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My desk at work is in front of the door. To outside. And, in case you have been living under a tree for the past week, the Eastern United States has had a ridiculous cold freeze. And for us in Atlanta, that is 12 degrees. (I know, Yankees, you power through 12 degree weather every day and all of your desks are outside in the snow and you go to the beach in this weather, but to us, that is insanely cold.) I could see my breath all day, while sitting at my
desk and if you follow me on Twitter, you know Chico and I have been huddled in front of the heater like nobody’s business. Like, we are lucky we haven’t burst into flames close to the heater.
Everyone at my company smokes. So the door is opening constantly and blowing really cold air on me. And the lobby’s heater doesn’t work very well, so it’s cold without the door opening. Also, everyone from upstairs has to walk through the lobby to come downstairs or to go to the main conference room.
Why am I telling you this? I am telling you because every time someone walks through the lobby he or she says, “Brr…It’s cold in here,” and then he or she smiles at me. Some of those people walk through the lobby like 30 times a day. So, from one person, I get to hear about how cold it is in the office 30 times a day. Multiple that by 62 and that is way too many cold comments.
Hey, you, yeah, the one that just smiled at me and fake shivered…I know it’s really cold in here! I knew it the first 5 times you told me today! And, I’m sitting in the cold. Like, all day. I can’t feel my mouth!! Keep it to yourself.
And that is how I feel about that. They are also talking about the cold with each other. Constantly. It reminds me of the voice bubbles on the sims. Constantly talking about the same things.
The phrase of the weekend was definitely Bubble Up. Which, is weird and not important and this post is almost 2 days late. Maybe, because I thought I would have time last night or this morning and then I ended up having a really intense work day and barely had time to breathe. The kind of day where you think about catching your desk on fire, just to be mean. When I had shifts like that when I was in the restaurant biz I would sit out back and catch leaves on fire and little branches and stuff. Or, I just wouldn’t talk to anyone for like 5 hours. Because I have no people skills. And I like fire when I get mad.
Bubble Up. Dude…have you played the new Mario for Wii? It’s awesome. What’s so awesome about it? Multi player is on the same screen. So, if you’re an asshole (like me) you can pick up your fellow players and throw them at the bad guys like weapons. (Justin keeps telling me you aren’t really using them as weapons because it does nothing to the bad guy and it only hurts the other player) You can throw them off of ledges and stuff too. Which I think is great. But, Justin and Ray (his roomie) kind of banned me from playing with them.
There is this other thing where you can get into a bubble if you are playing multi player, like if you are about to die, and then just float along while the other person keeps going. So, we were yelling “Bubble Up!!” at each other all weekend. 
(Well, they were yelling it all weekend, I went to bed at 8:30 on Friday night and they played without me Oh, I will seek my revenge, just you wait…muahahahahahahaha!!!!).
Note for the FCC: No, Nintendo did not pay me to say this or give me anything free and anything like that. So…you can put your fine somewhere inappropriate.
So, on Saturday I went to WordCamp Atlanta. I got an email last week asking for volunteers and telling me I would be able to attend for free and, of course, loving “nerd conferences” as my friend Dave referred to it, I signed up. (Dave also ended up being a speaker and unbeknownst to me, is a wordpress, social media guru)
I was a speaker Assistant/Runner, which really meant I got to go to the conference for free and just hang around because none of the speakers I was “assisting” even knew they had an assistant and none of them needed anything. So, I got to listen to some awesome presentations.
Dude, I didn’t even know it’s possible to use WordPress for anything but a blog. I knew of the possibilities of making a blog as awesomely tricked out, or as simple as you want. And, if I had thought about it, it makes sense that someone could use the platform to create anything, but I have never thought about it. To be frank, all the developer presentations were way over my head. I took notes tho…and pretended to understand. I secretly hope one day I will be able to do some of that stuff. I guess it’s not a secret. Forget that secretly stuff.
I did do a good bit of knitting. Since this blog is called Knit in Public, I took a picture of the knitting. Just so you guys remember that I do knit. And I do it in public. A lot. Like last night. At a restaurant. And people were making fun of me. And then I stabbed him with my knitting needle.
I made new friends!! Here is one, Felicia. I also met @iAlbert and @swfrost in person. And, some people knew me from this blog (which was probably one of the most amazing experiences of my life)!!
All in all, it was awesome and I met tons of great people and learned a lot. I can’t wait to go to my next “nerd conference.” I heard South by Southwest is where it’s at (I don’t condone using horrible grammar such as this in any way).
Dude, did you know people write multiple copies of blog posts…insane waste of time in my opinion.
