my desktop, today

When I'm at home, but not working (and sometimes, when I am working), my desktop looks like it does in the screenshot above. As you can see, Outlook is open, as are *three* simultaneous chat windows. I believe I was conferencing with Peter and Allon, and chatting with Vienna and Dardy (on and off). You can see all the yellow smileys in Vienna's window. She's the person I have the highest smiley-to-word ratio with, and she even used a Yahoo! specific graphic smiley today -- just for me --, even though she doesn't have graphic smileys turned on. I feel special. :) Man. I'm a child of the electronic world. Can I still write that, even though I'm no longer a child? How did I get to be a "young adult," anyway? I still feel like I did years ago. The only difference is... well, a mortgage, and a few more aches and pains. :) The photo behind the windows is from Bora Bora. It's my background now; i might as well get to see that hue of luminous blue somewhere. It certainly ain't going to come from the window in my study at this time of year in San Francisco.

Check Amabelle out to the left. Isn't that hilarious? Dardy brought a jello-shot from his latest "weak" batch, in preparation for his housewarming party tomorrow. Rita drove (in her brand new car!), with Amabelle to pick me up at around 7pm, and we headed down to Lucy's Tea House to meet up with Dardy and Bill. It was funny... Dardy told Amabelle that he was preempting the concert at my place with his housewarming (re: our meeting for the first time), but Amabelle preempted his preemption with this gathering tonight! :)

Anyway, so the three SF'ers arrived on time and sat down first. After a few minutes, I saw Dardy pointing at me and smiling (with cigarette in-hand), from outside of Lucy's. He looked just like he does in his web site. :) Crap. Text isn't wrapping around the Amabelle photo very nicely. I forgot to size it vertically divisible by 18 pixels. Anyway... it was good to FINALLY meet him, although I would have liked to have had a chance to chat with him more. I noticed that he was wearing a street-styled yuppie vest, so he can't make fun of me anymore for my Northface vest. :) Bill and I bored the other three by chatting around why transformers buzz (speculating about how a de-buzzing circuit works). We were also chatting for awhile about spam and the futility of fighting it. Dardy looked confused and tried to participate (getting him blank stares), until he realized (a few minutes into the conversation) that we weren't talking about snail mail. hahahaa!

We ended up playing Taboo for a loooong time, and finally left at around 10:15 to head back up to the city, just missing Adam, who was just returning from San Francisco. Dardy was ... as expected! No surprises. I think this is because he communicates so freely on his web page. "Meeting" him online was like a kick-start to our comfort with each other. Absent from our conversation was that usual blathering about where you live, what you do, etc. Wow. Constructed that last sentence was, like Yoda would.

i didn't rip this page out or the menu. i swear.	the boys, on one side
rita and amabelle	something must have been really funny. ha ha ha!
in the back seat of rita's car	in my study!

What is wrong with me? I was ready to sleep hours ago, but somehow 3:34am has reared its ugly head and bitten me in the ass. I need to force myself to get to bed at a reasonable time.

Hmmm... somehow my kitties managed to fill up their litter box's waste reservoir in the last three days. They're so small! How is it possible that they produce so much waste?!

More photos:

[dardy]
[amabelle] (passworded)