The title of this post refers to how I am spending my Hallowe’en – with every light in the house shut off (except for the brat cave, where my computer is), in the hopes it will discourage trick-or-treaters from a-rapping on my door. I have no candy, and I am blissfully treasuring the peace & quiet of my home, as the spawn have gone trick-or-treating themselves. Furthermore, after they get enough sugary loot, they are going to a Scary Slumber Party, because Angst’s best pal DeMonica is having a half-dozen or so friends over at her place to watch horror flicks whilst scarfing down candy. (Her parents are clearly insane.)

(Ah, Operation Lights Out clearly is not working so well. As I write this, at 6:02 pm, someone is ringing my freaking doorbell. Obnoxious.)

This morning, in quite a contrast to last Friday, I woke up about 5 minutes before my alarm went off. Must be the effects of Daylight Savings Time going away; perhaps my body thought it was 6:30 instead of 5:30 and got nervous about oversleeping. In any case, I hit the snooze button, flopped back into bed, and told Geoffrey to shut the alarm off when his phone started buzzing (I set a regular alarm, plus both my & Geoffrey’s cell phones, at staggered times…or I don’t wake up). Nonetheless, I actually got out of bed for real about 5 minutes later.

I wore contacts to work, instead of glasses, for the first time in several weeks. I just didn’t think the glasses looked great with the medieval garb. They took pics at work of everyone in costume, but didn’t get them sent or printed out, so basically I looked like this, with slightly longer & dyed black hair, and no glasses. And Geoffrey’s unadorned but very nice-looking black wool cloak.

As I was putting in the contacts, Anxiety got up, and seemed rather grumpy. Well, she always seems grumpy in the mornings (she is her mother’s daughter), but there seemed to be a purpose to it this morning. Spontaneously, I suggested she wear her jammies to school with my long & heavy dark green terrycloth robe and my fuzzy purple slippers. She brightened up considerably at that thought, and as I was gathering my things to go off to work, she came downstairs to show off her face. She’d used makeup to add very dark circles under her eyes, and a few other ghoulish touches, and announced that her costume was going to be “Died In Her Sleep.” Damn, what a clever kid.

It was raining as I left the house, and Anxiety asked me if I was taking my umbrella. I replied, “No, it wouldn’t go with my costume. When medieval girls walked in the rain, they got wet!” Her snarky come-back was, “Mom, medieval girls didn’t have a cell phone and an iPod, either.” Y’know, she had me on that one.

Work was sugar- and caffeine-overload, since I had a couple of my custom quad mochas and all the supervisors kept throwing candy on everyone’s desks. Combined with almost 10 hours of wearing a corset (I haven’t worn a corset for that long in about 3 years!), with stays that kept poking me in the solar plexus every time I leaned forward while sitting, it wasn’t exactly a comfy day. But still, it was fun to wear garb to work. I’m sure the other 8 or 10 SCAdians who showed up in garb today thought so, too. *rolls eyes*

When I went on my lunch break, I found that Lyse had texted me with a request for my work phone number and email addy. I phoned her to find out why she wanted them, and then got to play the game of “How Many Times Will You Ask Lyse Why She Wanted To Reach You Before You Lose Your Mind.” The silly wench. Finally she admitted to being in the general vicinity of Anxiety’s school – to which I replied, “You’re taking Anxiety out of school for the traditional Halloween watching of Ghostbusters, are you?” Lyse pretended to get all huffy, and indignantly replied, “Well, if you don’t want me to take your kid out of school, then you shouldn’t have put me on the list of people who are allowed to!” (Damn, Lyse is such a riot – that was the best laugh I had all day!)

Happy Samhain!

Recap of my weekend –

Friday – Having hit the “off” button on the alarm clock instead of the “snooze” button, I actually woke up 25 minutes before I needed to be at my desk. Hey, there is nothing like adrenaline panic to help wake a person up! Luckily, I always set out my workday clothes the night before, and the traffic signals & traffic flow were kind to me, so I actually made it to my desk on time. A long day at work included the battery of my iPod mini dying just before my lunch break, which made the last half of my shift a lot more boring. Then I was driving – picking up Karel from his work, driving to my place, taking Angst to her friend DeMonica’s birthday part, back home to pick up Geoffrey & drive him to work, then out to dinner with Karel – about 2.5 hours of driving. When we got home, my tummy decided to be awfully damned cranky for a couple hours (oh joy). But Karel & I managed to have a nice visit, and after driving him home & picking up Geoffrey, I crashed phenomenally hard.

