SHE LIVES!!!!!

I've been neglecting my blog as of late. Actually, I've been off the internet in general for a while, except to check emails. My friends all seemed to send me messages at once, asking if I was okay and so forth. Yes, I'm fine! Thanks for being concerned. :-) I miss you all, esp. those of you in OK, SC, and Latvia, and the various assorted forums I typically haunt. There's a new post on my other blog as well.

It's spring season again and work has been... well, I'm sure I've griped about it here before, so no need to rehash the details. It's just been typical for spring: busy and generally aggravating. A little over a month to go before it officially ends... but I don't foresee anything slowing down until at least the end of June, once all the 4th of July merch goes out. In good news (!!!) we got two new hires who are better than I could have hoped. One was transferred to another plant (read: STOLEN from me), sadly... I really liked the inch-long nail he has stuck in his eyebrow... but the other remained on my crew and is doing a great job. Oh... worth a mention... Boss is still on his erroneous "in lieu of" kick. I am thisclose to correcting him or simply beating myself on the head with Webster's until the pain overrides my irritation.

Speaking of spelling... I recently discovered the online game (Virtual world? Sim? RPG? whatever it's classified under) called Second Life. My sister had tried to tell me about it and get me into it quite some time ago, but I was one of those "Second Life is for people who have no First Life" advocates. Then, thanks to some friends who joined via one of our forums, I decided to pop in on a lark (i.e. was dragged in by the ankles, under protest). The idea was to talk to a particular musician related to the forum who was on SL in support of the new band lineup and forthcoming album. Well... he's been there, but I haven't met him yet... I found a buttload of considerably more interesting things to do, none of which I'm going to go into here... my rant is that most people who use SL also use scripted gestures: short audio clips with accompanying character movements and chat text, usually song lyrics or movie lines.

*cue spelling segue*

I want to know who writes the text part for these things. I know they're made by many, many different people, but I'm astounded by the fact that 99% of them can create a scripted gesture but cannot SPELL. How hard is it to look up a song lyric and copy/paste the desired lyric? It's not just songs, either. I'm talking common words... ones even a Microsoft spellchecker can't screw up... yet 4 out of 5 gestures have misspelled words. And EVERYONE uses them. It drives me bonkers.

Note: I've said before that live chat typos are not only exempt, but expected. I embarrass myself with the level of Typonese ability and fluency I've attained, and I make just as many errors as anyone else does on the fly, mainly because I can't type for squat. However... these pre-made gestures are used in place of live text chat, and therefore annoy the bejeezus out of me.

*end regularly scheduled grammatical rant*

On to other things...
People I meet online often ask me where I live, based simply on a comment from me that there is no Starbucks/McDonalds/anything else nearby, and shopping isn't something I can do around the corner. I like it that way. Granted, sometimes convenience would be nice, like when it's nighttime, the little local general store is closed, and I'm out of X necessity and have to drive 10 miles through the narrows (mountain/cliff road frequented by large hoofed wildlife fender magnets) to an open store. The lack of neon lights and 24/7 chain stores, however, tips the scales.

This past Sunday, Hub and I drove an hour to the city for a culture fix (i.e. breakfast cooked by someone else) and on the way home, we left the city route and took a detour through the mountains. It was an excellent day to enjoy the boonies. We saw a deer grazing in a field surrounded by wild turkeys, including a gobbler in full strut, and a red-tailed hawk watching nearby. How does that compare in any way to a view consisting of taillights, banks, and Funky Chicken Used Car Sales? It doesn't, in my humble opinion. We enjoyed the bucolic drive, emerging near another smaller city just in time to stop for a sushi dinner. Best of both worlds right there, folks. Perfect day.

Nothing much else to talk about... no vacation plans yet, but the beach trip will occur sometime before the next snowfall. (Maybe... June isn't here yet so there's always a chance for snow.) I need some sand between my toes and a fishing pole in hand in the worst kind of way. Heeeere fishy fishy fishy!

That is all.