This was originally posted to my blog on Feb. 2002. kayay mentioned French Onion soup in my previous post about cooking onions and I could not resist the urge to dig this story on up. The next post to the old blog was reposted in my lj because that was when we set an oven mitt on fire.

Really, that was just not our week for cooking. XD

Tsaiko's Instructions on how NOT to make French Onion Soup

1. Start at 4:00, having carefully calculated that the recipe should be done between 5:30 and 6:00. Watch as the recipe laughs at your calculations.

2. For starters, you need to use a cookbook with vague instructions such as "cook the onions gently." How the heck do you cook onions gently? I don't know. Or stuff like "turn down the heat" without every telling you how high to turn the heat in the first place. This will confuse you and make you want to hurl said cookbook out a third story window and into a bonfire. Great place to start.

3. Your cookbook should also have strange ingredients that you've never heard of and can't find at the grocery store. What is vegetable stock? I don't know. And how the heck do you get stock from vegetables? Another mystery. Substitute beef stock and hope for the best. It should be noted that I now know how to make my own vegetable stock, or barring that, where to purchase it. For the longest time you could not find any vegetable stock at a regular supermarket in NC. Most likely because it is the land that believes that even vegetables should be cooked with meat.

4. Decide that the measurements given by the cookbook are off. The four large onions we got must have been twice as large as the ones used by the authors because we cut up three and filled our medium saucepan to the brim. Of course, I'm making the assumption the authors attempted this recipe in the first place, which is doubtful all thing considering.

5. How to cook: Start the onions. The cookbook says that it will take about 45-60 minutes to cook into a nice mahogany brown color. It lies. You cook the onions for 60 minutes. Transparent. So you up the heat. Cook for another 60 minutes. Kinda yellowish. Up the heat again. At this point, forget about cooking gently. Violate the damn suckers by nuking them in the microwave if you have to. Just get them done.

6. At this point be sure to send your roommate out to get you dinner, because guess what? Assuming these onions ever turn brown, you still have to simmer them in the broth for another thirty minutes.

7. Eat the dinner your roommate bought. It should be about 7:00 at this time. Your onions should be a very dark yellow but no where near the desired colors of brown or mahogany. Decide they are close enough and dump them into the beef stock. Set beef stock to simmer for thirty minutes.

8. Thirty minutes later, guess what? The beef stock is not simmering. Up the heat and let that sucker BOIL.

9. At 8:00 your soup is ready. Your apartment (or house) should now smell like onions for the next week or so. Your soup should look nothing like what's pictured. Take the whole pot and stick in the fridge.


If you follow these simple instructions, you wind up like me. With a pot of soup that may or may not be edible sitting in your fridge and four hours of your life wasted. And I wonder why I eat out so much...

For skylark97 who asked if I'd really set an oven mitt on fire.

I'm happy to say that the French Onion Soup was not a loss. Very sweet but good with some blue cheese and salt in it. Miome and I decided to toast some bread to go with our soup. We turn the oven on, pop the bread in, and are talking until it's done. It's time for the bread to come out, so my roomie grabs two oven mitts and attempts to take it out. She almost burns a finger, jerks back, and sticks the finger under cold water.

Now here's where things get interesting. When my roomie jerked her hand back she dropped the oven mitt she was holding into the oven and onto the hot coils. So of course it catches on fire. Nice bright orange flames about three inches high. I stare at it for a few seconds in shock, ask if Miome is okay, then promptly ask the stupidest question ever.

Tsaiko: Do you think I should turn the oven off?

Duh! Proof that Tsaiko does not do well in stressful situations. Miome made some affirmative noise then told me to shut the oven. I guess she thought that it would smother the fire. It didn't. Smoke started leaking out of the oven. I turn around and open the drawer. Tongs! We have tongs? Grab the tongs, open the oven, and grab the burning oven mitt. Then I tun to the sink and plunge it into the water. Beat it down for a few seconds to put out all of the fire. Fire iss out, crisis over.