Saturday – Upon awakening, I discovered the only coffee creamer in the house was actually curdled. Mega-yuck, so I decided to go grocery shopping, and Anxiety came with me. After a stop for desperately-needed quad mocha, and 90-minute shopping trip (wherein I spent what would have been my entire month’s budget for groceries 15 years ago!), I stopped at the bank to have the PIN for my new debit card re-programmed (since I hate those incredibly-forgettable combinations the bank sends). After I had explained to the inane blond teller girl what I wanted, she insisted the PIN I had for my old card would work on the new one. I patiently explained to the silly git that the bank would not have mailed me a new PIN if the old one was still in effect. She insisted that I try it anyway. Warring between desires to bitch-slap some sense into the little twit, or call her manager over & explain that they would have done better to hire a semi-literate golden retriever, I decided it was simply beneath my notice to bother with her one second longer than necessary, so I tried running the new card with the old PIN – which, of course didn’t work! Then she let me know that the machine they use to change the PIN at that branch was broken, and I’d have to go to another branch (instead of telling me 10 minutes earlier, when I first said, “I need to change my debit card PIN,” like any halfwit would have had the sense to do!). Oh, if that wasn’t just PRICELESS! I left, and zipped over to where the party for DeMonica had been held to retrieve the birthday girl & my elderspawn, plus Angst’s FOTW (flavor of the week) boy. I dropped DeMonica home, and went to my place to unload groceries. With 3 healthy teens in the car, I figured they could unload the groceries and I would just put things away. I guess that worked out okay…except for the broken jar of pickles and the broken jar of Miracle Whip, thanks to the FOTW. But whatever. Then, due to the girls’ incessant whining about lack of jeans, I took them down to the thrift store on 50th & Division, and solve that bit of bother (and I got a very nice purple silk blouse for 8 bucks!). Then we had to go to Freddy’s, to get prescriptions filled, buy a few wall-shelves for various rooms in the house, and replace the broken pickles & Miracle Whip. Finally getting home, I heated up a large portion of potato-bacon soup & a few slices of French bread for dinner, which I ate on the sofa while curled up with Geoffrey watching A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (directed by Geena Davis’ husband, no less). We also watched A Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, and a really atrocious movie that was allegedly a comedy but largely consisted of a bunch of lame sight gags, Mafia!.

Sunday – Sucked down 4 cups of coffee in my first 30 minutes awake, vaguely feeling like there was something I should be doing. When Molly called to remind me that she was moving today, and about 3 weeks ago I’d agreed to help, I figured out why I had that feeling. (Sometimes I have the attention span of a ferret. Other times, my attention span isn’t that good.) So I zipped out to her old place, grabbing another quad mocha on the way. I helped haul stuff down from her walk-up apartment to the U-Haul, going up & down the flight of stairs approximately 57 times (and my thighs & knees sure did feel it). I couldn’t stay longer, though, because we (Geoffrey, the kids, & I) had to meet Geoffrey’s mom for lunch and take her home. You see, Geoffrey’s dad is out in the Midwest for some family business, and he’ll need one of their vehicles when he gets back into town, since Geoffrey’s mom will be at work (with their other vehicle). After a damned good chicken burger at Red Robin, we headed out to her home in Sherwood (yes, they have a Robin Hood Festival every year), stopping briefly at Borders, where we spent entirely too much money – yet again proving that I should not be allowed near any bookstore with a Visa card. But I got the new David Weber book in the Honor Harrington series, in hardback, yay! We got home just in time for me to realize this is Sunday and I haven’t done laundry for the workweek. Luckily, tomorrow is Halloween, so I can wear garb to work (well, in theory I could wear garb to work any other day, but tomorrow I can wear garb to work and not be looked at strangely!). Finally, I got a chance to change the billing info for all my online accounts to my new debit card.

