BALTIMORE!

I'm going to Baltimore! (In October.) I'll be visiting with my brother and his girly-friend for more than a week. I'm going to spend a day or two in Washington DC. I'll tour the Capital building and think it would be fun to play Representative bingo. I won't tour the White House because it requires a group of ten or more to do it for free, and I sure as hell don't know ten people over there.

My brother wants to spend a few days in New York and maybe stand in line to see the Daily Show taped.

Also, there's a comic con in Baltimore which I'm going to hit and probably drag those other two with me to at least one of the two days.

I want to have some authentic Southern BBQ. (Maryland's not that far from the Carolinas, right? There should be some good pulled pork and/or ribs there, right?)

I want to visit Charm City Cakes and take a smell.

The psychiatrist I speak to on a semi-regular basis says I need things to look forward to. Here's a big one.

Okay

For a guy who's going to be losing more than $200 a month starting next month, I'm doing pretty okay. I guess I'm just relieved that I finally know a bit about what's going on.

Strange the way we react to things, no?

Furlough Feels Like a 4-Letter Word

Looks like that 10% pay cut is happening to EVERYONE who works for the state.

Tentative furlough order favors Schwarzenegger
By Andrew McIntosh
amcintosh@sacbee.com
Published: Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009

A Sacramento Superior Court judge has issued a tentative ruling ordering state Controller John Chiang to implement a Schwarzenegger administration plan to furlough state workers two days a month and cut their pay 10 percent.

Judge Patrick Marlette issued the tentative ruling this morning, rejecting arguments by several state workers' unions that the Governor's plan to save $1.3 billion with unpaid time off was illegal and unconstitutional.

Marlette heard oral arguments in the case this morning and is considering making the ruling final.

Marlette's ruling said the state's current budget crisis represented an emergency and the governor's order was " reasonable and necessary under the circumstances."
Jim Zamora, a spokesmen for the Service Employees International Union, Local 1000, said his members were disappointed.

"We've been bargaining continuously with the state for the past week and we hope that we can mitigate this at the bargaining table," Zamora said. "We think we can help the governor achieve his cost savings goals but also cause minimum disruption to the lives of 95,000 state workers that we represent and continue to provide quality public services,"



Furloughs (from DPA’s website www.dpa.ca.gov)

Executive Order S-16-08 calls for a two days per month furlough. In a memo issued January 9, 2009, DPA said we'd post details about the furloughs on our website.

We will continue to update this page as new information becomes available.

Why do I have to take two unpaid days off each month?
The State needs to reduce spending immediately. Otherwise, essential services and public health and safety could be in jeopardy. Closing general government operations two days a month will reduce the State's spending.

Do I get to choose which days I'm off?
The furlough days are the first and third Fridays of each month. You don't get to choose unless you're in one of the positions described below.

When is the first furlough day?
February 6, 2009.

My department will require me to work on the first and third Fridays. How does this affect me?
Beginning in February 2009, if your department requires you to work on the first and third Fridays of the month, you would use a "self-directed" furlough. DPA and the departments consulted to determine what positions can use self-directed furloughs. There are two types of self-directed furloughs:

• For positions that generate revenue, or where services must continue and employees normally must work on holidays: You can choose which two days to take off each month, subject to supervisor approval.
• For posted positions in 24/7 facilities such as prisons and hospitals: You accrue two furlough days per month to be taken when feasible. Furlough days that cannot be used within the same month must be taken within two years following the end of the furlough program. Furlough days will not be cashed out.

Will the furlough days affect my salary?
Your salary range will remain the same. However, you will only be paid for the time you work, not your two furlough days.

Can I use leave credit such as vacation time to avoid taking a furlough day?
No. You can't substitute other leave for your furlough days.

Will the furlough days affect my benefits such as retirement?
Benefits remain the same. The furlough doesn't affect payouts for unused leave, service credit, health, dental, or retirement benefits.

How does the furlough affect alternate work schedules?
This is an example of an issue we're discussing with employee unions as we meet on the furlough's impact. We'll provide information on alternate work weeks and other furlough-related issues based on developments arising from these meetings.

Updated January 16, 2009 at 10:07 AM.

Well, I guess I'll be able to watch more TV, then.

Movie Meme Thing Answers

4. "Alright, yer 'fugees now. Show Syd the 'fugee face. Sad face."
No kids
Syd teaching our heroes to be refugees in Children of Men.

12. "Now do you think it's easy to just gradually take over every professional sport? Let me tell you something, man. Brothers have started figuring out this ice thing. Hope you enjoyed it!"
Guy who met Roger
Kabral explaining how black people are slowly taking over all professional sports in Canadian Bacon.

15. "You make love as you eat, with a great deal of noise and no subtlety!"
Mary's stepmother
Anne to Henry in Anne of the Thousand Days

17. "He slams the door
He stomps his feet
He sends me to bed
With zilch to eat
But my stepdad's not mean
He's just adjusting."
Rainbow Randolph
Sheldon Mopes singing to his audience in Death To Smoochy.

