the reason this was ever created was to hold on to past friendships and people who had transferred from diaryland years ago. i've made my place, commented and been commented on, ranted, raved, posted somethings both serious and frivolous. even when a paid membership was gifted to me, i still could never get past the feeling that i hate it here. it is easy and simple, connected to most everyone and yet i still could never feel like this was something i could admit to with certain groups.

so on that note, i am jumping ship. there might be the occasional bit here every now and then, but it's doubtful. this will become what it was originally, a way for me to comment without being anonymous. follow me to here or thanks for the time.

By definition, a resolution is a firm decision to do or not to do something. Yet every year people make resolutions that are impossible, improbable, lacking in motivation or ridiculous. The way I was brought up, a resolution should be something that you have not already been doing but would like to improve on. When people say the resolve to love their family and friends, unless they were not loving them the year before this is a terrifically moot thing to say.

I've always been of the opinion that New Years has always been a celebration of looking back and seeing how much you've disappointed yourself in the last year and hoping that because the year you write everyday has changed than so will everything you didn't like about the last year. Personally I liked the last year and wouldn't mind repeating it, hence my lack of enthusiasm.

Turns out I'm a pessimist. To everyone else around me it seems that New Years is a time to look back nostaligically at all the great things that happened and to wish for the same greatness for the upcoming year. Hmm.

So they create new resolutions that are normally by the wayside come February 1st and rather than actually working to change anything, just hope the next year will be better.

Because hope solves everything.

I hate cowards.

If you have an issue with me, say it. Don't tell mutual friends how much you hate me and wish I weren't around. Don't act like everything has always been okay to the closest person to both of us and then spend your time bitching about me to everyone else. There is never an excuse for me finding out after 3 1/2 years that you've been pretending all this time to be my friend. Sure, we've never been close, nor ever would be, but I dealt with so much unneeded drama and bullshit that was never my issue to take on so as to keep your super-sensitive feelings from being hurt. How dare you. This is not okay, and worse, there is nothing I can do about it short of having a knock-down drag out fight or to drag in others into this facade you've created.

So the best I can do is ignore. Which is really really hard when I don't want to listen to your dribble or allow you into my house ever again. But as it is not just my place, I cannot impose my feelings on Adrian. He'll deal with this as needed. But I'm not okay.

I know I can be a terribly destructive and annoying person. Admittedly I am barely a good friend to anyone and I am always amazed by the people that I do manage to keep around me. I get angry easily, I get irrational, I say everything that should never be said. I'm paranoid, I drink too much, I speak too much and I don't apologize well when I should. But for fucks sake I know my faults and I don't pretend they are anything but that. If you dislike me for them, let me know and I can see what I can do to improve. Despite how I come across, I have no illusions of my own grandeur.

--

On a side note, while I can totally understand the need for a guys night of poker and drinking, it is lonely when you're the only girl. I gave up playing poker with these guys a long time ago when I realized I was the only one who ever thought it was a game and not a cutthroat battle disguised as fun. But sitting upstairs by myself was not really in my game plan for the evening. But watching and not participating is not either.

--

Michael, last night was an enormous amount of fun. Thank you so much. And the turkey was beyond incredible. Kudos. And thanks for letting me know where things stood so I no longer make an ass out of myself pretending things are different. That counts so much more to me than I can ever explain. Hooray for real friends.

Honesty is not the best policy.

I could not vote. Due to a misprint, I said I was a year older than the truth. And when it was sent back to me, it was past cutoff. Texas has same-day registration, but not within limits for my ability.

But while living in a Republican city/county/state, I can be happy the Democrats took control of the House. i can go to sleep in peace.

Everclear. Ever clear. Parts I don't remember. At all. But it was a good party, despite the annual day of pain that follows and the trashed house that isn't mine but nonetheless is now destroyed.

Sorry Greg for my part.

My internet has been really bad lately, but Adrian's has been awesome since we got a new working router. So I bought an new ethernet card (the other was about 6 years old) and spent most of the day backing up files and the killing my system. There's something very refreshing about starting from scratch. Sure most of the music and photos will be put back on, but none of the other shit that was left will. Now I need to get McAfee corporate back on from Greg, find my Photoshop cd and figure out why the speakers don't want to work. But I'm content with just normal internet tonight.