Can I please have a weekend to recover from my weekend? Please? *whimper*

And because yesterday’s entry was so darned popular (don’t you see all those comments?!), I figured I’d throw another Internet Bumper Sticker at my blog and see if it sticks. Let me see, which of the hundreds of stickers in my sticker folder accurately sums up how I’m feeling today… oh, this one! Definitely this one:

Do you ever have one of those days when everything seems to be bright & shiny for the first 5 or 6 hours after you wake up, and then one little thing goes wrong…and that one little thing seems to bring about a cascade effect, in which – slowly, but with increasing momentum – Murphy’s Law kicks in and everything winds up going wrong by the end of the day? Yeah.

Over the weekend, someone came to me and said they were okay with me not liking them, because it meant any respect I had for them, they had earned and not just been granted. (And this is beside the point, but I wanted to be clear about something here: it’s not true that I dislike this person, I just find some of their personality traits irritating. And I told them that.)

But what that person said, about what respect I had for them being earned, was true. And, when I thought about that some more, I realized that they were utterly right. (Never let it be said I don’t give credit where it’s due!) I do have respect for that person, and a lot of other people, in certain areas – whether or not I necessarily like them, or admire all of their choices.

And I’m glad to have had that conversation, and grateful to that person for making me consciously aware of something that I’d only vaguely thought about before. That, in and of itself, earned them a bit more appreciation & respect in my eyes.

Today I met – in person – the guy I “met” on okCupid a few months ago. (The one who asked me out on a Not-Date some time ago.) Alas, I did not wear my “I’m blogging this” shirt, but I did mention blogging at some point. Okay, I didn’t mention blogging our meeting, exactly. Anyway…

Sean is obviously intelligent, definitely interesting, and there seems to be a lot of general similarities between us in the relationships, kids, & pets areas. And he hugs very nicely (serious bonus points there). Hmm, we’ll see how things go. I’m certainly interested in getting to know him better, in meeting his significant other, and in keeping a very open mind – but not so open that my brains fall out! There are a few possible blips on the warning radar…but I’m not going to make decisions about anything based on a few emails and one afternoon’s acquaintance.

Because we all know what happened the last time I did that. (And if you don’t, why are you reading this blog?!)

So we met for coffee at a little independent coffee place – the sort of place where you just know the patrons desperately want to be convinced that they’re “unique & beautiful snowflakes” – and then we continued our conversation with a long, slow stroll through the Lone Fir Cemetery. (History buffs will recognize it as the resting place of one of Oregon’s most famous & most notable founders, John McLoughlin – and we did indeed see that grave.) What was originally planned as an hour or 90-minute meeting turned out to be over 3 hours.

That’s what happens when you get two Geminis together. The talking continues unless/until they find something else to do with their mouths. *snicker* (He shares a birthday with my late husband. Yes, yes I did swear off dating Geminis. Good thing I’m not dating him, then, isn’t it?!)

The funniest thing about all this, however, is that we have not-entirely-divergent circles of friends. Robert (the World’s Best Ex) is bartending tonight at a Halloween party thrown by an old SCA pal of mine (who I haven’t seen in at least 3 or 4 years) and his lady. Well, turns out that Sean & his lady are pals of theirs, too, and are also going to be attending the party! Robert laughed at me when he heard this. (Of course, Robert & I laugh at one another all the time, but that’s part of the charm of our friendship.)

So, that was my Not-Date today. As I told him when we said goodbye, it was the best “first time I’ve met someone” that I’ve had in a very long time.

I had a profound dream last night. The Goddess, in all her splendor and magnificence, came to me in a dream. She said, “The winning Powerball ticket will be sold in Portland, Oregon, at precisely 5:03 pm, at a Plaid Pantry, and the Powerball number will be 11. Now that I have blessed you with this information, I have to ask: Would you rather have incredibly fulfilling romantic & sexual relationships, or an utterly ridiculous amount of money? Think on that, child.”

