…beyond nice.

I was supposed to go snowboarding today, but after two glorious sunny days, it rained like crazy – in the mountains today. You don’t even have to be a boarder to know that being pelted by cold rain while surrounded by snow isn’t exactly the most pleasant place to be. In the end, I didn’t go. I went to lunch with my sister, and since it’s a lunch on a work day and I didn’t have to work, we got smashed. Then we went shopping all giggly and silly like. My sister wanted to buy me some Tiffany jewelry for my birthday which is more than a month away, I told her it would make me much happier if she gets me something from REI, and she rolled her eyes and insisted I need something nice. I couldn’t find anything I liked, but all in all, I had a good time spending some quality time with my sister. To add salt to an old wound, the day became gloriously sunny late in the afternoon. Thanks, weather gods, I owe you one.

I’ve been condo shopping…and I actually found ONE place that I kind of liked (I say kind of liked because you get a small closet for $375,000) and the damned place doesn’t have a washer and dryer in the unit. It’s shared in the building, which means I have to walk more than ten paces to do laundry – which means if I live there, I will be so stinky no one will come within fog-of-war distance (distance equivalent of a Protoss Carrier) from me. I’m not even going to pretend I’ll do laundry if I have to haul that stuff around, I remember college dorms and how not frequently I did laundry.

Edit: During lunch, this lady, that sat next to my sister and I, asked if we could watch her stuff while she went to the ladies room. I told her yes, and then out of habit, I thanked her (I do that at work a lot, “Oooh, yay new art. So this goes there and that goes there. Okay, got it, thanks a lot!” that sounds sarcastic, but I’m usually pretty damned excited when the artists give me new art). It could be the drunk talking too…which means I’m a stupid nice drunk and not a couch fighting drunk which makes me sad, because couch fighting drunks are so much more fun. Just imagine, “Can you watch my stuff?” KA-POW! *kick her in the neck*

Family members are such sacred beings that I sometimes have such a distorted vision of who they are. Because I love them and think the world of them, I tend to think no one is good enough for them. Even if the person offers to train and take me up Everest, all it takes is just one less than desirable trait from this person and it would completely confirm my deep-seated belief that this person is unworthy.
My younger brother (not to be confused with the youngest one who’s 12) is 26, he has been dating this gal for over half a year. The gal has two kids and when he first started dating her, he asked me what I thought of the situation, at the time I said something to the effect of, “Well, how I feel is not important, so long as she has time for you and makes you happy.” I was thinking, “Are you fucking nuts!? She’s got TWO kids! She’ll never have the time of day for you, and if she does, she’s a bad mom! You’re only 26, you don’t need that kind of baggage!” He’s also a big flirt and not really a family man kind of guy, so I thought the whole thing was a bad idea. Regardless, it’s his life to live and I never tried to discourage him from seeing the gal.
He had a hard time telling my mom about his girlfriend’s kids, because my mom is very judgmental about these things. Still, the gal is Chinese and word gets around the Chinese community fast, my mom found out before he found a way to break the news to her. My mom didn’t give him grief because if there’s anything she has learned from dealing with her kids for 34 years is, if you give them grief about something, they’ll fight you tooth and nail over it. Instead, she would go to my sister and say, “Oh god, I don’t want to be a grandma to someone else’s children.”
Last night, my brother decided to introduce us to the kids. My initial thoughts on this were, “Why is he introducing the kids to us? They’re not important to me. They’re for him to deal with.” My sister cooked us dinner at her place. When I met the kids, I actually felt ashamed of myself. In thinking that my brother is too good to date a single mom, I forgot that the kids are actual human beings and not baggage. I look into the kids eyes and I saw for the first time, that they’re not only flesh and blood but they are children. They’re 5 and 7 and completely wide-eyed, just waiting for the world to show them love. The fact that they don’t behave like spawns of Satan helped. At the end of the night I told her how happy I was to get the chance to meet her wonderful kids. She smiled but looked a little apprehensive, “I’m still scared of trying to introduce them to your mom.” I just told her, “I wouldn’t worry to much about it, she’ll do the same thing we did, she take one look at your kids and fall in love.”
That whole meeting made me feel for all the single moms out there trying to get the boyfriends’ families to meet their kids. I can see how tough it is. I feel like I should have made a little more effort to make life easier on her, I should have at least invited her kids along for Christmas dinner and such. Hopefully, if things work out between her and my brother, I’ll have time to make up for my close-mindedness.

Tonight is such a weird night. People are strange. It could be the full moon, but every where I go, I see people in strange disagreement with each other.

