- I’m going to actually camp outside.

- It’s going to be my first real adult vacation that didn’t involve work.

- And it’s with “the girls.”

I mean, one of us is a guy, but he pretends he’s a girl.

I have never in my life related to more than one feminine personality at once enough to have “girls.”

My entire life, my friends in a vast majority have been male. Vast. We’re talking, before S and J, I’ve only had four women only I actually called my good friends, ever since like third grade when I realized chick “best friends” were drama queens and totally overrated. And those four women all have different personalities and come from different backgrounds in a way that I’ve never had more than one of them to myself at a time.

J is even pretty girly, but she’s got an amazing personality that envelopes that, so it isn’t all she is made of. S is feminine, but I wouldn’t call her girly, and she too, is fascinating and wonderful. Josh, whom I suppose I should count as one of my girls, is also much fun. He’s not girly, either, but his pocket knife is.

It just struck me as REALLY weird today when I was telling someone about my vacation, and they asked if Boyfriend was going and looked shocked when I said no. And I replied, “It’s just the girls.”

* Gasp *

Did I just say “the girls”?

I have “girls.”

I’ve never had “girls” before.

What an odd sensation.

Today, I was traveling along a four lane road. I was nearing a stoplight, which was green. I was in the right lane.

The left lane was at a halt at the stoplight because someone was making an unprotected left turn. There was a huge line of waiting cars behind it.

I saw a large vehicle up ahead swing quickly over into the right lane to get out of the line. I saw him. He had plenty of room. The car that had been behind him in line flips on its blinker.

It’s a burgundy Jeep Cherokee. If it had pulled out immediately, I could have braked a little and it would have been fine. But it hesitated for about three seconds too long, and then began SLOWLY to edge into my lane. I totally saw it coming.

I laid on my horn as my car approached that spot at about 40mph. I braked, but not too sharp, because I had a large truck RIGHT behind me. One second of horn. Two. I scooted over in the lane as close to the curb as I dared and really started to brake. All this time, still honking. We’re probably at three and a half seconds of warning horn now.

The Cherokee pulled halfway or more into my lane as I reached his rear bumper.

He saw me and braked but it was too late.

Crrrrrrrsssshhhhhhhhhhh down the driver’s side door of my poor little now-deflowered Scion.

I start cussing. The driver didn’t look, didn’t hear my horn. How is that possible!?

I check my mirrors and the Cherokee is right behind me. We get through the intersection and I swing into a strip mall parking lot conveniently there. I get out to check the damage. It takes the other driver a minute to get out.

He comes over to me. He’s about 5′0″ and probably ninety pounds soaking wet with shoes on. He is Asian, and older; he has pure white hair.

I’m 5′7″ and I’m a big girl. I towered over this man.

I said, “Are you alright? Are you hurt?” and was met with a blank stare and a slight head shake. I tilt my head in concern, “Sir, are you alright?”

He throws up his hands. I realize he doesn’t speak English. He couldn’t even understand enough to answer me when I said, “Do you speak any English?”

Okay. So.

The last time I got in a wreck, the fuck didn’t have insurance. I ask, “Insurance?” He doesn’t understand. I fetch mine out of my car and show him the papers, which rings a bell and he goes to get his. Thank goodness.

I also learned last time to never-ever have a wreck and not file a police report. So I called for an officer.

It took nearly twenty minutes for the cop to show up. A beautiful, polite, petite black woman. She took my papers, and went to take his, and that’s when she figured out he didn’t speak English. I guess the dispatcher hadn’t relayed that part.

She came to get my account of the accident first. It just so happened there was a fake nail establishment in that strip mall and a young man with Asian features, not much older than I am, came outside at that point. I had seen him watching out their door earlier.

When the officer started heading for the man who hit me, so did he. He was just a kind stranger who had figured out what was going on from watching the confusion between myself and the man and came outside to help. He was bilingual, and came to translate. Isn’t that awesome?

My car deflower-er explained the situation to the young stranger, who relayed it to the officer. She came back over to me and told me he had admitted total fault. She went back to her car to fill out all her forms.

I sat on my car to wait. I could hear the two men over there talking and only caught a few words. I clearly heard the young man say “wrong” at one point. Several minutes later, he came over to talk to me and I verified the guy was not hurt and all that. I thanked him for his help. He went back into his store.

The man wandered over to me at that point. He smiled big– I love it when faces with Asian features smile, because the whole face smiles completely and it’s absolutely beautiful– and he said carefully, “You okay. I wrong.”

I was really mad I had been hit, but my anger vanished then. That was his apology. And he had asked the young translator how to say it. I nodded deeply and said thank you to him, which I think he understood because he smiled again and nodded. I didn’t know what else to say, as he wouldn’t have understood it anyway.

We stood in silence for several minutes, and then he caught my attention again. He was half-covering his left eye. I had no idea what he was trying to mime.

“Your eye… hurts?”

