The Marci Rating System

Yesterday, my workplace offered a 30-minute presentation about how things are going. It was one of those ‘chill at your desk and log in online to hear the presenter / see their screen’ kind of deals, and it was optional, but why not?

About halfway through, we were treated to this:

Yes, that’s a lion, with the text ‘Everyone wants to be a beast’ at the top, and the text ‘Until it’s time to do what real beasts do’ at the bottom.

WHAT?!???

That’s weird, right? I’m baffled. My coworker told me it was not weird, and it means we are supposed to work hard. That’s — definitely not what I got out of it.

I know I tend to take these things waaaaay too literally, but I’m genuinely confused. I don’t want to be a beast! And I don’t know what real beasts do, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want that either! I am still scratching my head over this. What do real beasts do???

But WAIT! The BEST part of this whole thing is that the very next slide was a picture of a baseball player screaming, with the text, “Winning as a team is the greatest feeling there is.”

I AM SO CONFUSED.

My ‘mis-routed package’ has arrived in the state, as of 9 pm Thursday night, AND it just got scanned for its ‘destination scan’ at 6 am this morning! New ETA is TODAY, I’m so excited!

(Note: This is… not a very exciting package. It’s a couple shirts I got because there was a good a Memorial Day weekend sale, and I was not at all concerned about when they arrived. But when the predicted date of June 5th came and went, and the MYSTERY OF THE MIS-ROUTED PACKAGE began, I became super invested in the entire saga. Like, I could not be more excited about this. WILL THE PACKAGE ARRIVE TODAY???)

-After getting my package to the next state over on June 3, UPS gave me the worrying ‘we’ve misrouted the package; this may cause a delay’ message on June 4, and it’s been an ominous silence ever since.

+On the plus side, it’s pay day! Find that silver lining.

I re-watched the fight club episode of Guardian (ep. 18), and 1) it was great; 2) see #1.

Also, in the scene where Lin Jing is tracking things (I love that they explain so many things with ‘oh, Lin Jing invented something’ and then when they need to not be able to do that thing it’s all ‘huh, guess that invention’s not working today, weird’), I got distracted watching Da Qing completely zone out. So I watched it again, and here is my theory:

IT’S THE RED DOT. Lin Jing’s tracking program shows Fire as a glowing red dot moving across the screen. And there is no more surefire way to distract a cat than to move a glowing red dot around in front of them.

In conclusion: cats are great.

Wishing the very happiest of days to starandrea, and an even better year ahead! You’re like sparks and stars and rainbows every day! <3

My computer refuses to admit that “portaled” is a perfectly acceptable way to express the verb concept “to travel via portal.” I portaled over there! You portaled over here! They portaled to THE MOON!

At first I thought maybe it just wanted two letter l’s (portalled — mm, I don’t know, if it’s a made-up word anyway, why clutter it up with extra letters?), but no. It suggests that perhaps I mean “portaged.” Thanks, but no. That’s something quite different. (Also a means of travel! Not as convenient.)

Merriam Webster online does accept portaled (and portalled) as real words, but considers them adjectives (“having a portal”), which I guess is a bit like how bedazzled is an adjective now. (Although in a humorous twist, MW tells me bedazzled is a verb. Which really is an argument in favor of portaled being a verb, as far as I’m concerned.)

Me: It’s June! Summertime! Time to open the windows!

::it is 50F degrees outside, cloudy, with a breeze blowing directly in my open windows::

Me (wearing a fleece jacket and huddling under a blanket): Ah, fresh air! It’s bracing! It’s lovely! It’s… a bit chilly?

My brain: psst! You could close the windows!

Me: But it’s summer!

The three stages of my day so far:

*It’s June! A new month! A fresh start!

*ahahahahaha so far I’ve started the month by sleeping late and having the cat attack my foot when I picked up her food bowl (it was empty! I was going to refill it!)

*OKAY. TAKE TWO ON THIS MONTH.

Sometimes I stumble into fics from other peoples’ bookmarks lists on AO3 and think to myself ‘what a bunch of charming asshole weirdos.’

The Dawn Will Break Before You, by thepartyresponsible

“Okay, heartbreaker,” he says, “how much to put the tires back on the car?”

Jason rolls his eyes and gestures at him with the lug wrench. “Why don’t I just beat you up and steal your money? Is this the first time you’ve been to a bad part of town? Don’t show me your wallet, asshole. Come on.”

The man heaves a heavy, aggrieved sigh and starts pulling out bills. “Five hundred?” He tries. “Six? We can go to an ATM.”

“You are mugging yourself,” Jason says, oddly impressed. “Holy shit.”

Yesterday afternoon I wound up in a very long meeting, at which my presence was necessary for perhaps 10 minutes. (Which is fine. Sometimes it’s good to be minimally involved.)

But it’s standard in my workplace to bring your computer with you to meetings (in case you need to look something up, of course! definitely not so you can check email!), so I had the magical entertainment box in front of me the whole time.

And, unfortunately, a non-sympathetic executive sitting to my right. (Not directly to my right, though — there was an empty seat between us. Personal space bubbles are Very Large at work.) Which led me to the following ponderings:

*How much can I reduce the brightness and angle the screen the opposite way from which we’re all looking before it becomes super obvious that I’m doing so?

*What non-work-related tabs are likely to be the most recognizable, and therefore the most important to avoid?

*How good is that executive’s vision???