things and stuff

they're going to start having a farmer's market on the EA campus every thursday morning. how fucking cool is that?

i love walking through the Disco Lobby because a lot of the time, the James Bond 007 demo is running on the Monstertron of Love 2000. every time i hear the Bond theme, i get this effervescent little burst of happiness. must check TV schedule for Bond movies. someone's always showing one somewhere.

ran into mister_borogove just now. as usual, i was so lost in my own musings that i failed to notice him. actually i didn't even notice anyone had walked by me, until he said "hey, meredith!" am such a dope. still, always nice to chat with one of the Borogoves.

taco salad is the least healthy salad possible, and the EA caf makes it extra greasy. and they forgot the guacamole, and the tortilla is a flour one, and very bland. i do not like fried flour tortillas. they did give me lots of those nasty pickled jalapenos, though.

Dom, my boss's boss, just took me aside to tell me they've been knocking heads with HR trying to get me converted to a permanent employee, but there's apparently a hiring freeze on. so they're extending my contract "until the freeze is over", but he says they're very happy with my work and they'd like very much to offer me a permanent position.

i get a lot more compliments on my work here than at previous jobs. is very happy-making. not to mention that EA is a stable company, not likely to go under anytime soon. so even though i'd make less here than at most tech writing jobs, i'd feel a lot safer. safe is good. safe is so very, very good.

karma seems to be going my way these days, more or less. which reminds me, i have to go call the doctor and see if i've got diabetes.

when i have a house of my own, i'll... (UPDATED)

cultivate a bed of dandelions
have beautiful mosaic tiles
NO wall-to-wall carpet
paint the walls in warm, deep colors
build a cat bathroom to keep the litterbox out of mine
have a big, deep bathtub with a window next to it
get a subwoofer for the surround sound system
have a proper dining room for dinner parties
get a deep-freeze
have an appropriately cool, dry place to store wines
make sure the windowsills are deep enough to accommodate Daddy-O

update: in the Sims2 area kitchen here, they have vitreous glass mosaic tiles on the wall in mixed shades of green from pale sea green to a more mossy shade. it's incredibly beautiful. i could just stand in there staring at it for hours. some of you may know that i worked in a designer tile showroom for a while years ago, so i knew what i was looking for and it didn't take long to find what i think are the exact tiles in question: the green colors here are all incorporated into the wall. the glass has a rustic finish and is translucent, so when the light hits it the whole wall seems to glow a little. there's a sense of depth to it. very, very beautiful.

one day, i want vitreous glass mosaic tile.

that is all.

RPG'ers take notice

Normal, Texas looks like a very entertaining game. and i'm kind of wondering about the comments that suggest it would only be good for one-shots -- why not a whole campaign? i don't see any reason it wouldn't work, assuming everyone was actually into the idea.

i just wish the game's own site had at least some info on it beyond the name and a picture of the cover. sheesh.

damn.

it was only whilst contemplating immersive vs. relatively detached gaming and how uncomfortable i am with really getting into character in an RPG these days that i started to realize just how profoundly (and negatively) the whole suicide boy/stalking experience [1] affected me. used to be i had mostly male friends, but post-SB it's really, really hard for me to make male friends anymore, because i have such a hard time trusting them... and i almost never get to the point of being able to trust a guy, because it's so uncomfortable being around someone when i've got a continuous background process running to evaluate whether he's a potential stalker that i just avoid socializing with men entirely in any context i think could conceivably invite such things. even when a man tells me in as many words he's not interested, i still worry about it. (actually, that may make me worry about it more. it could be a cunning plan, after all.)

i think i need to, you know, do something about that.

[1] in brief, i was part of a gaming group that exploded spectacularly due to a married male player acting out his crush on me via his character. despite my attempts to remove myself from the equation entirely, he left his wife, earning me her eternal enmity, several friendships were destroyed, and he swallowed a bottle of prozac in an unsuccessful bid for my attention. i called 911, he spent 72 hours in psych lockup and was exported back to his mother, and the rest of the group scattered to different states. eventually he talked his mother into giving him the money to move back to pacifica, where he stalked me for several months before he ran out of cash and had to go back home. it was several more months before he stopped calling my number to breathe on the line, and it's only in the last couple of years that he's really stopped trying to contact me in one way or another.

i don't like bananas

lately i've been very much enjoying the horrible creature flicks sci-fi channel has been churning out at an alarming pace. i'd like it better if they'd spend some of that money on actual TV series, but hey. i take what i can get.

anyway, while i was hanging flypaper in my kitchen just now, my brane randomly associated the flies with an IM conversation i had with naomi_traveller earlier, in which she mentioned bananas. which of course brought me to the old joke, "time flies like the wind. fruit flies like a banana." or however it goes.

and suddenly, i knew what Sci-Fi's next creature flick will be:
Time Flies, in which marauding swarms of time-traveling insects FROM THE FUTURE (music swells ominously) arrive in our time after devastating the entire planet in their own. a misogynistic FBI agent (played by Richard Grieco) and a bitchy entomologist who turns out to be incredibly hot when she loses her glasses (played by a former Playboy model with enough collagen in her lips to rebuild Joe Montana's knees) must stop an obliviously idealistic scientist (played by John Rhys-Davies) who is working on a secret government project led by a power-crazed four-star general (played by Lance Henriksen) to genetically engineer voracious insects for use as a weapon of war. action! adventure! crappy special effects! romance! and of course, blowing lots of shit up! coming soon on Sci-Fi!

what's your theory on what their next masterpiece will be?