But I also blog for selfish reasons. My meanness needs a place to creep out. When I was a self-conscious teenager my mom used to say my occasional zits were “the meanness oozing out of me”. I’m an adult now, and like most adults my skin has recovered from its unfortunate adolescent state. Oozing zits no longer provide an mechanism to diffuse the meanness inside of me. So I blog about the people and things that make me want to taser people. And, with the meanness diffused via blogging, I can be charming and pleasant in real life (really, I’m not nearly as hateful in person). And (in real life) no one knows that I am a horrible and mean. I blog because mocking people occasionally makes me smile (but in real life it has consequence). And I blog because venting is a healthy way to deal with my disdain for the general population.

I write because blogging makes me feel better. But this week has been a FML week. And it is just continuing to get worse. And even hateful blogging isn’t making me feel better. Perhaps this is Karma’s equalizer for the full scholarship to law school I found out about last month. Or maybe Karma is annoyed by the absolute glee that I take from each porsche I zoom past on my morning commute to work because I get to use the carpool lane. There is something wonderful about zooming by porsches in my little scion xD. And it makes me smile. And I know I shouldn’t be gleeful about the porsche owners misery as they sit in traffic. But I can’t help smiling just a tiny bit when I pass them (especially the really douchey porsches with the giant spoilers on the back).

But this week has had several major blows. Due to some unfortunate work politics, I think my husband may lose his job. And the owner of the shiny house I was so excited about (which would have allowed me to move out of my in-laws house) rejected our offer (which even stunned *his* Realtor – our offer was pretty generous). And my health has taken a turn for the worse. And, since the house offer fell through, we won’t be able to rescue BIL’s amazing dog – who is going to end up in the pound. He will probably get euthanized because no one wants a 7 year old dog with hip problems – even if he is amazingly sweet. And I’m having friend issues. And even passing NINE porsches yesterday wasn’t enough to make me feel happy.

It’s amazing how I can feel like an complete success and an absolute failure at the same time. My job title finally says “Senior” before it. I make the equivalent of 2,707,068 gummi bears a year (based on current price of 5lb bag on amazon). That’s significantly more than the average family of four in California. And I just got a full scholarship to law school. By a lot of measures, I’m pretty damn cool. Yes, some moments I feel like a complete success.

But I live in the spare bedroom at my in-laws. And I feel lame. It was supposed to be temporary. We were moving 3,000 miles across the country and had already been approved for a substantial home loan. We needed a temporary place to stay while the home purchase went through.

But it didn’t go through. We put offers on four houses. And each time, there was some major issue problem. Once, the houses was officially on two lots and the bank “accidentally” only foreclosed on one lot so they only owned 1/2 the house. Another time, the neighbor claimed that the actual house was one foot over the property line – and that he could make us tear off the last foot of the house. We didn’t want to take on the legal battle. Each time an offer fell through, and we put in another offer, we thought “Only 30 more days – its silly to move out”. But then thatoffer fell throught too.

Now it is approaching six months. And all I want to do be able to get up and go pee in the middle of the night without having to put pants on first or to be able to sleep on the couch without feeling like the world (or at least my in-laws) are judging my newly established marriage and assuming we are DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED. I want a house dammit (or at least a yurt in the wilderness somewhere where I NEVER have to wear pants).

The heirarchy in our office goes like this: We have a director, who has two coordinators under her. Each coordinator manages a “group” (which consists of the coordinator, and one (or 1.5) other people). This means that there is a “coordinator” whose entire job is to “coordinate” me (and herself). This makes me sad. The job I was hired for was “Sr. Statistical Programmer/Statistician”. “Senior” apparently doesn’t mean what I thought it did. During my interview, everyone discussed (at great length) the need for someone who could work independently. This made me happy. I was happy because I generally don’t like other people. I don’t interact well with them. I am good at what I do. And I am good at doing it independently.

Because they have nothing to “manage” (there are only two “workers”), it seems like they have decided to fill their time with “update meetings” and reading “update memos” (written by me). Unfortunately, the more “memos” and “meetings” they ask for, the less time I have to do actual work. This means there is less programming getting done since I spend all my time writing memos and attending meetings. Soon, all my time will spent in meetings or memo-ing and I will have no time left to program. And then what will I write memos about?

