The Blog to Nowhere

- T minus 7 days until I get to meet Matt Smith and Karen Gillan! The comic book expo has a preview night on Thursday but things don't officially kick off until parade day on Friday. I really hope the weather is decent. It snowed again today. Snow! Cold weather I can handle but I don't want to be walking the parade route in blowing snow and/or pouring rain. Though, as I'm going as Two for the parade, I can at least justify bringing an umbrella and calling it a part of my costume since Two used an umbrella in "The Krotons". :-)

- Speaking of costumes, I'm nearly done with my "The Girl Who Waited" armour rebuild. I just need to sew on a few more bits and then I'll be done. If I get it done tomorrow, then I will have finished it with a week to go (as I'm wearing the costume on Saturday). I did the same thing two years ago when I was first crafting the costume. Yup, procrastination, that's me. I'm going for a personal best of three costumes for the weekend. Sunday could be a regular clothes day, but I bought all of the pieces to cosplay as Eleven from "The Day of the Doctor", and gosh darn it, I'm going to use everything even if Matt and Karen won't be there on Sunday.

- Work has been kind of slow lately but it's a welcome change. I actually have time to think now. It helps that they re-structured our group into two dedicated teams so some of my work was transferred to another admin. It's causing a few problems, though. Certain things should be done by the other admin, but I still get people coming to me for things that, technically aren't mine anymore. Every time it happens all I can think about is this:


It's really tempting to find an image of Lestrade with #not our division on it so I can pin it to my cube. I'm sure no one would get it, but it would make me happy. :-)

- Orphan Black is back tomorrow!!! It's going to be weird watching it as the episodes air. But more clone craziness!

<---- Canada looks a lot like the Ood Sphere right now.

- It is bloody cold outside. A blizzard rolled in around December 1st and it's been freezing every since. With windchill, temperatures have been in the mid -30s. Brrr. I was actually stupid enough to walk to work one morning and my god my knees hurt when I got in. My boots cover my shins and my coats hits just above my knees, so they're the only part of me really exposed to the wind. So I'm taking the bus to and from work until the cold snap is over. Even with long johns it's not fun. Time to invest in some snow pants.

- But I've come to the conclusion that Canada needs to invite a nice warm island to come join the country. The US and the UK have their islands in the Caribbean. Canada needs one, too. It'd just be nice to fly somewhere tropic and not have to worry about exchanging your currency. I guess Canada missed out on colonizing places since we were a colony ourselves. Who wouldn't want to be part of Canada, honestly? We have universal health care, and, um, maple syrup and beavers and hockey. Okay, we mostly have cold weather, but we're really polite. :-)

- I'm covering for a co-worker who's on vacation for the rest of the month and I've come to appreciate what he does. He's always the one dealing with our difficult engineers. Now it's up to me to deal with them. I don't want to be mean, but being firm seems to be the only way to get through with some of these guys. Look, I know you went through more university than me, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't listen to me. I'm doing your work for you, buddy.

- And speaking of work, I was under the impression that I would get a five year recognition award this year. I started working with the company in July of 2008, so that's five years in my book. On our intranet page it even says I've been with the company for over five years. But I just read an email from my department lead and she's listed people getting recognition awards this year and I'm not on it. I guess my anniversary date is technically January 1st 2009, since that's when the company hired me as a salary employee rather than agency. It doesn't really matter to me. You get a watch for your five year anniversary but I've seen it and it's not the kind of watch I would wear.

- Christmas is creeping closer. I have a gift exchange at work on December 12. Last year's was great fun. It was the exchange where someone bought a ham ($10 a pound so technically it fell into the designated price range). Let's see what people do this year. Also, my mom was asking me what dessert she should make for Christmas dinner and my immediate thought was fish fingers and custard in honour of Matt Smith and the Eleventh Doctor as Christmas is his last adventure. Obviously it wouldn't be real fish fingers, we would substitute cookies that look like fish fingers, but I think it would be neat. We can eat fish custard while we watch the Christmas special. :-)

- I've been so exhausted from work lately. Not physically, but mentally. There's so much crap going on with this data entry that I do. Office politics, very little support, and so much apathy from the engineering departments. I'd give it up, but then I'd be leaving my co-worker in a bind and he totally doesn't deserve that. I just want to get away from it all for a little bit; thank goodness I'm going on vacation in November. Speaking of which...

-I'll be in London in November. Anyone know what the weather is like then? Online, it says the mean high temperature for London in November is around 8 degrees Celsius. That's downright balmy when compared to home. We can get into the minuses around that time of year and we get snow, too. I'm under the impression that London doesn't get a lot of snow. I mean, if it does snow, no big deal, but do I pack snow boots just in case? Or do I just bring shoes? What if my feet get cold? And do I bring a winter jacket? I've never travelled during the winter before.