At which point my roomie and I look at each other and promptly fall out laughing.

So now there is a wonderful picture waiting to be developed of me holding the burnt oven mitt triumphantly over the sink with the pair of tongs. When we get it developed I will scan and post this thing. I also swear up and down we are not usually this bad in the kitchen. Really. This is not normal behavior for us.

Now if you excuse me, I have to go burn some chicken nuggets in the microwave ^_^.

I'm going to talk about my family reunion. An event where a large section of my family on my great-grandmother's side gets together an makes me wish we did these kind of things every five years instead of every year. Though I have to admit this year was better than previous years. But they me tell you about my experience.

For starters, you have to realize that the responsibility of holding/organizing the family reunion rotates between the various branches of the family. This year, it was my branch's turn. This meant that I couldn't just show up Sunday, stay the required two hours, and then leave. Oh no. I had to show up Saturday and help them set up. Which basically meant that I would voice an opinion and everyone would ignore what I said in favor of doing it the "right way" (ie, the way they want it). After all, I'm just a child (even though I am not an adult and have been such in the eyes of the American Government for four years now) and my opinion doesn't matter.

Can you feel my pain?

So I went in expecting the worse. Like the incident four years ago, last time my branch ran the thing. The whole group (aka all seven out of twenty three that showed up) spent two hours arguing about decorations. Not who was bringing what. Not even how to best set up the tables or how many chairs we might need. But decorations. My great-aunt and her daughters almost got into a cat fight over the bloody decorations. I just knew that this year was going to be a disaster.

Starts off my great-aunt and two of her daughters have all the decorations done. Don't like them? Too bad. They invited everyone to help. If you didn't show up you lost your right to voice and opinion. It worked and the decorations were cool looking. However, the church hall where we have the thing has installed a white aluminum pole right in the center of the room. Why? To keep the room from sagging. And since my relatives will have fits if we deviate the slightest from how this re-union is done we have to find a way to set the table up exactly like always while taking into account that there is now a pole in the middle of the room. Somehow we managed.

So everything is set up and we leave after only two hours. Thank god. Because my family has started in on the gossip. So and so is out playing golf instead of coming here and helping. So and so isn't here yet I bet she'll claim it was all her idea. That sorta thing.

So I ate dinner with my immediate family and went back to my apartment. I think my Mom is finally realizing that I want to be away from my house. That I don't actually like my extended family all that much. I do not like loud noises. I do not like lots of people I don't know. I am not a touchy-feely-huggy kind of person. My family is. I don't like my family. Period. End of discussion.

So on Sunday the family reunion began. Everyone helping host the thing (ie, my branch of the family) was supposed to to show up at 10:00. I was not about to hang around with my family four five hours. So I showed up at 12:00 with brownies. That way this year when people jokingly asked me "So what did you bring this year?" I could tell them "Brownies" and point to the dessert table. Make fun of my cooking skills, will you? That okay. I only took five brownies home out of the two dozen I made. Someone liked them. So there.

Anyways, I came in late enough to miss the whole screaming fight thing that happens every year between my great-aunt and her daughters. Thank god. A whole crowd had shown up and were talking. And a total of three (3) people were trying to do the work of what should have been twenty. So I jumped in and started helping. I did this for two reasons. One, it prevented me from actually having to mingle with my family. And two, it prevented me from actually having to mingle with my family. Everytime someone tried to get me into a long conversation someone would walk in with a dessert and I would be "forced" to leave them and set up the dessert. It was great. Why didn't I think of this plan years ago?

Of course, there were the usual stupid questions. I graduated in May with a B.S. in Geology. Since I can't find any jobs in the environmental geology field, I've been working for the University as a glorified secretary (aka Administrative Assistant). That's some background. Here's the questions.

So how's archaology going?

For the last fricking time, it's geology! Geology!

I have this niece who's married to this guy who does oil stuff. Maybe you should talk to him?

Oil stuff? Turns out he was once an accountant for a oil company that only has offices in India. No, I'm not interested.

