I got my motorcycle license. Finally. I was required to actually show up in person to the DMV to renew my class C license, so I took the motorcycle written test while I was there. Voila. I can now legally ride a motorcyle, even though I've forgotten how.

The girl who lives here doesn't live here anymore. She left on Thursday. When I got home from work, she was gone and I was sad. Her room echos when it's empty. Kathy needs to move in fast, so the room doesn't echo anymore.

Today I get to go to the colo and do some stuff. Yay! Work on a Saturday!

So, a few months ago, I get pulled over by a cop on the freeway because my registration year tag is out of date. Turns out someone stole it. The cop give me a fixit ticket. I make an appointment at the DMV, not wanting to wait there forever to get a new sticker. The DMV promptly forgets my appointment, and I'm left waiting for an hour anyway. I get the sticker. I put it on my car. I use a razorblade to scratch into it so it won't get stolen again. I then keep the fixit ticket in my purse for 2 months so that the minute I see a police officer on foot near me and my car, I can get this signed off. The only time I run into a situation where me, a cop, and my car are in close proximity, it turns out to be a loaner car because my real car is in the shop. Time passes. Last night I come home to a citation in the mail because I didn't get my fixit ticket turned in. Today I go to the Mission Police Station, determined to get an officer to sign off my ticket. The inside of the station is nothing like I imagined, but I do find several officers behind glass. I tell them I have a fixit ticket and ask one of them to help me. One of them comes over, reads the ticket to me, "mutilated due to theft?" and I reply "yes, my tag was stolen. I had to get it replaced." The officer asks if I have it here. "It's on my car, parked right outside." He signs off on the ticket, not requiring any paperwork from the DMV, not stepping out of his bulletproof cage to see my car. Now I just need to send it in with $10, and I think I'm okay. However, the citation is worded extremely vaguely, probably due to the fact that it look like they send out the same citation weather you have a fixit ticket, a parking ticket, a moving violation, etc. The thing that gets me is that I have to spend my time standing in line at the DMV, tracking down police officers, and spending money because someone stole my tag. I didn't actually do anything wrong! Gar.

My hair is purple. It's dark, and Kathy says I look like a goth. I'm not a goth. I never was a goth, not even when all my friends were goths and it was cool to be a goth.

By midnight the day was shaping up to be pretty much a drag. I woke up later than I wanted to. I didn't get the breakfast I wanted. I spent 11 hours at the data center, which is in a vast wasteland of suburbia. And then I went to the bar down the street with Kathy to get a drink before I go to sleep to wake up to do it all again tomorrow. (Yes tomorrow is Saturday; yes I have a 6 hour window to do a bunch of work.) But then, while we were at the bar, sitting down, drinking, talking, hanging out and enjoying our evening, who should walk up to the bar right next to us and get a drink? Mark Eitzel. I tried not to stare too much. I know he hangs out at bars in the mission, and if I'd ever wanted to track him down, I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult. But to just look up and see him ordering a beer (a bad bad beer), well, the day wasn't too exciting, but that was definately the topper.

It wasn't that I don't expect things to go wrong, after all, this is just about the time to start expecting failures. It's that I don't expect things to go so wrong, or for more than one thing to wrong in a day. I don't expect that no one will be around from the department that I need to assist me. I don't expect that key pieces of the solution will be unavailable, having been recently moved without my knowledge. All that said, I think that building the solution went well, and I was in bed by 4 am.

The girl who lives here came home late last night, in the middle of the second crisis. I find it annoying to be interrupted mid-crisis, but her story was so amusing that I forgave her. She had been dancing in a caberet unchoreographednumbers with a live band. The band had the samba dancers right up front in the center. For one number, the girl who live here and another girl went up without their third dancer. They were improvising, and did a butt to butt samba shimmy. Then the sequin of one girl's costume got stuck in the fishnet tight of the other girl's costume. They had to shimmy off stage butt to butt. The audience loved it.

Saturday was a long day. Most of my department clocked in about 15 - 16 hours, but I know that Tris did more. And what did we learn? Machines rooms are not for people, and there is such a thing as too many Krispy Kreme donuts. Oh, and also that 9' racks are very tall. They aren't just 2' taller than 7' racks. The difference is a ladder. As short as I am, I can reach the top of a 7' rack to patch in a cable. For a 9' rack, i need a ladder. And all everyone at work says is aren't we glad that it's done. The thing is though, the work isn't done. There is so much more work to do.

Now that it's July, people are looking for housing for August. I've gotten a number of phone calls and emails, and it looks like I've got a bunch of people coming by tomorrow. The weirdest thing is that one of them is a Simon's Rock alum, and I didn't post anything to our alumni mailing list. Go craigslist!