19. "Story goes, these great big rats come scuttling off the slave ships and raped all the little tree monkeys."
Wellington, 1957
The Zoo Keeper on the origins of the rat-monkey in Braindead (although I was introduced to it as Dead Alive).

Nothin' 'Portant

Scattergories meme from here, for now.

Rules:
USE THE 1ST LETTER OF YOUR NAME TO ANSWER EACH OF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS. THEY HAVE TO BE REAL PLACES, NAMES, AND THINGS. NOTHING MADE UP!
TRY TO USE DIFFERENT ANSWERS IF THE PERSON IN FRONT OF YOU HAD THE SAME 1ST INITIAL.
YOU CAN'T USE YOUR NAME FOR THE BOY/GIRL NAME QUESTION.

1. What is your name: ticknart

2. A 4 Letter Word: that

3. A Boys Name: Thomas

4. A Girls Name: Tammy

5. An Occupation: tailor

6. A Color: tan

7. Something you wear: tartan

8. A Beverage: Toddy Coffee

9. A Food: trout

10. Something found in the bathroom: towel

11. A place: Turlock

12. Reason for being late: tired

13. Something you shout: Tarnation!

Movie Meme Thing Hints

The original quotes are over here!

4. No kids

12. Guy who met Roger

13. Hippos and alligators

15. Mary's stepmother

16. Lara's Theme

17. Rainbow Randolph

19. Wellington, 1957

4:50

Wait. It's what time?

Crap.

I'll just remind you that I also, occasionally, along with some other good people, post at What's Distracting Us?, for them what's interested.

Ohrwurm

Have "Space Oddity" stuck in my head and can't shake it. Haven't been able to shake it all day.

You know, I've learned something today: Never let the first song you hear in the morning be "Space Oddity."

Movie Meme Thing

A) Post quotes from favorite movies (originally 15 or 16 or 20 or whatever).

B) People respond in the comments with the movie the quote is from.

C) No cheating with the internets, because we'll all know and you don't want to be shunned as a dirty, dirty cheater right? (Although I don't really care if you cheat. Thems just the rules as pulled from another blog.)

1. "Well you know what? THERE IS NO EASTER BUNNY! OVER THERE, THAT'S JUST A GUY IN A SUIT!!"
AE, Jan 23, Mallrats

2. "Welcome back to the land of the livin'... NOW PICK UP A SHOVEL AND GET DIGGING!"
AE, Jan 25, Army of darkness

3. "Disposing a pre-atomic submarines to persons who don't even leave their full addresses... Good day, Admiral!"
AE, Jan 25, Batman: The Movie

4. "Alright, yer 'fugees now. Show Syd the 'fugee face. Sad face."

5. "Occupational hazard. I see a great many on the course of any given day. Your's just happens to be an exceptional example."
Sue, Jan 23, Gattica

6. "A little? And you a writer? Tsk, tsk, tsk. I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives. You know, at one time I think I secretly wanted to be a writer."
Sue, Jan 23, The Philadelphia Story

7. "Well, what are you doing creeping around a cow shed at two o'clock in the morning? That doesn't sound very wise to me."
AE, Jan 25, Life of Brian

8. "I got no quarrel with 'ow a man prays; there's enough room in 'ell for all of us!"
AE, Jan 23, Paint Your Wagon

9. "'Rocco the rum-runner rubbed out Rico the Rat with his Rosco for robbing his rum-running receipts.'"
AE, Jan 23, Oscar

10. "Sun rises, night falls, sometimes the sky calls. / Is that a song there, and do I belong there?"
AE, Jan 23, The Muppet Movie

11. "Who knows maybe you and he could make love and you could think of me."
AE, Jan 23, The Jerk

12. "Now do you think it's easy to just gradually take over every professional sport? Let me tell you something, man. Brothers have started figuring out this ice thing. Hope you enjoyed it!"

13. "When Igor Stravinsky wrote his ballet, 'The Rite of Spring,' his purpose was, in his own words, 'to express primitive life.'"
SuziFitz Beads, Jan 27, hint: Hippos and alligators, Fantasia

14. "So, what you're saying is that even though you are an almost-paralyzed, multi-phobic personality who is in a constant state of panic, your wife did not leave you, you left her because she... liked Neil Diamond?"
AE, Jan 23, What About Bob?

15. "You make love as you eat, with a great deal of noise and no subtlety!"

16. "Yes, but do you know what it cost? There were children in those days who lived off human flesh. Did you know that?"
SuziFitz Beads, Jan 27, hint: Lara's Theme, Doctor Zhivago

17. "He slams the door
He stomps his feet
He sends me to bed
With zilch to eat
But my stepdad's not mean
He's just adjusting."