Later on Saturday, I went to Cafe Istanbul and watched a belly dancer dance and other people smoke tobacco out of a hookah. And, I used to opportunity to take the picture for the new header. With my new awesometastic camera Justin got me for Christmas. Weekend. Greatness. O. Yeah.
Yesterday, a coworker, Jer, was belittling me and cleaning out under my desk. It’s pretty much a space heater graveyard under there. It’s freezing in my area and I have burnt out two space heaters and am working on my third. It’s not my fault I can see my cold breath in there. I could DIE by catching myself on fire because I sit so close to the space heater without a space heater.
So, Jer is rooting around under there, yanking my mini Christmas tree in its holder out of it’s hiding space and telling me I’m messy (eye roll).
Jer: Why do you have so many space heaters under here?!
Me: Oh…those don’t work.
Jer: Then why are they still here?
Me: I’m hoarding them. And they don’t work.
Jer: None of these work? Are you sure?
Me: Serious stare.
Jer: So, I’m throwing these away. (And he yanks one out and throws it across the room into a box he recently dedicated as a trash box)
Jer: Hey! Hand me the scissors! (He says this while trying to pull the cord for the other space heater out from behind the desk. He yanked the cord a couple of times and apparently came to the conclusion that the cord was stuck somewhere)
Me: I am pretty sure that’s plugged in.
Jer: No it’s not (he looks at me like I’m stupid. It’s my desk area. I would have trusted me concerning the plugged-in-ness of items)
Me: Please check first, you don’t want to electricute yourself.
Jer: (He has obtained scissors) It’s not plugged in! (Proceeds to cut the cord with the metal scissors. As I said, the heater was plugged in and sparks flew.)
Jer: ….I guess you were right.
Thankfully, Jer did not electricute himself, but I got singed a little bit from a flying spark. It was all very exciting.
There are gnomes. Living under my porch. I know, you are rolling your eyes thinking, that crazy girl who knits in public thinks she has gnomes. Correction: I don’t think I have gnomes, I know I have gnomes.
At first, I thought it was the cats. Or their cat friends running around on the porch. THEN, one night, I heard noises (like loud foot steps) on the porch and the kitties were 
inside sleeping on the couch and I thought some weirdo must be doing a jig in front of my house. I ran to the window and nary a kitty or jig dancing weirdo.
Months went by and the noises continued. Justin thought I was being silly until he heard it one night and thought someone had come to the door. I knew it was the gnomes and after that, he knew it too.
For Christmas, my aunt gave me a lawn gnome, a scare-gnome if you will. He is sitting at the end of my front steps to encourage the real gnomes to stay away. So far, it’s working ok. The gnomes have made a couple of appearances, but not as many as usual. I will keep you all posted on the progress of the scare-gnome vs the real gnomes.
(I know that there aren’t really evil, blood thirsty gnomes waiting to kill me. But, I did really put a scare-gnome at the end of the steps [he has an owl on his shoulder] and I do blame the unidentified porch noises on the gnomes.)
There have been a bajillion blog posts on Avatar and I wasn’t going to write one, but I can’t get away from this damn movie. I saw it. In 3-D. Did you know it’s 3 HOURS LONG?!!…3 HOURS!!! I cannot sit still for that long. I lose interst at one hour and just power through for the last 30 minutes of most movies. And I thought I was going to pee myself, but this is supposed to be the most amazing movie ever (take that Citizen Kane) and I didn’t want to miss anything.
In all honesty, I wouldn’t have really missed anything. There would have just been more flying around and yelling and dialogue to make Al Gore really happy. My personal feeling about Avatar is this: someone 
(‘cough’…James Cameron) totally ripped off Ferngully. Which, my parents didn’t like me watching because they used ungodly powers and talked about saving the environment. Same with Rats of NIMH minus the environment stuff. And Captain Planet and Power Rangers. Dude, when I was in 4th grade, if you weren’t watching Power Rangers, you were a loser. I never had a chance.
In conclusion, if you enjoyed Ferngully, you will probably like Avatar because they are almost the same thing. Even down to the special tree. And make sure you see it in 3-D because if you don’t, I suspect you will get bored after the first hour and a half and with 3-D you will still have something pretty to look at.
New Year’s Eve was a blast! I spent it with good friends and watched other people get wasted and break champagne glasses and have the same conversation for 3 hours…what’s not to love?
Shift.org posted a photography project a few days ago: take a photo every hour New Year’s Eve through New Year’s Day. Since Justin got me an awesome camera for Christmas, I took tons of pictures and annoyed everyone all night. It was great! Here they are…
And that, friends, was my New Year celebration in a nutshell. I have many more pics, but I can’t put them all up (rules). I hope you have a great weekend!
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