Besieged by Stupidity

I had one of those days.  Working in IT, I definitely see my share of dumb people doing dumb things, but we had a largish bunch of users get caught up in a phishing scheme, where these users went ahead and sent the phishers their email address, password, etc, and then said phishers started using the email address and password to send out more of their spam.  We could provide the fastest, safest computers in the world, but there is only so much one can do about human stupidity.  I think the top layer of the cake was the woman who was denying that she sent her password to anyone.  That just made my head ache.  How the hell did they get it then?  Please don't say magic elves.

My sometimes loud but not really that bad downstairs neighbors moved away yesterday.  The only other connecting wall I have is in my kitchen with my side neighbors, though I do hear them a lot more.  Particularly when last week it was so hot, and they had their door wide open, blasting the TV.  I walked by a lot yesterday, when I was bringing laundry up and down the stairs, and there was this huge funky smell coming out of there.  Like piles of unwashed gym socks.  I don't know exactly what is going on there, but there is a stay at home mom and a dad and two kids, in a small place, smaller than mine, maybe that's why it smelled so bad.

Anyway, the downstairs folks are gone, off to greener pastures.  I only found them noisy on their back patio which is under my bedroom, and they had a taste for classic rock and loud, drunken arguments.  And they always remembered my name, and the husband would say my name every time he saw me, and you know I forgot his name about five minutes after he was introduced to me years ago.  I am not good with names unless I see them written, even then.  And you can't very well ask someone what their name is, years later.  I guess with them gone, I feel less self-conscious about not remembering their damn names.  I am just hoping that no one super noisy moves downstairs.  Or anyone who smokes.  I would prefer someone nice and quiet, just like me, but who knows what will happen.  Crossing my fingers, no crying babies.

I actually feel like there are friendly people who live near me, whom I smile at, but I could probably do more.  Like say hi.  Then talk for a while.  Or even listen.  Yet, I feel like I cut myself off from people like that, because I prefer to go home and have quiet, and not have people come by asking to borrow sugar, or have to worry about wearing decent clothes.  I also know that this is how I grew up, when you didn't really talk to your neighbors, and didn't really know them.  That was how my mom was, when I was a kid.  She's not like that now, good friends with her neighbor, and they take walks together.

I don't necessarily feel like I need or want to change, but I do think about these things sometimes.  I wonder about some alternate universe, where there is a me who made other decisions, and I wonder how that worked out for her.

Cheaper Than Therapy

DMA informed me that I am behind on posting.  Perhaps the reason is because I had therapy last week.  Therapy is like an infodump and I don't have to worry about my computer locking up during it.  In any case, I should set up some bullet points in this here page and allow that to aid the flow of my thoughts to blog.

• The countdown is on, four months until Italy.  DMA and I are waiting to purchase our tickets until we get closer to the date, somewhat in the hope that the lowering price of gas will mean cheaper flights.
• It has been unreasonably hot here the last few days, though getting a sunburn on Sunday didn't help. You can read about what I did on Sunday here.  I should pay Kailyn to do a travelogue of my life.  Anyway, heat plus sunburn meant me not sleeping well a couple of nights.  Hopefully I can start to turn that around.
• Had this sort of weird family issue in the last few weeks, and I'm not really sure how much I want to blog about it.  For starters, not clear how interesting it will be unless you know all the participants.  I guess part of my desire not to talk about it stems from me wanting to set a boundary between myself and the family craziness.
• Just did a post on Gals About Town about seeing the Go Fug Yourself girls doing a book reading last weekend.
• My therapist gave me a little writing assignment, maybe I should write that here as my next entry.  We'll see.

What I Need To Do

Got an A in my last Italian class.

It's been about a week since I took my final and I feel like I'm still de-compressing, getting used to not being in class, and going back to my old work schedule.  I'm still not used to any of it.  It doesn't help that we are finally getting some hot weather here, and I feel kind of like a wet dishrag at the moment.  My cats are laying around on the rug, barely remembering to ask me for dinner.

There were all those things that I was putting off until finishing my class, and I find that I am slowly chipping away with them.  Despite the heat, I made a valiant effort to clear mold off the walls of my too small bathroom.  Seriously, I should never move into an apartment with a bathroom with no window again.  It's a recipe for dust and mold, and my tiny master bathroom has bits of both.  Though after yesterday, a bit less.

Some days it is like that, when you have that feeling that you are going to do everything but I think I tend to work better if I can just slowly chip away at all the things I need to get done, instead of building up a hope of accomplishing everything that only ends in disappointment when I realize such tasks are impossible.

The Last Couple of Weekends

I think it's finally officially summer, and I feel like I've just been busy as hell the last few weekends.  Because I've been busy, I've lost a real sense of time, and when Kailyn and I were talking today about going to bocce, I said, wasn't that weeks ago?  Um no, it was just last week.  My birthday was only about a week ago.

Anyway, I put up a post on Gals About Town about going to the Mushroom Mardi Gras in Morgan Hill which you can read.  That was last weekend.

This weekend, I got back to the shelter to volunteer, and since it is kitten season, the shelter was packed and I was very busy showing kittens all day.  (Boo on this, because I wish people would adopt the very sweet adult cats, and the more time I spend helping people look at kittens, the less time I spend with those sweet adult cats.)  And then on Sunday, today, I went to the Sunset magazine celebration with Kailyn.  You can read her post for more info on that.  Being at outdoor fairs are what summer is all about in this area.  There was one summer some years ago when I hit up a food and wine festival every weekend.  I don't know if I have the stamina or the liver for that anymore (or the rich boyfriend paying for everything; I seem to remember that helping).  I think it's probably good for me to be getting some sunlight, but I probably should be more diligent about sunscreen, as I already have one weird red mark on my arm, and my face looks a little pink at the moment.

Oh yeah, and my Italian class final is on Tuesday, so I'm off work Monday and Tuesday.  I originally thought it was on Monday night, and figured I would use Tuesday to decompress, but now, I will just have Tuesday night to relax before trudging back to work on Wednesday.  I feel like once I'm done with class, I will have a lot more free time to do other things.

Reflections on 38

I started this post a few times in my mind, but really I haven't reached any real conclusions yet.  I am now at a point where my Italian class final is in five days, and I am cramming the subjunctive in my head, no matter that I'm not 100% sure that I understand what the subjunctive is.  Compared to the prepositions in Italian, it seems less complicated.  (I read something online that apparently Italians find the prepositions in English complicated as well, so there you go.  At least ours don't make unholy combinations with the definite articles like theirs do.)

I had a great birthday.  It's weird because I've had birthdays that I thought out more, planned out more, did more events, and usually I take the whole week off work.  This time, I didn't do much of that other than having a dinner out with friends the night of my birthday.  I certainly didn't go away anywhere, didn't have too many expectations of anything from friends, and so I was pleasantly surprised by all my nice gifts, and everyone hanging out and having a good time.  My one expectation was that both of my parents would send me cash so I could buy a new TV, which they did, so I did.  My old TV, I got it about a year out of college, so I feel like I finally have a modern TV now.

Despite a very busy Memorial Day weekend, I did have some moments for quiet introspective thought.  I feel like I've come a long way in the last year, and I feel that as time goes by, I am focusing more on what matters, what makes me happy, what I want.  I am still not sure what that means in relation to other people, particularly in romantic relationships, but I'm just going with the flow for now.