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Journal: I've never been one of those women. 2

Journal by Czarina Burrito

You know, the ones who have been planning their weddings since they were five years old. Honestly, ever since I found out what a wedding is (and I quote the 8-year old me at my sister's wedding: "Ew! You have to kiss in front of everybody?!* I'm never getting married!"), I've been trying to figure out how best to not have one.

But then I found out that the Science Museum has banquet facilities**, thanks to janeowit. What better reason for a party is there?!*** I would finally have an excuse to inflict pocket periodic tables upon everybody! It would be fabulous.

[*] I'm still not doing it.

[**] Of course you are bound to use their caterer, which happens to be the same one that sells hot dogs out of a cart at the Zoo.

[***] Except possibly to be rich enough to afford a party at the Guthrie, which would happening approximately never and periodic tables would just seem out of place.


Journal: Real Estate Fantasy Hour 9

Journal by Czarina Burrito

My house sold. You know, the one I was going to buy just as soon as I saved up $320,000 for a 20% down payment. I've decided that I need to set my sights a little lower, at least until I can afford an $8,000 mortgage payment. That should be any day now, right?

So Some Guy and I are looking at condos (yes, I know they are not the best real estate investment; it's a compromise). Of course, we won't be able to afford one until about a year after he returns from The Land Which Shall Not Be Named. So of course I went to an Open House last weekend. It's the voyeur in me. He wants to see the place this weekend (new development, the owner is hanging out there every weekend until all units sell), but I really don't want him to recognize me. Of course he will. I just hate for him to think that I'm actually going to buy one of his condos anytime in the next 2 years.

Poll: How should I disguise myself?

A) Thelma and/or Louise
B) Standard spy glasses with attached moustache
C) Wooden horse
D) Houseplant
E) Ski mask
F) Invisibility cloak
G) Pregnant zombie nun

User Journal

Journal: It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it... 12

Journal by Czarina Burrito

Gmail Vignette

From: Some Woman
To: Some Guy
I will have to miss playing Soccer Girl in two weeks to reprise my role as Engineer Girl at a [Company] Lecture dinner. (Another female speaker.) :^)

From: Some Guy
To: Some Woman
How come you get to have all the superhero jobs?

From: Some Guy
To: Some Woman
Because my X-chromosomes are in high demand. :^)

Instead of a cape, I am sporting a purple lab coat. All of the coolness, with none of the risks. (We all know what happens to superheroes who wear capes!)


Journal: Living with a hungry cat. 17

Journal by Czarina Burrito

It occured to me the other day that people not familiar with The Cat Who Eats Everything might find it odd that our oven controls feature a post-it note with the warning: Donuts in oven!

I had become so used to it that I accidentally baked the donuts.

User Journal

Journal: [TMI] Fun Fact of the Day 4

Journal by Czarina Burrito

I like to think of this as less TMI than Com2Kid, though. There should be degrees of TMI. This is really like 3rd or 4th degree TMI. Technolust gets a special designation of TLTMI, rated T for teens. Okay, old joke. Anyway...

The "proximity" effect can and will beat out the "ingesting hormones" effect.

User Journal

Journal: [Poll] The reality TV...it sucked me in! 7

Journal by Czarina Burrito

[WARNING: Contains Project Runway spoilers. Yeah. Laugh. Laugh all you want!]

Laura is...

A) The biggest bitch ever.
B) Surely she's not the biggest...well, I guess she is kind of rotund.
C) No doubt about it. She is pure evil.
D) Jeffrey won! In your face, evil bitch from bitchopia!

User Journal

Journal: Well, I may as well get used to this. [EDITED] 19

Journal by Czarina Burrito

[paints finger nails black]
[Applies black lipstick]
[Sprays hair black with temporary* hair dye]
[Dons torn black pants and black coat]
[looks downward]

Drowning alone, I gasp for air.
Coldness creeps over pale skin.
There is sadness so deep it pulls me down
Happiness dies in a deep, dark sea.

[*] Geez, I'm not that hardcore.

But seriously. Demonstrating science to middle school girls is my specialty. I am especially fond of the self-selected sets who are actually interested in science! And then you just hand this oppurtunity to the suck-up douche across from me without giving me a chance! Yay! Now the girls can continue to learn by example that science is for men, but isn't it cute that they're interested?

I used to think that gender inequality was dead. I mean, I truly believed that. I believed that we had won, that we were all equal. But we're not. It's just become more subtle. Maybe hypersensitively about sexual harassment is partly at fault. It's a double-edged sword, that one.

I have never felt that I was treated differently until this job. I've tried to shrug it off and blame myself for the past year. Notably, this has been the only position I've ever been in where from the moment of onset, I was the first female to the scene. It's "The Gods Must Be Crazy" all over again. I'm the Coke bottle, and they don't know what to do with me. This has been to my irreversible detriment.

XBox (Games)

Journal: MONTHS!!! 11

Journal by Czarina Burrito

I have to share this story.

So my roommate has this friend who is engaged to be married. The wedding was supposed to be in March, but she found out a few weeks ago that she is pregnant, so they have moved the wedding up to November. They just bought a house, and she started a new job last month. Very busy time. This is a total shock to them. She went off her birth control after they became engaged because she doesn't like how it makes her feel. But this is a total shock to them. Why? Who knows? Maybe the part of the brain that stores the consequences of biological functions isn't fully operational?

Yeterday I believe I found out why it was such a shock. That was the first time they had engaged in sexual activities in months. Months?!


No, neither of them was out of the country. They live in the same house. He's not a parapalegic, either. I thought of that one.

They haven't even been dating for all that long. Maybe a year or two.

Months. My. God.

Wireless Networking

Journal: My boss suggested that I seek counseling. 12

Journal by Czarina Burrito

For real. He was like "I hope I'm not overstepping my boundaries when I say this, but there are people...who can help you."

Now that's what I call a successful pre-review meeting. Or not. It was exhausting. All two hours and five minutes of it. I may have overshared, but at least I didn't tell him about the time when I was three years old and I cried and hid behind my mom's legs when I saw my very nice and friendly pre-school teacher in the grocery store. I really liked her.

User Journal

Journal: Islands. 4

Journal by Czarina Burrito

Some Guy sent this to me last night. He actuallly typed it up from a book he has because he thought it was that important. I agree. So I am painstakingly copying and pasting it from my email to share with you.

No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes - forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection) but still unique.

Without individuals we see only the numbers, a thousand dead, a hundrednd thousand dead, "casautlties may rise to a a million". With individual stories, the statistics become people - but even that is a lie, for people continue to suffer in numbers that themselves are numbing and meaningless. Look, see the child's swollen, swollen belly, and the flies that crawl at the corners of his eyes, his skeletal limbs, will it make it easier for you to know his name, his age, his dreams, his fears? To see him from the inside? And if it does, are not doing a doing disservice to his sister, who lies in the searing dust beside him, a distorted distended caricature of a human child? And there, if we feel for them are they now more important to us than a thousand other children touched by the same famine, a thousand other young lives who will soon be food for flies' own myriad squirming children?




User Journal

Journal: Insurance Companies are Slimy 6

Journal by Czarina Burrito

So...my sister's family was in an accident on August 13. They were rear-ended. Very clearly the fault of the girl who failed to depress her break at any point before the impact. Their truck was totaled and they lost their dog. They had just put $800 worth of tires on it the week before. Her insurance company (State Farm) refused to accept liability for the accident until the first week of September.

New vehicles are released on September 1. The value of their truck (totalled in August, remember?) dropped by $525 immediately upon release of the 2007 model year trucks.

Cute, yes?