I *do* realize that I have no people skills (which is why I am a programmer and spend all day in an office with a computer). And this probably means that I *do* need an interface person. At my last job, she was an administrative assistant (aka secretary?), not a PhD level researcher. She talked to clients, figured out what their question was, wrote it down and gave it to me. I looked at the data, figured out how to best answer their question, gave the answer back to her. It worked really, really well. At this job, I have someone with a PhD, and it is working less well. As I understand it, her job is mostly the same. Except she interferes with me accomplishing my job. And she wants me to write daily email updates about each project’s “status”. And I now document every query in a memo (to her, that no one else reads). This is frustrating, because the memo contains the same information as the daily “email updates” (literally, I often copy and paste them, sending her and email update with an attached memo that says the same thing). And she wants weekly “group” (just us) meetings (where we discuss the same things, again). And it isn’t like she doesn’t stop by my office daily to check in on things (where we reiterate the same points, again). So the meetings seem a little silly.

I am beginning to doubt my communication skills. I mean, if I have to say the same thing seventeen different ways, does that mean I wasn’t being clear the first time? I’ve won several awards for papers/presentations – which always led me to believe I was fairly clear. And I generally think that it is fairly easy to understand what I say (or write). I guess always knew I was a difficult person to work with, but does it really take someone with a PhD just to manage me? And shouldn’t having that person make my life easier, not more difficult?

I feel like I am stuck in a Dilbert comic. Only it isn’t funny.

Back to topic: One of my Mech. Eng. friends was at work (standing by a tank of Argon) when his boss came up and said, “I saw the craziest thing at Folsom Street Fair” (note: any story that starts with this line will probably be entertaining).  His boss proceeded to explain that at this event, men were inflating their nuts with Argon.  This sounded painful, and not altogether sane (or true) to me.  But this factoid was checked out on the internet (which never lies) and then quickly circulated within our friend group, because it is freaking hilarious. 

This led to a conversation about whether gay men found giant puffy inflated nuts attractive.  Which led to a conversation about whether women found giant puffy inflated nuts attractive.  But I was the only woman present (as is often the case when you get a group of tech geeks together).  And I am a statistician.  I wouldn’t trust a sample with n=1, especially when that “n” is a known outlier.  I mean, I’m not the girliest person in the world.  You should never trust a girl who likes math and hates shopping.   So I decided to add some “real” girls to the sample.   And that is where the slightly awkward text messaging came in.  

Anyhow, the conversation moved on.  There were more important things to consider than whether people thought Argon inflated nuts were pretty.  After all, Argon is a noble gas.  And noble gasses have a very cool property: they fluoresce.  A fluorescent light is just a tube is filled with a gas containing low pressure mercury vapor and argon, xenon, neon or krypton.  And it lights up when you pass electricity through it, right?  So the conversation turned to the very exciting question of ”If you taser someone’s nuts, while they are inflated with argon, would they glow?”.  Of course, the practical mechanical engineers in the room had to point out the problems with this.  Stupid mechanical engineers.  Mechanical engineers can suck the life out of a party like an electrolux vacuum (as their advertising campaign so clearly stated, electrolux really sux).   Luckily, the topic was not quite dead.  Instead of discussing if (under “normal nut inflating conditions”) someone’s Argon inflated nuts would glow, we began discussing what conditions would be needed to make someone’s Argon inflated nuts glow. 

So really, it all comes down to this: I think that MythBusters should do an episode on a questions we truly care about:  If you tazer someone with Argon inflated nuts, can they glow?   I mean, that is a much more interesting question than if bread lands butter side up.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t kick puppies yet.  I’m still 98% vegetarian.  I still take care of puppies that no one else wants.  I still work at a job that (I hope) makes the world a little bit better of a place (even though I could probably make more money elsewhere).  I still make a fantastic meyer lemon creme brulee (and how could that not make the world a better place?).   But I volunteer less (or not at all?).   And I sit on my ass and watch TV more.  I am a little more pescatarian, and a little less vegetarian.  I don’t pay as much attention to where my food comes from (is it organic?  local? recently, I just don’t care that much…).  I’m not as informed about what is going politically.  As my husband would say, I went from activist to slacktivist.   