18. "Once upon this same earth, beneath this same sun, before you, before the ape and the elephant, before the wolf, the bison and the whale, before the mammoth and the mastodon, in the time of the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs were of two kinds. Some had flat teeth, and fed upon the leaves of trees, and those with sharp teeth, for eating meat, preyed upon the leaf-eaters."
AE, Jan 25, The Land Before Time

19. "Story goes, these great big rats come scuttling off the slave ships and raped all the little tree monkeys."

20. "And where were you twenty years ago? Ten years ago? Where were you when I was new? When I was one of those innocent young maidens you always come to? How dare you! How dare you come to me now, when I am this!"
AE, Jan 25, The Last Unicorn

I'll cross-out the ones that were figured out and write the answerer and the title under it.

On Tuesday, I'll give hints to the ones not answered. On Thursday, I'll give answers to what ever is left.

A Report

While trying to figure out what to write today, I remembered that my mom once told me that when she had a journal (or dairy, depending on how old she was at the time) it was boring; filled with what the weather was like that day.

Today, it's been sprinkling on and off, but it's not too cold, to me.

Bookins

Went for a walk on my lunch hour 'cause I can't really concentrate on reading my book. I like to think that it's 'cause I finished a lot of books last week (four) and am just readed out.

Sort of doubt it, though.

I WAS RIGHT!

Spoilers for Battlestar Galactica!



It's annoying...


...but some people...


...may be pansies...


...and not...


...want to know...


...until they...


...see it.

From Ain't It Cool News:

* He discloses when it was decided that Ellen Tigh would be revealed to be a Cylon. (Remember how everybody thought she was a Cylon when she was miraculously discovered among the fleet? It turns out even the writers didn’t know the real truth at the time.)

And I called it 6 months ago!

It Just Is

Since I can't come up with anything positive, here:

"Flatulent whales caught in the act"

*sigh*

So, remember a couple of months ago when I said that I was going on some antidepressant medication?

Well, let me say that if this is how I feel with the meds working, I must have been in horrible shape before I started taking them.

Can't talk to my doctor about it 'cause she's gone until next week.

Cripes.

Only 4 Hours Vacation

Due to an odd holiday schedule, I will be in Cowtown from Februrary 12th, probably around noonish, through February 16th.

Other than laundry, I have nothing to accomplish.

- - - - -

There is no horse.
The sky is dark, dark, dark.
And the flowers are all dead.

You Can't Win

The boss man was wandering around complaining about the shit smeared booger wrapped piece of crap computer program we use.

At one point he turned to me and said it was my job to come up with a video game based around out experience with this program so the rest of the world will understand what it's like to use it.

Here's what I've come up with:

• Blank field with a wall in the middle of it.
• Your guy is on the left and carries a laser.
• On the right side is an exit.
• Every time you fire your laser a guy, with its own laser, appears on the right side of the screen.
• Your laser can not pierce the wall.
• The bad guy's lasers pass through the wall as if it weren't there.
• The goal is to cross the screen from the left to the exit.

And that's what it's like to use our computer system.

Question

What is a human being supposed to feel like, anyway?

Not a Rumor

Well, it seems that even if it's illegal for the Governator to force us to take two unpaid days off each month, the two in February are going to happen on the 6th and the 20th. (If the one happens of the 20th, I'm heading up to Cowtown for a four day weekend.) That means all state agencies will be closed on those two days. Hope no one was planning on hitting the DMV then.

Cheers!

'Nother Rumor

Well, according to my supervisor's friend, who works in the finance department for the state (or something like that), that we will be losing 10% of our pay starting next month and the suggested days will be the first and third Fridays of each month for every state agency.

At least there would be two three day weekends each month.

Rumor

Rumor has it that we aren't getting a 10% pay cut starting next month. I sure hope the rumor's right.

Fallin' Apart

My comforter is falling apart. In the late night/early morning hours I woke up to find my arm twisted up on the inside of my comforter (like between the fluff innards and the flannel skin). I nearly stripped the bed when I tried to slide out.

I think I'm going to have to buy a new one this weekend. So much for hoping it would last through the winter months.

"The hammer is my penis."

I got my copy of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog yesterday.

I broke it open. I watched it. I watched the making of. I watched the Evil League of Evil audition tapes. And I watched the movie again, but with the musical commentary.

So very sweet.

EXECUTIVE ORDER S-16-08

What's in a Name?

I don't name my cars. I've always called them "car" or "van" or by the model, when I drove a Pinto.

My new car named itself when its license plate came.

Its name is George Herbert Walker.

Yes, I am driving a Republican car.

Fog

I think my brain's fogging up. I've been having a hard time explaining myself to... well, anyone. I have thoughts and want to respond, but every time I start I lose the words. Which sucks.

It'll hopefully clear up soon.

PS I do think about that elitism thing, but that wouldn't stop me from enjoying an adaptation, if it's good.

GAHH!

GICS says to someone at the front counter, "I'm not sure what it's fur, but I'll do my best to find out what it's fur, fur you."

TMSV says on the phone, "It's an illectronic case. I can't pull out a paper file to see everything because it's illectric."