Long, Long Ago

Been a couple things lately that made me go "holy crap, I'm 26!"

The first actually happened about a month and a half ago, when into the store wandered someone who looked vaguely familiar, and yet unfamiliar. I watched the guy meander through the store for a few minutes trying to relax and let my brain cough up the reason I thought I recognized him.

I still hadn't figured it out when he got to the register. I did my usual patter, eying him discretely out of the corner of my eye, and I could see he was doing the same sort of thing. Weird.

Finally he raised one eyebrow and asked "You're FarmGirl, right?" (using my full real name, of course.)

My brain chose this moment to finally kick into gear, superimposing my memory of him at thirteen on his twenty six year old face. The reason I had so much trouble is that when I knew him, he was a clean cut young early teenager, and now he's a long-haired man. I mean really, the change is a complete shock. I did Knowledge Bowl (an academic competition in which we would be handed problems to solve, in three "quarters" we just had to solve the problems, in one we had to solve the problem AND put on a play about it. Think RPG's only geekier.) and Rocketry with him.

I remember on the bus to Knowledge Bowl meets we would drive the chaperons nuts singing stupid songs, until we got about half way there, then we were just as noisy, but we were discussing strategy and how we were gonna kick butt and take names. That's what set the knowledge bowl kids apart from the jocks, they goofed off ALL the way to their stuff.

Back then, he looked just like you'd expect a kid doing academic competitions and Rocketry to look, short hair, glasses, usually t-shirts and jeans unless it was picture day then it was a button down and jeans. He was skinny and angular and had a sharp sense of humor.

He moved away after that school year, and it was one of those lost touch things.

Now, he's filled out and lost some of the angles, his hair is longer than mine has ever been and he looks like he belongs shirtless playing bass for a garage band gone big.

Of course he said I haven't changed much. Well, it's true, I still look pretty much the same, just older.

But after he left, I texted R, giving her the scoop and telling her how shocked I was at the change. She came back with "what do you expect, you haven't seen him in twelve years."

Twelve. Years. Wow. The mere fact that something happened to me twelve years ago that I can reasonably be expected to remember that didn't involve a major natural disaster or an injury to myself has me a bit flabbergasted.

The other thing was a conversation in the GBC IRC channel concerning tattoos. Dixie said something along the lines of "you won't find anyone with just one tattoo for very long, they're addictive."

I started to compose a retort saying I'd had just one tattoo for a while now, and thought a moment to tote up years. Ten. Ten years I've had my tattoo.

Seriously?!? I swear it was just a couple years ago I got it... or it feels that way. There's no way that I've been considered adult enough to permanently mark my body for ten years. Well, technically, I haven't, but Farmmom and Farmdad signed off on the tatt because Bro knew I'd been wanting one, and he paid for it for my Christmas present that year.

But still. I'm thinking in decades now, and it's only going to get worse from here on out. Those "omg" moments will continue and grow as the years extend.

I'm not afraid of getting older, I won't delay my 30th birthday, I'm just worried that this means I have to admit that I'm a grownup now....

I don't wanna!

Company Policy

I've had a couple questions lately about this via email, so I'll clear a couple things up real quick.

I work at a chain convenience store on a major North-South highway. I work nights. Alone. I'm 5'7 and about a hundred pounds of well-packed attitude.

But attitude won't save me if someone decides to rob the store. Attitude will do nothing to deter a large man if he decides he's going to put his hands on me. Attitude won't save my life if someone decides to kill me.

But company policy clearly states that I'm not allowed to carry a weapon. Never mind that I've been approved for a permit to carry a concealed weapon, and can carry my gun anywhere else, my company tells me I'm not allowed.

If the store is robbed while I'm there, I'm to hand over the cash in the register and press the panic button. A panic button that has to be held down for three seconds to send a signal to law enforcement, who may then have to come from the other side of the county.

I'm fine with handing over the cash. They want it, they can have it.

I am not fine with the possibility that I will not be able to hold that button for a full three seconds (three seconds is a LONG time to do something when the excrement hits the rotating blades) if the guy across the counter decides he's going to take a little rape with his quick cash.

I am not fine with the possibility that a robber will become angry when I have a low amount of cash in my drawer and am unable to get him more money from the safe, and decide to take his anger out on me. Or that he may think I know some kind of magic code to open the safe, or make it spit out money more often than once every two minutes.

I am not fine with the idea of being beaten, shot, stabbed, raped, or otherwise assaulted because my company doesn't think I'm smart enough to safely carry a gun while I'm working for them.

I will abide by any company policy that does not directly impair my ability to provide for my own personal safety, in a manner guaranteed by the United States Constitution.

The Second Amendment trumps company policy. So does my life, and my safety. Period.

Quotes

Well the contest has been going for a while now, and while I'm a little sad that I've only gotten five entries, maybe these will inspire the rest of my readers to come up with their own. Here are the entries:

(Edit: Got a couple more, so I'm throwing them on the end.)

