Mishaps and other haps

We went out to Cambridge last night to hear sacredspud and his acappella group, offBeat, perform at the Mill Street Inn and Pub, otherwise known as the place we usually grab lunch at on the weekend of the Cambridge Renaissance Faire.

The group is very talented– the performance was terrific (and amusing, since most of their selections were of the well-known and amusing variety). The band’s percussion section is also intrinsically amusing since it’s all vocal and convincingly percussive. We had a good time and were very entertained.

However, during the performance of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” PhysOrg confessed that at a very young age, he had really enjoyed the original version of the song. While this was true for many, many people, some of whom were quite a lot older than PhysOrg in the mid-80s, I felt compelled to make a confession that would propel me to equal or greater levels of mortification.

The statement “I made a music video to this song” sent him into a prolonged, face-covered giggling fit.

The statement “My mom still has it somewhere” was too much information, a misstep in self-humiliation, a destructive plot device. Threats were made to call my mother and persuade her to cough up this phantasmagoric relic of defaultlisa’s past.

Later in the evening, as we were driving back to Madison, I called my mother, who had left a voice mail during offBeat’s performance. Three pairs of hands reached to snatch the phone out of my hands, so I had to angle my body in a hunched position, sheltering the phone against my vitals.

(OK, I lie– the threats were really more verbal than physical)

I told my mom what had happened and she said, “Hmmm … how much are you going to pay me?”

I whined, “Mom, I don’t have that kind of money!”

At this point, the car exploded in laughter.

There is an interesting discussion going on at Althouse today on the subject of “The gender gap in education.”

Back in October, I mentioned that I had been reading about a widening gap in the numbers of women and men completing college degrees. Apparently, the problems are not solely relegated to post-secondary education.

It is interesting to hear highly-educated people talking about this issue, especially since the male commentators are *not* the boys who were left behind (or are being left behind). Many of them attribute their success in life to people/things other than the public school systems in the United States, but still, ultimately these are NOT the boys who didn’t ever learn to read or the boys who dropped out.

I wonder if the *average* American citizen feels that public schools are particularly feminized or biased to promote girls’ learning styles?

I guess I have a hard time saying they *aren’t* because I am female and I have benefitted from public schools. The top four or five students in my high school class were all female and female honor students very obviously outnumbered male honor students.

I figured that this was just an oddity of my public school experience and not the symptom of a widespread problem in education. Maybe it *was* just an oddity, in fact.

But if a number of men are critical of how public schools have treated boys, and the mothers of boys are speaking out, and the numbers are showing that girls are doing better than boys on tests, more women than men are graduating from college, etc. …

Anyway, despite my previous skepticism that “boys are being neglected”, I am starting to wonder whether at least *some* of the criticism might be valid.

Or perhaps boys are stupid and we should throw rocks at them.
I dunno

The cafeteria at work was rearranged a little and reorganized this week. I think they have added some new food service options. Not surprisingly, they have also raised prices substantially.

On Monday I brought my lunch to work and on Tuesday I went out for coffee in lieu of lunch, so today was the first day I really noticed the changes.

My team received free lunch tickets today for completing a project a while back, so I went to the cafeteria and picked up salad, (small) soup, and a bottle of fruit juice. I noticed that with the new price adjustments, this lunch would have normally cost over $7.

Since I am not enthused by the lunch options available near my workplace (and most days I’d rather not spend half of my lunch getting in/out of the parking garage/building), it looks like I will be bringing my lunch to work more often in the future.

This change in the work cafeteria also made me think of some fast-food type restaurants I have deemed not worth the money for the food quality:

1) Panera Bread– I used to go to Panera a lot when I worked at my last job. I ordered soup most of the time because their vegetarian sandwich choices are limited and not very tasty and most of the salads also revolve around some kind of meat. Sure, you can ask for things *without* the meat, but I am pretty biased– I think you can offer much more inventive choices for people than just another chicken salad.

I realized that Panera’s vegetarian soups are pretty bland, too, and read some information about how unhealthy their menu options really are– so I don’t go there very often now. Plus, I’m not really that keen on bread most of the time … but if I *want* that kind of soup/sandwich fare, I can find something much better at Atlanta Bread Company.

2) Milio’s, formerly “Big Mike’s Subs”– for a veggie sandwich made to the best of their veggie-sandwich-making abilities, and a drink, it costs me $7. What gives? Is it the special pepper sauce? I hate to say it, but Subway has a bigger selection of veggies and is MUCH cheaper. So Subway wins.

3) Happy Wok– some of you know my Happy Wok story– it was not Happy. One day, I ordered a tofu dish for lunch there– only to discover it was not vegetarian. Beef was not mentioned on the menu board, but beef was in the entree. When I questioned the employees at the counter, they refused to cook a different meal or refund my money. I tossed the food and stormed out. I have been socialized not to sling food at people or the floor, but if the thought had run through my head, I probably would have overriden my social programming on this occasion. I was angry, my time and money had been wasted, and I did not have lunch that day. I would have felt *justified* in slinging the hot beef. I do not recommend Happy Wok as a place to spend money.

PhysOrg arrived home from Rochester about two seconds before I pulled into the parking lot from work yesterday, so that was pretty convenient.

There was general happiness and our guild meeting got underway at some point, delayed slightly by huge server queues (and the arrival of food for the four of us who live 50 ft. from each other).

We have around 70 members now and new members as well as veterans seem very interested in being involved in the guild, organizing and/or participating in activities, and generally supporting the guild. This is good!

