The Not-So-Secret Diary of a Bad Luck Girl

So what I thought was a bad mosquito bite is not a mosquito bite at all but the handiwork of a spider.

Tuesday night I was lying in bed, enjoying our new air conditioner, when suddenly I felt something very itchy on my thigh. Assuming it was a mosquito, I went in the bathroom and doused myself with the repellant that I picked up so many years ago in China, and which still works.

The next day the bite had swelled a little more, but nothing too alarming. True, it was about the size of an Oreo cookie, but I’ve had bites like that before.

Then on Thursday it had swelled and spread even more, and was incredibly itchy and hot-feeling. I showed it to MB, who thought it didn’t look like an ordinary mosquito bite and thought I should go to the doctor.

Of course I didn’t want to. I’m the type who thinks, Oh, it’s no big deal, it’ll go away. But MB was insistent, and there’s a health center at work so it wasn’t too much trouble.

The moment the nurse practitioner guy saw the bite, he said, “Um, yeah, that’s no mosquito bite.”

By that time it had spread to the size of a mini bagel, and was pretty red. It was slightly less swollen, but still felt sort of hard. Luckily it didn’t hurt at all. The nurse said it was probably a spider or ant, and prescribed some antibiotics.

I called MB, who became obsessed with trying to find the spider. “It’s probably brown recluse,” he said. Apparently my bite looked like the bite of those who have been bitten by that type of spider.

“It’s probably long gone by now,” I said.

“No!” he said. “I must find it. I must keel it.” Then proceeded to tear the apartment for the rest of the day.

I had dinner plans with YP and a former coworker, so I wasn’t back till 9ish. MB was in the midst of pulling all the furniture away from the walls, cleaning up the dust, and filling all the cracks with this hardening foam stuff. Overboard? Maybe a little. But at least our apartment got cleaned.

Towards the end of the night, MB seemed to begin to accept the fact that the spider had probably cleared out long ago. Then suddenly:

“Get me a glass! Quick!”

He had his head under the desk, his tush sticking up in the air. He had found the spider.

Well, he found a spider. Whether or not it’s the spider, I don’t think we can say for sure, though the markings were definitely like a brown recluse’s. After MB put a glass over it and slid it into a little tupperware container, we were able to examine it more closely, and saw the fiddle-shaped marking on the back, and, more importantly, the three eyes, a distinguishing feature of a brown recluse.

“I’m so happy I found it,” he said.

So am I, honey. So am I.

I’m glad to say this morning the bite has gone down. The coworker I had dinner with suggested drawing an outline around the bite, so that I could see if it was getting bigger or smaller. Today the redness has withdrawn from my pen outline. Now it’s more the size of a Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookie, not swollen at all, and just a little firm. Most importantly, the bite area has shrunk down to the size of a pin head.

I don’t know if it’s the antibiotics, or if it would have started going away on its own. One thing for sure, the amoxcycillan is doing a number on my stomach. I hate that.

Now I wonder if I’ll get super strong and being able to climb walls. That would rock.

Last day of a lovely, low-key three-day weekend.

Saturday
We managed to leave the house around 4. MB and I are sort of on opposite hours lately. He ends up staying up most of the night, feeling energized and inspired and working on his stuff, while I’m unconscious and, yes I admit it, snoring in bed. Then I’m up between 9 and 10, energized and inspired and working on stuff, while he’s unconscious – and not snoring – in bed.

But while he’s sleeping I seem to be able to get a lot done. Saturday, in addition to some laundry, fun reading, and this blog, I did some non-fun reading (ie, Web Design in a Nutshell, snore) and worked on my writing too, finally!

When we finally left, our first stop was the New Museum. It was just okay. Some of the art was ultra-contemporary so that we were like, “Huh?” I did like Paul Chan’s light exhibit, which I’d seen before either at the MoMA or the Whitney, and MB enjoyed the display on the work of the architects of the building. He likes the clean almost techno style.

