That run-on sentence in bullet #2 doesn't really suck, either.

Five things that didn't suck today, because it was that kind of day, in no particular order:

• Cranberry roll fake turkey real cheese sandwich with multi-grain tortilla chips. (Yes, I just blogged about what I had for lunch. Sorry, Maggie.)
• Overhearing the boss say "oh wait she's still here let me ask" as I was shutting down at 5:25pm, cursing (not entirely... okay, not at all) under my breath, then learning that the question was to verify that my vacation hours should roll over to next year instead of to ask me about something else I need to do ASAP before I left or the world would end.
• Inside jokes in crowded elevators.
• An impending 5 mile run. (Ed. note: make that 3... but at a 7mph pace to make up for it.)
• Eight-point-five weeks until New Zealand!

Oh, and also? Thursday is the new Friday.

Five things that did not suck today:

• Thursday is the new Friday.
• Thursday is the new Friday.
• Thursday is the new Friday.
• Thursday is the new Friday.
• Thursday is the new Friday.

Once again I packed a full 48 hours in advance. I was antsy and distracted all day. I fear this using-long-weekends-to-make-up-for-a-9-to-5 could become a habit. If only I had more vacation days...

Wednesday three.

Three things that did not suck today, in no particular order:

• being extremely hungry around 10am, lamenting the fact that people only seem to bring in food when I've eaten a proper breakfast, then happening upon a non-advertised batch of yummy fig/blueberry muffins by the printer
  
• a random high five from a coworker as I passed him in the hallway
• using the secret phrase* with another coworker to get off of a post-5pm, long-winded, non-work-related phone call

Bonus TTDS to round this out to an even five:

• shoe shopping at lunch (but OMG, can someone please explain these to me?)
  
• the last of the leftover pepperoni pizza from Sparky's

________________
* I'd tell ya, but then I'd have to kill ya.

Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the positive.

I'm in need of perspective these days, so I'm hereby reinstating the daily FTTDS. Five things that didn't suck yesterday, in no particular order:

• running across this after a coworker sent an email saying "for all intensive purposes..."
• finally finishing draft posts I started weeks ago
• finally getting my Hollywood Fringe Festival t-shirt (a gift for donating -the shirt is awesome)
• Family of the Year (they never suck but I particularly appreciated them yesterday)
  
• leftover pepperoni pizza from Sparky's
  

Five things that didn't suck today, in no particular order:

• waking up late and still catching the early bus
• coworkers with warped senses of humor
• 67 degrees and cloudy
• leftover pepperoni pizza from Sparky's
• two more days and then four-day weekend

This hasn't happened yet but in about an hour, I'm pretty sure that hearing Colin Meloy & Carson Ellis discuss their new book is really not going to suck either...

Living in Portland? Definitely does not suck.

Five things that didn't suck today...

... in no particular order. Because, yes, it's that bad right now.

• hearing that some friends I like a lot got engaged over the weekend
• Mumford & Sons on repeat... again... for, like, the 784th time
  
• Kettle Sea Salt potato chips with my sandwich at lunch
• the nice man on the bus this evening who kept falling asleep on me and apologizing, instead of ignoring the fact or being an ass about it
  
• skipping yoga to watch House as it airs on TV instead of 3 weeks later on Hulu

{Ed note: do not skip yoga to watch House when the SF Giants are about to win the World Series.}

Friday five.

Five things that did not suck this week, which was a particularly strange week, in no particular order... was there a delayed full moon that someone didn't tell me about?

• A BSG season 4.5 marathon last Sunday. All I have left is the finale, and I'm holding off until Sunday for that. Because Sunday is before Monday and if I ever need a pick-me-up before THAT, it ain't football, it's the BSG finale (even with the "meh" reviews I've heard, "meh" is OK so long as it's) followed by...
  
• America's Best Dance Crew! This is my American Idol, people. I have a stake in Beat Ya Feet Kings, Vogue Evolution and Rhythm City. (And Mario Lopez is my Ryan Seacrest. Erhm... I think I would actually prefer Ryan Seacrest. And when do I ever say that? To be fair, though, he was my favorite part of Knocked Up. And when do I ever say that?)
• Scoring front row center seats to David Cross next month. I can't recall the last time I had front row center anything, so this is pretty exciting. I must remember to turn off my cell phone.
  
• I really am going to Seattle tomorrow for the Jim Henson EMP exhibit and some other Seattle-ish shenanigans. Goal #1 will be crossed off as of Sunday.
  