I heard you've gotten a secretarial job. I'm so glad you've decided to settle down with an actual career.

I hate you.

I see your sister has brought her boyfriend. when you going to introduce us to your man? or alternatively So when are you going to settle down and get married?

I don't have a guy. I don't want one. I'm going to grow up to be filthy rich and have many cats and buy sex whenever I want from whoever I want. So take that.

Seriously, when my relatives ask me stuff like that it makes me want to commit ritual suicide with a fork. There's no way I would invite anyone I actually liked to my family reunions. It would be the equivalent of Draco Malfoy inviting Harry Potter to one of his.

Oh come on Potter. You'd have a smashing time at my family reunion. Nevermind that over half my family would love to see you dead, and the other half is insane. You simply love Aunt Greta's crab puffs.

I think not.

Overall, it went okay. We had to set up another table for the food which was a minor crises. We had over 100 people show up which is the largest crowd we've had. Ever. Food was good as always. Stuffed myself silly on dessert. Got to leave early because I helped out so much before and during clean-up. Everyone was impressed that I was helping so much (my mom just sent me this nice tearful email about how proud she was) and I didn't actually have to socailize. Life is good.

Just one last comment about my family reunion. While I know it was a church hall we had it in, I object the the church's use of faith locks in the bathrooms. What are faith locks? When you shut the door you have faith that the door will not open because there is no physical way for you to prevent it while sitting on the toilet three feet from the door. Thank you.

I'm still considering the two offers (thanks Kemmy and Chris for volunterring) to host my pictures for my pitas page. Though according to Utopian Trunks adding a _ to the file name stops fortunecity from blocking the pictures. Might try that before anything else.

Final bragging, talya linked to my pitas page in her blog because I sent an email to VS-fic mentioning Tattered Streamers.

runs around happily chanting "Talya noticed me! Talya noticed me!" I am a genki little fangirl yes I am.

I am in such a good mood.

Correction, I am in an unbeliveably great mood. I have been genki all day long. Of course, this could be due to the fact that I've gotten my first decent night's sleep all week last night. Insomnia and me with no computer in my room to amuse me is a bad thing. But also, it seems like I have not only solved most of my problems this week, but helped out with some other people's problems as well.

Case in point, the today's link. Kuwabara no Miko is an absolutely wonderful yaoi fanfiction writer. If you have never read any of her stuff I suggest you do a search and read her stuff. I would suggest going to her page, but all the links are broken. Which is a damn shame considering she had one of the best Duo/Heero fics of all times. Not to mention of the most believable Duo/Wufei fics I have ever seen. Now I will have to search and find her stuff so I can read it again. Why are some people's works so addictive? It's not fair!

Anyways, KnM was holding the RPG contest. She hadn't advertised it much, and nobody knew about it. After two months, nobody had entered. Well Talya Firedancer was complaining about this on her blog because it was really depressing poor KnM (or becki as Talya calls her). Well this really bothered me since both of them are great writers and even though I don't know either one, I read there blogs enough to be interested in their lives and not want to see them unahppy. They are so good and I am such an otaku ^_^; Besides, they have some nifty wall scrolls as prizes (ooooh wall scrolls). So I wrote KnM a nice email encouraging her and promptly sent the link on to the Vagrant Story ML I'm on.

Guess what? Within 24 hours KnM had eleven entries! Yeah! And she sent me a really nice email. Double Yeah! And Talya mentioned me in her blog. Triple YEAH! Now I don't know if my posting the link to the VS list was responsible, but it couldn't of hurt. So she's happy and will continue the contest. And I feel like I have accomplished something wonderful by halping another person out. It's such a nice warm feeling.

In other news, one of the grad students at NCSU discovered a dinosaur embryo inside of a fossilized egg. It's really rare find because 1) it's the only egg ever found preserved in marine sediments and 2) it's from the East coast where very little dinosaur fossil material exists and 3) it's a complete skeleton.Read the article for more details. Well, I know James Lamb and the graduate students at the University. So I was emailing one of them, and guess what? He said that next time I come over to the paleo lab, James will show me the fossilized egg under the microscope.