"The second most grabbable butt in the blogosphere." - Alan

"FarmGirl: 1000% of the USRDA of whoop-ass" -Cybrus

"FarmGirl: It's best to stay on her good side. Trust me." - JayG

"I just do what FarmGirl tells me." - JayG

"FarmGirl has a deliciously grabbable ass" - Jennifer

"She'll cut off your nuts and serve them to you." - Loki

"FarmGirl- 98 pounds of of tightly-wound tornado looking for a place to land." - Newbius

"FarmGirl: The world's most heavily-armed twig." - Commenter Ragdragger who did not leave a link.

"As a professional massage therapist it would be unethical of me to comment on FarmGirl's ass." - ChristinaLMT


Hmm. Apparently my posterior is the "famous" one, not me. Anyway, you can vote for your favorite in comments, or if you think you can do better, submit your own outrageous quote via email.

As a side note, the consensus seems to be "don't tweet" so I'll put that idea on the back burner for now, unless a bunch of people speak up in favor of the idea.

Hug a Veteran

And say thank you, today.

From all of us here at the Old Homestead, to all of you Veterans out there:

Remember that there are still those of us who know full well the price paid for our freedoms, in your time, your health, your limbs and lives. We mourn the loss of even one of you, and honor your sacrifices, large and small.

Those who enjoy the liberties of life in this country should not forget that those liberties come at a cost, paid by courageous and outstanding men and women.

Thank you for your service, each and every one of you.

Quotes, and Twitter

I want people to keep going on the previous post, I'm finding it very interesting. But I have one idea, and one question.

A lot of bloggers have quotes about themselves on their page. I'm getting kind of jealous of this, because nobody says awesome things about me. On the other hand I do try to keep my ego in check at least a little bit, so I don't want to go begging for "she's awesome" quotes. So, instead, I'd like to have a contest for the most outrageous quotes about me that you can think of. They can, of course, be entirely fictional. Make them funny, make them deep, make them whatever you want as long as they're outrageous.

Submit your quotes to my email ( therealfarmgirl (at) gmail (dot) com ) and I'll publish them, and let everyone vote for their favorites. This is also a good excuse to get some more regular updates. The winners will get a place of honor on the sidebar.

Next, should I get a twitter account? I'm gone more than I'm here anymore, and I do occasionally throughout the day (and night) come up with things that could be considered amusing. Normally those things get shared with the same people who are inflicted with my not so amusing random things (like picture messages live from El Marto Del Wal wondering at the fact that you can buy a vibrating ring for your ding-a-ling there)- the people I know well enough to have exchanged phone numbers with. On the other hand, I think I can tweet (twit?) from my phone, so I could conceivably share these things with all of you as well.

The question is, would it be just yet another self-serving ego-stroker or would my loyal readers (seriously how am I still getting 100+ hits a day on this blog?!?? I love you guys.) be interested in my random thoughts?

I would love to hear from the lurkers on this as well, a simple comment or email to the above address with either "yes" or "no" will suffice. If you email put "twitter poll" in the subject line so that I don't accidentally delete your vote, though.

So, get those quotes in, and tell me what you think of the twitter idea.

And Now, For Something Utterly Different

The last few days I've been sick. Pretty miserable sick for a couple of days, with the full body-aches-fever-sore-throat thing, coming together to give me a general attitude of just wanting everyone to let me lay in bed and die already. Of course, I can't just lay in bed, and I've watched all of my DVD's so many times that unless I get a craving to see Save The Last Dance again (shaddap) they're really only good for putting me to sleep. So I read. A lot.

I'll just pause here a moment to sing the praises of e-readers. I think I'll always prefer dead-tree editions, but e-readers are VERY convenient. Without my nook I'd have been stuck with the same problem in books that I had with the DVD's. Ok, less so, because I can re-read books way more times than I can watch movies before they're just not any fun anymore.

Anyway, I was running short on reading material and decided to pick up a few more e-ditions for my library. Unfortunately all of my favorite standby authors failed to have anything new magically be released just in time to save me from dying of boredom as well as some weird flu that left one lymph node swollen and tender while the other returned to normal.

Fellow GBC'er (ya'll remember the Conspiracy, right?) Vine* answered my cold-med doped out plea for recommendations, instantly, with two words.

Little Brother. (By Cory Doctorow)

When I hit B&N and it was available as an e-book (I frown on their suddenly having to brand everything nook, when they were so sensible about it before, and I think the term "nookbook" should be reserved for books with recipes for getting laid.... which QP should write) I grabbed it. Knowing Vine's personality and having done a bit of taste-comparison with him from time to time, I figured it would be an interesting read at the least.

Just finished it. The verdict? If you haven't read it yet, you should. Some reviewers have called it the younger sibling of Orson Welles's (authors note: I've stared at this for ten minutes and I can't figure out why even though I know it's incorrect, Welles' sounds more "right" ) 1984. Or something like that, anyway, I'm too lazy to go find the exact quote at the moment. And I'm still a little hazy with meds**, thus all the parenthetical digressions and the link whoring.

