Happy Days

I feel really really happy :)

I've got income from my job, even if it's just a little and isn't steady, it's enough.

Pat came by last night to drop off the rent check (passing through from Hawaii to Alaska), it was really good to see him again, I think we were both glad he dropped by.

I've made a couple of good friends at work, in particular Dana and Shane.

I had some Victor's hot chocolate with chocolate whipped cream this morning.

I've been getting the Icehawks back together, I missed my old friends and I especially missed being in a clan without all the drama I've been surrounded with in others lately.


Well, it really doesn't take much to make me happy, does it? I'm just glad to have this stupid smile on my face :)

Job :D

I'm working for Cingular (through TEKsystems). It's a part-time sorta job, you work when you're needed. What's happening is that Cingular has a large campus of buildings in Redmond, in Redmond Town Center, and everyone in two of those buildings is being moved to other buildings in that campus, or up to their Bothell campus which is about 1 mile north of where I live. The workers pack their stuff into boxes and put tags on all of their stuff, then we go in and unhook their computers and prepare them for moving (basically, knot the cords and throw them over the monitor, put peripherals in bags, etc). Once we do that, a group of movers comes in and moves the boxes and computers, then we go back and hook the computers back up again. Then on Mondays it's "Red Hat", basically we're on call for any problems anyone has.

This week we're only moving about 400 people, so we got everything unhooked in about 6 hours on Thursday (there's 5 of us working). Today, the movers were supposed to move all the stuff from about 6am 'til 4pm or so. We were there from 8am onwards doing hookups. We should have been able to get everything done that day, but the movers were being HORRIBLY slow. By 4pm we estimated that only about 40% of the stuff had been moved, so we went home. We were spending most of our time sitting around waiting for the movers, so there wasn't any point staying. Which means we'll go back tomorrow and finish up (hopefully). I've also been asked to be one of the 2 people coming in on Monday for Red Hat. All in all, instead of the 12-15 hours I was anticipating, it looks like I'll be getting about 30 hours spread across two weeks. And that's assuming I don't get called back next weekend for more moves. So, it's all very good news.

The best part is twofold. First, it finally got me down to Redmond Town Center, which was a very bizarre feeling. It's one of the things I remember most sharply from my trip up here in 2001, but that was Christmas, and it was the same but different seeing it 5 years later in July. Second, the crew I'm working with are some pretty cool people overall, and one in particular who's name I can never remember because it's a girls name and he's an asian dude (I think it's Dana or something), is very nice and pretty funny. We degenerated to throwing trash bags at each other multiple times today ;) It'll just be me and him and Shane (the boss) for Red Hat, which should be 8 hours of sitting around doing nothing if we do our jobs right, so that should be a *very* fun day.

God, knowing money's on the way makes so much of life look a lot brighter ;)

General Update

Well, there has been lots of interesting stuff happening. Just nothing I really wanted to put in my blog. But an update sounds like it would be a good idea, so here goes.

Financially, things are still very tight. TEK has gotten me a 2-day job at $15/hr this weekend moving PC's for a company relocating from Redmond to Bothell. This is good. The project I was working on in FL that I was hoping to rejoin in August has been pushed back at least until September. This is bad. However, there is some signifigant good news, and that is that utilities up here are far less than Pat had planned on (well, we've got no A/C, and we're sure as hell not running the heater this time of year!), so that helps us both out a lot. My share of the rent and utilities has dropped from $550 down to $500, and may even be able to drop to $450 during the remaining summer months, we'll see.

I'm pretty well settled in, I've begun making contact with many of my online Seattle-based friends, figuring out who will make good irl friends and who won't. One that I spoke to today turns out to have the same pistol that Pat has, but the shorter barrel and a laser sight. We are definitly going shooting sometime ;) With Pat gone on his family reunion trip to Hawaii and Alaska, I'm taking the opportunity of the cool mornings and evenings to clean this place up a little, and try to organize stuff so we can have a *little* more living space available. The afternoons I spend lying on the couch, lying in bed, or on the computer, usually with a wash cloth filled with ice cubes to keep me company. Poor Stormy hasn't liked this heat AT ALL, even with her tropically adapted fur she spends most of the day lying stretched out on the floor like a damp dirty rag.

As for more personal things, the past two weeks have been very tough. I'm not going to go into details in a blog this public, but if things get better, I'll fill you in more then.

quidquid Latine dictum sit altum viditur

Stormy tries to hitch a ride to Hawaii!

I think this pic is absolutely hilarious, just look at the expression on her face ;D She hopped in the suitcase while it was empty, and was sprawled in the bottom looking hot and exhausted (it was 95 degrees up here, with no A/C). As Pat piled on the clothes, and I snapped pictures, she slowly wriggled her way out from under the pile, but didn't leave the suitcase. I guess she really wanted to go see Paradise :D 

Brass from my first trip to the range!

 

My first shooting targets!!

We went down to the range, Pat ran through a magazine with his P22, and I just had to shoot. He ran through the next one slowly, showing me the procedure and everything, and the one after that was mine. His P22 is a LOT quieter than anything else I've ever heard at the range, practically no recoil as well. When I first walked into the range, all the gunfire was making me flinch a little, but as soon as he started shooting that cute little .22, nothing startled me anymore. My first clip, I couldn't even tell if I was hitting the target, my goggles had begun to fog up, and of course I had no idea what I was doing. My second clip was better, I was much more comfortable with the gun already. My third clip was just plain fun :)


I think that at about this point the guy in the booth next to us started firing his .45. Talk about BARK! But it never made me flinch :) The pressure waves coming off of it were pretty impressive tho, you could definitly feel it every time he fired if you were shooting. I spent all 3 of these clips trying to find out why in the heck I was still hitting to the right. Everything seemed to be sighted up properly. In retrospect, even Pat was shooting to the left at first that day, I'm thinking maybe the front sight was a little off. See, his P22 has the extended barrel, so the front sight is on a removable piece so that you can mount a silencer. Mmmmm silencer... Not like the P22 needs one! So anyway, I was having a lot of fun. One of Pat's coworkers showed up for his first shooting lesson as well, so we all just kept rotating through.


The first magazine on this target really irritates me. If it weren't for that one stray round all the way at the top, it woulda been a very nice little grouping. Oh well, can't win 'em all ;) At this point, Pat started practicing speed shooting at 40ft range, and I thought it would teach me more to fire at a longer range (wanted to be able to see more easily where my shots were going while I was shooting). So for my second and third magazines I shot at 40ft. I expected to get some misses, but managed to keep all my bullets on the paper, if not in the target ;)


I'm pretty sure that for both of these magazines the front sight was very loose, but I didn't notice it until the second magazine, when it literally spun 90 degrees on me. I was still shooting at 40ft, and one of the bullets from my first magazine did miss the target completely :( During the second magazine, I pretty much had to manually realign the sights between each shot, so that's my excuse for that HORRIBLE spread. Allen, Pat's coworker, shot next and had the same problem, so we all decided to call it a day. I went through 110 rounds, and I can't WAIT to go shooting again. I will probably go at least once while Pat's away in Hawaii, and I'm already dreaming about picking up a CCWP and my own fun little .22 to plink stuff with ;D That'll have to wait for a while, but oh well :) When Pat gets back from his vacation, we're gonna buy some cheap stuffed animals and gather up a buncha soda bottles, then head out to the desert and actually do some damage. You just can't do a satisfying amount of damage to a paper target with a .22 ;)