Some people get high off drugs. Others anime. Give me dirt, old bones, and a pick any day. Happy! Happy! Happy!

For the last few days I have been dispensing advice like there is no tomorrow. I think that most of my advice has done more good than harm. People keep telling me that I give good advice and that it helps them with their problems. So I'm happy. But what a lot of these people that don't realize that there's a secret to giving out good advice. The secret? Whenever I open my mouth to give advice I keep three things in mind.

It's not my life
Although it's hard, I always try to remember that it's not my life I'm messing with when I dispense advice. It's someone else's. If they take my advice, they have to live with the consequences. Not I. And since I like these people enough to want to help, I'm careful to make sure that i help and not hurt.

I will never know all the facts.
Which means that if someone says my advice won't work, I trust them to know more about the situation than me and don't pressure them. I can't know everything another person knows. Can't feel what they feel. Can't think like they think. All I can do is advise. And if my suggestion are vetoed in favor of something else, I can't let it get to me. Because more than likely there was a reason for them not to take my advice. And I will have to accept that.

If I won't follow my own advice, why the heck do I think I should give it out?
In other words, live by what you preach. Otherwise you have no business preaching it.

Shameless plug time! If you write yaoi for RPG games please consider entering Tattered Streamers. They have lots of catergories and cool prizes if you win. And I think that lots of people should enter. Yeah!

Also, apologies to Katyism for not adding her to my friends list sooner. I thought I had already put you on there. My mistake.

Have you ever had one of those times when you just did not want to be around people? Where everthing anyone said or did or didn't say or didn't do just grated on your nerves? Where even the most basic of human interactions was just more than you could take without hauling off and smacking someone silly? That's the kind of mood I'm in tonight. I am sitting, here, in a computer lab, rather than watching anime because I know that the people there would not just let me watch anime. Oh no. They would require me to speak, to comment, to listen to them. And tonight I just cannot do it. And since I can't do what I want to do, and ask everyone to leave and let me watch anime by myself, I did the next best thing.

I left.

So what am I going to do with the sudden influx of spare time? I'm going to write. But first, I want to get some things off my chest.

First off, I would like to make a public apology to Cneko. I'm sorry about what happened in the channel. I hit a nerve and didn't mean to. What I said was supposed to be a joke, but it didn't come across that way. You can be as ecchi or as innocent as you want. You are a capable adult and I need to learn to keep my mouth shut.

Heck, you can run naked through the streets if you so choose. I won't say anything. Okay you got me, I would say something. But barring you streaking in a public place, I will keep my mouth shut. I'm sorry, it was not my place to say anything. In the future, you can tell me to bugger off if I ever do that again. I woudl tell you this in person or in an email, but I'm a devout coward and don't have the guts to do so. But I might anyway if I don't think you've read this. I can grovel. Really. I'll get down on my knees and beg for forgiveness.

Second of all, I would like to make a public apology to the #AR channel. The channel was neither the time nor the place to get into a yelling match with anyone. I'm sorry. It won't happen again.

I would like to take this time to say a special thank you to Jeram who always makes me feel good about my writing. Thanks. I appreciate it more than you can ever know.

I would also like to thank all the people who have put up with my moods lately *cough**cough*LightHawk*cough**cough*Kemmy*cough**cough*Jag*cough**cough* You guys are great and I often don't say it enough to you. Thanks. Also I want to say THANK YOU MIOME! for putting up with me in all my quirky weirdness. You are great and wonderful and a bunch of other good, nice things I can't think to say at this point. I'm sorry I ditched you at anime, but I will make it up to you later. I promise. And I am really sorry.

Now, I feel better. I'm archiving that entire week of mood swings and angst so I won't have to look at it anymore. Now I am going to write smut or fluff or something non-depressing. I promise to share it with all the important people. Hopefully I will get a lot done. Thanks for hanging in there.


