The office here is like a big maze. I keep getting lost when I try to go to the bathroom or get a cup of coffee.

People have put candy on chairs outside their doors and right now small children in costumes are wandering up and down the halls saying “Trick or Treat” and collecting loot. I think they are having a party in the caff later. Kinda nice idea being able to bring your baby monsters to work.

I must stay away from the candy. So far today I have had a mini twix, a mini three musketeers, a Tootsie pop and a cupcake.

Not too many people are in costume but I did see a full fledged Darth Vador.

Toto, we’re not in London anymore.

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Go here for a fun little test to see if you are right or left brained. It is the silhouette of a woman. If she spins clockwise you use more of your right brain. Anti-clockwise then the left.

Some people on my team said that they were able to make her move the opposite way than what they first saw.

Me, I’m right brained all the way. I can’t get her to switch.

I forwarded the page to Al and he IM’d, “she turns right to left, but more imprtantly, (sic) I can see her nipples.”

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Daylight savings is one week before the US which means this morning when I woke up at 7:30 there was lovely light pouring in the window and not dark, dark, dark. Soon I know it will be dark, dark, dark even in the morning as well as dark, dark, dark by 14:00 but this morning on a gorgeous clear autumn day, I don’t care.

Okay. Enough wasting time on the Internet. Must go pack. Cab is coming at 10:30.

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With my new job, when I fly to Seattle on BA I am able to book World Traveller Plus there (basically slightly better economy) and Club World (business) back to London.

The last trip a couple of months ago was my first time in business class and it was a beautiful, beautiful thing. You get these seats where you can lay flat like a real bed and sleep is possible. You order off of a menu and the food was actually good. They give you wine that they pour from proper wine bottles. I can’t imagine how nice first must be given the level of service you get.

I’m going to Seattle tomorrow for a couple of weeks for a work trip and I just logged on to make sure I had an aisle seat and saw that I was upgraded to Club World for the whole trip. Normally I dread the trip to the US west coast, but in business it is almost a pleasant experiance.

I am a happy girl.

Side note. Since I have moved to the the UK two years ago, I have been back to Seattle four times. Eight years in LA, I made it back twice. It’s a nice benefit for me to be able to go for a work trip to a city I love and see my mates there. The timing also worked out because there is a wedding in Vegas that I will be able to go to now.

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Sometimes I get these grumpy blues where I just want to do nothing except eat chocolate cake.

I’m in one of them now only I don’t have any cake. It dosn’t help that my period just started and I am crampy and bloated and burst into tears at the slightest thing.

Stuart suggested that I come with him to Camden and when I was ho-huming about it, told me to not come if I don’t want to. All very reasonable. I still tried to pick a fight with him over it.

“So, you don’t want me to come.”
“That’s not what I said. I said, don’t come if you feel like you have to.”

He should just realise that he can’t do anything right at the moment except give me a hug and let me cry a little.

I hate when I get like this. Makes me feel weak. And hormonal. And stupid.

I should just go buy some cake and watch something cheerful like Ingmar Bergman films.

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I was quickly eyeballing my comments making sure there wasn’t a real comment stuck in the spam before I deleted them all when for .0008 of a second my heart jumped.

I had a comment from Bill Nighy.

I adore Bill Nighy. I saw him eating at Circus once and luckily I wasn’t drunk so I didn’t go to his table and tell him how much I love him. I am sad to say I haven’t seen him on stage yet. My love is from his performance as the washed up rock star in Love Actually: “Hiya kids. Here is an important message from your Uncle Bill. Don’t buy drugs. Become a pop star, and they give you them for free.” As well as some smaller indie films. (Rent I Capture The Castle today. Is a lovely adaptation of the Dodie Smith novel. Then go read the novel for 101 Dalmations which I remember loving when I was ten. Much better than Walt Disney.)

So an actor I adore has left a comment on my stupid little blog!

I looked closer.

Bill Nighy | wwedivasws@gmail.com | bill-nighy.info | IP: 64.22.107.90

Hi there…Man i love reading your blog, interesting posts ! it was a great Wednesday

It was spam. Bill Nighy spam.

I love Bill but I think this is even odder spam than the Best Cat Litter Boxes.

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Margee sent out a picture of her daughter in her Halloween costume and it blew my mind how tall she has gotten. Margee and I worked together at Yahoo! and she started our saying “Just keep swimming!” from Finding Nemo when we were all ready to lose it and kill someone slow.

E-mailed her back saying hi and she responded asking how I was, then said that she reads the blog each Friday and that it makes her miss me more.

Made me smile and feel sad at the same time.

If I ever were to leave here, there is now a group of people here that I would miss as much as the peeps in the states.

Note to self. Stop making friends.

So today is a shout out to my old Y! mates. Big Hug. (I refuse to yodel.)

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One of the big things that we have done at work is an Insights profile. It’s based on Jungian personality profiling and puts people into four different colours.