Personally, I think it's a better illustration of the hazards of too much government, easier to relate to. I won't give out any spoilers, but it's a well written book that works simultaneously as an entertaining read and a social commentary. Not many authors can pull that off, frankly. You either wind up with a well-written social commentary with the bare bones of a plotline and characters, but lots of details about how the world could be run better (either directly or through satire) or a good story that has vague hints of social commentary in there somewhere, if you want to go back and puzzle them out.

Excellent book, two... well, I was going to say two thumbs up but that's been taken and I haven't thought of what my personal seal of approval is going to be, or even what the scale is. Considering how much stuff I wind up reviewing just because I probably should figure that out. Anyway, I liked it a lot.

But what I liked the most was after the end of the story.

At the back of the book is an afterward from a security expert, Bruce Schneier. Basically, he says that any security system is only proof against the designer, until and unless it has been tested by someone else, and the more someone elses that test it, the better. Including what I can't stop thinking of as "guerrilla testing." Ordinary people, figuring out ways around security systems not because they really want to get around them for the most part, but because they like the puzzle.

The key to being a socially responsible guerrilla tester is publicizing your results. If everyone knows how to open a Kryptonite bike lock with a bic pen, then the people selling you crap to make your other crap more secure have to figure out a way to keep any jerk with a pen from taking it anyway.

Schneier finishes his afterward by encouraging readers to go hack a security system. Now, I'm no rabble rouser, generally. But I think the whole concept is great. It makes sense that if something is secure against one person, it's only sure to be secure against that person, and anyone dumber than them. But if a million people take a crack at it, some of them are bound to be smart. Or, at least, they're bound to look at things in different ways, and notice that a Bic pen would fit in that hole and I wonder what would happen if I put it in there...

So, faithful readers (do I have any of those anymore? I've been a bad blogger...) what hacks do you know about? Have you figured out a way around some security system, physical or electronic? Have your friends?

Comment and tell me about them. If you're shy or might get in trouble, comment as Anony-mouse.

Myself, I'm no genius at this stuff, but I did once break into my apartment when I'd locked myself out. I did it by taking off the screen on an open window, but hey, it counts, right?

*Yes, Vine has a blog now. Go bug him to post more, I want to see what he's got to say, but he's being shy.

**I've been told before that I make parenthetical digressions in conversation, too. My best friend R once told me that she could practically see the parentheses. I try not to do it too often in my writing, but tonight I blame the cold meds. Just be thankful that I'm not posting at the peak of the med-high.

Oh God My Job Edition The Third

In which a stray cat saves my entire night.

I was grumpy tonight. Rather catty, even, since my help was gone at 7:30 and half of the stuff I'm not really supposed to do while I'm by myself hadn't been done. She got some stuff done for me and kudos to her for that, I appreciated it, but having to take trash out after I lock the doors on top of everything else just aggravates me.

However, as I was outside locking up the ice coolers, in preparation for locking the doors, and having a quick smoke while I had half a moment, I stumbled across "our" stray momma cat.

She hangs around the store and snags food out of the garbage cans, to feed her never ending trail of kittens. Now, this town is pretty much full up on stray cats and we don't really need more kittens running around alleys, but I can't get mad at her for doing what comes natural. If I catch her when she's not nursing, I'll probably try to get her in a carrier and get her spayed, but I won't mess with her while she's got nursing babies.

I've been trying to buddy up to her a bit, thinking if she befriends me I might be able to love on the kittens some (because they're adorable, of course, but also because I just might be able to find a few of them homes and reduce the stray problem if I can lay hands on them) and I've been very careful not to frighten her unduly. She's been gradually getting closer to me over the last few months, but has steadfastly kept out of touching distance.

Mostly she's been giving me that "Well, drop some food already" look. Tonight though, she seemed to come to a decision all at once. I was speaking softly, distractedly, to her, as is my usual habit, since she was between me and the ice cooler that I needed to lock. She tensed and I figured she was going to walk away, but she paused while I took another relaxed step, then came right up to me, and rubbed against my leg.

I leaned down and held my fingers out for her to sniff, which she did, and seemed to decide that even though I smelled like cleaning products, I would be allowed to touch her royalness anyway.

She loved on me for about five minutes, while her kittens peered around the corner, obviously confused.

If I can get her to come for some attention every night, eventually the kittens will decide that what's good enough for mom is good enough for them. It shouldn't be that hard to find homes for a gray tortoise shell, a black short hair, and a gray-and-white ball of fluff.

Also, it is so easy to tell who momma cat prefers to cavort with, since every litter has one gray and white kitten, marked almost identically to the tom that I see occasionally wandering around that area of town. The current one is extra adorable, having inherited dad's coloring, gray mask and top of head, down the back and tail, with white nose, chin, belly, chest, and legs, with mom's long hair, which at this age makes him or her a little powder puff.

Tonight, I got a victory that I wasn't really expecting. It certainly improved my mood immensely.