There are lots of reasons for this.  It’s partly because I moved 3,000 miles across the country and lost the volunteer network that I was familiar with.  And I don’t like meeting new people – so building a new network is intimidating.  And it is partly because when I moved, I moved in with my in-laws (who are fantastic people, but are still my in-laws).  And when  you live in to someone else’s house, you don’t have as much control over where your food comes from and if it is sustainably harvested.  And when you are really trying not to be rude, you *have* to stop caring a little bit.  And I have a shiny new job, and I want to impress my coworkers with my crazy statistical programming wizardry.  So I have been working long hours – and that doesn’t leave time for silly things like volunteering.   And I don’t want to start any big projects (like getting certified as a foster parent again), because I’m going to be moving soon (out of my in-laws? please?).  And since I don’t know exactly where I am going to end up when I move (out of my in-laws, please?), starting a volunteer job HERE seems silly.   

But this is bad.  It’s bad because one of the reasons that I try SO hard to be nice is because I’m really a bit of horrible person.  I use volunteering and vegetarianism to “buy” karma-offset.  I’ve spent most of the past month wishing that a certain person would become HORRIBLY, painfully constipated or that he would end up with horrible ass-acne.  Not just the ugly kind that means he won’t be getting any play, but the oozy, painful kind – that pops when you sit down.  I mean, I don’t want to cause any permanent damage (hence the wishing for horrible constipationa and ass acne instead of testicular cancer).  But he seriously is evil.  And he really does deserve some kind of pain.  And thinking that he has oozy, painful ass-acne that goes “splat!” every time he sits down makes me feel better.  In fact, I smile every time I imagine him sitting down.   As I write this, I’m smiling because I’m thinking about it.  But without the volunteering, and the conscious effort to eat sustainable foods, and the foster care and everything else that I used to do (but am apparently to lazy to do now), I have nothing to offset all the bad Karma that my evilness is generating. 

So I’m starting the blog again, hoping that if I start writing my egocentric, self-indulgent drivel once again,  I will actually have to think about what kind of person I am on a regular basis.  And hopefully it will motivate me to actually BE a better person.  And I can offset all the bad Karma.  And then some cosmic force will think I am a good enough person to not be stuck living with my in-laws (please?  pretty please?  give me a house, dammit!).

Also noted in that entry was that my puppy is really pretty and has an exceptionally long tongue (but that is completely irrelevant to the current entry). This trip was 231 days ago (according to www.timeanddate.com, because I am way too lazy to actually calculate that).

This afternoon, I went to dinner with my sister. As I was dropping her off, she said, “Do you still have my backpack?” I replied that I thought it might be in my laundry room. After our voyage to Chimney Bluffs last fall, my sister put her backpack in the trunk of my car. It remained there until Christmas when I was delivering three friends to the airport. I needed trunk space and hastily emptied my trunk into my laundry room.

My laundry room is a disaster. It’s really gross. I try to not to be a totally gross person. The rest of my house is actually quite clean – thanks mostly to a wonderful woman from craigslist who scours it biweekly for a mere $45. She is amazing. But there are two rooms that she doesn’t scour. And the laundry room is one of them. So the laundry room never gets cleaned. And the buried backpack remained there until tonight. Tonight it was unearthed, as were the remainder of the 231 day old crudités. Ick….

There really was no point to posting this. I should clean out the laundry room. Who knows what other treasures are waiting to be unearthed. Instead I’m going to ballroom. Foxtrot makes me smile. Cleaning the laundry room does not make me smile. Any other disgustingness in my laundry room will have to wait.

But these color-by-numbers were evil. I’m all for weirdly colored things. Had the pony been pink and purple, I would have been cool with that. But these color-by-number worksheets were just a little off. And it bothered me. The grass was green, and the apples were red, but the tree trunks were orange. And I found that I couldn’t make myself follow the directions. I didn’t want orange tree trunks. And I didn’t want an ugly yellow splochy pony.

So I didn’t follow the instructions. And I really hope that the impressionable youth working with me doesn’t emulate me and get in trouble. I remember the elementary school crayon fascists. They scared me. They are probably the ones who stomped all the creativity out of me. They are probably the reason that at 27-years-old I can’t handle orange tree trunks on a color-by-number worksheet.

Actually, I can’t decide if my inability to follow directions is because I am too anal retentive (tree trunks aren’t brown) or not anal retentive enough (damn it it says 3-yellow). *Sigh* I would totally fail first grade.

** I don’t actually believe in altruism, Santa Claus, or nice Republicans.