised! From the desktop support ticket I entered to request more RAM:

Intern with Nice Bottom resolved DT-10: I can has more ram?
——————————

She has many programs installed in her computer.
With the steps above I hope to improve her computer’s performance.
If it is not enough for her I can do the backup and reinstall everything.

I feel like I was given an Unsatisfactory in Social Development because I didn’t colour within the lines :(

Hey, Kimli! We’re going to need you to go ahead and spend the day in Richmond, in a filthy warehouse, crawling around on your hands and knees! When we say “warehouse”, we’re totally not kidding – it’s an actual warehouse, filled with boxes and burly men wearing gloves and masks to keep out the dust. You’re going to want to get right in there, on your knees and under some “desks”, to unplug computers and then when you’re done that we need you to move all the computers around and then get back down again to plug them all in. You might want to drive your car in today, since you’re also going to have to take some of those computers over to this warehouse in Richmond. So, yeah, if you could do all that by yourself – oh and don’t forget to train these warehouse workers who don’t speak much English on the needlessly complicated process of manually downgrading the firmware on some routers in between the box picking and forklift driving – that would be just great.

Naturally, I picked today to dress like a fancy pirate. Formal shorts, fancy shirt, high heeled sex boots – all excellent things to wear to a fucking warehouse. I am so smart. You all wish you were me, don’t you.

Also, I am full of various rages.

This morning in the shower I gave some serious thought to setting my mother up with a computer.

While clearly the more pressing issue is why I woke up stoned out of my gourd and what this means for my plan to be a smug middle-aged straight edger, I find myself giving the idea more than just the passing recoil it warrants.

Don’t get me wrong – my mom on the internet would be a terrible, terrible thing. This is the woman who, when told she should use Craigslist to find an apartment, called me up to ask if I knew Craig and if I could ask him if he had an apartment to rent. I once tried to give my mom my email address so she could pass it along to someone, and it .. did not work. Giving my mother a computer could only be an impossible exercise in frustration and potentially bring about the apocalypse. She would break the entire internet. Viruses would escape the computer and start infecting the stove and washing machine. The entire country of Nigeria would name a holiday in her honour. Chris Hansen would show up on her doorstep and she’d be all over Dateline all because she clicked on the dancing bunny. It would be bad. Very, very bad.

And yet .. it would be a challenge. I could choose to lay the gauntlet down and heed the call to arms. If I could successfully get my mother on the internet and using email, it would be my greatest triumph and seal my place in history as an epic mastermind of brilliance. Many of you have met my mother and understand exactly why I turned out the way I did, and you know just how difficult an undertaking this would be. I think I could do it. I really do.

Whether I SHOULD do it is obviously another matter altogether. I have the hardware, and I’d be able to get internet hooked up at her place for free. Do I have the patience? If I took a long hard look at myself in the mirror, do I really think I’d be able to pull this off without strangling her? Is my life really so dull that I need a challenge of this magnitude, in this format? All good questions.

I should sleep on this, and perhaps look into rehab for my brand new drug problem.

Gillian is a superstar who worked some magic and lo – my archives are back online. Thank you, Gillian! You are awesome!

While I’m embarrassed that someone might have actually read through my early updates, I’m delighted to have them all in one place again. I hadn’t realized how often I refer back to older posts to jog my memory until I couldn’t – just last week I was wondering when it would be time to have Lemon neutered, and wanted to see when we had Hobble done so’s I could eyeball a timeframe (7 months). Without my archives, my memory is nowhere near as legendary as previously reported. I love you, old internet words. Never go offline again.

While I know where it was coming from, how exactly are you supposed to respond to someone reminiscing about “when you were all hot and stuff”? Talk about a backhanded compliment, and also ouch.

I am easily distracted and scattered today.

Ed and I forgot to have our belated anniversary dinner this weekend.

Corazzo sent me some crazy superhero gloves and a t-shirt. I think I will go fight some crime.

This post appears to be post 1138. The nerd in me rejoices!

• Mr. Clean disinfecting wipes do not taste good
• The only time to not be alarmed when a creepy old man with missing and/or horrible teeth leers at you and asks if there are perogies in the basement is when you’re standing outside a Ukrainian Hall, because he really is asking if there are perogies in the basement and not trying to pick you up for some gummin’
• There is no shortcut!
• Any day in which you end up on the wrong side of the tracks twice cannot possibly be a bad one
• Next time, get the brie-and-strawberry-filled French toast because the omelette, which was quite delicious in its own right, does not compare to the glory of strawberries when they’re served on a layer of fancy French cheese
• I heart Gillian

Social Media, the chicken-shit way:

Walk around an event with my Squee-PC out and wait for people to talk to me because I’m too shy to talk to them.

Hey, whatever works!

Update: So far, it’s worked 5 times in about 10 minutes.

Another update: Okay, it worked about a dozen times in total.

So, I’ve been trying to integrate myself somewhat into the Vancouver blogging community, which seems to also be the Vancouver Social Media community. I don’t really see myself as much of a social media person, but I came to a startling realization tonight:

I spent a good part of tonight in a room jam-packed to the brim with other people, walking around with my SqueePC out so I could check email, Twitter, my blog, and Flickr all at the same time. If that isn’t social media, I really don’t know what is – while I’m still working on the whole “social” aspect of things, I certainly have the “media” down to an almost obsessive neon T.

So, yeah. I made me laugh at myself.

In addition to the make-people-talk-to-me-via-tiny-computer method of interaction, I also recruited Gill for an experiment tonight – we deposited our Moo cards on various tables at the event. I’m thinking about suggesting this for the next big nerd shindig, but almost everyone I know has Moo cards or some variation of – and doesn’t do much with them. I’m a hearty example of this, as I have three sets of business cards and at least two sets of Mini cards. Why do I have them? Well, in addition to being in love with seeing my name and photos in print, I got them so I could trade contact information with people. Here’s the catch, though – I’m almost pathologically shy around people I don’t know; the very people I would want to be trading contact info with. As it stands right now, I give my Moo cards to people who already know me. That isn’t exactly the point, so I propose doing this:

To anyone who has Moo cards but routinely forgets to offer them up for trade and/or hand them out, period: start leaving them lying around. It’d be cool to have a table at these fancy social media events where people could just leave their Moo cards and pick up someone else’s – follow a URL, check out some photos, email a stranger. Obviously you’ve been in the same place as that person, so let’s take it one step further and maybe e-meet the people you didn’t get a chance to meet in person. That way, chickenshit people like me can still stay within the relative safety of our own social circles, but maybe get to check out a blog we hadn’t known existed.

Or maybe I’m the only one with this neurotic fear of meeting new people.

Anyway, I have Moo cards. I want to trade with people. Give me your Moo cards. I have no use for a hundred cards with my own contact information; I know who I am. Who are YOU?

If anyone got here because they picked up one of my cards at the BarCamp party, hello!

I will stop talking now. I think I absorbed a lot of Gill’s beer through osmosis and am drunk by association.

I figured everyone’s Friday afternoon could use a little tantrum dancing by Kevin Bacon.