Allison

So the scale was telling me an increasingly distressing story. I knew my snacking at work had gotten out of control. So I stopped.

It's.. rough, but easier than I anticipated.

something I have joked about in the last couple of months after being promoted to working onsite with my development team is the idea of leading a Scrum lifestyle.

and idk, I don't really care for new years resolutions, there's a lot of things I'd like to work on. Resolutions are often posed in "stop xxx", which is a lot harder to commit to than "do xxx", I think. Your conscious has to be constantly listening for you to be on the threshold of doing whatever verboten activity, but to do something, you can just set reminders for yourself, as long as you commit to follow through.

so maybe I'll just try the agile approach. I'll have a sprint planning party with myself (you're all invited), have a sprint, then check up afterwards. Might as well do something with livejournal, you know?

My 2011 Resolutions:

Budget Money
Graduate
Get a job
Move
Get Fit


I fucked up budgeting money, but luckily I Graduated, Got a Job, and Moved, so it was less of a problem than it would've been otherwise.

Get Fit is kinda up for grabs. I gained a lot of weight over the summer, but then lost ~10-15 after moving to CA.

On the whole, 2011 was a very good year. My emotions were relatively stable, despite some major stress related to getting hired. I had the best last semester I could've hoped for, spending lots of good times with my friends and classmates.

( Year summary and wrap up )

For 2012, I resolve to get Lola cat back in my life for good, keep up the good work on weight loss and fitness, and be brave when my work contract is up in April. Maybe I'll get an engineering position then, or another position at Konami? There's all sorts of potential!

Happy new year, everyone!

I found this worksheet I'd done for 9th or 10th grade English, "Family Interviews"

I interviewed my parents, my maternal grandparents, and my friend

anyway, it paints an interesting picture for these five people at that state of their life. My grandparents have since passed away, my parents have made the transition into being retirees, and my friend is due to give birth any time now.

Family Member's Name	Four words that describe this person	Three things this person loves	Two things this person needs	One thing this person fears	One thing this person wishes
Kathy	stuborn sensitive faithful curious	God Family Friends	Love Stability	The dark within	Happiness
Jimmy	Honest Friendly Optimistic Industrus	Family Food Pets	Food Shelter	Nothing	Happy Life
Mary	Dreamer Contrary Honest Loner	Family Reading Traveling	Peace Happiness	Heights	To see my whole family happy
Bill	stooped Bald Crippled Lazy	water Boiled eggs Good Tooth Brushes	Longer Sofa A Hearing Aid	Toronado Lightning	That all little kids be feed & cared for
Amy	hyper talkative funny has cool shoes	family friends converse shoes	converse shoes dudes	Nike buying Converse	to be an awesome bass player

My mother wrote hers in backwards slanting print, a trait she picked up in school when a teacher told her she had the ugliest writing of any girl

My father wrote his in engineering all-caps

My grandmother wrote hers in neat cursive

My grandfather wrote the first six of his in a heavy simple cursive, and the rest in heavy all caps, with wide spacing

My friend didn't write hers personally because it was the night before and I was using MSN messenger to interview her, so I just wrote it like I would imagine she would.


I wonder why I was so blind.

Am I moving in two months or five? I have no idea. My landlord never returned my call, so I might not have a choice anyway (2). That won't really be a problem, but it'd be nice to know.

But I can't know anyway; I'm supposed to hear back by the 7th if I am in the running for what seems to be an awesome job, in everything except possibly location. But I'm all for it.

I've felt this way for months, but there are an inordinate number of ways that the next few months could work out, each with its own unique set of advantages and disadvantages. I just don't have enough information to make any firm decisions.

In fact, I had already made one, and then got an e-mail asking if a lady could interview me over the phone for a position I hadn't even heard of. So now, I'm back to indecision.

In the meantime, I am definitely not trying to make things as easy as they could be,

but I still have my sense of nonurgency. Even if I fuck up, it'll still be okay.

I'm pretty bad at being a hipster. They dress how I'd like to, but I don't have enough style to do it. Also I'm not heroin chic enough to fit in the appropriate outfits.

I told my darling I wanted to go out to the coffeehouse a few blocks away, and once there, the girl at the counter asks what I want, and I tell him to go first. He says the exact thing I was thinking of, and I've learned by now that if I try to order something else so that we have more options and tastes to try, I will always make a bad choice and regret it, so without hesitating, I say "make that two", and we both opt for the whipped cream.