Hence our next stop, the Muji store. MB is a total Muji store whore, having bought T-shirts and other gadgets. I actually didn’t like the way the T-shirts looked on me – I prefer a cap sleeve – but I found a cool cosmetics bag. It’s waterproof, perfect for the shower at the gym. I had been using one I got for free from Shiseido, which finally broke after six or seven years. Very good ROI.

After that we walked through Chinatown, which I find immensely fun with MB, and down to South Street Seaport. I felt in the mood to look at the water. The place was packed with tourists, but we were able to find a quiet spot to gaze at the boats and the Brooklyn Bridge.

Later we had a sushi dinner, where we sat next to some schmo talking high-concept ceramics (don’t ask), and then still later saw the midnight showing of The Shining.

I have seen that movie a shitload of times, which I knew but not really till the film started and I realized I had every scene memorized. So it wasn’t as scary as I anticipated, though the final chase scene between Jack and Danny is still pretty heart-thumping.

I had a good time. Everyone kept laughing in anticipation: “Don’t worry about the hotel! Nothing will happen there! You’ll be fine!” The audience also kept cracking up at Jack Nicholson’s expressions and reactions. He really was totally over the top in the movie. I can sort of see why Stephen King hated this version.

Sunday
Another late afternoon departure. In the morning for me: fun reading, surfing the net, writing, schoolwork.

Our first stop this time was Home Depot. It’s almost air conditioner season. Right now the weather is lovely so our apartment has been comfortable with the windows open (though that lets in at least one mosquito a night, which always ingores MB and goes straight for my face), but it’ll be summer-in-the-smelly-city hot soon enough. We’re thinking about getting a portable unit, which would be easier to put away in the off season. MB’s gonna do some more research.

Took another long walk, this time out to Chelsea Piers. Really I wanted to go to the actualy piers, but I got mixed up about where they were. On our way back we hit Chelsea Market, but it was already closed.

On our way home, we stopped at Whole Foods and got some stuff for dinner. MB made grilled, open-faced mozzarella, tomato, and prosciutto sandwiches on baguettes, with a side of tomato soup and corn on the cob. This morning I had some leftover bread, which he had also toasted with butter, for breakfast, with cheese and jam. Yum!

Last night we thought about going to see the new Indiana Jones, but I got on a cleaning kick. MB usually cleans the place, but he boy-cleans: sweeps up the dust and that’s it. Last night I swept the kitchen, which is also the front part of the apartment, and wiped the floors too. Makes a huge difference.

Monday
This morning I finished The Amber Spyglass, the third in the Golden Compass trilogy. What good books! Really imaginative and complex. Next up is Kitchen Confidential.

Now time for some writing.

Work
Not being able to blog at work is going to take some getting used to, though I’ve still been surfing. While before my office was tucked away, now I’m in a main traffic pattern.

It was a good first week, though quiet. Tuesday my boss and I met, and he gave me several projects, a couple of which were sort of administrative – compiling a monthly report and creating an extensive database of all the members of the organization – but I don’t care. If they want to pay me manager-level bucks for work I did as a secretary, bring it on!

But I’m sure it’s temporary. Another project I have is developing a portal for all 700 people in my department all over the world. There’s a team already developing the technical part of it; my role is the content.

I talked to the head of that team, and I can tell we are already on disparate paths. My boss wants it to be a social tool as well as a portal/document management system, and the head of the technical team sees it as only the latter. Oh boy. I think developing some goals might be helpful, which should have been done at the onest but oh well. I’ll tackle that next week.

Everyone seems pretty nice so far. I had lunch with a coworker on Thursday. At first I was dreading it because he seemed so eager-beaver about it, but it turned out to be very casual. That same day, around 5:40, as I was getting ready to leave, this woman totally ambused me in my office. She works on this diversity task force and was telling me all about it, which is fine, but it was after hours and my phone was buzzing, and I knew it was MB waiting for me.