It seems most everyone has been stressed or down about something lately. Like the big thing everyone had been looking forward to is now gone and now no one knows where to turn. I want to be the friend for everyone, but lately it seems that I keep being reminded that the people I care about gave up on me a long time ago. Or they show back up, open up for the first time in forever b/c now the circumstances are safe, and when I reciprocate, I find only a void staring back at me. It's time for me to move on as well, I just don't know where it is I am moving on towards. Or even how much is towards something and how much is against.

I don't like gaming days. I know I am always welcome to come, but I know I would be bored quickly. But I don't like being alone even when it means I get things done I needed and wanted to. It also means I spend more time in my head alone, which I don't like. I need more distractions.

Work is early tomorrow. But my new schedule is awesome.

Pictures soon. I know I said Friday, but I didn't feel like it. Once I get Photoshop reinstalled, there's a higher chance, but the last week or so I just really haven't felt like doing anything for anyone else. The tide will switch again soon.

So Adrian and I went roller blading yesterday. On a whim, he decided to buy some rollerblades and I dug my old ones out of the closet and we went to the nature preserve by our place. Turns out that $20 rolelrblades bought from target are really crappy. He couldn't understand why this was fun for me b/c his wheels barely even turned and every part of the trail was a chore. I, on the other hand, tend to pick up speed so fast that I couldn't stop myself on anything with even the slightest decline. At best, my nice brake/stopper slowed me down a slight slight bit, but nothing substantial, and once I picked up any speed it was completely useless.

Which is how I ended up hitting the gravel across the sidewalk at one point and fell on my ass. For someone as clumsy as I am, ass pads would be nice. Instead, what I now have is a huge blue and purple bruise covering half my ass. Sitting hurts. Walking hurts. Everything hurts. :(

On a side note, I ran over a rock in the parking garage when I was leaving work the other night. I called my friend Ecik as I knew he was heading over to my place anyway. But by the time he got there Ialready had gotten the tire off and was putting the spare on. It sucked since this is the first time the tire has been changed on this car since I bought it, it took my standing on the breaker bar and jumping on it to loosen the bolts. But I am proud I was able to get it myself. I haven't had to change a tire in about 4 years, and on the Tiburon it was a terrific bitch to change. The Scion is ever so much easier.

Rocks have not been my friend lately.

I own a rock. Not as a metaphorical thing, but a physical. A small, slightly jagged rock. One side more rounded than the other, with a sharp top right corner. I know it is the top right corner b/c I wrote on this rock almost 9 years ago.

On one point of this rock, somewhat southeastern, shows a color that could be blood. Or feldspar. Hard to say. I maintain blood.

This rock has the words ‘Camp Constantin’ written in Sharpie on it. Or Magic Marker. Interchangeable in the house I grew up in.

This rock is magic.

In the last ten years I discovered the joys of alcohol. The pleasant letting go, the numbness that takes over sensibility and fear. However, alcohol makes my mind a little less clear on all the old stuff. Or maybe, as I typically theorize, the alcohol was just my way of purposely forgetting high school and college. I still am remarkably sharp on the important stuff and the recent, it’s all the other that seems to elude me.

Now, don’t misunderstand, I remember many things, but I seem to forget the things others don’t, typically wherein I make an ass of myself. So that is why I take pictures. To help me remember later. Although I did discover lately that sometimes, pictures included, the night is still a blur 4 years later.

But to my magic rock, or else I will digress even further.

Once, I used to be the leader of an all-mighty tribe of warriors, known only as the Explorers. The cops were after us for carrying AK47’s around the town square and we wore nothing but camo and black tank tops, until burning and or coldness got in the way. (As for the cops, they really believed the gun thing. Eh, Garland)

Now we warriors would go camping every month or so in the wild of East Texas for a weekend. And when I say ‘wild’, I mean ‘Boy Scout' camp. Come on, I was the only girl normally. It still counts.

