Every once in a while, work yields strange moments.

Like this one...

Did you know that your hair has no specific gravity? Or close to none? This comes from one of my coworkers as he asks me for a piece of my hair so he can make a rig for measuring specific gravity.

What's funnier... I ended up making it myself. My eyes are better than his.

*smiles* Made me laugh, really...

"So, honey, how was work?"

"It was interesting. I made a specific gravity rig out of my hair. How was your day?"

*shakes her head*

The above brought to you by the word 'surreal' and the letters H and J.

Raen.

This is my workplace.

In my room, a fuzzy station playing a mix from the 60s through the early 90s in the fuzzy "I can't quite come in clearly" fashion of every room I've worked in for the last ten years. To my left, an independant station that plays whatever the f#@$ it wants... from jazz to mainstream stuff. Right outside my door... Sumblime, Beastie Boys, etc. And on the other side of that... R&B.

The funny part is that they _all_ overlap each other loud and clear in my ears.

*smiles* Yep. Its Friday. It'll be nice to go home.

Raen.

I am _such_ a creature of habit.

How much of a creature of habit, you ask?

So much so that, after discarding of my last desk, I'm having a hell of a time getting the new desk together.

It is coming together... a little bit at a time... while I sort through the assorted stuff that hung out around my old desk. Old papers that I don't need anymore are getting discarded... the past two year's taxes relegated to the appropriate accordian folders... new arrangements set up for my ancestral shrine.

You know, I've been working on this layout for how this desk is to go together for the past couple of days. You'd think I'd be nearing completion by now. But, when you're mildly obsessive abouthow things go together, I guess it just takes a while longer.

The rest of the apartment is moving in a similar fashion. I think, if you were to look around this place, you'd see my reluctance to move again in the near future. There are actually pictures on the walls. We're trying to establish a sense of permanence to this place as we put it together that neither of the last two apartments we've been in had. Its nice. Different. And, I suppose, it means that I'm not planning on buying a house for at least another three years.

Also a good thing that I like the layout of this apartment more the longer we get accustomed to living in it. *smiles* I'll take pictures at some point and show y'all.

In other news, last_bastion and I continue to muddle our way around Denver. Today, we took off following YahooMaps directions for new comics and gaming shops. We even hit a pagan shop on the way back down. I think, next to Pearls of Wisdom in Columbus, its the best pagan-y shop I've set foot in. When I compare the two, I think Pearls might have had a larger selection of books, but that the subjects were more diversely New Age. Pearls of Wisdom, truth be told, was a New Age shop, but felt peaceful and welcoming to all Seekers entering its space, where many a purely pagan store I've walked into has felt a little elitist. Isis was a nice change from that. Very inviting, very comfortable. Good book selection... though the New Age topics were nto all that plentiful. _Definitely_ pagan. And I think vintageleah would like the place. It looks like an old bank building with columns outside. They're working on making the columns look Egyptian. *smiles* Its pretty cool.

Spiritually, I'm in an interesting place. Interesting largely because I'm trying to incorporate a (series of?) truth(s) that rang very clearly out of the Zen stuff that I've been reading into my already existing faith patterns. I would explain why this is difficult if I had words for it, but since I don't you're just going to have to live with my description of 'interesting place'. That is me, after all. Maybe... just maybe... if I ever get myself back into a school like situation... I might force myself to take some classes that will develop my communication skills.

Oh, and work has been fun. Since I've moved here, I've been fought over (as in, an argument that peripherally involved me started over my head), driven to the airport to pick up high dollar customers, been taken out to dinner at a really fancy restaurant by the boss along with last_bastion, surprised the hell out of one of my coworkers with my competancy, and received one hell of a compliment from the man who got me into grading. I don't have nearly the ups and downs that last_bastion does. My job doesn't really involve them. *smiles*

Anyway, I'm pretty much stalling from finishing putting my desk together. So... back to work for me.

Thanks for listening. ;)

Raen.

This is where I heave the sigh, right?

Had to get up and go to work today... which sucks in and of itself. Everyone else I know has the day off... with the exception of maybe a few people that I know who are mall-bound. I remember that particular sensation, though I didn't nearly mind it as much as this year. Something about the people I was with that year, I think. A manage who made my ribs ache from laughing (he really was a little uptight, but comical about it at least), associates who's company I really enjoyed, and a store who's subject matter I could get into. There's nothing like knowing you might make someone's Christmas because you're able to tell a customer the difference between obsidian and hematite or able to explain why sand guardens are part of Zen. In my line of work, really, there's not Christmas _umph_ to being at work on Christmas Eve.

Part of me thinks I should have picked up that extra job over the holidays... just to have a place to go and get that extra umph...

Not to mention having a place to show off my all white fuzzy elf hat.

I got into work with no misshaps... wow... that was strange. The car and I had formed an uneasy alliance, and the day went by really quick even if I am still trying to figure out how working until three o'clock constitutes a half day *scratches head*. _My_ problem didn't really start until I got off the highway, rolled to a stop, and tried to put the car into first to get going after the light changed. I'm not sure what happened, really. All I know is that when I did finally get the car off to the side of the road, the clutch had no tension. That sucked.

Cars really hate me this year.

And _that_ is just my problem. *heaves a sigh* I wish I could take this end of the year and write it off as never having happened... you know, like the tests you used to take in school with the really spiffy teacher who would drop the worst grade off of your score completely. Then again, who am I to suggest this?

Regardless, the car problem will be fixed... even with all of the issues that surround it (and there are more). Working didn't kill me. And all the badness of the previous year has built more to me than there was the hear before, shaving off the excess here and there, while sculpting bits to fit more precisely than they had before.

I have Christmas tomorrow, and there are some presents under the tree I'm really looking forward to giving. *smiles* I hope some of them help relieve, even if momentarily, some of the load that some have carried over this year.

Early evening found me working on dinner. Food is a comfort, you know... and as much as I hope others take comfort in eating what I have the time to make, I take comfort in the making of it. I kept staring at my hands as I did so... watching them shred off bits of bread and how much like my mothers they look these days. I remember when they looked younger, more child like, and I marvelled at it. I don't know why, really. I just did. The muscle in the thumb, the way it tensed and relaxed, the twisting of my arm where it meets my wrist, the half worn polish that I keep hoping will help obstinate nails grow, the various scars that have accumulated over the through the course of my life, and the calluses.

They're not porceline, soft, or gentile, but I'm finding that I like my hands. Don't know why... just do.

Its Christmas Eve... its 6 O'Clock.

Have you said your "I love you"'s as you should?

*smiles* Merry Christmas, everyone... and if I don't see you sooner, Happy New Year.

Raen.