Then yesterday she sent me a message titled, “URGENT response needed.” I HATE when people do that, unless it’s like the fifth message they’ve sent me and it’s really urgent. She asked if I could represent the department at this Asian American business function next Wednesday.

Seemed weird. Why was she asking me? Cuz I’m Asian? It’s not because I could represent the department properly since I’ve been there like five days.

Luckily I have class on Wednesdays so I can’t go, but I still felt this pressure that I wouldn’t be considered a “team player” if I said no. Normally I wouldn’t care, but it’s my first week, and want to make a good impression. But I stood my ground and said I couldn’t go since I had class. Her response was gracious, but the whole thing was weird.

More importantly, my boss is super nice. Straightforward, calm. Everyone keeps making little comments about how great he is. Cool.

School
My web design class has been a challenge. On Monday I had the worst time. We were playing with Photoshop and Dreamweaver, which don’t seem very intuitive to me. Plus I was really tired from my first day at the new job – I wasn’t busy, like I said, but I was anxious and hadn’t slept well – so I kept drifting off, would miss something the teacher did, and be totally lost.

Then on top of everything, my computer crashed and I wasn’t able to get to the images we had downloaded at the beginning of class, and ended up missing the last three examples. I felt really crummy and frustrated, especially since even the dumbasses in class seemed to be getting what the teacher was doing.

Wednesday I came prepared. I brought a USB key with the images from last class, so I wouldn’t have to worry about a long download, and also could keep putting stuff on there if the computer crashed (the school computers get wiped clean every time you shut down).

And I watched the teacher like a hawk. I kept my eye on every move he made (like Sting), and a few he didn’t say but did. I guess he knows it so well, he sometimes forgets to verbalize certain steps. And I spoke up immediately when something wasn’t working, which was only twice, thank goodness.

And I got it! We did rollover effects with some animation. The woman to my right and I were about on the same level, ie, getting maybe 80% of what was going on, and helping each other on the 20%. The woman to my left, who got stuff last time, wasn’t getting stuff this time around, for some reason. I was happy that I could help her on a couple of things.

Then there was this woman who did absolutely nothing. Last time she seemed pretty invested, but this time she just sat there and watched. I know she’s auditing the class, but still.

Our homework assignment was to finish adding rollover effects with animation to an image we started in class. I was able to do the first one, but was worried that I’d totally forget how to replicate it. So I went to school yesterday afternoon, prepared to be there for hours, but it actually took me less than two. Yay! I am the Photoshop queen!

Not really. But I was glad to have been able to do it.

Life
MB and I managed to go out once this week, aside from meals. We saw Prince Caspian on Tuesday. It was good, though the beginning was pretty boring to me.

We’ve also been watching downloads of Anthony Bourdain and Metalocalypse, which is pretty hilarious and which I have a hard time spelling. Wednesday night he cooked dinner, trout with corn on the cob. It was delish.

Yesterday morning I woke up with a sort of cold. Wtf? I just had one! This one hit me in the middle of the night, my throat suddenly very itchy and phlegmy. I felt vaguely crappy all day, and last night felt sort of bad. My stomach was upset, but that might have been from the herbal Chinese medicine I took to stop the throat irritation. I think I was only supposed to take one at a time, but misread the directions (in Chinese no less!) and took three. Oops.

This morning I feel somewhat better. It helped that I slept about nine hours. My throat is still bothering me, but otherwise I feel okay.

Last night we thought about going to see Indiana Jones, but I felt too crummy.

This morning has been very productive. I’ve done laundry, read my book – still The Amber Spyglass – properly checked my blogroll, and have updated in here. Although I finished my homework assignment already, I still have several chapters to read in my web design book.

Three day weekend, woohoo! I sort of keep forgetting. I think we’re going to try to go to Coney Island, as well as this Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, though the rest of New York might have the same idea.

Tonight there is a midnight showing of The Shining at the theatre near us. I. . .can’t. . .wait.

My boss isn’t in till tomorrow, but I’m glad I came in today.