Couples fighting…I get called in for tech support a lot for that. I understand men a lot better than women, so I get calls from girlfriends…and they almost get in that same fight with me all over again, but their emotions aren’t involved, so we actually HEAR each other for a change. I’ve recently had a girlfriend call me saying they think the boyfriend is being controlling…I asked in what ways, apparently the gal made a bunch of plans but didn’t follow through on anything and the guy flipped out and asked to be left out of the plans…controlling. I said, “I think you’re being rude.” She laughed…not because she thought I was being snarky, but because she realized that’s what she was being.

I’m no better than any other girl, you put me in that same spot and I think my heart might get broken, I’m just as stupid… All I’m saying is, stop and hear each other for just half a second, stop assuming the other person is out to hurt you. If for once, we think the other person honestly wants to hear you, and that somehow, we’re just not hearing each other…fights would get cut in half.

Tonight I see a couple that just got in a fight…well, the girl thought it was a fight, the guy thought it was a minor disagreement. In the end, I hear the girl is scared because she thought the guy was mad. The guy decided there is nothing to hear because there was never a fight far as he goes, just a bit of confusion over the situation. I just got the guy to sit and listen to the girl say that she was scared…simple but hard.

I wrote a letter of recommendation for a buddy of mine recently…and his comment after reading the letter, “I never thought anyone noticed half the stuff I did.” I wonder how many people felt that way…that perhaps all of us, felt under appreciated in some ways. I almost wish I would be given a chance to write a letter of recommendation for everyone that I love, so that they know why I truly love them, even for things they assume I never noticed about them.

Because it is a full moon melancholy night with crappy snow in the mountain, I leave you with an old favorite quote of mine that I actually borrowed, from 1984,
“Perhaps one does not wish to be loved so much as to be understood.”

Seriously, weather gods…we got new snow in the mountains every single day of the week, and then come weekend, you rain? WTF?

I worked from home today, which is nice (yes, I actually did get a lot done), but this weather is also depressing the shit out of me…which sucks dirty old wet gym socks. You would think that from living in Seattle, I would get use to this weather, but apparently not. Apparently, having your joy and excitement over fluffy soft powdery snow robbed from you is not something one gets over easily. I know, it’s only joy and happiness, I should stop being such a pussy.

I’m still a little cracked out from the caffeine I downed a whole bunch of from the night before, why the hell did I do that? I think I went out with Charlie last night and I think we played some pool, and I think he might have won a game or two…but again, too cracked out on caffeine to remember. So I’m going with, he never won a game, and I rule!

I vaguely remember him doing annoying unicorn impressions. Never send annoying videos to friends with the intention of bugging the crap out of them because that stuff will come back and bite you in the ass, by means off annoying high pitched voice through most of an entire meal, pausing only when the waiter comes by. Good times. Oh god, I just check out their main site…does Charlie write for them?  This is exactly something he would say:

“You get my axe of capitalism right in your face.”

I hate it when the weather gets me down like this, because it causes everything else to gnaw away at me. My usually jovial demeanor switches to, fuck you, fuck the world. Hey you reading this right now, I’m flipping you the bird. No…wait…wait for it… Double bird! Sorry, yeah, I’m done with my work day, I need to get out of the house.

If you told me a year ago that I would one day gladly trade my Saturdays for Wednesdays at work, I would have told you that you’re out of your mind. Yet, today, I find myself asking work to give me next Wednesday off and in return I would gladly work Saturday. Since I am no longer the crazy party beast that I once was, Saturdays are no longer saved for hangover recovery…instead it just becomes the day that I resent there being too many snowboarders on the slope.

I was too tired to talk about our last night-skiing trip…but holy hell, Tuesday night was the best night boarding I’ve ever done. We just kept getting so damned much snow that we rounded up a crew of 12-13 people and we were pretty much the only ones there so we had the entire freaking mountain to ourselves. It’s fun to be on a mountain where just about everyone you bump into is someone you know.

Today is my youngest brother’s birthday, he turns 12. Gah! Twelve! That’s almost 1/3 my age. I called my sister to see which game she bought him for his birthday, she told me she was thinking buying him some clothes. I had to explain to her every year that buying a kid that young clothing is like punishing them. Clothing seems like something a kid that age could expect even on non-special day. I’ll bet no kid ever cheered with fist pumping in the air over SOCKS! YES! YES! YES! SOCKS! Sorry for the excessive use of caps there. I got him Elebits and Elite Beat Agents.

I was recently playing Elite Beat Agents for research and found it to be pretty damned good…and it seems like every other DS programmer is playing that game right now, so I expect there to be two thousand or so knock-offs this Christmas season.

Dear god, will this server moving business ever end? I don’t know why I’m making it this hard. Hopefully after this move, I will not have to touch this crap for another bajillion years to come. I think the new host is faster but I could be imagining things.