Man, I am going to be laughing at this for AGES. We've got a buffalo hanging out on the lawn--nothing unsual there. One of our maintenance guys is from Florida so this whole wildlife roaming free thing is new to him. Of course, he wanted a picture of himself standing behind the buffalo. He took the long way around the buffalo but with me standing on one side with the camera (behind the railing on the porch of a cabin--I'm not stupid) and Florida standing not far enough behind him on the other side, you can imagine how quickly the buffalo felt threatened. That animal stood up and lunged at Florida--I swear, that man has never moved so fast in his life. The buffalo was only warning him off--didn't intend to go after him, but from the way Florida ran, you'd have thought it was a whole herd after him. Once I saw the buff was leaving him alone, I started cracking up. I mean, I've heard about buffalo doing that--I've seen one do it to a calf who was being too much of a pest--but to see him do it to this man I absolutely LOATHE...it was just the highlight of my whole damn week. I am seriously going to be laughing at this for days.

Eight inches. And counting. (And oh, how I wish I was talking about something other than snow accumulation.)

It's been a week or so since I've updated. In that time, most of our snow has melted (unfortunately, we can get anywhere from 4 to 8 inches within the next twenty-four hours, damnit), our caretaker saw the first bear of the season this morning walking around with her cub (awww....), our head of maintenance arrived--and then quit (grrr...), my poor snowman wasted away into nothing, and I bought a new computer. Which means the big news is the computer. I'd been having issues with my old one--the night before I bought the new one, I had to manually reboot it three times in as many hours, and the keys were becoming obsolete--so annoying. So, I drove three hours to the nearest major city just to get some hands-on experience and ended up walking out of the Best Buy with a new computer. It's a Toshiba A505 with Windows 7 and Satellite wifi which has turned out to be a godsend because I can now watch all my telly here in my room instead of having to go to Cody every week and fast-forward through my shows in order to catch up. That makes me so ridiculously happy. This computer's going to take some getting used to but so far I think I'm enjoying it.

So, yeah, that's about it. Nothing really interesting to report. Oh, but I did see actual bluebirds yesterday morning. I'd never seen real bluebirds before. They were just the most beautiful blue--I wish I'd had my camera. I didn't know birds that blue were real, certainly not in this part of the world, or outside of a Disney cartoon circling peoples' heads.




(The icon--totally referring to the threat of more snow. Yeah, I'm over it. I want it to be spring and I want it to be spring now--and not Wyoming spring where we still get snow once a week but real spring with warm weather and budding trees and new grass and flowers.)

Title: Perceptions
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries
Author: Dhvana
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: possible Damon/Stefan unrequited, mention of Damon/OMC
Word Count: ~2600
Summary: An encounter in New York City in the 1920s.
Warnings: mention of violence
A/N: I’ve actually been working on this for over a month, trying to figure out just what felt wrong about it and tweaking things left and right. I think I’ve finally finished tweaking.




( PerceptionsCollapse )

My day...(Not to mention, it's snowed several inches more since I took this picture and it's still coming down hard.)

My absolute most favorite person in the entire world is my sister. She's two years younger than I am, she's got more mysterious medical ailments that consistently have the doctors stumped, she's got anxiety issues, she works forty hours a week while going to school full time and basically has enough stress in her life due to all of the above (except the age thing--that's my stress because I can't picture her being thirty) that she really doesn't need any more.

So this is part of the reason why my protective instincts are rearing their ugly heads and all I want to do is fly down to New Mexico and beat the ever loving shit out of people.

My sister is a paralegal in a public defender's office that is suffering from government imposed furloughs/hiring freezes/wage freezes--so not only do they have to defend people who really just aren't the cream of society, office morale is in the pits. In addition to all this, my sister has to deal with the lazy bitches in her office who have it in for her. My sister is an extremely hard working person--she'd have to be in order to balance two full schedules of classes and work and still maintain an 'A' average. She gets her work done quickly, efficiently, and she does it well. She is constantly being assigned extra jobs that they would normally hire other people to do because they know she can get it done and the attorneys fight to have her as their paralegal. As you can imagine, this creates some resentment amongst the other paralegals who have been there much longer and get a whole lot less done. Lately, they've gone out of their way to make complaints against her (complaints that go in her record), schedule her to cover shifts during her class times (and then get pissy when she complains to their superiors), and just today decided to use her new car as an ashtray.

