Back in L.A. at one of my jobs, a coworker of mine was generally disliked by all of my other coworkers. For the most part, she was a very nice person. Unfortunately, she had one unpleasant trait: she had to one-up everyone. Not just most people, but everyone. And not just most of the time, but all the time. It drove every single person in the office nuts.

So, here's my fear.

That I've become that coworker.

When I'm in a group setting, and someone tells a story, I often find myself saying, "Yeah, yeah, I've had that experience, too! And here's another tidbit!" At what point do I stop commiserating and just shut up and listen?

I almost think I've lost my ability to socialize. Programming isn't exactly a social activity (but, damn, working with Mike and Chris is fun!), but hanging out with friends helps a lot. Playing ultimate helps a lot.

And listening (listening!) helps the most.

Just let me not become that hated coworker.

Time to start the word of the day section here, mostly to improve my own vocabulary, and mostly to understand the words I would normally just skip right over when reading, say, an Economist or other magazine or book.

What?

Skip right over words you don't know?

Who does that?

Back in the fifth grade (way back when I was but a wee lass (heh)), my teacher said something to the effect of, "I don't want you skipping over words you don't know. If you don't know the word, look it up." I'm sure Mrs. Pullins meant it as a way to encourage us to learn new words. Tragically, her words had the exact opposite effect on me. My reaction to her words? Something like,

"What? I can skip over words I don't know? Really?

But I never thought about doing that..."

And from that point on I started skipping over words I didn't know when I was reading. My vocabulary stopped expanding at the 11 year old level. Eh, it might have been at the 12 year old level, as I was in the 6th grade English class, but it was a young person's vocabulary. In later years, I would recognize the folly of the word-skipping as I struggled on the verbal section of the SAT.

Even after college I studied word books to expand my vocabulary. I wrote up flash cards, kept word lists with me, looked up words I didn't know and wrote them in a word journal, did everything I could to make up for those lost years from 11 to 16 when I just skipped right over the words I didn't know.

I feel I still struggle to this day.

Some people have suggested using a word of the day calendar. While I agree they can be useful in expanding one's vocabulary, they don't necessarily help me with the words I'm currently reading. The problem I have is that I don't understand certain words I'm reading right now. Looking them up, then writing them down will help me retain the words (or so claims my dad: "Look 'em up! You'll remember them longer.").

So, as I'm reading my magazine a day I'll keep a list of words I don't know, look them up, and keep my list here.

Then maybe I'll remember them.

Mike and I spent most of the day moving concrete and asphalt to the dump today. This weekend is the second of two weekends of Sunnyvale's free dump days, where residents can take pretty much any non-hazardous item to the dump for free, and get rid of it. Tragically, it seems that few people in Sunnyvale have heard of Freecycle, so there's a lot of still useful refuse that gets dumped. If the dump didn't have a "No Salvaging" sign, I'm sure I would have loaded up the truck back up and carted as much out as we took in.

The great part of the day is that we managed to finally clear out the concrete from the front driveway. Well, Mike managed it.

On the way back from the dump, one of the containers from the back of the truck flew out and landed between lanes 1 and 2 of westbound 237. Fffffft! out it flew when the truck made 65 mph. Mike made a funny face, said, "Uh oh," and pulled over. We pondered our options for a minute (leave it and drive away, leave it and call highway patrol, back up and get it), when we noticed the traffic pattern opened up for about 15 seconds, plenty of time to dash out to get the renegade tub.

So, Mike backed up the truck close to the tub and, without letting him know what was up, I dashed out to get the tub when the traffic opened up.

My heart was racing, and the adrenaline pumping. Dash in, zoom out and ta-da! we have a tub.

Not something I want to repeat: dashing out of traffic as cars come racing towards me at 70+ mph.

Not how I expected to spend my Friday night, but still entertaining nonetheless.

Liza and I spent the evening playing together as Kate and Mike went to see Sin City. Mike had been wanting to see it for a while now, talking about it, complaining that he wouldn't get to see it for a long while because of various circumstances.

So, I offered to watch Liza while they went out for the evening.

Liza's 2 years, 10 months. At this point, she has a personality. The great thing is that it's a pretty wonderful personality. When she laughs, oh my, the room and the world light up. When she giggles, oh, you have to giggle, too. It's great. She's great.

I'm sure if she were my child, however, I'd be less enamoured with her. But for now, heh, since I can give her back, she's still magical.

At nearly 3, Liza is fascinating to me. I find watching her and learning her interpretation of the world to be entertaining. For example, at some point in the evening, she wanted to wash the dishes. Well, okay, not something I would put on the top of my Friday night list, but sure. So, she found the scrubby pad for me, and "washed" the dishes with me. Her version of washing dishes is to stick her hands in the water, and thrash them around. After that, the dishes are magically clean!

Throughout the evening, we also played checkers (which involved stacking the checkers then knocking over the stack), hid under the covers, read Stray Dog at least 10 times, built a cushion house, and played with her blocks (twice!).

She was so funny with her blocks. She would take an 8 block, and put 8 one blocks on it, then another 8 block, then another 8 one blocks. She repeated this until she ran out of 8 blocks. Of course, at that point, she was bored. But when I asked if she would help me clean up, she did so without hesitation. I certainly didn't do that when I was young.

She currently has a way of using, "Sure!" instead of yes when answering in the affirmative. I'm not sure she knows the difference between "Sure!" and "Yes." but her use is terribly cute.

So, we went to see Mark and Megan perform in the Mikado.

The show was in downtown San Jose, where I had worked when I worked with Bharat and Jamie at Fusion One. I didn't work particarly long at f1, but I worked as long as I could,Given my lack of interest in the product and hesitaation with the company buyout of Sinia.

We were suppose to meet up with Keith and Katie and carpool to dinner with them, but we arrived at K & K's place too late. So off to the show we went, Kris driving. Tragically, we didn't know where we were going for dinner. I called up Katie, but she didn't know either. So, they promised to call when they arrived.

Turns out, where we went was a familiar lunch spot for me when I worked at F1 - the House of Siam on Market (there being two locations, the other being the VA Software Thursday night drink night dinner location). Even Kris recognized the place.

After dinner, off to the show. It was done in the original format - the choreography and music of the forst opening show. It was so poorly received the first time it opened that it immediately closed and was rewritten and re-choreographed to be shorter and, presumably more entertaining.

This production was 3 hours long and, well, I'm glad Mark and Megan were in the show so that I had something to focus on.

Yay, Mark and Megan!