So one year (99) we went to Constantin. One guy lost the transmission to his Blazer on the way, so we had to improvise the rest of the trip. He stayed behind and waited for my sister’s kindergarten teacher (his mother) to show up and help him out with money and a towing fare. The rest of us went on.

We set up camp. If anyone in the north Texas area remembers that weekend in particular, they should be shot. It had rained and the ground was terribly squishy. It was one of the smallest of our groups that had ever gone camping: 5 guys, 2 girls and a married couple as the chaperones.

Somehow the setting up process landed on 2 people’s shoulders. Guess a guy and mine and you’d be right. Suprisingly.

After getting the tents up, I went to the latrine to wash the mud off my hands. The nice wooden latrine with showers and toilets and plumbing that happened to have a 2 foot space between the top of the walls and the roof.

While washing my hands, I heard a random thump before I turned to leave. That was when I ran into the plumbing pipe. Or so I thought.

Turns out the nice metallic pipe sound I heard was my head, And a rock. Thrown by one of my best friends. They “didn’t know” I was in there, and were throwing rocks at the wall of the latrine. One missed the wall, went over, and decided to slam my in the head.

So now I am the proud owner of a scar that should have had stitches, but was too stubborn to get. Luckily I have no history of family baldness.

This was also the weekend where I screamed curse words at 10 year olds, got lost on a mountain with some stupid bitch who twisted her ankle and bitched for 3 hours to get the guys to carry her down the mountain we didn’t want her to go up in the first place, played the best damn game of capture the flag EVAR (better than any paintball game I ever played, and less hurty) watched my ex piss a fire out, and found magic rock that always makes me happy to not be 16 anymore.

That’s why it’s magic.

Yup.

And so far, I cannot fix the math in my head that says that from 99 to 06 is only 7 years but that iwas 16-17 and am 25 now which is 8-9 years work out.

The moral of this story? Throw the rock back and don’t listen to my boring ass stories of a billion years ago. Go smoke some pot. Or fling poo at each other. It will be more entertaining.

I like being reminded why I was friends with someone for 6 years. 12 years. It is a wonderful feeling.

this was not the age. the age of enlightenment. of settlement. of emotion.
this is the age of properity, when i get some reaping of the sowing.

but it was not the age for the final.

and now i am torn between the is and the was. and the scared.
i want but i don't. and i, of all people, know the difference between long term and desire.

but only by knowing one side so long that i know the other through default. not the side that is expected.

but i sit here alone. and that's good. b/c i might actually have to admit truth or cry otherwise. or both.

instead i can speak in cryptic that doesn't ever say what i want, while drinking copius amounts of whisky. arguably what started this to begin with.

i'm glad i have an 11 hour work day tomorrow. i'm glad i can block most things. in my head, my heart. more in my heart than my head. my head never stops.

hence the drinking.

i know my options. i always know my options, as well as how they will play out.
but it doesn't stop the agony of decision.

what really bothers me is knowing i have to separate for the first time ever. i never had to make the choice before, i always picked both and suffered the consequences. but i can't this time.

i could, but i won't be that. there's been too much of that, although i was never the accused. it's a promise i cannot afford to break. for myself and for....

but memory only serves so well. as well as extreme drunkeness. and i don't know what levels have been passed.

i've always been the most indecisive person when it comes to little things, like where to eat. but this has never been an issue. i always knew. and if i didn't i gambled, knowing what was the least.
but now i know, still can't make it stop, and am scared of my own willpower, self-righteousness and ego.

never thought i could actually worry about my own ego, esp. against a match in level.

i told (her) once that i was not supposed ot be here at this age. maybe at 35. but here, no. i was being comforting, but now the compfort has turned into being unsure.

please don't bring this back to me.

if -she- had been here, i would have been left behind. i do not question, b/c the choice was before the knowledge. before knowing what could never be. so should i hope for death in a different form? moving away? forgetting, eventually, b/c of the distance place either geographically or emotionally?



i used to know everything. really, it sounds arrogant, but i did. then i forgot it for the sake of another. and now i do not know which is the greater sin, remembering everything and acting upon it, or finding a new reality, full of compromise and endings.

it's becoming dangerous. and, if it occurs, the world will erupt.