-Broadchurch has started airing in North America, so I thought I would start watching. Obviously the only reason I wanted to watch was because of David Tennant and Arthur Darvill, but the show's not that bad. It's so serious, though. I'm used to my dramas having a bit of humour in them. The accents are also throwing me a little. I'm not sure where Broadchurch is supposed to be situated in England, but the accents kind of remind me of Newfoundland accents. I'm almost near the end and I still can't decide who the killer is. I want to think it's someone you don't expect, but a part of me wonders if they went with something obvious. And the show is just chock full of former Doctor Who people.

-Since work is being annoying, I've been playing Assassin's Creed II a lot. It was a free download and that was the main reason I got it, but turns out the premise is really neat and it's fun running around on the rooftops of cities in Renaissance Italy. Assassinating virtual people also helps to relieve stress. With the way missions and side quests are set up, you can do a bunch in a short amount of time, so it's really easy to get lost in the game. I usually think to myself, "Oh, I have time for just one more mission..." and suddenly it's an hour later. And I can see why guys cosplay as the main character Ezio. His costume is pretty bad ass. I'm in the process of getting the first game if only so I can understand more of the backstory.

- I want my TV shows to come back soon. I need some mindless brain candy.

Haven't posted anything that wasn't fanfic for awhile. Nothing to update really.

- Got sick again. :-P Stupid cold or virus or whatever keeps circulating around the office and I guess I caught it again. At least I didn't lose my voice this time. Felt more like a normal cold. Funny how that turned into a plus.

- Work's being lame again. We have some really stupid people working for the company. There are times when I just want to bang my head against my desk people are so thick. Sigh.

- Summer Glau's the new villain on Arrow! I have no clue who her character is, but I really hopes she gets some fight scenes with Ollie. I mean, why else would you hire Summer Glau? :-D

- And finally... Alexis Denisof dressed up like C-3P0. I just love that he (and probably Alyson Hannigan) made the costume from scratch. And all for a good cause, too.


The Alexis goodness starts at 2:52 mark or there about. And he ran in character! *insert dreamy sigh* I so need to go see Much Ado About Nothing. It's finally playing in Canada!

Only it's not laryngitis. I went back to the doctor's today (wow, I really wanted to capitalize that word while I was typing) and he didn't say anything about laryngitis. It's just a nasty cold that has settled on my vocal cords and won't go away. Great.

I feel like I'm spamming my poor flist with useless posts, but I really miss being able to talk. I'm not a chatterbox in real life, but it's so weird not being able to communicate, not even with a simple yes or no. I've turned in to a mime. Ultimately, that means I taking the rest of the week off from work. Granted, we had Friday off anyway, so it's only one more day, but I've never been out sick for such a long before. I was sending emails back and forth today with the admin looking after my stuff and she sounds super swamped. I feel bad that I can't come in and help, but I'm sure that my co-workers don't want to catch what I have.

I did discover today that I have more remote access than I thought. I can actually get into project folders from home. Not that it did me much good. I can't save into them for some strange reason. So I was able to help out a little. Didn't tell anyone beyond the other admin, though. I don't need people bugging me at home.

When I wasn't trying to work out my access, I was happily watching the DVD for "The Reign of Terror" that I got out of the library. I just love that my library keeps buying Doctor Who DVDs. This one was a fun one since they animated the missing episodes. It's a little weird, though, watching the animated episodes. How do the animators decide what a shot should look like? Are they following notes left behind by the director? Or is it the animator's prerogative? And I found that the direction of the animated episodes really doesn't match the rest, but I think it's probably because of the limitation of the animation. You get more close-ups in the animation while the regular episodes are staged more traditionally for TV at the time. I wish the DVD had a featurette about the missing episodes and how they were animated. It's fair to say that only geeks will buy the DVD and we love stuff like that. :-)

I'm sick of being sick. :-P

Because I think the Gentlemen have stolen my voice. :-P

Bad decision, going into work today. Was talking when I shouldn't have. I finally gave up at lunch and went home. I mean, I can still work, it's not like I'm on my death bed or anything, but I can't really help people if the best I can do is grunt at them and wave my hands. And I know that if I were to go in, I would still have people hounding me for help and answers and ten billion other things.

Honestly, I deserve some time off. The last time I went home sick was probably three years ago and I can't remember the last time I spent a work day at home. What do you do with yourself?

Yesterday was a friggin' joke. I was at work for 14 hours. I get to work early, 6:00 a.m. or so, so I can get stuff done without people pestering me. I'm usually out of the building by 4:00 or 4:30 p.m. But not yesterday. I was in a meeting for two hours and when I got back there was a pile of crap on my chair.

My co-workers are nice and all, but they can be idiots some times. Instead of asking the other admins for help, they just left all of this "urgent" work and then they went home. Gee, thanks. Knowing I wouldn't get all of the work done when I came in the next day, I stayed and finished what I could. Things I learned while stuck at work for another 3 hours?