I bought the damned lottery ticket. As the saying goes…”Money isn’t the key to happiness, but with enough money, you can have a key made!” *chortle*

If Mari and Karel went jumping off a cliff, would I do it too? Uhm, I’m going to take the fifth on that, and share this silly meme with you instead.

Go to Google and type in “$Name needs” with the quotation marks (where your name = $Name), and put the top 10 things that come up. (My comments in parentheses, she said redundantly.)

* Lilith needs a favor. (Apparently so! This was 42 of the top 50 results!)

* Lilith needs a captain and the huge Proxate Corporation wants the desperate and half-drunk Sean Murdoch. (A captain? I’ll settle for a lieutenant! Or maybe even the half-drunk Sean Murdoch.)

* Lilith needs a more decisive husband than Colin, if Lilith wants to be a good queen. (And you know Lilith wants to be a good queen!)

* Lilith needs a word. (Not more than one, mind you, just the one.)

* Lilith needs strong male warriors who are prepared to protect and energise the feminine group conciousness, which is the source of human creation. (Someone’s been writing webpages for SNAGs again… And hey, “protect and energise”? I’ve heard it called a lot of things, but that’s a new one for me.)

* Lilith needs a gown, maybe Megumi can help you with that. (I don’t even know a Megumi!)

* Lilith needs a figure. (Hey, I have a figure! And a nice one, too! Which looks very good in Megumi’s gown!)

* Lilith needs to say, “I can give you a new Celestial Force, but I’m going to Geas you in return to serve me until I feel that your debt is repaid.” (Actually, I’m pretty sure that I don’t need to say that. Especially since I have no idea where I’m going to get a new Celestial Force.)

* Lilith needs guaranteed access to the Dragon Mountains. (And a map, since I don’t know where they are.)

* Lilith needs something to do besides killing flamers all day. (No, I don’t. Killing flamers is fun! And educational!)

I’m a bad blogger, I know. It’s already the middle of the month, and I’ve blogged very little. So, of course, I will try to make up for it with a huge blog entry today. *grin*

First, apologies to my Number One Internet Fanboy. One day last week (Wed? Thurs?) we talked about going out this evening, and today I totally spaced it. I’m a bad girlfriend. With any luck, he will allow me to make up for my tres faux pas…I’m sure he can think of something. *wink wink, nudge nudge*

(And the truly, horrendously embarrassing part? My beloved Geoffrey remembered that Karel & I were going out tonight. He’s obviously a much better girlfriend’s-primary-partner than I am a girlfriend.)

Second, an opportunity to mortify my offspring! (Always a good thing, that.) I picked the eldest demonspawn up from the home of her FotW (flavor of the week, natch), and on the way home I remarked how all these female musical artists seemed to be getting engaged – presumably to be married. I mean, there’s Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morrissette, Avril Lavinge. Angst mentioned that she hoped Avril marrying another musician (a guy in the band Sum 41) didn’t mess with the music of either one of them, and I asked if she still liked Avril’s music? She answered, “I like Avril – just not publically!”

Of course my response was, “I am so blogging that!”

Third, today at work it was announced that this week is “Diversity Week” for our company. Our supervisor called us into the meeting room to read a long spiel about how diversity improves (apparently) every part of our company. I mean, the recitation itemized just about every freaking department. (Did we really need to hear about how diversity improves the probate department? I’m thinking that, since those customers are dead, diversity – or any kind of customer service, really – is not an especially-necessary quality in dealing with their accounts.) Anyhoo, due to our Diversity Week, we had to do “team projects” to express how diverse we are.

Normally I don’t think of myself as a creative-type person, at least not in the arts-n-crafts division, and certainly not in what management likes to call “team building opportunities.” (If life made sense, I would be forced to wear a sign that said, “Not a team player.”) However, today I was apparently high on liquid-paper fumes or something, since I made a suggestion – that I actually thought was kinda lame – and my supervisor jumped on it like I’d invented sliced bread. Then I got roped into “volunteering” (since it was my idea, yadda yadda). *sigh*