There are two girls sitting at the table adjacent to us; their cups are empty, only ice and straws. One of them is sitting up straight, reddish shirt, reddish hair, as though she were mentoring the brunette, who has her back to me, and kinda slumps, plays with her phone on the table. They're talking of typical college girl things; people they know, clothing boutiques, other serious things.

There are other people, but they're sitting too far away and I can't hear them over the sounds of our shared delights as we spoon smore "arsagaccinos", milk, chocolate, cream, toasted marshmallow. There is an elderly man sitting at the high bar, looking over a newspaper with a highlighter in hand, with some form of electronic media taking away his concentration momentarily. He must be doing some game in the newspaper, or looking for jobs. The New York Times is on sale, $2 today, $6 on Sunday. Would they chide me if I flipped through it without handing over any bills?

Why bother when there are original seasonal and greeting cards on a rack to spin through, a calendar of charitable journalism to feel uncomfortable with, or a drawer of games. Is this why hipsters are always talking about Scrabble? I thought it was because they are well-read and necessarily must brag about their vocabularies, but maybe it's just because they spend so much time in coffeehouses, where they might strike up a game with a random stranger, or group of friends after the gossip flow has ebbed.

The barristas are adorable, with their colored cords, and pixie haircuts. Sometimes I think of my darling as a pixie, although he isn't feminine in the slightest, and once, when I was feeling particularly heart-broken and lonely, there was a pixie girl on campus, that from a distance, I could nearly mistake for him. What would she have thought if I ran up to her and gave her a hug and a kiss? Just because someone is a hipster doesn't mean they're well-adjusted enough to be embraced by a stranger, or a girl.

The clientele that followed us are hipsters, too, or at least punk. Two girls come in, with hair cut to appropriate shortness, one with electric blue dyes. I think maybe they love each other; they have the certain closeness that I share with my darling.

The electric blue makes me think of the grocery store when I went a few days ago. In the spice and baking aisle, we passed a couple with electric blue and green hair, and punk clothing. I tried to give the kind of smile that says 'hey that's pretty cool' and not 'god you're so funny looking!' because that's really what I thought, but I'm not as talented with my expressions as my darling says one of his particular friends is. Looking at pictures of this guy, I would never have guessed that each expression was so exacting and predetermined, and I guess that's the sign of talent, making the unnatural seem natural. The only expression I can do is this wide ecstatic smile, which I practiced over webcam while skyping with my darling. When you smile so big that your face hurts, it stands to reason that your macular muscles would remember such positions.

He's tried to photograph me a lot since our time together is nearly up, but with my teeth being extracted, it's hard to open my mouth wide enough for the smiles that he wants to capture and take home with him, to get through the lonely months that guard against my graduation. But, I know how he feels, unconsciously afraid of keeping any memories solely in the care of the mind; digital memories never lie, and can be reread or re-regarded at any time, so long as one has an appropriate filing solution and can find the desired memory.

I don't store pictures of him in special "events" folders anymore. Being together is no longer an event; it's simply living.

The last month has been... nearly intolerable. I was pushed to do something, I failed at it, but here I am regardless.

I have a small bundle of other failures, but I think after this week, I will push them away and move on to new endeavors.

The new semester starts Monday. I'm apprehensive, of course. Also, I am anxious. I think I will see someone about that on Tuesday.

The last week in Georgia was a feverish attempt to make any sense of what I had been working on all summer. Saturday will be a feverish attempt to make any sense of that. Then it will be done.

We went to Minneapolis for a end of program retreat. The Science Museum was fun, and Dave and Buster's, and Mall of America, although officially, I did not go there.

It was kinda hard to leave my roommate at the airport, but perhaps harder for her to leave my grad mentor-- they developed a special relationship over the summer that I enjoyed vicariously and defended when necessary.

I packed up two months' worth of living in about five hours on a Saturday morning, then hung out with my friend azzie. Played some Shadow of the Colossus, listened to vinyl, ate ice cream. The next morning, we joined some other internet people at Krispy Kreme. I liked it a lot better fresh (no duh)

Then I drove for a million hours, and listened to a guy read me a book. It helped a lot.

