the deep moans round with many voices

Dear Internet,

I downloaded Office 2013, which makes a big fucking deal of how it's always available on all devices and yay OneDrive and what the fuck, I don't care, just give me MS Word ON MY OWN COMPUTER, YOU ASSHOLE PROGRAMMERS!

By which I mean, I have downloaded this thing TWICE and I cannot find hide nor hair of MS Word on my computer, no matter what search terms I use.

Which would seem to defeat the purpose of purchasing and downloading a program suite that explicitly claims to contain MS Word.

So. Anybody out there have any tips for FINDING Word and then for CREATING A GODDAMN DESKTOP ICON SO I DON'T LOSE IT AGAIN?!?!?!

Fucking Microsoft.

And their chat client is continually busy. I have refreshed it three times now and it keeps timing out and telling me to try again later.

Assholes.

...

...

AIPHGPAREIUHP98Q36YQYTPSREIUHEPHIO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1. I have two more Dreamwidth invite codes. Leave a comment if you want one!

2. On Tuesday my LJ was friended by not one, not two, but four Russian spambots. I reported them and they have since been deleted. The spammers seem to be trying a new strategy where they create the account, post four to seven entries (in Cyrillic), wait three or four months, and then friend a couple hundred people.

You can still tell they're fishy, though, because there is no pattern to their friends lists, and they have no community affiliations, no real interests, and no people who have friended them back.

*makes face* I hate spam. I used to have my email publicly visible on my LJ profile, but after the first wave of these jerks found my journal, I started getting abominable quantities of email spam, so I had to hide my address. This annoys me, because I dislike feeling as though I have to hide myself any more than I already do by using different parts of my name to compartmentalize my fannish activities from the rest of my life.

3. Thursday and Friday are for apartment hunting. God. I am going to have to cold call people all day long, and trek around town until my feet are ready to fall off. I mind the phone calls more.

I hate calling people who aren't friends or family. I can fake self-possession reasonably well during the actual call, but I am always jittery as hell and I forget to ask for useful information like, oh, say, the name of the person I'm talking to. Which is kind of awkward when it's a business call and you need to call back a week later to report an issue and they ask you who you spoke to the first time, and you're stuck saying things like, "Um... a man? Kind of a high tenor? He speaks fast, no particular accent, maybe a little nasal? Probably not too old..." and the person on the other end of the line sighs and you know she's thinking, 'My god, what an idiot.'

Or maybe that's just me. But anyway, I hate making business calls. Especially when the business is personal instead of just stuff I'm doing for the store.

4. PM is going camping this weekend, to a private music festival thing one of her friends holds every spring up at his cabin. This means I will (nominally) be in charge at work, and because PM got rid of the pager of doom, everyone is supposed to call my cell phone if there's an emergency.

I think I may skip church, just to be sure I don't accidentally repeat the 'forgetting to turn the ringer back on' incident from this past Sunday. *headdesk*

5. I have not written anything for a week now. I meant to, really I did -- I have "Secrets" ch. 14 open on my computer and everything! -- but I have fallen down the rabbit hole into Star Trek fanfiction and I think it will take another week to climb back out into something approximating functionality. *sigh* I do like the rush of a new fandom (I have only dabbled in various Star Treks hitherto), but the glee is somewhat dampened by the empty feeling I get when I haven't been actively creative for a while.

Hmm. Maybe I should try writing Trek fic...? *ponders*

My dad called me at 8:30 this morning. After I'd turned off my alarm clock and woken enough to realize it was the phone making noise, I was greeted like so:

"Oh, hi Liz, we were just talking with Vicky and she reminded us of the souvenir aspect."

And I was standing there still half-asleep thinking, 'What the hell? Are you going on a sudden, unplanned trip to the Grand Canyon or something, and wondering if I want a t-shirt?'

Then he continued, "Do you carry the Washington Post?"

Light dawned! The inauguration! Right! Yes! But... "No, we don't carry it," I told him. Which, incidentally, I have told him before. Several times.

I probably sounded groggy enough that he realized he was calling me before I'm usually up, and said, "Oh, did I wake you on your day off?"

"No, it's a work day," I said, and very politely didn't add, 'which makes it much worse because I have to get up for real at 10 o'clock and now I have effectively lost a good forty-five minutes of the sleep I would have gotten between now and then because you have woken me up too thoroughly.'

"Well, have a good day," he said, and hung up.

*headdesk*

I love my family, but some days, I swear to god, I wonder about their sanity. (Also, hello, my sister lives in D.C.; why was he not asking her in the first place??? Argh!)

---------------

On a completely different topic, look, new default icon! It's a computer-drawn version of a pen-and-ink doodle I used to draw all the time in notebooks when I was supposed to be paying attention to lectures. It began its life as the logo of an imaginary vanity press business I invented for a high school history project, but became something of a signature for a while, as well as the basis for several related doodles. I still tend to draw it (or other mini-sketches in a similar style) beside my signature on cards, as part of a cunning plan to disguise my lack of any appropriate and/or interesting words. :-)