It has been a while since I have met new people online and it is new for me to “make friends” via an online game, but it’s kind of neat how you forge connections with other players by doing quests and instances together– talk to them, get to know their characters’ personalities, as well as the players’ personalities a bit.

I think our ideas about the guild are going to expand and change a bit as it grows– those of us who know each other had some initial ideas about what we wanted and I think that’s always going to be at the core, but new members, officers, etc. are going to contribute different ideas about what they want and some of that will work its way into what we’re doing and what we “stand for” as a guild, also.

Work objectives for today:
– get through morning meeting
– finish up portion of project currently on my desk

Personal objectives:
– start reading the Oliver Sacks book I picked up this weekend
– hang out with people and possibly game tonight (it will be a good excuse to see Singularity if we get together, since we only see him on Tuesday nights)

He ran out of the Auction House wearing nothing but his axe and a large, toothy grin … he had probably won his auction, but it took the shirt on his back and you could tell his bum was going to be cold for a while.

(Aw, hell– as others have pointed out to me, it doesn’t get cold in Durotar)

***

The weekend was pretty decent after the whole migraine thing stopped. We didn’t have our quota for gaming, but there was some WoW– which included people in England, and even Rochester.

Minni and Teqnoq ran around for a little while yesterday evening, being supernaturally polite to each other, casting Wrath, making bandages …

I visited the bookstore and picked up a couple of interesting reads. Bought tomato soup and various random household supplies. WROTE CORRESPONDENCE to my dad’s mom and to a friend in Florida– wow, it’s been forever since I have WRITTEN A LETTER– but my grandmother doesn’t have an e-mail address and the friend in Florida sent me a Christmas card last month …

The chelovyek will likely be back today since things are going well at Mayo.

Oh, I need to get back into the regular gym routine this week– back muscles are aching again like they were a year ago. I did start using my exercise band again this morning when I woke up at 5:00.

I woke up at 5:00 this morning after having a really strange and scary dream:

My parents were apparently divorced and my mother was working a second job delivering papers, but that bit was just kind of depressing. Unfortunately, my sister was walking home from some unknown place and had to go through a town with a name that included some letters not in the Roman alphabet, a town well-known to be infested with HUGE, deadly spiders. She called us to say she thought she had been bitten by something and the line went dead. Oh, and there were replicas of all of my family members in the dream, so I had to ask Julie to be quiet while I was talking to Julie on the phone.

Spooky stuff …

I think that must have been a migraine. I haven’t actually had one before and I don’t have headaches very often, but a couple of people said that’s what it sounded like.

I was at work for two hours yesterday– my head hurt, but I was also seeing flashes of light, having trouble reading the computer screen and feeling nauseated. So I came home.

I have been mostly out of it, sleeping for the past twenty-four hours.

I’ve had minimal contact with the outside world, so if I seem a little out of the loop today, I probably am.

Sent: Wed 1/11/2006 10:33 PM

At the end of the day here in Rochester. Mom’s ok. I’m quite tired. It’s been stressful, but we made it through. Mom was awake and talking (not like someone who was out of their mind on pain meds either) and so I got to exchange some dialogue with her. We’re getting up in the morning to catch Dr. Farnell when he does his rounds at 8:00. I’ll talk to you soon.

me

I’m not sure how busy I have been in a technical sense this week, but my mind has been in several different places at once.

I kept an eye on Althea’s website all day today for the latest news about her mother’s surgery. As of this evening, it sounds like things went well, the tumor was removed and Margot has been awake some this evening. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Michael, except for a quick e-mail this morning.

Work muck managed to sully the day. This morning I found out (through the grapevine) that a co-worker was fired on Monday. I am not sure how much of it was based on job performance and attitude and how much of it was other people teaming up on her and wanting her gone. There is a certain “office politics” stench to the whole thing and I am considering talking to someone in HR about my concerns. Our manager apparently spoke to that team, but she hasn’t said anything about it AT ALL to our team, even though we work closely with that department. There’s a bit more detail than that involved, but that’s the gist of it.

Mlitiagrl and I went to a home buyers’ seminar last night and that was really informative. We left with some idea of what to do next, a better understanding of the process and of things like interest rate options and closing costs, and a crude timeline for the coming weeks/months. We also decided that having a Buyer’s Agent (realtor) is a really good idea when you are looking for a place. I highly recommend registering and attending one of these seminars if you start thinking about buying– they are free of charge and a lot of financial institutions offer them.

I talked to my mom last night and the conversation was medical-intensive. Mom just had some tests done, which came back fine. Also, one of my younger cousins has a new baby on the way shortly (she will be the first great-grandchild on my dad’s side) and a more distant cousin I went to high school with was recently diagnosed with colon cancer (I don’t know her very well since we didn’t grow up together, but she is only two years older than I am and has two young kids).

In other random news, I’m still considering whether I will retake the LSAT and attempt for a higher score in the Fall. Mlitiagrl pointed out that I have a good chance of getting into UW-Madison’s law school, regardless, and I think she is right. We shall see …

Sometimes I am very impatient to be doing other things, despite the fact that I know I have bills to pay and other plans in the works before I make career changes.

Cleolinda linked to this today, but I had read about it yesterday on Slashdot also.

Intent of the measure is to “prevent cyberstalking” but there are other ways to deter malevolence on the internet without writing legislation that could easily be used to limit freedom of speech, including any discussions or topics that “annoy” some individuals.

So if you want to post something on the web that might be deemed controversial or offensive, be sure to identify yourself. In fact, I would encourage you to at least be controversial, just on principle. Don’t let the smacktards get you down.

Transmuting Arcanite + Hot Chocolate