• The Comedians of Comedy, who are about to take my mind off a crazy, crazy week. I thought it was July that was supposed to never seem so strange, not August. I should have a talk with Colin Meloy about that.
  

Monday FTTDS.

Most things about today, also known as MONDAY, did really suck, but here are a few things - five, in fact! - that did not:

• Finally listening to Jason Lytle's Birds Encouraged Him, NPR's Song of the Day from a few days ago, which is really great and also kind of ironic because I never really liked Grandaddy all that much, and also because the book I'm about to finish (Adverbs, by the grown-up Lemony Snicket) keeps referencing magpies. Booker T's instrumental of "hey ya" from a few days ago is also really, really great. Who am I kidding - everything they feature is brilliant. I {heart} NPR's song o'the day. And when my IT department takes away my ability to stream NPR songs o'the day, I am going to burn the building down.
• Being able to help a friend in need who has been a friend indeed for over 20 years.
  
• Skipping the gym in favor of some wine and cheese. And subsequent pizza, but that hasn't happened yet.
• Filling out my Antarctic excursion paperwork. I dreamed about penguins last night (real, live penguins, not the Flightless Birds although they do not suck either right now) as well as tomatoes. "Why have we been rooting through tomatoes for an hour? There are PENGUINS right outside this Antarctic Safeway!" (I think you had to be there.)
  
• Sunshine in my apartment at 8pm on a Monday. That can't be a bad thing.
  

Belated Friday five.

Five things that did not suck this week, in no particular order:

• Watching the Penguins move on to the next playoff series. And seeing all the swear words and ":(" FB stati from all the Caps fans. Suckers! (Wait, did I say that out loud?)
  
• Geeking out at an excel class, followed by two hours in an amazing Goodwill where all the yuppie people and yuppie department stores donate their clothes (a pair of not-Old-Navy jeans, a work-friendly shirt, a glass sautee pan lid and a vase for $12! I had forgotten how much I loved thrift store shopping), followed by an amazing soup place in the Goodwill strip mall that serves huge wonderful bowls of soup for $3.25...
  
• ... followed by free tickets to an excellent show at the Doug Fir. Hooray for elitism (Yelp stylie).
• Ben Folds at the Roseland. Finally, finally, finally, I saw this guy (and his band). About three songs in, I was dubious - it sounded just like the CDs and looked nothing like what I'd seen on youtube clips. But then he confessed to having a migraine, which he gets about twice a year, and popped a couple anti-migraine pills... OK, when I get a migraine (also about twice a year), the most I can do is get up to wet a washcloth with cold water, stumble back to bed and put it over my eyes along with the blankets... But he was up there jamming under strobe lights and a screaming crowd, and suddenly his pain pills kicked in and it looked exactly like what I'd seen on youtube clips. Migraine WIN!
  
• Doing nothing other than catching up on Lost (no matter how lame the show has become) on a Saturday night. Two late nights in a row? I'm old, people. Bloody old and bloody tired.

Friday five.

Been a little behind on this, mostly out of laziness but also because it's actually really *hard* to come up with five things that don't suck every day... which I guess is kinda the whole point of doing it every day...? Right.

Will get back on that Monday because it was helping my mood when I was doing it daily. But for now, five things that didn't suck this week, in no particular order:

• free passes to two local Portland speaking event type thingies
• the opportunity to give constructive feedback to mgmt even though I don't think it will go anywhere
• to my shock and awe, despite a self-employment gig where I paid no taxes at the time, I am getting money back* for 2008 taxes... hooray for being able to claim moving, not getting last year's "stimulus" check, and H&R Block
• finding an amazing lady to watch Her Majesty while I'm gone
• finally hanging up my posters and paintings after almost 10 months of not wanting to put holes in the wall because "I'm not staying here much longer"... of course I am staying here and it's amazing how much more homey the place feels now

Happy Friday!

________________
* Well, except from CA, who will be sending me a nice I-Don't-Really-Plan-On-Coming-Through-With-This-IOU sealed with a scratch and sniff skunk sticker. Glad I got out of there when I did.

Friday five.

Five things I am looking forward to this weekend, in no particular order:

• Revolutionary Road
  
• a good long run tomorrow*
• BSG and Dexter catchup
• getting my packing/shopping list together for Costa Rica
• trying out a new Ethiopian restaurant with a friend

* these days, "long" means 5 miles, but...