Red- Competitive, demanding, determined, strong-willed, purposeful
Yellow- sociable, dynamic, demonstrative, enthusiastic, persuasive
Blue- cautious, precise, deliberate, questioning, formal
Green- caring, encouraging, sharing, patient, relaxed

I am a green/yellow.

My profile details ways to communicate with me, which includes:

Allow me time to talk it over with those who may be affected
Deal with me in an honest and sincere way
Be prepared to negotiate solutions slowly, calmly and quietly
Help me feel at ease

My profile details ways to not communicate with me, which includes:

Patronise or be paternalistic
Exert unnecessary pressure
Act aggressively or reject my ideas without explanation
Create a hostile environment devoid of feelings

We did this profile thingy so we would know- hey what’s his face is a red. I know I need to cut to the chase. What’s his other face is blue. I know that he digs process.

My company has spent a lot of money on this.

It didn’t prevent someone coming over to my desk today and talking to me like garbage, which set me from zero to ballistic on the angry scale, which made the situation worse.

I suppose it’s my fault for being a touchy, feely, whiney crying green.

I think really hate my job.

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Faggoty Ass Faggot wrote an amusing bit on how the American Press would overreact to this unexpected character back-story that you can read here.

I’m hoping that he is wrong and all of that does not come to pass. I haven’t really noticed anything here other than the initial articles saying, “Wow! Who knew? That’s kinda groovy.” Well. Not exactly that. I don’t think anyone in the British Press would say groovy.

A bit in the LA Times that I think is overwhelming in its vanilla lameness called, Seven Clues that ‘Potter’s’ Dumbledore Was Gay manages to redeem itself with the last paragraph:

“No matter how many ‘clues’ I can put down that Dumbledore was gay, no matter how many millions of people have read these books again and again, Rowling surprised even the most die-hard fans with the announcement that Dumbledore was gay. And in the end, the fact that we never would have guessed is what makes Dumbledore being gay so real. So many times I have encountered friends who are gay that I never would have predicted. It has shown me that one’s sexual orientation is not some obvious ‘lifestyle choice,’ it’s a precious facet of our multi-faceted personalities. And in the end whatever the differences between our personalities are, it is time that our world heeds Dumbledore’s advice: ‘Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.’ Today as I write this, I believe that it’s time for our aims to be loyal to what the greatest wizard in the world would have wanted them to be: love.”

Most of my gay friends are out. Darren’s homophobic and conservative parents became huge gay rights supporters after they heard the news. Other friends have had rockier experiences. Scott told me that when he tried to bring up the subject with his mother, she deftly changed the subject and everything was left unsaid.

I know we have a come a long way since Stonewall but there is so much further to go.

My Freshman year in University one of our theatre students was murdered. Tortured. For being gay.

On November 23, 1988, Gordon Church, a 28-year-old a drama student at Southern Utah University, was brutally murdered by Michael Archuleta, 25, and Lance Wood, 19. The murder was one of the most sadistic murders in the history of the state, gay or straight, but only a few people are aware of the torture killing because a judge placed a gag order over the case to shelter a prominent Mormon family in Delta from public humiliation that their son was gay.

I can’t tell you how much that disgusts me. . . the “judge placed a gag order over the case to shelter a prominent Mormon family in Delta from public humiliation that their son was gay.”

We all knew Gordon was gay. We all knew that he was targeted for being gay. I didn’t know until today doing a search for the articles for the links that there was a gag order on the truth getting out.

How I managed to last four years in Utah, I will never know.

A little under ten years later Matthew Shepard was murdered. Tortured. For being gay.

Where am I going with this. Not really sure.

I guess, while I agree with FAF that this revelation should not get the attention of the news cycle that he is afraid it will get. . . I think that one can never underestimate the power of story. Read Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung. . . Stories can change the world. That’s why one of the first people they go after to shut up are the artists.

While I think the Dumbledore back story is interesting and not a big deal to me, I hope that this means that it is interesting and not a big deal to the thousands that have read the books and it is just another step toward the day that when my friend tries to come out to his mother, she won’t cut him off and say, “I don’t want to hear this.” Another step forward to the day when someone won’t be murdered and tortured for being gay.

I supposed they’ll be murdered and tortured for an altogether different reason, but that’s a rant for another day.

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I am working from home today so that I can throw stuff in the slow cooker in a couple of hours as Stuart has asked me to make chili.

My chili is a variation of Fran McCullough’s Bowl of Red in The Low-Carb Cookbook but I add other stuff to it that makes it hurt so good. The problem is I can never really remember my variations so each time it is a little different. It is always good however. I prefer the slow cooker to the stove. It takes longer but it is ultimately much less trouble.

It was a bit of a mistake making my chili for Stuart because he loves it.

I know that sounds strange but he wants me to make it all the time because he loves it and while I like it, it really isn’t any sort of culinary challenge.

But I am making it today for him because it was a special request. It has nothing to do with it being a certain day. . . a milestone that he doesn’t celebrate because he doesn’t like gifts.

Nothing at all to do with him being a year older.

I love you sweetheart.

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