- People don't stay at work after 6:00 p.m. I swear, when 6:00 p.m. rolled around, everyone vanished into thin air. It's a cliche to say "the silence was deafening", but it was.
- The lights automatically shut off at 6:00 p.m. So there I am, working really hard, and suddenly I'm sitting in the dark. No motion detectors here. Our light switches are also counter-intuitive. The little LED light on the switch is green when the lights are off and red when the lights are on.
- One of the cleaning staff rides through the cubicle farm on a vacuum cleaner around 6:30 p.m. He was literally riding the vacuum cleaner. It was like a hefty Segway that sucks up dirt.

I got to a point where I was writing "Good evening" in my e-mails. I didn't finish everything, so it took me another two hours this morning to get caught up and then there was still the work from today. At least today I got to leave on time.

And only one co-worker seemed to care or notice that I was at work until 8:00 p.m. and really she only came over to complain about how much work I had to do. She did thank me for being dedicated, though.

So I'm doing all of this OT but I don't get paid for it. The time gets banked and it just sits there, waiting for me to use it. Thing is, I don't have any reason to use it. I'm not going on vacation until next year. I'm thinking about going to London in November for the Doctor Who 50th anniversary convention, but that's still up in the air. And if I do take the time off, the work will just pile up and I'm scrambling to get stuff done when I get back. It's lose/lose pretty much.

Sigh. Okay, rant done.

My book club keeps me pretty well stocked with books. We exchange books we've read instead of us all reading the same book and this process works great. You only end up reading what interests you, not stuff that interests someone else. I always leave a meeting with a nice pile of books.

Well, I just caught up with my pile, something I never thought possible. Just finished The Help, a book I thought I would never end up reading because everyone and their mother, including my own mother, have read the book and I hate reading books that everyone is reading. But wow, it's a great book. It's outside of my usual realm of sci fi and fantasy, but I'm glad one of the book club ladies shoved it into my hands.

I don't know what to do now. My next book club meeting is in two weeks, but I need something to read now. I have one book from the library coming my way so hopefully that shows up by tomorrow. I just have to make sure to read it slow so it lasts me until the second Saturday in March.

And completely off topic, the local comic book expo says they're going to announce a Doctor Who guest tomorrow. Finally, someone from the show will be attending! I'm betting it's John Barrowman since he's filming Arrow in the province next door so it won't be a big deal for him to fly over here. But if it's, say, David Tennant, well, I won't kick up a fuss. ;-)

Saw this on tardis_stowaway's LJ. Thought I'd give it a go:

I know very little about some of the people on my friends list. Some people I know relatively well. But here's a thought: why not take this opportunity to tell me a little something about yourself. Any old thing at all. Just so the next time I see your name I can say: "Ah, there's Parker ...she likes money and cereal." I'd love it if everyone who's friended me did this. (Yes, even you people who I know really well.) Then post this in your own journal. In return, ask me anything you'd like to know about me and I'll give you an answer.

I was going to rant about work, but after a few recent events, I'm just glad that I have a job. It may not be fun and they keep giving me stuff that's not my area of expertise, but it's a job and that's good enough.

I will, however, rant about a co-worker at work.( Rant held within )

It'd be nice to get away from it all, but now's not really a great time. The only thing I have to look forward to is the local comic book expo in April. It is the only time I actually take a day off work that isn't vacation related. I have my fingers crossed that they'll announce some Doctor Who guests soon. Oh, and it goes without saying that I'm looking forward to Doctor Who, too, whenever that comes back. :-)

Did you know that LJ only lets you go back 380 entries on your flist? I'm trying to catch up on everything I missed while I was away, but LiveJournal seems to have other ideas. So if anything important happened before September 25, well, I guess I'll have to find out about it another way.

Playing catch up was the theme of my day today. There wasn't a huge pile of work waiting for me when I got in today, mostly because it was all sitting on the other admin's desk. I guess she got super swamped while I was gone so it all started to accumulate. I don't want to complain, the lady was essentially looking after every single project, but it's sort of a mess and it's not fun trying to sort through someone else's work. Oh well. That's life.

Vacation was great, though. Being cut off from the internet for two weeks wasn't horrible, but I feel like I missed out on a lot of stuff, most notably TV. So much TV to catch up on...

Vacation highlights:
- Awesome cruise ship. I'd totally sail with this company again. The staff were super awesome about my nut allergy. And my god, there was so much food. It's so hard to resist when it's sitting right there.
- Pandas! Not on the ship, but at the San Diego Zoo. Only two of them were out, and both were lazing around because of the warm weather, but that's two pandas more than my local zoo has. Only downside to the zoo trip was the overwhelming number of kids running around. Two words. Free admission.
- Penguins! I got to pet one! I bought tickets to do a behind the scenes tour of the penguin exhibit at Sea World and it was so worth the money. For the curious, penguin feathers are super soft. I thought they would be sort of rough, to cope with the cold weather. Nope. It's very downy, almost soft as cat fur. Yet again, tons of kids at Sea World. I'm not sure if I enjoyed Sea World as much as the zoo. Sea World is too much like an amusement park and that's not for me.

I did some other stuff, too, but nothing as fun as petting a penguin. I wished I could have smuggled the penguin home. The enclosure is the same temperature as where I live right now. It'd be right at home. ;-)