Here’s a hint: there’s beer involved in writing this post
December 5, 2007
I had an interesting conversation with my boss today in which I admitted that when it’s as slow as it was today at work, I can never tell if people are happy or they’ve just lost confidence in us. You know, sort of like when you don’t get any emails for awhile, you start wondering if your email is broken? He assured me that it’s the former, however, so…yay us.
Speaking of work, I found myself back in my old office today for some paperwork I should have taken care of three months ago, specifically cutting the last work-related ties to my old workplace and transferring the balance of the 401(k) I opened with them to my new 401(k) I have open with my new job. Procedural stuff, mostly, but it definitely needed to be done since the emails on how to do it have been sitting in my Inbox since mid-September and the HR manager from my old workplace is leaving the firm in about three days. Might as well get it done with the person who already knows how to do it.
I exchanged pleasantries with a few people, and two separate people commented how I was “slumming it” by coming back. That was odd. I also called a friend of mine and told her to look out her door so I could wave at her from the HR manager’s office down the hall.
Through circumstance, it appears that Hanne and I are living together for the immediate future. This differs from our previous arrangement only in the fact that she has more clothing at my apartment for now and she’s paying me rent–the amount of time and number of nights she stays over won’t change since pretty much the answers to those questions are “all the time” and “every night” already. Only now, I’m getting money for it. This isn’t a long-term arrangement, just until her landlord cleans up the flea problem in her house. He keeps a couple of cats and is a firm believer in natural, organic ways to do everything. While it might make you feel better to buy organic everything, poisons in particular are designed to kill. You can’t substitute something that’s all-natural and expect it to have the same effect as the chemically-induced death that comes with commercial anti-flea powder, pills, collars, drops, etc. He’d been trying to treat the problem first with natural methods that included starving the cats, then that failing he doused the house in some sort of flea powder, irritating both Hanne’s asthma as well as her sensibilities.
So, she called me up in tears (and I feel obligated to note Hanne’s strong will has only been broken by several weeks of solid studying for her upcoming finals) the other morning after going home to shower and whatnot and finding fleas on her–again. That’s not as bad as the night she spent at her apartment last week, though. She woke up with flea bites up her legs. She said she was going to give her notice and move in with me indefinitely, and I shrewdly suggested she instead just tell her landlord she was moving out and not paying rent until the flea problem was back under control since it’s been ongoing for so long.
We’ve occasionally discussed moving in together in the future, and as much as I like having Hanne at my apartment, there’s still a mental safety net that I’m not quite ready to work without with regards to her mailing address and where she keeps most of her stuff. If this scenario had been at the end of a long discussion and apartment search, then I wouldn’t give it a second thought, but something feel wrong about my first live-in girlfriend just sort of falling into place and not part of a mutual decision to combine living quarters based on a desire to cohabitate and not just one person’s apartment being intolerable. I should know. I inquired about that once in the past, except my role was reversed. In hindsight, that probably would have been pretty dumb.
I did end up going to Bally the other day and reupping my membership with them. Despite the fact that my information was still in their computer system, they wanted another $75 to set me up with a “new” membership. That’s pretty dumb. If I think I’ll be doing a similar thing next winter, I may suck it up and pay the $4/month to keep my membership inactive and save the $75 next year. Either way, it’s nice to have both the time and a place to exercise once again. The weather’s been fairly nice the last couple of days–temperature-wise, I’m not counting the torrential downpours that have flooded the Pacific northwest and closed I-5 between Portland and Seattle–but I find it difficult to motivate myself to run in the rain and darkness that seem to accompany the end of my workdays. I went for a nice 3.5 mile run yesterday after work, and I plan on going again tomorrow after work, too. It’s not a substitute for a good old-fashioned outside run, but it’ll do for now. I can’t say if it’s worth every penny they carged me for the setup fee, but it;s definitely worth the monthly fee just to stay/get back in shape over the winter.
I’ve found myself hankering to buy either a Playstation 3 or an Xbox 360 lately. I can’t explain why given that there really aren’t any MUST PLAY games available for either of them that I’m interested in. Maybe when the next Final Fantasy game is released, but not before then. I’m sure it must be my inner geek crying out for new toys since all I’ve given it to play with lately is a second HDTV tuner for my media center PC and a new game for my computer. Gotta keep the inner geek happy, or else it starts clamoring for $400 game systems that would gather dust most of the time. And that? That’s not good for my credit rating.
I did donate a few items purchased from their wishlist to the Legacy Emanuel Children’s Hospital via the Child’s Play charity today, though, speaking of credit rating. Child’s Play is one of the charities I give my full thumbs-up to both because I support its mission (to donate toys and game consoles/games to children’s hospitals around the world) and I’m familiar with the two guys who started it, and they’re both stand-up examples of great people. They started the charity as a way of offsetting the constant “OMG GAMES ARE BAD AND KILL PEOPLE” that one constantly sees in the press these days (especially about games like Manhunt 2 that most gamers don’t give a rat’s ass about and tend to avoid just because it sucks) and show that gamers are decent folk who just enjoy having fun. Since they started the charity in 2003, they’ve raised more than $2 million worth of money and product donations. This year alone they’ve raised $450,000 in donations so far, and though my $50 did little to contribute to that, I felt good about it. I last donated to them in the form of cash in 2003, and I feel that another donation was long overdue.
For those wondering, I purchased an Uno deck, an “Arthur Goes to the Hospital” book, a copy of Aladdin on DVD, and a copy of Brain Age for the Nintendo DS. All very Andrew-ish gifts for kids. Hell, three of those I wouldn’t mind having myself! But I wanted to donate things that would get use years after year and make some sick kids happy. Bang for my buck and all that. I thought I’d just buy a bunch of small things to feel like I was giving a lot, but the more I looked at Legacy Emanuel’s wishlist on Amazon.com, the more I thought I’d rather give things that I always liked as a kid: a good Disney movie, Uno, an Arthur book, and brain teasers.
I can’t believe it’s December already. It seems like yesterday Hanne was just saying “I can’t believe it’s August already.” Or maybe that was just me recounting that story yesterday? Either way, it’s going to be 2008 before I know it. Scary.
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