On Saturday, a friend dropped by to hang with Housemate. No biggie, I was headed out for a few errands myself. When I came back, they were in the living room watching DVDs. Seating in the living room is minimal because any flat surface was a storage space to Hubby, and it hasn't been a priority to me. I'm focused on floor space and big things. A couple of hours later, Housemate says "casually" "I'm glad we're getting things cleaned up. We might even have space to sit in the living room soon!" I blinked at him for a moment and said, "Eventually, yes." "It'll be great." "When we get there, yes."

The thing is, I don't want him to help. I've had him help shift heavy/awkward things or take things out to the garbage. But I'm the only one who can pass judgement on the stuff, and he has a remarkable ability to step over actual trash related to his cat. (As for his cat, I clean the litter box, because he has hellacious allergies that would put him on the floor wheezing if he did it. I dislike cleaning cat boxes, but it needs done. He thanks me every month or so.)

So, granted, he lives here, the house should be more habitation rather than storage facility. But I don't think I'm completely unjustified for being snarked at his passive-aggressive "There isn't a place for guests to sit!" thing. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, there's not room for visitors, so visitors don't come over--or if they do, they hang out on the porch or the backyard, they don't come over for anime viewing.

We're going to have to get you a giant hamster ball, aren't we?

Oh Strix! Do you remember the horse race games at carnivals where everybody shoots water into the clown's mouth, or rolls balls into a hole to make their horse advance until there is a winner and a stuffed animal is awarded?

I feel like you just advanced your horse into the lead ahead of Ginger and Hil.

Appraisal~ma!

Bubblewrap for Strix. Super bummer on the glasses. May the moving go smoothly.

Yes, appraisal ` ma.

You know, even after all these years working for a university, I cannot figure out why higher ups feel like they do not want to pay anything to outside vendors for employee training, yet cannot understand why people don't want to pay us 1,000s of dollars to train their employees?

Fingers crossed on all this!

So on the day that traffic is all snarled up in Boston because of a Presidential Visit... I got fares out to Wellesley, Waltham, Lexington and finally Back Bay, which took me away from all the bad, frustrating traffic, and gave me some substantial money, too. Plus I saw some amazing buildings out Wellesley way.

Hey, I haven't posted about this in a while, but my plan of flossing during the day is still working. It's been about 2 1/2 months, and I've missed maybe 2 days.

I should've made it a New Year's resolution; that way I could say I actually kept one for once in my life.

I took my car to the shop this morning to fix some broken stuff, and see why it vibrates so much at idle. Motor mounts, it turns out. Low end to fix everything is looking like $1550, high end $2100. Not exactly unexpected, but also not really what I want to spend money on.

Like, ALL the motor mounts? Sheesh, that's a heck of an unexpected expense.

This whole going to work instead of gallivanting around Europe thing is for the birds.

I actually read all the posts since I last posted (I think it's kind of hilarious that I could keep up pretty well while on boats and planes and whatnot, but get me back home and I fall off the internet entirely for a while) but cannot brane. Which is bad for the thinking portions of my job, but oh well to that!

Reloading everything on a computer after the old one died or being bashed repeatedly with a hammer: which would you choose?

Once again, a new version of Windows has broken a complex chain of software upgrades. Anyone using the latest version of Word? Will it make me want to kill people?