Sprouts make me happy.

Too bad that they're apparently notorious for spreading food-bourne illnesses. A sandwich made with sprouts is so much more exciting!

Happily eating my sprouts now. If I die this weekend you'll all know why, and you can go report my case to the FDA.

Maria just called to invite me to a fondue party! So exciting.

First off, Maria is adorable. Second off, she thought to invite me! Third off, I've never had fondue; what an exciting adventure it would be.

I don't know if I'll be able to go -- if Mary's birthday-ice-cream-outing runs too late, I'll just be out of luck. I'm really happy anyhow, though! Strange how little things like a silly invitation can turn my mood all around.

The Northeast is colder than Mars, at least during lunchtime. Poor Northeasterners.

My new officemate said that I can blog whatever I want about him, as long as I don't blog anything he says about other people. Nice. Very reasonable.

I like the guy, I've decided. Glad to be working with him.

We're famous! Er, sort of. Manzell, the captain of my Ultimate Frisbee team, got himself and our team reference in the most recent edition of The Stranger. Pretty crazy.

I apparently got my right and left contacts mixed up at some point down the line. Bah! Right, left -- I'm old enough that I shouldn't have problems with that anymore.

As Louie and I were walking by one of the sketchier parts of my neighborhood just now, someone climbed out of a dumpster right beside me. I was not expecting that, so it startled me. Vaguely disconcerting when that happens.

Steve accidentally left his bag in his car last night, so he has to stop by on his way to work. And since he has to stop by, we might as well go together, so I get to carpool with Steve and Dan. Sweet! Carpools are the shiznit. They get you there faster and more directly than the bus, but you still don't have to worry about parking or getting your car home in the nasty afternoon traffic.

Mary had a really good birthday dance tonight at the Russian Center tonight. She danced amazingly well and you could tell that she was really enjoying it. Then afterwards, we had a birthday cake for she and Gretchen. So nice! Sometimes the swing dance scene really gets to feeling like a family of sorts. Very warm.

Susan and Jay stopped by to Lindy after the Tango dance. Really nice surprise seeing them there.

It was a terrible night for my dancing -- I was somehow out of sorts and just wasn't feeling it -- but overall, despite that, a wonderful night. Usually when my dancing is off it brings me down, but tonight I was able to maintain a good feeling anyhow. I'm glad for that.

The last few days set me thinking and I realized that, especially now that I almost consider us friends, I didn't feel good about having posts up about my ex-officemate without his knowledge.

So I cleared the air.

I told him about the blog today. Past and present, good posts and bad.

He says he isn't crazy about the idea, but it's okay. I feel better for him knowing.

I told my new officemate about my blog. He doesn't really understand blogging, although he thinks it might be a generational difference. There are perhaps 10 years between us and he thinks people today are more voyeuristic. He grew up in an environment where you let your family and maybe your close friends see all your quirks and oddities, but it stays in the family. You keep strangers out.

Anyhow, I don't know whether younger people are more voyeuristic or not. I can see where blogging might seem strange to him; I am putting a lot of myself out here for anyone to see.

I don't really think of it that way, though. I think of it more as a personal exercise. On the one hand, I am exploring myself through my writing. On another hand, it is a tool that pushes me to think more consciously these days about how I live my life. I don't want to feel that I have anything to hide. When I think something or do something and then find that I am uncomfortable writing about it, it makes me think. I question things that I wouldn't have questioned before I started blogging.

Some of my friends are uncomfortable reading my blog. They say it makes them feel like they are eavesdropping on something private. I can respect that. I can also respect the people who choose to read it. I think I'd still write it even if nobody chose to read it, though -- I feel that I write mostly for myself. At the same time, I am not going to hide it, either.

My officemate compared it to windows and blinds.

"Do I leave the blinds open?" I don't always -- if I have a window facing a busy street, I might close the blinds -- but if it is possible to look into my window but less likely that people would randomly come across it, I will tend to leave it open. Part of it is laziness. I love sunshine, and I'd rather leave it open so the sun will shine in the next morning without my having to do anything. Part of it, though, is that I don't like feeling like I have something to hide. I want to always push the boundaries of where I'm comfortable. If I get to feeling that I have things to hide, I want to tackle that head-on and change how I feel.