Here was the kinda-lame idea: Since we have access to a digital camera at work for morale-building crappe, I suggested we take a head-shot of each member of our team, and then cut & paste one feature from each person into a single face. We’re a pretty diverse lot, moreorless…we have 10 people on our team (not counting the gal on maternity leave). Gender – 6 men, 4 women. Ethnicity – 2 black, 1 Hispanic, 7 of vaguely European but definitely mixed-breed descent. Age – 1 over 40, 4 or 5 in our thirties, 4 or 5 in their twenties. Sexual preference I won’t even try to guess at, although I know there are at least 6 with spouses/live-in loves (and I know for a fact that at least one of us is non-monogamous *grin*). Offspring – either 4, or possibly 5, out of 10 have little splatlings (I haven’t heard one of the guys mention kids, although he has mentioned a wife). Corporate appearance – 4 of the 6 men on the team have facial hair (and a couple of them have tattoos), but I’m the only girl with visible tattoos and/or who has frequent hair-color changes.

Anyway, that’s how I got to spend an hour on the company dime cutting out facial features from 8×10 photos, pasting them onto colored construction paper, and arranging sticky letters onto the whole thing. I even came up with the (rather lame) verbiage for the project; we were told we had to include the word “inclusion” somewhere in the blasted thing. So I arbitrarily slapped on “Teamwork is about inclusion!” with a smiley-face & a star stuck randomly in the whole mess. Clearly my corporate persona is something akin to a snarky cheerleader.

The result of this frightening little project was an eerie conglomeration of facial features that vaguely resembled Matthew Broderick with odd eyes (1 blue, 1 brown), an eyebrow-piercing, and a full brunette beard. No, I’m not kidding.

Fourth, when I got home, Geoffrey was watching a show about “the most extreme” something-or-other. They had a segment featuring the Croc Hunter, Steve Irwin, during which Steve was talking about moving a male crocodile into another zoo enclosure so he could mate with the female there. Steve described the female as “real sexy” – at which point, I snuggled into Geoffrey and said, in a sweet & loving voice, “If I ever hear you describe a crocodile as ‘real sexy,’ I’m divorcing you.” Geoffrey is so cute when he’s pretending to be appalled!

Fifth (and lastly, for the moment), when I got online tonight, I pulled up my nation, and found that I had two really cool issues! “Local pressure groups” in my nation have begun to call for “parental licences,” so I approved that one PDQ. Perhaps I’m hopelessly politically incorrect, but I do find it appalling that you have to go through a screening process to adopt a cat from the Humane Society, but any idiot with no brains or common sense who’s at least a few minutes past puberty can recklessly breed at their discretion (or lack thereof). And the other issue that came up was about polygamy – woo hoo! Here’s the text of the choice I approved for my citizens (with my particular favorite bit in bold):

“Multiple wives? Excellent!” says passer-by Abraham Jones. “Presumably we will allow multiple husbands, as well. And gay marriages, of course. In fact, now is probably the time for the government to butt out of marriage altogether. Let people marry their cats, if they want.”

Amen and hallelujah! “And the wedding reception for Mr. & Mrs. & Ms. & Mr. Smith-Jones-Mrrow-Anderson featured champagne, veggie hors d’oeuvre, and catnip-stuffed toy mice…”

It’s been a while since Mir was in the news, right? Did that thing ever fall out of the sky like it was supposed to? I don’t remember, either. So here’s a TopFive list from 1997. Ooh, back when the Internet was chock full o’ Geocities webpages, and meeting someone in person that you first “met” online was considered really fuq’ing creepy. (Hell, friendships with people that I first met online has been 85% of my social life in recent years.)

15> The AMC Spacer

14> Uncle Boris’ Last Chance Galactic Truck Stop and Fireworks Stand

13> Ikantbelievitsa Space Station

12> Skylab for Dummies

11> Emergency Vodka Storage Unit #6

10> Absolut NightMir

9> The New, Improved People’s Deathtrap 2000 (“Now with leaks!”)

8> Space Toast Coast-to-Coast

7> The S.S. Minnowsky

6> The Black Cat, Walking Under a Ladder, Broken Mirror, Spilled Salt, Friday the 13th Space Module

5> Kaputnik

4> Cattlecar Galactica

3> Spacey Spice

2> The Amazing Orbiting Barge o’ Death

1> Deepshit Nine