a murderer loose in my house

I sent this email to Pascal last night because he's a plant expert:

WTF?

I got home last night and noticed Forrester Sharpanov was turning black at the base. Then, I sit down to watch a movie, and it appears he died.

Is that plant blood?

 Pascal:

That looks like blood. It looks suspicious. Have you dusted for prints? Have you questioned the other plants and established alibis? One of those succulents was looming suspicious when I was there.

 I sort of suspect the Baby Toes Cult. They're like a combination of the mormons, evangelical christians, and scientologists.

We only LOOK innocent

demolition man

My kitchen demo kicks off Monday. Hooray! I'll post some pics of my kitchen tomorrow. Right now I'm busy drinking and packing.

Maybe not the best combination. At least I'll be surprised when I open the boxes I packed while drunk.

I should write a book on team building

The team I work with at my new job has been in storming mode for sure the past few months. That's why we got to spend an evening last week playing bocce ball.

It's frustrating because there's a huge lack of communication and people not getting along. So last night one of the team members arranged for us to have sushi. Along with us came a Brit who's working as a consultant for us. He's so professional and unruffleable I couldn't help but pick on him. After he sat down I said "So, are you really from UK or have you been faking that accent all along?"

That is not the typical way we talk to each other (my company is pretty formal) so he was taken aback. Then he said "I'm from Surrey" and I remembered a famous serial murderer case there from 2009 (don't ask me how - I can't remember my phone number) and T accused him of being a serial murderer. The night went down hill from there.

So this morning I sent out an email asking for some information. Normally no one responds but in this particular email I included a few sentences about how we discovered last night that our consultant was a serial murderer. Of course everyone responded because they wanted to make a serial murderer joke. Even my manager said "I don't think [my company] covers serial murderers as a protected group". (we employ gay and transgender people and they are considered "protected" as in you can't discriminate against them)

Then our poor consultant tried to respond that he was an upstanding citizen and had a clearance.

So I was like "HA! I knew you worked for MI-6!"

Later on I got an email from an executive director who had somehow gotten on the thread. He said "Congrats on your team building even if it's very unorthodox. I'd love to attend your next sushi dinner." He's a guy that usually ignores my group and does his own thing which makes extra work for us. Perhaps that's changing because he also sent me 3 work related emails and wants to collaborate with me on a cool project I'm working on.

It's funny. I was being low key at work because I'm new there and there's all kinds of political land mines that I keep stepping on. Lesson learned - sometimes being me is a good thing.

my first corporate hike, and of course we almost die

I've been nagging my colleagues and printing out topos for the past few months trying to get some people together to do a hike. Finally, one colleague, T, agreed to go on a hike with me this evening. She's training for a half marathon. I also invited two of my male colleagues. One simply said "I won't go hiking with you because you'll kill me." The other said "Well, how far are you going?" When I responded "Four miles" (I was lying, the trail was 7 miles) he said "But that's SO FAR!"

Um, what?

Anyway, the hike was beautiful, in an area called Las Trampas. They weren't kidding in the reviews about it being steep though. One woman started her trail review with "My butt still hurts!"

No, sillies, she was talking about being sore from hiking.

I said we would only hike until it started getting dark because I only had one headlamp and parts of the trail are narrow, densely wooded, with steep drop offs and I knew there was no moon tonight. But then we decided to go to the top ridge even though the sun was sinking fast. When we got there we saw two huge bald eagles. I thought they were kites at first they looked so unreal. The hills in front of us changed colors 5 times in 5 minutes as the sun set. Beautiful. (I need to bring my camera next time)

Then, as we descended from the ridge back into the woods I heard an owl. We looked up and saw it - it must have had a wing span of at least 6 feet. He was so cool. It was the biggest real owl I've ever seen. There wasn't enough light to take a picture unfortunately. We could hear him making owl whooing noises the rest of the descent down the trail. I am taking his sighting as a good omen.

We arrived back at the car right as it got really dark. I was so busy congratulating myself for my impeccable timing and speeding so my colleague could get back to her hotel to do some work that I almost missed the fuckwit deer that decided to run out of the woods and in front of my car. It's a little Mazda 2. Would not have been pretty. I slammed on the brakes and slowly turned in the direction I thought the deer was not going. The ABS sounded like it was full of gravel and about to explode and the car was sliding along the road with the deer running next to it. It was kind of James Bondish, as much as a car trick in a Mazda 2 can be James Bondish. I literally missed the deer by centimeters. My colleague didn't say anything for a second, and then she said "Did we ALMOST DIE?"

In my world, not really, but she was pretty shook up. Hopefully the story doesn't spread. I'd like to get more people out on hikes.

back to the fake clam counter top

So the smiley face the sequel counter top I picked out is not available until November. My kitchen is supposed to be done by the end of October. I was like fuck fucking fuck!

Then Christine found two slabs of the spring blossom (supposedly). She's going to order it today. If it's not in stock I have no fucking idea what I'm going to do for a counter top in my kitchen. Maybe I just won't have any. The only thing I use them for is a temporary resting place for wine bottles after I open them.

from underwear to star wars

I had a writer's group meeting on Saturday and one thing that always strikes me is how little some writers are able to visualize what they're writing. One guy I was working with had a meet cute scene in his book where a guy opens a car door and knocks his soon to be love interest over.

Being an aspie, I immediately went out side and measured the distance between my car door, the curb, and the side walk. I measure other cars to get a good sampling. I then created a diagram showing the guy that it would be impossible for the character in question to be knocked over by a car door because the door would be too short.

Do you think he changed his book? No. Which is why I rarely read fiction.

We were reading a scene in Kevin's screen play Saturday and he had a stage direction about a male character looking at a female character's back and seeing her underwear poking out above her jeans and thinking it was sexy. I was like "dude, that is so NOT sexy." Given the amount of travel I do I am exposed to women's underwear a lot more than I want to be. It is NOT sexy AT ALL to see some woman with low rider jeans with underwear hanging out the back. Of course all the guys disagreed with me. Then I said it should be star wars underwear if he was going to show underwear because that's the most unsexy thing I could think of.

Which might explain the dream I had last night...

I dreamed that I was living in a house that wasn't like my house at all. Suddenly my friend Blanchy showed up and I made us toast with butter on it. Then all these weirdly costumed women walked in and started eating the toast. I was like "who the fuck are you guys?" They sang a song that went:

As strange as this may sound
As interesting as this may be
We're the characters from star wars
It's a pretty good movie

Um, what?

I was like "stop eating all the toast" and one of the women said "and we're also going to sit in your favorite chair and buy your house." I woke up worried that someone had actually bought my house.

Then I drank some water and went back to bed (it was 3 am). I didn't have any more dreams that I remembered but that stupid song is still stuck in my head.