I drove to work this morning at 630 in a terrible thunderstorm. Sheet of rain, almost flooding my car, etc.

2 minutes from home I saw lightning hit a transformer box in the median that controls the streetlights.

The sky was a color I have never seen before. I've never been so scared and so elated.

--


Anyone bored and anti-sadism? Feel free to follow the links through here.

So it has been really rough at work lately. My company does not really like actually hiring people. Most of the employees that have been working for Fujitsu for the past 2-3 years are sub contractors. Meaning temps. Meaning it makes it hard to put on a resume how far you have risen in a job when you hold the same position in the company you get paid by.

But recently, when going through he process to become a full-time employee, one of my co-workers was fired for having mroe degrees than stated on his resume. An entirely ridiculous idea to me, as it did not apply to his job to start with. He was single, almost 50, and withing 2 days of being fired, was hired at another company for 20 thousand more than he was making at Fujitsu. Because that makes sense overall. Fired someone to make them have a better time in life. Also, 2 others in my dept. have quit for better jobs, and another is quitting within 2 weeks to go do the same job at AAA for 17 thousand more than we get paid. And I really do wonder why I stay sometimes.

Now, I've been at this company for right over 1 year now. I started in Dispatch, became a lead there, then was offered a job, interviewed and promoted within one day to being a Call Manager. The money is much much nicer, the hours not too different, the job more challenging, and thus, more satisfying. I sam arrogant enough to say that few else could have done the same within the same amount of time for the types of jobs I have been doing within the last year. I keep my mouth shut at work. I hold my complaining until I am at home. When they change a policy and make things that much harder, I do them without a sound and try to prove how stupid the policy is without feeling it is against me personally, but instead, up to me to prove the polivy's inadequacy. I am not the redneck that sits next to me, nor am I the over-educated that thinks himself too good for the job yet is too lazy to find something better. I know my place. I know to rise, I work harder. And I will rise from my own ability alone.

But it has been hard lately. Too make up the lack of trained people, we have hired 3 new employees. This is not to say I have been working in this position long. I was promoted only 2 months ago. Right after that, we hired 2 new people from outside the company. While I still have much to know about this position, it is only the opposite side to what I was already doing, and, as I have unintentionally shown everyone, I actually know our system better than any other Call Manager, and so I can manipulate the data to my own advantage of making my job simpler and more streamlined. These other 2 are trying, but they have to learn a new everything.

Now 3 more. One is a quiet middle-aged woman with mostly grown kids, who seems earnest and yet within a few weeks, cannot grasp her job yet. I do not think she will last. Another is terribly quiet and I know nothing about, except she does not seem to ask questions and she is being trained half the time by someone even newer (and thus, more incompetent) than myself. The last will perfectly make up for one of the Angela's, being brash and country. No other words fully depscribe. She has not sat at her desk for more than 40 minutes in 2 weeks (always training with others) and yet there are more than 6 Nascar related things on her desk. Hanging keychains. Post-It notes. She carries a piece of one of the tracks (whichever is the most sacred, I don't know) that has been made into a bottle opener on her key chain. And kisses it once a day. Seriously.

Somehow, that is always the one that sits by me. The loud one.

In the last week, we've had 14 times people have called out sick. Out of 10 people. That places a terrible strain. I'll admit, I called out when I could have gone in, but wanted the day off. Not recently, but it has happened. Once every 2 weeks we have a standby day, where if someone calls in, we have to work on our day off. As temps, the overtime is great. But I've had 3 days off in 5 weeks.