He doesn't think of it as "I've something to hide", but thinks of it more as "What the hell are you doing looking in? What right do you have to be invading my privacy?" External view as opposed to internal.

Very reasonable. I can respect it. But it's not my view.

Anyhow, as for my blog: this is who I am. I am not ashamed. I have nothing to hide. I'm not going to get my panties in a bundle whether you decide to look in or not; I've left the shades open on purpose. Read it if you like, pass over it if you'd rather -- either way is fine by me.

I burnt my tongue on my lunch today.

I burnt my tongue yesterday, too.

I hate the feeling of a burnt tongue -- I need to stop doing that. Doesn't matter how hungry I am, when I've just finished preparing my food, I need to learn to wait until it cools a bit before eating.

My joints, especially my wrists, ache right now. I was wondering for a moment if it mightn't be the weather, but then I remembered that it was probably related to lugging a 40 lb bag of dogfood home from the local pet store just a bit ago.

Outside of the less-than-optimal meeting this morning, today was a good day at work. Made headway with a customer on one issue, helped Mr_X1 troubleshoot several issues in his development environment, and made significant headway on a bug that Mr_X2 and I have been chipping away at the last few weeks. I might even be able to pass that bug off my plate tomorrow and get the fix worked into the project team's next version drop. It's nice to head home at the end of the day and have so many loose ends tied up.

Now I'm back to the cleaning project I've got going full-time in my apartment. Sorting through old clothes, filing away old bills, doing month's worth of accounting, shelf-papering all the drawers and shelves in my kitchen, unpacking boxes that I still haven't gotten to even though I've been living here over half a year, etc... overwhelming, really. Feels like all these ends will never be tied.

Interesting note: Blogger's spellchecker does not recognize the word 'blog'.

Add me to the ranks of people who have been reprimanded by their employer for their blogs.

As a result, the following will occur:

• Over the course of this week, I will go back and edit or remove all questionable posts that I have written since starting work with my current employer.



• I will no longer blog from work. Should I find myself stuck waiting for a compile or for a test case to finish timing out, I will find some other productive way in which to spend my time.



• Going forward, I will make sure that there is no way to identify my employer, the client I am contracting for, or my co-workers from anything I do post. In my writing, so that they cannot be identified, I may refer to my employer as Company_A, to the client I contract for as Company_B, or to various people by assorted nom de plumes. Even then, however, I will be watching my content.



• At some point in the future, I will implement a secure content-management system. Most posts on the site will remain public. To view all posts, however, you will need to create an account and password and have me grant you certain rights.

Two side notes:

• If you, dear reader, happened across my blog without my knowledge and were offended by some of what you read, I apologize. The writing here was never meant to hurt anyone. Rather, it was only ever meant to be an outlet in which I could explore my feelings and chronicle my day-to-day-life.



• About my late officemate -- I realize that I vented terribly about him on this blog. Strangely enough, in outing my negative feelings here I was somehow able to interact more positively with him in person. I believe we actually realized a healthy, happy relationship the last few months of his stay here, and I genuinely miss him now that he is gone.

Mr_X1, my new officemate and dev, thinks I should be able to negotiate myself a higher salary because of all the knowledge I've gained about these products I'm working on. Funny.

I've actually been stressing the last few days because I got a cryptic message from my Company_A boss telling me to stop in tomorrow because we "need to talk about some things". In the past she hasn't really pulled me in unless she thought there was a problem, so I am not confident that the meeting tomorrow will lead to good things.

So, anyhow, Mr_X1 thinks it will be okay. I've been helping him ramp up on stuff the last week or two, and I've been helping out the other folks on the team recently as well. I have apparently impressed him quite a bit in the process, and he things will turn out well. If they don't, he's offered to do a rain dance for me. So sweet.

Here's hoping things do go well.

I am amazed sometimes at how airheaded I can be. I put a load of laundry into the dryers this morning and forgot about it until now. 12 hours the poor load was alone downstairs, left to fend for itself in a building filled with at least a few crazy people.

I miss sexual intimacy. I wonder if that will cause me to value it more whenever I have it again.

I went out clubbing tonight with gay-Chris and Jonathon. It was nice, although I felt ever-so-slightly like a third wheel.