They told me that my computer would be all set up today, and of course it wasn’t. So that took all morning. I had been told to leave behind my PC and laptop for my other team, but then someone else told me today that I should have brought them over. Arggh! Some things never change.

Luckily I was able to at least run over and get my laptop – and not run into anybody, yay! – so that I could at least check email. Turned out I had a whole bunch from my old job. Of course the moment I leave, all these requests come through. But at least I didn’t have to fulfill the requests, just answer some questions.

It definitely feels weird to be in a new spot, a completely different building in fact. I know where the ladies’ room is at least, having had lots of meetings on this floor, but I’m not sure about the kitchen or copy room. I had the impression the cafeteria here was nicer than the other one, but it’s not. While it’s bigger, the selection is far more limited. Plus the register lady was nasty, and not just to me. I may continue to get my food from the other caf, at least in the morning, which isn’t a big deal since I walk past it from my bus anyway.

As for the weekend, it was a nice one. I had Friday off. I slept in, then headed out around noon for the gym (MB had a lunch meeting). It was good workout – four miles. Afterwards we just hung out, took walks, ate dinner. Watched I’m Not There on DVD. It was interesting but a little confusing at first. Cate Blanchette was amazing as one of the Bob Dylans.

Saturday was SG’s baby shower in DC. I decided to go down just for the day since the hotels were sort of expensive. I was taking a 7 AM train, which meant getting up at 5:30. Yikes! And of course having slept in Friday morning, I wasn’t tired till like almost 2 AM.

But I was okay during the day. On the ride down, I expected to sleep, but felt good and energized with my coffee, iPod, and daydreaming out the window. Got into Union Station around 10:45. I thought I’d have time to walk around, but by the time I grabbed a snack and freshened up, it was time to head over to the restaurant.

I’ve never been to a baby shower. I have just one other friend who has a kid, SB, and she’s Jewish, which means no baby shower. So I was picturing a roomful of mommies and moms-to-be ooing and ahing over every burping blanket and teething ring.

But it wasn’t. It was fun. I think it helped that the room was a mixture of marrieds, singles, and those with or without kids. There was lots of laughing and joking around. One of the games was Forbidden Words: there was a select list of words – baby, onesie, carriage, etc. – that we couldn’t say. Each person was given three safety pins, and every time someone heard someone else say one of the forbidden words, they could take a pin, and whoever had the most at the end won.

I wasn’t paying attention, I have to say. At the end when SG was opening gifts, one of which was a Baby Bjorn, for some reason, I said the name aloud: “Baby Bjorn.” Next thing I knew two people were putting their hands to me. SG said the look on my face was, “Wtf?” Needless to say I didn’t win that game.

I did win the baby animal game though. We were given a list of 20 animals and had to fill in what the baby version was called. Like gosling for goose. Some of them were hard! Did you know a baby hare is called a leveret? I had never heard of such a thing. But I still won: eight out of 20. The prize was a very nice L’Occitane set, hand cream and a really good smelling body lotion. I’ve been using it although I have like three others open.

The food was good too. It was high tea so we had little savory sandwiches, as well as trays of desserts. The scones were out of this world, as was the clotted cream, which I thought was butter, just much softer and a little sweet. The shower was scheduled to end at 2:30, but it was four by the time we left.

SG and I hung out for a bit after dropping off her mom, then picked up her other friend, and we all had dinner together. More laughing and talking.

Caught an 8:30 train back. It was quiet and quick – till we got right outside Newark, that is. We were chugging along when I heard a weird noise, like a bump. Suddenly we stopped and just sat there for I don’t even know how long. Thirty, forty minutes before an announcement finally came on that a “rescue train” was coming from New York and we’d all have to walk up to the first car.

We all assumed that the train had simply broken down. But as we walked, I saw policemen on the tracks, as well as cop cars, a firetruck, and an ambulance. Then I started to realize that we hadn’t just broken down, and what that “bump” was. Yikes.