And does anyone know if fortunecities has started blocking all links to images on their servers like geocities does? Because all my pictures on my pitas page are suddenly broken. But Miome's page is still up. Crap.

In the grand tradition of Tsaiko opening her mouth only long enough to exchange feet, I have managed to piss one of my friends off. This was mostly due to the fact that I hit a nerve and didn't realize I had done so until we both were in an on-line yelling match and she dropped off the channel. And yet, I still didn't get it until someone pointed out I was being unreasonable. Only then did I realize that "Why yes, what I said could have been taken as something other than fooling around."

My life was so much easier before I had real friends. It was cold, it was lonely. I hurt like you wouldn't believe. I still carry the scars on my soul from those times. But my life was very simple. I had one goal: make it through school. In order to do that I needed to interact with others. So I learned how to do so. And somewhere along the way I made friends. Good friends. Friends that I'm still talk to and go out with every once in awhile.

These were not really close friends. Oh, I knew them and they thought they knew me. I showed them what they wanted to see. I hid myself behind a facade becaue I needed them. Deep down people are pack animals. Give them an option, and even the most solitary of people will find others to hang out with. So my friends and I came together to form a group of outcasts, friendship born out of mutual need. But deep down I knew they didn't know me.

Because deep down, I was still the Wolf. Born of cold logic and bitter self-hatred, that was who I was for many years. I wanted to change. I wanted to be different. No one was willing to give me the chance. I was an outcast, lowest in the pack, circling others waiting for a chance to belong. The chance came in the form of my highschool friends. And I began to change.

When I got to college, I found people who were as different inside as I was. Some hurting, some fractured, some lonely, some wanting to belong. Suddenly I went from someone who nobody wanted to hang around with, to the pack leader. Why did these people congregate with each other? Because I was there. I did my best to make sure everyone was welcomed. This was my pack and I would be damned if I would let it become what I had seen in highschool.

Eventually, the group split up and reformed, a hundred a thousand times. Schedules changed. Interests waned. People graduated. New people were invited. Groups go through that and I never tried to stop it from evolving But the core ideal I planted remained. All are welcomed.

Most of all, I changed. The Wolf is still apart of me. He/she still reflects his/her birth. Cold logic and bitter self-hatred but time has tempered the sword's edge. There are other's to balance out the Wolf. The Dragon and the Unicorn. But he/she is not my core anymore. I walked through Hell, and with the help of myself, my friends, and my aspects, I made it.

Yet sometimes all those things aren't enough. Sometimes I mistep, say the wrong thing, step outside the boundaries. And when I do the Wolf is there circling, ready to rake his/her claws against my soul. Ready to send me into the small, shivering heap I once was. The Wolf is darkness and hate, logic and a betrayal of self. But he/she is also a part of me, and I will never forget that.

So if I hurt, and don't want to talk about it, please understand that it's just the way I am.

Speaking of computer, let's speak about mine. I sitll don't have one. I almost did, but alas, it didn't work. Saturday evening my roommate Miome (who hosts my GW fics over at Miome's Maxwell House) was working on installing Windows 98 onto what will become my computer. She got it done on Saturday and asked me the all important question. What did I want to name my computer?

Understand I have been tired all weekend long. Saturday (Em, Dan, Cneko, Jag, Miome and I were all supposed to finish an RPG we started playing on Friday. Only I was so tired, that I fell asleep. So Miome took me home and woke me up for dinner and then asked me, while I was still tired, to name my computer. So I named it the first thing that came to my mind.

I called it Tanako.

In retrospect, it would have been better if I named my computer after Cthulu. Or Loki. Certainly naming my computer Loki would have invited less trouble. I can just see the conversation now.

Tsaiko: Hey, I think my computer is possessed by a malevalent Elder God.

Random person: Why do you say that?

Tsaiko: Because it keeps throwing errors, crashes at the worse moments, won't boot half the time, randomly eats programs and/or files, and works perfectly fine when I get someone here to look at it and tell me what's wrong.