The most important thing that didn't suck yesterday was my mood. Everything else (including the weather, the workout, finally running a bunch of put-off errands, my sandwich at lunch) was gravy, so I'll skip the list. Er... or, maybe I just made the list.

Whatevs. It's Friday, people!

All's quiet on the home front.

Her Maj has been enjoying a lovely day and evening at the MGM Grand of pet hotels - the emergency vet. Her stay so far has included pokes and prods from various strangers, numerous lab tests and having the fear of God instilled in her (damn yappy dogs!).

Tomorrow, lab results pending, she is scheduled for a relaxing noon endoscopy/biopsy. I was hesitant about a surgical biopsy but this is not invasive, it's one of those coiled camera scope thingies like you see on Animal Planet ER shows and House, and I sooooooooo want to watch - how cool would that be? (Oh, and also, she now weighs 7 lbs. I'd cut her open myself if it would help. Desperate times and all that.)

Anyway, the boss was nice enough to let me work from home today to accommodate this mid-morning appointment half an hour away, and it's a darned good thing because I've been a bit of a wreck all day. But in between that I also got a ton of work done (no prairie dog cube calls, no next door neighbor with the booming base voice, no disco rave down the hall, no anorexic cat sitting on my lap paralyzing and inconveniencing me) and I spent another hour and a half at the gym tonight.

In addition to those things, here are five more things that didn't suck today:

• Finding out that there is an "English - Pirate (beta)" Facebook language. Best. News. EVER! (A bit hard to read, but hilarious nonetheless.)
• YBIAA.
  
• Beets.
  
• Getting some dirt on people I knew in high school and college.
  
• "Shed Your Love" by the Helio Sequence.

I almost forgot.

• Dr. House.
• Lunch on the boss's dime.
• My yellow duck earrings. (Also, my b/w cow earrings and my pink pig earrings. Everyone keeps saying I need more color in my wardrobe... baby steps, people, baby steps.)
• The Decemberists.
• Finally getting my Hep A and typhoid vaccinations taken care of.

Those things didn't suck today.

Like the words of a song I could not forget...

I had to call someone named "Desiree" to get some information. I couldn't stop singing this song in my head afterward. Which brings us to five things that didn't suck today:

• Neil Diamond. Neil Diamond never, ever sucks. Sometimes he's not what you want or need to hear, but he never, ever sucks.
  
• The cheese plate at mandatory fun hour this afternoon. That was some good cheese. The crackers were pretty good too.
  
• Figuring out the root cause of a big problem with someone I really enjoy working with, even though the root cause essentially ended up being our collective fault. I learned something useful and I got to work with one of my favorite people. So that was good.
• Her Maj is drinking lots of water, even though she stopped eating this morning. We have an appointment with the specialist on Tuesday. Tomorrow she's getting her weekly injections which always make things better (until about Tuesday, so that all works out I think). I am dealing with all this information pretty well despite the week-long out-of-country vacation coming soon and rapid depletion of the house fund. Although I'm not sleeping much. Meh. Sleep when you die, eh?
  
• The prospect of wearing out my very generous Regal Cinema gift card I got for my birthday in prep for Oscar voting. I can't win, obviously, but it's still a competition between me and you.
  

I'm sorry.

I have no list of five things that don't suck. Today was pretty awful. But I'm trying to learn from it, and do things better next time.

OK, watch this again. And again and again and again. It doesn't suck. I promise.

I don't get 30 Rock.

I hadn't seen a full episode before today, now I've seen five. I love Tina Fey, I love Alec Baldwin in that role, I love the supporting characters. But I don't get why the show is so popular and wins all those awards. The story lines are often banal or predictable. The only times I actually laughed were scenes where Tracy Morgan says something incredibly inappropriate. Clearly I'm missing something. Or maybe all the stress from cat and work have warped my fragile little brain and now I just want hugs and puppies.

Man. That would suck.

Speaking of...

Five things that didn't suck today:

• Staying home sick and watching 30 Rock and House reruns all day.
• Successfully employing a combination of brute force, pill syringe and buttery quartered nasty tasting antibiotic to Her Majesty. It just went down, poof, like magic. Amazing. Each day is a new challenge in this endeavor and the same thing never works twice in a row, so tomorrow will be another fun struggle, but today was a good day. Damn cat.
• I have gained enough weight back that I can now wear all my clothes without looking like a bag lady, which means that (a) I can restart the gym regimen as soon as I feel better and (b) I will probably have to eat more to keep the weight on if I do start burning 700 extra calories every other day. (I know, I know, woe is me, right?)
• Another BSG disc in my mailbox this afternoon, which I am off to enjoy as soon as this is done.
  
