The Other Fellow’s Job

there’s a craze among us mortals that is cruel hard to name;
wheresoe’er you find a human you will find the case the same;
you may seek among the worst of men or seek among the best,
and you’ll find that ever person is precisely like the rest:
each believes his real calling is along some other line
than that one at which he’s working–
take for instance, yours and mine.

From the meanest “me-too” creature to the leader of the mob,
there’s a universal craving for “the other fellow’s job.”
there are millions of positions in the busy world to-day,
each a drudge to him who holds it, but to him who doesn’t, play;
every farmer’s broken-hearted that in youth he missed his call,
while that same unhappy farmer is the envy of us all.
any task you care to mention seems a vastly better lot
than the one special something which you happen to have got.
there’s but on sure way to smother Envy’s heartache and her sob:
keep to busy at your own to want “the other fellow’s job.”

–Strickland W. Gilliland “The Other Fellow’s Job”

a FIRST

i just beat, from start to finish and on my own, my first video game. ever. now it’s time for sleep.

fresh egg sinks, old egg floats

maggie

the cat has fallen in line with the family (finally). she knows exactly what’s up with all of us now. ignore dogs. act adorable at tall man person, stay out from under feet. bump noses and snuggle with short female person. all activities will result in head scritchies, food, treats, and a warm places to go into kitty comas. i did make the mistake of standing beside the cat tree last night. she took a swipe at me (because she’s kinda retarded) and she knocked my glasses off. she had her claws out because i heard her paw clink when it made contact. I grabbed her by her silly kitty neck scruff and explained to her in very srs bizness tones that was not good kitty behavior. she looked chastised for about 4 seconds and then it was back to crazy maggie hour.

coco

on friday, coco turned 3. she and i snuggled and gave her extra goodies. i was thinking about when we got her and all the things that are different now. i wish sometimes she was a little quicker to warm up to people so they could see how sweet she really is. there are advantages to having a spastic and protective dog though. :3

teh gamez

i’ve been looking for ways to keep the ball rolling with things in life. go to the gym. get reward. do a load of laundry. get reward. sad, maybe but life was getting DULL and i needed a hobby.

over the holidays steam had a sale and I bought quite a few games. This was strange for me because I have always hated on PC gaming while singing the praises of consoles. The Wii, bless it, and the PS2 are still good systems but sometimes a girl wants something different. so i got these games and well… the video card in my PC sucked to the point where it was stealing any potential joy out of all these new games.

apparently the new hobby i wanted is very similar to my old hobby…spending money. bah. i bought a new video card and put it in last week and have been enjoying playing games on a PC. it occurred to me that I never enjoyed PC gaming because all of my computers were mostly built to execute MIGHTY POWERFUL SPREADSHEET CALCULATIONS i don’t know what this world is coming to but as long as my frames/sec doesn’t lag, i’m in.

Corsair H-50 Sealed Liquid CPU Cooling by bekabug

in which i carry on the self indulgent tradition of self indulgence

W

1. I finally moved webhosts. Blue host is win.
2. I joined a gym
3. We got a new roommate

That’s about all the retrospection I can handle for one post. Onward!

I’m giving up dairy for 3 months to see if my breathing improves. I’ve had a low level sinus infection since Thanksgiving. I can’t seem to shake it and mammary secretions seem to make it worse and the internet is backing me up on this so…goodbye gooey goodness. If it doesn’t improve I’ll head to the dr. I’m not wasting good money so someone can tell me what I already know. (You’re fat. Oh…and here, have some antibiotics.) I keep rinsing my sinuses out with a neti pot but some mornings I really feel like I need a pressure washer.

A partially related sidenote: I should start eating more salmon and fewer (no?) chicken nuggets. Mechanically separated chicken parts that have been breaded and deep fried are not food (no matter how delicious and crunchy they are). I need to find a good source of frozen salmon. We’re a bit too far inland for me to trust something being “fresh.”

Last week someone on LJ decided that they had become too big and important to keep me (and many others) on their friends list. I’m conflicted about this. On one hand they have every right. On the other… how pretentious. Not that I don’t have my pretentious moments (and they are filled with some breath taking twattery, admittedly) but if Neil Gaiman can be and OMEGA MEGA EPIC author of the highest caliber and still manage to keep a public blog then I don’t know who this person thinks they are fooling. I know sometimes we have to make grand gestures to keep ourselves on the up and up but ugh. So many blogs I had been reading for years, ended in 2009 leaving my RSS reader with nothing more than a “Dear John, It’s been real and it’s been fun.”

They don’t owe me anything. Even though I’d go to their site, read their stories, click their ads, leave comments, laugh, cry, and be “involved” through their sharing… Maybe I’m too clingy. Maybe I’m too needy. Maybe I feel abandoned a little too easily. I’ve outgrown people and people have outgrown me. Most of the time it is nothing personal but every now and again you can’t help but feel that there is something wrong with you. That you keep flinging yourself into a voyeuristic, one sided relationship where you interact, hoping that someone will interact back.

I’ve thought that maybe the trick is to not expect people to reciprocate and I am at the point now where I fully expect people not to give a fart, let alone a shit, whether I read their mindless drivel or leave a comment. Negative self fulfilling prophecies haven’t been my thing since high school so I’m returning to that good old standby: wide-eyed, hopeful, foolish optimism followed with a well timed “fuck you,” when things go sour.

This isn’t a jab at any of my dear readers. I love you. If you’re reading then that is one person more than i’d ever expected to read this crap.

I mean well, I’m well well, I mean I’m in hell, well I still have my health, at least that’s what they tell me.
If wellness is this, what in hells name is sickness?
But business is business and business runs in the family.

We tend to bruise easily.
Mad in the blood.
I’m telling you cuz I want you to know me – know me & my family.
Amanda Palmer – Runs In The Family

Cobalt SS by bekabug

summertime

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