My sister does not need this kind of bullshit stress in her life and I'd very much like to go down there and inform each of them of this. Nicely, of course. With a goddamn phaser set just above 'stun'. Or a team of mercenaries to back me up. Or hell, if I could afford it, my own legal team to sue the fucking pants off of the whole department. This is just not normal adult behavior (or so I'd hope but I currently have very little faith in humanity).

This kind of crap just drives me crazy. And I still want to beat the ever loving shit out of them for messing with my sister.

Yeah, I'm gonna be a great manager.

Started learning the reservations system today--this is going to be a lot of detail work that I'm most likely going to screw up quite a bit until I get used to it, especially since season hasn't really started yet so we're not getting enough volume that the reservations require daily attention. But at least I'm starting on something new. My brain was beginning to liquify.

We're waiting to see if this big storm hits us or not. They're predicting at least a foot of snow (or more) over the next few days, but since I'm in an area that doesn't really apply to any forecasts, it'll either happen or it won't. I'm kinda hoping it won't. I don't especially want to be snowbound for the rest of the week.

And now for something completely different--my boss was chased around his truck this morning by a moose. The image of that is going to make me laugh for a long time.

Today was my weekly trip to town over the snowy mountains (another six inches last night though it's mostly melted now) through the fields of the undead roadkill (damn deer) and into Cody, where I'm sure you don't even need two hands to count the number of stoplights. And that's about it. Made the Wal-mart run, had lunch with a friend, visited the local coffee shop and abused their free Wifi--the usual.

Looks like it's about time to get a new computer--I have to manually turn it off and restart it more than I should and my keyboard is starting to give out from over-use (I'm having to fight with my shift key to get it to work). Maybe I'll have saved enough by the end of summer to do that.

Also, I just want to note here that Hawaiian pizza is one of the best pizzas to eat cold--the pineapple adds the necessary moisture to balance out the dryness of the crust. It's almost as good cold as it is fresh.

And let me just be a poor sport here and say HA!!!!!!!!!!!! to the K-State Wildcats for blowing it in today's game and not proceeding any further in the finals. Now they just have to sit at home and watch like my poor Jayhawks.

We got about four inches of snow last night, finally giving me an excuse to dig out the snow boots I bought down in Florida (that's right, snow boots in Florida--you can imagine how great they are). Of course, last I looked it was already up to 38 degrees out so it'll probably melt pretty quick. Too bad it's just the powdery stuff--I haven't made a snowman in years and powder just doesn't pack well.

Woke up early this morning with this weird pain in my neck just under my jaw. I figure I probably slept wrong and strained/pulled a muscle (either that, or I need to see a dentist). It's really tender and very annoying, especially when I try to turn my head. Had me searching through symptoms on WebMD at four in the morning. I'm so glad we're finally working towards affordable health care so I can visit a doctor with problems like this as opposed to just toughing it out. I still have to wait a few years before it all goes into effect, but it'll be better than nothing (which is what I have now).

*steps on soapbox*

Feeling somewhat under the weather, I just had to mention my stand on health care on Facebook because I have this uber-conservative republican 'friend' on there (we met in elementary school but grew apart in high school) and she was making nasty comments about health care the other day and it just ticked me off. She's got kids. If her job didn't provide health insurance, I'd sure as hell hope she'd want to get some that didn't cost an arm and a leg, but because she's provided for, she can't look at it from anyone else's point of view. There are 50 million people out there who do not have health insurance because they can't afford it and their jobs don't provide it. Why do these ignorant asshole politicians/republicans think we shouldn't be allowed to pay a reasonable price to see a doctor? (Of course, free health care would be better, but I know not to press my luck.) I just don't understand how they can say they're looking out for the people by trying to keep goverment out of it when it's the people they're more than happy to see remain sick and poor and all the government is trying to do is keep us alive. (Okay, that's ridiculously simplified but it'll have to do.)

*steps off soapbox*

So yeah, that's my day so far. Snow. Tired. Sore. Slightly feverish. And aching to go into town--I've been thinking about this all week, to the point where I believed I was a day ahead for two days straight (it's finally Friday, right? good). I think I'm suffering from cabin fever, and March isn't even over yet. It's probably because the hiring is just about done and I can't wait to get started on something new.