• Um... slow day. Did I mention that I didn't go to work? That definitely didn't suck.
  

This one was hard. It was a long day.

We're doing a lot of interviewing right now, and I've been thinking about how I would answer these interview questions if I were on the other side of the table. Always good to be prepared. One of the questions is, "what are you proudest of in your career" followed by the downer question "what has been your biggest failure?"

I have a few project-related proudest moments, which I'm not going to blah blah blah about. But one of my (three? four?) proudest moments came with time. In my first official managerial 1-1 with a much younger staff person, I showed up with a super-long list of questions with check boxes next to each question. She basically said, "so whaddya wanna talk about?" As we went through each item I checked it off my list. The next week she had a few questions with check boxes next to them and my list was relatively shorter than the previous week. Starting with week three, she had all the questions with check boxes and I, having no check boxes, just mentored and managed and took her amazing suggestions and employed them however I could. The other day I got an email from a former coworker/still good friend saying that my "protoge" (his word) had done an amazing job in a very important meeting. This made me proud.

I've been trying to mentor my current younger coworkers since it's pretty evident I will not be advancing into management at my current company. I'm not in a position to make decisions, so mostly I provide moral support and give them suggestions for how to approach management with their ideas. One of said younger coworkers has started making lists of questions with check boxes next to them. I had to laugh to myself.

My biggest failure... I know what it is, and maybe I will write about it someday. Someday when I can figure out how I could've done things differently. Because dwelling and moping is useless but hindsighting is actually kind of productive.

So anyway. Things that didn't suck about today:

• The new M. Ward album has Zooey and Lucinda Williams. So that's pretty awesome. The album itself is pretty awesome too.
• I finally sent a thank-you card to my uncle and aunt for their Christmas gift.
  
• My cat smells like peanut butter.
  
• In case this hasn't been obvious, I really, really, really like my coworkers. Management, not so much, but my team is amazing. They keep me sane and entertained, and we all look out for each other.
  
• Tasty Bites palaak paneer w/TJ's frozen naan (heated of course) definitely does not suck. Not as good as India Chaat House but it'll do in a rainy-snowy-hell-no-I-am-not-walking-15-minutes-to-Cart-City pinch.
  

Something else tds.

I am doing 50% of this! There are no animals involved, but I'm doing it!

So that's something, right?

CCL update #97.

Three days of barely eating resulted in Her Maj reaching a record low weight of 7.5 lbs (normal weight under normal circumstances, which are a distant memory at this point, averaged 11-12 lbs). So today she spent another day at Chez Vet where she was treated to fluids, various other injections, full-fat food which she apparently pigged out on and has continued to pig out on since we got home, and... dog medicine.

Yep. That's what it's come to - she is now taking dog medicine, which is apparently successful in preventing feline nausea if given in small doses. This along with Pepcid AC to reduce stomach acid and antibiotics for the "I" in her IBD and an appetite stimulant. All of which, of course, have different administration schedules. I'm going to need my parents to send me one of their spare day-of-the-week pill boxes.

Luckily, so far, she just stops eating so I don't have to deal with the potential grossness of her disease. But then unluckily she gets down to 7.5 lbs. Damn geriatric cat. Next month she'll probably need a walker. And then she'll start keeping all the balls that land in our yard.

On another note, five things that didn't suck today (I really am trying to keep to this, at least on weekdays, but I'll save the Friday five for actual Friday fives):

• She didn't have to be put to sleep, which is seriously what I worried about until the noon call with the vet. I'm not sure why I worried about this, because I have determined that her sole purpose in old age will be to bleed my house fund dry and stress me out daily.
  
• Today the spellchecker suggested I replace a correctly spelled acronym with "peep" and, well, PEEPs are awesome.
• A friend's FB status this morning was "driving to work with the heat on HELL." That made me laugh.
• Kelly green, the color of my sweater, which my youngin coworker claimed I "rocked" today. Why, thank you! (I think.)
  
• Figuring out how to write a complicated excel formula. I tried for an hour and when it finally worked I actually did the fist in the air "YESSSSSSSSS!" Yeah, I'm a nerdgeek.