At my parents' house, they gave me the couch in their trailer, and crammed themselves together on the bed. I worked for a week on the house, such as I did. We're hoping to be able to move back into it by Thanksgiving. They don't relish the idea of staying the winter out in their little camper.

They finally got their insurance check today (the fire was in May), so a lot of cares have been lifted from their shoulders.

Since they got the check, I will probably get a new car soon. It represents my share of inheritance from my grandparents' deaths. I will get a Nissan Altima, probably a '10, when the '11s come out. It will be blue.

My car, which my roommate nicknamed Jacy (for my license plate number), was not finished giving me trouble for the summer. As you may recollect, I had to replace the fuel pump while in Atlanta. Also, my battery died, and it had to be replaced as well. While driving from Pottsville, not from Atlanta, by all luck, my fuel gage stopped working. At first, I was afraid I had leaked an entire tank of gas on the interstate. After twenty anxious minutes' driving to find a gas station in backwoods Arkansas (have you ever seen a tax office offering electronic filing out of a small building that could be a shed, and doesn't seem it should have even seen a computer? What about an old fashioned gas pump where you pump your gas and the clerk takes your word on how much you purchased?), I determined that I still had my gas, therefore it must be the gage malfunctioning.

Check gages

Check gages

Check gages.

I've started a trip odometer, and when it gets to 100 miles, I'll refuel. I reckon 3/4 of a tank will take me that far, even driving in town. If not, well, I'll be in town, huh?

I was supposed to determine something to research this summer for my honors college requirements. I was so caught up with the stuff I was doing at georgia tech (no, I dont think it will suffice), I didn't think to think about it until a few weeks ago.

I guess I'm going to meet with someone tomorrow. I hope it will go well. I need it to go well.

I hope I will be able to talk next Tuesday, instead of crying uncontrollably and locking up.

I am in my home, with my cat. Some of my dear friends have left this town, but perhaps it holds a few more kindred spirits.

I was going to make some sort of clever entry about how mad my mom makes me when she just throws away stuff without asking if I still want it, but I'm too mad to do it. I think I'm going to retrieve her old 1982 Sears stereo from our fire!dumpster just to spite her (Also because I love it and you cannot find a combination 8-track/cassette/AM-FM/turntable stereo anymore. I've looked)

because god, it depresses me the fuck out!

So sitting in econ today, learning about why Keynesianism is not the way, and quietly calculating the bias of the newspapers we read for class and my professor, I had some ideas.

HURRAH, ARMCHAIR ECONOMICS

===) Is the Federal Reserve more of an independent agency, or are they a sock puppet the Congress and presidency can point to in times of high interest rates and say "Blame the Chair"? Perhaps it was just the way it was alluded to in class today, but the latter seems to be the case! or possible, at least.

===) economists have hearkened to the idea of mixing up different schools of thought, right? To avoid that "too much of a bad thing", and to use whichever tool makes the most sense at the time, then stepping back when it rights itself?

===) if temporary measures are less effective and instill less strong feelings in the constituents, let's have a short term tax increase. "it's only one year" on the back of bail outs etc shouldn't stymie the economy too much? (IANAE)

My ideal government/country would (and be able to) stop getting into land wars in Asia, use diplomacy instead, focus on infrastructure upgrades that will last X years, eliminate manual manufacturing jobs as the unskilled masses begin to retire, and switch to automated systems, but more of them (the private sector, not the govt xD), instill a healthier form of nationalism of the type of "hey, we're not so bad. Let's fix this economic mess" rather than "OH SHIT CHINA IRAQIS FARINERS@!!! WE HAVE TO HAVE BIGGER TRUCKS AND BIGGER BOMBS THAN THEY".

*drifts off, as in a dream*


national debt, unemployment, low interest rates, resistance to socialization. So so dismal. Dreary. I want to fix everything we learn about in class, but the whole thing is so huge.


(I was pretty pissed off at one of the articles we read today. It tried, pretty dishonestly, I believe, to compare the US's debt to the debt of one person. If you're going to go for scare stats, at least compare it to the debt of 300 million people. Our population, you know? We're all in this together. That's what the democratic part of representative democracy is for :|)

* I realized after my first class that I had put my underwear on inside out. Strange.

* The two hour homework sessions have already started. God damn it.

* My ear throbs, but if I push on my jugular it stops.