Random person: Oh that. That's just Microsoft.

Tsaiko: Like I said, my computer has been possessed by a malevalent Elder God...

But no, I had to go and name my computer Tanako. For those who are going "Who the Heck is Tanako?" I'd advise you reading Ani. For those of you who have read it, feel my pain. Because tanako is the kind of character that get's stuck in your head and makes a pain out of himself. He's done it to me and to the wonderfully talented Ms. Miko, demanding that we do what he wanted when he wanted and pitching a fit when we didn't listen.

So I tried to boot up my computer on Sunday. Threw an error. Tried again. Different error. Yet again. Yet another error. So I went and got Miome to see what the problem was. She assured me it booted just find Saturday. I wandered into her room to play on her computer while she fixed mine.

The first sign that something was wrong was the cry of despair that emanated from my room after about an hour. But I though, "Hey, it's MS. Cries of despair are normal when dealing with it." Then another hour went by and Miome wandered in and started banging her head against the wall. That's when I knew. My computer was down and would not be coming back up that night. So I went and consoled Miome telling her that it was not her fault. Then I wrote stories the old fashioned way. By hand.

So I am still without computer. When will I be able to churn out the fanfics and short stories you all know and love? I don't know. But I will always accept donations in the for of comments to keep me writing.

And money. Money is alwaus good.

I now have kitties! Beautiful torteshell kitties. They are bonded sisters who really needed to be adopted together. One is a long hair named Kira, the other a short hair named Nadia. We got them last Sunday after a whole run around. But they were worth every second of it. Beautiful, wonderful cats. I love them!

I was going to do some social blogging. You know, where you respnd to stuff that others have said in their journal while pimping their sites so that they will link to yours. But by the time I got around to doing it, the things I wanted to comment on have already been archived. Sigh. I am such a procrastinator sometimes.

Though I can link to Maystation by Nangke. They have a link to my pitas page. Someone actually linked to my pitas page. Someone I don't know. Katyism has a link to my pitas page (or she mentioned me because i mentioned her) but I know her in real life. I don't know Nangke. So I have my first official link. I am so happy. And as soon as I get the new layout of my site up, I will be a'linking. Yes, yes I will. And these two will get a link back.

My counter says that I've had over 1000 hits. My webpage has been up for over four years now. My pitas page has been up for about four months. I have gotten more hits on my pitas page then on any of my homepages. Maybe its because I update this thing more. Maybe it's a sign from the almighty internet gods that I should get my but in gear and update my site.

Nah...

Seriously though, the realization that people actually read their stuff is the most wonderful and terrifying feeling an author can have. On the one hand, you know that people are reading your stuff. They are interested enough to live through what your characters are going through as they read the words upon the page or screen. On the other hand, unless they write to you, you have no idea what they are thinking. Do they like it? Do they not? What could you have done better?

Don't get me wrong. I like that people read my stuff. But sometimes the temptation to write for the audience instead of for myself become to great. I want to be liked. I want recognition. Heck, let's be honest, I want money. For me, writing is not the way to get it. I forget that sometimes, forget that the words I put down upon these pages is unltimately not for others. It's for myself. For my characters, for my thoughts, for my feelings, for a way to keep me sane in a world that keeps trying to drive me crazy.

It's easy to forget that. And so tempting. I've seen it happen a hundred, a thousand times. Authors who write a story because it has to be written. The sotry becomes so popular, that they write another. Then another. Then they are writing because they need the recognition, need the money, need their audience to remain their audience. They forget why they started writing in the first place. They forget how to put time and skill into their works. They just... forget. And because of it, they lose the audience they are striving so hard to keep.

I don't think of these people as sell-outs. I understand that they need to make a living. Or for those who write non-professional stuff (aka fanfiction), I can understand that desperate need to belong. To keep the comments coming. I don't think of these people as sell-outs. More like those who have lost there way. They are lost and cold, stumbling in a dark wood without the benefit of light. Maybe they fell off the path of their own accord. Maybe they were led astray by will o' wisps. False ideas or false dreams that disappear once its too late.