Today, out of 6 people working, 2 called in. It actually made it 3 as one of the people originally scheduled to work has since quit. And the person that should have been on standby has also quit. The schedule was not changed. To us, the United States is split into 23 sections basedon geography. Florida, southern California, the southwest, central, Conneticut, etc. Each section has it's own Field Manager which works from 5 am to 2 pm, local time. We take over 3 area on a standard day from 2 pm to 10 pm local, the groupings based on making sure no one is over-loaded but still busy. My standard areas are New York city, Florida and Ohio. Not much happens in Ohio, New York is always crazy busy, and Florida is the 9th realm of hell because of our contract with Burger King. I will not go into that. As Call Managers, our job is to receive the calls, figure out what can be run today or not, based on severity and tech resources, getting the parts to the site for the techs to complete the jobs, updating the customers and about a million other things. Weekends, being slightly slower and due to Fedex not shipping all the time, we take on 4 areas as a standard adn the it grows throughout the night and to cover lunches and such. So b/c we were essentially down to 3 people, our boss conned one of the full timers into working on his day off (from home, he's a special guy) to help out. So our areas were reassigned. My Ohio went to someone else. All 4 calls that happen there. So instead, I gained Pennsylvania/New York and Conneticut. CT is one of the busiest, worst areas. Too many people being too good of consumers and the employees break too much equipment.

So we're all overloaded. All day. No breaks (not that I ever really take breaks anyway), no lunches. Pizza promised at 4 to make the day easier arrives at 730. Bad, bad busy day. the guy covering NYC this mornign never did call me back to turn his area over to me. Don't know when he stopped working during the day. Might still be for all I know.

..
.

But what makes it all ok to me?

I was asked by my supervisor the other day if I had contemplated being a lead in Call Management. A lead for a dept I've only worked for for 2 months. It makes the insides all warm and squishy, being recognized over people working in the same dept for 4-5 years. Also means more money. Which is always welcome, not that I have evern adjusted to how much I actually make now.

But to me, it means another step. I don't like being bad at a job, and I don't like being good at it and being stuck there forever. I want to rise. I want to prove my statement right to Taba. And to myself.

Lofty goals. But really, what I don't want right now? I don't want to work at 7 am, eleven hours after getting off work. Boo.

My childhood hero just died.


Goodnight Ann Richards.

Second Ann/Anne in a month.


And the news today. Marie could not handle. So she took pills and went for a swim.



You'll be missed sorely as well, Marie. I never knew you, but will mourn you.

There are so many times I need more friends....especially when I am trying to read some new insight or observation online and realize no one has posted anything new.

So I went to go buy fabric today.
And ended up going to the big Half Price and was looking around.
I knew he worked there.
Which is why I was drawn.
I needed to know he was ok.
Ok in life, ok in job, eating right and not starving,
Ok without me.
It's been a few years.
And I left his friendship long after the relationship was over.
I was the one who couldn't handle being friends while dating the guy he wasn't.
I was the one who quit calling and answering b/c I felt guilty when I wasn't there.
So I saw him. He works in multiple areas.
The cafe, the buying.
And I hid from him.
I looked at books in his area, at first b/c I really didn't think he'd be there.
Then, b/c I liked the subject.
But when I saw him, I hid.
I'm pretty sure he saw me as well. I'm just not sure if he saw me as who I am, or just another female who looks similar.
I need to know he's ok.
B/c he hasn't always had the best life.
And I was only there for a short while.
And I can only hope I helped instead of being a detriment.

3 years is a long time.

When I thought there was a chance he'd seen me and would come talk to me, I ran.
I paid for my books, gave a longful look to the window where he would be as I walked to my car, and left.
I ran away from the one person who has really known me for 10 years.
He scared me with that knowledge.

Would he find me better now?
With my better job, apartment, boyfriend he wasn't?

Or worse?
B/c with him I lost the best friend I had in those 10 years?
And never fully regained that back?

I always feel trepidation talking to those people,
Those that mattered.

So I run. Well, drive.
40 minutes away is not enough.
It's time for farther from this life that was.

The edges started fraying a long time ago.
That's why some people and I finally blew up and had to try to regain. Not that we have yet.
But I need the distance. In miles. Kilometers.

B/c all I've ever had the chance for before was emotional.
And that only has 2 options.
Feel everything or nothing.

At this point in time, I am with someone who does not allow me to pretend. To feel nothing and act as I always have.
Hell, in the last week I've had to choose between what I have and what could also be if I were still that person.

And when you've been that person for so very long even after a hiatus it is hard to not go back to it.

But love is forever, by my own definition.





Right?

Moving Ja' to Seattle in the morning. 3 days driving each way. Not able to write how unhappy I am to lose her yet. Maybe when I get back. Back in 10 days or so.