That only got me a blank stare. We both started laughing. He said “Eye. Eye…..” and looked up and raised his hands towards the sky. We made eye contact and I shook my head no with wrinkled eyebrows, because I was still clueless. He must have been hunting for the word, because a minute of awkward silence went by and then he exclaimed, “Sunny?” and when I looked at him with understanding he laughed again, “Sunny!!!” and pointed to his eye.

Ah! “The sun was in your eyes? You couldn’t see?” I’m not sure if he fully understood my sentence or if it was me choosing that moment to place my hand over my eyes as a sun shield but he started chuckling and nodding quickly. I said “It’s okay. Things happen,” which I don’t think he understood either.

The officer returned. She gave us our papers back. She explained to both of us the procedures, but I don’t think he understood it. She stressed the Case Number on the police forms by pointing to it many times, and I think he got that at least, and I bet he has someone at home who can help him.

We started to walk away and both looked over our shoulders at each other. He paused. I nodded again and said, “Thank you,” and he nodded so deep his shoulders dipped like a mini-bow and he said it back.

My car damage isn’t huge but I have no doubt it will be expensive. The lovely blue paint is scratched down most of the driver’s door. There are two major scrape/dent/gouges, one about six inches higher than the other, both nearly the length of the door. The door handle is hanging on by a thread or two. If I pull it out at just the right angle it still opens the door.

Since I’m going out of town for at least a week if not longer in the second part of this month, I’m going to do my best to arrange to have it worked on during that time. It would save me from having to get a rental out of the other insurance company. Or mine. If I’m even paying for that. I don’t remember.

Now there, my dear readers, is the tale of my wreck, told in all the fascinating details. I hope you enjoyed my recount of the tale.

Two good friends of mine ended a long relationship recently and I feel myself pushed to almost choose sides; and not by either one of them, but by myself.

How can I willingly accept invitations to hang out with the guy when my heart actually lies with the broken-hearted woman?

I don’t think I can. She and I have had some heart-to-hearts about the whole thing and I feel like setting foot in his house would be a betrayal of her trust.

What makes it even more of an interesting conundrum is that my boyfriend is best buds with the guy. They call each other brother, since grade school days.

There’s another woman in the picture, and in order to protect the pieces of my broken-hearted friend, I ordered my boyfriend that if he finds out anything official about said other woman he’s forbidden to tell me. Because if she asks me again, and I know something, I won’t lie to her.

She asked me right after the break-up, and I could in honesty deny hearing any such things. And knowing all that I know now, and how hurt she is, I do *NOT* want to be the one to have to answer that question with more than an, “I don’t know.”

At this point in time I don’t think the guy did anything violating the relationship code, other than that she was out of town for school and he met someone and may have emotionally moved on in her absence. Even that I can’t really fault him for. I did that myself, once, a long time ago. There were some differences there– he was gone for a year and a half, not a matter of weeks– and I honestly don’t think he was still in love with me.

I’m a believer that as long as it isn’t leading you into territory dangerous to your emotional, mental, or physical health, you should follow your heart. And he seems to have done that. And I want to be happy for him and still be his friend, even if I think he’s a blathering idiot for giving up such a great woman after so long over someone he didn’t know that well at the time.

An invitation has been extended to boyfriend and I for an Independence Day party type thing, and I think I’ll have to let boyfriend go stag. The new girl is going to be there. I don’t want to know about any of it until my female friend has healed.

Yiddish, from German luft, air, and mensch, person.

[14:03] J: I need a parka
[14:04] Caleb: nah
[14:04] J: *shivers*
[14:04] J: my nipples have upgraded and could cut diamond now
[14:04] J: I’m going to start selling Nipple Cut jewels
[14:05] Caleb: that’s a great idea. I’m sure we could design jeweler tools to clamp over breasts and we can call the company Nipple Cut Jewels
[14:05] J: we’re gonna be rich
[14:05] Caleb: hell yeah

I now have it.

Raconteur is from French, from raconter, “to relate, to tell, to narrate,” from Old French, from re- + aconter.

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I work in IT.

I listen to internet radio while I’m at work.

Yes, one of the very staff who should be protecting the bandwidth… IS SATURATING IT!

*evil laughter*

If Network Dude only knew……..

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I get a lot of spam.

I scan most of them over, just to see if there’s anything interesting.

I just had one arrive with the subject, “Wanna hug you.”

and a body

“Missing you with every breath.”

How cute. A spammer must be in love with me!

Now I just find a way to make him hand over all the monies he is making with his evil powers!

I often forget how many people I have in my corner.

I get all kinds of responses from folks when I say I’m crazy, that there is more than one person in my head– the past three entries have been just a taste, a nibble, of what life is like in my brain. It’s a busy, busy place. I find myself embarrassed by it when I let it really out, but lately, I have discovered I feel better when I expose it to the daylight.

Someone whom I think of as wise told me not to see it as a sort of weakness, but as a testimony to my strength, because there aren’t many people who could function daily with the “brilliant mess” (his words, not mine) I own inside.

Don’t know how much truth there is to that, but it made me feel good.

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And having recently discovered the amount of control after the fact shooting in RAW gives me, I’m tempted to start shooting in it instead of JPG. What does that do to my file size? MORE THAN DOUBLES IT!