Don't get me wrong. I get angry at these people. Not because as a fan I want (nay, demand) high quality writing. I get angry on behalf of the story. The characters. Because they deserve better than what they're getting.

I've wandered off the path. I have been lost in the woods. I am glad that each time my characters and my stories have been a latern in the night, guding me back t the path, to why I write. I write because I must. I write because it is what I do.

I write for me. I hope I always do.

Somehow or another my roommate's keys wound up in my purse. We're still not sure how this happened. I think she put them in there. She thinks I put them in there. We argued. Then I suggested that they somehow fell in my purse. It was a good enough excuse for us to drop the argument without either one of us admitting that they were wrong.

Though personally, I still think she put it in my purse ^_^.

It's funny how people remember stuff like meetings, assigments, birthdays, parties, etc. Or smaller stuff, like the factthat you have to get up early to finish a project before 8:00. I have this internal reminder system. It's great. Most times I don't even need a pocket calender. In fact, I went for three years in college without one. I got my assignments done on time. All my projects done. Always knew when my club meetings were.

I love my reminder system. It works like this: I'll have something that needs to get done. About a day or two (or sometimes an hour depending on how much lead time it thinks I need)I'll hear this little ping! sound in my head. And then I listen for the message. It generally goes something along the lines of "You have a test tommorrow in Business Law. Or something to that effect. I am reminded and all is good.

But it can be annoying too. For instance, if I decide that I need to get up at 6:15 to take a shower instead of at 7:00 (which is what I do when I take a shower at night) this is what happens:

ping! You were getting up early to take a shower.

It's 4:30 in the morning! I don't need to get up this early to take a shower.

Yes, you do. Otherwise you might go back to sleep and be late.

That's why I have the alarm set.

You've slept through your alarm before.

I've never slept through this alarm. You made sure I bought one I couldn't sleep through.

But you might start. better to get you up now then risk it.

Have I mentioned that sometimes I hate you?

Several times.

Sometimes I lend my reminder system out. Especially to my roommate. She is the world's worse for forgetting stuff. Appointments, meetings, classes, where she puts things. So I've gotten in the habit of reminding her when stuff is. Unfortunately, it's not as lenient as it is with me. So often five minutes before she has to be somewhere it will kick in. ping! Tell miome she's got five minutes to get to class. Which inevitably leads to the her making this squeaking sound and running around frantically much to the amusement of my reminder system (sadist that it is).

My little reminder system always makes a ping! sound. Always. I'm not quite sure how it pulls it off. There is only one time when the ping! is not present. When I'm late. Then I get a nice, snarly voice. Full of growls and teeth and annoyance at the fact that I once again have messed up.

Hey dimwit. You do realize that we were supposed to have that paperwork done by 3:00. Check the time lately?

CRAP! It's 4:00. Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap.

You forgot? This paperwork is necessary for us getting a job. And you simply forgot about it? Are doing this deliberately?

Look, I got busy. I didn't remember. Besides, you're suppose to remind me.

I did.

Too late for it to do any good.

If you had done this earlier, instead of waiting till the last minute we wouldn't have this problem, now would we?

There's a big disadvantage to arguing with yourself. You always know exactly what to say to win. Now my roommate has this other reaction to the realization she's late that drives my reminder system batty. Miome decides that she's already so late, that it doesn't matter and she doesn't care.

I can't do this. I don't see how she can do this. I am one of these people that even if it's just for the last five minutes, I will go to a clas if I am late. I am the kind of person that feels guilty if I call in sick to work and I am not about to die. I spend all day thinking about how I should be at work, all the things that I need to get done. I will stare at the clock and go bonkers. My reminder system will drive me nuts, frothing at the mouth about how we'll have to work three times as hard to catch up.

Miome doesn't have this problem. She simply forgets about it and moves on.

...

I don't get it.

But I still think she put her keys in my purse.