I can’t even remember what time it was when we finally got on the rescue train, but it was definitely after 2 by the time I got home, two hours late. But MB was still up, that night owl, and we hung out for a bit before finally going to sleep at 3.

Slept in immensely on Sunday. MB even woke up before me, which almost never happens.

He had another lunch meeting, but this time we left together. His meeting was in Times Square so I hung out around Bryant Park till he was done, specifically the International Center of Photography. They had a really good exhibit on Japanese photographers.

When we met up, it was raining again. Boo! So we just grabbed something to eat, got this book I needed for class, then took it easy the rest of the day.

This is probably the last day that I’ll be able to blog from work for a good long while. Although my last job sucked, I could really slack a lot. Now I can’t. I’m better off not doing personal stuff at work anyway.

Wednesday was the first day of my web design class. It was supposed to be Monday, but the teacher had a prior commitment he couldn’t get out of.

I went to the assigned room and no one was there, which was weird because MLS students seem to like to get to places early. I was starting to think I was the only one who signed up and that the class was canceled. But then I checked the teacher’s email again, and saw that it was in a different room that night. Dehr.

There were actually a lot of people signed up, more than 20, and as always there was a know-it-all dumbass. Like when the teacher was showing us how to do a hyperlink, she kept chiming in, “Now you underline it.” No, idiot, as a link it’s automatically underlined. She said it twice! But the teacher was very patient about it.

At first I thought he was a freak. He’s huge with a beard down to here, and lectured in this big booming voice and kept punctuating everything he said with, “Mm-okay?” exactly like that South Park character. But when he wasn’t in lecture mode and was just talking, he was normal, smart, and funny. And patient, which is good.

I thought I knew some basic HTML, but I really don’t. He had us do a survey to assess how much we knew, and I don’t know jack. All I know are how to do links.

I already feel like I’ve learned. For instance I didn’t know there was something called XHTML, a sort of evolvement of HTML 4.1 (though MB says that people don’t really use XHTML but HTML 5.0). And before I didn’t understand the color codes. And I didn’t know that a tool like Dreamweaver makes it pretty easy to design a web page (if that page is any good or not is another story). I’m used to inputting my paltry code by hand.

Yesterday was my last day at my old job. Yippee! Of course I had left a bunch of stuff to the last minute, but I was able to finish most of it pretty quickly (amazing how much time is freed up when you’re not surfing the web). An operational “cheat sheet” for my coworkers, status on a project for another coworker, an overall status report for my old boss, uploading some documents onto our team’s Sharepoint.

Then there was cleaning out my office. There was tons of stuff I didn’t need. Some could be thrown out, and some I lugged over to a common file cabinet down the hall.

Still, I was at the office till almost 8 o’clock. I probably could have finished everything sooner, but my new boss wanted to meet up in the afternoon, which was cool. He seems pretty easy-going so far, saying that if I wasn’t free, we could just meet on Tuesday as we had planned. But since I was going to be in on Monday and he wasn’t, it would be good just to touch base before Tuesday.

That took a good 90 minutes, from 3:30 to 5. He gave me a detailed overview of the organization, which is HUGE, a run down of his projects and where I’d be involved, and preview of some of the things he’s thinking about having me do. (He had an actual list, as opposed to fluffy, flighty, unattainable ideas which was all my old boss had.)

That part of the business is so different from my part, which is all unicorns and leprechauns, ie, not real. That part is how much equipment should we order this quarter, and what contracts are in place for what vendors, and how much money can we save. In marketing sometimes I felt like it was how much money can we spend on the most bullshitty project.

I guess there’s a little contention between that department and marketing. When my new boss was introducing me around, someone asked where I had come from. I told him marketing, and my boss said, “But we accepted her anyway.” I thought it was pretty funny.

And it turns out there are two people in the department whom I worked closely with in the past. In fact I sit right next door to one of them now. Crazy!

Today I have off since my office is being moved. It’s so rainy out, it’ll be hard to get motivated to do anything rather than lounge around.