Stolen from too many people to name.

What Kind of Area Leader Are You?
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Re-posted from OpenDiary.

I've had a fetish for stationery ever since I can remember, but lately that fetish has branched out to include more generic office supplies.

At my office, we're a premiere account with Viking, who seem to give us deeper discounts every time we buy something.

Recently, for example, (like last week) we bought chairs. The list price was $120, the published sale price was $80, and we paid $67 each. Can't complain.

And then there are the pens. Pages and pages of pens, ballpoints that retract, but still have comfort grips, are the current favorite among half my officemates. The rest of us use Pilot micro-fine rollerballs in blue. (Always blue. I hate blue ink, but we have to use it at work, because it's generally the only way to distinguish a 'wet' signature from a copy or fax.)

My assistant brought me a PURPLE rollerball pen the other day. I love it. I love the way it flows so I can fill in the forms we use with happy purple inkstrokes. I love the way it's so striking against the white paper. It's impossible to use this pen and not be in a good mood.

It's not just little bits and bobs like pens, either. This weekend Fuzzy and I were going from store to store looking for desks (still), and I got lost in Organized Living, because I was so taken with all the little boxes and trays and…officey things.

I need a bigger house.

I don't know how I managed to miss them for the three hours I was home alone tonight. Probably it has to do with the fact that I have my desk, and Fuzzy has his, and neither of us share well.

Zorro was burbling at me when I got home this afternoon, and for a moment I was convinced our run of Seizure Free Months was over, but then he settled, curling up on my sweatshirt, which I'd tossed onto Fuzzy's chair.

Fuzzy found the paw prints when he got home. At first we thought one of the dogs had had an accident of the lawn-gift variety, but our dogs don't generally do such things, and never under desks. Then we suspected they were chocolate – I'd left half a Krackle bar on my desk, and found the remains – shredded foil – on the floor.

But, no. It was blood. Little Zorro-prints in dried blood. Ugh.

But neither dog seemed to be in pain.

And then I picked up my little Z. And looked at his feet.

Somehow, in a fashion known only to chihuahuas, I'm certain, Zorro had snagged a nail on something, and snapped it off at the quick. (For those of you who aren't dog-owners, if you cut a dog's claws too closely, they do bleed. This would have bled more.)

We cleaned it up, cuddled the dog, and that was that. He's still subdued though – didn't even growl at Cleo when she stole half his dinner.

Silly boy-dog.

I'm a generally unfuckwitted, liberal, not-too-generous, not-too-selfish, relatively well adjusted human being!
See how compatible you are with me!
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I'm also 90% compatible – according to this quiz – with , who I stole it from.

I haven't updated this in a while, partly because I really have nothing scintillating to say, but mostly because my right shoulder is killing me, and I'm trying to minimize the amount of time I spent at the computer. Or at least the amount of time I spend typing. This just started, recently, so I must be sitting differently, or something. Two things that should help are the new chair and monitor stand I ordered from Viking (they'll be here tomorrow or Friday, , and they had your color in stock, too. AND they were only $69.97. Not $79.97).

My new chair is in a color the catalog calls “burgundy” and I call “raspberry.” I wonder what the real thing will look like, as compared to the picture in the book.

This line exists solely to welcome a new addition to my Friends list, , who may never actually post anything, but is a welcome reader nonetheless.

It's cold in here.

Fuzzy's stopping at Juicy Burger before meeting me here at the office, because they close at eight. Isn't he sweet? I have such the addiction to cheeseburgers. Bad, bad, bad.

I'm still shopping for a new desktop. Kinda like that PowerMac G4, but then the new loaded Sony is kinda suave, too: 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 processor, 200 GB hard drive, 1 GB RAM, 128 MB GeForce Video Card, DVD-RW and a second DVD-ROM, and the Audigy soundcard. And it's about the same price. And it's purple! Well, sort of.

B's kid is selling candy bars for science camp, so he brought in the box. As pointed out, it was Band Candy in the extreme. Need I tell everyone that the creamy caramel bars were the first to disappear? Must I mention that I was not the only person to steal them?

In two weeks, I'm leaving for a long weekend in Baja Sur, where I will drink maragaritas on a black-sand beach, and bask in the sun for six days, and try not to embarrass myself with my Abysmal Spanish, which is only slightly better than my Horrendous French. I wish I could take a year off and do language immersion courses.

I wish a lot of things.

On the phone with my mother last night, I was informed that when I visit her next month she's taking me a Black Sand beach with sparkling turquoise water, and shipfi – um – doplphins frolicking off-shore.

Yay, Baja Weekends.

It's not that time of the month, but it's the time just before it, which means I get horrible crampy aches in my lower back, and not even soaking in my decadently large bathtub helps. Ibuprofen takes the edge off, as does, strangely, caffeine.

I haven't had anything caffeinated, however, since my morning macchiato, so I've been kinda fadey since about 4:30. We came home, and I browsed through this jewelry catalog in which I found the only peridot jewelry that ever interested me. (It may be my birthstone, but no one said I had to like it.)

After a bit, we went out to Barnes and Noble, where I spent less than $100 for a change. Yes, , I did buy Jennifer Government. I'd been looking for a copy of the DVD Tortilla Soup but they didn't have it. Nevertheless, I now have that tango “Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps,” (or whatever it's called) running through my head in both English and Spanish.