So. I made a new sorting structure for my mess of image files and started going through them. I am finding it ridiculously hard to part with them. I remember clearly every moment that every last one of them was taken, and it feels like I’m getting rid of something special. Even when the photo is of nothing of importance and isn’t particularly artistic, I am having difficulty letting go.

I’m going to have to get over it and learn to delete.

/ sigh

I lose track of it. I forget it.

I often don’t even know what day it is. And I normally have to check multiple times within a single day, because my brain doesn’t seem to see that as something I need to know and therefore, remember.

My old job required me to always know the date and day of the week. So I did alright then. But it took less than a day or two of that position being gone before I was in the oblivion of constant checking.

I have both an old-fashioned calendar in my bag and have finally got myself actually using Google calendar, synced to my Outlook, to keep my personal and work life as organized as I can. I set reminders on EVERYTHING, in Outlook, and Google, because otherwise, times and dates creep up and pass without my attention and I miss things and forget things.

I looked over at my wall next to the desk just a moment ago and had to laugh. I have my bulletin board, and next to it, a calendar that I stare at often when I’m in deep thought.

It’s still on June 2007.

Shows you how much attention I pay. Ha.

I think I’m going to just leave it there.

June had a pretty picture in that calendar.

Well, today was the day I would have been getting it. When it hadn’t yet appeared, I hopped on the IRS Website and used their Where’s My Moolah thing…

And realized…

That duh, with my parents still claiming me on their taxes… since it gives them a huge tax break I let them do so even though I’m actually financially independent other than sharing their roof…

I get no monies.

UPDATE: Want to hear something interesting?

My parents don’t get any money for me, because I’m over seventeen. I get no money, because I’m a dependent, despite the fact that I filed my own tax return with big enough numbers on there that I could have been in my own place the whole time.

And, it really sucks is for situations like one of my sister’s; she’s raising her bum best friend’s kids. There’s a son who just turned eighteen and graduates high school tomorrow. He doesn’t have a job. He’s truly a dependent. But he’s over seventeen… so does my sister get any money for him? Nope.

A while back, I bought a new camera bag to accommodate my new SLR, but the fit still isn’t quite right. It works, but it’s not ideal. It’s so bulky, and a little awkward. I could never find a way to justify laying out that much money for a camera bag, as the Think Tanks are not cheap, but with my lovely gift card I received from my employer I decided to take the leap (after doing a ton of reading and research on them of course) and buy one of the bags.

I got on the Think Tank website and tried to order it on Monday, using my American Express gift card. It denied my card, stating the billing address was incorrect. The message it gave me stated that my order WOULD NOT BE PROCESSED, and therefore, I assumed, my card not be charged.

I happened to know the card was actually mailed to my boss’s house, so I tried to run it with his address for billing, and it denied again, this time without a valid reason given but still stating no order was actually placed.

So I went to Amazon, and ordered the bag, AND a remote (YAY!) through a camera store selling through them. Amazon rejects the card. I update the billing address to be the address the card was sent to. It rejects again. I emailed customer service, who said the order still had my billing address on it, and customer service changed the address to my boss’s address. They said it should work, but to get back to them if it did not.

It did not. And I got back to them! And what I got for a response is basically that I was out of luck, because it denied for an unknown reason that time and there was nothing else they could do.

Bastiches.

I decided to use money out of my checking account to pay for the purchase and then use the card for expenses like gas and such to replace the money. I had already put a tank on there and a lunch one day (forgot my wallet at home that day, but had the gift card, ha!) so I hopped on American Express’s website to check my balance.

And there I see a charge from Think Tank.

Excuse me?

I called their customer service line, but they did not open until 9am Pacific Standard which would be 11am my time. I’m impatient, so I decided to email them instead and see; my email had no response come 2pm so I decided to call again.

The sweet chicky on the phone tells me that basically it places a temporary hold on the money that should release within a few days, and that they’ve experienced this before.

I said thanks, and let her off the hook, since I doubt there was anything she could do to make me happy in this situation, but my immediate thought was that, “Well, damn, if you can place a hold on my money so I can’t spend it anywhere else, why didn’t you just run the fucking charge fully and let me have my bag?”

>.<

Needless to say, I’m not a happy customer. At least that explains to me why it was probably denied at Amazon; the purchase I was trying to make there, plus the hold, is more than the balance of the card.

Okay. I’m done bitching. Thanks for reading.

It’s ridiculous.

I wish I could just shut it off.

An American Express reward. For $250.

FREEEE MONEY!

Well… not really free… I worked for it… but it was a wonderful gesture by the company and I feel rather appreciated. It’s a nice, lovely feeling.

So, what am I going to do with this money, hmm?

Am I going to send it off as an extra car payment?

Shall I sock it into savings for the road trip I may be taking at the end of July? Or put it into my moving out funds?

Or should I buy camera accessories?

‘Cause there’s plenty of those I want. Yeah.

OH. The torture of such a decision! It’s going to drive me MAD!