It is going to be a very, VERY long week.

My in laws are visiting. In fact, not only are they visiting, but they're sleeping on the floor in the living room, meaning there is no escape. They have been here for less than 20 minutes. We have already had several outbursts of bickering, AMAZING amounts of uneeded, unwanted, and incorrect advice from the FIL, and I have made my excuses and returned to the office, where I will hide for the rest of the week. Within the first five minutes (no joke), I wanted to punch my father in law.

I am admittedly not the most patient person in the universe, but there are VERY few people who can make me want to kill them within the first 20 words of a conversation. My father in law is one of those people. He is an "expert" on everything, and will share his "wisdom" with you no matter how hard you try to avoid him, shut him up, distract him, or flee. Even agreeing with whatever MIND BLOWINGLY trite/wrong/stupid comments he's making only makes him harangue you even more over how you're STILL not using his strategy/advice correctly.

Quantum mechanics? There's a "right" way to do it, and he will expound upon it at great length. Nuclear physics? Mmhm, yup, he's still got an opinion, and ity's still the only possible opinion a right-thinking individual could have. Cooking? Gardening? Sonnets? Obscure artistic forms from the 19th century? Careers? The proper way to drive? Children's names? Feng shui? He has an opinion, it is the only correct opinion ever, and you will have to listen to him hold forth on it until the next opinion forms.

I just got a lecture on the proper way to fill a snake's water dish. I wish I were joking. Truly, I do. It was followed by a lecture on the correct way to put the clamps back on a snake tank. ORLY? Therez a rite wai? Wait, would this right way, perchance, be the ONLY POSSIBLE WAY the clamps could fit on the tank? Would it also bear a close resemblance to EXACTLY WHAT I WAS DOING? OH. FUNNY, THAT. Jesus Christ, I am going to go insane.

This week cannot end fast enough.

Miso Soup, Sticky Heat, Millions of PowerPoints

1. I have finally learned how to make miso soup. It is much simpler than expected, and the ingredient list is not terribly daunting. Bonito flakes, though, are a smelly beast.

2. Jesus H. Christ, the weather. It was awesome for a few days -- in the 80s, not sticky, all that happy jazz -- and now we've got almost DC-like humidity and blazing sun. I got sunburned walking across a parking lot. It's not a long walk.

3. Tutoring is going. There's a lot of prep work for the first students, but then kids of similar ability levels are pretty easy to deal with. The problem is the very high and very low level kids -- they require their own, super-crazy-uber customized lessons, which involves a lot of guessing and a lot of playing with slides and examples.

Also, pet peeve: if your kid has a highly detailed IEP (special ed documentation on how to effectively teach the kid), WHY would you not allow the people tutoring your child to see it? Oh, nevermind, it makes sense: the teachers teach your child, while tutors sit there smiling benignly at your child and not doing anything involving the learning process. Hmm. Actually, that's pretty goddamned stupid. Oh well. I get paid whether or not the parent feels like sharing the information that would give me a shot at preparing a lesson their kid could actually benefit from. Still, slowly but surely I'm getting the sinking suspicion that parents do not actually care if their kids get anything out of tutoring, and just want to brag to their friends that they spent money to get "the best I can find for my baby."

Hah.

I got a giggle. www.howtouseanescalatorindc.com

Particularly enjoying the "DC escalators = politics. Left = move forward. Right = obstruct everything. Middle = nobody likes a centerist, make up your damn mind."

Hehehe...wait.

I read this comic and got a mad fit of the giggles. And then, I realized: not only is it not funny, but it's kind of the story of my life as well as that of many of my college/grad school friends.

On the bright side, I apparently find my/other people's failure to succeed deeply hilarious on some level. On a less bright side, DAMMIT.

Holy crap.

It's HOT. Arizona, according to John, is a bit hotter, but it's still 106 in the shade. And the sun is now really, well, and truly out to kill me. (As are Texan drivers, but compared to NJ they're rank amateurs at vehicular homicide.)

I sort of have a maybe-job with somewhat vague responsibilities. These responsibilities tend to get a giggle out of people. I'm the techie. (Yeah, yeah, it's okay. I laughed, too. And it only gets funnier.) More accurately, I'm the techie-PowerPoint sorceress-wannabe tutor for a startup tutoring company run by the mother of one of Alex's grade school friends. (I told you it got funnier. At least the owner's looking for a real tech.)

However, I'm having fun. It's a great gig (even though I'm being paid in unspecified amounts of stock options that may or may not turn into Confederate paper money in the end.) I'm indoors, my commute is about 15 feet, pants are purely optional, and my opinion is valued.

The last one blew my mind. I'd forgotten how reassuring it is to have people care about what I think, to have people assume I have more than three firing neurons, and to assume that I did not, actually, letter my diploma on cardboard from the back of a cereal box. The owner suggests a project, and lets me run off and do it. She trusts that I am bright enough to figure shit out. Even if it turns out that the stock I'm paid with isn't worth the printing paper, this job is worth it.

The move to TX was, on my end, part of the push to pretend that last year never happened and to salvage my life. This job seems a good start. I'm not teaching yet, but this gig is a solid first step towards no longer being the person who spends 6-12 hours explaining the fine points of how to read a menu to customers who could not outwit a mentally impaired goldfish and the remaining hours in a depressed funk. Some people pay therapists a lot of money for the kind of self-image repair I'm getting for the cost of a couple slides and some basic explanations of how to log on to a website.

It's a good deal. Time to go play with PowerPoint some more.

Exalted or...um...I'll assume success.

So, wedding may have me a bit deranged. (May. It's possible.) So, I am doing NOTHING wedding related today, barring addressing thank yous and mailing them. (10 min, max.) The rest of the day will be spent trying to bump my WoW rep with the Mag'har. I'm shooting for revered by the end of today, and Exalted by Wedding 2.0.

Much healthier use of time. MUCH. Sorry for the whining.

Occam's Razor for Weddings

The general annoyance and bother of the wedding has enabled very quick decisionmaking. Name change? Fuck it, don't feel like discussing any more. I'll take his name. Table arrangements, when half of my Mom's church friends are not on speaking terms with one another? If everyone has a chair, we're good. Scheduling? Cut-and-paste Excel spreadsheet.

It's the perfect marriage (hah.) of Occam's Razor and ennui: will it get the issue out of my face, no matter how temporarily? If yes, I agree.

Advice: don't get married. Elope, and focus a small portion of all this energy/money/time on staying happily married. It's NOT worth it. I can attest to this, I'm not even doing a big wedding.

My dreams have all revolved around the wedding for weeks, now. Not walking down the aisle, or dancing at the reception: I dream about creating table arrangements, maintaining the endless, mind-numbing spreadsheets of wedding data, tying program ribbons, clicking through hundreds of identical photos of linens/place settings/bouquets/cakes, and messing with the printer. My waking time? Wedding or worrying about undone wedding stuff. Alex is finally in the same city, and we're spending our free time folding programs, printing thank you notes, and freaking out about the wedding. Even during those (very.fucking.rare.) free and un-wedding-ed moments, someone invariably calls about the wedding.

The most hilarious part? It's NOT OVER after the wedding is over. We get to do this AGAIN in New Jersey. Slightly less stupid hoopla, since I flat out refused, but same stupid focus on traditions so arcane that the only person who knows how to explain them had to do independent research. It's very interesting to hear about Chinese banquets and how it's absolutely necessary to have yet another wedding celebration, but, seriously? Guys? JUST. COME. TO. THE. FUCKING. ORIGINAL. WEDDING. Kthx.