I'm thinking of curling up in the bed with a book and a mug of cocoa, and reading for the next three hours, or until I fall asleep, whichever comes first.

I was awakened this morning, not by our alarm, which had been set for nine am on Friday, because neither of us had wanted to leave bed at eight, but by my aunt calling from Connecticut. To be fair, most people are (or should be) out of bed at ten AM, even on Saturday, but most people don't routinely stay up til two or three, either.

And at that point I would have gotten up /anyway/ because I had to use the bathroom.

But anyway, she called, and apparently will be here next weekend. And I'm torn, because I'd love to take next Monday off, but she has a history of being unfashionably late/cancelling at the last second/just not showing up. When my grandmother was still alive, she'd send Patti (who is the youngest and therefore the favorite) plane tickets to visit her, and then Patti would cancel at the last minute and later use the tickets for something else.

For five years my grandmother lived with my parents, who took care of her, hired a nurse to spend the day with her when they had to work, and Patti, who happened to call one time when she was alone for five minutes had the nerve to chastise my parents for not being the 24/7 entertainment committe. When asked if she'd like to take my grandmother in, my has-a-PhD-from-Stanford-and-had-her-first-teaching-job-at-Yale-but-had-to-quit-because-otherwise-she'd-have-been-fired-for-not-publishing aunt, who now makes ends meet by teaching part time at Wesleyan and editing papers for the chair of the Yale English department, and lives in an apartment that doesn't have a bathroom, because she “just isn't cut out for real work, the way you and your mother are, Xenobia,” said she was too busy.

So, I probably won't take time off, and if she really does deign to drive the twenty minutes from the overpriced decorated-by-folks-who-have-all-their-taste-in-their-mouths house of her friends Joan and Marty in Palo Alto, she'll have to fit her visit into my schedule.

Because, you know, I love the woman, and she's my godmother (failed at that, didn't she?) and stuff, but her selfishness pisses me off.

On the other hand, sometimes she can be funny. Like when her ex-husband (who is a tanner buffer version of Chris Reeve in his Superman days, and whom I really miss) cheated on her with some 18-year-old (whom he later married), she called the chick's mother on the phone and said, “Do you know that your daughter is fucking my husband?”

But those cool moments are few, and far between.

* * *
In other news, shopping for office furniture ended in a fight today, because I wasn't in love with anything we looked at, and Fuzzy wasn't in love with anything we looked at, and he doesn't like change, and when I said, “Let's re-think this and work on other projects” he grumped at me. Apparently, in the rules of Fuzzyness, you have to submit ideas for weekend projects three years in advance, in triplicate, and then talk them to death before you do anything.

I'd rather just /do/ something. Anything. Don't care what at this point. Paint the hall bath, maybe. “Oh but we can't because I might have to use the other bathroom once.” Yeah, well, I use the 'other' bathroom every day. This isn't a great tragedy.

We won't talk about the adventure to Fry's in Palo ALto. Nope. Won't even go there.

***
But I did have a lovely salon appointment today. And my nails are RED. Like fuck-me-dead red (which, by the way, was once an actual Wet-n-Wild make-up color). It's silly, but they make me feel like such a bad-ass bitch when they're red.

And that, aside from having hands so small the average third grader's are larger, is why I rarely paint them so.

Actually she's /still/ out there barking, and my shoulder hurts too much to deal with the door. Stupid big-lipped gallumphing cow-dog. (That would be Cleo.)

When we moved in, the previous owners, who had FIVE dogs here, one of which was a wolf-hybrid (and never mind the fact that there's an ordinance here that limits each household to two domesticated animals), said, rather cavalierly, “Oh, the neighbors are deaf, don't worry about barking.”

But I do. I really do. No matter what I try with this dog – treats for silence, noisemakers, everything – she's still The Barking Bitch of Beelzebub, and it's driving me crazy.

I've contacted Stacy to come and do some AntiBark Training with Cleo, but so far I haven't been able to figure out a good time. Soon, I hope.

Also, while the neighbors immediately to one side are elderly, and pretty hard-of-hearing, the rest of the neighbors, to my knowledge, are perfectly healthy in that respect, and they don't deserve Cleo “serenading” them by barking at trees, wind, cats or – her favorite – NOTHING.

For the record, I'm blaming , just because.

The Grand Duchy of Zenitopia
“There's no such thing as strong coffee-only weak people”

UN Category: Democratic Socialists
Civil Rights: Average
Economy: Developing
Political Freedoms: Excellent

Location: the South Pacific
The Grand Duchy of Zenitopia is a tiny, environmentally stunning nation, renowned for its burgeoning chihuahua population. Its compassionate, intelligent population of 5 million are fiercely patriotic and enjoy great social equality; they tend to view other, more capitalist countries as somewhat immoral and corrupt.

The large government juggles the competing demands of Education, Social Welfare, and Healthcare. The average income tax rate is 27%, but much higher for the wealthy. A very small private sector is dominated by the Trout Farming industry.

Crime is relatively low. Zenitopia's national animal is the chihuahua, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its currency is the java-nut.

(Yeah, yeah, you know the drill. Go to www.nationstates.net )